Giant Insects are Taking Over!

For whatever reason, insects have long been feared by people. They have ferocious looking , lots of legs, and many of them possess surprising, superhero-esque talents like flying, jumping, stinging, and lifting tremendous weights. Take these atributes and super-size them and you have something truly formidable! 

Over the last two years I have been developing a project that encourages students to explore the world of insects. The "hook" for this lesson is the creation of a movie trailer in the spirit of the man-eating monster movies of the 1950's. Two great examples are "Them" (the original giant insect movie) and "The Beginning of the End. 

Students select an insect from a list and create a movie plot centered on the actual abilities of the incect. The project is assembled using Microsoft's PhotoStory 3 which is available for download free of charge. I like PS3 because it is simple. It imports photographs (doesn't work with video) and allows students to do some simple editing and add the "Ken Burns Effect" to their images. They can also add a narration to their slides. PS3 allows some creativity without overwhelming students with editing and effects choices. 

The final projects that were turned in this year have been posted on youtube.com for viewing. My lesson still needs improvement as the final products are not as engaging as I had hoped. Next  year I will have students identify the components of a good movie trailer so that their trailers look and feel more like a professional movie trailer. If you have suggestions for improvement or extensions on this project, leave me a comment!

Writing in Three Dimensions!

I read the following quote in the April edition of the T.H.E. Journal. It was so insightful and contains so much truth that I am compelled to share it with others:

"We're not reading and writing across and down the page anymore. We're reading and writing in three dimensions: across, down, and out, the 'out' being hyperlinks. It's a whole different kind of literacy; it's a whole different kind of writing; it's a whole different kind of reading. It's a type of literacy that can't be done anywhere else but on the web." 

-James Yap, director of instructional technology and data management for Ramapo Central School District, Hillburn, NY. 

In "Facebook Training Wheels" by Jennifer Demski, T.H.E. Journal, April 2009

Youtube goes educational...the times, they are a changing!

On March 27, Youtube announced the creation of youtube.com/edu, a dedicated video channel for lectures and material from leading higher education institutions in the United States. Currently this channel hosts over 20,000 videos from prestigious schools such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, and the University of Michigan. Many of the videos posted are full length lectures from noteworthy professors including the ever popular physics lectures by Professor Walter Lewin of MIT.

Now your first reaction to this addition by Youtube might be, "it's about time that there is something useful and educational on youtube, I'm sick of watching song parodies sung by teenagers in the mirror or action shots of people being stupid." While this is a welcome fringe benefit, I would submit that there are two important trends to be considered:

1. Large companies are realizing that there is a huge demand for educational training and information. 

The two largest and most innovative companies that I can think of are Apple and Google. Apple introduced  iTuneU several years ago and it has grown rapidly. Apple recently introduced iTunesU K-12 to further expand their academic offerings. Google (which owns Youtube) is quickly becoming one of the most formidable companies in the world and one of Apple's greatest rivals. I am not surprised by the launch of Youtube/edu and expect to see a K-12 channel made available within the next year. 

2. Education is taking place OUTSIDE of the classroom more and more. People of all ages are learning through their iPods, web enabled phones, wikis, blogs, and other web 2.0 technologies. 

School buildings and classrooms are so 20th century! Online learning has increased exponentially in the past 10 years with no end in sight. I continue to stand by my prediction that online learning will become the dominant form of education within 20 years. 

Youtube/edu has some interesting content which may be of some use to K-12 teachers, however the addition of such a service signals a change in the winds of education. In the words of the great poet-songwriter, "The times, they are a changing!"

New Labcast Episodes Posted!

In December I was selected as one of a group of educators to create content for iTunesU K-12. I am in the process of creating 25 resources focused on high school biology labs that will be available for download free on iTunes.

Time to work on this project has come in bits and pieces in between my teaching responsibilities and quest for my elusive masters degree from Liberty University. I'm on spring break now, and managed to edit and post four episodes over the weekend. They aren't on iTunes yet (should be in the next week or so), but they are available on youtube. 

I hope that these labcasts will be of use to students and teachers all over the world. Science is meant to be experienced, not merely read about. I am excited to share some of the more engaging and effective labs that I have discovered with others. 

Materials related to these labs can be found on my wiki.

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Wikis in the Classroom

A wiki, from the Hawaiian word meaning "quick", is a web page that can be edited by anyone. The wiki concept has exploded in popularity primarily due to the following of wikipedia. The beautiful thing about a wiki is the collaboration that is encouraged. Wikis are a pool of knowledge to which people can continuously add. In the classroom, a wiki can be a innovative tool to encourage collaboration and synthesis between students.

This year I decided to try a wiki assignment in my high school biology classroom. We were studying genetics, so I told my students that they were to find a current news report related to an application of genetics and post a summary to the wiki that I had created (I am using Wikispaces). Additionally, students were to read and reply to the post of one of their fellow classmates. We did this for three weeks. Each week my students posted one original summary and one response.

I was pleased at the end result of the project. I asked my students what they thought of it and received mixed reviews. Many of them complained that it was a lot of work because they had to think (imagine that!). Others reported that they learned a lot and enjoyed using the wiki. From a teacher's perspective, I liked the collaboration that the wiki fostered and the real-world research that was done by the students was much more engaging and challenging than reading from a textbook and answering section review questions. You can create your own opinion of our project by viewing our wiki.

The wiki created an excellent forum for exploration and discovery. Some of my students found applications of genetics that were new to me! It was fun to watch the posting list grow throughout the week and to track the responses that were posted. Each week there was always one fascinating post that garnered lots of response. Some of the more interesting posts include:

• The Couch Potato Gene
• The Left Handed Gene
• Anti-Cancer Beer

During this assignment we did have a few problems:

• The school web filter blocked wikispaces, the domain we were using.
• Students were required to create an account, a process that took nearly an entire class period.
• Some students had trouble navigating the wiki.
• Some students were not familiar with the concept of creating a hyperlink or editing a web page.
• Some students had trouble remembering to post their assignment on time because it was a virtual assignment, not a paper assignment.

Several of the problems above can be solved by gradual and continued use of this technology. Once students are familiar with the process, they will feel more comfortable and enjoy the project. Wikis foster the higher order thinking skills that I am continually trying to build in my students. This has been confirmed by research completed by Wake Forest University. Because I believe the wiki is a helpful classroom tool I intend to expand my wiki use next year.

Dr. Ruth Reynard published a web article in the online version of the T.H.E Journal in which she examines some potential pitfalls of using wiki's in the classroom. These pitfalls pedagogical in nature rather than problems with the wiki technology itself. One of the main points Dr. Reynard makes is intentionality. Wiki assignments must utilize the primary values of the wiki technology (collaboration, and creativity) and have useful applications.

If you have had success in using a wiki in your classroom, please leave a comment with your tips and suggestions. If you haven't used a wiki before, I would encourage you to explore the technology-- it's a great classroom tool!