All Good Things...

...must come to an end. With the end of our class approaching I'm left with the daunting task of incorporating some of the things that I have learned. Below are my technology incorporation project plans. I've been trying to really get A LOT of the leg work completed because I know once school starts, I will have less time to "tinker". Luckily, I now know definitely what classes I'm teaching next year (3 Algebra 1, 2 Biology --- Yay!!) so I'm better able do some real integration plans. So without further ado, here are my ideas.

1) The Catalyst - A class wiki for my Biology classes that will serve as a collaborative hub for the class. I created the wiki using Wikispaces. I've been pretty happy with their features (particularly quickly providing a complimentary educational upgrade that removed the ads from the wiki) and have found the editing features easy to use. One of my big issues with wiki's in general is the boring layout. Therefore, to spice it up a little, I used Glogster Education(another tool brought up in this course) to create a poster for my home page.

2) CA Teacher Resources - Another wiki created as a collaborative space for the teachers at my school. I think one of the most powerful outcomes of this course (second only to my personal development in technology integration) is passing many of the tools and tricks I've learned on to my fellow staff members. The wiki includes a lot of the information that we've discovered during the class. Teachers can explore this as well as add their own information. Hopefully throughout the year, teachers will add links that they come across.

3) Ms. Theobald's BioBlog - I decided to also create a blog for my Biology class. It will serve as a place for class discussion about articles, class topics, etc. My students have a lot to say but sometimes have trouble expressing themselves. I've used discussion boards before but I think this will open up so much more to them. There's link to my the blog on the wiki so they can easily get to it. I decided to go with Edublogs because of their focus on educational blogs and their numerous features for monitoring and moderation. Your account also allows you to set up student accounts that you can monitor as well as change student permissions. Later in the year (after the students have become familiar with the blog), I plan to alternate making them "contributors" to the blog which means they can go in and write a blog post but can't publish it. I can then edit it if necessary and publish it. I'm excited to give the students ownership of the blog as an assignment and think that will just further their interest in blogging.

4) Screencasts - I had never thought of using screencasts for class before taking this course. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm very interested about exploring their capabilities particularly because of my student population. Many of them have trouble when dealing with a task that has many steps and therefore may struggle even trying to use some of these technologies. I think screencasts would be a great way to introduce these tools (How to navigate the class wiki, how to comment on a blog, etc.) and then they can reference them when they are having trouble. Also, as I said before using them to present to students who are absent or to serve as a review for tests could be a very useful tool. I will definitely be using the screencast I created for class to allow the students to review concepts outside of class.

5) A little more - I plan to actually pare down the number of simulations I use (I think I use them too often without really examining their value and effectiveness) and bring in more inquiry based activities. I plan to use the CIESE: Human Genetics Project and a few projects on the WISE site. I also plan on using Glogster and Voicethread as alternative ways for students to express themselves and as alternative ways to assess understanding.

Please take a look around at my plans and let me know what you think. Thoughts? Modifications?