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.