Science 2.0?

From Web 2.0 to Math 2.0 to Science 2.0 -- Dave Powers, at his Do the Math blog, speculates on what Science 2.0 might look like in the classroom. He focuses on Web 2.0 tools that can help create the Science 2.0 classroom.

In his post "What Science 2.0 Could Look Like," Powers lists several free Web 2.0 tools that can be useful in a science classroom and one tool that he says is "worth the money." Powers' list includes:

• Google Spreadsheets, "a free way to create a collaborative data sheet to record the results found during an experiment" (you can tour Google Documents to see all the features)
  
• Slideshare which allows you to put Keynote and PowerPoint presentations online
• Google homepage for organizing RSS feeds and online discussions
• Wikispaces for Educators to make private or public wikis and "to create an online textbook, an online lab book, or a website for students to share links and to conduct discussions"
• Vimeo, a video-hosting service for "publishing student videos, teacher tutorials, and other video files" and where viewers can comment on videos
  
• Jing Project to capture screenshots and record video
  
• Bubbl.us, a concept mapping application similar to Inspiration for "map[ping] out the connections between science concepts such as the food chain or the water cycle"
• Diigo, a social bookmarking tool that lets you add sticky notes or highlighting to shared articles and websites
• Create a Graph for graph-making
  

And Powers feels that ed.VoiceThread is worth the price, about $60 for an account that can accommodate up to 100 students. ed.VoiceThread allows for multimodal presentation of results, experiments, research, or new findings. Students can also discuss at ed.VoiceThread. ed.VoiceThread is the K-12 version of the free VoiceThreads.

With so many resources available on the Web for learning, sharing and using findings and information, hopefully more science teachers will turn to the Web and Web 2.0 tools to stimulate and motivate their middle schoolers.

SOURCE: "What Science 2.0 Could Look Like" 04/07/08
photo courtesy of Stephen Barnett, used under this Creative Commons license

Got Discovery Education Science for Middle School?

One of the bigger challenges in the classroom is engaging all the students -- the quick, the impatient, the deliberate and "slower," those who need extra repetition or personal attention, the bored, the disengaged, the social butterflies. Maya Payne Smart reports in Edutopia on Discovery Education Science for Middle School that combines e-books, video, virtual labs, glossaries and more in a service that can appeal to all your students at once.

Discovery Education Science for Middle School costs about $2000 a year per school. In that package are educator-vetted resources meant to capture the interest of "students with diverse interests, knowledge, aptitudes, and learning styles in the earth, life, and physical sciences." The service has adaptations that help slower learners or those with disabilities. For example, most e-books come with audio assistance so students can hear the text as well as see it, a boon for particular learners. Some of the available videos have closed-captioning. And for those students speeding through the middle school curriculum, the service offers additional resources. When students are absent, they can log in from their house and keep up with their lessons at their own pace. This Discovery service is also excellent for extended student absences. And your classes can stay on track if you have to miss a few days for illness or professional development.

Discovery Education Science also offers in one package a lot of resources that schools couldn't necessarily afford if acquired separately. Emma Haygood, who teaches science and technology at Berrien Springs Middle School in Michigan, said "The service offers a lot of interactive labs the kids can work on that I wouldn't otherwise be able to have in my classroom. And because it's on the computer, makes noise, and is interactive, they think it's the greatest thing." Since students work at their own pace, interruptions during the day, like special events or assemblies are less of a problem.

Tracie Belt, who teaches life science at Shorecrest Preparatory School in Florida, praised the multimodal offerings of Discovery Education Science. It's easier to blend art, language arts and social studies with science and technology with Discovery's interactive glossaries, image libraries and videos. With Discovery Education Science, all these resources are in a single, easily navigated space that lends itself not only to individualized and differentiated instruction but also to collaborative learning. The virtual labs, though no substitute for all hands-on learning, "still stimulate their thinking and allow them to test their predictions," Belt said.

Discovery Education Science for Middle School also includes online assessments and grading tools to help you track your students' progress and determine grades. If your school has the cash and is trying to move to more collaborative and project-based learning, you can find more information at the Discovery Education Science website. You can even sign up for a 30-day free trial to see how it works and if you're interested in using it with your students next year.

SOURCE: "Cooking Up a (Virtual) Laboratory: Discovery Education Science Delivers" 5/1/08
photo courtesy of TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³, used under this Creative Commons license

Susan Graham: Not Your Mother's Home Ec Teacher

When my mother went to high school, the class was called Home Economics and the goal was to make efficient, modern housewives out of every young woman in the room. By the time I went to high school, Home Economics was insulting and starting to be phased out. But as Family and Consumer Science (FACS), the course is more than sewing and dish cleaning -- it's history, social studies, Web 2.0 tools, economics, global studies and critical thinking, especially in the hands of Susan Graham, who has taught FACS for 25 years. She writes at A Place at the Table about an excellent FACS lesson centered on the labels inside her students' shirts.

For a week, Graham's eighth graders looked at the labels in their shirts and marked the country where each was made on a map using sticky notes. As the stickies accumulated in China and Central America, students were confronted with the question "Why?":

A quick look at the stickie-infested map makes it clear that clothing construction is concentrated in China and surrounding nations and in Central America. Why? Because clothing construction is low tech, requires minimal infrastructure, and the work force is usually women and children. A quick Internet search indicates that the average wage in many of these countries is less than $5,000 a year and that, in many cases, children younger than my students are working six-day weeks to produce those clothes.

Conversations and Internet searches about social justice, child labor, outsourcing, the U.S. trade deficit, and the economy in southwest Virginia, where they all live, followed. And the next day was spent on a sewing project that, Graham wrote, will help them

develop a greater appreciation in the future for the people who will construct the clothing they wear. They will be better consumers—more likely to look at quality of construction. But the most important thing they will learn is to manage their own time, set their own standards, assess their own work, live with their own mistakes. These are Career and Technical Education skills that will serve them for a lifetime.

Graham makes FACS about creating, thinking, learning and thriving. As one of her eighth graders said, "This is my favorite class because instead of telling us a bunch of stuff, you let us do stuff that makes us figure out why we need to know stuff."

SOURCE: "Don't Be Too Quick to Label Me!" 5/7/08
photo courtesy of M. Kelley, used under this Creative Commons license

LIVEbrary Open House - Podcast and Transcript

We had a successful Open House here at the LIVEbrary on Thursday, May 15. You can take the Open House Tour yourself any time by listening to the podcast and following the transcript below. Here's a link to the podcast:

Podcast of Annick LIVEbrary Open House
(WAV File, 30 minutes, audio only)

SUMMARY OF PODCAST

The podcast includes producer Steve O'Keefe explaining the mission of the LIVEbrary program. There's a quick recap of Season One, "Media Awareness," from Fall of 2007, and an introduction to Season Two, "World History," running through Spring of 2008.

The LIVEbrary On Demand program is described as an effort to put teachers in charge of the LIVEbrary by allowing them to select the software used, the authors they want to chat with, and the date and time of their chats. Each LIVEbrary On Demand online classroom visit includes a live chat with an author trained in online communications, a moderator, and a LIVEbrary Lesson Plan.

Charis Cotter, author of Kids Who Rule, described the LIVEbrary training she received and how she's already using those skills to reach out to classrooms she can't possibly visit in person.

Our blog editor, Dr. Dedra Johnson, is also on the podcast discussing her process for selecting stories for the blog. She highlights a few of her favorite posts.

Here's a transcript of the sites we visited during the LIVEbrary Open House. You can follow the links while listening to the podcast, if you like.

SITES VISITED DURING OPEN HOUSE

Sample LIVEbrary Blog Post
Copyright-Free Artwork Sources
http://annickpress.blogspot.com/2008/05/5-15copyright-and-hassle-free-images.html

Sample LIVEbrary Lesson Plan
for Shari Graydon's book, Made You Look
Web Version: http://annickpress.blogspot.com/2007/11/livebrary-lesson-plan-4-made-you-look.html
PDF version: http://www.annickpress.com/Livebrary/LessonPlan4.pdf

Skype Chat Transcript for Made You Look with Shari Graydon
http://www.authorviews.com/authors/annick/transcript_week4.html

The Annick LIVEbrary Web Site
http://www.annickpress.com/Livebrary/

List of Books, Authors, and Lesson Plans in LIVEbrary On Demand
http://www.annickpress.com/Livebrary/Livebrary%20on%20Demand.html

List of Books & Authors for Fall 2008 (Science) and Spring 2009 (Health)
http://www.annickpress.com/Livebrary/future.html

Google "LIVEbrary" to see News Coverage, Linkage, and Spread of Program
Web Search: http://www.google.com/search?q=livebrary
Blog Search: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=livebrary

What's Out There Anyway?: techLearning's Site of the Day

techLearning has an excellent series, Site of the Day, that highlights an educational web site every day. Websites are submitted and presented with a description, the name of the author or publisher, tips on the content of the site and appropriate grade levels. You can check in daily or search the archives. Each Site of the Day story is brief, and you'll need to try out the sites yourself, but the features give a great peek at some of the gems in the huge sea of the Web.

Thursday's Site of the Day was Operation: Heart Transplant, an interactive site from NOVA. Students can engage in a virtual heart transplant, going through 190 steps, and also can learn more about the history of heart transplants. The site has lesson plans, too. Operation: Heart Transplant is suitable for middle and high school students. On Wednesday, the site of the day, submitted by Amanda Barton, was My Very Own Pizza, published by the Dairy Council of California. As the description says, the site "never once uses these important words: calories, carbohydrates, fats, saturated fats, fat-grams, etc. A clever teacher might use this fact to spark some interesting class discussions about how we are manipulated as consumers and/or about the growing problem of childhood obesity." The site is appropriate for all grade levels.

Dynamic Earth Interactives, featured on Tuesday, lets users poke around the inner structure of our plant and explore plate tectonics and processes like earthquakes and volcanoes. The site has excellent graphics and some critical-thinking activities. And the week stated with The Circus in America, also appropriate for middle and high school. The Circus in America has biographical information, pictures and audio dating from pre-1793 to 1940. The author is Lavahn Hoh at the University of Virginia.

Other Sites of the Day include The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Thomas Jefferson, Vincent van Gogh, BAM! Body and Mind: Ad Decoder, and guides on writing and grammar. It's easy to get a quick overview of a site and its offerings. Know any fabulous websites you've used with your middle schoolers? Check out the criteria for selection and then click "Submit your favorite Web Site."

SOURCE: "techLearning: Site of the Day" 5/15/08
photo courtesy of eschipul, used under this Creative Commons license

Copyright- and Hassle-Free Images

Recently, a picture on this blog had to be removed. It was found through a Creative Commons search and carried permission for re-use. It turned out that the person who posted the image and labeled it for others to use didn't own the image.

The owner contacted this blog and the picture was removed, then replaced. When pulling together a class project, blog, wiki, video or Ning, it is important to not violate owner's rights or copyrights -- it can cause trouble for you and your students down the road. Errors are usually easy to fix but with a little work, you can avoid the hassle by directing your students and yourself to sites that have worry-free images for you to use.

There are dozens of sources for copyright-free images on the Web, some just for educators, some focused on particular image types or disciplines. Take a look at these sites for starters:

• Flickr's Creative Commons pool is probably the best known source for images. Photographers allow varying levels of use of their images. Often, you can use an image as long as you give credit to the photographer and are not earning money with the image. Using the advanced search can help you find images that are free to use with proper credit.
  

• Also pretty well known is Creative Commons search which taps Flickr, Google, Yahoo and other portals for images that have varying Creative Commons licenses. This search casts an even wider net than the Flickr pool, above.

• Pics4Learning has copyright-free images in 48 different categories, ranging from American Sign Language to fractals to tools and machinery. The images in Pics4Learning have been donated by educators, students and photographers. It was created as part of the Partners in Education program by Tech4Learning, and the Orange County Public Schools Technology Development Unit.

• OpenPhoto also has a great collection of free stock images. You can browse categories or use the search engine to find specific types of images.

• U.S. Government Photos and Graphics at USA.gov has images and graphics that can be used and reproduced without permission. Look carefully at your chosen image, though; some images are licenced. The images come from government departments like Agriculture, Customs, Defense, NASA and the Indian Health Service.
  

• Wikimedia Commons has over 2 million "freely usable" images, video files and audio files. You can search by type of file or browse categories. Always check the copyright or Creative Commons license before using any image.

• The Library of Congress American Memory collection is a great source of historical images but you must be careful about copyrights. Some images are free to use while others can only be used with the copyright owner's permission and possible fees. There is an advertising category that has great images for media literacy activities.

This wiki with a really long title has an enormous list of links for pages that offer images: Copyright-Friendly and Copyleft Images and Sound (Mostly!) for Use in Media Projects and Web Pages, Blogs, Wikis, etc.

Read carefully, and pick wisely, and be prepared for mistakes made by others or unclear permissions. In those cases, removing the copyrighted image is the best fix. If you are contacted by the owner of an image about a blog, wiki or student project, the same policy applies -- defer to the copyright owner and remove and/or replace the image. With so many options available, you and your students have plenty of image choices free of charge and worries.

SOURCE: "Copyright-Friendly and Copyleft Images and Sound (Mostly!) for Use in Media Projects and Web Pages, Blogs, Wikis, etc." 5/2008
photo courtesy of openDemocracy, used under this Creative Commons license

More Nings for Students and Educators

At the Social Networks in Education wiki, you can find dozens of Nings for particular subjects, professional development, French and Spanish, and classroom networks. Many of these Nings connect students globally and can be great tools for your middle schoolers. Or you can modify them to fit your plans and students, find some collaborators, or be inspired to change or add to some of your classroom practices.

You can find all kinds of Nings, and some non-Ning networks, on the page. Some of the Nings made expressly to connect students and teachers globally are listed below:

• FieldFindr aims to connect global volunteers with teachers and their students. Teachers can post looking for volunteers or people who have expert knowledge to enrich their classes' study of immigration, peace studies, playgrounds, and the Holocaust. Teachers can also search for other collaborators through posted comments.

• The International Classroom, a social network created specifically for students ages 12-14 to be able to safely connect and share their experiences and cultures, and The French Connection, a Ning linking sixth-grade classes in the U.S. and France for French language study, are both closed. You must be invited to participate or learn more.

• Rolling on the River is centered around the study of rivers and other bodies of water. It is a "a resource for global collaboration" where users can "[s]hare information, find global partners, and learn more about rivers, lakes, and oceans through participation and collaboration." An interdisciplinary exhibit can be seen at the Apple Learning Exchange. Teachers also share web resources and search for collaborators on specific water studies projects.

• Museums and Students offers a portal to connect students with museums, their staff, and artists. It exploits one of the great aspects of Nings--the multimedia nature of interaction. Museums and Students has videos of artists discussing their works and processes, links for a podcast from the Columbia Museum of Art and other art-related podcasts, notices of art-education events and professional development opportunities, additional groups that focus on particular museums or topics, and forums on museums' online presence and the value of virtual tours.

Most of what you'll find on the wiki are class Nings -- many private -- and social networks for teachers looking for more information or colleague interaction and support as they use or learn to integrate Web 2.0 tools into their teaching and disciplines. As we slide all too quickly into summer, this wiki can be a great resource for new ideas, new friends, and inspiration for next year and beyond.

SOURCE: "Social Networks in Education" 2008
photo courtesy of openDemocracy, used under this Creative Commons license

NASA Connect

Another great, free program from NASA is NASA Connect, a series of math, science and technology programs made just for students in grades 6-8. Math, science and technology are blended and directly related to work done at NASA by researchers.

NASA Connect offers a series of programs each year that have three different parts:

1. a thirty-minute television broadcast that your students can watch live or that can be recorded for later use
2. a hands-on activity
3. and an interactive web activity to promote use of technology on your classroom.

All three components are created to work together to show how math, science and technology are combined in real-life situations and research. NASA Connect shows are available on 130+ PBS stations, Channel One, and some cable access channels. A search box at the NASA Connect site can help you find your local station. The shows are also available online at NASA's Learning Technologies Channel. Video copies can be ordered from the NASA Educator Resource Center in your state or the NASA Central Operation of Resources for Educators. You can copy and show the shows multiple times as long as it is strictly for educational or classroom use.

NASA Connect is produced by the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA and is endorsed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). As with many NASA educational programs and initiatives, the main goal of NASA Connect is to "establish a 'connection' between the mathematics, science, and technology concepts taught in the classroom and the mathematics, science, and technology used everyday by NASA researchers."

Once you register, you have access to the PDFs which describe the hands-on activities for each unit. Unfortunately, the site shows no new programs since April 2006 but the archives are available of past programs such as "Breaking Barriers: Solving Linear Equations©," "Team Extreme: The Statistics of Success©," and "The Right Ratio of Rest: Proportional Reasoning©." Hopefully, new programs are in the pipeline.

SOURCE: "About: NASA Connect" 2007
photo courtesy of Gaetan Lee, used under this Creative Commons license

Using VoiceThreads with Bill Ferriter

Laila Weir writes in Edutopia on sixth-grade language arts and social studies teacher Bill Ferriter and his use of VoiceThreads with his students at Salem Middle School in North Carolina. Ferriter had a hunch it would work since his students already spent time online outside the classroom. With VoiceThreads, he has been able to extend learning and interaction beyond the classroom walls and regular school hours.

VoiceThreads are "interactive media albums" that contain images, documents or videos that viewers can comment on in one of three ways: by typing a comment, recording an audio or video response, or drawing directly on the image, document or video. VoiceThread is easy to learn and use, a boon for teachers new to Web 2.0 tools and for students who may have varying levels of experience with technology. (A secure site for teachers and students, Ed.VoiceThread, has a fee-based service but one that "should pass even stringent school Web filters.")

Ferriter started small, posting VoiceThreads on a number of topics connected to classroom work and letting students respond voluntarily. He got so many responses, he knew he was onto something. Students are more likely to participate in a digital discussion where shyness and fears of embarrassment, very strong in middle school, are eliminated by nature. Students can also think ahead of time about their responses, something that isn't usually possible in an in-class discussion.

Students can participate in multiple conversations, eliminating another in-class discussion problem according to Ferriter: "In a classroom conversation, there's generally one strand of conversation going at any one time, and if you're bored by that particular strand, you're completely disengaged." One VoiceThread on Darfur elicited thoughtful responses and a lot of participation--Ferriter got over 60 comments from 36 of his 53 students.

The VoiceThread site has great tutorials to get you and students started. VoiceThreads can be private or published and can be embedded in a class or teacher website. Because you can use a telephone to leave an audio response, the need for microphones or webcams are eliminated for students or schools that don't have them. And this also makes the discussion accessible to students of varying levels of ability and technological experience. Ferriter has a wiki that has examples of VoiceThreads and lots of great tips for getting started.

SOURCE: "VoiceThreads: Extending the Classroom with Interactive Multimedia Albums" 04/16/08
photo: screencapture of a VoiceThread tutorial

Immerse, Connect, Understand and Excel with NBC's iCue

NBC News has created a free online learning community aimed at students 13 and up called iCue, which stands for "Immerse, Connect, Understand, Excel." Michele Greppi reports in TV Week that iCue has games, "peer talk," and video in a secure environment.

The Cue Card is central to iCue. A Cue Card is

a video player, flash card, note-taking tool, and trading card all rolled into one. With the patented 'flip card' technology, you can watch a streaming video from NBC News, and then 'flip' the card over for additional information from our producers. You can also jot down your own notes, add your own tags, and organize your cards in color-coded categories for easy study. Plus, Cue Cards can be shared with your friends and used in games and activities.

iCue also promises discussion forums, "hundreds" of current and historic news videos, daily challenge questions, essay challenges, and a Student Center that offers non-academic activities. The site is free to use and paid for by advertising. iCue debuted May 1 with a focus on election coverage. There are plan to create collections of resources for U.S. history, U.S. government and politics, and English language and composition, modeled after AP course outlines. The resources themselves, though, can be used to enrich or support non-AP classes.

The site was created based on research from the MIT Education Arcade. MIT will conduct a study on iCue's effectiveness at building critical thinking and communication skills in students. It will be interesting to see how helpful or effective iCue is as a service. Even so, free access to NBC news videos, past and present, can be helpful in any middle school social studies course.

SOURCE: "NBC News Launches iCue for Students" 05/05/08
SOURCE: "iCue FAQ" 2008
photo: screencapture of the iCue homepage