I think the students could have a blast with this one. Short videos could also be really nice as class openers, a good "hook" to get the students involved in the discussion of the day.
I tried it out by creating a short video in which an elephant and a giraffe debate the relative ecological importance of predators and parasites.
Parasites vs. Predators by jausema on GoAnimate
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Thing 9: Taming the Web
Screencast-o-matic presents interesting features that it had never occurred to me to use. I do often explain the features of a particular website to students, since there are many excellent websites for teaching science concepts, especially topics like genetics, cellular energetics, biodiversity, and plate tectonics. Typically I will take a few minutes in class to highlight the features of a site, but if a student is not paying attention or is absent I either need to re-explain it later or ask another student to give them the low-down. I could use this feature to record a short website tour, then post it for students to view if they need a refresher, if they are absent, or if we run out of time in class.
The "pro" features could be useful, but would not really be necessary for someone who had Camtasia or similar software. I used Harry's copy to try out Camtasia, and I think it would be worthwhile for the school to buy a site license.
I tried out doing a video tour of a PBS website on plate tectonics called "Savage Earth" It seems to work just fine, except that there is no audio because I did not have a microphone available. I have one, but it's at school and I am trying this out at home. I think I will try this again later for explaining some other assignments - I often use web interfaces for homework and for lab explorations in class. The "publish to YouTube" option looks interesting and could be useful. I suppose if you publish to a file you would be able to edit/save/re-post in whatever manner you want - also potentially useful. But a microphone is a must in order to take advantage of this!
The "pro" features could be useful, but would not really be necessary for someone who had Camtasia or similar software. I used Harry's copy to try out Camtasia, and I think it would be worthwhile for the school to buy a site license.
I tried out doing a video tour of a PBS website on plate tectonics called "Savage Earth" It seems to work just fine, except that there is no audio because I did not have a microphone available. I have one, but it's at school and I am trying this out at home. I think I will try this again later for explaining some other assignments - I often use web interfaces for homework and for lab explorations in class. The "publish to YouTube" option looks interesting and could be useful. I suppose if you publish to a file you would be able to edit/save/re-post in whatever manner you want - also potentially useful. But a microphone is a must in order to take advantage of this!
Thing 10: Instapaper
The features and uses of several of these "things" are beginning to blur together, at least as I am thinking about them. Instapaper sounds like an interesting concept. I have often struggled what to do with sommething on the web that I want to read later. Usually I save a link in my browser or send an email link to my personal email account, expecting to have more time at home. This works reasonably well. The advantage of Instapaper is that it would be accessible from any browser, and I would not have extra email messages cluttering up my inbox. However, the way I envision using this service is very similar to how I would see using Diigo - that, too, is a service for saving and organizing websites to be used/view later. I suppose Diigo has the added "social" element of allowing one to share lists, but as I pointed out in my post on the topic, I can't see any advantage to using that feature, at least in a classroom setting.
Anyway, I created an Instapaper account and I will see how it works for a while. I have not yet tried accessing it from my Ipad but I will come back to this post and update after I have done so. I did encounter one problem - I was unable to drag the "read later" button to the bookmarks bar in Chrome, which is my preferred browser these days. It worked fine in Firefox. After doing some searching I found another approach. Chrome has an extension available called "defer". This extension installs a button that can be linked to Instapaper as well as several similar services. Here is where I read about how to use "defer" It does work now with my Chrome browser. I am interested to see how well it works at school, where I will be on a different computer but can sign in to my Google account within Chrome.
Below is a screen shot of the instructions. Other services it works with are called "Pocket, Readability, Kippt, Pinboard and Buffer" (I have not heard of any of these before ).
Anyway, I created an Instapaper account and I will see how it works for a while. I have not yet tried accessing it from my Ipad but I will come back to this post and update after I have done so. I did encounter one problem - I was unable to drag the "read later" button to the bookmarks bar in Chrome, which is my preferred browser these days. It worked fine in Firefox. After doing some searching I found another approach. Chrome has an extension available called "defer". This extension installs a button that can be linked to Instapaper as well as several similar services. Here is where I read about how to use "defer" It does work now with my Chrome browser. I am interested to see how well it works at school, where I will be on a different computer but can sign in to my Google account within Chrome.
Below is a screen shot of the instructions. Other services it works with are called "Pocket, Readability, Kippt, Pinboard and Buffer" (I have not heard of any of these before ).
Here are a couple of items on my Instapaper account. Still not school-related - I have travel on the brain.
UPDATE: I was able to get to my instapaper page/list from the iPAD, but I could not save additional pages to read later. There is an App available, but at $3.99 I need to decide whether it's worth paying for. The link did show up on my Chrome browser at school.
Thing 8: Hearing is believing
I have been thinking about experimenting with some "flipped classroom' approaches for a couple of years now, but with limited time to work on alternative approaches, I have not made much progress yet. However, this fall I have an extra reason to give it a try - I will be missing three days of class in September in order to travel to Acadia National Park for an educator's conference. I made a similar trip 2 years ago, to Glacier National Park. Not wanting my students to get behind, I assigned them a project that in other years I have used as a semester-ending "capstone", and asked them to read/study the appropriate chapter from the text on their own time. This year, I wanted to try something different, so last spring I recorded several segments of my lectures on biodiversity with Camtasia. The recordings do not contain much in the way of editing - they consist mostly of me narrating the slides and graphics, explaining the concepts as if I were teaching the material "live". I have uploaded these presentations to Screencast, and plan to assign the students to watch them while I am gone. I have divided the material from the chapter into several smaller segments, so that each lecture is 15-20 minutes long.
Depending on how well the recorded lecture works, I might try it again later in the school year. There are many labs and activities that I would like to try in my classes but have a hard time fitting them in do to time constraints. Using a flipped approach might make it possible.
Below is a screenshot from the lecture I linked to.
Depending on how well the recorded lecture works, I might try it again later in the school year. There are many labs and activities that I would like to try in my classes but have a hard time fitting them in do to time constraints. Using a flipped approach might make it possible.
Below is a screenshot from the lecture I linked to.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Thing 3: notes
I have never used a service like Diigo before, so this is uncharted territory. I do like the idea of being able to tag/save/store files for later review. I often come across interesting websites and it can be a challenge to figure out how to index and organize them. My usual approach has been to save sites in an intricate nested hierarchy of bookmarks. One challenge with that approach is that I had a completely different set of bookmarks one my home computer than at school - until I started using Chrome, which allows users to synch bookmarks across any computer they are using.
I saved a few sites to Diigo. These are totally unrelated to teaching - they are travel sites, with an eye towards some future vacations!
I am not sure how much I would use Diigo. I don't see it as a useful teaching took, except for organizing research on a particular topic. I would not, for example, share my list of interesting sites with my students. Much easier to do that by putting links to useful sites in an html file and uploading it to my school website.
I saved a few sites to Diigo. These are totally unrelated to teaching - they are travel sites, with an eye towards some future vacations!
I am not sure how much I would use Diigo. I don't see it as a useful teaching took, except for organizing research on a particular topic. I would not, for example, share my list of interesting sites with my students. Much easier to do that by putting links to useful sites in an html file and uploading it to my school website.
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