VoiceThread

http://voicethread.com/share/1169376/

Digital Storytelling

I composed a digital story of part of my trip to the UK during the summer of 2007 using Picasa. In late June and early July Olivia and I traveled to England and Scotland. I was so smitten by Scotland, particularly the city of Edinburgh, that I chose it as the subject of my story. (It must be those Scottish roots in my mother's family - they came over from Scotland in the late 1700s.) Scotland really felt like "home", like I could just pick up and leave the US and live there "happily ever after".

In retrospect, there are many aspects of the trip that I could make into digital stories. For instance, when we were in London, Tony Blair was resigning as PM and Gordon Brown was taking over the office. (Almost three years later Brown has himself resigned.) We were at Buckingham Palace watching the changing of the guard and Blair and Brown's arrival to meet with the Queen was imminent. Press helicopters were flying overhead to catch sight of Blair and Brown's motorcades to the palace. The same day we were at Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey and there were protests going on against Brown and the Iraq war. I have never been that close to an actual political protest and it was exciting (for a long-time rabble-rouser myself) - history being played out before our very eyes! What a great story that would make if only I were a history teacher (alas).

There were so many wonderful castles and gardens that we visited, I could easily compose several digital stories on those alone. Would that not be great if only I were teaching botany or landscape design! Well, maybe I'll get the opportunity to compose such a story someday for fellow master gardeners.

All in all, Picasa was relatively easy to use. One can choose to insert text captions or voice to accompany photos. I kept my digital story to about 25 or 27 photos although I had many more photos I could have added. Unfortunately, I did not find a way to add music to my story. Perhaps this is not an option in Picasa, with my digital story being more like a web album. I was really hoping to add some bagpipe and Celtic music to accompany my story. So, if any of you out there have any pointers...

Other"Tools" Assignment

Okay, it's the end of the school year and the kids must be rubbing off on me because instead of exploring three of the Other Tools in the assignment, I went to three categories of tools and explored three of each of those, so bear with me while I cover what I've learned.

First, I investigated the "Quizzes and Polls (Surveys) tools" because Mary and I used clickers a few times in the biology classroom this year as well as taking online quizzes and surveys in the library. I visited "eQuizzes" which I registered for. It's a free web-based quizzing program where you can create custom quizzes and monitor student scores. They had a few sample quizzes on there about snow, the presidents, elemental symbols, and US state capitals. (It's always fun to take the sample quizzes to find out if you're really smarter than a 5th-grader!) Then it was on to "Yacapaca" where you can type in your country selector and they will give you sample quizzes from your country on a variety of subjects. There are file quizzes, but you can create your own quizzes with "Yacapaca". They allow you to choose items from quizzes to share with students online, but it seemed like I had to wait a long time for each question to load. That might be a disadvantage for the impatient student. I also went to "ClassMarker" where quizzes and tests can be used in class or can be embedded into a website. There were free and paid accounts available for this tool.

Next, it was onto the "Presentation/Publishing/Multimedia tools" where I went to "Glogster". I've been curious about "Glogster" since Emily had it on our original assignment list, then removed it. Anyway, with "Glogster" you can use text, images, video, and music to make a "poster" of yourself and link the poster to Facebook, etc. "Glogster" is marketed as the "perfect way to express yourself". "Scrapblog" is an online scrapbook where photos can be published online or in print in order to archive special occasions and events. On "Scrapblog" you choose a project and design then add photos and finishing touches. "MyPhotoAlbum" you can create online photo albums by using your own photos and images from the web. Photo and video storage is available and there are private and public settings for sharing photos and videos.

I also looked at a few "Image and Photography tools". "Flickr" is a site where you can share photos and videos. There are free "basic" accounts are available and the site includes a photo management tool. Using "Picasa" you can import pictures from your camera and make video and photo slide shows. I am going to use this site for my Digital Storytelling assignment since it's a free download from Google. Finally, I visited "SaysIt" where you can create funny photos and graphics like signs (think the funny church signs), seals, badges, et cetera.

Wordle

I love Wordle! It is a way to be creative for us non-arsty folk. I can see using Wordle for projects after reading a novel or short story in English, for example, using Wordle to critique the work, list the characters, give a plot summary, et cetera. Wordle could be used for an art project since font color, size, and style can be changed (also tagul.com and tagxedo.com would be great with this type of assignment). It can be used in the beginning of the school year for the students to introduce themselves to their teacher - tell who you are using Wordle, for instance. Wordle can be used for holidays or to commemorate special occasions (birthdays, first communions, et cetera) - it is the lazy-man's scrapbooking tool! I would use Wordle for the cover sheet/title page in my students' binders or for them to tell what they have learned in a course over the past school year. It would be a fun way for them to really think about all of the things they learned and perhaps submit it as a final assignment for the year. They could use the opportunity to be creative and inject their personality into it.

The two Wordles I did as part of the assignemnt were a portion of Martin Luther King's 1963 "I have a Dream" speech. I found a text of the speech and copied and pasted the "I have a dream..." portion of the speech into Wordle. After some minor glitches with Java, it finally worked. I submitted this Wordle to the public folder on the Wordle site. I also used terms from my Astronomy class to compose another Wordle. I plan on posting both of them in my classroom. The kids will probably ask what they are and I can share Wordle with them. Wordle was a really interesting and exciting discovery for me!

Diigo

I found Diigo to be quite interesting, a different take on the Wiki and other tools with collaborative potential. It was also fairly easy to use. I believe this tool would be useful for groups to share information that cannot be summmarized easily. In other words, one must go to the source/article to get all the information. This tool would be useful for students working in a group on a research project as well. They could pool their resources using Diigo and pick from the best to use in their project. Or, alternatively, they could assign each group member a part of the project to research and all members of the group could see what the others have collected. Members could also check up on who is the weakest member of the group (who has not done their share of research or whose work is lacking in quality). Teachers and instructors could join the group to keep tabs on student progress.

During the summer I work at the Greater Cincinnati Civic Garden Center as a volunteer on the Horticulture Helpline. We often get numerous calls for help on the same subject/topic, so something like Diigo would be a great way to electronically pool the resources we find on the web on a particular topic (end rot in tomatoes, for example) to share with one another and with our clients as well.

Wikis

Okay, at this point I am starting to feel overwhelmed by the number of technology-driven tools out there. I didn't feel that way until I delved into the Wikis assignment, however. I watched the instructional video (edit-write-save; new page-link) and read the overview of Wikis suggested in the assignment (simple, joint, and fully-collaborative web publishing). Then I clicked on the "Classroom Wikis to Check Out" and waded into the fray checking out among other links, wikipatterns.com. A number of times I was stymied by "sign in" requests - I suppose the wikis were private. I tried a link for astronomy teachers - thought that would be good - but the link was no longer operable. Then I proceeded onto the Springfield Township Virtual Library wiki and tried a number of links there as well. At educationalwikis.wikispaces.com I came across a number of interesting wikis including "Free Stuff for Science Teachers" (which I will definitely be visiting again) and "Kimistry" written as an educational tool wiki for chemistry and biology teachers by someone named Kim - very clever.

After searching through the aforementioned links in the assignment, I set up my free educator account at Wikispaces Educator, making sure to set the wiki permissions to "private". My wiki is a list of things to do in the garden - since that's what I've been concentrating on at home this week. A wiki like that could turn into what we used to see in the newsappaer on a weekly basis - a gardening column reminding people of what they should be planting, pruning, deadheading, watching out for(pests, diseases) and so on. I could see a wiki with this purpose being used by a garden club or simply by a group of friends.

At this time, I suppose I prefer the Google Docs to Wikis at present perhaps because I have been using Google Docs (in a very limited fashion) for this course. I can see, however, with some group assignments/projects that either would work exceptionally well as a collaborative tool for students.

Google Reader

Cool....I like Google Reader and not because I read EnglishTeacherWarrior's blog entry about it first. It's pretty cool how you can make files of your favorite blogs and podcasts. I also liked how Google Reader already had listed for me the blogs that I foolow from the 21st Century Skills class. To that list I added: NASA K-12 lesson plans (NASA Quest), Weather lesson plans (Free Online Weather School), NSTA (National Science Teachers' Association), Bad Astronomy, and NASA Earth and Space Science Education News (keeping track of Hubble images and so forth). (I know what you're thinking, I AM a real egg-head, so kid away!)

I watched, fascinated by the real time (mostly) news coverage, the Chilean earthquake aftermath this past weekend on TV. I was riveted to the TV set by the impending tsunami in Hawaii. Thank goodness the tsunami was very mild in most places, including Hawaii. When I subscribed to the NSTA blog feed, the first thing I saw was an article there from National Geographic entitled, "Chile Earthquake Tsunamis Smaller Than Expected - But Why?" Well, I had to click and read the story since the same question had been on my mind since this past Saturday. It turns out that the predicted tsunami in Hawaii was 4 feet and the actual tsunami was 3 feet - not a bad prediction at all considering the thousands of miles the waves had traveled across the Pacific! It was simply that most people had remembered the horrific 1960 tsunami in Hawaii and were expecting something similar although that was not what was predicted. Another reason the tsunami was not as bad, geologists hypothesize, was that the Chilean earthquake took place beneath shallower waters off the Chilean coast so the tsunami did not build as high as it would have had it been generated in deeper waters (think Indonesian tsunami several years ago). I am glad I found Google Reader so I could get this information. I don't know that I would have looked for an answer to my question about this weekend's tsunamis without the impetus of the Google Reader assignment. Thanks, Emily.

Podcasts/Audacity/iTunes/VoiceThread

Emily assisted me with my podcast today. I did a podcast on how to use a scientific calculator to enter numbers in scientific (exponential) notation. This is a question I get routinely from my sophomores. They get incorrect answers on their problem worksheets and it usually ends up being how they entered the measurements in scientific notation into their calculator. They do not know what the EE, EXP, or 2nd Func keys are - or at least they say they don't know - they have probably forgotten from previous years, right, math teachers? :) Emily and I did experience some difficulties saving the podcast, so she is checking with Gene about the issue. I hope I will be able to add my podcast to my blog at class on Wednesday regardless.

I did attempt to download Audacity on my home computer but did not have success. I kept getting an message that said the "system administrator" has to download it. So I suppose I will be using Audacity and doing podcasts solely at school unless Becksfort or someone can troubleshoot for me.

I do not have an iPod or iPhone (Keep It Simple is my mantra, folks!) but did download iTunes at home. Unfortunately, I could not get into any iTunesU sites. I clicked on each of the universities listed at iTunesU but kept getting the "cannot display this page" message. Perhaps I did not download iTunes properly. I already knew iTunes had music, movies, movie trailers, audiobooks, and TV shows, but did not know there were also podcasts and courses there as well. I will definitely be trying again to access iTunesU. I will have to ask someone in class if iTunesU is the "free educational stuff" that we were supposed to locate on iTunes.

I went through the VoiceThread tutorials and looked at several examples on VoiceThread. I really cannot say that I find VoiceThread too terribly exciting or interesting. Perhaps that is because there are not a lot of high school science examples available for viewing at this time. Also, I had a hard time even thinking of an idea to use VoiceThread for. I did see a VoiceThread on variable stars (astronomy), one on the water cycle (7th grade science), plus a few others. I was not particularly impressed with the quality of the recordings (volume, images, etc) nor could I see a pressing reason why the information presented was more well-suited to VoiceThread than some other media tool, like plain old PowerPoint, for example. I thought that the pop-up comments were sometimes annoying as well. I did have a vague idea, probably too closely related to the variable star VoiceThread I viewed, that could be a collaborative teacher-astronomy student project on the Sun after we finish studying the Sun later this semester. Not too terribly original of an idea and I cannot say that I am really itching to get started on it either. Anyway, although I cannot picture myself using VoiceThread in the near future, I am open to ideas for teacher-student collabortaive projects from all of you out there. I teach Astronomy, Geochemistry, Biology (occasionally), and Anatomy & Physiology, so if something pops into your head, please let me know.

So far, I think I can see myself most comfortable with and using Skype, screencasts (I have more planned), and podcasts for educational purposes.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

The Bloom's Digital Taxonomy article was a new way of looking at and thinking about the "original" Bloom's Taxonomy taking into consideration the digital tools and technologies that must be incorporated into today's classroom in order to help students achieve, recall, understand, apply, analyze, and evaluate what they learn, and create products. The information in this article was helpful because, as I was reading page 7 of the article, I noticed most of what our students do with technology when left to their own devices is located on the lower end of the scale (LOTS - remembering and understanding): texting, instant messaging, twittering, e-mailing, and chatting. The article served as a reminder that it is our duty as teachers to assist students in "climbing" this heirarchy of skills (moving upward to the HOTS - applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating) by assigning appropriate tasks and projects. There was a definite focus in the article on students as collaborative learners in Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. Our students are already using some of the collaborative tools such as Moodle and GoogleDocs mentioned in the article for assignments and projects, but are they using them to achieve HOTS? Collaboration should facilitate the achievement of HOTS, but can only do so through carefully structured projects and assignments.

In Astronomy class, students prepare an article summary every quarter. They choose a recent article from a scientific or astronomy journal regarding a subject or topic in astronomy that they are interested in and summarize the article for the other class members. Students *may* include posters or PowerPoint slides to their presentation if they wish although it is currently not required. Perhaps requiring a PowerPoint presentation to go along with their verbal summary of the article would encourage HOTS (specifically analyzing, evaluating, and creating). They would have to be judicious about what images they include in their presentation to concisely convey information. A maximum presentation length (number of slides) as well as a review of website evaluation (choosing images) would assist students in the steps of analyzing and evaluating. A review of appropriate design parameters would assist them in the creation of the presentation. With these changes in the requirements of the project, students would certainly learn more than if they were simply to recite the article to their classmates.

As I read the Bloom's Taxonomy article I kept thinking about how the school district's research scope and sequence fits into/with this taxonomy. Students do Boolean searches to gather information about their topics, prepare website evaluations of potential sources, write, edit, rewrite, in some cases collaborate and provide feedback to peers as they write and ultimately create a project or paper, hopefully enhancing their learning experience and relating their project to classroom work. I know this is what we aim to do with the Bioethics paper in Biology. Students are certainly asked to step out of their comfort zone in terms of topics as well. They must learn about what ethics *is* then apply what they know about ethics in general to a specific topic, then discuss both (or all) sides of the issue in the paper they create. Perhaps to add to this experience students could post their drafts of their papers online (Googeldocs?)inviting a select number of classmates to constructively review and comment on their work. Students would be required to review and comment on a specific number of peers' work. Some of the rubrics provided in the Bloom's Digital Taxonomy article could be used or amended to provide a tool with which to grade students' feedback to their peers. I will have to ask Mary H. if this is a viable addition to the project.

I was amazed to see in the article the vast number of digital collaborative tools available to teachers and students. I was happy to see the addition of rubrics associated with these tools as well. Coming up with a rubric from scratch could perhaps deter a teacher from using any one of these tools. It is a mind-numbing thought to try to think of ways to incorporate all or most of these tools into the curriculum. Instead, I should choose a select few (Moodle, Skype, Googledocs) to incorporate. Baby steps, right?

As a side note, the spelling, grammar, and puncuation errors in the article were a bit distracting for me. (How about some of you English teachers??) I thought it was amusing that the author made these errors even as he prepared a rubric which deducted points from the tudents' grade for the same errors. Someone, please, get this chap a good editor! :)

Skype

Santa brought me a webcam and before I could say "21st Century Skills", my daughter had the webcam ready to go and began her Skype account and away she went! I set my account up several days later with her help (there are a *few* advantages of having a teen in the house!) She also took my photo and we attached the photo to this blog and my Skype account. I have already contacted a number of people in this course to request that they be added to my Skype account "contact list" (my daughter *denied* my request). :( Hopefully, I will have better luck with the rest of them!

My daughter likes Skype because she doesn't have to text or call (costs $$) her friends to chat or collaborate with them on school projects (although Skype-ing does require setting up the session in advance using a text or phone call). In the event a mic or camera doesn't work on either end, there's also the text option. We have out-of town relatives who have Skype accounts, so my daughter is eager to keep in touch with her cousins using her account. Also, a niece here in town has been battling leukemia and has been quarantined in the hospital for weeks at a time during her therapy. Since we cannot visit her (her immune system is compromised), Skype would be a great way to say hello and actually *see* her when sending our well-wishes. I am definitely going to have to talk with my sister-in-law about this option.

During winter break, the Biology students had to work on their DNA model project. While my daughter was working on hers, she was communicating with a friend about the project. I was able to use Skype with the webcam to answer her friend's questions about the model and *show* her exactly what I was talking about. This is a definite improvement over students simply e-mailing questions and me replying, hoping that they will get the meaning of my answer(s).

I know Julie B. is using Skype to communicate with a former student teacher, now teaching in England. What fun!

I am eager to use Skype to communicate with the Cincinnati Observatory Center. We have not quite worked out the details yet, but I am thinking we could use Skype to ask COC staff members to answer questions students have, for the Observatory staff to personally invite students to COC events, for follow-up sessons to our field trips to COC, and for astronomy mini-lessons.

I am also trying to develop ways in which to use Skype for my Anatomy ccourse as well. Perhaps Skype-ing physicians regarding a particular organ system we are studying, or to clarify information from the textbook, or contextualize information from the textbook? I will definitely have to develop a list of contacts.

I think Skype has already became a fixture in our home and I hope I can use it to full advantage in the classroom as well. I will have to ask my daughter and students for their ideas!

K-12 Online Conference

On Thursday, December 17, 2009, I viewed the archived K-12 Online Conference presentation "Self-Driven and Classroom-Based: Professional Development in the 21st Century" (http://k12onlineconference.org). Two things about the title caught my attention, first the professional development part since this is why we are all taking this course and the 21st Century part of the title since it ia also part of the course title. I thought, perfect! The presentation lasted about 30 minutes during which I dutifully took notes. I think that the idea of these conferences and presentations is pretty cool since it is an effective way to bring educators from all over the world together, to find out how educators in the next town, state, country, or continent teach, what tools they use to do the teaching, and how they formulate and evaluate their ideas and practices. Also, the conference presentations are archived which allows for viewing at any time. Another benefit is that the presentations, in addition to being worldwide, are multicultural. Sure, it isn't face-to-face communication which is probably what we all prefer, but live conferencing with all of these educators would be a horrendous financial burden. So the online conferencing is the "next best thing to being there."

The presenter was Konrad Glogowski from Toronto. He based his presentation on Guy Claxton's statement that "schools become communities of practice where...the 'elders' of the community are themselves exemplary learners" (Claxton, 2002). To cite the presentation description/abstract:

"If students today are to benefit from schools where they can acquire the learning dispositions that will allow them to build and transform future societies and address global challenges, teacher professional development must be reconfigured to allow teachers to focus on examining and learning from their own professional contexts. The 21st Century demands that teachers investigate their practices on a regular basis, learn to design new approaches, and quickly and effectively respond to the ever-changing knowledge society. Classrooms must...become sites of inquiry where teachers engage in practice that is perpetually experimental."

In Glogowski's presentation he states that teachers need to establish a "personal learning network" because connecting with other educators is necessary and meaningful. Teachers should learn *with* rather than learning solely *from* other teachers. "Learning with" means building knowledge by working with colleagues (contextual learning), rather than learning from colleagues in an observation-delivered mode (de-contextualized learning). "Learning with" allows teachers to focus and reflect on themselves and the contexts in which they teach while "learning from" teachers simply follow their colleagues' practices. In the "learning with" approach, the focus is on knowledge-building and helping students to become inquirers of knowledge as well as critical thinkers.

In classroom-based professional development, teachers reflect upon their practices which in turn leads to professional growth and meaningful development. Classroom-based professional development foocuses on who we are as individuals and what we do in our classrooms on a daily basis. In this particular 21st Century course, we are doing exactly that. We are learning abour different technologies, sharing them with our students, incorporating them into our practice, and reflecting upon those changes primarily using our blogs, therefore making our experiences meaningful and contextualizing what we learn and share. Ultimately, teachers are not providers of information, but we are learners ourselves along with our students.

Classroom-based professional development has a democratic engagement component as well. Students can give feedback to teachers and critique teaching so that the teacher may change whatever practices necessary. I have done this numerous times in the past, especially when teaching a new course or teaching from a new textbook. I ask for students' feedback on activities, pace, et cetera, and change if the students and I believe the change is essential to maximize their time and learning experience. An important part of reflective practice (which is an essential part of classroom-based professional development) is for teachers to ask themselves questions such as "how can I improve?" and "why am I teaching this way?". Only when we discover what limits us as teachers can we then work to effect the change necessary. Reflective practice allows teachers to be able to identify areas of weakness and improve those areas with the assistance of colleagues and students. After all, as Claxton stated, schools are *communities* of learning.