A Virtual Trip to a Tech-Savvy School

Below is a screen cast of a powerpoint I made for a school I worked at last year. It's called the Scholars' Academy and is a NYC public school located in Rockaway, Queens. I chose this school because it's driving principle is that technology is the key to success. Enjoy!

Exploring MORE Technology - Session 9

Other resources I would like to talk about in this post are iTunes U, Smartboards, Ipads, and UDL (Universal Design for Learning).

iTunes U is a really nice FREE resource that can be used by teachers and students. There are dozens of universities that have their professors record their lectures and upload to iTunes. You can search these by university, professor, or topic. You can sign up for podcasts on certain topics. One that I am really looking forward to using is called "Ask a Biologist" from Arizona State University. Each session is a short interview with a scientist about their work, using revolving around something strange or interesting. I like this series in particular because my students always come up with strange questions and things that interest them, but I never seem to have enough time to get into it with them. Maybe I can post episodes of this on the class website, or even just encourage students to subscribe.

Smartboards are becoming ubiquitous in NYC classrooms, and unfortunately, not many teachers feel totally comfortable using them or use them to their full potential. What makes a smartboard so useful is that is allows you and the students a chance to be active in what is happening on the board. You can have media-rich presentations and not have to worry about juggling between several displays. You can touch and toggle everything on that one board, even draw or write on pictures/diagrams/text that you are showing the students. I'm very excited to have a smartboard this year at my new school. I've had one in the past and have mostly used it along with powerpoint. However, I would really like to see the science lessons available on the smartboard website. My only complaint with the using the smartboard is that the software uses a lot of ram, at least on the older laptops I have used with it in the past, and makes the computer run a little slow at times.

Another, much smaller gadget, is the ipad. This tablet computing device is newer on the scene, but is quickly becoming more and more popular as more educational apps are created. One great way to use these is for ebooks. Instead of worrying about real books, losing them, carrying them, returning them, etc., a student can carry an entire library of books in one device. Many of the reading programs are also great for students, including features that allow students to highlight a word and have it defined or pronounced or highlighted and saved for later reference. Unfortunately, ipads are still fairly expensive and also easy to steal, so managing this resource may prove difficult in some schools.

Lastly, I would like to comment on a video I watched regarding something called Universal Learning Design. Watching this video, I felt that every aspect was pretty intuitive, a lot of stuff I already try to do in my own classroom. Differentiation has been a big buzzword lately and is something every teacher should strive for. Much of the UDL best practices centered around differentiating presentation and student work to accommodate all types of learning styles. Instructional technologies make this so much easier for the professor or teacher. This video gives lots of great suggestions for designing your classroom or course to be a great learning experience for all of you students.

Exploring Technology - Session 8

There are so many interesting and useful technology tools that I want to use in my classroom.

One that I'm working on is a google site for my class. I had a class website in 2009 that I found really useful. It contained a page with announcements, one to download lesson ppts., a countdown the Regents, and a calendar of assignments, links, etc. However, this year I would like the website to be more interactive, so maybe I will try to incorporate a blog component. Last year I didn't need to make a website because my whole school used Edline which was an amazing resource. We basically all had our own webpage and once the student logged in they could easily access any of their classes. It even linked up to our online gradebooks and we could give quizzes and assignments online, score them online, and they would automatically load into our gradebook. While this resource was great, it was expensive and the school had to purchase the subscription for the teachers to use it. Google is free and just has as easy to organize so that looks like my best option right now!

Another on the list that I found interesting was Wikispaces. I'm starting to make my Wikispace right now but the formatting looks like it will take a little getting use to. However, it does look like it will be a nice platform for student discussion and collaboration. I will link to this from my website and perhaps make assignments for students to post. It's great that this resource is free. It seems a little daunting to get all of this set up now before the school year starts (because once it starts there's no extra time for anything) so I think it will be important to get the students involved in posting and creating pages. That way, they are involved, they can show off their tech skills, they can take ownership over the site, and it reduces the workload on me. One hurdle will be getting all the students to be members of the wikispace and set up using it. One technique that I learned was to have a couple "experts" that assist their group members in doing this, and that should make the initial start-up easier.

I would be lying if I didn't say that a lot of this seems like a LOT more work, but I definitely see the richness it adds to my teaching and know it will be worth it.

Using Social Media to Reinvent Yourself - Session 7

I have to admit, I'm not really sure what to write about for this entry. Reinventing myself isn't necessarily something I have tried to do, but as I think about it, social media does give you a tremendous opportunity to make connections with others on your own terms. Maybe, through this networking, you can create a new persona. For the most part, you do have a lot of control over what information is made available about yourself (if you know what you're doing). As a teacher, I could use facebook , for example, to connect with my students, and their parents, outside of the classroom. I don't know that this is necessarily "reinventing myself" but the Ms. Pallotta persona on my class's facebook page would indeed be different from the persona that my family and friends have access to on my personal page.

There are a lot of horror stories out there about teachers losing their jobs over stuff on facebook and myspace, cyberbullying on class websites, and even students impersonating teachers and administrators. Not to scare anyone away from exploring these tools, but instead to motivate educators to be aware of them, how to use them, but maybe we should all read this article on the National Education Association's website about the internet and students' first amendment rights. I don't understand why more schools don't have professional development regarding social media and it's proper use so that more teachers (and parents!) are aware of how to monitor a child's activity on these sites. It would be a shame if the negative consequences of students' access to social media discouraged teachers from trying to use them in their classroom.

The Networked Student - Session 7

In the video, the networked student, the student uses:

• Google scholar to search for peer-reviewed articles to gain reliable and credible information on his topic.
• Social bookmarking site to organize the links he was found useful so that he can share and access sites easily.
• Blogs and RSS reader to review and comment on the opinions of others on his topic, as well as share his own opinion and collect comments from his peers.
• Podcasts in iTunes U to listen to professors from many universities lecturing on topics that he is researching.
• Video conferencing to facilitate a conference wit
  h a documentary-maker he considers an expert on the topic he is researching.
• Video, Wikis, Voice thread to present his organized knowledge to the public.

This simple informative video presents an interesting way for students to learn. The tool I found most interesting was Google Scholar. I didn't realize this even existed and can't wait to investigate it further. I'm always frustrated with how my students would just copy anything from anyone's website, instead of gathering, organizing reliable information, and synthesizing their own ideas. It actually made me weary of using technology for research in the classroom. With this tool, research should be less frustrating and easier to manage.

Welcome to my Science Blog!

Time is so limited in class to talk about all of the exciting discoveries going on in the field of science, so let's use this blog to share interesting articles that pertain the topics we cover in class. The first one I would like to post is regarding one of the first topics we discuss in Biology: What does it mean to be a living thing? As scientists try to find life on other planets, they need to decide just what it means for something to be alive. Watch the video below from the New York Times.