WolfQuest is an online game that will be great for Ecology. It can also be downloaded, which will work better for my low bandwidth sites. The game teaches students about the ecology of wolves in Yellowstone. It was developed by the Minnesota Zoo.
I have spent the last two weeks writing lesson plans for the University of Alaska Fairbank’s Lesson Plan Bank( All of these lessons are field tested tooI). I love the idea of teachers creating and sharing their work without copyrighting the material. It’s great to be a part of government funded programs that make materials available for free. There creative commons concept has taken hold on many blogs, wikis and websites were teachers are sharing. Curriki is a Global project that is attracting teachers who want to share their work too. There mission states:
Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of ‘curriculum’ and ‘wiki’ which is the technology we’re using to make education universally accessible.
My search of Curriki has found that the content which they call lessons, resemble digital digital text book sections. There are some activities and multimedia resources too. I see they have broad partnerships with many distance learning companies and organizations. The content here is much easier to access and use than Hippocampus. The site is evolving in quality and content quickly.
Have you ever wondered about permafrost? Do you have questions about where to find it and how it shapes the arctic? Ask Tunnel Man. He has a great web site from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Tunnel Man is monitoring permafrost at schools around Alask. You can find this data at his web site too.
There are good permafrost lesson plans at Arctic Climate Modeling Program site.
This summer, I have the opportunity to participate in the STEP (Science Teacher Education Program) program at UAF. I get to learn more about volcanoes, permafrost, paleontology, petroleum geology and more. The program also asks me to create lesson plans to incorporate this content into my class. Here is the link to the program and lessons
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:
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!
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