More Photo Phun

I looked into the photo sharing sites recommended on our class page.

Flickr is great because it has a lot of searching options and you can find some really interesting images. I did some searches and started a Favorites list. You can post a slideshow of photos to a blog. Let's see how it goes!


Preliminarily it looks like you can do the same thing on Photobucket and Bubbleshare but I found the search options and quality of images better on Flickr (but admittedly haven't looked into the others as much).

**Just in case you were wondering, I have all the cell phone pictures because when I start talking about evolution in Biology, we talk about the evolution of the cell phone. It's fun and accessible. I even show a clip from Saved by the Bell with the really big cell phone.**



I think I'm having way too much fun with this!

**Edit: Also, when you add new photos to your favorites, they get added to your blog automatically**

Travel Reminiscing

Still having fun with Picnik and thinking about classroom uses while I'm familiarizing myself with the tools. Makes me want to travel more!

Having a Picnik!

Finally had a chance to get on Picnik this afternoon and really enjoyed playing around. I put together a collage of my trip to Maine last week. I found Picnik very easy to use and very intuitive.

Not sure yet how I would use this in class to add to a lesson. Images are always great to use in class but I'm not sure how using Picnik would add to that. Would love to hear how others plan on utilizing it.

Twitter tales and my new plan

Being an avid Facebook user for my social networking, I was relatively (or highly) disinterested in adding Twitter as I felt that it served a similar niche in my world. However, in the past couple days I've begun to see it in a new light. I've been able to read many interesting articles, discover many new resources, watch many new videos, etc. without having to put in the effort to find them. They have also caused me to stumble on other resources that I might not have before. While I still find the sheer number of updates that come in overwhelming, I'm accepting that I can't read/see/find everything.

New plan:

Follow a lot of people (that I believe could be a positive, contributing member to my PLN) and spend this time that I have in the summer monitoring the quality and usefulness of their posts as it applies to my objectives and then by the end of the summer or end of the class make some cuts. This will allow me to fine tune and establish a true set of individuals with skills, talents, and information that I can utilize.

Questions/thoughts I still have:

If you are following someone on Twitter and subscribing to their blog, is that overkill? Often many people update that they have a new blog post. Not sure if I need that if I subscribe to their blog in Google Reader.

Shout Outs:

Twitter4Teachers wiki. Randy posted this (thanks) on one of our class threads. It has several twitter accounts and blogs to follow group by discipline or interest. I was able to find some really great, helpful people to follow.

Smart Board Revolution A Ning set up for Smart board users. I found this by following @jameshollis.

Rush 2 Knowledge Lots of information about ways to incorporate various technology tools (including utilizing the Smartboard - which we have in each room). Found by following @starden

A What? Oh, a PLN!

Going into this week - I have never heard the term PLN. For all I knew it could have been anything. What I quickly discovered is that I have many PLN's for various things in my life but my virtual PLN (specifically my science PLN) was very small to nonexistent. Last week introduced me to blogs and wikis and I'm excited about their use in the classroom. In fact, I've signed up for an edublog account and have begun working on a blog for my high school Biology class. Hopefully throughout the summer I'll be able to create and save enough posts to have a good foundation going into the school year. My biggest concern with a blog is that I'll start it and then after a month or so fail to maintain it. So if I have some posts already ready to go, then I think I'll have a better chance of keeping it up throughout the year.

This week I worked on developing a PLN and finding ways to ensure that I keep up with it. I'm interested in websites like Classroom 2.0 and The Synapse (Biology Network) but fear that I will not keep up with them. I need to become familiar with what the sites have to offer to make sure that I use them effectively. Then when I need information throughout the year, I'll know where to look without a lot of fuss. I hate fuss!!

Google Reader and iGoogle has been very helpful in managing everything for me. It allows me to have a one stop shop for the information I need. However, having it all there makes me want to look at everything. Before at least if I checked my e-mail - I didn't have blog and Twitter updates staring me in the face begging to be checked as well. That being said, I really love having it all there I just need to put in personal time limits on the time I'm willing to spend looking through things. I have been away from my computer for a couple days because I was travelling to a wedding in Maine and I opened up iGoogle and had 360 news items in my Google Reader and that gave me a little anxiety. While I know that don't have to read everything, it's a little overwhelming!

Twitter -- hmmmm? Not sure about it yet. What I really like about it is that I feel very connected to people with similar interests. I thought it would be very similar to Facebook (which I use for social networking). I like that Twitter gives me a place for personal networking that I have have separate from the social. Like other posters have said I think it provides a great forum for articles and information and I also like the person that said - you are in control and if you want to stop following someone then do it! I also need to accept that I can't nor do I need to read everything. Katie, walk away from the computer!!! What I need to examine is what I hope to get out of it. That will help focus my efforts and give it more meaning.

Alright - off to wedding stuff. Have a good weekend to all my new virtual world friends.

The Great PLN Adventure

Step One: Examine the state of my current PLN.

In doing this first I had to mentally separate my general PLN from my science PLN. In doing this I basically discovered that my science PLN was very small. For one I'm at a very small school and while I can (and do) consult with other teachers regarding general education topics and struggles, we only have 4 other science teachers and none of them teach the subjects that I do. Therefore, they can't really provide me with as much information to fit into my science PLN. Therefore, one would logically think that I have sought outside networks to fill this science PLN void. Not really the case. This caused me to examine why.

Everyone always says don't recreate that wheel and I've always had a hard time with that because I always want to do and make my own things and I don't always step back to see what's out there. This is partly because I just want to make my own things (and make my wheel new, different, and exciting) but also because I feel like (whether it's always accurate or not) that it's too time consuming to sift through others' stuff and find something that's useful. I would rather just spend that time making it myself. Sometimes I'll stumble upon something but will forgot to look there again. This has always been a struggle of mine.

Step Two: Attempt to expand my PLN.

Thankfully, due to summer break (although I start teaching summer school next week), I have this time to examine and look for resources. My major objective in beginning this PLN expansion of 2009 was to remember that anything that I added needed to not only make my life simpler but more importantly make me better able to teach my students.

Through this what I have discovered (or reaffirmed) so far is that

• Two heads, 20 heads, 100 heads are much better and more efficient than 1
  
• Google Reader paired with iGoogle might be the best thing ever
• In order to get the most out of my network, I need to be part of the conversation instead of watching while the conversation goes on around me; making comments, responding to blogs, asking questions instead of just saying them privately to my comptuer.

Step Three: Share, Share, Share

Here are some things that I've come across or begun using to build the Katie PLN empire that you might also find useful **short description included**.

1. iGoogle - Coordinating your PLN. Marta has a great post about using this and I just want to put another plug out there. For me (who struggles to check things that are scattered in many different places) having my Gmail, Google Reader, Twitter, and other fun things like the weather, picture of the day, and to-do lists all in one place is great!
2. The Synapse - This is a network for Biology teachers (I know many of you teach other sciences - sorry!). One of the admins is Stacy Baker who has Miss Baker's Blog that many of us have looked at. Another one is Elissa Hoffman who many of us are following on Twitter. I found information about Synapse on Miss Baker's personal page about using blogs in science.
3. Finally here a couple more blogs I came across that are proving quite helpful. Successful teaching has a lot of good information on various tools to use in the classroom. Lab Out Loud has podcasts done by two science teachers who interview scientists.

Step Four: Continue the journey

On that note, I'm going to stop rambling and call this post finished.

Boy do I love YouTube

I went to find a video to post to try out embedding a video and found myself sucked into the YouTube vortex for way too long. My oh my.


The video is the first part of the movie Gattaca which I show to my Biology students. What I'm toying around with though is somehow doing it through a blog format where the video is posted (problem one: YouTube has it but it's in segments). If they watched a segment or two a night, they could post about it and answer questions. This would help to free up those days because it often takes me 4+ days to watch it in class (mainly because we spend several minutes at the beginning finding where we were and several minutes at the end doing end of class wrap up things). I'm not sure if this would work and would allow them to get the most out of the movie, but I will continue to think on it. Hmmm....

My Blog and Wiki Quest of '09

Here are some things that I came across in my searching --

Blogs first. In looking around I found a lot of the same blogs that other classmates had posted about. I also found a lot of info on incorporating blogs in the science classroom. I included a little bit of both in this post.

1. NSTA article about incorporating blogs into science teaching. It's from the Journal of College Science Teaching but it has really good information particularly rules for an effective blog in a science classroom. This is helpful because (for me) one of my main objectives is exploring effectivesness and ensuring that I'm incorpating technology effectively. It also has a table to addresses the modalities that a blog can address
2. I also found a site that has several science blogs that you can search through (I know - more searching). Not sure how useful it would be but I found a couple interesting science news sites that would be helpful when I have my students do current events.
3. As previously mentioned on other blogs, I liked Miss Baker's blog. It was a classroom blog in the true sense in that both the teacher and the students seemed to have an ownership and partnership of it. I'm still struggling with the upkeep of something like that. I think it would start off well but I don't know if it would be properly maintained throughout the year. Miss Baker also has a personal blog where she writes about Using Blogs in Science which I looked around on and had some cool and interesting tips, ideas, etc.
   
4. When thinking about using blogs in my room, I really like the idea of using them for discussion forums. I found a blog that is used for that same purpose. It's described as a place for high school biology students to discuss current topics, post articles, etc. I like the structure of it. It appears that clear guidelines were outlined (which I think is really important). Also, on the comments (some were in the 150 range which could get overwhelming) there were broken down by which paragraph the student was commenting on. This one was done on Edublog (which I haven't yet looked into) and that must be one of their features. I like the idea that you can comment on a particular part of an article and then maybe only read comments that people have made regarding that particular part. Then you don't have to read all 150 comments (unless you want to!)

Ok...on to the wikis. Here was my issue when searching for wikis - you are unable to actually see the process that played out in the creation of the wiki. When you search for them you are often seeing a finished product. While some of the final products look nice and have given me some ideas about possible uses in my class, I'm not able to see the evolution of the wiki. How did it get to where it was? What kind of facilitation went into its evolution? That being said, I found a couple things.

1. While I'm not a Chemistry teacher, I found this wiki useful. It involves a periodic table project where students were required to research an element and then update the wiki with their information. On the left sidebar directions, possible research sites, a rubric, and other things were provided. It seemed to be very organized and while I was not able to see how it all came together, the final product was interesting. Using it for a class project I think might be an interesting application.
2. The other helpful site I came across was on the TeachersFirst page. It has Wiki Ideas for the Classroom. What I like is that it provides ideas by subject of ways to incorporate a wiki. While I'm not sold on the wiki yet as something that I could use, it provides some interesting ideas. I like the idea of a student made glossary with definitions and illustrations created by the students. I have a lot of hassle with vocabulary and this would be an interesting, interactive way to compile all the terms that are so important in Biology.

Many ideas are playing out in my head right now and I will continue to post as thoughts and possible applications come to me. I like that so far there have been good discussion and helpful suggestions. The only big problem I'm having now is keeping up with my blog, the blogs I've posted on, the class wiki forums that I've posted on, as well as the class material. Lots of things to check. This then made me think of my students. If I try to incorporate all these things - is it just going to be a bunch of things for them to check and follow and get confused by. Hmmm...what's that about all things in moderation?

To Add or Not to Add?

My guidelines for incorporating technology (web tools in particular) center around the idea in the title. When is it appropriate to add technology? What tools can I (and my students) truly utilize? What are my motivations for incorporating technology?

I desire to (through technology):

• Address my 5 E's: Engage, Enhance, Excite, Explore, Express
• Use "new things in new ways" when appropriate and applicable
• Make the technology fit my lessons instead of making the my lessons fit the technology
• Address the needs of my particular students (with mild to moderate learning disabilities) particularly their various learning modalities
• Allow my students to become more independent thinkers
• Ensure that the content is still the focus and that the students are not getting bogged down in the mechanics of the applications
  

Hopefully through these guidelines (which I'll continue to refine throughout this course), I'll be able to address the question: To Add or Not to Add?

My Vantage Point

I've been teaching for three years at a small (~100 students grades 6-12) private school that caters to students with mild to moderate learning disabilities. It's a school that possesses and utilizes (or attempts to utilize) a lot of various technologies. We have Smartboards in each room and a strong emphasis is placed on incorporating technology into the classroom.

Because of that, early on, my approach was to haphazardly incorporate any and all technology that I could fit into my lessons. What I usually got in the end was a lot of frustrated students, confused parents, and an exasperated me. I thought I was enhancing the lessons by incorporating a million things but have discovered that I need to more closely examine and evaluate the effectiveness of the things I'm using.

While I'm still formulating eloquent guiding principles, my main focus with this course and with the broader notion of technology in the classroom is to answer the question: To add or not to add; What are effective additions and what am I incorporating (or trying to incorporate) for the sake of "being technological"? How can I use this wide of array of resources to truly enhance the experience of my students?

Starting to understand why...

the students often have to help me with things related to technology (because I dive in head first and then realize that I can only doggy paddle).

I think I'm finally getting on track on am looking forward to learning a lot.