Creative Commons + Glogster

I've been trying to play around with creative commons and glogster this morning and have decided that both can be super useful together. In the past I have had my beginning physics students try to draw pictures and use magazines to develop a poster/book that shows some of our key movement terms. This has always been somewhat tricky for them as, especially as a pre-assessment kind of activity. I'm thinking for this year that I will have the students search through creative commons for an image(s) that fit our key works as a pre-assessment. It seems that this will help them by giving them choices first and then by streamlining the process. Plus, what they don't finish in class they can easily finish at home now.

As I've been playing with this though, I am finding that not all images will upload into glogster. It seems to take most .jpg, but not all?!?

New Tools

This week I've tried to focus in on two key tools, Glogster and Diigo. I haven't found Glogster to be quite as intuitive as others, but I still see using it with my students regularly. I tried creating a "science biography," something I have all my low-level students do at the beginning of the year. I had a lot of fun and wished I had my home computer with more pics. I think I may be too much of a perfectionist though as I have spent entirely too much time changing layout and backgrounds and fields and such. I have so many kids that like to add an artistic touch to their projects and work that I think this may be a big breakthrough tool for motivating the "I'm not a scientist" kind of student. I think what I feel most limited by, though, is still not seeing the big picture of how this (these) technologies will fit into my classroom. I have made multiple personal projects, but need to see how these allow me to interact with my students and how my students will interact with each other.
Diigo is looking to be a promising tool for my advanced bio kids and all the research we do. We have several big research projects and a bunch of case studies where I have the kids keep a lot of paper info that could easily be stored online. Last year I had them organize their work into Google Docs which they could then easily share, but it seems like Diigo will easily "one-up" this. I really like that the kids will be able to keep all of their online research organized in one place with notes and highlighting all together that is easily searchable. I only wish I had something to research that I could use Diigo for personally before jumping into the classroom with it. Maybe when free time arises (hah!).

Feeling a bit sabatoged...

Internet attempt #4. First try today to get some work done resulted in frustration of extremely slow page load times (2-5 minutes). Second attempt at a coffeeshop I discovered that my school-issued MacBook will no longer load pages at all (not sure what it's picked up in the last day). Third attempt at same coffeeshop with personal MacBook worked well for five minutes before they decided to close an hour early. I'm not on try number 4 since 5:30 and it seems to be working well, but it's almost 10 and I'm tired. These technological woes seem pretty common place, which is why I have traditionally been reluctant to expand my reliance/use of web technology. Anybody have a magic potion or mantra that will remove this tech curse?
On a lighter note, I just played with Glogster for a few minutes and am excited to have my kids try it out. I think this will help level the creative playing field for many. I have some students that put all of their time into design and not enough into content, and some who turn in typed pages glued to poster boards showing no real creativity (I was/am this type of student). I'm thinking of using this as a day 1 activity with my skill-based science class to get an idea of their science "biography."

Ever-increasing view of literacy

As I've read more and looked into how to incorporate technology my view of literacy skills has grown. I've attended quite a few literacy workshops and the sort over the past few years and I can't remember a single one that really focused on tech-based forms of literacy. Watching some of TED videos and the viral videos got me thinking that there is a whole other world of science sources out there beyond the text books, journals, magazines, and blog sites. It's also seeming harder to motivate kids to read, so maybe these sources will work well. It seems easier to respond to some of the video based topics as it engages the kids more fully.
In addition to the literacy idea, communicating educated thoughts is also a major component. Does communication in a literate way mean written? I don't think so, and that's what I'm looking into now.

In Bozeman

I have finally made it to Bozeman and am getting prepped for my first week of classes. My wife and I had a great 4 day climbing detour at City of Rocks, Idaho for a friends birthday. If you are in to climbing and have not been there yet, you have to put it on your list of places to go! Hopefully I'll see some of you in classes this summer.

Guiding Principles

(Not in list form, but it does capture my thoughts)
I feel that technology has an ever growing place in education. Unfortunately it has grown much faster than I have been able to keep up with. What I am coming to realize is that technology, especially web technology, allows a much greater level of collaboration than students have traditionally have. One of my classes monitors water quality of one of our local rivers and we are able to share this info with other sites on our river and with state and national water quality experts. This has been great for the kids to see and experience. Web technology can also help students and teachers better organize the millions of resources that are now available. I think one of the key components to effective education using this web technology is the student's ability to not only find quality information, but to organize and apply this information. I think web technology also has the ability to show students how interconnected life really is. Too often a student views science as science, history as history, and math as math, without realizing that all three really are interconnected. I think technology should also help students best communicate their learning and discoveries. With the multitude of different applications out there students have the opportunity to communicate with a variety of people/forums/groups and must learn how to best reach their target audience. With all of this being said, technology cannot be the education for students. Technology can be a tremendous tool, but not when it interferes with essential content. Technology should be used to supplement the student's natural inclination to discover knowledge and not replace the outdoors, laboratories, print text sources, and group discussions. Technology should also be easily integrated for the students. If students capture video, they should have a simple method for uploading that video on a computer and editing it without detracting from the essential content. Finally, web technology needs to be safe for the students. They have the freedom to put so much of themselves out on the web that they need to be educated how to safely share information and access information. This is where I feel the most direct instruction needs to happen, the rest seems to come fairly naturally to a majority of my kids.

A Brave New World?

After reading through the series of online articles and text chapters I find myself fairly encouraged by the possibilities for advancing my students' learning. I think what excites me most is that this will open me up to more student-driven assessments. I feel that I use technology quite a bit now, but after the readings, I am not using them very effectively. I rarely have my students collaborate when they design blogs. Though we have Vernier probes, I don't have them plot the data on the computers and manipulate that data (but that's because I have one computer in my classroom). I would love to find efficient ways have my students do all of this, but it will take a lot of practice on my part to get there. I think my biggest challenge, as I reflect now, is incorporating technology into my lower-level skills-based classes. I have a few of these and tend to avoid technology in the name of imparting basic concepts. I'm not sure if this is good or not, but I would like to find methods that my students can use that aren't so method/procedure heavy.

Intro

Hi all! I am a high school science teacher at Roaring Fork High School in Carbondale, CO. I teach a variety of science courses: General Science, Beginning Physics and Chemistry, Beginning Earth Science and Biology, Advanced Biology, and Sustainable Agricultural Biology. I'm not too techno savvy yet and am really looking forward to discovering new ways to incorporate technology into my students' learning. I have had students use blogs in the past and we do a number of research projects and case studies in my upper level classes, so I feel that I have the Web 1.0 stuff down reasonably well. I do have a reluctance to jump right into the whole social networking thing and figured I could always avoid Facebook and Twitter. Well, I'm on Twitter now and am interested to see how this can help me. I look forward to sharing with all of you this summer on what kinds of tech we can find and use in our teaching.