Meet Hunter, our yellow Lab.
ISO200, shutter speed 1/15, f/4, shot on my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT
January 8, 2007
Back then he was a big ol' bundle of crazy energy. We adopted him from the animal shelter when he was a year and a half old. He's now about 3, and a big ol' sweetie. He still has lots of energy, but now he listens to commands, is calm when we have guests, and I LOVE that I can walk him without a leash. And he's got great big brown eyes and floppy ears that give great expressions for photos.
I was talking with my I.T. guy (aka, my husband) about Furl as an option for clipping websites, articles, etc for future reference. He asked me if I had checked out Evernote.
So, I went. On the surface, it seemed to be a bit like Furl, offering website clipping and tagging, easy search features, etc. And it doesn't have Furl's community features "most tagged," "share with others," and so on.
But here's what it does have: integration. Multiple forms of media. Smart searches. You can take a picture with your phone, email it to yourself, it will read any text in the image and in future searches through your Evernote "notebook" those images will also appear. Imagine - take a picture of a complicated image drawn on a whiteboard, save it, tag it, and search for it later (either by tag or by searching for text in the image itself). SWEET!With Furl, you clip the whole webpage. You can highlight a quote from it and include it in your information when you save the page. Evernote takes it a step farther - highlight the text in the page, use your "Clip to Evernote" tool, and it saves just that quote for you, saving the URL in the "Note Attributes" (highlighted below).
This is a great feature if you're doing a lot of research for a paper and you just need to save some references or quotes. I definitely appreciate it because I have a hard time absorbing large amounts of information from a screen. I still want to print out a hard copy and use a highlighter. But I can't search that. Here, I'm essentially doing the same thing and now my 'highlighted' notes can be tagged, saved and searched.
I'm going to keep both Furl and Evernote around to see how they work in the longterm. But for now, I have to say that Evernote is more impressive to me. The user interface is more attractive and easier to use. The media integrations and ability to use it from cell phone or email, not just browser, are exciting and useful features. Try it out!
A new set up for the classroom made a huge difference in how I was able to teach the computer portion today. They had more room to work and fewer cables and distractions in their work space. We also integrated some other technology into the class, by watching a video of a Rube Goldberg machine. We were discussing the similarities between chain reactions like those to a computer program.
Their assignment was to begin a two day project where they would spend most of their time building a chain reaction or marble ramp roller coaster (the patterns came from paperrollercoasters.com) and then add in details using the Crickets. Examples: when the marble rolls down the ramp, it hits a bell, the bell rings and the sound sensor will be triggered and turn on a light or play a song.
For the most part, they got really into building the roller coasters. It was a good change from the computer work for those who were less interested in the programming, but still teaches the same concepts (cause and effect, linear progression).
Tomorrow, we'll see how well the integration of the Crickets goes.
That is the question posed by Professor Dunleavy for today's assignment.
I have always liked blogging. It's a great way to keep old friends updated on current life. But I find, more and more, that personal details have no place on the web. I try to remind myself anytime I post that someone else will see it in the future. So, all of my future blogging will be done with this in mind, and written from a professional or instructional perspective. I like the idea of it being something that benefits my students as much as it benefits me.
Reasons to be cautious:
- You don't know who's going to read it. Even if you protect it with passwords, they can be hacked, passwords can be shared, anyone can be reading over the shoulder of someone who's 'allowed', it can be copied and posted on public sites. You maintain no control over it, once it is posted, it is out of your hands.
- In not knowing who's reading it, you don't know who you'll offend with it. You risk offending the people you work with, the parents of your students, or your students themselves. Offending them can lead to losing respect, or worse.
Reasons to do it anyway (just be careful):
- Students in school today know more about computers than we can imagine. They're comfortable with it.
"[E]ven though the world of fifth grade may seem remote to educators in the college and university system, these students, when they enter postsecondary education, may have had more experience writing online for an audience than writing with a pen and paper for a teacher. Such students will bring with them a new set of skills and attitudes." - Stephen Downs, Educause.edu.
They understand, or need to learn, how to write for a global audience, because it is part of their lives.
- Tracking myself. I would like to believe I will keep a physical journal, notes about what works, doesn't work in a lesson plan. But if my lesson plans are electronic, it's easier for my notes to be too. And it should be shared with my students. Did they think it worked? What else did they need from me to learn the content more thoroughly?
- Encouraging learning outside the classroom. They'll be online at home anyway, why not let them use that time to check in with their classmates, their homework for tomorrow, hints for the homework tonight, links to further information?
- Promoting your school, your class, your students. You're doing good things, the world likes using the Internet to find good things - be one of those things!
We're 3/5ths of the way through our Play, Invent, Explore camp, and I'm still just making it up as I go. All of my camps follow the same general outline every day: some non-specific activity to get everyone into the room and excited about camp, 15-20 minutes talking about our plans/activities/the science behind what we'll be doing, activities for about an hour, snack, activities. This camp required a lot of talking the first 2 days in order for the students to learn some of the features of the software, and more "instructional" time then I really like for a camp. I tried to keep it limited, and make sure they had time to explore on their own, but I kept feeling the pull to show them (all, as a group) new pieces to the Cricket puzzle.
Background: This camp is for 8-10 year olds and is run at ScienceWorks. They're working on laptops on loan from Southern Oregon University. And some of the parents walked in, saw the computers, and expressed concern that they weren't too sure if their students were computer-literate enough.
Well, relax, your kid knows how to use the computer. They may not understand how to trouble-shoot all of it, but they are more than capable of learning to use (and create) programs with limited assistance and guidance.
Lesson summary - Monday:
We talked about computer programs, focusing on how the computer doesn't think, it just follows the instructions we give it. The kids each selected a computer, and together we created our first, very simple, program. We turned on a light. Then we changed the color. We added in a few other pieces, one at a time. Each time, I need to draw in their attention and walk them through the step of putting the pieces together to run a new program. The more pieces they had, the harder it became. We added the ability to repeat, to use "random" so the computer would pick the color or brightness, we added the touch button and "wait until - touch" to run pieces of the program. The more I showed them, the more they started to grasp the pattern of how it would work. We made it through light, touch, light sensor, random. Then they had about 15 minutes before the end of camp (3 hours went FAST), and I gave them free reign. Most of them discovered that the speaker worked the same as the light, so it was pretty loud when the parents came in to pick up students.
Lesson summary - Tuesday:
My goal for Tuesday was to show them the similarities between the way the light program pieces worked and the way the sound program pieces worked. First though, we did a verbal review. I drew a short program on the board, exactly the way it would look on their screens, and asked them to tell me what the computer would do if I ran the program. They were stumped for a minute. This was what I was afraid of. They had figured out how to change numbers, move pieces around, use the speaker, etc, but they still didn't understand how to 'read' the program. But we figured it out together. Then they did the speaker. They were given the challenge to use their computer to write part of a song, and then work in groups to play a song together. Most of them figured it out, some stumbled through it, all of them had fun. This is a lesson that would work in an hour or so. After snack, I had them build a Lego 'motion module' - called the "up and down". It was really the only one all of them could build using the materials in their kits. Some of them had time to add bouncy toys on the top of them, some only had time to run it once or twice (and had to have their programs written for them while they finished building the module).
Lesson summary - Wednesday:
My goal today was to have them combine their skills from the first two days into one large project. They were asked to build an animal to go in our 'zoo', an idea I borrowed from the Playful Invention and Exploration website, which has lots of good ideas for the Crickets. I anticipated it taking the first half of camp, and that after snack we'd be able to learn how to collect data (brightness, loudness) and graph it, so that they would understand how the numbers related to reality. Some of them were still finishing their animals and setting them up in the zoo when their parents arrived at 4.
I'm now very nervous about my plan for tomorrow and Friday. It might still work... or I might need to have an 'easier option' for the less agile. We'll see.
The following is a response to Concept to Classroom: Multiple Intelligences, a workshop on understanding and using the theory of Multiple Intelligences to improve classroom teaching.
No debate here. I've seen it in action too many times, that need to explain things in more than one way before everyone in the room understands what you're trying to say. I understand my own issues with it very well, I am generally a visual learner and understand things best when I see them, which includes preferring the written word over verbalized communication. In college it was very important to me to copy anything the professors wrote on the board, especially drawings, add drawings to my own notes on topics that were being discussed to help me remember what I visualized at the time of the discussion and copy down as much of the lecture as I could, since it would be remembered and learned in the very act of writing it, where listening went "in one ear and out the other."
Implementing it in the classroom is much tougher. You have a limited amount of time, and in our current educational system, too much to teach to get the students to pass the test. The effort to address each topic from a variety of perspectives in order to reach students of all learning styles is difficult, at best. But certainly not impossible, and definitely an effort that pays off and is necessary if you want to reach everyone and give them the best possible chance to learn the material.
For science, there are many ways to implement techniques for teaching to multiple intelligences. Most topics in a science class lend themselves to either the traditional written or multiple choice tests or for experimentation and presentation as ways to evaluate learning. Interpersonal and Intrapersonal intelligences are stimulated through lab work (generally a group activity) or report writing (an individual activity). Reading and discussion aids the verbal and linguistic intelligences, while diagramming a cell or the process of respiration brings home the message for the visual intelligences. What I love about science is the way it brings together so many subjects and can be a gathering point for people of many intelligences.
Learning centers are a common way of addressing the needs of multiple intelligences in a classroom. They are most popular in elementary and middle school; however, as a future high school science teacher, I can still consider ways that they can enrich learning in my own classroom. In a science classroom these can be places where various long-term experiments are taking place, where related research from other sources are available, where related experiments can be done by individuals or groups and conclusions can be drawn. Lab work is a common idea here, where the jobs of data collection, note taking, mechanical operations for the experiment, observation and discussion can be shared in a group, with each student taking the role that fits their intelligences best, but then in sharing the work and the results they all can learn from the experience.
Presentations are another great tool, and one that can be used for assessment. Here, students are motivated to learn the material because they know the test of the material will be on their own terms. The more visual or musically inclined will include those types of elements in their presentation. For the verbal intelligences, you may see more of a lecture-type presentation. Whatever they use to present the material, there's probably been a greater amount of research, work and effort made then there would be in preparation for a traditional test.
The way information is presented by the instructor (me) should also follow those ideas. A basic and traditional lecture won't be received by all students the same way. Using elements of each of the intelligences, even in a limited way, will help to trigger the learning process for each student and draw them into the topic, even if not all material is presented in the way that is best for them. This is part of the multiple intelligences theory, that we all contain the ability to learn through each way, we just have tendencies toward faster development in certain areas. Using those ideas to draw them into the topic, then stimulating another aspect of their intelligence is a way to further their all around growth.
In teaching to multiple intelligences, we risk not having taught students the skills and information they need to pass the standardized tests that are now mandatory in our classrooms. This is one of the fears and, along with the time-consumption involved in finding multiple ways to reinforce material, it's sure to be raise alarms with classroom teachers and critics alike. However, the ways that people minds function are certainly different, and the expansion of learning options that come from increasing technology and access to Internet and vast stores of knowledge means that we can't continue to ignore the obvious fact that some students will learn faster in some ways then others. The educational system needs at least some revision from the bottom up in order to make it possible to fully explore the options of teaching to multiple intelligences, so that the assessments and requirements are also fair to all, giving all students the opportunities they will most benefit from (not, "all the same opportunities"!) before they enter our ever-evolving society.
PDFs add a new option for ways to share articles and books with a class. It's cheap, it's easy and, for students who can read and comprehend without needing the hard copy, it saves paper. They're a good tool with many applications.
PlanetPDF's free ebooks are excellent. Their site is a bit overloaded with ads for their products, but their resources are valuable and worth fighting through the visual clutter to find books that can be used with classes.
As I was browsing through the required readings on Teaching Philosophy Statements to accompany my future portfolio, my thought process went from, "eh, this isn't so hard" to "geez, I don't think I can really define my whole philosophy yet, I mean, I know what I like, but it's in 4th & 5th grade classrooms... not high school biology labs... how do they relate?"
So, some day, I'm sure I'll need to write a whole Philosophy of Teaching. This is neither the time nor the place for it. But it's a good place to take some notes. One of the interesting things to consider about the philosophy statement is that it is both cause and effect, as well as ever-evolving. While refining ideas and committing them to paper, you start to really consider what actions you use that demonstrate (or don't) the things that you claim to believe in. In writing it, you can create the effect of working toward being the teacher you want to be. And as you experience more as a teacher, you develop and change your philosophy, defining it and re-defining it as the situation requires. Though, hopefully, your true philosophy, what you really believe to be true about how a student learns your subject, and how to reach students and aid them as they develop skills they need in your subject or in life as a whole, doesn't change to meet a new situation, just changes in the way it is implemented.
Which means that there must be some underlying ties between what I believe works for me in a classroom full of 4th graders, or will work for me in the future when faced with a room of high school sophomores. What, though? Where are the similarities, what will be the same?
First, every student has the ability to learn the basic skills to study science. They may not be able to memorize every chemical reaction in the steps of the Krebs Cycle (part of cellular respiration) but they can understand the role of the different cycles in the life cycle of the plant. They may not have any interest in knowing names of species of trees or insects, but they may find a connection to the study of ecology and the cycles therein. And biology is about the systems and how they work, from the large to the small. Understanding that any topic is about putting together the pieces to see the big picture of the system is a basic skill, and some students learn it best from the top down (how the system works and what small pieces it needs) and others from bottom up (what the chemicals are, what the pieces are, how they fit together to create a system). So any topic must be presented to show both. I teach whenever possible by explaining the big picture and narrowing in to some of the pieces. And I believe in testing on both equally. Can you tell me why the system is important? Can you identify the pieces?
I love working with students one-on-one. I tend to begin a majority of my classes with a brief introduction-lecture and then do an activity/assignment. In my current teaching, that's the hands-on activity that's more-or-less planned for them. In the future, it might be some reading, an experiment, a research project, or other assignment. During the activity, I work the room, looking for common questions (which help me know when there's something I should have/could have explained more fully, which things the majority may not have the prior experience to fully understand without further guidance, etc) and then know either what to do differently next time while I answer the questions in a personalized way, or know when to interrupt the class and bring them back to a discussion or further lecture/review from another perspective. What will help the majority, before I go back to the individualized guidance that will bring the perspective each student needs in order to learn the subject.
Which means that it's very important to me to know the content of my subject matter inside and out. Can I explain it from multiple perspectives, can I create activities that stimulate learners of any style (the visual processors, the verbal communicators, the artists, the engineers) to guide them into the topic? And, no matter how they've gotten to their question, will I be able to understand it to also guide them to the answer?
Guiding them (not leading them) to the answer is imperative to me. I'd rather they use a good, clear thought process, and get the wrong answer then have them use a muddy thought process or a simple guess and be right only because I gave them the answer too soon. Can they take their wrong answer and test it again? This is of course a best-practices tactic only on experiments and activities when testing the wrong answer doesn't become dangerous, but will lead them to see that they've obviously made a wrong turn somewhere. Then we can work together to backtrack to where their answer came derailed and try again.
I guess I had more to write then I thought. I hope my philosophy becomes better defined over time, but those seem like good ideas to start with.
Sorry, VLIB, but technology has evolved beyond you. Though the World Wide Web Virtual Library was probably once at the forefront for cataloging the data and websites of the Internet, it doesn't seem to have kept up with the 21st century. Too many of the links are broken and outdated, their search engine is behind the technology of Google or any of the others (when it isn't broken), and the information available can be more easily reached through one of those same search engines, or Wikipedia. Of the five or six topics I tried to research through this site, 4 of the links were broken or led to sites that were significantly lacking in information verse a quick search on either Google or Wikipedia. I can't say I'm likely to use this tool in the future.
My love for iGoogle is now complete. I've discovered how perfectly they've created it to be used on my iPhone. When I'm at my computer, I can search for the gadgets I want that will display the best news, headlines and information I want to learn about, with links to the best RSS feeds and websites. And then I can see them from anywhere, any time. And they were smart about how they manage it for iPhone. The same way that gadgets can be collapsed to be out of the way when browsing online, I can collapse them to save space and scrolling time on my phone.
I love integrating technology. That's what makes any tool more useful to me: does it work no matter where I am? Can I use it for more than one task, or in more than one way? As I move deeper and deeper into cyberspace, I need to be sure I'm not alone out here - can my phone, my laptop, my email, my instant messages, my camera, and, oh, all those other people I want to talk to, come too?
ISO200, shutter speed 1/15, f/4, shot on my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT
