My Favorite Web 2.0 Tools -- Session 3 -- Part Two

So, Web 2.0 is a term for the movement of applications from the personal computer onto the web.  Many of the applications that people use today are available for free in a web based format.

I chose for my personal productivity tool to look at Delicious.com.  This is a Yahoo product that keeps your bookmarks online so that, instead of bookmarking websites on your personal browser you bookmark them on Delicious.  You can then log into your delicious account from any computer and have access to your bookmarks.  In addition, this tool is designed for you to share your bookmark lists with your friends.  It refers to itself as a social bookmark site.  I'm horrible at remembering URL's and this is the ideal solution for me.  I have already signed up for an account.  This can increase my productivity because I can do research from any computer and, without an email, mark the pages that I found for later use.  It can increase my students productivity if they all have accounts they can do research and share resources with each other simply by bookmarking pages.

I chose Tokbox as my screen recorder selection because I thought it looked pretty neat.  It has a free video conferencing feature where up to 20 people can join, talk, text chat, and share videos and photos all at the same time.  You can also use it to send a free video message of up to 10 minutes.  I can use this to collaborate remotely with colleagues or I could even video conference in a sick student from home to class.  Any reason that a group of people might have to work together on the phone, any sort of meeting, could be done using this tool. 

So, that's my take on Web 2.0 at this point.  On an tangential point, a good science fiction book that starts with a near future look at the impact of cloud computing is Accelerando by Charles Stross.  I can see the near future that he envisions being upon us in the next 10-20 years.  The end of the book gets well out into hard sci-fi, so if you're not a fan it's probably not for you.

Until later!

Google Forms -- Session 3 assignment

Google forms is a google product that allows users to create an embeddable multi-question form that can be used for a variety of purposes.  Data collected from this form is fed directly into a google "sheet" where the information can be manipulated just like any spreadsheet of data.  Google forms have data entry formats that include text, paragraph text, multiple choice, check boxes, choose from a list, scale, and grid.

This tool could be used in a variety of ways to enhance teaching.  Examples include using it as a survey to find out more about your students or homework could even be done this way.  Actually, with paragraph text entries, the information for this assignment could have been collected there.

My learning curve for this tool was initially straight up.  It was not very intuitive when you select "Form" from the drop down tab in google documents and you get what appears to be a google sheet.  Once we found the "Edit Form" command in the menu it was incredibly easy to figure out.  The only other thing that wasn't immediately apparent had more to go do with how the blog editor works than google forms.  To embed the form into a blogger.com blog, you have to select the "Edit HTML" tab at the top-right of the editor and then paste in the information that google forms gives you under "Form - embed form in a webpage".  If you just want to put in a link to the live form you can do that, instead, which is a little more straight forward and would be very simple to do on any webpage.

As a group, honestly, we didn't do very much together.  We individually looked at the tool and made a couple questions.  Mine were the monty python references.  I also figured out how to do the linking and embedding.

So, here is the URL for the form with all the data.  Here is the link to the "live form".  Below is what the form looks like embedded into a blog.

Thanks for reading!

Google Forms Assignment

Here's the form!

Science and... blogging?

Initially, upon reading the assignment for this blog post I thought that it was going to be much more difficult to find ways to use blogging in the science classroom than it seems to be.  Having found the Extreme Biology Blog I'm beginning to think that this could be a very useful tool.  Blogging about lab experiments that students have done can help them cement their understanding of the material.  They can also practice their writing skills by taking their very technical and structured lab report and turning it into a discussion piece such as you would read in Popular Science which would again, illustrate and cement their understanding of the material, but also allow them to share their findings and knowledge with other students.

Taken in a different direction, blogging could be used as an experimental sounding board.  Students could blog about things that they see and experience in their daily lives.  From there students could offer up hypotheses, test them, and report back.  For example, the observation that a rock and a feather fall at different speeds could offer up a theory (that is incorrect) that weight affects how fast something falls.  The students could then experiment with different size and weight objects to try to prove or disprove that theory.  With refinement and proper guidance, students would achieve a good understanding of the concepts of gravity and wind resistance, all done outside of the classroom.

So, to apply my own proposition, my initial hypothesis that it would be difficult to use blogging in the science classroom has been proven incorrect and I've arrived at the theory that the use of blogging in the science classroom can be a powerful tool for educating students.

Until next time...

Me, an introduction...

It occurs to me that the best way to start a blog is tell a little about myself.  I'm currently enrolled in the MAT program with Willamette University looking to earn a Masters of Arts in Teaching with authorization levels of high school and middle school and endorsements for chemistry, physics, and integrated science.  I've entered this program after working for almost twelve years as a synthetic organic chemist with two different companies in the state of Oregon.  I have a MS in Organic chemistry from Oregon State University and a BS in Chemistry from the University of Oregon.  I am making the career change to teaching for a variety of reasons but one of the biggest is that I tend to take ignorance personally.  I've seen or heard too many statements from media and friends that show that they don't understand how science affects their daily lives, whether it's "chemicals" in their water or not understanding basic concepts such as momentum and speed.  I really want to educate future generations so that they have a better understanding of the world around them and participate in the democratic process of life in our country in a knowledgeable way.

I am the father of two wonderful children, ages 3 and 6.  Due to my inherent paranoia, I don't like to post their names or photos on the internet.  There are too many crazy people out there for my taste.  I have a fantastic wife, Melissa, to whom I have been married for 9 years.

I am an avid snowboarder (and skier when the snow conditions are "hard"), though I have not had as many opportunities in the last few years as I would like to go.  As my children get older and can participate we will, as a family, certainly go as much as time and money allow.  I also enjoy camping and backpacking, the occasional fly fishing trip, and I brew my own beer at home.  Homebrewing is a new adventure for me, but it's been a lot of fun to learn.

This is my official first ever blog post.  I'm looking forward to doing more in the future.

Until then.