Brain Explosion

"Wow it is already Thursday can't believe tomorrow is our last day of class"... those were the words shared as I left the class today. I am excited to see and learn about all sorts of new doable things! While there are always struggles of will this work or will that work... at the end of the day there are still a lot of great things out there that we can use with our students. Having a class like this once a year I think would be awesome just a way to see what is new out there and share amongst each other our skills even. So next year... what am I now going to take on with me. I have used a lot of this week to get my website cleaned up a bit as we all know it will never be done. I really do want to use this more as a home base for my students to go to and add items as the year goes on. I would also like to start the year using Diigo verse throwing it at students when they are trying to do their final products. I also do see myself creating some jings as a way to show students how to do various thing. I think I am going to add more digital options to various projects and show students how they can create comic strips or videos as part of a project instead of the normal posters or powerpoints they often like to do. I really think the website that we have created as a list of resources is going to be a place I visit over and over again to see what else I might be able to do. there is a lot to think about... good thing i do have some time to think before school begins.

wednesday buisness

Today in class I did a lot of cleaning up and organizing of things. I went thru my website and restructured it quite a bit actually. I had to add a section for my biology classes and then reduced my classroom resources down to one page per subject area instead of one per period I teach this will keep it all organized when begin teaching in the fall again. I also added links I had to my biology website. I then went in and played around with my diigo account that my students had used this fall for their final project in my earth science class. It was not organized very well and I am not one for mess online tools. I went through and created tags for all the links students have posted this way now all the future links which get added are into categories students and myself can find easier. I hope to introduce this bookmarking tool earlier in the year in hopes students can use it all year as well as for their final project. At the end of class I decided to play with wordle as I have always loved ones I had seen on other sites. I had a blast create and playing with it but then found out that unless you want a tiny little box on your website you need to go thru some additional steps to get the wordle to be useable. I was able to get a screen shot and hopefully will be able to get it now on my website. I enjoyed learning about additional places to play with photos or make movies. I really enjoy doing this and a ot of that information will be used more for my private live. I also have started up a private website that I was going to try out for my pictures on wix.com I liked the professionalism of it. I have wanted a place to showcase my pictures as this point I would like to watermark then before I place them on my website which I can do via my ipad as I have a cool app which does this. Really this week I have gained a lot both personally and professionally. Most of all i like the fact you let us play and just have fun.

The Edge-ucators Way

After reading Tom Marsh's article "The Edge-ucators Way Why the Edge-ucators Way is Needed"( http://ozline.com/strategies/edge-ucators/ ) I looked at the pyramid of the approach he is talking about.... layer one look to learn. I clicked on it to see more what it is about and I can say that I do this with my student. Have a picture or Idea that you put up on your digital screen and then ask students questions to get them thinking about this picture. I have done this not only in my science classroom but also with my seminar group. We actually did this cool activity of pictures a photographer had taken a prom. They pictures really said some interesting things about the couples. We asked students to analyze and we talked about it. It was very cool and was neat to hear what the kids thought compared to what I was thinking about the picture. The second way Class Portals is really something I have been trying to work on this last year. Having begun work on my website having a place where students can share ideas and info and work with one another. I look forward to using more of these types of ideas this next year. Level 3 is well Web quest and today we worked on one. I have never done one with my students and after finding one today online that I could add to and tweak I am excited to see what the outcome is going to be. The top level is the self designed projects which I have been trying to some level of doing but really need to add more to. At the end of my earth science class I have the students pick a final project which can be on any earth science topic. Students often have trouble when I open the door to them and I am trying to work on developing the ways I can use more technology in their self design. I have students using diigo to bookmark sites so that they can share resources they find with one another. Why not help each other out? So I am trying to do things the edge-ucators way and I look forward to seeing where it is going to go.

The continuos struggles

Day one of class was fun. I enjoyed playing around with the photo editing and if I had it my way would spend my whole day doing that if I could. I love picture editing and it was fun to see some other applications available for free. I have done most of my work in photoshop elements but recently have gotten my photoshop full version. At times I think I just need to take a class in that as that really is where my love is. Website design is not an old hat to me. I recall the days when that was the thing to do. Instead of facebook and twitter we all have websites on geocities. There are always new sites and it was fun to play with a few of the new ones. This however is where frustration also came... Uploading pics seemed to just be the pain the in the butt problem from the day. Welcome to education... It is really sad we live in a technology world and this is what our schools are like. How are we suppose to teach them when its blocked. At this point I still am a google fan for my website a) I have put a bunch of work already into that site b) students have google accounts and this allows some other sharing features to work nice with files and such c) I have had no problems at school when I worked on this site so I am thinking it might just be the best one for me to stick with. I still am thinking about getting some of my photos together to do something with.. i am not a big fan of web-quests maybe you will change my mind tomorrow but right now I am not sold on them. So despite the crazy picture upload problems day one was fun and I look forward to more excitement as the week continues. : )