Google

Documents/Presentations/Spreadsheets – Having handouts, assignments, practice tests, and practice quizzes on Google or some other website makes things so much easier for students. If they miss class, they don’t have to get caught up, they can download your PowerPoints or handout or activity from your class website. Less worrying for parents, teachers, and students. 

Forms – I think this is a good idea. Forms makes it easy to create and share worksheets, quizzes, tests, etc. with other faculty. It is an easy way to keep handouts and make them available to students and parents. I would probably use Microsoft office webaps instead of Google because office looks a little more professional and I’m used to using office.

Calendar – This one is a no brainer… Having a calendar on the web for what your classes are doing is about the simplest thing you can do. Simple does not mean useless in this case. A calendar online would be an awesome tool for you, your students, parents, and other faculty. Having your colleagues knowing when you are teaching specific units is a great way to have cross-curriculum alignment and interactivity.

Blogger – I think having the students make a science blog would be awesome. They could link articles they find about current scientific topics to their blog, or do some interview with some college professors by video chat and post their interview on their blog. Or even have them do some field work and take pictures or videos to post to their individual blog or a class blog. A class blog would be an awesome idea. You could assign different topics and have a new student write an article for it each week. It could be a form of class newspaper for the parents and other peers to read. It would be REALLY cool to have another biology class or several biology classes from other schools or even other countries do the same thing and link them up so the different classes can be following each others blogs. I would love to hook up with a biology class in England or Mexico or China. That would be the coolest thing ever I think.

Reader – I think it would be cool to make a class reader to track a few science sites or comics or articles about biology. We could spend a few minutes at the start of class each week to see what is in the current news about biology and it could also be a great way to talk to students about primary research journal material vs. second hand textbook / news article / science blog / etc. You could even have the students create their own reader and make a science section on top of a fun thing or two

Google Maps / Google Earth – I love messing with google earth. I think everyone does. In the biology curriculum we have to teach a unit on ecosystems. I could have students use Google maps or Google earth to look at satellite images of different ecosystems. There is also a part of the Evolution where we talk about hominid evolution. It would be cool to use Google earth or maps to look at some excavation sites where some of the early hominids like ardipithicus and h. erectus were actually found.

Groups – Groups is a way to create discussion boards. I like the idea of using a discussion board. We had to do this in my Evolution class. The teacher created several topics that had to do with our lessons and

Google Custom Search Engine – This would be an awesome thing to implement on a class website. You could have a search engine for the UEN website for recourses or useful science websites.

Scholar – This is a great step up from using a normal Google search or a Wikipedia search for research papers and the like. You don’t have to worry about the rigmarole of making sure your school has paid the rights to use Academic Search Premier or other databases.

Sketch-up – I messed around with this application for about 30 minutes. It is a very simple 3D model designer. I built a shed with windows and doors. It took only a few minutes to learn how to use. I don’t see how I would be able to easily use this one in Biology class since it is was inherently designed to be used for architecture. Pretty fun though. Useful for some subjects, but not sure about biology. I could come up with something if I had to use it. Maybe have the students build a wall of a cell using an actual wall made of bricks or something. Might be a fun challenge to leave up to the students. Could say “You have to create something using sketch-up and have it apply to anything we’ve covered in this section and publish it to our class blog or website with a paragraph explanation.” That might be cool.

Lesson’s Learned

One of the main things I got out of the Power point presentation called “educating the net generation” is how crazy multi-tasking my generation is. Even as I’m writing this blog I was taking with someone, checking my emails, and working on another classes assignment. The other thing is that I need to remember that the newer generation is going to be even more multi-taking and even more involved in technology. At least I can remember a time when we didn’t have internet. I remember when we were the first family in our apartment complex to get a regular NES. My friends thought my dad was so cool because he could beat Zelda. What would it be like to have a life where you were given a DVD for your 2nd birthday, or an IPOD at 5. A cell phone in 3rd grade… I can’t even imagine. I guess that is the whole point of this slide show…the kids are growing up with a very different outlook on life. They are techno-dependent. How long could some teens go without their cell-phone or Facebook? How can use this techno-dependence as a positive and integrate technology into my classroom to make for an awesome learning experience.

The video “why integrate” was about a high school in Georgia. One thing I was impressed with was the use of “eclickers” or “iclickers” whatever you want to call them. As a teacher, I should constantly look for ways to incorporate technology in my classroom. Standard 2D in the NET says - “Provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching.” I think using the iclickers is a great way to have students take quizzes. Not only are you using technology, you are saving paper, and you can get instant results, automatically record grades, and walk through each question with the students, and provide scaffolding in quiz / test taking skills. I wish that I had teachers that used these. Some friends of mine have had teachers use these even in large lecture type classrooms with 200+ people and said they were a great way to keep the class interactive.

The article titled “21st century” has one little section about Technology. It mostly emphasizes the fact that we need our students to be technology literate so they can make it in the workplace and in life in general. I do think that is a correct statement, but I think there are more reasons we should include technology in our teaching. We should not solely focus on “our students need this to be competitive in the workplace.”

The article titled “Online teens are learning skills, not wasting time” is a great reassurance to teachers trying to incorporate technology in their classroom. I’ve heard some people say, “Kids get enough computer and technology on their own, they don’t need us adding even more hours to their lives. We need to get kids off the computer.” I think that is the wrong attitude. Media is a part of their lives. Use that to their advantage. Teach them how to use it effectively and teach them how great a learning tool it can be. If you leave them to learn how to navigate technology on their own, there will defiantly be those kids that will get lost or drown.

The article WWW: Whatever, Wherever, Whenever is advocating using the internet in classrooms. I agree with most of this article. I think teachers should be integrating learning through media like the internet, podcasts, and short films. I think one of the most important parts of this integration is made clear in this article: “learning must be real, rich, and relevant.” Teachers shouldn’t just use media because it is cool, fun, or “the new thing to do.” Media is a tool. It is a means to an end, not the end itself.

While watching the video about engaged learning I thought about my education. I remember sitting in nice neat little rows in Jr. High and High school in almost all of my classrooms. Where in “real life” do we sit in rows and listen to someone spout off facts for 7 hours straight. I really like the word Collaboration. I really hope that Collaboration is a word that can describe what kind of learning is going on in my classroom in the future.

The last article about games made a great point: “

It is important to emphasize that games and play may be effective learning environments, not because they are “fun”12 but because they are immersive, require the player to make frequent, important decisions, have clear goals, adapt to each player individually, and involve a social network.” Games can be included in my above statements about media. Games used in the classroom to be used as a game are pretty pointless. If a teacher says, “I think I’ll include a game in my lesson to make it fun for the students” I think they are forgetting the point of their jobs. If most of your lesson is so boring that you need a game to get your students excited again, you are doing something wrong. You could instead come up with a great game that transforms your entire lesson. It’s not about boring vs. fun. It’s about instead of spewing out facts, get your students working together, making decisions, and competing. The learning will follow.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I think that I have a pretty good grasp on technology. I have been using computers since my dad brought home our 1st Macintosh when I was in 1st grade. I have kept current on new technology over the years. I don’t think that I will have a problem with #5. I think that using technology to improve myself as a teacher and continue my own personal education as well as using it to contribute to my community and school will come naturally to me. #4 seems like it will also be easy for me to do. Teaching students about the necessary safety involved with technology use is something teachers can easily skip over and assume that students are already familiar with. Taking a few minutes to explain internet and technology safety can make a world of difference. Using Dr. Ramirez’s line..just pretend your students didn’t get the memo about internet safety and you be the one to give it to them.

I think the standards that will take the most amount of effort for me will be 1-3. It is so easy to fall into an attitude of feeding information to your students. I have seen a lot of biology teachers say “we gotta get through this material.” With that attitude it would be hard to stop and take time to let your students be inventive and creative with technology. I am interested in seeing how the NETS’s “picture perfect technology-using” science teacher would run their classroom. Too many teachers that I have observed think they are using technology because they have upgraded from using overhead projectors to power point presentations (some still use overhead projectors). Others use cheesy VHS presentations from the 1970s. I don’t want to be that teacher. I want to incorporate cutting edge technology into my classroom. I’m interested to see how much more prepared I will feel in this aspect by the end of the semester.