Math Stuff

Check out my Math Sites webpage at http://rochesterschools.com/rms/technology/links/math.htm

Shakespearean Quote Quest

Mrs. Marshall gave me 23 quotes from Shakespeare. I created a worksheet that students will search through a website to find who said it, the name of the play, the type of play, Act and Scene and what the quote is about. The website is http://www.rhymezone.com/shakespeare. It allows phrase searches and keyword searches. Students can also read text before and after the quote once it is found. We promised big prizes for the student team who got the most correct.

The worksheet is on the Technology Library page at: http://rochesterschools.com/rms/library/.

Rhymezone also does synonyms, antonyms, rhyming words and lots more.

Podcasting Workshop

I attended the Podcasting Workshop at the Seacoast Professional Development Center in Exeter. (www.spdc.org) It was a very well run workshop with a knowledgable humorous presenter, Steve Kossakoski.

At the outset we were told that we could create a podcast without spending any money. To get better quality podcasts, ease of use, etc. we could spend a lot more. Steve called it "hardware creep". To start with we will need a microphone and a poor one will be noticed. We were given headsets with microphones (cost $15) that are of a very good quality. We will also need a software program that will edit recordings and save them in the correct format. Garageband is a free program for MacIntosh and Audacity is free to download for use on a PC or Linus or Macintosh.(download site is here) We were given time to record our voices and mix it with some free uncopyrighted music. It is very easy to do in Audacity. It's like word processing only it's sound. It has some fancy effects like fade in and fade out so that music can begin the podcast and then fade when the voice begins. You can also increase the volume on certain parts or delete sections. Lots of fun to use. Students will like it also.

If you want some portability to record voice or other sound you can buy a small mp3 recorder. They can run $30-$500. But all you really need is the microphone, a computer, Audacity and if you would like to subscribe to a podcast, you will need iTunes. To subscribe to a podcast, which means that iTunes will download it as soon as a new podcast is posted, simply go to the podcasting website and drag the "chiclet" or RSS feed button to the iTunes window. iTUnes is also free to download. It is an excellent program for keeping your music organized, getting and listening to podcasts and can be used to go to the music store to buy albums and individual songs.
Some of the uses for podcasting in education: Colleges are using them so students can listen to a lecture over again to review. Listen to interviews with experts on a topic. Some schools have used them to communicate with parents such as expectations and new programs. Students use them to read their own stories, reports or poetry. Visitors to a classroom can be interviewed. Special Education teachers talked about the value of having students record their reading skills periodically throughout the year and listen to their progress. I would like to have reading or English classes write and record stories for a week on a particular theme such as what they are studying in science or reading. A group of students could interview students during the team Literacy Fair. New teachers or administrators could be interviewed for a podcast. Many World Language classes are trying out podcasting.

Steve gave us several links that are directories for podcasts. I found one that has the full text of a story by Herman Melville, Typee. Another podcast had the "Federalist Papers". They are endless. Here are some of the links. Learning in Hand , Bob Sprankle's podcasts, Room 208 (3rd graders in Maine) , the Bobby Bucket Show (A Podcast for kids, Parents, and Readers of All ages! Celebrating READING with Books, Music, Author Interviews, and more) , and lectures from professors at Stanford University. More - Podcast Alley (choose by genre), Education Podcast Network ( podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century), Recap Educatonal Podcasting for teaching and learning (from the U.K. podcasting for educational use) , Podcasting News (all kinds of news) , Podzinger (search for a podcast) , ITunes ( find and subscribe to a podcast).

More great resources - sound effects and non-copyrighted music. Audio: Open Source Audio (several genres to choose from), CCMixter.org.
Sound Effects: Free Sound Effects (car door, phone, kitchen drawer), More Sound Effects, FreePlay Music ( over 1000 songs, indexed, searchable, helpful).

The final step to creating a podcast after refining it in Audacity is to export it as an MP3. Remember where you save it. Then you must upload it to a server or host. There are free servers and others that cost. Steve has set up a server for us at Loudblog. PodAdmin is another one. You can download free opensource software and set up your own server or choose a server of your own. Others are: Switchpod, PodAdmin, and Creative Commons. You can simply upload your mp3 file to your webserver but then it can't be used in iTunes and loaded into ipods. You will just be able to listen to it. Uploading your podcast into one of these hosts is a little like uploading a webpage through ftp or publishing a blog. They will be archived and you can put a title and comments and even an image.

As our final "test" we were asked to had a "discussion" or" interview" about podcasting and the possibilities we could imagine. The results are at http://www.spdc.org ...click on Resources and then the Loudblog link.

Blog Workshop

On March 16th I will be giving two 2-hour long workshops. The material and links are all on the webpage linked from the RMS site. It's at: http://rochesterschools.com/rms/technology/blog/blog_workshop.htm

We're going to learn what a blog is, look at some different blogs and then create either a personal or classroom blog. Blogger.com is very easy to use and update and edit. My only worry is that Metrocast is scheduled to do some maintenance between 9 and 9:30 tomorrow just when we should be creating the first post in our blog.

If there is time we can talk about RSS feeds and see if anyone is interested in learning how to set up an account.

Should be fun!

Postscript to the blogging workshops: I have added links to several of the blogs created that day. Everyone had fun and was amazed at how easy it is to create a blog and to add to it. Use the link above or go to the Teachers Page at the RMS site.

Science Resources on the Web Workshop

I attended the NHPTV Science Resources on the Web Workshop. Many great sites. They are all on a webpage at NHPTV. One of the presenter's favorite type of site is the online science museum. They have educational sections where there are lesson plans and activities. Some of them will let you create a profile so you can "collect" lessons that you found helpful. Some of the best are the Exploratorium in San Francisco (the Digital Library here has activities for in the classroom searchable by grade level, also check out the "cool sites" section) , the Boston Museum of Science and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
The Teachers' Domain collections include classroom-ready multimedia resources for use in lessons. Search by grade level and subject (life science, physical science) and find videos, lesson plans and interactive activities. [Example - This interactive activity from NOVA Online lets you spin a spiral galaxy, including our own Milky Way. It demonstrates that what you can learn from visible light observations of a galaxy is largely determined by the angle from which you are observing it. (Earth and Space Science 6-8) ] It wants you to register but it's free.
One of the best websites I found while in the workshop was the Genetics WebLab. It has 14 interactive activities including: Mendel's Peas (you determne the number of traits and then try to create a specific kind of plant); Punnett Squares, Dragons (by manipulating the recessive and dominant genes you try to create a dragon); DNA Fingerprinting, natural selection and more.
A website with some fun activities involving genetics is Kids Genetics. They have some excellent interactive activities/ tutorials where students can learn about genetics.
The last website I'd like to mention is the Middle School Portal, a part of the NSF. Here you can choose, Math, Science or Technology. Has many lesson plans, activities, worksheets, exercises. For Example: The Virtual Body from MEDtropolis.com is an interactive overview of some of the basic structure and function of the human body. The site, available in both English and Spanish, is a mix of information and activities focused on four areas -- the brain, skeleton, heart, and digestive tract. The site's extensive array of diagrams and images, as well as its interactive nature, enhance the site's appeal and educational potential. Worth exploring.
Discovery school has some great Teaching Tools for Teachers. These include puzzle makers, lesson planner, worksheet generator and quiz creator. It will even correct quizzes and send the results to your e-mail address. All you need to do is register. You'll be able to save all your creations on the website for later use.
Finally, the presenter suggested we help students become better at evaluating web resources. Many students assume that if it's on the Web it's true. She defines sites as either Expert (NASA), Credible (TIME Magazine) or Unknown (site credentials are unverifiable). Students should learn to read a URL. Do they know that a .com is a commercial site, .edu is educational (probably a university or school), .gov is an official government site. I'll be putting together a PowerPoint presentation to help students become better at searching and to help them evaluate websites. FYI, the presenter showed us a website with the URL martinlutherking.org. Kids might find it when searching for information about Martin Luther King. But, it's a website created by David Duke to trick kids into distributing literature defaming Dr. King. I'd like to show this PowerPoint before the 8th graders do their research paper.

Battles of the Revolutionary War

Ms. McCarthy and I came up with a project to get familiar with the battles of the Revolutionary War. I found a website, http://www.britishbattles.com/battle-of-quebec-1775.htm, that organizes the battles into categories (fields). We had the students set up a database in FileMaker Pro with the 9 fields: Battle, date, place, combatants, size of armies, generals, casualties, winner and picture. For advanced students we added significance. They were required to do 10 battles which must include Trenton, Saratoga and Yorktown. As a final activity they will write and answer 10 questions about their database. Students will then switch computers and question sheets and see how well they can answer the questions using the Find feature. For a rubric and directions you can open this WORD document.

The New Read/Write Web

Everyone by now has used the read-only Web. The web we use to google for information for our report. The new web some have called Web 2 or the Read/Write Web is changing how students are communicating. Not only can you read some information but you can respond to it. Teachers are using blogs to get their students communicating through writing. When you know there is a real audience out there it feels different. In writing this blog I find myself writing much more than I ever thought I would. It appears that teachers who use blogs in the classroom are finding students reacting this way also. They aren't just reading and writing, they are collaborating and correcting.

Some of the "new" things on this "new" web - A blog is short for a web log. It's an online journal that is archived and that readers can respond to. I have a school account with Blogmeister that I think will work for RMS. It allows teachers to filter student writing. RSS Feeds are another new tool that stands for Reallly Simple Syndication. They allow you to subscribe to different sources of information that will collect into a file for you to read. For instance, if you are interested in wind power as an energy and want all the latest news and writing about it, you can have it collected for you. The sources of information could be from online newspapers, magazines, or blogs. Student could also use RSS feeds. Another new one that was news to me is something called social bookmarking. It works a little like bookmarking a website that you want to remember. With social bookmarking you actually save a copy of the website into a searchable folder. I guess it would actually be like accumulating a stack of books for your term paper. And you can subscribe to someone else's collection of websites on your RSS feed. Two websites to try to investigate social bookmarking are Furl.net and del.icio.us. You may have heard of podcasting. Many teachers are getting into this with their students. It's actually similar to a radio broadcast but it's distributed on the web. Listeners can listen to them when they want.

I'm hoping to try some of these new tools at RMS. Experiment at home. To start a blog go to blogger.com. It's almost as easy as setting up a Hotmail account and it's free. Put your class assignments up for each week so students can refer back to them. Give extra credit if they respond to a question or comment. Subscribe to an RSS feed. It could be on any topic such as gardening, a certain author, adventure vacation spots, or the Patriots. I'm going to try social bookmarking. When I find an excellent website for a particular project I'll try "collecting" it so I can pull it up quickly. Anyone want to do a podcast at RMS?

Geometer's Sketchpad

I attended a math workshop in November and listened to a middle school teacher present her successes with Geometer's Sketchpad. It's a geometry program that allows student to visually see results. It also allows algebra students to graph equations. A very neat program. I gave Marie B., our Math C.C. the disk to try and she is excited about it also. We may try to do a workshop in March if we can learn it well enough by then. It is free to download at this site for 30 days but you cannot save or print. The package is about $1300. and comes with lessons and worksheets. There is an excellent tutorial at this site that has some basic lessons with lines, triangles and circles. I found this lesson about pinwheels that looked interesting. Hoping we can get the money.

It's Official - 1 Tech Facilitator/4 teams

Wally made it official yesterday that Carleen will begin teaching 7th grade Computer Class next semester (Jan. 23). I will continue as the technology facilitator for all 4 8th grade teams. We saw a need for 7th graders to learn computer technology. Seventh grade teachers have been complaining that the students have "no clue" how to save, print, edit, etc. The present 8th graders had the course last year so we are coasting on that. Next year it could be disastrous! So Carleen will teach keyboarding, WORD and a little of Excel and PowerPoint. It's still a work in progress so please comment if you have any suggestions.