Using Pictures for class

Last week and the week before I was using many pictures that I got off the Internet. When I found the picture I just copied and then placed it into my presentation. Later I was thinking that I should have wrote some type of reference for each of them. I should do this for two reasons; 1. I should reference any material that I use and 2. it is good to model for my students.

My students just turned in a project in which they had to display the structures and functions of different organs from the plant. A couple of students decided to do a power point presentation and used pictures from the Internet. I forgot to ask them to provide their references and did ask them to go back and do so. I still got www.google.com as a reference!! My oh my, I need to do some work on this.

Passing it on

This week my teammate is starting research papers with our 8th graders. She has scheduled time to work with the students in the computer lab. I told her about using data bases in addition to search engines. We went to the MPS website and went through the student resource options. She thought this was fabulous. I can't wait to see the results!

Technology

Okay, so I haven't blogged for awhile, but I have had just a ton going on personally. I will have to say I am having fun on Facebook. I have been able to reconnect with some people I haven't seen forever. I have also been interacting with images from google and using them to reinforce my curriculum with my Promethium board. My students will be doing a project soon, not research, and I am trying to figure out how to give them a tech option for it. They will be displaying the structure and function of a plant.

Facebook Fun

I joined Facebook about 2 weeks ago. I am having a great time finding people and reconnecting. My high school class has a page and we are updating each other quite a bit. I also use it for networking. I like that it can be almost like text messaging, but on-line.

Wasted Time

I was planning on working on going through some of the "Things" this past weekend, when our Internet went out. Kaput, nothing, blah!! We that worked out as well as a lead balloon. The most frustrating thing was that my husband was out of town over the weekend and when he got back today, he was able to fix it!!! Oh well.

Reading

I read the article from "Thing 1", Truth: Can You Handle It and I agree and disagree with some of the points. One thing was that the author believed that Wikipedia was bad. Although later in the article they compared Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Bratanica and found it was nearly as reliable. I really think it is a great starting point students. Especially when they do not have the research skills needed to find more reliable sources. Also for a middle schooler it can be very hard to muddle through a scientific article.

work

I've been working on a presentation for my students for this week. Actually I am writing labs for them to write in there lab notebooks. I am sooooo used to working with word and I like the way it sets things up, especially when you have to add objects. I just finished uploaded it to docs. Unfortunately it doesn't look the same:( Oh well I need to play a little more.

The change over

The change over has been relatively painless. I had to do this a little different seeing that I already have a blog for my girls and their grandparents! After our training this past summer I was really inspired to use blogging as a way to keep my in-laws involved in my daughters lives from Texas.