Levels of Organization in a Ecosystem PPT.

Levels of Organ. in Ecosystem

Vocabulary List Fall Finals

Vocabulary List Fall Review

Review Fall 2011 Final

Fall Final Schedule

Animal Adaptations Project

Here are some website that might help you in your research

Kids National Geographic

Animal Adaptations

Virginia Beach Public Schools

Animal Adaptations Physical and Behavioral

Tool # 11

YEAH!! I have finally made it to tool #11
I have a couple of favorite tools I know I can't live without. First is Dropbox. I use this all the time. I have it set up on my personal as well as work computer. It allows me to update documents cohesively. I also have not used my thumb drive in a couple of weeks. This alone is great. The other item i really like is diigo. I use it to drop favorite websites that i can go back and reflect on. It also makes it easy to lead a class project. Google docs is also a must. We are starting a project in science about adaptations of various animals. I want the kids to use some of the useful tools i have learned about. I will propose to my students to use storybird and glogster. It will be exciting to see what they choose to use.
I have really changed my thinking about 21st century technology tools. At first I was not to happy about all the time this learning would take. But the cool thing is I am able to see how my kids can use this as well as how much more they will get out of it. I know there needs to be a lot of initial leaning from the students, but i also know they will want to explore more options for their own leaning.
I need to figure out how i will implement the use of the new tools ie, computers. We have a cabinet set up for storage but i need to see how to keep them powered up and also i need to develop a way to give out he technology and always account for it. All that technology out can be quite tempting to take for some.
The most unexpected outcome of this training is that i really enjoyed it. I am able to walk away with great ideas that i can implement immediately with my students.I also see how this technology can help those students who have trouble expressing themselves in class. Technology is ever changing. What i have learned over the past couple of months will continue to evolve. I guess the best thing is that I am not scared any more to try new things. WE could all use a little breaking out of our boxes.

Tool #10

1. Discuss at least three things you would want to make sure your students understand about being good digital citizens. Students may think they know how to find information, but what they really need to know is how to target the specific information they need. A teacher should not just put up a website on their whiteboard. We need to show the student how we got to that site and why it is useful in teaching the objective. At the UPPER level, kids need to be taught how to access credible sources, either through searching databases, advanced searches on google or other good search strategies

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2. Share at least one of the resources mentioned above or on the Ed Tech website that you plan to use instructionally. Brainpop has a video on digital citizenry that i plan to use.

3. Explain briefly how you would "teach" the idea of digital citizenship to your students. Students are believing everything they read. Where is the skepticism? The investigation? The desire to double check things? It should be instilled as a part of what they learn, but specifically relating to Internet sources. Such things as verifying sources and basic literacy skills must intentionally be included in our curriculum at all levels. It should be modeled as part of what we teach.  

4. Explain briefly how you plan to share the idea of digital citizenship with your parents. I plan to add links to digital citizenship to my webpage and blog for parents to review. I will also send home a hard copy of students expectations in regard to digital citizenship.

Tool #9

1. Why do you think it is important to tie the technology to the objective? Anytime you teach content you must tie it back to an objective. This helps keeps students on track and also gives a checkpoint to assess if the student has learned the objective. Just having technology and letting the kids use it does not mean they will walk away with the information they need to learn.
2. Why should we hold students accountable for the stations/centers? Their are 25 students and one teacher in a typical classroom. A teacher cannot be everywhere, therefore the students need to know how to use the technology as well as how to take care of it.
3. Visit 2 of the applicable links to interactive websites for your content/grade level. Which sites did you like. How could you use them as stations? How can you hold the students accountable for their time in these stations? I liked BBC Home: Human Body and mind, because anytime you can have students use an interactive website to show how the body works it makes more sense to them. They need to not only read about the body but also see how it acts and reacts. Brain Pop is also a tool i regularly use. It would be neat to have the students use this on their own at stations.
4. List two to three apps you found for the iPod Touch/iPad that you can use in your classroom. What do you see that station looking like? How can you hold the students accountable for their time in these stations? I would use the apps as stations around the room. The apps that looked cool for science would be the Discovery channel for the iPad. The options with discovery are almost limitless. I would like to use the Ecosystems app. We will be starting this in the spring and it would be neat to have the students visit each of the 8 ecosystems. To hold students accountable i would have questions set up at each station so they would also have a guide to their learning. This would help to keep them focused on the objective.
5. What about other ways to use the iPod Touch/iPad? Share another way you can see your students using the device as a station. I am not sure how to use the iPad in other ways besides the apps and also as a internet tool. I will learn from other teachers with what they come up with.

Tool #8

3 things I have learned for implementing classroom technology
1. Set up iTunes account
2. Syncing Ipad to computer
3. Using Webcams

Planning the implementation of the various technologies will take the most time upfront. Teaching the kids how to use the equipment properly. Also setting up rules and regulations on how to set up and put up equipment.
I think using skype with other classrooms that are studying the same thing would be fun.

Tool # 7

I visited all the websites that were on the 11 tools site. I must admit it seems quite daunting to collaborate with another classroom on a project. I did like the CIESE Website. There were quite a few projects that looked interesting but the planning time involved to set these up with one of my classes was too much for me at this point. This type of collaboration takes a lot of planning and also it needs to be connected to the TEKS. I think the easiest way to step into collaboration will be for me to have my 2 pre/ap classes collaborate on a small project.


When you plan to implement - after thanksgiving
What tool(s) you plan to use - Google Docs, Edmodo, Diigo, Poll Voting,
A brief description of the project (plan - two or three sentences) Students in 2 pre/ap classes will collaborate on research and ppt. presentation on a animal and its adaptations. They will work together to come up with information about a specific animal and the structural, behavioral and physiological adaptations.

Tool # 6

I have been using Delicious to organize my bookmarks (learned in tool #2). Now i am going to use Diigo because it has the ability to add sticky notes and annotate articles found on the web. You can also take a snapshot of the page and use as a picture.

I just used Poll Everywhere. You do not need to sign up for a membership. I am going to practice using this tomorrow in class. I am going to put the poll on this page a couple of different ways. If you get a chance answer the poll. Thanks appreciate your feedback.

Make a live audience poll at Poll Everywhere

Here is a second way to do the same poll.

Build television sms voting polls at Poll Everywhere

Student Searches

I saw this web 2.0 tool for students. It is a search engine that has been vetted by educators. I was thinking of using it on my students next internet based project.
Here is the widget.

Tool #5

The first Web 2.0 tool i used was Prezi. It was fairly easy to make a quick presentation. I want to explore it more to try to embed differnt items like you tube or brain pop into the prezi. It really is just another way to show something to my students.
Here is my Prezi


I then used storybird to develop a comic strip about scientific method. This was really fun and i could see the kids using this to show their learning on various topics.
Here is my StoryBird
Slimey and the Scientific Method on Storybird

Please send me some comments on my prezi or storyboard.

Tool #4

1. I had begun to use google doc's a few weeks ago after having been to a training by Ken Jones. I can see a lot of use for this when creating documents. I created a test a few days ago and would usually attach to an email for all my team to look at and make corrections or add any changes. Now we can all make corrections/changes in real time and have a finished document much faster. All without making and hard copies. We Need To Save Trees.
2. I created a form yesterday and sent out a question to get feedback on How Many Hours Do You Spend doing non instructional hours each week. I have gotten three responses for 7-10 hours a week. Very interesting. I need to figure out if i can see who responded to what?
3.  Briefly discuss how you can use the tools in Google Apps with your team or department..See comment from #1 above. How can you incorporate Google Apps as a tool in your classroom? Well i think the easiest way to do this would be to have my students complete their team labs in google docs so they can all add to the document and i can comment on it as well before they submit to me.
Which tools are you excited about using with students? Google doc's has a lot of potential. We need to be able to train the students on how use google doc's and they need to have access to this technology.

Tool #3

I visited a few sites...You Tube, Teacher Tube, School Tube and Blinkx. I really liked the idea of Blix, being able to search for videos that would be appropriate for school in one place. It would cut down on searching different sites. I don't think it searches discovery education that we have access too. I am attaching a hyperlink for a video i found on Blinkx, see below.
Nervous System Video


The picture below is of a professional video on the nervous system i found on YouTube. It is really cool how you can look at the videos without leaving this blog just by clicking on the insert video button above. You can view as many as you like and when you find the one that works just click the share button and it gets embedded in your blog.

As far as the copyright information... I was pretty familiar with it since i have done so many science lab reports. The one thing i do like to stress is that if you are using most information in a closed system, ie like on our network you can show most things without worry of copyright infringement since it is for use in education.

Finally i enjoyed going to the Picasa website to browse pictures. I saw a few of the nervous system i wanted to use but when i tried to download the site/sbisd kept timing out.
I did open a dropbox account. I have saved some documents on human body and our next tests. I don't see much difference between it and our network or live binders. I guess it is a similar tool for getting to your information. Dropbox would be useful when you are tying to share documents with your students.

My thoughts on PLN's

Well so far not many teachers from Spring Forest are up an running with a blog. I am going to start looking at blogs that will help with student behavior in the classroom. Here is one blog that i enjoyed. I saved it using delicious.
http://www.nassp.org/Portals/0/content/59587.pdf

Tool #2

I have visited 5 blog sites on 21st century learning.
Educators PLN
Classroom 2.0
The Fischbowl
Always Leaning
Technology in the Middle
I am slowly getting up to speed on google reader. There are so many tools it is hard to keep from forgetting which ones do what. I am sure there will be a easy way to keep them...i guess bookmark for future use. Some of the names of these web tools is a little annoying because they do not help to describe what the site exactly does.
I think that there is so much to learn sometime it seems a little overwhelming. I am going to look and see whether i want to add a diigo or delicious account for keeping track of favorite bookmarks.
Tell me what do you think of all the new initiatives. how do you as a teacher keep from getting overwhelmed?

I am Blogging

It was easy to set up my blog. Voki took a while due to having to download a lot of other software. I am just finishing up and have spent 1/5 hours.