learnscape.org

HippoCampus is an interesting resource for those who are looking for online content. I plan to give this a closer look this summer. They have quite a few science courses

If you are a science teacher, you must check this site out. It’s Awesome. My lesson for today called for  a transparency of the Rock Cycle. This Flash animation from Teachers’ Domain is incredible. Throughout the animation, you can click on active areas and see more details. For example, you can see an animation of granite “morphing” into Gneiss. If a picture paints a thousand words, how many words does a flash animation paint?

PS  (You may have to create a free login to see this)

I am in search of any resource that is free. Teaching Distance Learning classes is quirky. One of the twists is I have no budget. Let me correct myself. I can spend $150 on class supplies and get reimbursed for it. So here are some free virtual dissection sites. I am only listing sites that are interactive.

The Pig - Whitman College

Frog - Froguts will allow you to complete a simple dissection in the demo

Frog Dissection - University of Virginia

Cow’s Eye Dissection - by the Exploratorium

Visible Human Server - Ecole Polytechnic

The Whole Frog Project - Berkley

Sheep’s Brain - University of Scranton

The kids played bingo the other day. And of course the question comes up, what do I get for a bingo? This week the get a Bill Nye ecard. I am not sure this is a great motivator for bingo, but it is a fun way to reach out to students over a distance. I found this resource on Larry Ferlazzo’s site. He has a lot of resources that add interaction in the classroom that are worth taking a peek at.

Here’s a fun way to add interactive content to your class. The folks at wilderness classroom have done a good job of creating short activities that can help you integrate these activities into your daily lessons.  A good model. I’ll have to post more sites as a reference too(note).

I just realized that I have been sharing a lot of resources, but I haven’t talked about how my classes are going. It’s spring and everyone is looking forward to summer and break. We have about 6 weeks of class left. When I started the year, I was trying to explain to friends and family how you could teach science over video. I was trying to explain this myself too.

So my first concern was the curriculum. How do you choose activities that have enough interaction and activity, but can easily be done with a video conference?  I have spent a lot of time trying to find good lessons that suit themselves to this format. I feel like 1/2 of the lessons we have done will work with some tweaking.  I hope to be able to share my curriculum map with linked resources here by next year. This is still a work in progress.

I had no clue about how the structure of the class would work and how to incorporate the site teachers. I was a bit shocked getting thrown into everything this year, but looking back, I am glad that I did this cold. I am a very experiental learner. I have a few bruises, but here are few of the lessons I learned:

• modeling each assignment and task  is important: The students would rather do their work with you than independently. I asked them to do too much on their own at first.
• communication takes time: Pacing on a vido class is much different. You  have to provide more wait time. You also have to train the students at each site to be patient about the time delays themselves. The plus side is it gives students a longer time to think about the questions you ask. I am trying to come up with ways to use this as an advantage.
• Lessons take about 2 times longer to teach than I expect them too. Drats. I am interested in finding out how this is for other DL teachers. Do they find this to be true? I think this phenomena increases with the number of sites you have on at once too. Keeping everyone on the same page is harder with different physical sites.
• Visuals: Lots of visuals are helpful. I like them too because I hate to think of the video archive containing mostly my face talking :-).
• Team Teaching: Working with the site teachers is team teaching. Site teachers are a critical part of the class. I hope to develop a better team approach next year.

I feel like I have spent most of this year finding resources for lessons and curriculum and testing them. Next year I want to focus more on delivery style and student assessment. Finding good material should consume less of my time, but it will still need attention. At least I know what not to do next year and  I have a much better  outline.

Stay tuned!

Here are some Links for teaching about Maps

• USGS Intro to maps Lesson
• Topozone - You can find a small topo of your region
• This web site has examples of landforms found on topographic maps

I know there are a more great sites out there. Please email me with your resources. I am receiving the MapTEACH DVD for preview in a few weeks. I will update everyone on this.

Medical Mysteries was a hit with the kids. Very well organized and good support materials.

I just found some interesting resources for Moodle at the Taming Moodle Blog. Moodle Tutorials is a very practical resources for those who are Moodling. This is a Youtube for Moodle users. It’s pretty techie right now, but it’s a great idea and I hope more teachers join the community and share. So share your Moodle tutorial video, or create one!

I have the pleasure of spending the day with Shane Elliot, one of the developers of Moodle. Shane is sharing the new developments coming in Moodle. 1.9X and 2.0. Portfolios and improved Grade book features are two keys upgrades. But I think the most significant evolution is the social networking tools. Their will be tagging and blog features to facilitate this. There will also be a way for moodle “teachers” to connect with other moodle “teachers” and share content. This will open the door for collaboration with commercial content too.

But I am most excited about the prospect of teachers sharing curriculum. I am a huge fan of the whole creative commons philosophy. It makes so much sense for us to work together. This video is a great overview of the philosophy. We should be able to use this concept to collaborate and develop online curriculum. MIT is sharing a lot of their courses online. But the Open University has gone one step further and puts the units in Moodle online. You can download these and bring these into your own Moodle. I can see integrating some of the introductory units into my class an tweeking them. Of course I’ll share