Guiding Principles Revisited and Final Thoughts

This is what I stated in June and still hold to these principles today: The technology needs to be relevant, inquiry-based, simple to use, and have a seamless fit into the course content. I don't need the students to have one more thing to do if it does not enhance their learning.

My focus now is to begin school next week, continue to add content my moodles (including screencasts and voicethreads), "attend" webinars, and put a plan together for a simple action research project (is that an oxymoron?). I need to decide how much time I'll devote to my PLN weekly as I can get carried away in the virtual world.

This was a good final course in the MSSE program for me. (Although, there are a number of other courses I would like to take.) It provides a new beginning and with this course wiki and Marta's wiki there is a road to further professional development.

The course reminds me of our family excursion to ten National Parks in 22 days with a lay over in Bozeman for five of those days. My kids wanted to stay longer at each park we visited. I needed to stay longer at each new tool I used. As I told them, now you have had a short trip through __________ (fill in the blank with a National Park), you know where you might want to return. I think it's the same way with the tools we've used in this course. Now I know where I want to go back and visit for a longer stay.

Thanks to everyone in this course. You made my PLN possible. Have a great year. We'll continue the conversation.

Final Project

Thank you, Eric for your vision and all members of this class for their invaluable contributions. This has been a very resourceful class. Other courses provide useful content and tools, but this one built a new road to teaching through the personal learning network and Web 2.0 tools. This project is bittersweet as it is my last MSSE assignment.

My goal for this course was to find a web application to extend the two hours per week I have with home educated students. That goal was met and more. The virtual possibilities expand daily as the growth of online education expands exponentially.

Here is the project plan:

All my courses (see PJ Biology, PJ Chemistry, and Patti’s Sandbox) have a Moodle thanks to Tammy Moore at the Virtual Homeschool Support Group. Currently, this group is hosting the sites until I have a server. The Moodle route was chosen because it is password protected which serves two needs: 1) It is the only way my parents will accept their students putting their work online; 2) It is the only way the publisher of the textbook allows graphics and course materials to be available via the web.

Within the Moodle, a wiki will be used to display group projects such as a watershed study for biology and the results of inquiry labs for chemistry. The forum function (aka blog) will be used to discuss a question of the week, lab results, science articles and hot topics. Currently, I’m writing a grading rubric for both applications. A podcast will be uploaded for each weekly lecture so absent students may hear what they missed or for students who need to reinforce learning. Screencast will be used for additional support material I could not get to during class time. Voicethread will be used as a formative assessment and probe tool.

An area that I have not defined is what to use for an online discussion/open office hours virtual classroom. Elluminate is far and away the favorite yet pricey for my needs while DimDim has fewer features but is an open source.

My PLN includes following what is happening at Classroom 2.0, Teacher’s First, Sloan Consortium, International Association for K-12 Online Learning, and following many blogs with Google Reader. All this Web2.0 experience/content will be organized on Diigo. I plan to develop a blog for science teachers of homeschool students. This will require starting a blog, writing quality content, and networking through the many blogs this group of teachers might frequent.

These are my plans for now. It's a good start, but I know it may look different in time as my skills develop and I learn from my students.

Week 7 PLN Reflection

This week I focused on developing my class moodles and attending classes and webinars on basic tools. Classroom 2.0’s session this week on PowerPoint presentations by Alvin Trusty should be a must look in the future prior to the week six work for this class. I now want to re-do my work submitted for that week.

A moderator for Classroom 2.0 is in my online moodle course. She has generously offered to give personal instruction on Diigo for me in a LearnCentral vroom. At this point, I am starting to feel the effects of a PLN. I may not have a PLN for the science content areas of the classes I teach (yet), but I am amazed at the virtual relationships and generosity of the teachers who are willing to give their time and talent to bring others into the Web 2.0 playpen.

Week 6 PLN

I would like to have a google earth aerial view of my PLN journey. I wonder how often I'm going in circles and how many bunny trails I'm traveling. Part of my angst is that I am so destination oriented. I like to have a place to arrive and plan the best route to get there...at the appointed time. The PLN is a journey. I'm not getting there fast enough and I can't "see" the best route or my final destination.

I had two good stopping off points this week. 1) I finally read through all the unread posts of the class (150+). Thanks for the encouragement in your posts and words of wisdom. Some led to additions to my PLN. (I wish I could remember to whom I should give credit.) I added three blogs to follow: ICT in the Classroom, Steve Spangler, and Successful Teaching. I continue to check in at Classroom 2.0 for the latest posts. I have not found an efficient method to keep up with this site yet. Any suggestions? For those who follow Globe, they are having a virtual meeting this week. I also found a site with 5000+ demos, many of them are science related. 2) I started my moodle course learning all sorts of how to's with the instructor using voicethread. I have two weeks to set up three moodles.

My twitter was silent for the week. I set up a Diigo account which needs some serious organization. I purchased Mathematica from Wolfram.com as a visualization tool. This, too, will have a large learning curve for me and I plan to take advantage of webinars to learn how to use it.

This week's assignment was challenging. It was good to try out so many tools and determine what works. I plan to stick with screencast-o-matic, slideshare, and voicethread. Screencast will be very helpful for students who miss class. Voicethread has great potential to for a discussion of the material. I have yet to work out getting those posted on youtube. It may be a user name/password issue.

Back to the journey...

Week 6 Presentations

Dealing With Data

View more presentations from psjelinek.

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So often, I have made assumptions that students come into the high school science class knowing the basics of handling data. I wanted to begin this year with a primer on data. My goal for this project was also to incorporate last week's work on data bases that could be used for inquiry work. That went beyond the scope of this project and my time. The above presentation has a couple of graphic errors, and I made enhancements to the next screencast project below. In addition, I finally figured out how to embed each of these presentations. That in itself was an accomplishment for me. Any and all criticisms of the project are welcome.



The graphics were improved in the screencast. I am really excited about the possibilities of this technology. I can have students review these prior to class or have available materials that absent students missed.



This was the tough one. When I started the project, the excel graphs in the ppt did not appear. I found out they would not appear unless I converted the ppt to a pdf. After downloading two free pdf conversion programs, the convert ppt to pdf program WORKED! It was a simple project once this was accomplished. Here is the link to the free download in case you have the same problem in the future. Note the conversion program appears in the slides. I would need to purchase the program for that to disappear. I can get along with the tag line.

Week 5 PLN Reflection

My PLN progress has improved exponentially over the last couple of days. (It helps to spend hours in cyberspace.) I participated in a live Classroom 2.0 Elluminate session yesterday. I emailed the moderator of the session and found she teaches a course on developing a moodle wiki(free). The class starts tomorrow and I have a sandbox to develop my classes using moodle and elluminate. I'm scratching the idea of using facebook as the classroom tool.

After listening to two beginner wiki sessions in Classroom 2.0 by Sue Waters, I have found her advice and teaching helpful in understanding the Web 2.0 world and developing a PLN. I am now connecting with other educators in Classroom 2.0 and Learn Central.

With classes starting in three weeks, I believe the abundance of quality materials flowing in from this class and following the aforementioned nings and blogs will be more than enough for a PLN. Time and experience will lead me in new directions in the future.

Simulations and Google Earth

When I have a scientist from the University of Memphis Center for Earthquake Research and Information visit my class, the real time earthquake google earth tool will make the data interesting for my students. As I update the syllabus for each of my classes over the next couple of weeks, I will refer to the Google Earth data sets to determine if they are a good fit for the class.

I found a one stop shop for simulations. EdInformatics covers a number of science topics.