CEP 812: Wicked Learning Project

My educational need that I was looking to meet was a way to allow for students to better understand the content that they are reading in the blended science program, particular students that are struggling readers and ESL students.

For my wicked problem of needing a good program that can read and translate text for students I actually chose 2 programs, White Smoke and Natural Reader.  I chose these two programs because together they achieve my goal and offer both free and paid versions of the software.

I chose these programs enhance any student’s learning because they offer many different options for facilitating learning of content.  These programs work with multiple types of students with multiple needs.  For students with ESL needs White Smoke provides translations for all types of text including more complicated texts that can occur in high school courses.  It also gives all students another way to proofread their work.  Natural Reader in its free edition of the program offers a basic reader that works well with many text based programs such as Microsoft Word and Adobe.

Both of these programs help supplement teaching strategies that may already be in place in a lesson.   They can enhance teaching strategies that involve reading text out loud to students.  It will allow students to have materials read to them multiple times without a teacher or para-pro that would normally read text to them.  It will also help students better analyze texts for content and for research purposes.

Overall, both of these programs enhance any student’s learning of content because they offer many different options for facilitating learning of content.  While using these programs the learner will be able to experience material on more levels because of the options that both programs provide.  It can enhance their experience by offering pronunciations of words that may be difficult and translation for ESL students they still are struggling with English.

At Union High School (where I currently teach) we get a lot of refugee students from Africa that speak French and a lot of Hispanic students that know very little English, these are the students I had in mind when trying to solve this problem.  Feel that they will benefit the most intellectually because they will be able to understand the content even if their English isn’t the greatest.  The other students I had in mind while trying to solve this problem are my struggling readers.  Science curriculums are full of new vocabulary terms and words that may look and sound “weird” to an inexperienced student.  Natural Reader can help both my ESL and struggling readers (and most of the time they are one in the same) with pronunciations.

Here is a link the screencast of the Prezi about my project.
Here is the Prezi itself.

CEP 811: Final Reflections

1.    What are some things that you have learned about effective teaching strategies when integrating technology?

This course has taught me a lot about the different ways that I can create lessons and resources online.  I learned a lot about ways that I can provide feedback to my students when creating an online lesson and how I can offer several different options for my students to learn content.  I really enjoyed the STAIR project because it helped me look at online lesson planning in more detail and re-evaluate many of my current lessons.

2.    How did integrating web-based technologies help you think about and evaluate uses of technology?

Integrating web-based technologies helped me think about how much i really knew about integrating technology into my lessons.  I have learned a lot about creating lessons online that I did not know before.  I spent last summer helping develop the biology Moodle curriculum for my district and came out thinking I knew it all about online lesson development.  This class has opened my eyes to what real online lesson planning is.  It helped me take a step back and look at my current lesson to see how I could improve them in the future.    

3.    How have you met your own personal goals for learning about technology integration?

I feel that I have met many of my goals for learning about technology integration through increasing my knowledge in online lesson creation, especially with the STAIR project.  The STAIR project broadened my knowledge of creating lessons in Moodle, it also raised my confidence in using the program.  Learning about MERLOT has been a great addition to my arsenal for lesson planning for my blended courses and enhancing my lessons.  I think through the introduction to MERLOT I will be able to learn more about what is being done with technology in the classroom.

4.    Do you have any new goals? What are your plans for reaching your new goals and your long-term goals after this course is over?

     My new goal is to put together more resources that I can use to add to my blended curriculum.  I want to create a wiki page for my classes next year along with a few Webquests.  I would also like to look into more ways to accommodate my special education students and ESL students.  Some plans that I have to achieve these goals is to continue my learning of education technology by working towards my masters.  I also plan on doing more of my own exploring of technologies through going to conferences (MACUL) and using MERLOT.

CEP 812: Personal Learning Plan

Through reflection upon my Personal Technology plan I have found I have made progress towards my goals but I am still learning and growing.  I have found that my confidence and abilities have grown in using technology in teh classroom but I want more than that.  I would like to gain more skills in teaching my colleagues how to use technology in their daily lessons and to help them build there confidence as well.

Here is the link to my PLP that I created using Prezi (a Web 2.0 tool that I have fallen in love with!)

CEP 812: Group Leader Project

Here is my Group Leadership project.  I had a wonderful group with varying technology skills that worked very well together to achieve our goal.

To deliver the PD tutorial we used Jing to create our screen capture and windows media to compile the screen casts.  We chose this because it seemed like the best way to demonstrate all of the aspects of Moodle we wanted to highlight.  During the development of this project I learn many new skills, like how to create more in depth lessons in Moodle and how to use Adobe conferences.  Also, I worked on my screen casting skills and working to better my recording quality.

If I were to develop another similar product again I would  create my script differently, though using Google docs helped a lot with planning and collaboration, I feel this would be a project I would complete on my own in the future.   I would also take more time to explore more options of how I could present my tutorial or ways supplement or enhance it. 

CEP 812 Wicked Problem Project: Part D - Findings and Implications

I feel that the project was implemented as planned, though I would like to see it implemented on a larger scale.  Students seemed to respond well to the project and the programs that I found for them to use.  The evidence of the success was the increase in grades on the handout they were given and the student reaction to the programs. 

If I were given another project of this type some things that I might do differently are:

·         Make more attempts to get more people in district on board with trying new ideas

·         Take more time on with student feedback and staff feed back to improve my solution.

·         Try to have multiple teachers at my school trying the solution instead just in my classroom.

The lessons that were learned while working to complete this project are:

·         To allow plenty of time for learning new programs and to be flexible.  It is important plan for all levels of learners.

·         To not underestimate students ability to teach each other and themselves.

·         Listen to student comments and feedback to make your solution better.

I will look into implementing this project on a larger scale and have more teachers involved to see if they feel the programs are effective to enhance learning and teaching strategies.  I would also like to give more time for implementation so students can have more time with the programs so they can be more comfortable with commenting on the effectiveness of the programs.

CEP 812 Wicked Problem Project: Part C - Implementation

This post is about the implementation of the solution for my Wicked Problem.  I have recorded a podcast about the surprises, unexpected bumps in the road, and the things that went well.  This podcast allowed me to go back and reflect on the solution to see if there is anything that I would change and encouraged me to explore more programs that could solve my Wicked Problem of needing a good reader program and translation program for my students.

Click here for my podcast.

CEP 812 Wicked Problem Project: Part B

For my wicked problem of needing a good program that can read and translate text for students I actually chose 2 programs, White Smoke and Natural Reader.  I chose these two programs because together they achieve my goal and offer both free and paid versions of the software.

White smoke is the translation program.  It comes in a free version (though there is a version for purchase) where students can:

·         Copy and paste text into a text box and it has the options to translate the text into English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish

·         Use the writer program for checking their own written work (which can be used just not for the ESL kids, but all other students for proof reading purposes).  This function also integrates itself into Microsoft Word while the student is working (though it is a bit redundant of what  Microsoft word already offers).

·         It also has a dictionary function that searches key words in a dictionary, thesaurus, and on Wikipedia.
Click here for an screen capture of White Smoke that includes explainations of each aspect of the program.

Natural Reader is the text reader program.  It comes in a free version (though there is a version for purchase) where students can:

·         Copy and paste text into the reader to have it read to them in English

·         Use the Floating Bar .  This can be brought to the front of a document and the student can highlight what they want read to them.

·         An mp3 can be made of the document be read

Here is a link to the Natural Readers website that has several different videos that demo the possible uses of the program.

Overall, both of these programs enhance any student’s learning because they offer many different options for facilitating learning of content.  These programs work with multiple types of students with multiple needs.  For students with ESL needs White Smoke provides translations for all types of text including more complicated texts that can occur in high school courses.  It also gives all students another way to proofread their work.  Natural Reader in its free edition of the program offers a basic reader that works well with many text based programs such as Microsoft Word and Adobe.

While using these programs the learner will be able to experience material on more levels because of the options that both programs provide.  It can enhance their experience by offering pronunciations of words that may be difficult and translation for ESL students they still are struggling with English.  

***Both of these programs help supplement teaching strategies that may already be in place in a lesson.   They can enhance teaching strategies that involve reading text out loud to students.  It will allow students to have materials read to them multiple times without a teacher or para-pro that would normally read text to them.  It will also help students better analyze texts for content and for research purposes.

In science we focus on a teaching strategy that we call CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning).  Students are asked fairly regularly to analyze text for claims (opinions and statements) that are well thought out and have evidence that directly connects to the claim (the reasoning).  Having a program that translates or reads the text can allow for better understanding and lets students to be able to process ideas more completely.  This is a skill that students will be able to apply outside of school.

It can also help teachers with giving students clear expectations (DL. IFL).  No matter how “clear” a teacher may think their expectations are, if the students do not understand because of language barriers or a lack of reading skills there is no way to reach the students.  Natural reader gives both teachers and students a way to translate the expectations to meet ESL needs.  Natural Reader allows for both ESL and struggling readers to hear the expectations multiple times without the teacher having to repeat them.

Natural Reader can help ESL students with their English skills because the more they hear the word with the written word the better they understand the language.  It can also help those students with pronunciation skills.  White Smoke can help ESL students because it can give them a context for learning English and it can serve as a way to compare English to their native language (which can help with learning a new language).

At Union High School (where I currently teach) we get a lot of refugee students from Africa that speak French and a lot of Hispanic students that know very little English, these are the students I had in mind when trying to solve this problem.  Feel that they will benefit the most intellectually because they will be able to understand the content even if their English isn’t the greatest.  The other students I had in mind while trying to solve this problem are my struggling readers.  Science curriculums are full of new vocabulary terms and words that may look and sound “weird” to an inexperienced student.  Natural Reader can help both my ESL and struggling readers (and most of the time they are one in the same) with pronunciations. 

CEP 811 Share: Online Teaching Experiences

Currently my students are using Moodle as a Learning management system for a blended curriculum.  This is the first year that we have tried using Moodle in the classroom and the first year for blended.  My students have taken to the program fairly well but still struggle on occasion with some of the “ins and outs” of it.  Moodle has helped enhance my lessons by offering more ways to differentiate my instruction, give my students access to more content resources and to allow my students to explore content based topics.  I would like to do more collaborative group work assignments with my students in the future, potentially using Wikis and  Google Docs.  Recently I introduced my Chemistry kids to Google docs and they have responded well to it, though the learning curve has been there, the transition has been easy for the more focused and self motivated students.  The students that do not fall into that category have needed a bit more guidance using the program but seem to like the idea of it.

My district is next looking to go live with Gaggle in the next few weeks and I would like to use this to incorporate more collaborative opportunities into my lessons.  But, I am still learning about Gaggle myself and feel that integrating it into my lessons could be difficult due to time constraints and students having difficulty with the new program.

The technologies that could be harder to use with my students right now would be podcasting.  This is mostly due to the lack of technology available currently for them to record a podcast (right now we are struggling to make headphones, let alone quality microphones for the students).  I do feel that my students would respond well to a project with podcasts right now the technology isn’t there.

I feel that now that my students have been exposed to what learning in the digital age could be like I think they will be able to pick up new digital learning tools more quickly the more they become acclimated to learning in this manner.

CEP 812 Group Leadership Project: Part B - Storyboard and Script

Here is my group’s script and story board for our Leadership Project.  We collaborated using Skype and using a Google doc and Google presentation.  Our project focuses creating an interactive lesson on Moodle.  As a group we had quite a bit of experience using Moodle in our classrooms and wanted to share some techniques that can be used to create effective lessons  on Moodle.

The portion of lesson creation that I focused on was creating questions and responses in Moodle.  I also explained how to set up the grading on each question.

Story Board and script

I created the portion about adding questions to Moodle, it starts on slide 17.

CEP 811: School Wikipedia Page

I was searching for my school (Union High School) on Wikipedia and found that there wasn’t a page for the school.  I was able to find my district’s page (Grand Rapids Public Schools) on Wikipedia but it had no information and links to pages about the 5 high schools in the district. 

 I clicked on the linked to my high school and found nothing, so it offered me an opportunity to edit the page.

Here is the article that I created.  Union High School Grand Rapids, MI

I added some general information about the school just to get the page started.  I hope that sometime in the future that my article will be built upon to create a more complete description of my school.   This is my first year at this school and I am still learning about what all the school has to offer and would like to see if anyone else from my school has something to contribute.

Wicked Problem Project: Part A - Description of Need or Opportunity CEP812

My educational need that I would like to meet is a way to allow for students to better understand the content that they are reading in the blended science program, particular students that are struggling readers and ESL students.

 I would like to find an affordable, quality reader program and translation program) to meet the needs of students require materials read to them.  I have many students with low reading levels and that are ESL students. In each of my blended science classes I have students that several different learning abilities.  I feel that have a quality program that can read and/or translate material will help them with their learning.  This will help differentiate instruction and give students more control over their learning.

This program should be used on a daily basis in the classroom.  I would like to see the reader program be available to all students and staff to help differentiate learning.

My plan:

·         Research and compare reading and translation programs focusing on accuracy, ease of use and cost.

·         Test the programs in a classroom setting with multiple learners with multiple needs.

·         Work with the district technology coordinator to get the program in the classrooms.

For this to be successful I will need the full support of my district and their technology department.  I will also need to buy/find etc. a program that can be easily loaded on to student computers.

CEP 811: UDL Lab

Here is the UDL check list for the lesson that I created.

I found that I met several of the needs of check list in this lesson, though I do think I could vary the ways that students present their ideas more.

Assignment: PART A - Brainstorm session CEP 812

Scott, Dan and myself decided to focus on Moodle as our technology to present.  Through brainstorming we found that all of us have had experience using the site and can gain access to it for our project. 

 

We used a couple different conferencing tools for brain storming:

·         We used the forum group set for us in Angel for preliminary planning and scheduling a time for all of use to get together. 

·         On Sunday morning and evening we used an Adobe Meeting room to make plans for our project and to decide who was going to do what for the project.

·         Throughout the brainstorming process we posted our ideas to a google doc.

The advantages to using a Adobe Meeting room to discuss the project was that we could meet face to face to discuss ideas and we could share our computer screens with each other to demonstrate ideas and show examples. 

The main disadvantage of using the web conference tool was finding a common time that they 3 of us could get together to be on at the same time.  Though this is something that has to be dealt with in any group work.

Adobe Connect could be used to connects students to other classrooms around the world, it can also be used to connect students content experts (for example, if I wanted to have a guest speaker about genetics for my biology class I could).  Lastly, it can be used to teach lessons from home.  I say this because, there were a few days this winter that I couldn't get to work because the roads were so bad (I drive about 45 minutes to work everyday) so I had to call in, this would remedy the problem of me not being in the classroom.

Here are links to our first and second brain storming sessions.

Session 1 (I was unable to make it to this one, but it was nice that I could go back and watch it, that allowed me to go back and make comments on our google doc)

Session 2

Video Intro

This a brief introduction about myself that I created using powerpoint and Jing.

CLICK HERE!

MERLOT Lesson Review: DNA From the Beginning

http://www.dnaftb.org/

This software is a large collection of different multimedia resources about DNA and genetics.  It presents concepts that are accurate and that are educationally significant.  As a teaching tool this software could be used for explanation and demonstration.  It presents a lot of content that can be used to enhance lectures and allows for student exploration of the topic of DNA.

The characteristics of the target learn is one that is looking to further/supplement their current knowledge of DNA.  This site could be easily integrated into an existing biology curriculum to help demonstrate different genetics concepts. It includes a variety of ways that topics can be explored (through animation, video, reading etc.), this allows the software to be used in several different ways to achieve different learning goals and reach all types of learners.

The learning goals of this resource are fairly easy to identify through the titles of each section and concept covered.  Students could easily complete assignments using this tool and teachers would be able to easily integrate it into a lesson.

The resource is fairly easy to use and navigate.  The interface of the site is easy to figure out and navigate, though when creating an assignment using this site it will be important to give clear directions for where you would want to students to go to in the site seeing that there are several options, a student could easily get lost in the content because there are so many collections of information.

I feel that students would enjoy using this site because it allows them to research topics in genetics in a more organized and concentrated way.  It also has several different ways that the content is presented and this allows for flexibility for meeting learning needs.

"A Funny Thing Happened With Technology”

This a funny story about an experience I had with giving students some technological freedom.

CLICK HERE!!

Personal Learning Reflection

·         Some things that I have learned from this course about effective teaching strategies when integrating technology is that it’s important to not be scared to try new technology.   It is important to integrate technology in daily lessons because it allows for teaching to all learning styles.

·         Integrating the integrating the internet helped me see the possibilities that are available.  It opened my eyes to new programs and strategies for integrating technology into my lessons.

·         I feel that my personal technology plan exemplifies good teaching because I was able to use it as an example of a Prezi presentation for a project that my biology students were doing.  In addition to being able to use it as an example I was able to use it inspire many of my students to try new technology.  Lastly, by showing my presentation to my students it engaged several students that hadn’t been struggling to become engaged.

·         I feel that I have met my goals in my Personal Growth Plan but I have found new goals that I would like to achieve and have found that I can go deeper into the goals that I had set originally.

·         My main new goal is to become more comfortable teaching new technologies to my students and my colleagues.  I feel that I can do this through furthering my education by enrolling in the graduate program at MSU and by attending conferences.  I also feel that I will become more comfortable by practicing the new skills I will be learning in my classes and using these skills in my daily planning more.

Learning Style

I tend to be a visual learner mostly, though with the addition of tactile experiences while learning adds to my learning.  I would always do well I tests and assignments if I could see how it was done first, able to take my own notes.  I have memories of taking history exams during my undergrad and have an image of the notes that I took during a lecture in my head to help me recall information.  I know that if I didn’t take notes that I would struggle with preparing for a test or completing an assignment.  I wrote everything down, every little detail; this always helped me remember. 

When planning lessons I find it’s important to include as many learning styles as possible.  With a blended curriculum it makes it a lot easier to do this.  While creating the biology Moodle lessons as a team we worked together to offer all different types of supplemental resources that help our diverse population of students.  I am still finding more that can help and still I am still searching for more (i.e. a good, cheap if not free translation website for the many ESL students that I have).  This coming summer I would like to work on incorporating my Jing videos and kinesthetic aspects to the lessons

Licensed Photo

This is a link to my Flickr page, which has my first licensed picture that my fiance took of our cat Maggie when she was still a kitten.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59744610@N02/5463202031/

Creative Commons

I chose this image because coming up in my biology class we will be discussing photosynthesis and cellular respiration.  I find that both of these concepts can be extremely hard to teach without visuals and graphic organizers. 

Photo Attribution:

Original image: Simple photosynthesis overview.PNG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_photosynthesis_overview.PNG

by: Daniel Mayer
Released under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

I regularly use images and other media in my curriculum.  I strive to integrate them as much as possible.  I find that most students that if they can see it while they are learning it (modeling etc.), they tend to remember the concept.  In the blended curriculum that I have been teaching this year it has been crucial to have a media component to all of the lessons.  This lesson has taught me that I need to go back and review the media sources that I have been using and check their CC licenses.  I know while creating the first semester of the biology curriculum we were not making sure we were checking our sources before linking/embedding/copying and pasting.  This will definitely be something that I bring up to the higher ups at district.

On the other side of things, there are several lesson of my own creation that I have post to the Moodle site that my district uses that I did not get a CC license for now that I am more educated about CC I would like to a license for. 

RSS Post Part 2

Jing Video of my RSS page navigation

This is part 2 of my RSS page post.  I have found that my RSS page has been an excellent way to organize the websites that I visit daily and/or should be visiting daily.  I have found articles on how to engage parents in their child’s learning, blogs about topics that I can use for my classes and several news articles that I can use to connect what I am teaching to the real world.  My favorite RSS feed currently is the Science Blogs feed.  It is a feed of the blog posts that are being made through this site.  I like it because it doesn’t limit me to just one single blog, but actually several.  I have also found that I have been using my RSS feed to keep up to date on news headlines.  I used to just get my news from the headlines on Yahoo or MSN (both are very limited and tend to more about pop culture) because it was easy, now I find my RSS page to be just as easy and offers me a lot more.  I can see using my RSS page in my teaching by using the articles/blogs that I read as teachable moments and to make connections to real world.  I also have read a few articles/posts that can help me with strategies for using technology in the classroom. 

Tonight I read an article about a note taking app that is now available for the iPad (http://www.techlearning.com/article/36566) .  This got me thinking about if there were any other note taking options online or programs that my students or I could use (we don’t have iPads, though we wish we did).  I did a google search and was able to find software that can be sued for taking notes, some free (http://www.evernote.com ), some not (http://www.perfectnotes.com/ ).  These are programs that I could use myself or that my students could use.

PC Maintenance and Security Lab

1. “Intrusion detection and intrusion prevention software”          Feel that I would share the purpose of IDS and IPS, because I feel that most people have the same misconceptions as I did. I thought intrusion detection and prevention was something that was important to pay attention to and that it was all included in either my windows firewall protection and/or my anti-virus software. Through the tutorial learned that its optional, though recommended (by the tutorial). IDS and IPS looks at what is happening to your computer with more depth. It looks at behavior of programs and changes and not just what is left behind. Like the CSI of malware.

2. “Good Safety and Security Habits”
          One thing that I learned and will be sharing is that it is important to have a routine to update/check my computer’s health. This includes, updates(ant-virus, spyware, firewall etc.), scan disk, backing up files, This is no different than taking your car for its regular oil change in that it can prevent anything from happening to your computer. Some information that surprised me was about Universal Plug and Play. This turns you computer into an open server and is unnecessary for home computer user. Universal plug and play can leave system vulnerable and should be disabled. Lastly that it should not be confused with plug and play because that is a useable program that allows for USB’s to automatically start up when you plug them in.

3. “File Backup Options”
         It is important to back up what you have on your computer. From what I have learned is that a lot of people do not chose to do back up the data on their computer (or at least do not do it as often as they should ). There are several different options for backing up your data. Windows has a built in back up options that walks you through what settings you will need to back up you computer along with an option for where is saved to. I learned that there backup utilities online that are available (free and not-so-free). All programs seem to be relatively easy to navigate and utilize, it’s just a matter of using them regularly.

My PLN

I created my PLN with wordle.net and using a word document.

I feel that my PLN is constantly growing. While in completing my Bachelors Degree at CMU I started using facebook but had no idea of its potential. Over time I have grown my PLN though growing my facebook network, posting to blogs, creating my own blogs and using twitter. My PLN has grown also through the different places that I have worked and with the people I have worked with. I hope for my PLN to grow by including my new colleagues and working on using moodle to include my students more in my PLN. My PLN will grow through the use of my new blog, collaborating in developing my SIG group's project, tweeting more, and my RSS page. All of these resources will grow my PLn through allowing me to learning from many different people and resources.

GTD Share Activity

1.I tend to use mostly paper and pencil to organize my process, though I am open to the idea of using a piece of software to help better organize my process. I tend to use a listing system when determining what I need to accomplish in the day.

2.It took longer to go through the process than I thought. But I believe it has to do with still figuring out what strategies work for me. There were times when I felt that having a calendar program or some other organizational software would have been more effective, and easier to make changes to.

3.I think that this process will help me because it will take the system that I have already set up for myself and give it more structure.

4.I think my process will probably become a hybrid of what I am already doing and the GTD process. I will use the GTD process to incorporate more structure, flexibility and continuity to my process.

Social Networking in Education

I have been using some sort of social networking as long as I can remember, but when brought up in discussion at school it is always brought up in a negative context (i.e. “No student should be on Facebook while in their blended classes!”).  Almost making me feel guilty for being one of “those” people.

I have primarily used Facebook for the majority of my social networking needs.  I have been a proud member of the Facebook community for about 5 years or so, but I have never truly considered it a possible teaching tool.  In the article Social Networking Goes to School - by Michelle R. Davis published in Digital Directions, the author says, “…it has become so ubiquitous for students—who start using sites like Webkinz and Club Penguin when they are in elementary school—that it just makes sense to engage them this way.”  This resonated with me because it really shows the change our culture has gone through and makes me wonder why it is taking so long for our schools to catch up.  I know that there are school across the country that have teachers that are plenty tech savvy and incorporate it in their daily lessons, but the culture changes that are occurring in society that are standards now, seem to be taking some time to become standards in schools.  I feel that a lot of this comes from the stigma that has always come with the technology/internet serving more of an entertainment resource (causing students to become off task) than as a great educational resource.

I can see the value in a resource such as Ning.  For our blended courses students are exposed to several different ways they can use technology to supplement their learning.  One of them has been the use of forums to share ideas about specific topics and questions.   I think that Ning allows for students to have a common meeting space outside of Facebook to talk about class topics.  I feel that if I chose to create a group in Facebook it would be too informal and allow students to get off topic from the class. 



Above is a screen dump that I created on Jing of my RSS page.  I was able to find many sites and blogs that interested me to add to my RSS page.  This included: Science Blogs, MSNBC, Accuweather, and Science Magazine.  I also added the Health & Science NPR feed because I find that NPR covers many current science events.

I posted my comment to the blog Does technology enhance or detract from the wilderness experience? [Observations of a Nerd] through the Science Blogs RSS feed.  I commented on how I believe that technology has actually deliver the wilderness to my students because many of them have not had a lot of experience being in the wilderness.  I allows my students to have experiences with nature that they would never have without it (i.e. using the internet resources to support concepts that I am presenting to students in biology).

I have found while tracking my RSS feeds that update regularly and a few of them are hard to keep up with.  The Science Blog site streams several different blogs posted to the site.  This has allowed me to follow several different scientific topics that I can share with my students.  I chose the Accuweather RSS feed because I also teach a meteorology class and have found many resources from the site that I have the students use in my lesson.  I have found the MSNBC RSS feed is the hardest to keep up with regularly because of how often the site is updated, this also applies to the NPR: Top News feed.  I have my meteorology students do weekly current weather events (research the where, when and what of the event with question linking to the topic being discussed in class).  I allow the students to use several different sites to find their events, by having the Accuweather site and the MSNBC site it allows me to keep up on any weather events that my students may use for their assignment.  The science magazine RSS is more of a link to research current articles on topics that I am teaching.  I feel that I can use this as a primary resource to present to my students not only to supplement content but to also encourage student to strengthen their skills in inquiry.  

The difference between websites and blogs

Websites and blogs are very different from each other.  I wouldn’t say it’s like comparing apples to oranges, but I feel that they both serve different purposes.  Websites are less collaborative than blogs.  Blogs allow people to discuss topics and learn together about a topic and share what they know.  Websites are informational but do not allow for people to post and collaborate on the content actively.  One person, company, or a small group of people contribute to a website that has the permission to do so, while with a blog any person that the author allows can make comments or add to the blog. 

Both websites and blogs have a similar downfall and that is accuracy.  I feel that people have to be cautious about what they believe to be factual.  This has been an issue with the internet once it became public domain.  In a blog it seems easier to run across inaccurate information than in a website only because it is more of a “living” document than a web site.  Though websites can be updated as often as a blog, it is harder to have people from outside of the website creators to make changes to the content.