This is one of those weird fungi you find on dead trees. It looks like someone threw butter on the tree and it went "splat!" Can you name it, or explain to me how it gets its food? Remember, extra credit is a good thing!

Everyone's Blue

Deep Sea Weirdness

So, I have been out of the blogging for a while. Here's something new.
WHAT ON EARTH, or under the sea, are these things?! I actually don't know. They look like some kind of polyp to me. That would imply they are cnidarian in origin. That means something like a jellyfish, anemone or a coral type organism. What do you think?

The Concept of Studying

OK, here's the idea: students are supposed to understand that they need to study new information they get in class. In middle school as teachers we had to tell our students to go home and study or to read over their class notes. Somehow that concept has not been fully in-grained into many students behavioral patterns. I am finding that it is not a common practise by high school students. No one seems to just study anymore!!!

I know I have told many a middle school class to go home and study their notes. I can even here other teachers saying to their students, your homework tonight is to study your notes!!

How do I know this is not happening? Well, I have asked them. So, my new mission to to try to get at least my students into the concept of studying! Wish me luck!

Mutant Frogs

Who says living near toxic waste is safe???!!! Check out the frogs in this picture. What on earth is wrong with their legs!?! Amphibians are easy species to study for mutations due to environmental changes. They reproduce quickly and with many offspring per mating. All they need is a little water (their eggs dry out without it) and they are good to go. Can you thing of any other creatures that might be good to study mutations due to changes in the environment?

Is This For Real?

This photograph is showing a man made island some where on our lovely planet. Do you think that this is for real or is it photo shop? Let me know what you think.

Any Guesses?

This specimen was found growing in the mulch on the side of my sister's yard in northern New Jersey. The only other thing near it were some pine trees. If you click on the photo it will pop up larger so it can be seen clearer. Anyone have a guess what it is? If you're specific, you get credit!!

A Place Called Earth

This photograph always makes me wish science fiction stories were real. I would love to be able to hop into my ship an go visit Jupiter's moons or another system half way across the galaxy! I wonder if it will ever happen? The imagination is about the things we just don't know enough to do....YET!

Too Cute

Optical Mania

Ok, this is enough to make anyone cross eyed! Just stare at it long enough and watch it move!

Loki's Castle

It is just amazing that people continue to find new things on our planet. Take Loki's Castle for instance. Deep in the Northern Atlantic Ocean scientists have discovered another set of black smokers. These are in an area on the mid Atlantic Ridge where vents release super heated chemicals into the ocean. The cool thing here is that they are in a relatively stable area, they are huge and they may be the oldest of such formations to be found. I wonder what kinds of creatures they will discover here and if this deep sea ecosystem will be any different from the others previously discovered. Only time will tell!

Thoughts

This was sent to me in one of those chain emails a while back... but I loved it so I kept it and now I need to share it. Its a poem Audrey Hepburn wrote when asked to share her "beauty tips." It was read at her funeral years later.
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others.

Class Posting

Last Class Blog

And thus I am done! I have transferred a copy of my lesson to the class wiki; I can’t wait to use it this year in class!!! I have also started a bunch of other lessons that I plan to finish during the next two weeks. There’s so much I want to do with everything I have learned from the Master (a.k.a. Barb)!
I did run into difficulty trying to load the lesson onto the wiki. Turns out all the cool things I do with word to make my lesson look good did not load correctly. I think I cut and pasted it nine times before it looked ok and flowed properly on the page. Two column layouts don’t seem to work… along with some other things. Anywho, it is done and definitely useable. I wonder if we will ever really be a computer a kid school?! I would love that! Just think of all we have learned and what we can do with it everyday in class! The kids would love it!!

Magazine Covers Unlimited

Well, I love yet another internet tool. I think I may have to find a way to use the magazine cover in my lesson plan. I must think!

Warholizer

I was just playing with Flickr Toys and this one caught my eye. What will they come up with next?!

Arctic Ice Shelf Break-up

While I am not one to subscribe to the theory that we can actually do anything about global warming, I do find it interesting to watch. This is a satellite image of Very large hunks of ice breaking of one of the Arctic shelves. The total breakage was about 8 square miles of ice sheets as can be seen in the photo. This happened in the North Atlantic and more of the same shelf, the Ward Hill Island shelf, may be breaking off soon.

I love satellites!

Cosmiclog link up

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/31/1237857.aspx
Paste this link to view the eclipse in China.

Sign For The 1st Day of Class

YouTube & Podcasts & ebooks

First, YouTube is a pretty cool site. You do have to watch it though. Some of the stuff I came across was a bit risque and so not appropriate for school kids. I can't believe some of the stuff they let people post. But, the education stuff is great! I now have a bunch more stuff to add to my powerpoint lectures for class. My sister has been watching her spanish soaps on YouTube for a couple of months now. I love that you can find things in other languages too.

The podcasts have some merit too. I know mugglenet is pretty popular with the Harry Potter crowd! But, I found a few of good ones on global warming, nature, and animals. My favorite is called Nature and I had a great time learning about the mapping of the platypus genome. There were some pretty technical ones that I had trouble keeping up with but most were interesting.

And then there were the ebook sites. This will be a good resource for online research for kids who can't get to the library. I was not able to find anything for leisure reading but I did find textbooks and other types of books I can use for my classes. And yet again, more information that I need to keep up with. Talk about being web-aware! TTFN

DNA Wrapping

Cool Wee Beasties

WEEK 8

Well, well, well.... so many tools, so little time. I absolutely adore the library thing web site. I started adding my collection and I still have so much to add. This I will definitely use!!!! I am often in Barnes & Noble and Borders looking for new books to read by my favorite authors and others. There are times that I sit there and wonder "have I read this one already? Did I get it at the library or did I buy it?" and so on. Now I will be able to get my book list on my mobile phone and know for sure!!! Yipee!
As for Zoho writer, is isn't too terrible either. It will be a good offering for the students who don't have compatible word processors on their computers. I was able to upload some of my old files that my present Word could not. I can now convert from word to works to publisher on zoho with no problem what so ever. That's pretty damn useful. I think I will add a link on my Moodle site so the kids in my classes can get it if necessary. And, I am so jazzed about google sites. I didn't realize it was so easy to make my own site. This is definitely something I will use. As the quote..."I have got to get me one of these!" says, I will definitely be using this one. Hence the ...so many tools, so little time comment!

Wikis

Ok, so now I'm probably going to have to set up a Wiki. Honestly, I am being consumed by the web!! As I was reviewing the sites we were given, I got lost again. There are sooooooo many cool things out there. I liked the GoAPES wiki from the edublog site. I am going to have to keep my eye on that, especially if I get to teach environmental science in the future. I got to tooling around and found so many teachers using wikis for their classes. There were kids sites, and science sites, and economic sites; high school level sites, middle school level sites and college level sites! Just YIKES! Here I go again. I can definitely see myself using a wiki for a class project site. Think about how you can get a collection of projects from a number of classes all on one wiki. What a lovely idea. I am going to need to be a Superman to keep up with all this stuff:)

del.icio.us & technorati

Social bookmarking is such a wonderful tool. Now I can access all my favorites from any computer. I signed up for del.icio.us because that site seemed pretty useful. While I was searching around on these sites, I noticed that I can use a bunch of other peoples info which can, if used properly, save me some search time.

I was not too impressed with technorati. It seems to be a lot of work to search out useful information. The site itself was too, well, boring. That's all there is.

The Future and Web 2.0

Can I just say...WOW! The two articles we had to read on the future and Web 2.0 had so much to say. They are like an epiphany of the future of web based learning. There were just so many concepts introduced in these two articles.. They also made me realize that taking this course was an excellent idea!!

Here are a few thoughts I would like to pursue:

1. I am going to have to become a lurker. Actually, this course is helping with that. I find myself lurking about all kinds of web sites.

2. We are becoming "engulfed" by the amount of information available. Weeding out the excess is going to be a challenge for my students and myself.

3. I especially like Steve Hargadon's comment "now we have to teach them to create appropriate content." I think this will be very important in the future.

4. All those classes stressing the importance of differentiated instruction will totally come into play while using web based learning. This can only benefit our students in the long run.

5. And, connections in real time online will be very useful to the future of education!

Now I just have to do my weeding and figure out what I can use to help my students in this new teaching/classroom environment.

`Web 2.0 Choices

OK, as I was going through the award winners for Web 2.0, I came across several that I already use. For example, craig's list, which is a cool place to get great deals on just about anything. As for new ones that can be used in class by my students or I, comiqs was one. This one allows the user to create comic strips which will be good to show changes in a situation. Galaxiki was just cool and if I was still teaching middle school science, having kids create and share their own solar systems is a cool way to learn about space. Wufoo I will definitely use for the forms and surveys. Yourminis.com should be fun to use too.

As for personal stuff, my sister-in-law mentioned stumble to me the other day. Needless to say, I added that to my toolbar. It can be pretty addicting though. I find myself saying just one more stumble and then I keep going. Since it is personalized to a person's own tastes and interests, you never know what's coming next. And then there is cocktail builder! What a cool idea! And so I am off to ... stumble? build a cocktail? create a new solar system?....TTFN

Scroll Search - Nature Places

So, I made my scroll search using a bunch of cool sites from my favorites on msn. I figured out how to get to it from my blog page, but I can't figure out how to link it so my students can use it too. This will be a great idea so I can access my favs from other computers, but it doesn't seem all that useful for classes. I will just have to see. TTFN

The Mosaic

The above is a mosaic I created using Big Huge Labs. I tried using the comic strip generator but was unable to finish it. I kept having a problem and msn kept shutting down when I tried to use it. So I tried something else. There is alot of cool stuff on the BHL website. I know I can find many uses for my students. Maybe I had better start booking lab time for my classes now! I can see me using so much of this stuff in my classroom. TTFN

The RSS: Relatively Serious Scanning

OK, I just signed up for RSS feeds on Google Reader. May I just say... there is way too much information to be had! In time I should be able to consolidate what I need and thank the gods for the star feature in Google Reader. At least I can keep track of the information I want to access again with out too much trouble. And, if I am searching elsewhere, all I have to do is look for the little icons that let me link up to my reader with anything new I find. Does anyone have any good educator sites I can add to my feed list?

Something Cool

Hey, are these not the coolest bugs, excuse me, insects you've ever seen?!

Flickr Fun

Ok, I went to flickr and had so much fun that I made my own account. As I was perusing the site, I couldn't believe the images I was seeing. So many people have talent. But, some of the stuff was kinda boring. Vacation photos of your boyfriend just didn't do it for me.

I really liked the nature photos (science teacher - sorry) and the scenery. It is like going places from the comfort of your computer. Some of the pictures I found were parts of things like plants, etc. They were very arty and could be used in a number of ways. Like the picture above. If you don't know what you're looking at, its hard to tell what it is. Can you Guess?

Oh, and another thing, it made me realize that I need more practice with my own photos. Or maybe a better camera with zoom!

TTFN

Trading Cards

OK, I just used Big Huge labs trading card creator. Could anything be easier?! I am thinking that this will be an excellent way to introduce The 5-6 Kingdoms to my students. They can make their own cards on each of the phyla present on our world today. The site also has other types of thgings to create with and I know my kids...oops, students, will love this. This was fun. The picture was one I took on vacation - gotta love how nothing runs away in Florida. I get great photos down there.

OMG the Avatar

CAN I just say, Yahoo has some pretty cool stuff. The avatar was awfully fun to create. I can see myself changing it again and again as the occasion warrants. This is the second email adress I have had to make for this course though. Like I don't have enough to remember!! :) TTFN

The Beginning

Welcome to my very first real blog. That sounds so strange. Who ever heard of blogging 5 years ago? As I am doing this for a class I have decided to set this up for my students (and anyone else) to use. I will be posting all kinds of things that may be of interest to my classes and other information. The topics will be anything from genetic mutations , cool pictures or postings to just about anything I find to be cool and of interest. So... stay tuned and see what I come up with. The picture

is of what I hope not to see on my Florida vacation next week! TTFN