I watch a cooking show and I want to cook. How does this apply to my teaching?

View my Screencasting 101 presentation here. 

I watch a cooking show and I want to cook. How does this apply to my teaching?

It applies in several ways: First, teaching must be inspirational. When you present a lesson, you must do so with gusto. Bring it to life! You are a salesman selling them a product that they don't think they need and may not even want. Overcome their reluctance with energy and enthusiasm. Make personal connections, make it look tasty and appetizing.

Which brings up the second point: Use whatever tools you can to make it appealing. Visuals, graphics, video are already the tools of advertising and persuasion - use them. Students already self-select video (particularly YouTube) and the internet as the means by which they learn the things they want to know about. Use those same tools in your lessons.

Thirdly, lessons have to be accesible. Cooking shows are not successful if people can't watch a show and say, "I can do that." Make the learning clear. Show it in steps. Present it in a way that students themselves can say, "I can do that!"

Last, lessons need to be repeatable. We already know that even top level students need to hear something many times before it sinks in. Struggling students need repetition even more. I love the Food Network website. I go and I watch the recipe videos over and over when I'm about to cook. When I'm actually cooking - especially in the middle of a multi-step process - I rewind and watch the videos over again to make sure I don't miss any important steps.

Screencasting your lessons and hosting the videos online allows your students to do the same. How powerful a tool is it to be able to reteach a lesson over and over again and not wear out your voice (not to mention your patience)? Students who are absent never need miss a lesson again. When they return, they can watch the videos and complete the assignments to get caught up. Parents who want to help their students, but don't have the content knowledge can watch the videos too.

Then, why not put a little Emeril into it and kick it up a notch? Have students screencast their own lessons! BAM!

Landform Detectives & Eco Defenders

A tip of the hat once again to @ktenkely for an excellent resource. Read her review at: http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=2672

Landform Detectives

National Geographic's Jason Science Landform Detectives allows you to "Travel the globe to unlock the secrets of Earth’s strangest and most inspiring landforms in The JASON Project’s geology game: Landform Detectives. Unlock new, challenging landforms and earn commendations to place on the leaderboard!

Teachers, students, parents, and residents of Earth everywhere will love this fascinating trip through the amazing processes of geology. Look at mountains, valleys, and rivers in a whole new way as you solve the puzzle of how they got to be that way, and think about how long it took to happen. Ice, water, wind, and sand are some of the unusual suspects in the amazing story of our Earth! Discover your inner geologist today!" 

Check out the rest of their curriculum at http://www.jason.org/public/whatis/jason.aspx covering weather, ecology,and energy.

Eco Defenders

Eco Defenders is another science game that deals with the issue of invasive species.

"With some help from JASON Host Researcher Russell Cuhel, size up one of three ecosystems before designing an invasive species to infiltrate and disrupt, eliminating rival species and witnessing the rippling repercussions your invader has on the ecosystem as a whole.

Pick a defense mechanism to fortify your invader against the natives, color it to better blend with the environment you choose, select which trophic level it will inhabit (don't worry, you'll learn what this means!), and release it into the wild!"

http://demo.thinkfinity.org/widgets/resources_share.html

http://demo.thinkfinity.org/widgets/resources_share.html

Guest Blogger for BrainPop - Using BrainPop With Student Response Systems

I was invited to be a guest blogger for BrainPop. They have over 76,000 registered educators. Heady stuff. I decided to go ahead and post it here as well for my 7 followers. Enjoy!

I also made a screencast of the process which can be viewed here: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW1BmI-sooY

Using BrainPop With Student Response Systems

I began using BrainPop with classroom responders four years ago. At the time I was using a Promethean ActivBoard and ActiVote student responders. I started out by entering the questions from BrainPop quizzes, along with questions of my own, into ActiVote quizzes using the Promethean software to assess students. It made grading so much easier than paper and pencil, not to mention all the paper it saved. I could show the printed quiz on the Promethean for students to answer allowing them to answer the questions at their own pace instead of having to wait for all students to answer before going on to the next question. They don't actually have to see the page the individual question is on to answer it on the ActiVotes. The quiz can run in the background. So instead of displaying each question one at a time, I could display all the questions at once on the ActivBoard or a printout of the questions that way we didn't have to wait for everyone to answer before we move to the next question. When the quiz was done, I exported the results into Excel and posted the results for students to review and transferred the grades into my gradebook. We also got instant feedback by viewing the results in pie charts and other graphs and discussed the questions that gave us the most trouble.

Then I discovered how to use the ActiVotes for on-the-fly quizzes. I noticed that the ActiVote response status bar sits at the top of the ActivBoard software, so I started using it with Classroom 2.0 resources such as BrainPop by lowering the browser page to just below the ActiVote status bar. I then used the Promethean pen to label the pertinent parts of the website we were viewing so students could answer multiple choice questions I posed. Once all students answered, we could view their responses and I could easily assess the whole class’ understanding as we went through the video.

Two years ago I changed schools and began using a SmartBoard and their Senteo Smart Response system. The Senteos are a more sophisticated response system (although Promethean now has a comparable product) and allowed for numerical answers as well as multiple choice, but on-the-fly questions were not as easy for me to figure out. I continued to convert the BrainPop quizzes into Smart Response quizzes for assessment and grading using a similar method to what I did with the Promethean software. Smart Response quizzes run in the background while I display a complete list of the questions on the SmartBoard in the foreground or a printout. However, recent upgrades in the Smart Notebook software have made it very easy to use the Senteos for quick checks. The most recent Smart Notebook update allows a transparent view so you can have full access to all the Notebook tools even when viewing websites or other software. So, now I can use the transparent view while watching a BrainPop video and pause the video to check for understanding with the Senteos.

The way to do this is to have a blank Smart Notebook page open in transparent view over the BrainPop. Transparent view can be activated by clicking on “View” then selecting “Transparent Background.” You can write over the video with the pens, highlighting for emphasis and making notes using the floating toolbar that appears when in transparent view. When you reach something you want to ask a question about, pause the video and switch out of transparent view using the floating toolbar and open up the Smart Response tools. You have a choice of inserting a multiple choice, yes/no, true/false, or numerical answer. Select the type of question you want and switch back to transparent. If you are using multiple choice, the letters will still be visible and you can drag them to the location you desire. When everyone has answered, switch back out of transparent view, open the Smart Response tools, and stop the question. Select “properties” and show answer key and you can select the correct answer. Results can be displayed graphically and also exported to Excel.

These new features have really opened up many possibilities and have really added a lot to my 21^st Century teacher toolbox. My students love BrainPop and it really brings a lot of life to my classroom. I am looking forward to the day when we can get closer to full integration between the various tools we use in the classroom, such as SmartBoards and BrainPop, but this brings us one exciting step closer.

Playing History: Your Source for Historical Games

Playing History: Your Source for Historical Games
http://www.playinghistory.org/

WHY PLAY HISTORY?

There are tons of free historical games, interactives and simulations on the web. Playing history aggregates info on these resources in a simple, searchable database making it easy to find, rate, and review historical games. There are currently 131 shared games covering everything from American, British, Canadian, and Ancient History. The games are at such respected site like PBS, Discovery, BBC, and the History Channel.

(Thanks to Jackie Gerstein for the link)

NASA Timeline

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/PQTimeline/

This interactive multimedia timeline traces the search for extrasolar planets, from ancient philosophical speculation to modern discoveries. 450 BC to Present (Thanks ktenkelly - read her review at http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=1784)

Also, don't forget to check out NASA for Educators http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/index.html and NASA for Students http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/index.html

Spelling City

http://www.spellingcity.com/

I just found out about SpellingCity. It is a great, fun way to practice spelling lists. You can enter your list and have it test, teach, or play a game with them. They have some 42,000 words in their database and use real voices to read them - they even use them in sentences. I tried a number of words out including some science terms - they didn't have genome, but they did have genetics and amoeba. They also have pre-made lists such as Dolch/Sight words, abbreviations, and compound words by grade level and printable work sheets.

Teachers can register for a FREE SpellingCity homepage to save their word lists so students can access them and practice online.  There is a premium feature available that allows them to test online as well. Looks like a great resource.


Short 3 minute How-To Videos are available at http://www.spellingcity.com/how-to-videos.html