Marine Biology and Biology

Course experience:  Priceless!  My eyes have been opened to a whole new world!  With our school going to a 1 to 1 program this year with our freshmen, I took this course and the k12 online conference class this summer.  What an eyeopening experience!  I am so excited about using some of these tools with my students.  I have already set up a wiki and am going to use Google docs spreadsheets, Quietube, my RSS reader, and Quizlet.  I have to keep myself focused because I do want to use all of the tools and it becomes overwhelming!  I would like to thank Shelley for her insight and enthusiasm for teaching old dogs new tricks!!  Thanks, it is truly inspiring!

AMAZING!!  Both Twitter and Classroom 2.0!  I have been a member of Classroom all summer and have received notices about Eluminate sessions and help tips, it has been an incredible resource!  Classroom 2.0 is an unlimited resource for ALL teachers.  I have been a member of Twitter for about 1 month and am following just a few!  In the beginning I thought that Twitter was for professional athletes to let their fans know what was going on!  Boy was I wrong….that it just the tip of the iceberg!  I can see using Twitter with my students so that they can let me know how a particular unit is going for them.  This might be a way for the “shy kids” to ask me questions without feeling so intimidated.  I have learned so much in this class this summer and with school starting next week, I really want to use several of these tools in my classroom!

After attending a technology conference this week at Lakeview Academy in Gainesville, GA, I added several more sites to my RSS!  Here is an article that I loved about Quiz generators, http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/31494

I am learning to “weed out” some of my earlier choices for blogs and sites that are “just not panning out” like I wanted them to.

Another new blog that I added that I found a very pertinent discussion on was, http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2010/07/to-textbook-or-not-to-textbook.html

This article is what I have been dealing with this summer with my Biology texts.  I am going online with them and I don’t think that I will issue the “hard copy” of the books.  Our online textbook publisher has been very helpful providing us with access codes, etc.

Two words:  VERY COOL!  I can see a multitude of uses for the word docs, spreadsheets and presentations.  For another online class that I am taking this summer “k12online conference”, I made a presentation from Google docs.  I think that it was easier than ppt.

I have already thought of a way that I am going to use a spreadsheet….at my cross country team’s parent meeting we sign up for snacks, water, etc for all of the meets.  This year I am going to email the parents a Google docs spreadsheet and let them sign up for which meet and what items they would like to bring.  That way all of the parents can see what others are bringing.

In the classroom, I use ppts with my Marine Bio class.  I can see me using Google docs and converting some of those ppts over and then letting the students edit them and add their comments.

In my Biology classes, we do a lab with the germination of mustard seeds.  We count the number of seeds that germinated in which environment.  Then the students are required to make a computer generated graph comparing their results with their entire class.  I am now going to make them use a Google spreadsheet and make their graphs comparing their own, their class and the entire grade’s results.

One of my personal favorite you tube videos is of my fellow science dept member dancing to “Soulja Boy”. One of Coach Cole’s students took video of him practicing for an upcoming pep rally in his room after school. Enjoy:

The you tube video “How to make a paper gun that shoots without blowing (with a trigger) was very informative! It was pretty cool for shooting rubber bands!

The 2 content videos I found were about Marine Biology. The first one was “The life of a Marine Biologist” and was about a phD student and what he does. It was very enjoyable and informative. I liked reading the comments, most were from students who were in high school that were thinking about majoring in Marine Biology that were asking him questions. I did notice that he was nice enough to respond to each and every one of them.  Here is the video URL without the ads using Quietube:

http://quietube.com/v.php/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LARnRMdUDXE

The second content video was “Marine Biology in Antarctica”. It was awesome and was about the British research station “Rothera”. She actually showed an underwater dive and the pictures were incredible. To find out more about Antarctica go to: www.discoveringantarctica.org.uk

Teacher tube is invaluable!  When I went to it, I found a great video of a teacher filming a squid dissection in wonderful details.  I am going to use this next semester with my Marine Bio students to intro the dissection.

Making a podcast was really simple.  I can see where this would be useful in leaving instructions on my website for my students to complete an assignment, etc.  This audio podcast I made was simple, however, I can imagine if you wanted to add music or effects that it would become more challenging! Hope you enjoy my podcast, here it is:

The amount of resources available with itunes Podcasts is staggering.  I think that it will be a great resource for me in my professional and personal life.  I subscribed to BTR: Celtics Stuff live (The Boston Celtics) for my personal, I also subscribed to ESPN: PTI for my personal.  Both are great!  For my professional, I subscribed to Terra:  The Nature of our world.  Incredible stuff!!!  I am going to try and incorporate podcasts in one of my classes!

Library Thing is very neat.  I am going to mention it our media specialist but I bet he already has an acct!  The best thing that I like about it is that you can get comments and reviews from others on a book!  If I were wanting to read a book or assign a book for my students, I could go to Library thing and review the comments.  Personally, I think that it is a great way to organize your books that you have read and are wanting to read.  It beats the little piece of paper I carry in my wallet of my favorite authors’ books that I want to check out from the library!

Check out my delicious bookmarks:

http://delicious.com/dbranham01

This is going to be such a good resource for keeping up with all of the great websites!  Before now, I had to be on my desktop to check out the “favorites” or “bookmarks”.  Now I can just log on to delicious from anywhere and have all of my Favorites!!  I have to teach a short technology session for our teachers when we get back to school in August, Delicious may be my topic.  Of course, it is so hard to choose a topic because I have learned so much in this web 2.0 class along with my online conference class I am taking too.  So many cool things to share, Glogster, wikis, and the list goes on and on!

I found a neat article in my reader that is very current!  Last night was the MLB 2010 Home Run Derby and I watched it!  In my reader was an article about how during the airing on ESPN, they had a special on the Physics of hitting…Sport Science:  The Home Run Derby.  It explains the roles of the hitter’s swing angle, hitter’s bat speed and the speed of the pitched ball in determining how far a batted ball will travel in the air.