Final Project

I decided, after reading Sandy's blog post, to try to create a wiki for my classroom. She did a great job of explaining how she set up her wiki, and why she was using the tools she did. Thanks, Sandy!
I'm not sure how often my students will be required to access either the classroom wiki or their own blogs, but I think probably two times a week. I envision parents checking the class schedules occasionally - just to see if their child has a test coming up.
The Biology 11 page contains the rubric for a project the students will be doing next spring. Most students will prefer to use some web tool or another to present their information, but some will prefer to make a poster. Since not all of my students have frequent access to computers or internet I can't require a web based major project. The page also contains links to examples of student work which I have uploaded. Thanks Jared and Brendan!
I have also put a link to the PowerPoint presentation I put together for the web tools course on that page. I will be using the presentation as part of the ecology unit. I don't use PowerPoint for many lectures, but I will use the ones I have made for various MSSE courses. That way I will have a few good presentations without a lot of bad ones!
The Chemistry 11 page contains a PowerPoint presentation I made as part of the requirements for a Chem 580 course I took this summer. I will be using the presentation, as well as the lab activities this fall. This particular presentation uses two images I got from Google images. Usually I prefer to take my own pictures, but I do appreciate being able to find one quickly when I need to.
I will also be having each of my students set up a learning blog. Since most of them take more than one class from me, I will limit the number of postings they have to make for each course to one a week. The blog posts they make will be in the form of directed journals, which I hope to use in my capstone project. Last year I used journals in my math classes, and found that sometimes students needed more time that I could spare in a class period. Hopefully using a blog format will help them finish writing out their thoughts.

Webtools I will actually use (AKA Final Project)

I have learned about a number of new interesting tools this summer, but most of them are not something I will actually use in classes I teach. This is a disclaimer that I need to add to my final project for the webtools class: what follows is a work of fiction. Most of my students have internet access at home, but not all do. Any tools I use have to be able to be used at school during limited computer lab time. I either give up class time, or stay very late after school so that students can access the lab, under my supervision, after sports practices which end at 5:30pm. It is not going to happen very often.

Version 2 of my proposed use of webtools during the 2009-2010 school year

I would like to use some sort of interactive lab notebooks. So far, I think individual blogs would be more useful in my setting than wikis, but I'm not positive. I lean toward a set of postings that students would make, and then I would just give feedback, but maybe students would like to get feedback from their peers also. I'll keep pondering.

I will require my biology 11 students to make some sort of presentation on a habitat we study on our major field trip. This worked quite well last Spring, and with some modifications to the grading rubric, and with plenty of notice, I think students would prefer to use computers for this presentation. Most of the projects turned in were powerpoints, but with a little encouragement I think other presentation options would be wonderful.

I will make a google earth presentation at the beginning of the school year to the grade eleven class parents, and then at the end of the year during the "Year End Concert". Students, and their parents, love to see pictures taken during the school year. We'll use tools like Picnik to edit pictures to portray our year in math and science.

News from the preschoolers

We have been learning about Noah's ark this week in Hope, BC. I can't decide if all the children lined up on stage singing about rainbows, or 60 little fingers wagging while little voices sing "Don't mess up God's world" is my favorite. I should try introducing our BC forests theme next year with the "Don't mess it up" song. All this is a preamble to my intro to ecology powerpoint.
Ecology
The slideshare tools we have explored this week have added a whole new level of frustration to my life. Anything which takes six attempts and still gives a "Oops, you found an error" message is not worth using. I won't willingly use these tools for several summers. I'll try again after the creators have a chance to work out the bugs. I'm glad that I had a chance to play with the ideas, and am glad that I will know what people are talking about when they mention screencasting, but I'm also very, very glad that I won't have to try to navigate them again any time soon.

Introduction to Ecology Powerpoint

This posting is under construction.
I wish I could post my powerpoint presentation here, but I can't figure out how to do so.

Week 6 from Camp Hope

This week has been busy, almost unbelievably so. Shannon, Caitlin, and I have been setting up the program for three and four year olds which we will be running for the next ten days. This means cleaning, chasing away spiders, sorting, moving furniture, setting up props, and trying to convince administration that we can not run programming for 60+ children while someone else uses the same space to run a women's health seminar for 100 people.
Clearly I need my PLN to ride in to my rescue! Maybe Susan Berrend (Connectivities Lab) could let me watch her children while I'm doing my program, and then we would both have time to do the work for this class.
I've been able to adapt my word document notes for my intro to ecology lecture into powerpoint, but that is as far as I have gotten this week. I'll continue to try over the weekend and into the next week.
Camp Hope has no internet access right now - and, unfortunately, no hope (pun intended) of getting very much bandwidth until after August 2. So, in the interest of working hard on the Webtools course, I am making a real sacrifice - I will drink frozen lemonade in the Blue Moose Cafe so I can access my virtual network of friends.

Thoughts from my PLN

This weekend a couple of things happened which helped me appreciate my virtual learning network. First, as part of the webtools course requirements, I participated in a live elluminate seminar. The topic was clip art for use in interactive online courses. Now, I don't teach any online courses, but I do teach students who occasionally get bored or distracted (rather like me). I did not walk away from this course with ideas I will use as presented, but I did come away with ideas to help make my presentations more learner-friendly.

I learned something else from attending this seminar: I don't multi-task well. I could either listen to the audio presentation, or read the chat, but there was no way I could concentrate on both at once. I know that research shows that students do much less well when trying to study and listen to music, but I watched this in action as I participated. I learned that I need to give my students time to first listen and then look, or the other way around, but to expect both at once is irresponsible.

The other learning event was the outbreak of several fires in the West Kelowna area. Yesterday afternoon a major forest fire broke out near Gorman Brothers Mill. People were evacuated almost right away, and as the fire spread I found myself following AM 1150 on Twitter. I also followed my facebook friends and the radio for news. Telus asked people to refrain from using cell phones except in emergency, so tweets sent by reporters from the front lines were really appreciated. When my son was called up to fight the fire I was able to let all my friends and relatives know. When one of my co-workers feared being evacuated I could see his facebook status; when another told us that her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter were safe, if not allowed home, we all rejoiced; we all knew when two more fires broke out during the evening and night and we all knew to stay away when another fire broke out this morning on this side of the lake. My PLN of virtual friends is almost identical to my PLN I see and work with, but online tools certainly help me keep up with changes.

I'm not sure how helpful this is with shaping how I teach, but it is certainly helpful as I build relationships with the people around me.

I think I can

Mission Creek, the riparian habitat most of my students researched and presented.

The Marine biology station about which I thought they would make their presentation.

Sea kayaking from Friday Harbor. This was another chance to research about intertidal zones.


The desert center in Osoyoos. Two students made presentations about this habitat.


Snowshoeing at Crystal mountain. None of my students made presentations about this habitat either.

I decided this week that I really can use online data in my grade 11 classes. I have been meaning to include stream ecology as part of my grade 11 biology class, but knew that the provincially mandated curriculum really does not include water quality in any of the courses I teach. The concept of making room for something I really enjoy has been germinating for two years - since I took Streamside Science in the summer of 2007. Last summer I took Teaching Ecology, and renewed my conviction to include a more hands-on ecology unit, so I made plans to include a student-generated habitat presentation this spring as a culminating activity. Since I take my grade 11 students to Rosario beach each year, I rather expected that several students would choose to present information about the inter-tidal zone. No one did. Two looked at the desert habitat near Osoyoos which we toured, but most explored the riparian habitat surrounding the river near our school.

Each year I try to improve each of my courses, so this upcoming year I'm going to make a few changes to the major field trip I plan with the class. First, I will tell them about their presentation, complete with the grading rubric, at the beginning of the course. Second, I will remind them as we snowshoe through the alpine habitat that they could use pictures they take, and information both from their textbooks and from other sources to make a presentation on the alpine habitat near our school.

Third, I will add one day (a Sunday) to our four day ecology field trip. This will allow us to continue to include the Osoyoos desert center in our trip, to include a stop in the alpine portion of the north Cascades highway, and to include a little more down time at Rosario marine biology station.


Then, since students are already interested in the riparian habitat, I will include short trips to the water (less than a 5 minute walk from school) during our Terry Fox run in September and during PE training runs once in the winter and once in the spring (assuming that teacher does not object too strenuously). I will be able to have my students work on this project over the course of a year since I teach chemistry as well as math to this same group of students.

Luckily for me I found that the province has a water monitoring station approximately 1km downstream from our collection point, so we should be able to compare our data to the data from the ministry of environment's. I've also found a water monitoring site (World Water Monitoring Day) where my students can share their data with others.

I have been uncomfortable making major changes to a successful program (which our former principal taught for years), but I think a series of small improvements is well within my capabilities. This project will allow me to integrate things I've learned in several of my own classes, and will be a way to help my students make cross-curricular connections as well. I'll adapt and improve my ideas next summer, but this seems like a good start to me.