Reflections on Web2.0 in the Classroom

The talk about Web2.0 being the future of education, the "flat Earth," and students as digital natives is stale to me. I feel like I have heard it for at least the past 5 years, which is my entire teaching career! I suppose there might be some folks that still need convincing, but I am personally ready for some meaty morsels of how to make these tools work for me in my classroom.

It seems to me that the wheels are pretty slow to turn in public education. Teachers either have the technology but don't know how to use it, or they learn it and yearn for it and don't have the funds to procure it for their classrooms. For me, this is where the disconnect is from the utopian ideals of every student creating meaningful online content in a global village and my reality:

• Only 65% of my students have internet access at home which means any type of work involving the internet needs to be done in the classroom.
  
• My classroom has 7 working and 3 non-working laptops (circa 2001) for my 140 students and there is no other computer lab available.
• If I want to show my students any content found online, I have to bring in my own laptop and my own LCD projector.
  
• My school has one digital camera available for student use and it is at least 8 years old.

Honestly, most mobile phones are more advanced than the technology available to me in my school. And my digital native students own those phones! I might sound bitter because I am (just a little bit) but I know that I probably have it better than thousands of teachers across the country. I don't want to get side tracked, but the disconnect between knowing how to use Web2.0 tools and having the hardware to do so is real in many classrooms across the nation.

One thing that I feel excited about is how technology has evolved from big ol' expensive clunky computers that needed multiple software programs to perform a variety of functions to sleek tablets that run very affordable or free apps and the availability of web based tools, many of which are also affordable or free. It makes me feel like we live and teach in a transitional time and that in the not-so-distant future it will be feasible for ALL students and teachers to truly collaborate. Once the hardware barrier comes down, I think we will see some truly amazing products from our little digital natives!

Introduction for MSSE 580

My first name is Sarah and I teach middle school science in Belgrade, Montana. I live just a few blocks away from Montana State University, where I received my B.S. in Biology. This is my first summer in the MSSE program and it is sure to be a whirlwind! I gave birth to my first child just 3 1/2 months ago (a son named Ian). My husband and I have a furbaby named Mazey- she is a Huskadore (husky lab cross) who is adjusting to no longer being the only child. We try our best to take full advantage of our primo location and are more likely to be away from home than in it.

I am extremely interested in technology for the classroom, but unfortunately it is a constant upstream battle in my district. I could go on and on about how difficult they make it for teachers to incorporate technology into our classrooms, but I would rather focus on what I have been able to do with little to zero support from my district. Many of my technology dreams are wearing thin after three years of being dashed against the insurmountable rocky shores of our tech department, but I am trying to hold on. The pessimist in me says this MSSE 580 course will get me super excited about a bunch of stuff that I will never be able to implement in my anti-technology school... but the optimist in me is very excited for the opportunity to explore the latest collaborative online resources and implement them into my classroom!

Performance Based Assessment

I was shown a great website for performance based assessments in the science classroom. I have just started trying these and I have a long way to go but I really like this type of assessment.

edu2.0

I really love this online learning management system. My school has wanted to start using Moodle, but it hasn't been working out for me just yet. For example- I can't access it unless I am on a computer at school and neither can the students. That seems to completely cancel out any usefulness of the application.

A few years ago I set up a class on edu2.0 and I've found that it is very user friendly for both me and the students. It is a walled community so you cannot access my classroom unless you join Belgrade Middle School. If you would like to visit, the access code is PANTHER. My class is 7th grade science.

It is:
-Cloud hosted (no server space needed like with Moodle)
-Free, but you can upgrade to have more features
-Ad Free!

If you have any questions about setting up your own class, please contact me!

Science Notebooks

I felt that I did not utilize the science notebook very well last year. In an effort to see how I could improve that, I found a few good sites that really got me inspired to make the notebook a crucial component in my class. The Scientist Notebook Toolkit was the first site I found and that led me to www.sciencenotebooks.org, which was incredibly informative. I love all the pictures they have of student work because I can show my students what I am expecting from them. The FAQ part of the site was also helpful because it clued me in to some potential problems and how others have dealt with them.

A picture is worth a thousand words...

I really like to use pictures to explain and assess students. I found this site called BIODIDAC that has TONS of images related to biology. All they ask is that you let them know you are using their images and who will benefit from their use. They even accept contributions if you are a good illustrator or photographer!

Atomic Theory Timeline

After a few trials and errors, my students are really making some progress on our Atomic Theory Timeline Wiki. You can see that some of them are plagiarizing and using wikipedia as a source (they were supposed to find two sources BESIDES wikipedia), but it is a start. It is so blatant when they copy and paste- I wonder if they think I won't notice?! They are struggling with trying to condense the information into a nice little packet that will be easy for their classmates to study. I think they might be used to fluffing things up to write a longer paper, and it can be a real challenge to condense a lot of information into a couple choice sentences!

How Stuff Works

I have found another great source of short video clips to give my lessons a touch of tech. How Stuff Works is across the board for all content types... so enjoy!

Chemistry Resource

I am doing an Atomic Theory timeline with my physical science students and have been looking for some great sources online. This site seems to be a "must use" for them- it will really help them meet all the requirements of the assignment!

Teaching Evolution

This was the scariest thing I could think of when I was in teacher preparatory classes. I have taught it a few times already but am not sure how deep to go with my middle school students. The most helpful site I have found so far is from UC Berkely.

DNA Resource Looks Promising

This is from Cold Springs Harbor- home of Barbara McClintock, one of my hero science chicks. They have some great resources for teachers- you can create your own site and lessons within their resources. I think much of it might be a tad high level for my kids, but I might use some of it. The website is www.dnai.org

Teacher's Domain

Yikes! Two in one night... couldn't help it. This one is awesome if you are trying to incorporate more technology into the classroom. It has TONS of interactive flash animations from NOVA and I am sure a plethora of other things that I don't have time to delve into...

I want to Collect Spiders!

I found this great site that has some cool lesson plans for biology from the Biology Project at the University of Arizona. I think my favorite is the spider collecting unit. These pictures were drawn by the creator of the lesson, Debora Scheidemante. Props to you, girl... I like your style :-)

Our Little Mitosis Project

So I thought it would be neat to make movies about mitosis using the manipulation kits we use in class to learn the phases of mitosis. We took digital pictures and then used Windows Movie Maker to create short films. You can see our results on TeacherTube.com if you search "mitosis manipulatives."

Can you roll your tongue? I found some great lesson plans at this website from the University of Utah.

ONline Graphing Tool!

Just found this little treasure- an online graphing tool that allows students to create a multitude of graphs and then email or download them in various formats. I think it will be nice simply for ease of access!

Biology Corner

This site has been a great help to me this first year of teaching! I can usually find some worthwhile stuff on here when I am in a pinch...

Gas Law Java

I have been teaching the properties and laws of gases to the 8th graders. We are going to do some graphs to show each of the gas laws and I wanted to find some neat Java applications that would show the relationships between temperature, pressure, and volume. It turns out there are quite a few so I am going to put them all out there for the students and have them let me know which one they prefer. Here is what I have so far:

Oklahoma State
University of Oregon
Ohio State
University of Colorado

There is also a company that has some free software available for running a multitude of science applets.

Screencast-O-Matic

I just found out about this and it totally "rox my sox" as the middle-schoolers would say! I was able to create a little movie of my computer screen as I talked my students through how to sign on to their account and access important information for class. I do this with the LCD projector on a regular basis, but it is nice to have the ability to create a series of tutorials for the students. I might try and do this for next year as I think it will save lots of time that was spent getting the kids to sign up. They had a paper to read as they worked through it, but I have found that showing them first, and then letting them do it goes much faster and they have far fewer questions about the process.

Mitosis on YouTube

I am getting ready to tackle Cell Division so I have put together a playlist of helpful videos from YouTube. I would love to see my kids make some of these, but right now the access to technology is an extremely limiting factor. I will, however, have them manipulate chromosomes and spindle fibers until this is stuck in their brains!