Thing #21 More Google

Even though Google is my middle name, there were still lots of things out there that I wasn't up on. I haven't played around on Google Earth in a while so I downloaded the latest version and discovered that you can do historical views now. That is very useful in teaching Earth Science. You can look at features such as barrier islands and see how they change over time. This really comes in handy for looking at areas before and after events like hurricanes and landslides. I looked at Bolivar Island before and after Hurricane Ike and saved some images.


Jan. 8, 2008 & Jan. 30, 2009

I also tried out Google Alerts. I set up a few alerts so I'll be getting emails now whenever lunar eclipses are in the news and if anything comes up on some medical conditions I'm researching.

I've had an iGoogle page for a couple of years but I played around with it and did some rearranging. I love my iGoogle home page. It has my Google Reader that I usually skim through every night. It also has a translator, moon phase calendar, Wikipedia gadget, weather, Places to See, Art of the Day and of course my hamster.

My boss uses Sketch Up all the time and has produced some pretty impressive graphics. I'll have to save that for another day but I do need to be able to use it. I frequently need graphics for science tests or activities and I either can't find what I need or there are copyright issues.

Thing #20 Google Docs

There are things I love about Google Docs and I use all the time and others that don't meet my needs. I love the forms and use the survey tool frequently to collect information. I used to send out email surveys and spend hours collating the responses into a spreadsheet. Now, I send out the survey and a spreadsheet is created automatically from the results. I can export that spreadsheet to Excel and also share the results with everyone or just a few people. For example, I used this form to collect science TAKS scores from other area districts.

I'm glad that Google provides a free online software for people to create documents and spreadsheets if they need that service. However, I already have software that has better functionality so using the Google software instead of Microsoft Word or Excel doesn't help me any. The first thing that happened when I went to create a table in a document was that I couldn't do what I needed to do. I almost always end up merging cells in a table and there isn't an easy way in the Google document to do that. I went to the help forum and thought it was funny that the inability to merge cells easily was the first thing that popped up.

Instead of using Google Docs for that purpose, I use Dropbox if I need to collaborate on anything. I can upload the document to be collaborated on and it can be accessed from anywhere by the people given permission to edit. Since I am collaborating with people who also have the Microsoft Suite, software isn't a problem. If you would like to use Dropbox, use this link to sign up. You can have up to 2 gigs of space for free.

I also tried out the Google Presentation Tool to create this presentation on Natural Resources. I won't be using it though because PowerPoint is much more powerful.

Thing #7B Google Reader Revisited

Though I am the slowest student ever and it is taking me a long time to finish this course, I really have learned a lot that I continue to use. One of the things that has become part of my routine is skimming through my reader.

This story made me laugh which I value highly. Nice to know my beverage of choice is good for me.

This article about Canyon Lake Gorge provides me with some more information I can add to my virtual field trip about that site. This article gave me some background information about the arsenic poisoning in Bangledash. It is a good reminder that there are usually unintended consequences to our actions and that things are never as simple as we think they are.

Thing #19 VoiceThread

I definitely see potential for the use of VoiceThread in the classroom. Being able to easily do a voiceover to accompany a still picture while using the doodler to visually indicate what you are talking about is a great tool. The sample that I have embedded shows how this could be done to talk about the layers in sedimentary rock beds. If a teacher has a Promethean Board she could do the same thing live but if she doesn't then she could do a VoiceThread ahead of time and project it. Or for beginning teachers who aren't confident in their content or are overwhelmed by everything they have to do, they could use a VoiceThread that has been prepared by someone else.


I also liked the idea of using a VoiceThread to have students explain a process. I really like this example of students showing how to figure volume using water displacement.

Thing #18 YouTube

I think this rap about the Large Hadron Collider is great! It shows the potential for using songs and raps as both a tool to present information and as an assignment for students to show what they have learned.
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This would be a great clip to show mass movement.




There are how to videos for all kinds of things on YouTube. In this video, you can learn how to change a tire on a bike.



This video is about the best dogs ever, Rhodesian Ridgebacks. You have to watch a short commercial first though and embedding is disabled so you have to use a link.

I also checked out Teacher Tube to see if there were any videos I could use for elementary science. You really have to wade through a lot of videos that aren't very good to find something you can use. Makes me think about my own attempts to make teaching videos. I also wondered about some of the clips from commercial videos that were posted. Are they legal? Anyway, the kids that made this video on erosion did a nice job. I can see having students do something like this at the end of a unit. It would be a time hog though so I don't know how practical it would be. Maybe 4th grade could make them in May to review the main science concepts they need to retain for 5th.

Thing #7A Google Reader Revisited

Checking my Google Reader is pretty much a habit now. It is on my iGoogle homepage so it is convenient and easy to check. I've subscribed to sites for general news, personal interests and lots of science news. I really try to stay up on current science news so I can link what students have to learn to what is going on in the real world and so I can help teachers see why all this stuff is relevant.

Here are a few items from my reader today.

This link made me smile. They tried a fun little experiment to see if they could get people to take the stairs instead of the escalator. It worked! In the short term anyway. It would be interesting to see what happened in a month or so.

This link about how banded rocks reveal clues about conditions on Earth when the rocks were formed, directly supports the TEKS about interpreting sedimentary rock sequences.

I am super excited about something I learned on today's Tech & Learning Blog. It is about how to use SMS messaging for educational purposes. That isn't what I'm excited about though. One of the links I followed from the blog took me to this site. It shows how a group of educators used technology to share with each other what they learned at a conference. I'm so excited because next month is our state science conference and I got some good ideas for ways we can bring back and share info. We mean to meet afterwards but it ends up being very difficult to schedule and by the time we do talk we have forgotten lots of important information. One of the things this group did was create a Google survey that they filled out each day with a reflection about what they learned in a conference session. The spreadsheet that Google creates from the survey can be shared with the group so everyone can learn from each other. I LOVE THIS IDEA!! They also created a Wiki for bringing everything together. I'm trying to decide if that is needed or not.

Thing #17 Podcasts

Be afraid, be very afraid of podcasts!!! I started this assignment last weekend and meant to knock it out in a couple of hours. Instead I subscribed to a bunch of podcasts and kept following links from one thing to another and the hours went by. So then every evening during the week, I came home with the resolution to finish this activity and the same thing happened. The moral of this story is that for the obsessively curious, you must be very disciplined when you start subscribing to podcasts. (and blogs)

Some of my general findings about podcasts were that I prefer video to audio and if a transcript is available I will read that before listening to the podcast. Even when the podcast is of a NPR program that I love to listen to when driving, I have a very hard time just sitting and listening to it. I need to be physically doing something, ... like driving a car. :-)

I subscribed to podcasts in two ways with iTunes and with my Google Reader. Right now I prefer my Google Reader because I really like having everything in one place. The cool thing about the Google Reader is that the podcasts are right in with the blogs, journal articles etc... When I select the title, the podcast opens with a player so I can listen or watch it right there. I'm also putting them in iTunes with the idea of eventually using my iPhone to listen to podcasts. The problem is that I don't like using the earbuds with my iPhone, the speaker in the phone isn't loud enough for me, I don't know how to make it play through my car speakers and haven't been motivated enough to figure it out.

Some Podcasts that I sampled:

• Geek!Ed! - The episode that I listened to was like sitting in at a grade level meeting where teachers are analyzing a problem and trying to figure out why they are having the problem. I wasn't vested in their particular problem, I wanted to know about the issue on a national or international scale. While it might have had some broader implications, I didn't really want to listen to the raw data. I would rather a researcher attend hundreds of meetings like it and synthesize the data for me with maybe some excerpts from individual meetings.
• NPR: Books Podcast - I subscribed to this podcast because book reviews and author interviews on NPR are how I primarily find books to read other than suggestions from friends. I often hear an author talking about a book and stop at the store and buy the book before I get home or I order it from Amazon.com that day. I also come into the office talking about what I just heard and my coworkers end up buying the book too. I really should get commissions.
• Scientific American: 60-Second Science - I subscribed to a bunch of science podcasts but this was one of my favorite. That may say something about my attention span. It is very well done and they get an amazing amount of information into 60 seconds. I even like the intro where they say, "This is only going to take a minute." It makes me smile every time.
• EarthSky - In this episode, they talk about damage Hurricane Ike did to the TX barrier islands. I can really see using episodes from short, well done podcasts like EarthSky in the classroom to provide relevance for concepts students are learning about in science.
• TED: Ideas worth Spreading - These are amazing talks by fascinating people about a whole range of ideas. We currently use this episode in the 5th grade curriculum to spark interest in the concept of adaptations.
  

There are several ways I can see using existing podcasts in the science classroom. When I was in high school, my biology teacher required us to read and review one science article a week from a list of approved journals such as Scientific American. This was one of my favorite assignments from the class and obviously made an impact since I still remember it 25 years later. I can see giving a similar assignment to students but also using podcasts in the list of possible sources. Another way to use existing podcasts would be to play particular episodes for the class to illustrate a concept or provide a real-world application for that concept. I would like to provide links to certain episodes in the on-line curriculum but I worry about how long the links will stay viable. Then I wonder if it would be breaking copyright to download some podcasts and load them directly into the online delivery system instead of providing links.

I will also be getting into the production end of podcasting out of necessity. Well not really podcasting because I don't intend to create content on a regular basis that people can subscribe to. I will however, be producing video and audio files that will be posted in a way that people have access to them. I need to create virtual field trips from the geology trip I took this summer. They will need to be produced in such a way that classroom teachers can use them with their students to address particular student expectations. I really need to get busy on that assignment. I also need to create files for the purpose of staff development. Both FOSS and STC have created teacher how to videos to guide teachers step by step through the lessons that go with their kits. I need to do the same thing for other things in the curriculum. Sometimes teachers can't make it to a traditional staff development session, they forget what was said at the training, or the training was canceled due to lack of interest. Short videos might provide just what they need, when they need it. My problem is that I don't really believe there will be much of an audience so I'm not very motivated to put in the hours needed to produce a good product.