As the School Year Comes to a Close

Well, my plan for reflecting on my school year didn't go the way intended. Nonetheless, I have learned many lessons of this process of reflection. Even though I could blog about it as much as I wanted to, I found myself constantly reflecting about how and where to improve, student engagement, and technology integration. One major realization is that I cannot be afraid to fail. If you can't accept that you will fail, how will you know when to improve? I have taken in so much from my PLNs this year and I think the connections I made over the school year really helped me in the classroom. I can only see improvement in my future.

Where am I on This Journey?

Wow! It has been such a long time since I last wrote a posting of my adventures in teaching this school year.  Let me say that my science class has kept me on my toes and quite busy.  Of course during my unintended absence to blogging for my audience, I did spend time with several technologies.  I will share my experiences with you!

Weebly for Education - My advance students write reflection journals about the learning experience in my class.  This website made it easy enough for my students to create their own websites, which are very creative if I may say so myself.

Edmodo - I love the recent updates on Edmodo since its creation.  My students easily download assignments, simulations, and just about anything resource I provide for them.  If they don't finish in class, they just post what they have, but then can go home, finish, and post their work again for my review.  I can easily post grades and share feedback about their work in their individual files.  While I am not completely bought on the badge reward system as yet, my students seem to like it.  After about a year, I will see if the badge system really works for eighth graders.

Flip & Video Editing Software - These have probably been some of the best learning resources since the start of the second semester.  Of course, my first recommendation is to make sure your school is equipped with media than can handle video files.  My students have been demonstrating their learning by making videos.  So far we've made infomercials, educational videos, and demonstration videos.  One of my students even videotaped his visit to the caves and narrated scientific concepts.  I felt like I was watching a documentary from National Geographic!

Explain Everything - This is my new favorite app on iPad.  I finally decided to get an iPad over the holidays and just researched the best apps out their for instruction and learning.  While there is a minimal cost, I believe this app is worth it!  I have made PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, and more.  I simply record my voice provided the necessary information then I upload to YouTube. Within the first two weeks I was totally impressed with the amount of views each lesson received.

YouTube - Okay, so after about a year of thinking about it, I finally decided to create a YouTube channel for my class.  If nothing else, this is a great resource for students who are absent.  Initially, I thought that this would be an ever time-consuming task; however, it has not been.  The programs I use to make video presentations upload my work straight to YouTube and my job is done.

GoAnimateforSchools - One word: FUN! I enjoy making the cartoons for my students as much as they enjoy watching them.  I make the information very basic so that all my students regardless of readiness level can understand the material.  I wait to share challenging material in class.  For those who like to flip the classroom, this might be a nice way to present information to share with students.

Well, I am going to sharpen my skills on many of these new resources and will reflect on their overall effectiveness once the school year ends.

How do you use these tools (or others) to support science instruction and learning in your classroom?

Continuing my journey...

Class Parrot

Over the summer, I subscribed to a service that would allow me to keep parents up to date via text messaging. To my dismay, I learned that many of my parents were not receiving the benefits of the text messages based on the type of mobile carrier.  While I am glad that the service provided many benefits, I knew that I didn't want parents to miss out on obtaining information relative to my physical science class.

Now, there is a reason why I love Twitter! After creating my own PLN (personal learning network), I have come across many great resources to support educational technology in my own classroom.  On two different occasions, I received tweets to check out Class Parrot.  I added the tweet to my favorites in case it would come in handy.  Well guess what? It recently did.

Class Parrot is a web service (currently in beta) that provides teachers with 500 credits at start-up (and 200 more every 30 days) to send messages to parents and students.  In addition to sending messages, you can create polls, check your history, review your members list, and adjust your preferences.  Class Parrot also allows teachers to set up more than one class in the event that different information must be conveyed to different groups/subjects.  I love options!  Another great feature of Class Parrot is the ability to provide two-way communication between teachers and students or parents.

How am I using Class Parrot in my science class?
1. Remind parents/students of upcoming due dates, team/school events, and more.
2. Send out trivia questions for drawings.

I am quite excited about the potential of this new resource in my classroom.  How will you use Class Parrot?


Continuing my journey...

Oh Don't Forget!

Towards the end of the last school year, I happened to come across a really neat website that I thought would be quite useful for my students.  If you haven't heard of Oh Don't Forget before, then let me introduce you to a wonderful tool.  Like the website states, it allows you to create scheduled text messages that are FREE to remind you of things you can't afford to forget.  I can recall the number of times I would cringe to the phrase, "I forgot that it was due today." After testing the simple-to-use website a few times, I realized the educational technological benefit this resource could play in my classroom.  Now, I am sharing it will fellow teachers to share with their students. 

Here's what you do:
1. Type in your phone number. (Don't worry it won't store your infomration.)
2. Type in the date and time that you'd like the reminder. (Caution: The reminder text has to be set for more than an hour into the future!)
3. Type the reminder message. This is what you will see when your phone alerts you.
4. Click create and you're done!


This would be a great tool to share with students and parents!

Music in the Classroom...Thanks RCA!

Somehow the sound of music has been absent in my classroom since I left the high school arena.  As I think back, I am not really sure why that was one component I didn't keep in my middle school classroom.  However, I found a renewed interest after visiting the Ron Clark Academy two weeks ago.  I saw the power of music in more than one content area and the impact it played on student learning and school culture.  I became excited that I decided to get straight to work that same night on finding ways to incorporate music once again.

Prior to teaching in middle school, I used songs like "Mission Impossible" and the Jeopardy Theme song to increase a sense of urgency in completing missions or time to answer game questions.  Was it because I transitioned from teaching high school social studies to middle school science why I couldn't figure out how to make it work? I am not really sure, but not being sure isn't a good enough reason to continue to ignore the benefits of music in the classroom.

In about another week, my eighth graders will embark on the Energy Unit. So I pulled the main concept, conducted an internet search, and found some really great music resources.  However, while the lyrics would do the job, I knew my students wouldn't get into the elementary tunes.  So what did I do? I did like the folks at RCA and found a song that was on the radio (which is hard if you don't listen to the same music as your students) that students liked (thanks to my daughter).  I realized the song was a bit longer than the lyrics I found online so I had to get creative and come up with a new verse and a bridge.

Now it was time to build interest among the students on the team.  I got the buzz going around that we were going to do something cool and that Ms. Prince was going to share a rap with the team on Energy.  I had students who jumped at the opportunity to help me put it together and even wanted to put a few moves to it.  While I don't have the flexibility to take my students and do some of the great things I witnessed at the RCA, I am hoping that our music debut will open up some doors for us and show the potential of music to our administration and school community.

I hope to revisit this topic in a few weeks to share the impact music played in my classroom learning environment.

Until then, keep a song in your heart (and your classroom)!

Keeping on my journey...

Video Assessment Probes

Over the weekend, I came across the YouTube Channel for MAXclassroom, and saw a wonderful way to integrate technology for students in a math class. Immediately I thought that this was something that I could replicate in my science classroom. I am always looking for ways to assess how much my students are learning, and when you are able to combine technology and assessment great things happen! After trial and error, I finally have the final product (see below).

Now how was I able to do this? 1. I chose a video from SchoolTube, but Vimeo, TeacherTube, YouTube, or wherever you can get an embed code will work. 2. I created the assessment through the Forms feature of Google Docs. 3. After saving the form, I opened the spreadsheet, click the form and embed form in webpage options. 4. To have the video and text side by side, use the following code
<table><tr><td>PASTE TEXT HERE</td><td>PASTE VIDEO CODE HERE</td></tr></table>


BUT to have the video and text in a vertical position, just place the codes in the posting window in the order that you want each to appear. Please keep in mind that minor adjustments may need to be made to the width and height depending of your class website or blog. I would love to hear how YOU could use a tool like this in your classroom! Continuing my journey...

A Quality Work Wall

I have been back in the classroom for the last six weeks and it is great to know that I am still fired up about my students' daily experiences. This year I have tried a few new twists to each lesson. If you walked into my room, you would find all the characteristics of a standards-based classroom. However, just making sure that my class has all these characteristics isn't enough. It is one thing for me to understand what a standards-based classroom is, but what about my students. Shouldn't we expect our kids to know what it is too? Too often we throw out new buzz words and never really consider keeping our kids in the loop. I mean, do your students really know what the NCLB Act means for them? After spending the last couple of days grading assignments from Choice Boards and Learning Contracts, one thing was definitely consistent. I made a mistake! I assumed that my clearly written directions would provide students with what they needed to know in terms of presenting a final piece that was filled with effort and high quality. I was wrong. My expectations were not clear for them. Of course, I can sit here and say that they should know what quality work is because they had to turn in writing assignments, artwork, and other products in other classes before. However, something that might have been acceptable for 7th grade may not be considered acceptable in 8th grade in terms of quality. My students could have just thought that since work was turned in one way in another class, it would be acceptable in mine. While this could lead into a new blog on teachers' perspectives on quality work, I will leave that for another day. In my reflection over my students' work this week, I have decided that I want to go beyond just showing one student exemplar for a specific task. Instead, I would like to create a QUALITY WORK WALL that show student samples of various types of activities that are done throughout the year in my science class. Students really need to see what it takes to submit different kinds of assignments, but assignments with the same level of effort and quality. Now, just posting work on the board will not do, nor will posting work with direct feedback be as effective. I want to take things a bit further. I envision a Quality Work Wall that is comprised of quality work that meets/exceed standards, has specific feedback, AND incorporates annotations filled with specific characteristics that must be obvious in student work. I think this will help set the tone for what I expect to see in student work. How will this go over? My hopes is to implement this as soon as we return to school next week and document the changes that I notice in quality and effort down the road. What about you? Are your students clear on your expectations for your class assignments? Do they understand what quality and effort mean for you and what it should mean to them? I encourage you to reassess your student exemplar wall or create one if your room is lacking in one today. ...the journey of a science teacher