Emma's Blog

I am looking forward to practicing some of my new web 2.0 tools as we return to the classroom. I had moments of getting lost in the web this summer and now need to refocus my energy. I would like a way to review and remind myself of the different formats. I was hoping that [...]

I looked through several forums in Classroom 2.0, and while I understand the great potential of using each other for information, I don’t think that best practice is always at work. One forum that looked promising about PBLs (project based learning) ended up being a corporate download opportunity. Another forum began with a serious question [...]

Through Instructify, I found a new site called Learn About Robots. I plan to use this site when I ask students to “invent” a robot of the future. This site shows the wide variety of robots that already exist and will help students explore the possibilities. I’m also tracking the monarch migration from monarch watch. [...]

I use youtube often to find quick video clips to inspire students to think outside the box during our robotics and Rube Goldberg units. Every once in a while an inappropriate thumbnail shows up in the related videos list. I am looking forward to using quietube in the future – and it’s so easy to [...]

I ran into a few glitches while trying to create a podcast. I suppose the answers are simple and with a little bit of help, I’m sure that I will be successful in the near future. I can envision using podcasts in the classroom to encourage students to become experts on a topic to publish their [...]

I found a fun podcast for my class that fits into my Great Questions list, a way to encourage deeper thinking about topics we discuss. When students stump the teacher with a question we put it on the list. Now, with the Podcast “Why? The Science Show” by Dr. Dave Brodbeck, I can have the students [...]

Library Thing is an interesting way to find out about books – a little faster than checking through Amazon’s reviews. I think I could use this to keep track of my book group reads and to catalog what we have already read for newer members. I found it particularly interesting that the reviews of the [...]

Exploring delicious and creating my own account was simple enough. I found that searching within delicious for some science subjects was limited in its offerings but it is easy to use other search engines and tag them. For use in the classroom, to ask students to add websites under a particular topic, I think it [...]

From Instructify: The Answer Garden is a digital feedback tool that I think will work for quick questions to get students into the mindset when they get to the science lab. I typically do this on small whiteboards, allowing students a moment to write, reflect, or draw a response to a question that begins the [...]

I explored several of the tools but I was particularly interested in creating comics because I sometimes use this as an format option when students are presenting their ideas or something they have learned or . Pixton – click and drag comics, has good “How to Videos” and some cool features. I think it could [...]