Tech Happy

W.o.W!

azrunner — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:06:42 +0000

Ok, I said I’d get beyond the science stuff, but I just can’t help it. This week’s site is a great interactive one centered around the rock cycle. Using lots of flash animation, the site has an interactive rock cycle, explanations for each type of rock and the processes that act to change rocks. Not only can students view photos and animations relating to rocks and the rock cycle, but there are quizes built in as well which use the same pictures and animations. If you are studying the rock cycle, you don’t want to miss this site!

Learn well!

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.

Our Class Blog!

azrunner — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:28:40 +0000

I’m finally getting there! After much monkeying around with different blog services, I settled on edublogs as my class blog and we’re just now getting it underway. I wanted to provide a link to the blog for you to look at-please feel free to leave comments for myself or my students. We’ll greatly enjoy them!

And yes, there will be more content coming in the following weeks. It’s a little empty now, but more is on the way (I promise!).

Learn well!
Mr. Hunt’s SciBlog

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.

W.o.W!

azrunner — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:43:07 +0000

Site: Earth & Sky: A Clear Voice for Science

I promise I’ll move on to some non-science sites in the coming weeks, but as I try and build things for this year I’ve just got a bunch of science resources that are really, really cool. This week’s site is Earth/Sky Kids, a site for current, science related material. The site is divided by subject areas (space, animals, plants, bizarre, etc…) and each area has a number of current articles relating to that area of science. In addition, there are a number of podcasts included and blogs for discussion on topics. All in all, a wealth of info on what’s happening right now in science. The articles themselves can be used by students in fifth grade and up (most likely), but the ideas can certainly be posed to younger students and used as a reference by all teachers. Personally, I’ve been using the articles with my seventh graders for their weekly science article reviews, which I hope to have up on our class blog soon (still working out some technical issues on it-but look for the link soon!)

Learn well!

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.

W.O.W!

azrunner — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:05:18 +0000

Yes, the W.O.W!’s are back! Now that things are starting to settle down just a little bit, I’ve been able to explore a little more on-line and find some good resources. I’ve also been looking throughout the summer, so I’ll be adding a few I found over the last couple months in upcoming weeks as well. If you want a sneak peek, look at a few of the sites in my del.ici.ous section (I bookmarked some of them since they were so awesome!).

However, on to this week’s site. It’s called the Exploratorium, and is one of the most diverse, thorough, and thoroughly fascinating science sites I’ve ever come across. Currently there is an interactive section on scientific process and evolution that includes artifacts, interviews with experts, and lots of great questions. I also watched a video they made from a recent solar eclipse that could be seen in China (yes, they actually filmed in China). Not only do they explain how and why eclipses happen, they show it to through their telescope. Just great, great stuff packaged with a super design and layout. I would say almost any grade level could find appropriate science content here with the large volume of multi-media content available. Check it out today!

Learn well!

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.

Day 1

azrunner — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:20:28 +0000

Whew! After having been away from the classroom for two years, I’d forgotten how much a school day can do in your brain…I have a mish-mash of names, faces, things to do, things I forgot to do, and things I want to do all running around my brain at once. After finally overcoming an incredibly slow laptop and a TV missing some channels (namely the one with announcement on it) things finally started rolling a little bit. I did get a mini-lesson on the value of covering less material in depth…in many ways it felt like my first day teaching as opposed to my eighth first day. However, I am excited about the possibilities. I have a great group of students and can’t wait to get them blogging, filming, and talking about their experiences and ideas. There is a huge amount of potential and I hope I can tap into it.

I am still looking for others to communicate with, and any suggestions for blog services (I have over 120 7th graders) are welcome…

Learn well!

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.

Blogging With 100’s

azrunner — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:12:30 +0000

Ok, now that I’ve got the job comes the real work. One of the things I’m trying to sort out right now is just how to set up blogging (which I want my students doing) for over a 100 students-actually about 150. I want them blogging about the investigations we do in class as a way of reflecting and communicating as well as responding to various questions, articles, and so on. My biggest question is this: individual blogs or a big blog that all can write to? I’m also contemplating middle ground solutions, i.e. setting up a blog for each class that they can write to or creating blog groups so they are only sharing the blog with 3 or 4 other students. While ideally I’d like them each to have their own I haven’t found a good way of managing that as yet (or even offering it). 21classes has come the closest, offering 50 student blogs with my account, but I would need 3 or 4 of those to cover all my students. And while one blog would be easier to manage, one blog for 150 authors doesn’t seem sufficient. There are a variety of options for the middle ground, but if anyone has any ideas/feedback on how blogging has worked best for them with their students-feel free to chime in!

Learn well!

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.

A New Beginning

azrunner — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:08:33 +0000

Ok, yes, I did steal the title from Star Wars, but it really is for me. After a couple of frantic months looking for a new teaching position, I landed finally in the Peoria Unified District (in Phoenix) as a 7th grade science teacher. So, in some ways I’m picking back up where I left off-as a 7th grade science teacher. However, after two years of grad school and gathering all sorts of great ideas and rebuilding a philosophy I am recharged for a year with (gasp!) middle schoolers. Congrats (or condolences) can be left as comments :)

I’m now settling in and finding all the challenges and opportunities one always finds with a new position. Of course, I’m working to find what technology tools I have, since I hope to have my students blogging, wiki-ing (is that a word yet?), and otherwise reporting & their results to the whole wide world as well as to each other-and responding. With that, I would be interested in partnering a little bit with some other classes out there-we’ll be studying ecology (biomes, food chains, pollution impacts, etc…), geology, and some Earth/Space science. If you’re game, let me know…

Learn well!

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.

Catching Up…

azrunner — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:14:25 +0000

Ok, so it’s been a week. Yea, I’m not quite keeping up the pace I had hoped for the summer, but it’s hardly due to sunbathing. I’ve still been busy putting in my hours on the job as well as helping out with a graduate class at ASU West (which takes up the better part of my Fridays and Saturdays). You can see some of the fruits of this in my flickr section. These particular photos are from the geocaching adventure we had on campus last weekend. An early start to beat the heat was a good idea-though those of marking the spots didn’t get much of break, walking around the previous afternoon with the GPS devices in 112 plus. Ah, the joys of interning. However, it has been a good experience for me simply in that I’m now getting some of the material for a second time around as well as seeing what a whole new crop of folks is doing with it. Being able to spend time with these teachers, Dr. Christie, and the other interns has me really ready to get back in the classroom…

To see some of the work they are doing in the class, go to Dr. Christie’s 545 and 546 pages…

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.

Go 2.0!

azrunner — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:59:06 +0000

I’m finally getting my 2.0 resource pages up and running! If you follow the link at the top for Go 2.0! you will find a number of educationally useful 2.0 sites/applications sorted out by category. This is basically designed to be a resource bank for teachers-so please feel free to use as needed. It is still a work in progress (you’ll notice a couple pages noted but without links-those are still in the works). Also I would love it if you would add your ideas for use of any of these sites or to suggest others that are similar/better than those I’ve listed.

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.

Summer of New 2.0 #2 - Twitter

azrunner — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:36:24 +0000

Ok, I’m a little late this week with my new 2.0 (when I say new I mean new for me, of course) but I figured it worth posting late to enjoy Father’s Day weekend (and it was ). My new for this week was Twitter, basically an on-line instant messaging service,though you can use your phone with Twitter as well. Getting started was easy enough but then I was kind of hit with a “what now?” moment. One of my first thoughts was who really wants to read about my daily goings-on (had I done this more last week it would have read updating computers…updating computers again…still updating computers…etc…) Perhaps part of the problem I’ve encountered is that Twitter, being a social networking tool, required a level of socializing and I just don’t know that many people using the service. Even so, I’m still a little stumped as to a classroom application. Perhaps this becomes more useful when actually away from school as a way to communicate with students/parents about goings-on school-wise (or between students working on assignments). This may also streamline efforts to work collaboratively between different classrooms and schools.

One other question I have…I came across some folks who are “following” well over 100 conversations/people. How do you keep up/keep track of all these different strands? I know RSS is a possibility, but how do you keep it from becoming somewhat unwieldy? So, if you have an answer for me on this, or other ideas for educational purposes, feel free to comment or twitter me-username azrunner.

Authored by azrunner. Hosted by Edublogs.