You should be using this tool, don’t you think?
(WordPress doesn’t support embedding this player — you’ll have to go see for yourself — it’s worth the click.)
One more way to make outstanding presentations; one more way to get students involved in rationally-active, brain-intensive, graphic organizers.
One tool I picked up in a session with Learning.com earlier this week.
(See also “Thoughts on using Prezi as a teaching tool.”)
3 Comments | 
Classroom technology, Education, History, Presentations, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom technology, Cogito ergo sum, Education, Graphic Organizers, Learning.com, Metaphor, Presentations, Teaching, Technology | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
So, God is a platypus?
Appearing to be aware they are losing the battle of the classroom to real science, creationists have taken a sneakier way to undermine science education. P. Z. Myers explains:
A lot of people have been writing to me about this free webgame, CellCraft. In it, you control a cell and build up all these complex organelles in order to gather resources and fight off viruses; it’s cute, it does throw in a lot of useful jargon, but the few minutes I spent trying it were also a bit odd — there was something off about it all.
Where do you get these organelles? A species of intelligent platypus just poofs them into existence for you when you need them. What is the goal? The cells have a lot of room in their genomes, so the platypuses are going to put platypus DNA in there, so they can launch them off to planet E4R1H to colonize it with more platypuses. Uh-oh. These are Intelligent Design creationist superstitions: that organelles didn’t evolve, but were created for a purpose; that ancient cells were ‘front-loaded’ with the information to produced more complex species; and that there must be a purpose to all that excess DNA other than that it is junk.
Suspicions confirmed. Look in the credits.
Also thanks to Dr. Jed Macosko at Wake Forest University and Dr. David Dewitt at Liberty University for providing lots of support and biological guidance.
Those two are notorious creationists and advocates for intelligent design creationism. Yep. It’s a creationist game. It was intelligently designed, and it’s not bad as a game, but as a tool for teaching anyone about biology, it sucks. It is not an educational game, it is a miseducational game. I hope no one is planning on using it in their classroom. (Dang. Too late. I see in their forums that some teachers are enthusiastic about it — they shouldn’t be).
No such thing as a free lunch. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Free software for use in educating kids about biology, sounds too good to be true.
_____________
In comments, Lars Doucet disavows creationist intent. So the creationist/intelligent design factors were added just to make the game more playable, and not as an attempt to introduce or endorse creationism or intelligent design.
Lots of discussion, much of it rude (some of it delightfully so), at Myers’ joint.
Maybe, if the makers didn’t intend to make a creationist stealth game, they could jigger the thing to make it more accurate?
11 Comments | Biology, Classroom technology, Creationism, Education, Intelligent Design, Voodoo science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: Classroom technology, Creationism, Intelligent Design, Voodoo science, War on Education, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This is cool.
Pam Harlow, an old friend from American Airlines, and a map and travel buff, e-mailed me with a link to the Newseum’s interactive headline map. I can’t get a good screen shot to show you — so you gotta go to their site and see it for yourself.
When it comes up in your browser, it features a map of the continental 48 states, with dots marking major daily newspapers across the nation. Put your pointer on any of those dots and you see the front page of the newspaper for today from that city.
Using the buttons at the top of the map, you can check newspapers on every continent except Antarctica.
How can I use this in class?
Update: Here’s a screen shot of the Newseum feature:
Newseum’s interactive front-page feature – on December 15, 2013
2 Comments | Geography - Economic, Geography - Political, Globalization, Internet, Journalism, Maps, Museums, Newspapers, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Travel, World history | Tagged: Classroom technology, geography, Globalization, Internet, Journalism, Maps, Museums, Newseum, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
National Lampoon once ran a cover of a nice, spotted mutt, tongue out, looking sideways at a pistol pointing at its head. There was a sort of a caption: “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.”
That’s one way to try to boost circulation! I first saw the magazine on the rack in a small pharmacy in Colorado Springs, across the street from Colorado College, between rounds of the Colorado College Invitational Debate Tournament. Being short of cash and in sore need of eye drops, I looked at the magazine but put it back on the rack. The woman at the cash register watched me carefully. When I got to the register, she said, “You know, they’ll do it, too! They’re just the sort of people who will kill that poor dog!”
(I imagine that woman has led Colorado Springs’ dramatic move to the right in politics.)
The publishers got that woman’s attention, didn’t they?
Comes an article in The Scientist, “Pimp your PowerPoint.” It’s a news story based on a book by Michael Alley.
In the middle of the 19th century blackboards were all the rage. According to Pennsylvania State University engineering communication professor Michael Alley, it was common for universities and research institutions to proudly advertise that they had the only slate writing board in a 100-mile radius. Scientific lectures became more engaging than they’d ever been.
More than 150 years later, there’s still room for improvement. “People are not anywhere close to tapping the potential that a PowerPoint presentation offers,” Alley says. “We have a tool that can do an incredible amount, and people just waste it.” Who hasn’t been lulled into a somnolent state by some well-intentioned scientist presenting his research to a captive audience by reading a seemingly endless stream of bullet points?
Any media, done well, can be wonderful. P. Z. Myers’ paean to Prof. Snider and his color chalk artworks reminds us that even a chalkboard can be a place of art, in the eye and hands of someone who gives thought to the work and practices the skills necessary to communicate well. Looking around my classroom today, I note that better than half the whiteboard space features paper maps held to the board with magnets (which the kids like to steal).
Sometimes a flipchart is all you have, and sometimes a flipchart is all you really need — again, with thought to the ideas to be presented and a bit of polishing of the skills.
The piece in The Scientist relates useful ideas to help somebody who wants to make a better, less sleep-inducing, communicative PowerPoint (or better, maybe, KeyNote) presentation.
Unplug, think, and write
According to Galloway, using PowerPoint to make a great presentation starts with powering down the laptops and writing out an outline on index cards or a legal pad. “People have to shut off their computer and go away as they’re writing their PowerPoint presentation,” he says.Establish your assertion
Alley says that he starts planning each slide by writing down a single sentence stating the idea he wants the audience to take away. “You have defined what it is you need to support that statement,” he says. “That’s where it starts.” Alley adds that the sentence should only take one or two lines, should consist of only 8–14 words, and should appear in 28-point font when inserted in the final PowerPoint presentation.Assemble the visual evidence
Let the assertion sentence for each slide guide your decision as to which visuals should accompany it. Use “explanatory images”—not decorative or descriptive images—to support each assertion, says Joanna Garner, assistant professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University. When describing the context or methods of your research, photos and movies are ideal pieces of evidence; when presenting your results, elements like graphs, tables, or charts (appropriately highlighted to emphasize key points) will do the trick.Read more: Pimp your PowerPoint – The Scientist – Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/templates/trackable/display/article1.jsp?type=article&o_url=article/display/57186&id=57186#ixzz0oSXiXCT6
Two things you gotta have first: Something to say, and a desire to say it well.
Resources:
• The Craft of Scientific Presentations: Critical Steps to Succeed and Critical Errors to Avoid, by Michael Alley, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2003. $39.95.
• Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations, by Garr Reynolds, New Riders Publishing, 2010. $31.49.
• slide:ology, by Nancy Duarte, O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, Calif., 2008. $34.99. (She’s got a blog, too.)
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward Tufte, Graphics Press, Cheshire, Conn., 1983. $40.00.
7 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Communication, History, Learning, Learning styles, Presentations, Student projects, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom technology, Communication, Education, Edward Tufte, Garr Reynolds, KeyNote, Learning, PowerPoint, Presentation Zen, Presentations, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s from the folks at Education Week and Teacher magazine: Teaching Now.
You may want to see the entry a couple of days ago about a school who issued cell phones to fifth grade students, and why.
Or note this story that Broward County, Florida, is hacking away at salaries for librarians and teachers of art, music and physical education.
Leave a Comment » | Classroom technology, Education blogs, History, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom technology, Education, Education blogs, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Or, was it the cute curmudgeon teaching econ and the old cartographer in geography?
I think I’ll add this to my TAKS review. What other classroom uses can you find for it?
I found it at Cool InfoGraphics.
Seriously, geography and economics teachers, this is big stuff:
“Follow the Money” is a video summarizing the results from the project by Northwestern University grad students Daniel Grady and Christian Thiemann. Using data from the website Where’s George?, they have been able to track the movement of U.S. paper currency. What can you learn from this? That there are natural borders within the U.S. that don’t necessarily follow state borders, and it can also be used to predict the spread of disease because it maps movement of people within the U.S.
From Maria Popova on BrainPickings.org: This may sound like dry statistical uninterestingness, but the video visualization of the results is rather eye-opening, revealing how money — not state borders, not political maps, not ethnic clusters — is the real cartographer drawing our cultural geography. The project was a winner at the 2009 Visualization Challenge sponsored by the National Science Foundation and AAA.
Tip of the old scrub brush to VizWorld and Maitri’s VatulBlog
1 Comment | animation, Business, Cartography, Classroom technology, Economics, Education, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Technology in the classroom, Video and film | Tagged: Classroom technology, Economics, Education, geography, Video and film, Where's George | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Here’s another opportunity to put real, cutting edge technology in your classroom. In fact, your kids could probably invent all sorts of new uses for it.
Have you even heard of this stuff? Can you use it, live, with the equipment you’ve got?
Blaise Aguera y Arcas of MicroSoft demonstrated augmented-reality maps using the power of Bing maps, Flickr, Worldwide Telescope, Video overlays and Photosynth, to an appreciative and wowed audience at TEDS:
My prediction: One more advance in computer technology that classrooms will not see in a timely or useful manner.
But have you figured out how to use this stuff in your geography, history, economics or government classes? Please tell us about it in comments. Give examples and links, please.
1 Comment | Classroom technology, Economics, Education, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, geology, History, Science, Social Studies, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Classroom technology, Economics, Education, geography, Government, History, Lesson plans, Photosynth, Technology, TEDS | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This is the headline that roped me in, at The New York Times: “Wi-Fi Turns Rowdy Bus into Rolling Study Hall.”
And a short excerpt:
But on this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops.
Morning routines have been like this since the fall, when school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92’s sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. The students call it the Internet Bus, and what began as a high-tech experiment has had an old-fashioned — and unexpected — result. Wi-Fi access has transformed what was often a boisterous bus ride into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared.
What would your bus drivers say?
(File under “If you teach them, they will learn — and behavior problems will fade away.”)
Don’t miss the end of the article:
A ride through mountains on a drizzly afternoon can be unpredictable, even on the Internet Bus. Through the windows on the left, inky clouds suddenly parted above a ridge, revealing an arc of incandescent color.
“Dude, there’s a rainbow!” shouted Morghan Sonderer, a ninth grader.
A dozen students looked up from their laptops and cellphones, abandoning technology to stare in wonder at the eastern sky.
“It’s following us!” Morghan exclaimed.
“We’re being stalked by a rainbow!” Jerod said.
More:
6 Comments | Classroom technology, Learning, Learning styles, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, XO laptops | Tagged: Arizona, Classroom technology, Education, Empire High School, Internet Access, Laptops, Learning, School Bus, Technology, Vail School District | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This is really good.
It’s a pretty good rundown of the fight between Keynes and Hayek, conducted mostly after Keynes’ death in economics classrooms and central banks world wide.
Watch it, and hope for more soon, at Econstories, the blog of the guys who created the thing, John Papola and Russ Roberts.
Resources:
4 Comments | Classroom technology, Economics, Education, History, Music, Teaching, Technology in the classroom, Video and film | Tagged: Classroom technology, Economics, Education, Hayek, John Papola, Keynes, Music, Rap, Russell Roberts | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish reads well, and it reveals evolution as easy to understand from a morphological view of life as revealed by fossils and modern animals.
Shubin released the illustrations from the book for teachers to use — a rather rare and great contribution to evolution.
Here’s where you can download the slides, at the Tiktaalik roseae website: Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion Year History of the Human Body – Teaching Tools.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula, “Teaching Your Inner Fish.“
2 Comments | Biology, Classroom technology, Education, Evolution, Images, Science, Teaching, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Biology, Classroom technology, Education, Evolution, Neil Shubin, PowerPoint, Science, Your Inner Fish | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Older son Kenny nears graduation there, but we still get the newsletters to parents bragging on the school, and there is much to brag about. The Good Folks at the University of Texas at Dallas asked us to share this story. It’s right up the alley of a blog that worries about education, so share it I will.
After all, when was the last time you heard a teacher raving about students using their cell phones and Twitter during class? (Yes, I’m about three weeks behind the curve on this.)
Here’s the story from the press office at UTD:
ATEC Student’s Twitter Video Makes Waves
Project Documents History Prof’s Use of Popular Service as a Teaching Tool
June 11, 2009An Arts and Technology student’s video account of a professor’s classroom experiment with Twitter is making waves on the World Wide Web, capturing thousands of viewers on YouTube and prompting an article in U.S. News & World Report.
UT Dallas graduate student Kim Smith’s video, “The Twitter Experiment,” shows how Dr. Monica Rankin, assistant professor of history in the School of Arts and Humanities, uses Twitter to engage her 90-student history class in discussion. The communication application helps overcome the logistical issues involved in having scores of students interact in a short time span and encourages shy students to participate in the course.
“The video is a living example of what my Content Creation and Collaboration course with Dan Langendorf was all about: using emerging media technologies as a tool for education, collaboration with other fields, and documenting the experience for everyone to have access to,” said Smith.
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that lets users send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets, in short posts of 140 characters or less. The Twitter video was a course project for Smith’s digital video class.
The video, which took roughly 20 hours to record and edit, was shot during two class periods, one at the beginning of the semester and one at the end. Classmate Joe Chuang helped with the video and editing.
The collaboration of Smith and Rankin began when Smith documented a class trip to Guanajuato, Mexico, in 2008. They kept in touch via Facebook, and developed the idea of using Twitter in the classroom at the beginning of the Spring 2009 semester.
Smith worked out details on Twitter with Emerging Media and Communication (EMAC) faculty members Dr. Dave Parry and Dean Terry, who referred her to individuals who had done similar experiments. To get students comfortable with using Twitter in a classroom setting, Smith created a simple how-to video and attended class to help Rankin introduce the idea to her students.
The video was first released on Facebook; Terry and Parry both tweeted about it on Twitter and it went global within 48 hours. New-media icon Howard Rheingold tweeted about it, which helped it further circulate in the “Twitterverse.”
“I have gotten several direct messages from people saying that they were more ‘traditional’ and would not have considered using the social networking and micro-blogging tools in this way, but opened their minds after seeing the video,” said Smith.
A few weeks later Smith posted the video on YouTube, and an entirely different wave of viewers picked up on it. On Monday, June 1, “The Twitter Experiment” registered 500 views in a few hours. Read Write Web and other popular blogs had picked up the video, causing views to skyrocket.
“I love my classes and experience at UT Dallas and want to master how to use what I learn in EMAC to help professors like Dr. Rankin, who are willing to consider new technologies intelligently and experiment with what they offer,” said Smith.
Media Contact: Karah Hosek, UT Dallas, 972-883-4329, karah.hosek@utdallas.edu
or the Office of Media Relations, UT Dallas, 972-883-2155, newscenter@utdallas.edu
UTD, where the football team is still undefeated. Seriously, have you thought about using twitter in class, for coursework? Please tell us the story in comments.
Meanwhile, I’m wondering just how I could make this work, in a district where cell phone use by students is against the rules (ha!), and where students are discouraged from using laptops in class. In Irving ISD, where every high school kid gets a laptop, this could offer some great possibilities (anybody from Irving reading this; anybody try it yet?). I’ll have to check to see if our network can handle such traffic, and I’ll have to get an account on Twitter; we have 87 minute class blocks, and smaller classes, but it’s tougher to get kids to discuss in high school.
With the layoffs in Dallas ISD, support for new technology tricks in classrooms is essentially non-existent. Can I do this as a guerrilla teaching project and make it work before I get caught?
I may have to get some of these people at UTD on the phone. If you’ve already overcome these problems, put that in comments, too, please.
5 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, College, Education, Higher education, History, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom Discussion, Classroom technology, Education, Facebook, Teaching, Technology, Twitter, University of Texas at Dallas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Bug Girl put this up, and you can watch it there and comment on it there in a lively and informative discussion, but it’s just too good not to show here:
Teachers, show it to your colleagues, and especially to your librarians and your administrators.
Students, show it to your teachers.
And, go thou and do likewise.
.
.
.
Oh, and note that Bug Girl’s post was a year ago.
Other stuff to see:
4 Comments | Education, Learning, Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom technology, Classrooms, Education, Learning, Teaching, Technology, video | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Does your school encourage the use of technology in your classroom?
My school says “no iPods, no exceptions.”
I learn from P—ed Off Teacher that may not be a good idea:
I was just about to tell Kevin to put away his I-pod, when I looked down and saw the graph of the function we were looking at on it. I did not know I-pods had this capability. He said that he downloaded a program with math applications and that is why he was able to do this.
Some days, I just love my job. I yelled at Kevin. “It’s kids like you that are keeping me from retiring.”
Who knew?
Of course, it takes a special teacher to be doing the job so well that the kids use their toys to learn the subject. Or does it? This is a special category of “discipline.”
How are things in your classroom today?
1 Comment | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom management, Classroom technology, iPods, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
VHS can now be considered dead, really most sincerely dead.* New tapes are not being produced for almost all programs, and the last, die-hard distributor who sold pre-recorded VHS tapes announced the company will stop those sales in the next few weeks.
For projecting programs in the classrooms in your school, is your school ready to switch to DVDs? I’ve never tried a poll here before, but I hope you will answer this one, especially if you’re a teacher.
Please express your opinion.
3 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Television, Video and film | Tagged: Classroom technology, DVD, Education, Teaching, Technology, VHS | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
One way to get better use out of technology is to let your students use it. How about having students make posts to a blog, for credit? They learn how to write, they learn technology, and they learn the class material.
Here’s a great example of a classroom-driven blog, where the students do most of the work: Extreme Biology. Miss Baker’s Biology Class holds forth from a school in the northeast, with 9th grade and AP biology students doing most of the work.
Here’s another good example, from another biology class (in Appleton, Wisconsin — close to you, James!): Endless Forms Most Beautiful (every biologist will recognize the title from biology literature).
The idea is attracting some attention in science circles, especially with an idea that working scientists ought to drop by from time to time to discuss things with students.
How do your students use technology to boost their learning?
Leave a Comment » | Biology, Brain learning, Education, Learning, Learning styles, Public education, Science, Student projects, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Weblogs | Tagged: Biology, Classroom technology, Education, Science, Student projects, Technology, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
