Beginning to Explore

I created my first actual podcast today on making black bean nachos. Using garageband was not difficult, though I didn’t really do much with it – just hit record and play.  I was impressed with the clarity of the recording since it is just from my laptops built in microphone.  I realized that having a script would be very important if the podcast is for teaching purposes because it almost needs to be put together like a movie.

Podcasting in chemistry would be very helpful.  On days that I am out of school for coaching, a podcast could be created ahead of time for students to watch so that we don’t miss a day of class.  Podcasts could also be used to help students who are absent make up class or present projects where everyone could view the projects at their leisure.

As I explored Classroom 2.0 and Ning, the major thing that stood out to me was how nonuniformly information was organized.  One of the great advantages of Facebook (at least earlier iterations) was that it was very easy to navigate, and the page design was not overwhelming.  The search tools were good and predictable.  The sites that I explored on Ning seemed cluttered.  For example I went to a page on use of Picasso in the classroom and was taken to a page with around a thousand different strands mostly in other languages.  There was no unifying theme except at the top of the page which assured me that the page was a place to share usage of Picasso in the classroom.  As a science teacher, I am looking for places to collaborate with colleagues, and thus far I haven’t found much high school/AP level chemistry information on these social sites.  They are a great idea, but require more time to navigate than I have during the school year in order to be useful.

It was nice to have to sit down and explore YouTube.  I have been a sideline user of YouTube for a while (there are several videos of chemistry being done to peeps that I find entertaining and that my AP students find entertaining), but I have never had the time to actually sit down and explore YouTube.  There are a lot of videos on the site.  I was glad to find out about the safety viewing mode.  Even at home I don’t appreciate some of the content that appears on the sides of websites.

There was definitely content (particularly demos) that I could use in my classroom on the site.

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I think the major obstacle for using YouTube videos in the classroom is time constraint.  I coach two sports, so I don’t have lots of extra time to surf through extraneous videos, etc. to find useful things for my classroom.  Perhaps this summer I will be able to do more because I have always thought it would be neat to have an intro video clip for lessons/units but that was never practical until now.

Teachertube seemed to have easier to find content, but it loaded so slowly it really wasn’t worth dealing with.  I prefer that clips buffer before I watch them, not in the middle of trying to watch them (especially if they are only one or two minutes long).  I was excited that several teachers I recognize from the APChem listserve have videos on TeacherTube, so I will definitely explore more this summer.  I think that using YouTube as a resource in the classroom is something I will have to ponder over the summer when I have a little more free time than I currently have.

As the owner of the first video ipod, I have been using an ipod to listen to music and catch up on sermons that I have missed at church for years.  Today my eyes were opened to ipod U, and I am very excited.  I spend at least 2 hours a day commuting to work and am constantly flipping through the radio looking for something to listen to.  Today, I downloaded UC Berkley’s Roman Civilization course to listen to, and I subscribed to Scientific American’s feed.  As I began exploring, I also saw that Google has a feed that allows you to keep up with global news, so I will probably investigate that next.

I have been using podcasts in my classroom for several years.  Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams have recently published podcasts for 1st year and AP chemistry.  I use these podcasts in my AP classroom to reinforce what I teach.  The students receive points on their tests if they choose to complete the take home notes for the unit podcasts (usually several hours) that go with the material we are studying.  I like this method because it gives them a second voice/alternative approach to learn the material we are covering.  They come in quoting funny pneumonic devices that Mr. Bergmann and Mr. Sams use to learn material.  These are also helpful to show when I am going to be gone because of illness or athletics.   This way, I never have to worry about losing a day of instruction time during AP Chemistry.

When I originally started using their podcasts, they had review podcasts available for free on itunes.  My AP students would watch the review podcast at home and then work sample problems in class where I could help them with the complex ideas and mathematics.  This “reverse learning style” worked great, and I am hoping to create similar podcasts over the next several years so that my classroom time for both levels of chemistry can be spent more efficiently and effectively.  Podcasts also allow students to easily make up missed class time.   At one point, when I had easy access to a camera and firewire, I would videotape my lectures and burn them to dvds for students who knew ahead of time that they were going to miss several days of class.  The idea of podcasts is similar but even easier to use.

Originally, I thought that Pageflakes would be a neat addition to my classroom, but as I explored the tool, I realized that it is not intuitive for me to use.  After several attempts, I was able to load the k12 template into my own page (I realized that I was loading the page into a different page that was open and that if I shut all the extra pageflake pages down I could load it into my own page).  I think that the site has potential, but I will need to spend several weeks optimizing it into something that is easy to use for my students instead of something that is confusing and overwhelming.  Another issue is that pageflakes is blocked at my school, along with many of the sites that the flakes access, so multiple things would have to change in order to make this a valid tool.  Definitely not my favorite thing that we have looked at during this class, but I think with more time to contemplate and explore, it could be useful.

It is very rare for high school appropriate chemistry sites or material to pass through my Google reader, so you might imagine my excitement when this blog by Jason Forsythe was posted on Instructify.  The post summarizes the material available on Chemistry Educational Digital Library site.

After pursuing the site for a short time period, I have decided that it is worthy of some time this summer to really explore the site.  It has videos, activities, modeling, etc. resources, and it is free.

I recently read a blog post that mentioned that the features on google documents were going to change how we communicate, i.e.  that the days of Microsoft Office were on the decline.  When I read the post, I chuckled at the thought of the classroom without powerpoint.  Then I started my chemistry students on a food chemistry project that culminates with a group presentation to the class.

The students at the private school I teach at come from all over the city and suburbs.  They are not centrally located like they would be in public school, so group projects can be challenging.  I showed them the presentation feature on google documents, and they were instantly sold.  We are currently trouble shooting the method together because I am just learning how to use the technology, but so far, it has been very useful.

While I don’t think that I will be doing group projects that require the use of google documents, I can see several areas where they are professionally helpful.  First, when writing a chemistry test, the other chemistry teacher can easily revise the test through gmail instead of having to go back and forth through email and hope that I have the most updated version of the test.  Second, students who are working on group presenations can use the presentation function to be able to work on their presenation even when they aren’t at school.  And third, I can use the spreadsheet function to create tshirt size lists and apparel information for my volleyball team.

Overall, it seems like a versatile tool; however, I will need more time to really explore what things google documents will make easier.

LibraryThing is amazing.  It is like having your own personal, skilled librarian.  I am an avid reader and sometimes I run out of things to read because I have exhausted my knowledge of a genre.  The Suggester tool allows you to enter a book you have read and then it will suggest new books to you based on what you have read.  While I wasn’t completely impressed with the selection (I entered The Last Olympian and it only returned books in the Percy Jackson series – I have finished that series), it did give better results than just browsing the shelves tends to give.  The amount of knowledge of books on the site was incredible, too.  I am not sure exactly how this would be used in a chemistry classroom, but I could ponder it a while.  I think in history and english rooms it has obvious applications.  For me, the most obvious applications are personal.  I particularly like the 50 book challenge and could see myself using that to keep a record of what I have read.

Keeping favorite webpages bookmarked on an independent website like Delicious is an excellent idea.  Every summer my internet bookmarks at work are deleted when the computers are updated, so I have more or less stopped bookmarking sites and depend on Google to help me find the sites that I know exist.  Using Delicious to organize interesting webpages would make it possible to locate the webpages from home and would allow my students to view sites like The Video Periodic Table of Elements from home (since all of the videos are on You Tube, which is a blocked site).  I use several internet based research projects during the year, and I think that delicious has the potential to be a site where I can list websites for students to use that would be easier to keep up to date than a webquest is.

You can check out my delicious bookmarks at  http://delicious.com/chemistryponderer.

Kathy Schrock recently conducted a survey about the use of Twitter by teachers and school districts.  The results indicate that most school districts from which people responded did not use twitter.  Those that did used it mainly for informational updates.

This blog interested me because I think it is ironic that the educational realm is slow to accept uses of new technology.  If we are supposed to be preparing students for “real” life, ie post high school life, then how does our acceptance of new technologies affect their perception of the value of education.  I posit that a school’s use or avoidance or implicit condemnation of new technologies, i.e. by categorically blocking websites, etc. affects a students perception of the value of their education.

Learning the appropriate uses of technology like virtual social behavior is as important as learning acceptable real life behavior.  Cyber bullying and regular bullying would be a great example.  Pushing someone around, whether physically or virtually, is wrong because it damages the person.  Similarly, learning when it is appropriate to be on social sites and when it is not appropriate are important skills to take to the work place.  Is it okay to be surfing the web during a meeting at work?  When and how do students learn the acceptable boundaries without being explicitly taught them?

I believe that education will appear more relevant to students when the technologies they use at home are used to a better extent in their school environment.