Camera for biology class

Have you ever feel that your biology class when you learn about animal, you don't have enough time to do observation or all the information that you gather are all through media but nothing in real live, or even only pictures? When I search around for new tech idea for this week, one of the post from educationworld.com mentions about using video module using flex cam. I don't quite get what it means but I or if my idea is the same. I wonder if there indoor-outdoor zoo can provide high resolution webcam for close observation of its animal. Thus, schools can submit for live feed and the students can obtain live-observation of animal. The zoo can hire tech-observer who will do maintaining job for these cameras and watch out for any worth to notice action such as transition phrase of the butterfly or the giving birth of mammals. Of course not all information would worth to look but it can give you the real time view of these animal. I believe it would be good experience for the students. Wasn't it the best if you can study some animals in biology class and then you can go right home and do quick observation of those animals. Perhaps, at some point, there would be a library of video archive and live feed. And it will always be good for education.

Education 2020 or E2020

This is a program that I have just learned about at my volunteer work , St. Peter Claves K-8 school. This program is designed to replace all in class session with online education. The website is at Education2020.com. This program covers a full range of subject up to 7 and 8 grade
Math
6th grade Math
7th Grade Math
Pre-Algebra
Algebra I
Geometry
Algebra II
Pre-Calculus
Math Models & Applications
Social Studies
MS World History
MS US History
HS World History
HS US History
Geography
Economics
Government
Language Arts
Language Arts 6
Language Arts 7
Language Arts 8
Language Arts 9
Language Arts 10
Language Arts 11
Language Arts 12
Literacy and
Comprehension I
Literacy and
Comprehension II
Introduction to
Communications and
Speech
Science
Earth Science
Life Science
Physical Science
Biology
Chemistry
Physics
Elective
Health
Psychology
Sociology
Spanish I
Spanish II
Consumer Skills
Career Skills
Strategies for Academic
Success
Introduction to Art
Art History
Computer Applications
- Office 2007
Classic Novels
The Red Badge of Courage
Call of the Wild
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Gulliver's Travels
Jane Eyre
Robinson Crusoe
The House of Seven Gables
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Portrait of the Artist
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Mrs. Dalloway
Heart of Darkness
The Three Musketeers
Borges Author Study
O'Connor Author Study

The students will learn to how to use the program. Each of them will go through online video-text lecture that won’t allow you to skip the first time. Then they will do a comprehensive quiz at the end of short lecture to make sure they have understood the concept. A regular in class lecture will be divided into several short sessions. The students should be able to finish these sessions within the same amount of time as regular lecture. Each student will have his/her own computer and will be able to work at the same page. They can also review the lecture at home as their convenient. This seem a promising feature but it also have some small problem that I can see right away.
Pros:
Students can work at their own paces
Allow review of lecture
Quiz check for understanding of concept
Convenient for students
Allow course to go on without interfere that can happen at regular in class lecture such as teacher or students is absent, etc
Allow multiple feature and technology advance gadget to assist in learning such as video, graphs, pictures
Cons:
Different students have different paces
Lazy students will have more chance to become lazier
Extra cost
Computer – network dependant
Students tend to finish the lecture fast so that they can browse internet or do their own thing than lecture
Class is chaos as some are finish, talk, play around while other have to study.
Generation with potential vision problem

However, this is just base on few days experience in a school where the program has just been used. I would want to look forward to it and experience more.

Interactive Learning Art

That is the name of the post on Tech&Learning that I have just read (@http://www.techlearning.com/article/22008 by Barbara Bray)The post contain a large number of website in which they have interactive program , mostly created with flash, with the intention to make the learning of word and vocabulary become much more interesting. Although I fear that my kid will become addicted to computer as he sees it as something fun to play, I will introduce these program to him and let him play them on computer. I have spent hours to check around these program. They look so much fun. In comparison to all the interactive toys and alphabet learning toys available for small children, these program are offered at no cost and have much more learning effects than regular toys. I cannot think of how teachers can use them in the classroom. Yet I believe it will be a great learning toys for children at home.

Bembo’s Zoo

This site has a flash program that start with The Alphabet. When you move your mouse over the character there will be the sound of the animal whose name start with that character. For example, if you click on Elephant, the screen will display the word Elephant and all the character will move around and turn into the shape of the Elephant while the Elephant sound will play on the back ground. Cute !!

Building Language for Literacy

This website has a program that start with three animal - or the way of playing with word.
You will then pick a building type to play with all the name of all the objective that belong to this building.
The Nina where you find item that belong to the building
The Leo where you will choose all the alphabet that make of the word which will associate with this building.
The Reggie where you will choose the word that rhythm with given word

Fridge Magnet Poetry

You will either choose to make of sentence from a bunch of given words or play scrabble with other players

There are more and I still spend time on discover but I will let you discovery for yourself. Have fun all and Thank Bray, B. for these.

Magnetic Poetry Tiles

Make a Word

Quiz Tree

Road Hog Spelling

Voycabulary

Visual Dictionary Online

Word Ahead

Word Magnets

Zoom Playhouse

Some new learn tech for ed

Wordle: I know this from my classmate @ http://mcmahansassignments.blogspot.com/2009/09/using-wordle.html (! Thanks Cheryl !) where she ask for her students' thought about their 5th grade, summarize their thoughts, and used wordle to displace the popularity of the thought.
The usage: get a document and paste into wordle.net and you will see interesting result.

Web-base calendar: another application where you will share your calendar with your friends. It will be good for sharing assignment due date with classmate or important date with friends and relative. This idea is introduced by my classmate @ http://madigansmadness.blogspot.com/ (! Thanks Bill !)

Interactive white board and response system

These are the first two technology on top of my head that I would use in my class, provide this class is face-to-face one.

The first one is interactive whiteboard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_whiteboard ). It is a device that add to the side of your class white board, include a projector. This allow you to project the screen on your computer onto the whiteboard and store the writing and your interaction with the whiteboard (using a special pen - provided with the system) into your computer. With other tools available the computer such as internet browser, office tools, this create a better learning environment and engage the students with learning.
For example: you teach the students about geography and during the lecture, you can bring up the maps, some statistic number, or picture of the specific location in the lecture to the whiteboard instead of just dry and boring lecture.
One example site that introduce these interactive whiteboards :
http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SMART+Boards/Front+projection/

The second one is called: clicker, smart response, or learner response system ( one example site that sell these is http://www.prometheanworld.com/server.php?show=nav.16 ). What it does is allow us to quickly capture the response from students or audiences, output the responses, store the response for statistic and data usage that can be used. For example, during your lecture, you want to check for the students understanding of the subject, you can have a quick 1,2 multiple choice question about the topic. The students can quickly response to the questions. Then, you can output the results so that everyone know where they standing and you know if you need to fill up a gap or move on to the next topic.

Althought these are not new technology but they are not widely used. Thus, a lot of their applications and potential usages in education have been left out.