sciENCOUNTERS

Is Your Washing Ma-Cheen Running?

2012-02-14T13:42:00.002-06:00

Super cool video of Ernie Halter!

Just had to share... not sure why :)

Thing 18

2012-01-30T13:46:00.006-06:00

Groundwater

View more presentations from Kristin Daniels

What did you like about the presentation you embedded? How might Slideshare be useful in the classroom? out of the classroom?

I like the presentation that I embeded because it relates to what I am teaching currently. I think Slideshare would be useful to share information with other teachers but also to find slideshows that already exist. My next question would be whether or not you can edit a slideshow. I know that it was made by someone else and that it is their intellectual property but what if I want to add a slide. Next, I will need to research and find out if this is possible. It would be like getting a headstart, which as teachers we really need sometimes. Out of the classroom, I feel it might come in handy for a graduate course.

Thing 17

2012-01-30T13:27:00.003-06:00

Give a review of the tool you explored - what worked, what didn't work, how might it be used in your personal or professional life?

I explored flashcarddb and found it to be a really cool tool (poet and didn't know it). I will share this with my students as a way to study. It was easy to add cards and then to study with them. Also if I create a set, we can use it to study if there are a few extra minutes at the end of the hour. I do not see myself using this tool in my personal life... well at least until my son is in school. :)

Thing 16

2012-01-30T13:21:00.002-06:00

How might you use this tool in your personal and professional life? What
issues come to mind about using this tool with students (ie, they need email
addresses to log-in)?

As we are now a "Google School," I feel that I will need to be using this often. We use Google Docs to track behaviors and share calendar information. I can only see Google Docs becoming more integral in my everday life at school. I worry about sharing ideas with students because of privacy issues. I only want my students to be able to see certain Documents within my account. I need to learn more about sharing documents to get a better understanding. I think there is an App for that. ;)

Thing 15

2012-01-30T13:03:00.002-06:00

Is RSS becoming easier to understand? Do you recognize new benefits of using
this tool? Do you remember to check your feeds regularly? Has it become a habit
(or obsession!) yet?

Yes, RSS is easier to understand. As I search the web and visit sites, I notice that they all have RSS feeds. I do not always want to subscribe but I now realize that it is an option. I do not remember to go and check my feeds frequently. I fell that if I put the Google Reader into my igoogle page, I would notice it daily. I still go to my blog sites separately like a technology immigrant but am working on it.

Thing 14

2012-01-30T12:35:00.003-06:00

Include your Delicious username in this blog post so that others can view the bookmarks that you have chosen to share. Then reflect on how you think social bookmarking can be used in your teaching. Does Delicious seem to be a tool that can enhance your productivity?

My delicious username is mgorski. I think social bookmarking will be great to share with colleagues rather than emailing website URL's all the time. We always want to share video clip sites, demonstrations, labs, etc. It will make it so much faster to have all of these saved using cloud computing. It will be in one fixed spot so it can be accessed from any computer. Yes I do believe that Delicious will help me organize my websites and share them easily. I foresee (now I'm psychic) that I will use it often.

Thing 13

2012-01-30T12:05:00.007-06:00

Share your thoughts about tagging. Is tagging a useful way to organize your digital resources and why? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages? What is important to think about before assigning tags to bookmarks or other Internet content?

I think social bookmarking websites is great! I often find cool labs online at home but if I don't send myself the link I get frustrated trying to find it. I will end up talking to Pat about it but won't be able to find it. A couple times, I would even try to retrace my virtual web searching footsteps to relocate it... cyber-sleuthing. This social bookmarking will be great because it will cut out the "middle man" of site sharing. I think this is a tool that will be very useful to me. The only disadvantage that I see currently is making sure that Delicious is added to all of my web browsers toolbars. The tags should be assigned by the unit(s) that they fall under. I believe more tags will be better than fewer. If you tag the site to all units or words, the time taken will be cut down. And as teachers we all know time equals money. :)

Thing 12

2012-01-30T11:46:00.004-06:00

Review the widget you selected. Are you getting comfortable with embedding
code? Do you belong to other online communities? Are relationships formed online
as meaningful as face-to-face relationships? Why do you think Facebook and other
social networking sites are so popular with kids today?

I did feel pretty comfortable embedding the code. Some of the widgets seem like they want you do put in a code that is different than the one used. I am sure there are many different ways to embed them. It is hard to decipher these codes because they are foreign to me. I am sure they will get easier. Yes, I belong to online communities and have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I do not feel it creates good relationships. I started it to convey information about my son to family far away. It does accomplish this goal but also seems quite voyeuristic to me. I have since cut my "friends" to a minimum and just family. I think that these sites are so popular because it creates a forum for gossip and goofiness. Now I sound like a grandma but it's TRUE!!!!!!

Thing 11

2012-01-30T11:32:00.002-06:00

What do you like / dislike about leaving comments? How did you feel when you
received your first comment? Why do you think commenting is so important in
online communities? What might this mean for students who share their writing
online?

Tidbit about me... I second guess a lot! So leaving comments was slightly stressful. Plus, we are all doing the same things so it was hard to leave comments because there was not a lot of new content. I felt great when I got my first comment. It felt like what I am doing was being validated. I comment quite a bit on some of the blogs I follow outside of school. I really think it will be important to teach blogging etiquette to my students. They text anything and everything so they need to understand that this is a different arena and need to treat it as that.

Embed and Download Video

2012-01-08T09:15:00.000-06:00

I selected this video because it is entertaining. My students love this video and it answers the age old question about how astronauts use the restroom on the International Space Station. There are other videos from the ISS that help the students understand weightlessness among other topics. I quite like the downloader KeepVid. This past fall, I used this site almost daily because our YouTube was not working at school. My students and I were grateful for the site because it calmed my anger by letting me download videos to my computer.

Online Video

2012-01-08T07:52:00.004-06:00

What do you like or dislike about YouTube? Did you find videos that would be useful for teaching and learning? Is YouTube restricted in your building?

I already have a YouTube account and use it daily in my classroom. It is great for showing my students video clips about anything from a volcanic eruption to a cartoon/song depicting groundwater safety. If YouTube were gone tomorrow, I would literally cry (which is personal reminder to continue downloading the creme de la creme to my computer). What I dislike about YouTube is it has so many videos compared to 4 years ago, which makes for a laborious search for educational videos now-a-days. That said, I would not trade it for all the tea in China.

Fun With Images

2012-01-08T07:16:00.006-06:00

Fun With Images was the hardest "thing" yet for me. The reason I found it hard was because some of the the image sites were not seamless. By that I mean, several of the sites had links that did not work correctly or had glitches. I figured them out but you had to find a way around the glitch before you could actually perform the image creation. I think, like with all things, you weed out the good from the bad. I enjoyed Montager and the memory game for their ease of use. The Mirrorizer and Face on a Different Body were 2 sites that we time-consuming and difficult. Like most things in teaching, if it isn't easy we do not have time for it. Simply the truth.

Share Your Photos Online

2012-01-08T07:04:00.001-06:00

That's my boy!, a photo by sumpski on Flickr.

I think I could use flickr in some many ways in my classroom. Earth Science is about Earth so it will be represented more in photos, most likely, than any other subject area. I can use it for my weather unit, volcano unit, rock cycle unit, etc. The issue that I feel I will face most often will be the copyright issue which I do not fully understand yet. My next question (and research topic) will be whether I can show a copyrighted picture for educational purposes i.e. a slideshow?

Aurora Australis (NASA, International Space Station Science, 05/29/10)

2012-01-08T06:45:00.002-06:00

Aurora Australis (NASA, International Space Station Science, 05/29/10), a photo by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr.

This is a photo of the Aurora Australis taken from the International Space Station. Actually, I found all the of the pictures taken by Marshall's Space Flight Center to be great. This photo in particular was interesting because it gives a different point of view to look at auroras. I could definitely use these in all areas of Earth Science. There were volcanoes, sunspots, and clouds; all taken from space.

Managing Your RSS Feeds

2012-01-07T18:41:00.001-06:00

How do you handle information overload and how do you think RSS might help with that?

I actually had a hard time finding blogs about Earth Science. I may have been using the wrong search terms but after 30 minutes of searching I did find 3 that I found interesting. As far as information overload, I can understand overwhelming feelings when you are following multiple blogs. What I have found is you will prune blogs that do not interest you and add others as you go. Eventually, a core "good" blogs will emerge over time. So it may seem like a lot of information at first but time will divide the good from the not-so-good.

What is RSS?

2012-01-07T17:30:00.000-06:00

How might you use RSS in your personal or professional life? Which method of subscribing do you prefer? What didn't work or doesn't make sense?

I already use RSS feeds on my igoogle webpage. I had not used the RSS reader. I signed up for it but do not think I will use it much. I don't mind subscribing anyway... they are all pretty quick... even copy and paste isn't bad. I think I could use it in my professional life by subscribing to an earthquake update feed or earth science news. The students are always asking me if I heard about the new planet (which one is it today?) so it could prove to be helpful by having all info in one place.

~ Mrs. G

Blogs in Education

2012-01-07T14:55:00.001-06:00

How might you use a blog with students? How might they respond to a blog assignment? What concerns do you have about educational blogging?

I think I would use a blog to supplement my teaching in the classroom. It would be a place where students would have a voice without raising their hand. I believe it would be great for students who are really shy or students who want to learn more about our curriculum in a different way. I would love to post a video or a debate-like question that my students could respond to. The immediate concern that pops into my head would be how I would be able to track if each student commented. Currently, I have a hard time visualizing how to give credit to a blog comment or even track them.

~Mrs. G

What I hope to learn from 23 things?

2012-01-07T14:10:00.000-06:00

I hope to learn lots of cool ways for me to push my quirky sense of humor onto the world. No really, I have always wanted a way to post cool videos for students to comment on but did not know how to (or had to the time to learn). Also, the videos may relate to science but not to the objectives we were currently studying so a different forum was needed. Polls are another way I wanted to get my students opinions but again no outlet. I think some of the 23 things will give me the tools and platforms to accomplish them.

~Mrs. G

Fingers Crossed!

2012-01-07T13:15:00.001-06:00

Welcome to my blog! If you are reading this, then I can blog!

Come back for cool polls, science videos, and experiments.

~Mrs. G