My Web 2.0 Experience

www.fanpop.com

Well my Web 2.0 experience is coming to a close.  And while that excites me (hey aren’t we all excited when we actually complete something), it also provides the perfect time to reflect on what I’ve learned through this experience.  

Penny: That's thinking ahead.
Sheldon: The alternative would be to think backwards…and that's just remembering.

The Web 2.0 exercises have uncovered many different technological techniques and tools to use when teaching.  I really feel that it is necessary to use technology in the classroom.  My students are constantly immersed in a wireless world and in order to provide the best learning experience possible, I must adapt to the current technologies.  Instead of having cell phones, laptops, smartphones and iPads be a distraction in class, I should utilize them as a catalyst to involve students in active learning.  

While all of the Web 2.0 sessions have been useful in one way or another, there are a few that have stood out to me which I hope to implement in my teaching immediately:

• Class blog: At the very least I will be creating a class blog where I can post instructions, updates, articles and links of interest to my students to supplement the material on Blackboard.
• Twitter: I really like the idea of using Twitter as a means of getting student feedback and questions during lectures, and also as a replacement for expensive clickers for in-class questions and class exam reviews. 
• Wikis: I want to encourage my students to create a wiki for collaboration on group projects.  I hope that this will help facilitate group work and reduce the issue of coordinating multiple schedules. 
• Podcasts:  This is the one that excites me the most.  As soon as I got into this topic, my mind exploded with all of the different applications for Podcasts in the classroom and lab.  I want to use Podcasts to show techniques (i.e. a proper dissection and the structures students should be looking for), to supplement lab manuals and summarize instructions, as lab safety videos, and maybe even as a visual exam review session. 
• YouTube: One of my favorite things to do when teaching is to supplement a lecture with a video. I like to choose clips that reiterate what I’ve been explaining or bring about the same point in a unique way.  This is also an effective way to relate things they don’t know to things they do (like The Big Bang Theory).  I love making these connections for my students and I find it really helps them to understand new information.  

Throughout my Web 2.0 experience I have been gleaning ideas, tools and knowledge to improve my teaching and create more of an active learning environment in my classroom.  It has definitely been a worthwhile endeavor and I encourage everyone to go out and try some of these new tools.  I can guarantee that you (and your students) will be very excited with the results!

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my blog!  I know I’ve had a blast creating this blog and infusing it with all of The Big Bang Theory-isms and Sheldon related goodness.  And do not fear, for even Dr. Sheldon Cooper, as awesome as he is, could still use some effective teaching techniques!

Sheldon Teaching in the early episodes

 

Though Sheldon may not use tools like Flickr, Twitter and YouTube for effective teaching, his students definitely use them for effective criticisms! 

But he is learning! Check out his use of a personal journal (can anyone say research blog???). 

Sheldon Teaches Penny Physics 

www.stiboo.com/Season3.html

 I’ll leave you with one final Sheldon quote!

Sheldon: I was expecting applause but I suppose stunned silence is equally appropriate.

Week 10: YouTube

I came across an amazing quote by John Orlando on the use of videos in teaching, "The modern teacher is (or should be) more an aggregator than a producer." Basically if the information is out there and it is an effective communication, you should use it!  Whatever will successfully enhance a students learning experience.  He goes on to mention that some teachers are hesitant to use videos because they are not directly contributing to 100% of the lecture.  Well, if Sheldon Cooper uses YouTube to help his understanding, I'd say the rest of us can too (see "The Pants Alternative").

http://www.tehranlasik.com

Penny: OK. Well, then, there's a couple of things you should probably know.

Sheldon: I have a master's degree and two doctorates. The things I should know, I do know.

Its was mentioned that perhaps students could create vlogs, or video logs.  They could use their webcams, digital cameras, iPhones, smartphones, etc.  My only reservation with this, is that once again we are eliminating the need for students to write.  I really think that this could be detrimental.  While some presentations, projects and progress reports outside of academia could utilize vlogs, in science academia most information is transferred in a written format.  As such, I think I could best serve my students by making them write more often, say with a written blog instead of a vlog.  That being said, I would use vlogs in certain circumstances, such as creating lab safety videos, or having a group present their methods in a video format. The video below is pretty corny but you get the idea.

I really liked Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann's idea of flipping the classroom in that all of the lectures are given in a podcast (i.e. video) form and the classtime is instead used to work through problems, have discussions, and work on assignments while having access to one-on-one teaching time with the professor.  This may not work well in classes with 100 plus students, but I really like the idea of flipping the classroom to provide more one-on-one time and creating opportunities for students to ask questions and get them answered.

 

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While I'm trying to focus on using YouTube to teach effectively, there are many other uses.  Sheldon definitely uses it to its full potential, even if its for evil revenge on Kripke. 

Week 9: Podcasts (Audacity)

www.somuchpun.com

Well, we're almost to the end of our Web 2.0 sessions, but this week's topic was really exciting!  I've always heard Podcasts being mentioned but really had no clue what they were.  This week was my chance to find out!

Podcasts are audio or video files that are available to the world via the web.  They can be uploading (meaning you can make your own) or downloaded (so you can listen to one by someone else).  And the best part.....it's FREE!  I definitely just caught the attention of any graduate students like myself out there!

I can see endless possibilities to use podcasting in education!  In fact, I had my own private handwritten mindmapping/brainstorming session (see Week 7: Mind Mapping) about all of the cool things I could do with podcasting in the classroom and laboratory.

So here's what I came up with. You could have podcasts on:

• Lab techniques
• Lab safety videos (this would save a lot of introductory time in first year laboratory classes)
• Background information on the lab session to supplement the lab manual and engage visual or audio learners
• Key points from lectures (created either by the professor or students as a group project!)
• Online quizzes (created by the professor and posted online as study material or mandatory assignments)
• Dissection videos: This is my big one, as my biggest pet peeve in science laboratory classes are figuring out an effective way to highlight the techniques, what structures the students must see, etc.  Not only would a podcast video allow a proper dissection to be shown it would also reinforce what they should be looking for, proper techniques, safety issues and would be a good example to use when studying later for an exam.  Basically this would boil down to less instructional time and more hands-on learning time!  What teacher wouldn't love that?!

While I think I would be hesitant at first to create my own podcast, I really believe that this is an invaluable teaching tool, especially in scientific academia.  Face it, we're living in a world of iPods, iPhones, iPads, laptops and smartphones.  It is easier than ever to reach students electronically!  And this may be helpful for the students as well, as a lot of these podcasts could be picked up when their schedule allows it.

Even Sheldon appears to agree with me on this issue.   He readily uses podcasts and various other technological advancements to better annoy his friends and control his surroundings.  Check it out below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLr_cnPJ7VQ

www.tvfanatic.com

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Also as a polite nod to science, today is actually the 200th birthday of Robert Bunsen, the creator of the Bunsen burner.

www.pinkfrosting.com

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Week 8: Google Docs

http://www.juniorhero.com

See my Blog Post in Google Doc

Too bad The Big Bang Theory gang didn't try to create this app using Google Docs....may have saved a lot of "Sheldon-related" mishaps, and Sheldon could have collaborated from his room!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivd7_6oqRlc

http://www.shadowlocked.com

 

 

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Just as a side note , in an article by Ken Thompson in Team Leadership Development he suggests using the video below as an icebreaker for team work and collaboration.  This might be another good lead in to Google Docs!

Week 7: Social Bookmarking With Delicious

From flickr user: topgold

“My new computer came with Windows 7. 
Windows 7 is much more user-friendly than Windows Vista. 
I don’t like that.” -Sheldon Cooper 

Delicious is a social bookmarking site that can be used to organize your favorite sites.  But, the catch is it all hinges on your ability to organize, mainly through appropriate tagging.  For example, if I assigned a project on starfish, my students could Google “starfish” and come up with about 14 million pages to visit.  And suppose they found some really good sites in all of that abundance which they want to remember to use later.  They can simply tag it using Delicious, which transfers the site to their Delicious page that can be accessed by any computer, whether they are at home or in the library or on their own laptop.  But here’s the catch.  If my students tag each site simply with “starfish” then when they go to find that site again they are still going to have to look back through the 100 sites they’ve tagged.  Instead, when tagging a site they must use key words like anatomy, reproduction, propagation, diet, predation, etc to be able to narrow down their search and make Delicious an effective way to manage information.   

Basically if you’re not organized, Delicious won’t be any better for you than simply bookmarking a page with your internet browser.  The only positive is you will be able to access this monstrous list of pages on any computer.   To be effective, Delicious users must be organized from the get-go.  If they can do this, then I believe it will be a very effective learning tool, in particular an excellent research resource!

Here's how my first Delicious search went: 

When I originally searched “Scientific Teaching Methods” I got 152 bookmarks.  By selecting the tag “Education” I got 116 bookmarks.  By selecting the tags “Science” and “Education” I got 109.  It would have been more effective if I could have filtered out the high school curriculum with a “university”, “college”, or “secondary education” tag.   However, if I just utilize the tag “Science” I got 22 bookmarks.  This was much more manageable and it seemed to eliminate much of the high school resource sites, but it also got rid a site that had all sorts of video lectures from schools like MIT which would have been very useful.  I can see this being a limitation of Delicious, in that not only does it rely on my organization, but also the organization of others!

Here are some interesting links I found using Delicious:

• The ultimate resource for information on Graduate Research from Iowa State University: http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~honavar/grad-advice.html
• Introduction to Journal-Style Scientific Writing: http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWgeneral.html
• Activities to identify the controls and variables within an experiment using the Simpsons! http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/controls.html
• Teaching the process of science: http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/process_of_science/index.html\
• How to use “R” in statistics: http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah/KB/R/index.html
• Teaching about evolution in science: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5787
• The first scientific video journal: http://www.jove.com/

http://www.jove.com

Or you can look me up on Delicious, I'm user e_n_6913!

Overall opinion: Used in the right way (i.e. organization to the extreme), this could be a really useful tool.  I would suggest it to my students to use.  The one thing I did like about Diigo that I didn't see with Delicious was the ability to create a class account so that all of the students in that class could tag good sites on that particular topic in one central location.  If there is a way to use Delicious to do this, I believe it would be an awesome tool for groups to use when collaborating on a research project. 

I believe that Sheldon Cooper may be an expert in the field of organization, much to the utter exasperation of the rest of us mere mortals!  I think Delicious (or any social bookmarking) would be something Sheldon would excel at.  It combines his love of organization (he organizes his cereal according to fiber content, see “The Big Bran Hypothesis”) and his requirement of limiting user friendliness.  Plus he could “virtually” socialize with other organized people, or just refuse to share his bookmarks! 

Leonard: We need to widen our circle.
Sheldon: I have a very wide circle. I have 212 friends on MySpace.
Leonard: Yes, and you've never met one of them.
Sheldon: That's the beauty of it.