I’ve very excited to be one of the administrators of The Synapse, a social network of biology teachers.  It’s quite diverse with teachers across many grade levels and different years of experience.  Please come join us!

Why should you join?  You can share ideas, get help with lesson plans and lab activities, and receive encouragement and emotional support.  There are different groups you can join (general biology, AP Biology, Zoology, etc.) to discuss class specific topics.

If you’ve never used Ning or Facebook or some other social network platform you’ll notice there is a lot going on in the network.  So, let me point out the key steps to getting started.

When you go to the home page, click on Sign Up:

After signing up, check out some of the forum articles and add your own thoughts to the discussions:

Also, join a group:

Once you get comfortable with using the network you’ll notice there are some other really cool things you can do like add videos, music, and pictures.  The more teachers who join the network and share their ideas the better it will be.  I look forward to seeing you on The Synapse!

My students thought I was the coolest teacher ever when I showed them this Animoto trailer I created for our upcoming celebration of Darwin Day:

When they get back from break I’ll show them the trailer for my special Valentine’s Day lesson, The Biology of Love:

Yes, I know both these songs are copyrighted and I’m being a bit baaaaddd by using them, but I don’t think you’ll capture students’ attention by using songs they don’t know. It’s possible I can find some really great creative commons songs to use and I intend on looking for them. But, c’mon! I can’t think of any song cool enough to represent Darwin besides an ACDC song. Does Fair Use work here? I used more than 10% of each song. I need to research that. Does anyone know?

It doesn’t matter if I don’t publish them online I guess, but I like the idea of being able to publish them online where my students can access them later.

Anyway, for those who are wondering about each of the trailers and what I have planned for both special days, I haven’t planned out the Darwin Day presentation, yet. But, my Biology of Love lesson is on slideshare.

It’s pretty infamous. Last year it was the Slideshare of the Day for about two weeks and it’s been downloaded 952 times. I’m unabashedly proud of it. The videos I show aren’t embedded in the slideshare, but most of the presentation is shown. It’s my favorite presentation of the whole year. Can you tell?

Photo source: Castaway in Wales on Flickr

My current students are my guinea pigs.  I try not to test on them too much, though.  One group told me they love all the apps, but only if we use them one at a time.  I think that’s because to most of them all of these things are just too new.  In a couple of years I’m hopeful that my students will be more comfortable using educational apps and that I can use more of them at the same time.

The students are quick to tell me when something is or isn’t working.  Of course, a lot of things they love don’t have a huge educational impact.  Take polleverywhere.com.  Only about 30% of my students have cell phones with a texting plan so it isn’t practical to use in my classes.  Plus, my class sizes aren’t so big that I can’t conduct my own poll with just a simple raising of hands.

But, one student pointed out the appeal of this application when she literally screamed, “YOU’RE GOING TO LET ME TEXT IN CLASS?!?!?!”  It was awesome.  It didn’t seem to matter to her that she was texting for a class assignment.  Just the fact that she was able to text was thrilling to her.  Here’s the poll the students completed:

Another tool I find frivolous, but fun is Animoto.  It’s great for videos that show off what you’re doing in class.  I’ve used it to send home a video to parents at progress report time.

They’ve recently added the ability to include text in your presentations so perhaps this will make it more suitable for actual learning purposes.  However, the slides change so quickly (at least in time with the beat of whatever music you choose) and so this is a bit limiting.

To test it out, I created this Animoto based off of my introductory lesson to DNA and then asked the students’ opinion about its educational value.

Here are their responses:

1. List everything you learned from this presentation (I counted up 12 different facts).

• Out of 13 students, the most a student listed was eight and the least was zero.
• The average was 2.6 and the median was 2.
• The most common facts listed were DNA can be used to solve crimes and it can be used to cure disease.
• One student wrote that DNA gives you your identity although that fact was not included in the presentation.

2. Do you think this presentation could be used to replace/improve the traditional powerpoint lecture?

• 2 students answered Yes.
• 11 students answered No.

Yes and no.  Yes because it’s more visual and cooler but no because we might not be able to learn all the information correctly.

No, this short movie was too fast.  Maybe for entertainment but not to learn.

No, it was too flashy and distracted me from the topics.

Not replace, but I think it could be added into the presentation.

I do because it isn’t like the old powerpoint lecture which people usually find very boring.  This wasn’t boring.

3. Did you find the animations/music too distracting?

• 3 students answered No.
• 10 answered Yes.

The music was distracting.  I would rather learn without it.

The animations and music are very distracting because when a new topic shows up you first look at the pictures and not so much the information.

Yes, it was hard to concentrate during the presentation.

No, music helps me focus and the animations helped us see what we were learning about.

4. How did this animation affect your interest in DNA?  Increased it?  Decreased it?  Or had no impact?

• 8 students said the video increased their interest.
• 5 students said it had no impact.

This increased my interest but didn’t teach me much.

This increased my interest, but not greatly.

It definitely increased my interest.

It increased my interest because it was flashy.

Did not affect because the animation did not provide information.

Had no impact because I didn’t understand it.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that Animoto should be used to capture students’ interest about a topic with fun music and pictures, however, it cannot be used to replace a typical lesson.  Polleverywhere’s texting polls can only be used in large classes where the majority of students have cell phones with texting plans.

To continue the evolutionary trend I am updating the grading method I use for the blog project.  Inspired by Tara Richardson’s grading method I have decided to change my current method of students earning points for posts & comments.  Now, the students will be graded on whether or not they have met the goals of the project.

Here is the table they will need to fill in on their individual wiki page.

Here is an ideal table a student could create. Note that since I have not used this method before the examples listed are from a mix of students rather than just one student.

I’m handing this out to the students tomorrow. What do you think?  What did I leave out? Any suggestions?

I knew I was going to be absent from school last Monday and felt a lot of anxiety about it because I missed several days a few weeks before to attend a conference.  Every day I miss with my AP students stresses me out so much because I have to get through a ridiculous amount of content in order to feel that my students at least have a shot at performing well on the AP exam in May.

So, the day before my planned absence I decided to prepare a lesson using Jing.  Jing is a free application that allows you to capture what you’re doing on your desktop and save it as a video on screencast.com.  Apparently, there are some other apps out there that do the same thing, but I’ve found Jing to be super easy.  It also allows you to capture and edit images (but I prefer Picnik for that).  Here are the two that I made for the day I was absent. The embed option doesn’t work on Edublogs so you’ll have to follow the links:

The students had practice problems to complete and I was worried they would not be able to figure them out without the background.  So, either the day would be wasted or I could use Jing and make it productive.

It took me about 30 minutes to make the two videos, but that was due to the fact that I was getting over a cold and couldn’t stop coughing!  So, I had to delete a couple of times and start over.  Jing only lets you record video for 5 minutes and so I used two for the lesson.  Any more lecturing than that and you lose your audience, so the 5 minute time limit actually helps you get to the main points quickly.

When I returned the students said they liked it, but thought it was a little weird.  None of their teachers had ever done anything like that and they found it odd at first.  However, they said it helped them complete the packets so I think it was worth it.

My nominations are:

• Best Educational Use of a Social Networking Service: Principles of Biology
• Best Individual Blog: What It’s Like on the Inside
• Best Teacher Blog: NashWorld
• Best Educational Tech Support Blog: JoeWoodOnline
• Best Educational Wiki: Periodic Table Wiki
• Best Class Blog:

1. Extreme Biology – we aren’t supposed to nominate ourselves, but I’m nominating my students so maybe it will still count
2. Endless Forms Most Beautiful
3. Biology in Action

Last year my students’ blog was nominated for Best Teacher Blog.  I’m very happy that Edublogs decided to create a Best Class Blog category this year which is much more appropriate.  Good luck to my nominees!

In addition to posting it on Slideshare, I’ve put my presentation up as a PDF document here and as a HTML document here for easy downloading.

Thank you so much to everyone who came to the presentation.  Please join in the conversation here by asking questions, giving tips & suggestions to each other, and definitely put a link to your blog once you have it started!

“Gender Stereotyping” Photo: Aislinn Ritchie

Last year when I blogged with my students I noticed no difference in the success females had versus males.  Both were equally productive at writing posts and comments and earning a 100 on the project.  This year, females in the class have been doing better on the blog than males.  However, I attribute this to just sheer coincidence.  I don’t have a large enough sample size (62 students last year and 50 students this year) in which to really notice any trend.

I’m disturbed by the (albeit few) number of people who recently said to me that females are doing better on the blog because of their gender.  It seems like such a cop-out; an excuse to not work on the blog.  “I can’t do this because I’m male.”  Is this really a positive thing for male students to believe?

If this type of attitude is allowed (which is nothing more than adherence to a gender stereotype), is it fair for a female to say, “Sorry, I’m not going to do that hands-on lab very well because I’m a female”?

Now, let me be perfectly clear.  I don’t believe any of this.

Blogging involves:

• having discussions with peers, mentors, and experts
• learning how to conduct proper research and find credible sources
• learning how to write reports and include citations
• improving literacy skills
• debating controversies and discussing innovative solutions to problems

Is a male going to be able to tell his college professor or his boss when asked to write a report or discuss a problem, “Sorry, I can’t do that because I’m male”?

I’d like to hear from other teachers who have students that blog and find out if there is actually any evidence supporting this belief.

I don’t buy it.