V-Frog 2.0
Check it OUT! I'm the first one to admit that I LOVE real dissections, though the animal-lover inside of me does tend to recoil at my willingness to sacrifice lives to satisfy my curiosity. Enter V-Frog, a (fairly) new virtual dissection software that actually allows users to make their own cuts and explore the animal, all without sacrificing any critters.
Then, of course, a word form V-Frog's sponsors. They should seriously pay the guy from the other video for the good press he's giving them - he made a much more interesting advertisment for their product than they did.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
IEPowerPoint
I've been using PowerPoint for a while now. But mostly for very basic lectures - no moving parts, no animations, just text and informative pictures and diagrams. In the middle of the Fall semester, I'd begun to utilize Mac's comparable Keynote program as the medium for my Daily Schedule and Learning Log (a daily question they do at the beginning of class). I used a background format begun by my mentor teacher, so it looked pretty good (except for one ridiculous spelling error on the title slide).
I went to using PowerPoint for the Daily at the beginning of this Spring semester, incorporating a couple of lab and in-class assignment instructions as part of the powerpoint, sequenced so that I could click to the next slide when it was time for those instructions. However, I abandoned that daily about 80% of the way through the unit. I was frustrated by my lack of facility with PowerPoint on Mac. My formatting skills were decidedly lackluster. I never felt like I had enough space to write what I needed to. The Daily was just in the way, sitting on the screen at the beginning of each period for the sole purpose of preventing me from taking roll online or setting up later parts of the lesson like online clips, movies, diagrams, and podcasts.
So I decided to change that. My objectives?
Besides improving my formatting skills, I wanted to learn how to embed media and hyperlinks into my PowerPoints so that I wouldn't have to worry about closing down the daily to transition to the digital media portions of the day's lessons. More than that, I wanted to explore the usefulness of powerpoint as a unit organizationtool . All this have I done (yes!), BUT: I realize now that "creating slideshows which are entirely transferable to an online repository of such things, like slideshare.net," should have been part of my objectives, as I now have a level of expertise which is thoroughly undemonstrable in this forum.
So here it is, my beautiful DNA Daily, in slightly less than perfect form. The Objectives on Slide 2 are the overarching objectives for the whole five-week DNA unit, conceived in the tradition of Understanding by Design/Backwards Design. Those objective are referenced at the top of each of the following slides, telling me which objectives I was covering each day (the labels look hideous on slideshare, less so when the show is played in its original form in my classroom). The Essential Questions are also UbD/BD inspired. We discussed them at the beginning of the unit and then at the end to assess how the students' changing thoughts about DNA form and function. In my classroom, the hyperlinks on slides 7, 9, and 12 each link to the videos on the following slides, which start automatically as soon as they come up. The hyperlink on slide 19 web-linked me to a video to be found here, and was my highest hope for transferability to slideshare. Alas, I can not even click on the hyperlink on slideshare, much less get it to work.
Slideshare really should have been a part of my IEP.
On a more positive note, I can send you a much nicer version of the powerpoint as an e-mail attachment on request any time after Mother's Day, Sunday May 9, 2010 (when I can get back to my computer and accessthe original version). Just leave me your e-mail in the comment section, preferably written out as follows: erin dot a dot gilland at gmail dot com, in order to avoid sweeper-bots from stealing your e-mail address to put to their own nefarious uses.
In the end, this was an extremely valuable learning experience for me as a teacher. I was extremely satisfied with my finished product; it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It made my life easier instead of harder. Transitions to digital media were smooth, something I'd never experienced before, and now I have a compact unit recorded for posterity. It is extremely disappointing that I did not think ahead enough to spend more time on the "publishing" aspect of this assignment, but it in no way diminishes my profound relief that I now have a quick and easy method of keeping my digital media choices at my fingertips.
Early Spring 2010
Late Spring 2010
I've been using PowerPoint for a while now. But mostly for very basic lectures - no moving parts, no animations, just text and informative pictures and diagrams. In the middle of the Fall semester, I'd begun to utilize Mac's comparable Keynote program as the medium for my Daily Schedule and Learning Log (a daily question they do at the beginning of class). I used a background format begun by my mentor teacher, so it looked pretty good (except for one ridiculous spelling error on the title slide).
I went to using PowerPoint for the Daily at the beginning of this Spring semester, incorporating a couple of lab and in-class assignment instructions as part of the powerpoint, sequenced so that I could click to the next slide when it was time for those instructions. However, I abandoned that daily about 80% of the way through the unit. I was frustrated by my lack of facility with PowerPoint on Mac. My formatting skills were decidedly lackluster. I never felt like I had enough space to write what I needed to. The Daily was just in the way, sitting on the screen at the beginning of each period for the sole purpose of preventing me from taking roll online or setting up later parts of the lesson like online clips, movies, diagrams, and podcasts.
So I decided to change that. My objectives?
Besides improving my formatting skills, I wanted to learn how to embed media and hyperlinks into my PowerPoints so that I wouldn't have to worry about closing down the daily to transition to the digital media portions of the day's lessons. More than that, I wanted to explore the usefulness of powerpoint as a unit organization
So here it is, my beautiful DNA Daily, in slightly less than perfect form. The Objectives on Slide 2 are the overarching objectives for the whole five-week DNA unit, conceived in the tradition of Understanding by Design/Backwards Design. Those objective are referenced at the top of each of the following slides, telling me which objectives I was covering each day (the labels look hideous on slideshare, less so when the show is played in its original form in my classroom). The Essential Questions are also UbD/BD inspired. We discussed them at the beginning of the unit and then at the end to assess how the students' changing thoughts about DNA form and function. In my classroom, the hyperlinks on slides 7, 9, and 12 each link to the videos on the following slides, which start automatically as soon as they come up. The hyperlink on slide 19 web-linked me to a video to be found here, and was my highest hope for transferability to slideshare. Alas, I can not even click on the hyperlink on slideshare, much less get it to work.
Slideshare really should have been a part of my IEP.
On a more positive note, I can send you a much nicer version of the powerpoint as an e-mail attachment on request any time after Mother's Day, Sunday May 9, 2010 (when I can get back to my computer and access
In the end, this was an extremely valuable learning experience for me as a teacher. I was extremely satisfied with my finished product; it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It made my life easier instead of harder. Transitions to digital media were smooth, something I'd never experienced before, and now I have a compact unit recorded for posterity. It is extremely disappointing that I did not think ahead enough to spend more time on the "publishing" aspect of this assignment, but it in no way diminishes my profound relief that I now have a quick and easy method of keeping my digital media choices at my fingertips.
Early Spring 2010
Cell parts daily
View more presentations from Erin Gilland.
Late Spring 2010
DNA Daily
View more presentations from Erin Gilland.
A Delicious Teacher-Networking Site
This semester, I decided to explore the true facility of one of my host teacher's pet projects: a delicious list group entitled westscience designed to be frequented and contributed to by anyone who has ever enjoyed the hospitality of the West High Science Department.
As one of those privileged few, I was given the password, meaning that I can contribute to the site as well as view it. This I have done, though my use of the resources outweighed my contributions, I have to admit. I explored almost every bookmark on the list, and used many of them throughout the year. However, I am proud to have contributed Ionic vs Covalent Bonding on 25 Jan, Bonding in Metallic Solids and the Energy Resources Homepage on 05 Feb, and, at Amy's suggestion, NOVA science's RNAi video I'd been using on 19 Feb, all found here and here.
For me as a teacher, the westscience delicious list has and will continue to be important because it helps me organize resources. In science, more than in almost any other discipline, there are multitudes of online animations, self-practice sites, and physical/life/earth systems exploration tools. It is a serious task to keep all of these fantastic resources, which often illustrate processes and relationships better than other mediums ever could, in reach and organized. In addition, it can be a trial to keep organized all the various resources that have been referred to you by other science teachers - an e-mail sent here, a scribbled note there, a mention during a conversation at lunch. . . delicious lets you all put it in the same place, with a tagging system that allows you to customize searches to your needs at the current time. And now, why delicious is particularly important at West High.
The most obvious disadvantage of this social web is that contributing is limited to such a small pool of people, mere dozens in number. However, that is also a strength. The people who contribute to this group are all extremely judicious in their use oftechnology . Thus, there is very little at the site that is NOT genuinely useful and powerfully explanatory.
This semester, I decided to explore the true facility of one of my host teacher's pet projects: a delicious list group entitled westscience designed to be frequented and contributed to by anyone who has ever enjoyed the hospitality of the West High Science Department.
As one of those privileged few, I was given the password, meaning that I can contribute to the site as well as view it. This I have done, though my use of the resources outweighed my contributions, I have to admit. I explored almost every bookmark on the list, and used many of them throughout the year. However, I am proud to have contributed Ionic vs Covalent Bonding on 25 Jan, Bonding in Metallic Solids and the Energy Resources Homepage on 05 Feb, and, at Amy's suggestion, NOVA science's RNAi video I'd been using on 19 Feb, all found here and here.
For me as a teacher, the westscience delicious list has and will continue to be important because it helps me organize resources. In science, more than in almost any other discipline, there are multitudes of online animations, self-practice sites, and physical/life/earth systems exploration tools. It is a serious task to keep all of these fantastic resources, which often illustrate processes and relationships better than other mediums ever could, in reach and organized. In addition, it can be a trial to keep organized all the various resources that have been referred to you by other science teachers - an e-mail sent here, a scribbled note there, a mention during a conversation at lunch. . . delicious lets you all put it in the same place, with a tagging system that allows you to customize searches to your needs at the current time. And now, why delicious is particularly important at West High.
The most obvious disadvantage of this social web is that contributing is limited to such a small pool of people, mere dozens in number. However, that is also a strength. The people who contribute to this group are all extremely judicious in their use of
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