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.