Science, science, and more science

The focus is on (yes, you guessed it), Science!

A great link for science teachers is the The Periodic Table of Videos. This is a site that displays a Periodic table and when you click on each element, a little YouTube video pops up discussing and demonstrating the properties of that element. Very clever! You can find the link here -http://www.periodicvideos.com/#

The next site is called Wonderville which is done by the Alberta Science Organization. It is an interactive site with lots of games and activities. It can be found at www.wonderville.ca

The last site, which is great for biology, is called Cells Alive. It does a great job with animations demonstrating the biology behind cells including the different parts of cells. Definitely worth checking out if you teach biology.

The Big Picture

This weeks entry deals with a site from the Boston Herald called "The Big Picture". Every couple of days a Boston Herald reporter posts high resolution photos of an event that is signinficant somewhere in the world. These photos are taken by professional photographers and they are often stunning!

This weeks photos include pictures of H1N1 activity from around the world which you see to the left, Remembrance Day services across the globe, and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not all entries are based on current events - there are thematic entries as well.

The photos are great for creating discussions within y0ur class - you could have them write about what they see, analyze particular photos for specifict deatails or talk about what's signifcant about the picture they are seeing.

New photos are published every other day and you can check the archive at the top of the page for previous posts.

Just a note- when you first go to the site you will see one photo of that event. If you scroll down, you will be able to find a link that will reveal up to 40 photos of that particular event. The photos look amazing when blown up on a big screen - you don't need a smartboard for this application either.

Check it out at www.boston.com/bigpicture/

Glogster

Recently my students have been using a program called Glogster - you can find it at http://www.glogster.com/. It is a way of creating interactive posters using a variety of media. The students quite like them and it makes creating an informative poster much more interesting and fun.
You can sign your class up for a school account at no charge. To do this go to http://www.edu.glogster.com/, register yourself, select how many students you want (you can have up to 200 and I suggest you select that, as you'll have enough for all your students should you want multiple classes to use it.), then they will email you a list of passwords and login names that your students can use.

The great part is you can control the content, who sees it, and be aware of who is creating what.

To see an example watch the video below.

Hippocampus and Ipod Touch

This week's entry focuses on a site that has a little bit of everything. Hippocampus is a site dedicated to providing high-quality multimedia content on a variety of subjects to highschool and college students FREE OF CHARGE.

There are currently 10 subject areas with subtopics to choose from. Although it is an American curriculum, a lot of the subject material overlaps into B.C. curriculum areas. After you choose a subject area, you can browse by topic and select the areas that are most relevant.

Since teachers and students can control the content of the courses using the SMART Board, they are able to quickly pause the course material and take notes at any point during the course. The courses also contain assessments that students can solved on the SMART Board and then put their answers in the space provided to receive feedback.

Even if you don't use this resource in class, the course material is a great way to get ideas to enhance your existing lessons.

Another interesting tidbit that I came across was a school in England who has incorporated Ipod Touches into their classroom. Our district has been considering the idea of providing laptops to students within the next five years. However due to cost and equipment issues this may not be very practical. The Ipod Touch may be an alternative.

If you are not familiar with the Ipod Touch, it is the latest version of the Ipod with a touch sensitive screen. You can download programs called Apps from the Itunes, many for free. A lot of them are designed for educational purposes.

The video clip below shows you what the school in England has experienced since taking on the Ipod touches - this is filmed after about two weeks of using them - and how the students, who are elementary age, have taken to them. Perhaps this may be an alternative to laptops for students. Something to think about.

Science links

Hello everyone,

This week we look at links for the science guys. There are tons of interactive science websites out there. One of the best for science animations is called Freezeray. Here you can download free animations on a whole variety of science topics. Most of them are very good. The site organizes the resources into various categories including Physics, Biology, Technology, and Chemistry. They even have a fun place to practice Science-related literacy. The resources here include a hangman type game and various key-idea interactive resources.

As I mentioned previously, the interactive resources are downloadable and can be used freely for non-commercial purposes. The really good thing about these resources is that they are flash-based and can be imported into your Smart Notebook files.

Pro-d to go

This weeks entry is for those becoming familiar with SMART boards. Two educators, one out of the states and one from Winnipeg, have been creating Podcasts about SMART boards for a couple of years. They have done over 150 podcasts incorporating most school subjects such as science, math, socials, language arts, etc.

Each podcast is about 40 min. during which time they talk about ways to incorporate SMART boards into your classroom. They often invite teachers along who have used the boards and share their ideas. You can download the podcasts free of charge at their website and listen to them when you have the time. You can find their site at pdtogo.com/smart.

Some of you have been trying to leave comments on the blog. Unfortunately you need to have a google account in order to do that. To sign up, go to google and click down in the right hand side where it says "Create an account now". It takes only a minute and then you have access to Gmail and other Google programs. You can then leave a message on the blog for others to read as well.

The wonders of youtube

This week we look at the wonderful world of youtube. More than just a place to post your summer vacation videos, Youtube can be a wonderful educational tool if you know what to look for. Fortunately most of the work has been done by someone else.

One page in particular lists the 100 best videos for teachers. They are categorized by subjects and some are quite good. The link is included below

100 Best Youtube videos for teachers

Web 2.0 Highlights

Hello again,

Thanks to those of you who emailed and commented on what a good idea you thought this blog might be. If you want to leave a message, it is really easy to do. Click at the bottom where you see the 0 comments and a new window will open that will let you leave a comment. You can also email me as well at mike.archibald@sd6.bc.ca.

Last week I talked about Web 2.0 which is the new interactive wave of websites that are hitting the net. It's impossible to talk about them all as there are so many. What I thought I'd do is give you some of my favourites that you might incorporate into your own classroom.

English teachers, and just about anyone else will love this one. It is called "Wordle" and can be found at http://www.wordle.net/ This site lets you take a group of text and create beautiful word clouds with them. Click on the example below to see a good example.

Click above


The great thing is you can use any type of text, letters, numbers, whatever, to make these. It is simple and free. You can then get students to try and decipher what the main topic is about, highlight the most important parts, etc. Wordle removes the most common words like "the, an, and" and only leaves the main ideas. I've used it and the kids love them. You can print them off, use them on a Smart board and have kids make their own.

Another great site is http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/ For those of you with a Smart board or for those of you who would like to start using one, this site is a must. Its creator, Jim Hollis has created this blog with hundreds of links to interactive sites that you can use with or without a Smart board. Once again, any of these sites work with a computer and projector - Smart boards help to get students interacting with them at a different level. Jim is constantly updating the blog with new things he comes across and it is all archived so you can go back and look at his previous entries.


For math and science teachers, you'll love this one. Nikon, the camera company has created a wonderful site that deals with scale. You have to see it to fully appreciate it. You can get to it by following this link -
http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/index.htm

Check it out and let me know what you think. That's if for this week. Let me know if there is anything specific you'd like to know more about.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Golden Secondary School Technology Blog!

The purpose of this blog is to enable me (your learning coach) to be able to assist you with technology ideas. Also, it is a great forum to be able to share with you some of the amazing and, best of all, FREE sites on the web that can make your lessons come alive. All you need is a computer and projector to access them. Having a SMART board helps for the interactiveness but it is not necessary.

If there is something you'd like to know more about, please email me or leave a post on the blog below and I will do what I can to assist you.

So where do we start? With everyone teaching different subjects it is challenging to be able to give everyone what they specifically need. That's why your feedback and questions will become so important.

Having said that, the best place to start is to give you a sense of what is out there in the World Wide Web that can be used within your own classroom. The past couple of years has seen a huge explosion in what we call Web 2.0 applications. This refers to the next generation of web sites that are out there where interactivity becomes the norm. Instead of just reading for information, we are now able to interact with the websites in a variety of ways. Many of these sites are free - all you need to do is access the website. Whose making these things? No idea but there are a lot of them with hundreds more appearing every month.

Web 2.0 takes it one step further. The best place to find Web 2.0 sites is through the website http://www.go2web20.net/ Here you'll find an archive of hundreds of websites organzied by categories. Some of them are shown in the image above. Each website is briefly described in detail and then if you click on it, it will take you there to check it out. More are added to the list every week and as mentioned before, many are free to use. Take some time to see what's there and next week I'll post some of my favourite sites that I use in my classes.