Round 2 - Final Reflection

We are at the end of the 17 Things to Chew On, Round 2 class. I really enjoyed the Master class that was offered this year. The best part was making 3 student assignments with different "Things" we learned last year. It really forced me to start applying what I learned. Although I loved many of the tools from last year, to be honest, I was lazy and hadn't planned on using any of them this year in class. After doing the Master class projects however, I have made some permanent changes to traditional projects that I like to assign every year. I also loved how the students liked learning new web tools. The positive feedback from them made it all worth it.

I personally believe that teachers should integrate a lot of technology into their classrooms. With all that is available, it is our job to educate our students and to prepare them for college. Some of the web 2.0 tools would be excellent things to use in college and in the future. Anyways, these tools are not difficult to understand and can be easily incorporated into any class.

If I had to describe my learning experience in one word it would be: innovative.

Round 2 - Thing 5

The final "thing" for this project was to explore Evernote. I really loved it! I've downloaded the app for my phone as well. Basically, Evernote allows you to organize websites, pictures, videos, etc. all in one place. It's a fantastic research tool! Also, it saves paper because you don't have to print all your sources. Simply highlight part of a website, right click, and save to Evernote. Once in Evernote, you can organize into specific folders. This would be awesome for students to use. So many classes have research projects attached to them, and students can save all their information and sync it with their cell phone app so they can access it at any time. If we can have Evernote installed on all the computers in the school, I think it would really be the next step to making our school paperless!

Round 2 - Thing 4

Thing 4 was iPadio, which is a phlogging tool (telephone blogging). It basically allows people to call a number, leave a message, and then the message is translated to a blog. I thought this would be really useful for my biology class. My students often have major issues pronouncing some of the complex vocabulary words, and if I could have recordings of me correctly saying the words, it would help the students a ton.

Here is the link to my channel:
http://www.ipadio.com/phlogs/KristiSterling

Master Class Project 3

My third and final project was with Animoto. Again, I used my Zoology class as the guinea pigs! The goal was for them to create a "Most Wanted" video about an invasive species. Their animoto was limited to 30 seconds (which was nice because it forced them to really focus on the important facts) and had to include pictures and text. The students really enjoyed using Animoto and I would use it again!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pevVmga2RQboxn_IspuO5g2FJz4lAfOA0Til1069FC8/edit?hl=en&authkey=CKLm6dUJ

Round 2 - Thing 3

Diigo was a pretty cool tool..I especially liked using it for articles and other reading material. Although I agree that it takes some good research knowledge in order to use this tool, juniors and seniors might be able to grasp the basics. For example, my senior zoology students are doing a research project right now and instead of printing the material from the websites, they could just highlight and bookmark them to save paper. I like that you can go back to your bookmarks later to review them. Perfect for a research project in progress.

Here are my annotated links:
http://diigo.com/0fcby
http://diigo.com/0fcbz

Master Class Project 2

I assigned aPrezi project for my Applied Zoology students. The goal is for them to research a specific aquatic animal of their choice and present their findings in a Prezi. I hoped to get great Prezis with lots of information, pictures, and maybe an embedded YouTube video. Just like with the webpages, my students blew me away! The presentations were amazing. I gave the students plenty of time to fine tune their presentations out of class, which really paid off. Some of them did things that I don't even know how to do on Prezi. Take a look at the examples, I put in the links to a few of the coolest ones.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y0GeDPcsfDhUunPAtjNviXZfJOYcBYMry-t4bMtePno/edit?hl=en&authkey=CPWbqc8H

Master Class Project 1

I completed my first project which was for my Applied Zoology students (seniors) to make a website through www.weebly.com. I decided to have my students make websites instead of making PowerPoint presentations or posters. The benefit was that I was able to hand out all the website addresses to the class and the students can go back to revisit the information when they are studying for the test.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MsEuf0w49FWw2N8NQGD4FQ9LxN37iTKpGPAfDGNr4VA/edit?hl=en&authkey=CN_VqeMJ