Celebrating Kansas Voices is a project to get more of the unheard stories told. I chose to interview my mother and her account of the 1966 tornado that hit Topeka. In the video, you’ll hear about her story and about a family that survived in the midst of a disaster. I chose to use this story because it has been very close to my mom and she really enjoys telling the story.
To create this video, I used Voice Record Pro and iMovie. Voice Record Pro was free, iMovie is about $4.49. VRP was very easy to use, very straightforward and versatile. iMovie, on the other hand, was frustrating. I had a very difficult time finding out how to do specific functions and actually had to quit and come back to it a few times out of frustration.
Again, I’m looking at some iTunes U resources. This time, I’m looking at the Puppet Pals HD course. This resource allows for teachers to have a vast wealth of apps available for their use in the classroom. The one I’m focusing on focuses on ages “5-14+.”
When opening iTunes U, it can be found under Educators, and then Using Apps in the Classroom. There are 18 courses available, ranging from Hopscotch, toPuppet Pals HD, to Scoodle Jam. Each course has their own unique twist on how to use apps in the classroom.
When you download it, it shows up in your iBooks app. You can then open the iBook for your selected course, in my case Puppet Pals HD, and then start exploring the depths of activities they include. Included are many activities for varying ages, including interviews with famous people, or translating things.
Today I’m looking at some iTunes U courses. One in particular that caught my interest is one focused on Middle School Science, looking at climate change, titled “Climate Change Affects Everyone.” I found this in the Inspiring Ideas for Teachers area of the iTunes U courses, which can be found under the “educators” heading on the app. In total, there are 30 courses, ranging from Communication in 21c, to 3-D Geometry Unit, to Building Self-Advocacy.
Again, I looked at Climate Change Affects Everyone. The course is kind of cool, it comes with a collection of books, apps, documents, images, and web links that would be helpful in teaching the lesson. It gives relevant apps that can be really cool in helping students understand the material better. Basically, the course gives the educator everything that they would need in order to successfully teach about climate change.
One Best Thing is a huge iBook series that uses over 100 iBooks to share small lesson ideas or education processes that might be useful to teachers. They have some ranging from history lessons to science help, but I wanted to look at one that was a little more… unusual. I looked at a video looking at the process of Mystery Skype, or using Skype to have your students communicate with students around the world.
The idea is to allow your students to ask questions to this other person in some mysterious place so that they can get a better idea of where it is. The goal is to find out where they are without directly asking them. This could be really cool for a geography lesson! Students could get real exposure to these other parts of the world. I remember, back in middle school, learning about these other countries. I got the country Botswana to study. I don’t remember where it was, I only remember what the flag looked like. Could this technique help students with their long term memory of where these countries are? I think so.
The iBook claims that these calls can last anywhere from 40 to 45 minutes. Now, that seems a little long to me, but it could be accurate and could be really cool to see what kinds of questions the students ask and to see what they learn about the other country.
The blog I’m looking at today, thinkthankthunk, is astounding to me. It’s written by Shawn Cornally, a physics, math, and programming teacher in Iowa. The material in his blog is extremely relevant and interesting to read about. He’s often found criticizing modern education, especially the 8 hour school days. He focuses on competency-based education, Iowa BIG.
I’ve really enjoyed reading the blog. Most of the blogs that I’ve been reading through have not been interesting to me, I only have to sound interested in it. If you’re going through my posts and you want to read a good blog, this is it. Shawn looks into what makes a teacher interesting. He’s focused on the good things, not the fluff of education. He’s not saying that you need this and this and this in order to improve your education, he’s saying that we need to look at what we’re teaching and how we’re teaching it.
He also puts a lot of thought into standards based grading. which is “is a technique devoted to giving students formative control over their own progress.” I’m pretty excited to have found this blog and I hope that you enjoy it too.
sciencegeekgirl is a blog looking at the current Physics Education Research happening in American right now. The blog is run byStephanie Chasteen, an educator in Boulder, CO. In fact, she holds a PhD in Physics.
CU Boulder is very famous in the physics community for utilizing what are called tutorials. In one blog post, Stephanie reflects on these tutorials as well as their creator, Stephen Pollock. She works with a website calledPhysPort.org, which is a website devoted to helping physics educator across the country. This website is maintained by PER’ers all over the US, including a university very close to home: Kansas State.
I am personally very interested in this blog. It is extremely relevant for physics education, primarily algebra and calculus based physics.
Adobe Slateis a free app developed by Adobe to help tell stories better. It can be used both by educational professionals and the every day person. It’s a very versatile app that allows for a lot of creativity in creating a storyboard. I chose to develop a story based on circuits.
The app works as advertised. Adobe claims that this will “make your message stand out” and it truly does. It allows for an incredible amount of creativity, depending on how much time you want to invest in it. I could see this being used in any discipline of education. Students could use it to share presentations with the teacher, the teacher could use it to organize material for a student to understand it better. It’s extremely versatile. You can see mine here.
It appears that the app is fairly new to the Adobe collection, so I can see it becoming a paid for app in the near future.
Using the Showme app, I was able to create a whiteboard screencast about Newton’s 2nd Law. The app is free and easy to use. You can use undo features and change the pen color with ease. I couldn’t find a way to re-record my voice though, so I had to go with a first take. As far as tutorials go, I used this one, from iPadagogy.
Again, the app was easy to use. I looked through a few apps, but this one appeared to be the most useful for my tastes. It was relatively simple in design. All I wanted was to be able to record my voice and use a white background with some different colors, and I got exactly that. I want to be able to record lessons like this, similar to Khan academy or Brant Carlson at Carthage College, whose videos I have used countless times.
Tech Edge uses iTunes and Youtube to share numerous videos relevant to teaching using the iPad. They review loads of apps, including things like an app to track motion or to look at the way our solar system works. This could be incredibly valuable to a teacher, especially an elementary school teacher who might have to teach multiple disciplines and needs to find multiple videos for different content areas. I, however, will not be teaching elementary school, so I will be looking at a relevant subset of their videos. I was surprised at the amount of content that they covered. The most useful app for my teaching purposes, one that you can find in more detail below, allows for students to use motion trackers, just like Vernier supplies to schools. However, this only requires your iPad, not a bunch of equipment!
In their Space episode, they introduced an app called Solar Walk.
Solar Walk is great for only $2.99! It’s useful because it allows for the user to interact with what is in space, including satellites and moons. This is a great resource for introducing students to what is out there in space. It also allows for students to learn more about what they are viewing. By giving students this information, it feeds their natural curiosity.
They also have an episode about video physics. This was was very interesting to me. Developed by Vernier, the app Video Physics allows for video analysis of physical concepts.
This is awesome for only $4.99! You can use preloaded videos to gather important data and analyze it. This could help students understand how these physics concepts, such as forces, relate to real life. In fact, this is nearly exactly what we do in labs, only simpler and easier for the student to use.
Lastly, in their Science Fun video, they look at the app DIY Sun Science, looking at light and it’s related concepts.
This app is free! They use real data from almost live time to allow students to analyze the sun. You can look at different wavelengths using different filters to look at interesting features about the sun. The app helps tell you what you’re looking at to reduce confusion for students as well. Very cool!
I’ve seen iMovie around for quite a while, but I’ve never given it any attention. Creating a trailer for a movie is easy because they give you several templates to work with. I started with the idea of using the “forces” of good and evil and showing some physics-y stuff with it, but that got a little difficult trying to find the right photos or videos for that, so I just stuck with something that was fun. I chose a Star Wars theme just for the novelty of it. They can use the “force” to battle each other. You can see my videohere or below.
