screencasting/podcasting

Still doing lots of screen and pod castings. I can see that it would be a great idea to have a web site that has podcasts of the powerpoints I present to class. By using video to capture the stories and drawing that I do based on questions the students ask, those that missed class will have a much better feeling for what they missed when compared to just going through a powerpoint. I've also found that in making short podcast of vocabulary for our ELL students, it has helped me come up with additional examples that should help all my students. I'd like to try to use them for quizzes by doing a demo which would then be consistent for each class. I have to say having a little Flip video camera has been great! It is so easy to quickly grab it and shoot some video the just plug it in to the computer for editing. I plan on shooting a lot of video this summer and getting things ready for next year.

Action Research

Well I went to the class last night to learn how to do the action research paper. Sara was there so we got a few things set up since we are going to try and cooperate on this project. Yes, we know we have to have two separate papers but the idea that we can use both our classes and maybe even add another teacher to the mix is great. I think we will be able to collect all the data we need this school year and if everything goes well we might even get a chance to do the paper before the deadline, but it is nice to know that you have a year to get the paper done. This is the first one I've done for the district so I'm sure it will take some time to figure out just what they want. Not real clear yet about when we need to have the video done so I've got some checking to do to find out. Gil was talking about after our next class, I'll have to find out for sure so I've got it done and ready to show.

screencasting

I've been working on doing some on-line course development for the district for a class for next year. They want a lot of podcast and/or screencast so I've been making a number of screencast lately. It is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It is very different being in front of a class and teaching something using a screencast than relying on just the screencast to get your message across. Doing the screencast and talking while your doing it was a challenge at times. I kept thinking of other ways I could say things and then would get off track a little and have to start all over. You can't preview with the software I'm using but you know when things aren't the way you'd like them to be when you get done. I can see that this could be very helpful for those students that miss my class and can watch these at home to get ready for when they do come back to class.

iMovie work around

Trying to use the Flip camera to create podcast was a little troubling at first but I found out that the new version of iMovie is the problem. I used the older version and was able to import just fine. I like the older version anyway, the new one is to messed up to be able to quickly edit short clips for podcast. So it looks like I should be able to get some podcasting done in the near future.

podcast troubles

Still working on podcasting. Ran into a couple of bumps in the road using some of the districts equipment. I got to use on of the flip video cameras, it is really nice and easy to use but doesn't work with iMovie. When you hook it up to the Mac's USB port it shows up as a flash drive but iMovie wouldn't import anything from it. So I tried to move the files from the camera to the hard drive and they came over as AVI files. So I tried to import them into iMovie and that didn't work either. I later found out that it all depends on which OS you are using and the camera's software/firmware can't be changed you have to send it in and exchange it for another camera. One of my fellow teachers spent hours with tech support and then had to send his in. I'll see what happens when he gets his back.

For now I'm using a work around using an old video camera that hooks right up to iMovie. I guess if I was better at doing a great job with the first shoot I wouldn't need iMovie to clean it up! I'll work on that, yea, right;)

Thing 19 Screencasting

I went through the lesson on screencasting today to see if I could get some good ideas as to how to use it more effectively with the on-line class that we are building. I have an wiki to put it on but there are some things with the districts set up that we have to figure out yet.

I looked at Jing, Skitch, KickApps and Screentoaster. They all seem easy enough to use and I like the fact that on some of them you can preview and edit what you've just done. Being able to put them in a format that allows you to use the iPod Touches that are going around could be very helpful.

I can see that using this as a tutorial for teaching students how to set up a lab or use a piece of equipment will be very useful, especially for our ELL population. I liked Screentoaster but there is a cost associated with it so for now I'll use the one from the district that we used during our podcast training.

google docs

I didn't know very much about google docs before we were introduced to it during our class. Since then it seems to be everywhere. Many of my students that usually do a powerpoint used google docs to do there presentations this quarter. It really worked nice since nothing got lost or had to be converted from one version to another, it just worked.

I'm working on a project with other science teachers putting together an on-line course for the district and the team is made up of people from many different schools, so we decided to use google docs to get started putting things together. We also set up a wiki and a blog so we can keep in touch and post our lessons and podcasts.

I sure am glad I took this class. Its making this new way of communicating much easier than setting up meetings and running around town carrying floppy disks with lessons on them;)

Comic Life presentations

I had my students export their Comic Life pages as HTML files so we could use the projectors to show the whole class at once. It went very well, they found out that like a powerpoint the font and color scheme you use makes a difference. Also some of the text was a little distorted at times so the class would ask questions for clarification. I really liked that part because it helped the group presenting understand that if they were to make a stand alone comic they would have to make sure it was clear enough for their audience to understand.

Using Comic Life also kind of forced them to be more to the point, so they chose their words carefully. Though many students took notes from the pages, looking at quiz scores, I don't think it was any different than doing a powerpoint or poster to deliver their message. They did like it better so from that point of view it was a nice change from what they do in other classes. I'm sure I'll use it again with a few tweeks here and there, but overall, it was worth doing.

More on Life, Comic Life that is

Today was the last day for my students to work on their Comic Life pages. I was pleasantly surprised by how many of them really got into making their pages. I even had a few after school today, so they could tweek a few things to make it just right. One student after 30 mins after school shouted out that he loved doing this and we should do it more often! I'll see tomorrow when we all read them how well I like doing this.

What I have seen so far is that they are being very concise in what they are saying. I was worried that they may just load it up with pictures and not really have anything worth saying. What I'm finding is that they have put a lot of thought into what they are doing, maybe because they know everyone is going to be reading them and taking a test on the material that they are presenting. I took some standard test questions from the data base to use as a quiz, we'll see how well they do.

Crazy Day

We were in the state championship girls b-ball tournament today. We beat Blaine 73 to 34. The reason I bring it up is that most of our students were at the game so we had very few in class. Some of those that couldn't go to the game wanted to watch the game since they told us it would be broadcast on the net. This too seemed to be blocked, we could get the audio but not the video. Like we saw in class last night you just never know what is going to get blocked that you never thought would.

Having most of the students gone today did give me a chance to play around a little more with Comic Life. The more I use it the more I like it. I did make a tutorial about how to use some of the equipment they will be using in the lab and it was so easy to put together. I like the fact that you can save it as HTML and then show it in color instead of printing in black and white.

Podcasting

We had a podcasting workshop after school Monday and it was really neat.
The more we played around with it the more I could see the uses for doing them. I thought being able to make a podcast that shows step by step how to use a meter or other piece of equipment we use in our labs would be very useful for those students that miss class that day. I have some other thoughts but I think I'll wait until after our mili class tonight, which happens to be on podcasting to see what new things I can learn.

More on Comic Life

I've got a student teacher who is kind of a comic book buff, so I ran my idea by him to use Comic Life in class. He gave me a wonderfully puzzled look, like really, you want to have students teach each other using comics. Yep, I told him. He then got a little nervous and asked if I could explain in a little more detail what I had in mind. It's always fun to make your student teachers stop and think;) So I laid out for him my idea and told him he could do what he wanted but that was what I was going to do for the next chapter. I'm looking forward to it, I like doing things that make students question what they are learning and why. I have some very talented students that I know will really come to life with this assignment. We are going to start the middle of next week and I can't wait.

Comic Life

I stopped in to see Exploradora in the Mac lab yesterday and they were using Comic Life to do an assignment. I started thinking about ways that I could use that in my science class as an alternate way of assessing my students knowledge. Many times I have students draw out or use pictures to aid in their description of an event they observe in the lab. I was wondering if anyone has used this as an alternate way of testing?

Google streetview with additional photos

I've been checking out google's street view. You can now see user generated pictures of famous places by clicking on the thumbnails in the corner of the window.

Here is a link to short video about what they have done.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/02/news-from-google-world.html

Teleconferencing

My engineering class borrowed a teleconference set up from the district this week to have a couple of conferences. One was with Medtronics and the other with 3M. It was really cool to be able to interact with the speakers and listen to what questions other schools asked. I can see that an application like this would really be nice for getting current information to a large group of students in different locations. The only trouble we had was with band width, got a little slow and pixilated at times. My students really liked it so I think we'll try it again sometime.

Backchanneling

After class Tuesday I got to thinking about how I could use edmodo or Todaysmeet in my engineering class for them to communicate across the room while working on separate parts of their project. I talked with them today about it and they thought it would be very helpful for them to see what each other is doing without having to stop and talk about it. They know they need to do face to face communication at times but not all the time. They are always yelling across the room for so and so to check out this website or source that they found. If nothing else it should quite things down a little;) I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Clipmarks

I've been wanting to try out Google notes for awhile now but hadn't gotten around to it. Well I waited to long, they are not letting any new people sign up. I thought they just weren't going to support it with any updates but they are not letting anyone even sign up for it. They will still be somewhat supportive to those that are already using it in that they still have access to all their stuff. So I moved on to trying out Clipmarks. I think it will be helpful. There are times when I find a piece of an article or picture that I want to use and trying to copy and paste or even using Grab can sometimes be not quite right. I clipped a few things and sent them via email and it worked really slick. I'll have to use it some more to see all that it can do.

Cloud fun

I had my first go at using wordle tonight, it was fun. I think it could be used as a way to get some students hooked on a new topic. I was thinking that if I gave them the wordle before they started a topic and had them do some research on the words to see if they could make some kind of connection between them that they might discover some relationships beyond the standard curriculum. I tried to post the image but it wouldn't let me, not sure about the copy right stuff of posting either so maybe its a good thing it didn't work.

Scientists Solve the Mystery of “Flu Season”

I was going through my Reader feeds yesterday and came across this article that I thought was interesting. It talks about why we get more colds and flu in the winter than in the summer. I always thought it had to do with people being inside more and therefore being exposed more often. Well, I still think that may be part of it, but from the article it sounds like the flu virus just likes the cold dry air of winter, not much we can do about that. If you want to read the whole article follow the link.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/02/10/scientists-solve-the-mystery-of-flu-season/

Trying to make the time

I've been reading through some of the other blogs that get sent to my Reader account and there are some great things that people are doing and experiencing. I read and responded to Paek-Man's post about being frustrated with the news that if you didn't have 15 or more blogs your SOL. I'm sure we were told that we need to blog every week, just like we tell our student's that they need to do their homework every week. I think the difference is that not all of us understood that it was an absolute requirement as apposed to a suggestion to do if we could. I'll take the resposibility that I didn't ask more questions to fully understand. I know for me there were times when I was working on understanding parts of what I was reading and was somewhat overwhelmed. Those are times when I just need to process the information before I can write about it and depending on what else is going on, it can take a week or two.

I have learned a great deal from this experience and look foward to each class and the new things I get exposed to. I've had my students using google docs. and have used it myself with teachers from other schools all working on the same activites for IFL. I'm now using it with my student teacher which is a new exerience for me. I think the most important part of a class like this is not that we blog about it but that we actually use it. Having a million tools but never using them is like not having any tools at all. I would much rather learn and practice and teach about a few things that I find that I can use right now as blog about the wonderful things out there that I may never use. I guess it all boils down to time and what has to go in order for us to make the time to blog.

Thing 21

Podcast are so cool!  I got an iphone a couple of months ago and have a couple podcast fed to my phone all the time.  I use Discovery Channel and FORA.tv Daily.  What I like about them being sent to my phone is if/when I have some down time I can easily check a couple podcasts, since they are usually very short, for things that are current to use in class.   I also use the lecture series that has casts of college classes so I can see what is being done at that level.  I have found some that work for my physics classes and have put links to them on our class web site.  Also what is nice about having them fed to my phone is I can access them at school, as long as I don't get caught with my phone;)  There are many times when I'm eating lunch and listening to a cast.  I think the next step is to make some of my own for those students that miss class or need to see/hear it again.

I just tried to get into the podcasts from the list on the mili site, no go from school, they were all blocked.  

google docs

We are going to have some changes in our science offerings next year which lends itself to using google docs. The teachers say they don't have much time to meet but are being asked to coordinate their lessons.  Has anyone tried to put a large portion of their coursework on google docs in a team setting?  My thoughts are that they could use docs to put up some of their labs and such and then those on the team could tweek them for their own use.  The hard part is to get those that don't use/know anything about docs to spend the time to learn about it.  I've done this with single assignments/lessons but not with a whole course.  I'll have to look into how to organize folders to store the docs.  So if anyone has done this I'd love to hear from you.

Access trouble

As I mentioned in my last post, I'd keep you informed as to my trouble logging in to certain libraries. Well at class this last week, I think we figured it out, you just can't get there from here. What I mean is that it all depends on where you are as to how you can or can not log in. There are people looking into it to see if the whole thing can be set up in a more efficient way. I'm still not sure I fully understand why it works the way it does but I do know that if I go through my local library I can get access to the others, I just could not get to them directly. So a work around has been found, Yea! Now all I have to do is remember what I was looking for.

Thing 23

I jumped ahead a little. I found that over winter break that parents were e-mailing me about the rest of the quarter and what we would be doing. I guess there were some that are going to the inauguration or vacationing or whatever but wanted to have a run down on what their student was going to miss. That's were the web site comes in handy. I put what we would be doing everyday until the end of this quarter on there along with the answers to their problem sets etc...

There is also a link to their on-line text so if they don't have a text with them they can go on-line for what they need. Also, I've found that having their homework sheets and such on-line allows me to no have to go run off so many extras for when they forget them or lose them, I just tell them to go print one when they get home. No excuses now when they say they forgot to bring it home for the weekend.

I know one of the things that was mentioned in Thing 23 was to make a link so you all could check out the site if you wanted, but its got some things on there that need to have a little security so the site is password protected. Using the districts site and COSMOs does not allow for any great site building so your not missing much. I can give you the password in class if you really want to see it.

What's up with my library card?

I"ve been trying to get into some of the databases like Melsa's Online Resources for Public Use and Hennepin County Public Library Databases but it won't take my account number. I got a new card a month or so ago and it seemed to work fine until this week anyone have any ideas? My students have been using theirs just fine. What I did find before was way more information than I I had time to sort through. So that's good and bad. I think I need more practice getting into DB's and narrowing my searches. I'll keep plugging away and let you know what I find.