Science Major

As you all may have already gathered, I am studying to be a high school biology teacher. I changed my major several times throughout my first two years of college, and now I am currently trying to play catch up to finish college as soon as possible. Because of this I get to take three science classes a semester. It keeps me crazy busy. Right now I am currently procrastinating studying for my second chem test of the semester. chem is not my thing on any level. There is a reason that I am studying to get an endorsement in biology and not chem. One thing I do while I'm procrastinating from all the homework I have to do is look at lame science jokes. So I am just going to leave a few here for ya'll.
Enjoy:)

The Teaching Channel

My tech of the week this upcoming week is the Teaching Channel. It is this really cool website where teachers post videos of what they are doing in their classroom. It's really neat to look into other classrooms from all around the nation and see what they are doing. It's rad how a whole network of teachers is working and collaborating ideas through technology. Here are two real neat videos I found and enjoyed.
Making Science Relevant with Current Events
Students Create their own Biology Lab

Mobile Blogging

In class this Thursday, we did an activity called mobile blogging. We were to update and blog about our trip to the one button studio in the library on campus. We were to do this in a google document. I found the assignment to be very challenging. One of the reasons is that I spent almost the entire time trying to get access to google docs. I got locked out of my google account and couldn't contribute to the document until I found a way to log in. Once I did that I was able to contribute a picture to the document. We arrived at the library to learn how to use the one button studio. In the studio we spent a lot of time waiting for Brad to get the system to work. Once he got it working it was a really neat idea. I liked how simple it was as well as how convenient it was to make a video. I am not sure that it is something I will be using this semester to make my video journals, but it is nice to know it's there if I need to.  When we had finished the entire mobile blogging activity our group had added pictures and just short sentences about the experience to our google doc. Check it out:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-5tOce4QpIaB69bV4NaQAfuMNOLPOmcGHhGshGtA9d4/edit

ToW Popplet

This weeks tech of the week is Popplet. Popplet was kind of interesting to use. It was also very simple to figure out how to work. Pretty soon I had created my first popplet. What is popplet? It's this cool website where you can organize information into rad little graphic organizers. You can add pictures or whatever you want into each bubble. I messed around and made a short popplet giving information about myself. I could see how this could be a great site to use in the classroom. It would be a fun assignment to have kids create their own popplets over information I've taught in class! Here's my popplet! Check it out:)

1/30/15

These first few classes have gotten me thinking a lot more about the use of technology in the classroom. Until now, I have been of the mind set that technology isn't all that necessary in the classroom. This class has been showing me that there are beneficial ways of incorporating it into lesson plans. Although today I had an interesting thought. I was thinking back to when I was in high school and how my teachers incorporated technology in the classroom. As a student I always dreaded assignments that required me to use a new technology. One of the main reasons was because I struggled with making it work, and I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of my peers. My anxiety about the technology distracted me from what I was supposed to be learning. Looking back I know that I probably wasn't the only student that felt this way. As educators I think we should also be in tune with our students capabilities. I plan on using technology in my classroom, but I don't want it to ever be a stumbling block in the way of my students learning. I hope that when I am a teacher I will be able to discern how much technology is too much. In this class I continue to learn new technologies though that make me super excited to use in the classroom. Last week our tech of the week was Flipboard. When I was in high school I had a science teacher that required us to find an article that involved real life usage of the information we were learning in each chapter. We would then have to write a summary. It was a great way for us to earn points as well as apply information we had learned. Flipboard is the coolest app, that allows you to pick an interest and it will pull articles globally that relate to a topic. I love the idea of having an assignment similar to the ones my science teacher assigned, and then allowing my students to use their phones as a tool  to find articles
 I also look forward to being able to share youtube videos like this one with my students to help them learn a topic.

Tech of the Week

This week our technology of the week is Flipboard. When I first downloaded this app I assumed I would delete it after this class and never use it again. However, this app is actually really cool. I can select my interests and it brings up news articles on those subjects. I don't watch the news very often, so I don't keep up with what is happening in the world as much as I would like. I think this app could be super helpful and an easy way to get news!

Week Two
I finished my Vine experience over the last week. It wasn't really difficult to complete a vine, but it was surprisingly time consuming to make a six second video. We also were asked to tweet over the past week. I have had Twitter for quite a few years now so that was nothing new for me. In class we were assigned groups that share the same subject area majors that we do. We started making an info-graphic on state, national, and technology standards in education.  I think looking at the standards and picking them apart is very interesting and is something I've never looked at before. Putting it into an info-graphic seems to be a little intimidating and challenging to me because I am not tech savvy on any level. In class we also watched a cool video that challenged us to think about how education is being taught. One of my classmates shared that "Technology isn't always learning." A former teacher of his had tweeted him that earlier in the week. I found that to be an awesome thought. Lots of time in high school I can remember the focus being on using our new laptops or this new technology or whatever it may be. Often times though those technologies we as students found ways to be off task with them. I think as a future teacher this is something I'll have to remember when I start trying to incorporate technology into my classroom.
 Roz brought up an interesting idea in class. She mentioned the idea of technology natives and stated how my generation is part of the technology natives, but technology has changed enough that now we are immigrants just like the generations before. This cycle she suggests will always continue. Which brings me to this meme that is most likely the future of my classroom.
 My closing thought is over the past week I have become more aware of technology in general. I also have started thinking about using it in my own classroom. One thing to know about me is I am always on Pinterest, and as I've been surfing Pinterwst I keep finding more and more amazing science apps for teachers. It's gotten me very excited about this class. At some point I will have to select a tech of the week to learn and I will probably use one of the apps I have found on Pinterest so more to come......