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.
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• 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.