Internet safety

I spent a couple hours learning about internet safety this week. One reason I spent more time is that I got distracted by watching the teen safety videos on netsmartz.com. I must admit, the stories and facts that I learned were a bit frightening. I read the whole site for internet safety on the ldstech website and found a bunch of statistics on cyber bullying. I was surprised by how young kids are when they start being bullied. I was also surprised by how easily information can be found. It made me wonder if it is too late for me to lock up all my information that has already been shared through facebook and such. I googled my name and found that the first two pages of search results are actually about me. I taught my sister (who has two boys) all about what I had learned and even showed her one of the videos that I thought would be most helpful to her.

The thing that we spent the most time on was kid safe browsers. I showed her Kidzui and she decided to look into it. we were about to download it, but our computer told us that it was from an unknown publisher. How can I trust places like kidzui if I haven't used it before. Have any of you used it? Is it actually safe? Does it really work to keep our children off of the typical websites? My sister said that she likes nick jr., but nick jr still has adds that her kids can click on that take them away from the site onto places that she has never seen before. Does Kidzui get rid of that problem? My sister and I decided together to be more careful and watch out for danger on the internet. I hope my nephews, and everyone else I love, feel the same!

Participation

I have reviewed all of the movies made by Dan, Liz and Stuart. Here are the link to my comments.

Dan: http://dan-the-tech-teacher.blogspot.com/2011/11/multimedia-project-teaching-relative.html?showComment=1323890290337#c2360392488867117287

Liz: http://lizthesciencewiz.blogspot.com/2011/12/instructional-video.html?showComment=1323890792312#c2616605896594443560

Stuart: http://stuarticusharperian.blogspot.com/2011/12/harpers-world-of-science.html#comment-form

Movie Reflections

I made this movie movie with the idea of it being a project I could have my chemistry students do. It would have been after we learn about the difference between chemical and physical changes. Then my students could think of examples of each type of change and come up with a project to show what they know. If they have to think about examples, find ways to portray them and present them to the class, they can have more confidence in the idea that they actually know what they are talking about and they will be more reflective about their learning. Plus I feel like my students would have a lot of fun doing something like this. I know the high school student that helped me had fun!

My First Movie!!!!

Instructional video storyboard

Here is my storyboard!

The Promethean Board

Another technology that I have been working with is an interactive white board called the Promethean board. A lot of people have heard of the Smart board, but that is just a name brand, kind of like Kleenex rather than Puffs. I could use this technology to help the students become more involved in the classroom. It takes a little longer to make flipcharts (kind of like a power point slide show), but you can share your flipcharts with any other teachers who use the promethean board (if you want to). I really like that I can use layers (which I just learned). Using layers I can hide answers underneath of pictures and have students identify what each picture represents. Then I can let them move my "reveal-er" over the picture to let them see if they are right. The promethean board also comes with an "iclicker" type of technology, so I can have students answer before we reveal the answer. I really love how interactive the promethean board is, though there are a few glitches. Sometimes the "pen" squeaks against the board which is unpleasant, so I think I would like to use a smart board rather than a promethean board. Another glitch is that sometimes the pen will stay as a clicker even when you try to use it as a pen. I haven't figured out how to get out of the glitch yet, but I hope to. Overall, I really like the promethean board. I would use it if i had one in my classroom, but I would not go out of my way to buy it for my classroom.

Here is a poll that I would use in my classroom...

Replace audience response hardware with Poll Everywhere

Polleverywhere.com

For one of my technologies I decided to learn how to use polleverywhere.com. This is a fascinating technology. If I wanted to use it for myself I could have an audience of 30 people who can answer poll questions by text message, But because I am a teacher, I can have up to 40 people send text messages to each of my polls. So this works like an iclicker, but it is cheaper if all of my students have free text messaging.I would have to pay $50 a month if I wanted to grade my student on their answers. That doesn't sound that bad.

So I really like how I can group questions. This way I could have 8 different classes texting answers to 8 different polls. I can keep them separated and not worry about exceeding my 40 person limit with more than one class. I could also take attendance, though I'd have to be careful with that one.

I spend a few hours exploring what I can and cannot do. (There is a lot I could do if I was willing to pay money). There are only a few things I have been really disappointed with. One is the fact that I cannot format my words in my polls, so chemical formulas will be a bit confusing for my students (without subscripts or superscripts and such). Another is that I cannot embed my polls straight into my google website. Whenever I do, I get a message that says"Warning: your HTML contains some tags that are not permitted". Finally, I wish that the whole page would fill up with answers, rather than one column. Otherwise, I love Polleverywhere and  I plan on using it in my classroom.

Try it out. Tell me what you think of my post! Text "299962 [answer]" to 37607

A pretty good example of following copyright law

So this YouTube video is used for educational purposes. It is 15 minutes long, but it is accredited to Adam Bellow and most likely put up with his permission. In his slides, he uses all kinds of quotes form people and books and he shows a lot of pictures that are not his own, but he spends no more than 15 seconds on any image so he follows all the fair use laws. The only problem I see is that he does not officially accredit most for the images or quotes he uses. He names off those who hold the copyrights of a lot of the things he uses, by showing the cover of the book he is alluding to, or showing the picture of the person he is quoting, but if ha had a list of all the images with citations at the end or at least accessible to all who watch it, he would be super safe when it comes to fair use. (Plus, I'm sure companies like twitter, facebook, smart board, and such appreciate the free exposure to the public.)

A poor example of copyright law

This YouTube video makes use of The Lion King 2 and Lebo M's song, "He lives in you". Even if this were a class project, strictly for educational purposes, it would be failing when it comes to copyright law. The poster, TigerXtrm, does give credit to both Lebo M and Disney, but I highly doubt he received permission from either of them. Also, the fair use laws say that someone may use up to 10% or three minutes of a video (whichever is smaller), but this person used 4.5 minutes which is definitely not shorter than 3 minutes. fair use also calls for a maximum of 30 seconds for each musical composition, but the entire song was used. This hurts whoever holds the copyright for the music. I wouldn't have to go buy Lebo M's song now, because I can just listen to it on YouTube. 

Class Website

My first great accomplishment...made a website!
CLICK HERE to see my class website.

I'm pretty happy with this website. It is simple, but that is the point. I want everything to be easy to find and easy to use. Green makes me think of chemistry (plus it's gender neutral), so I went with that theme. I put some lab dates on the  calenders each corresponding to the different classes. I tried out the horizontal navigation bar, but it looked too awkward with my chemistry picture. I chose the chemistry picture over the horizontal navigation bar, because I really like that I was able to link that to the home page. I also have a link to a side introduction page all about me.

I did a few more unique things to make my page my own. I added a cool periodic table gadget that gives all the details about each element to a separate page which would be accessible to both of my classes, and I came up with a project about the periodic table for my chemistry class. The assignment is listed under Chemistry and it's called the "Periodic Table Project". On this assignment page I embedded an iframe showing a site that has a special video for each element to give the kids inspiration. It was so cool, because I had to go into the html view when I edited the page and write in code with all the carrots and such.  <iframe src="web address" width="" height=""></iframe> . This is something I've never done before, so I'm kinda excited!

Voice thread

I am really interested in using voice thread this semester. I'm sure I'll have to teach an online class sometime, and when I do, I would like it to not be horrible, so this seems important to learn.

The Beginning...

So, here I am doing something online for this cool new class titled Teaching with Technology. I'm so happy to be back in school and learning things. Wish me luck!