Joel's Science Update: April 2009

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Thing #23

I like what I see on Ning and Classroom 2.o

It seems to me that these are the Web 2.o version of the 1990 internet users-groups and list serves that I was involved in.

The college level physics community set up physnet in 1989 and physl in 1990 so that physics teacher around the country cold collaborate on teaching ideas. This was pre WWW days, no graphic interface. Every thing was text driven and there were not user friendly. In addition there was no spell checkers. It was all about communication.

This site takes this concepts to the next level. It adds a cooler interface and all of the social interaction tools such as grouping tagging in near context commenting. This is a great improvement over the users-groups and list serves that were a challenge to follow a discussion thread and did not have the capability of images. It was real challenging to discuss physics with no pictures.

Physnet has come a long way since 1990 but physl (an e-mail list serve) had died. Physnet is not fully Web 2.0 but is making progress there.

I can see a teacher setting up a social network site for their class so that students have a place to discuss the class and get input from the teacher on the learning.

Thing #22

Here is my Facebook page Joel Palmer. I have a Myspace page but do not like it very much. It seemed to be more sleazy then Facebook.

I use this page to keep up with my children. My daughter is much more active than my sons but they post occasionally. It helps me keep up with what they are doing.

Educators should be aware of these sites but need to be careful about interacting with their students on the sites. As a teacher you need to know what interest your students but you need to keep the student teacher relationship intact.

I have recently been able to get in contact with a large number of former students who have a alumni group on Face book. If has been great to hook up with students form 20 years ago. If you go to that group you can see some realy old pictures of me with a beard.

I am not sure of any educational uses unless students used them to collaborate on home work.

Thing #7c

I read an article to night about the Flue affecting Schools in Texas.

This very interesting article from the New York Times gives a more global perspective on the possible pandemic that is starting in Mexico and quickly spreading to Texas.

With out the RSS feed I would have only seen the local newspaper articles.

Thing #21

Where to start.

I have been using Google calendar for more than a year both personally and with my district calendar.

I have google home page, G Mail account and use Google bookmarks.

My favorite tools are Google earth which I see has many education uses and Google Sketchup.

In fact I am teaching a one day seminar for El Centro college this summer on using SketchUp. If you check out my links on Delicious you will see one for 3D Warehouse. This is google site for storing and sharing models made in Sketchup. One link is to my posted models. I have many more to post.

Thing #20

We have been using Google Docs for months now. I recently used it as a cite for teachers to register for the Science Department dinner next Tuesday night.

We are using it to collaborate on documents and collect data in spread sheets. We have not used it for presentations yet due to the limited features available.

I definitely see it a s a way of collaborating on curriculum development projects.

Thing #19

I think this is the coolest thing I have discovered on in this course.

The implications for collaborative learning are astounding. I can imagine a group discussion on the periodic table in Chemistry or the differences between plant and animal cells.

The problem I have is "Do we have sufficient technology resources to make effective uses of the program?"

Thing #18

A number of our teachers are using videos both from teacher tube and utube. At this time utube has more cool science videos than teacher tube but i think that will change over time.

Utube has much more junk on it so you have to be careful what you use. I wold be real careful sending students to a utube web site but I would use it in class and embedded on my own web site.

Fore science teachers it allows us to show demons that we may not have time, money or equipment to to in our class.

This is a Utube science video called How much Sugar is in a can of Soda.
This is a teacher tube called Thunder and Lightening

This is the most amazing video. This is a Ping-Pong ball launched by what is called a vacuum cannon. It is a 10 foot long PVC Pipe with aluminum foil covering each end and a ping-pong ball in side. A vacuum is drawn on the tube so it is a vacuum inside. then you poke one end with a sharp object. Air rushes in and accelerates the ball so fast it comes out the other end with enough force to destroy a coke can.

Another look

Thing #17

I am fascinated with the use of podcast in education. I am actively exploring the use of it with students and as a staff development tool.

This coming Tuesday night I am hosting a dinner meeting for MISD science teachers to discuss the new TEKS and our plans for implementing them.

There are some teachers who can not make the meeting so we are going to record it and publish it as a pod cast.

We also have some required yearly safety training. We are exploring the possibility recording a series of podcast (probably vodcast) that we can post on the district Moodle site and have the teachers go through the training at their own pace and time.

Thing #16

Ok maybe I am cynical but I am not seeing a lot of classroom applications. Personally I can see using it as a guide to selecting reading material on a given topic.

I guess what this site reveled to me was one of the powers of Web 2.o. It allows thousands if not millions of people to "tag" or express opinions about many things whether it is websites, books or pictures. This metadata makes the web more search friendly. When I create a web page or post a picture I may include search terms that I think make sense but they might not make sense to you. When thousands of people tag the picture or web site odds are that some one will se it as you do and place a tag that will let you find it when you are searching.

This site does it for Books.

Thing #15

This is my Delicious book mark page. Click Here

I have save a number of bookmarks that would be use full to teachers as well as well as some that I think are just fun.

I could see this a away of getting teachers to collaboratively share bookmarks for good educational useful sites. We are constantly e-mailing good sites to our teachers but we do not have them collected in one location where teachers could search them for tag MISD and the maybe the subject area or topic.

Thing #7b

I chose to write about Roger Bannister and the Four Minute Mile. This post is form the blog of Roger Bobo one of the greatest Tuba players of all time. HE has been a personal hero of mine since I was 16 years old. You may not know but I am a tuba player. I have been one since 1973 and continue to play today. I am not a great player maybe not even a good on but I play with Joy!

The tuba playing community is unique among musical instruments. There is the International Tuba Euphonium Association formerly known as the Tubist Universal Brother Association (TUBA) and Tuba Christmas to name just a few of the Tuba organizations.

This blog's title is about the running of the first 4 minute mile by Roger Bannister. A strange topic for a tuba player blog. In the blog Bobo is responding to a posting from a young tuba player who sets his ambition to be the best tuba player in the world. Bobo tells the story of how no one had ever been able to run a 4 minute mile and many thought it was impossible. Bobo was convinced it was and then did it. Since then many have done it but no one has run it much faster than 4 minutes. He compared it to progress in tuba playing in the last 30 years in light of the fact that the quality of the playing of the other instruments (Violin, trumpet, sax) have not undergone the same improvement. (The tuba is one of the most recent inventions in musical instruments) He pondered how could it could get.

This may not be interesting to any one else but to us tuba players it is fascinating.

Thing #14

I chose to look at http://quizlet.com/ and was pleasantly pleased. In science there are a number of things that students need to memorize. I can see a number of quizlets that we could develop and use for tutoring students. Off the top of my head I and see us using it for the following:

parts of an atom
Parts and function of a cell
Metric prefixes
types of changes

I think the possibilities are limitless. I plan on using it in the next year.

Thing #13 Image generators

Wow I am constantly amazed how the web is bringing software capability to the average person at little or not cost. These sites allow the average user to create amazing graphical images. I can see using these images to spice up presentations and bringing some levity to lecture PowerPoints. At the right is an image I made with Custom Sign Generator.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Thing #12

This is an example of making a Bubble share Slideshow to demonstrate the different types of volcanos. This is a neat way of making a review of concepts the students could access from any where.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/817669/ by Alan Levine
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kahunapulej/326086995/ by Kahunapule Michael Johnson
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waldenpond/2150851852/ by Andrew®
http://www.flickr.com/photos/topten/480298741/ by Erman Akdogan
http://www.flickr.com/photos/monterd/189236869/ by Paco Olvera Monterd

Thing #11

In my search in Flicker I went back to my earth science teaching days and found a number of images if volcanos. While teaching in East Dallas many of my inner city kids had little or no experience out side of Dallas. I always felt it was important to use visuals when ever possible to help them understand a concepts. This resource opens up a world of images for people.