Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Micro Teaching

Today I got to micro teach for the beginning of class. I was nervous to get up in the front of class but Dr. S was supportive. The night before we sat on Google Docs for a good hour+ discussing how I should attack the lesson today. She saw that I had used wordle to title a couple of my papers, so suggested that I could do a wordle for my micro teacher. I took important words from week 5 of moodle and off the power point to put in wordle. In order for the words to be big I had to write them over and over again. The word "science" was the biggest on my wordle and that's because I wrote it about 20 times. Then I wrote the other words a different amount of times to make them different sizes but big enough to be seen on the board. The color scheme is important because they have to be easy to see on the board. There can't be anything dark so they should be bright and inviting. When I got in front of the class I introduced the lesson by saying I created a word cloud, and asked my peers to pick out two words they knew. Each person told me one word they knew off the board. After everyone spoke I concluded the lesson by saying that the answers they had given me has proved that they know how to connect these words to everyday life, and that our class is about connecting the students life to science. Overall I felt like the lesson went well, and I'm so appreciative of how Dr. S helped me through the entire thing!

Below are the wordles I made for my micro teaching:

The video above is an example of micro teaching in the classroom.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Wordle

What is a wordle? A wordle is a graphic representation of the most frequently used words in a blog, free write, or speech, and Wordle is the site to do that. It’s simple, fun and creative. To create a wordle, simply go to Wordle and click create. Enter a bunch of text into the box by either copying and pasting it from an article or paper, or just typing your own words; hit submit and let the site do the rest. After creating the wordle, users are able to customize the look of it. Options range from color to size and shape. One of the benefits of using a wordle in blog is that it adds variety—allowing readers to see what you’re most passionate about in a creative way.

In wordle you can get the html link to the picture by saving to a public library. The html will be under the wordle. The bad thing about that is once you "x" out of it you will probably never see that wordle again because so many people save ever second. If you want to keep your wordle for the future you have to save it as a print screen. In order to do that hit the "print screen" button on your keyboard. This makes a snapshot of what your screen looks like. Paste it into paint or anything you can edit, by pressing "cntrl" and "v" at the same time. Just crop out the wordle or what you want from it and save it as the individual wordle. Now that your wordle is ready to go upload it to where you want to use it and there it is.

How to Create a Wordle:

How to Use Wordle in the Classroom:

Some examples of my made wordles:

This Wordle is made from my blog post:

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

"BUGS"

When we think about science in the classroom, there is a sense of dread. Many students do not like science because of everything that is involved with it. Recently it seems that science, math, and technology have fallen to the bottom of the love list in school. The sad part about it is that few girls show any interest in these subjects at all. The article “Bringing Up Girls in Science (BUGS): The Effectiveness of an Afterschool Environmental Science Program for Increasing Female Students’ Interest in Science Careers” talks about the importance of getting girls involved in the program.

BUGS was an after school program for 4^th and 5^th grade girls; that “ provided authentic learning experiences in environmental science as well as valuable female mentoring opportunities in an effort to increase participants’ academic achievement in science” (Tandra Tyler-Wood). This program was meant to get girls interested in the field in hopes they would be successful later in their lives. The participants of BUGS graduated high school and went to college, with many of them going into majors dealing with: science, math, or technology. They compared the girls in the BUGS program to four groups of girls who did not go through the program and saw different results. The results showed that the girls who did not go through the program had a lower amount of people in the science, math, and technology majors.

This research informs me that by being a teacher, you have to educate your students in the subjects that are not the favorites. You can do this by making the subjects enjoyable and fun. You really want your students to come back excited to learn. I feel that these three subjects are good for hands on activities. Science especially, has so many opportunities to learn besides through a textbook. There are many places that would be good to go on for a field trip like: Liberty Science Center or even a children’s science museum.

I chose this article because I felt that girls need to get involved in science. By knowing this information I can prepare my activities so that all the students can enjoy the lesson. I can’t just focus my attention on just the girls but I can try and get them more active in the classroom.

Bibliography

Tandra Tyler-Wood, A. E. (n.d.). Bringing Up Girls in Science (BUGS): The Effectiveness of an Afterschool Environmental Science Program for Increasing Female Students’ Interest in Science Careers . Journal of Science Education and Technology .

*This is my Ed Article for class

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Psychedelica

The New Frogfish!

When one thinks of the word fish they think of something that lives in the water, swims around with fins, and has gills. When one thinks of a frog they think of an amphibian, which has a long tongue to catch insects. Has anyone ever thought of the two together? Probably not. It’s an interesting conception to think of a frog and a fish together. Are they really something that was put together or is it an animal that has similar features of both creatures?

Off the coast of an Indonesia Island divers found an interesting look fish. It hoped, crawled, and swam. It was something they had never seen before. The divers took pictures of the fish and sent them to fish expert Ted Pietsch of forty years. After examining the pictures carefully Pietsch came to the conclusions that the fish was unnamed. He went into his collection and compared it to pictures he had from 2008. They were the same fish species that was not known. He said that it was a frogfish but a new species of it. He named the new species Histiophryne psychedelica, or psychedelica for short. The psychedelica is about four inches long, with swirls and stripes like a tiger. The fish hops along the coral reef by squirting jets of water out from itself. This gives it the appearance of it hoping rather than swimming. This is the first frogfish that has been seen to hop. They crawl by using their fins. Their fins look and work like legs which explain why they like to crawl along the reef rather than swim. With these two features the fish gets into a rhythm of crawl-hop-crawl-hop. Another interesting aspect that applies only to this creature is that it has eyes that face forward. On a fish the face is pointed and angled. They have two eyes on either side of their face. The frogfish has a flat face with eyes directly on it just like a human. A lot of fish that live on the reef have camouflage to protect them. The psychedelica does not change even though the known frogfish does. Its color and design stays with them no matter what.

What’s interesting about the psychedelica is that there have been pictures of it from years ago. At time no one knew what it was and the pictures were put to the side. Looking back at his photos, Pietsch found pictures sent from the Dallas Aquarium with pictures of the fish he just named. Those pictures were taken about seventeen years ago.

I chose this article because I always found the ocean fascinating. There are so many creatures that have yet to be discovered because we do not have the technology of going all the way to the bottom of the ocean. I could bring this into the classroom to teach science by asking students to use their imagination. I could ask them to draw something they believe is in the ocean but has not yet been discovered. We can go through the different levels of the ocean and what is known about what lives there. This topic can open a big discussion that will allow students to get involved.