Week 1 Blog 4 - Wk1 Show Me What You Know Project

I have decided to focus you this project on what I know about my thesis.  I am going to show and tell you all how I am going to implement my thesis into my real classroom. 

In order to more effectively communicate with my students I have created a Ning Social Network.  So far my students have been sharing laboratory data on the site and I have been blogging about classroom items.  I really like the fact that students have a place to share ideas and data from class.  In the past I would normally take 15 or so minutes out of class to share the data on the white board.  Using the Ning allows students to share the data more effectively and we don't loose 15 minutes of class time!  Most of my blogs have been antidotes about what I am noticing while marking certain assignments (for instance I created a blog about "how to create an 'A' worthy graph") and I also try to add blogs about cool new science research that I read.

The class Ning also has a section for sharing media.  I have used media often and prior to the Ning I would email students multiple emails per week with media rich attachments.  Now that I have an easy place to share, I have been consciously taking pictures during each laboratory that we do in class and posting the pictures on the Ning for my students to see.  I have overheard the students talking about the Ning and how cool it is to see themselves doing the lab.  (If any of you would like to do this, I highly suggest asking permission from your students' parents and your administration.  I was able to post pictures as long as the Ning was closed to outsiders and the pictures were not labeled with student names.)  I do backup all my pictures through Shutterfly and I have not started using flickr mostly because I don't want to share my pictures with the world. 

So far my students like this tool that we are using together.  Tonight I took my posts to another level.  I took the dive into Vodcasting tonight with my very first episode - An Overview of Glycolysis.

Prior to Vodcasting material, I would spend time searching the internet for copyright free pictures and save them into a folder.  Much of my data is organized in the following way: 

I would also create folders with names like Presentation (for my PowerPoint, Keynote, or Prezi), Video (for all embedded or non-embedded videos I want to show during the presentation), and other (for any additional information such as a word document of Web site resources and laboratories).  Even though I use iPhoto and iMovie to categorize my pictures and videos, I have continued to create folders with all my information too.  To be honest, I try to back up my curriculum material multiple items per month and through the use of folders I can easily share files between school and home.  All my updated versions of curriculum (including pictures and videos) are on my flash drive, which I carry with me at all times. 

Finally onto the Vodcast.  I used ScreenFlow to capture the online animation created by Dr. Graham Kent and I used my Snowflake microphone to record the voice over.  I added text boxes to the ScreenFlow document in order to emphasize the molecule "PGAL" since it did not appear in the animation.  After I edited in ScreenFlow I exported the document and then imported the new document into iMovie.  I have become quite proficient in iMovie and I quickly added a title page, transitions, and credits.  I finally exported the iMovie video and uploaded the video to YouTube.  Please see the embedded Vodcast below.  I hope you enjoy learning about Glycolysis!  (PS your body is actually going through Glycolysis right now - millions of times)





Resources

All pictures are personal property of K. Hirt (c) 2009

Video Podcast (Vodcast) is the personal property of K. Hirt, 2009 and can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdVYrUALI2A

The animation seen in the Vodcast is by Dr. Graham Kent and is cited within the video.  The original animation can be viewed at:  http://www.science.smith.edu/departments/Biology/Bio231/glycolysis.html