Teacher TechBites ep 016 - Tracking Student Progress with Google Forms

This year I've started teaching differently. I've embraced a teaching methodology called Modeling Physics. The largest component of this style is Socratic Dialog. Basically, we end up having a lot of class discussion where I ask questions without directly giving answers.

I've started using Google Forms to not only track who I've been calling on, but also what they know. So far it's working well, but I'll know more once I get enough data.





Crossposted from TeacherTechBites.com

Google Workshop at Wayne RESA

Today I'm leading a workshop as a Google Certified Teacher at Wayne RESA. I'm not sure I'm as ready as I should be, but there's not much hope I'll ever feel as ready as I need to be.

I'll be focusing on Google Apps for Education, but I'll also be covering Blogger, YouTube, and Google Maps/Earth. If you're interested you can check out a Google Site I put together for today. It serves as my handouts, agenda, and presentation tool.

New Google Serach Feature Coming?

I just saw this hack and I had to try it. Apparently Google is working on a way to visually relate search key words. In order to activate it you have to run a java script which puts a cookie on you computer. Tony Ruscoe and Phillip Lenssen detail the process at Google Blogoscoped.

You end up with a web like arrangement of search terms. Your search results will be off to the right. To make it work you really need some pretty general search terms. For example, my picture started at Educational Technology. When I searched Transforming Teaching, I got nothing. Proper names will work for really big people. Steve Jobs gives results, but David Warlick, Will Richardson, and Alan November do not.

I think this sort of search can have some power. But it's still in its early stages and needs a bit of work. It is fun to play with though, so you may want to give it a look.

Arduino in High School Electronics

I started using Arduino, an open source electronics platform in my one semester electronics course. Arduino incorporates a microcontroller (mini computer) and allows for a lot of really cool options. Last semester was the first semester I used Arduino with the whole class. It went fairly well.

All students were required to create a final project. I gave them the option of working with a partner with the caveat that when they presented their final project I would get to decided which of the two of them would have to answer my questions.

Their projects included not only the circuitry and programming, but students also had to physically build the device. This ended up being a really good project. Even if they chose to build upon a project they found on the net they had to tinker with it to make it do what they wanted it to do.

Once completed, students had to write up and present their projects on Google Sites. If you're interested you can go to the class site to find descriptions, pictures and Arduino code. Below is a video created by a pair of my students who used an old remote controlled car as the chassis for an autonomous Arduino controlled robot.


Crossposted from FlosScience

Ancient Rome in 3D for Google Earth

I found out about this yesterday and I was totally geeked. Then I found the competition for educators and thought I really need to give this a look. So I downloaded the latest version of Google Earth, and the new Ancient Rome layer wasn't there. It appeared sometime late yesterday.

This morning I downloaded it to give it a try and I am totally disappointed.

3D Ancient Rome suggests 2 GHz dual core processor with 3 GB RAM and a good video card with at least 512 ram. They don't list any minimum specs. My desktop computer couldn't hack it. It's running WinXP with a 2.8 GHz Pentium IV, 1 GB ram and an ok nVidia graphics card. As I started to load the data things started to crawl to the point of being totally useless.

So I decided to try my MacBook which has a 1.83 GHz dual core with 2 GB ram with Intel integrated graphics. It kind of worked, but not in any sort of satisfying way.

I was able to get the historic terrain with no real problems then I tried for the 250 Landmarks. This was slow and just barely doable. Then to prove to myself how inadequate my two year old computer is I decided to be silly and try for the 5000+ buildings. I watched for about five minutes as buildings were added at a rate of about maybe 5 a minute or so and decided I didn't have 1000+ minutes to wait for the rest of the buildings.

For me this is a bust. With just the landmark buildings in I could see that it could be really cool, but everything was a bit choppy and slow. I'm not sure I would be able to do an effective demo with this in class. And even if I could, with just the landmark buildings in place you don't get any sort of real sense for what ancient Rome looked like.

I have a feeling that the most important component needed to make this run is a good graphics card. The big prize for the educator competition is a new MacBook. The ironic part is that if the teacher can run the Ancient Rome layer they probably already have a pretty good, brand new laptop.

Google Teacher Academy, Non-Tech Tips

I blogged about my impressions on Google Corporate Culture after my day at the Google Teacher Academy. For me this is still the biggest piece I walked away with. But I did pick up some good tips/tricks. I'll share them over the next few blog posts unless I get distracted by something shiny.

We started the day by breaking up into small groups to share our favorite non-tech lessons. These could be ones we've done or ones we've seen. Then we came back together and the best one from each group was shared with everyone. Here were my favorites:

• Use a large whiteboard as wiki training wheels. Many students, particularly younger ones, have a hard time understanding how a wiki works. The facts and framework for a concept can be put up on a whiteboard. Over time the information and layout can be modified as new things are learned.
  
• Six word stories graffiti style. Students write six word stories about some subject. The best ones are then turned into graffiti style art that is hung on the walls for all to see.

Now, I know many people out there don't have an extra whiteboard that they can dedicate to a long term project, but you might be able to get one cheaper than you think. You can get shower wallboard for pretty cheap (under $30) and it comes in 4'x8' sections and makes perfectly acceptable whiteboards. This would also be a perfect way to display the six word stories.

I'm already planning on getting a couple panels for my classroom. I'll let you know how they work out.

Google Teacher Academy - Chicago

This week I had the honor of attending the Google Teacher Academy in Chicago. This was really cool. I got to see all sorts of ways to use Google tools in teaching, some new and some I've seen before. But, I'm not going to talk about that today. What I want to talk about (before the KoolAid wears off) is how I felt in the Google Offices. I know you've probably seen descriptions of the Googleplex and heard about the free food, game rooms, masseuse on staff, and the loose non-existent dress code. These are cool perks, but totally beside the point. What they do is point to the positive corporate culture that Google seeks to imbue in it's offices.

The bottom line seems to be if your employees are comfortable and happy then they will be more productive. They will look forward to coming to work rather than dreading it, and while they're there they get more done. I've been struggling to work towards this in my classroom for the last couple of years, but I've never had a good model to base it on. Now I'm beginning to have an inkling of what it might look like. Next step, start implementing it.

Google Chrome

Google has come out with their own web browser, Google Chrome. I was going to resist it until they had a Mac version (currently they only support Windows), but I've heard enough about it now to make me think I should try it.

I've been using it for all of 5 minutes or so and I have to say I love it. It's very clean and very fast. Cool stuff includes:

• No search box. If you want to search just type your query into the address box (where you type in the url). It will try to predict what you're typing (be it url or search query) and make suggestions.
• Clean interface. There's not a lot of buttons across the top, just what you need.
• Did I mention it's fast?
• Each Tab is it's own process. This means if one of them has an issue and crashes you can just close that one Tab and leave everything else untouched. I haven't personally confirmed this yet.

Now, Google has said it is very Beta. I think they're using Beta in the traditional sense (rather than Beta as in gmail is still beta). If you rely on lots of plugins then you may want to wait. There's no Diigo plugin, for example, and I rely heavily on Diigo. But, the Diigolet for Firefox works fine in Chrome. 

I figure for now I'll primarily use Chrome when I'm using Google products (Apps, Docs, gmail, Sites, Blogger) and still use Firefox for my day to day browsing. But, that said once Chrome is available for my Mac I may jump over to Chrome as my primary browser.

Help - Google Teacher Academy

I'm planning on applying to the Google Teacher Academy Chicago (Sept. 24, 2008). Part of the application requires the production of a video.

"Each applicant to the Google Teacher Academy is REQUIRED to produce and submit an original one minute video on EITHER of the following topics: "Motivation and Learning" OR "Classroom Innovation." Be as creative as you like.

This video is a very important part of your application. The task is designed to demonstrate your technical ability, your resourcefulness, your commitment, and your unique personality and interests."

So, here's my video (one minute is not very long):

What do you think? Too cheesey? Need an introduction? Need my face/voice? Too disjointed? It's not too late to scrap it and start over. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Unless of course you're just trying to torpedo me to improve your own chances ;-)

Gmail security hole you can easily plug

I was going to go into all sorts of detail outlining a security hole in Gmail login and how hackers can use it, but I'd basically be re-hashing what others have already said. If you really need to know the how and why I'd recommend reading these two posts:

• Making Security Easier
• New Tools Automate Cookie Stealing from Gmail

The bottom line is you should always use a secure login when you sign on to Gmail. You can do this manually by typing "https://" instead of "http://" when entering the url for Gmail. The "s" makes it secure. If you're like me you're a bit lazy and probably won't remember to do this anyway, so I recommend going into your settings and making Gmail do this by default.

Login to Gmail and click on "Settings" in the top right corner:
In the settings window (General tab) scroll all the way down and click the circle next to "Always use https" and then click "Save Changes"
Then you never have to worry about it again. As an added bonus, I noticed that when I logged into Blogger to write this post it also gave me a secure login by default. Now I have to see if there's an easy way to make this the default in Google Apps Education Edition.

Google Earth in Physics?

Google Earth allows for the creation of custom content by users. The easiest way is to create a kml or kmz file. kml and kmz files are fairly easy to create (or modify). It is just a mark-up language. If you can code html you can code kml files (they're not the same, but are similar). KML Tutorial. For those who don't want to delve into the code you can create these files within Google Earth itself. I mention kml amd kmz because this is the format you will save Google Earth files in if you want to make them available for others.

A kml file is simply a small text file with instructions for Google Earth to interpret. KMZ files are compressed archives of files. A KMZ file includes the KML file and any other files (like pictures) the KML refers to. I was playing around the other day and created a KMZ file from a nature walk (crosswinds marsh.kmz) my son and I took. I plotted our path (using my GPS) and took pictures along the way. I placed pins in Google Earth and edited their descriptions, to include the pictures. You can use html code in the description to change text style, include links to the web, bring in pictures, or even some web videos. I put the path and the pins in a folder in GE and saved the folder as a KMZ file.

I created the path using GPS Visualizer, a web application that converts GPS files to other formats, including KML or KMZ files. This allows me to use my GPS unit with the free version of Google Earth. Normally, you can only use a GPS unit with Google Earth Plus.

In the newest version of Google Earth Beta 4 they took some of the premium features from the paid version and brought them over to the free version, including the ability to create paths and polygons. So, if you don't have access to a GPS unit it would be easy enough to draw a nature walk and incorporate pictures from the walk as pins. Or have a student studying the Tundra biome outline the tundra and have pins marking points of interest with pictures and information. This would be a lot more fun than having the exact same information in a report or powerpoint presentation.

HTML Primer for Google Earth: This shows some very basic html code you can use in your placemarks within Google Earth. A quick search of the internet will yield a lot more.

Google Earth in Physics

For more go to the Google Earth Page on FLOSScience.com

Google Analytics is Cool

So, I've been using Google Analytics to track statistics on this blog. Well, a couple days ago I looked and got a shock. I typically see 20 to 50 hits in a give day. So I was a bit confused by what I saw.Over the course of three days, July 16-18th I had over 700 hits!!! I figured someone was messing with me so I looked and found hits from all over the place. Almost all of the hits cam from Google from people searching for information on the Hot Wheels Radar Gun (I blogged about it a couple years ago). This still left me a bit confounded, until I shared my confusion with my wife.

She, unlike me, doesn't live under a rock and pays more attention to news that has nothing to do with educational technology. Anyway, she told me of a kid who was using his Hot Wheels Radar Gun to stop people from speeding in his neighborhood. Apparently the story was picked up by the AP.

Anyway, I wonder how many weird blips like this happen in search histories caused by one relatively isolated event. Seems like there's a sociology experiment in this.

GIS - Geographic Information Systems

I taught Environmental Science a number of years ago and I came across all of this then. Some of this material may be a little outdated. I will be working on it this summer to help out a good friend of mine who will be teaching Environmental Science this year. GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, is basically taking data and plotting it on maps. By mapping the data it is often much easier to spot patterns or trends. In education GIS can be a perfect tool for inquiry based labs.

The simplest GIS activity I've ever done with my class was to pass out maps of South East Michigan that I'd gotten from the Secretary of State or the Department of Transportation (I can't remember which). Then in groups of trhee I had students use markers or crayons to trace all th rivers and streams. By highlighting this data students were able to quickly identify the different watersheds in our area. We live in the Rouge River Watershed which covers a large area and funnels down to one very polluted river. Once the watershed was "outlined" in this way it was easy for students to understand why it is still so polluted even given all the programs aimed at changing this.

GIS becomes even more powerful when we bring the power of computers to bear. Below are listed some free programs for analyzing data. The easiest is probably Google Earth, but I highly recommend giving ArcExplorer a try.

• NASA World Wind - Free and Open Source program from NASA. Visualize the Earth as a 3D globe that you can easily map a variety of data onto. Yes, I know this sounds a lot like Google Earth. It is not quite as easy to use as Google Earth, but it already includes much of the scientific data that you have to download separately and add into Google Earth. You should give it a look and see if it will give you a few more things than GE will. It also includes the Moon and Mars. Be sure to check out the World Wind Wiki for more info and add-ons. The World Wind Wiki offers a comparison with Google Earth. Or if you prefer, here's a 3rd party comparison.
  
• Google Earth Ideas - Google Earth is free from Google, although there are paid versions as well. The newest version allows for easy integration of SketchUp Buildings.
• Arc Voyager SE - Cool program that comes with ready made activities. ArcVoyager really begins to show the power of GIS. (This is still available, but it has been supplanted by Arc Explorer. Personally I haven't used ArcExplorer in class yet, which is why I still list ArcVoyager)
• Create Custom Maps from online data. (Earth Exploration Toolbook)
• Earth Science Lesson focusing on mapping earthquake data. (Earth Exploration Toolbook)
• Looking into the Earth using earthquake wave speed data. (Earth Exploration Toolbook)

I created this map as an example of some of the cool questions you can ask. It was created in ArcExplorer using data from the 2006 CIA World Fact Book. The highlighted countries have more than twice as many active cell phones as traditional telephones. This is really cool, it demonstrates how many developing countries are leap-frogging technologies and not even bothering to build the infrastructure necessary to support more out dated traditional phones.

Cross posted from www.flosscience.com

New Direction

So, I haven't really been blogging as much this past year. So, what's the solution? More blogs to update. I'll be starting another blog or two that have a slightly different focus than this one. I wanted to keep this blog mostly focused on teaching with technology, but I often have good science ideas that aren't really technology based and I haven't had an outlet for sharing them.

So, I'm starting a brand new thing. I bought a domain from GoDaddy and set up Google Apps and Blogger to point at the new domain. So for the cost of $10/year (domain registration) I get free web hosting (10GB of storage), as many email addresses as I want, and easy to update web pages (both through Blogger and Sites). The whole set-up process, while not 100% pain free, was relatively simple. I could also easily add a couple more web services and have free audio and/or video hosting/podcasting (that way I wouldn't have to eat into my 10GB).

This idea has been percolating around in my brain since last year's NECC. Where I was presenting some of my science stuff in the Math/Science Playground. Someone recommended that I become the Open Source Science Guy since I was showing how to use Audacity to teach sound. Well, opensourcescience.com was already gone, so I bought FLOSScience.com. (FLOS = Free/Libre Open Source)

As of writing this I haven't posted any FLOSScience blog entries yet, but I have been working on the Google Site side of the new site, just in case you're interested. Needless to say, developing this is my summer project.

I don't like to lecture

I don't like lecturing, I'd much prefer to do lots of hands on activities and have the students learn from doing. Unfortunately, I have to lecture from time to time just due to the massive amount of information I have to impart to my students. So when I recently watched a video by Professor Eric Mazur on a teaching style he class "Interactive Teaching" I was hooked.

The basic idea behind Interactive Teaching is two fold. The first part is:

1. Students read before lecture
2. Students go online to answer questions about the reading and to ask questions about the reading
3. The instructor reviews answers left on the net looking for areas where most/all of the students get it or where they don't get it
4. This data informs how lecture is done

The second part is something many of us do already. During Lecture Professor Mazur asks his students to teach each other.

1. A question is posed to the class
   
2. All students respond via clickers, whiteboards, or colored index cards marked with letters
3. Responses quickly assessed by the instructor.
4. If most are correct the answer is confirmed and explained briefly
5. If there's a mix of right and wrong answers the students are asked to turn to their neighbors to defend their answers. After which the students are re-polled.

I typically do a lot of the second, but I haven't done the first. Until now I didn't have an easy way to implement it. While I was watching Professor Mazur's video the pieces started to fall into place. A few days earlier I'd read a post by Tom Woodward at Bionic Teaching on how to use the new Google Forms with Exhibit. Now, I still don't really understand Exhibit, I'll save that for the future when I have some more time. Anyway, I realized I could create a Google Form for my students to fill out and the data would be dumped directly into a Google Spreadsheet for analysis.

So, I can have them read, or I can record a lecture and have them watch it, and then answer questions before they come back to me. I get to see their responses before class and I can easily tailor my lesson to fill the holes they still have in their understanding. Or, I can use this technique for a very easy pre-assessment before I start a new unit.

Below is a quick screen-capture I did to show you how to do this and how my first such lesson looks like. (note: for ease I tried out the video upload function within Blogger, you can see the results below. Not very acceptable. For a clearer version got to my copy at falconphysics.blip.tv. There you can also download the full resolution screen capture if you want.)

Struck a cord...

One of my favorite podcasts is Geek!-Ed!. I listen to every episode and I usually agree with what they say. Occasionally, however, I don't. Near the end of this week's episode (episode 87) they were talking about Google Docs and other similar tools. This led to a statement by Chris who said (at around 35:30):

"As educators, we have no control over what happens with our student accounts."

Chris goes on to say that this is why he won't use Google Docs in his classroom.
The following rant is not about the Geek!-Ed! podcast, but about an attitude I run into quite often among educators.

Now I know there is a great possibility for students to stumble into problems when they use internet tools, but to not use one because you as an educator do not have complete control over what students will do with it sees to be a bit alarmist. Students can use pencils and paper to get into lots of trouble and I have no control over how they use them. I only have control over what they put in my hands. Does this mean I shouldn't teach them to write? There are lots of books in our public library that I wouldn't want students to read without supervision of some kind, but does that mean I don't encourage them to utilize a great resource? We have no control over what happens at local government meetings, does this mean a civics teacher shouldn't require/encourage their students to attend them?

In order to use many internet tools I have to knowingly relinquish some control over my students, but this is no different than when students are taught to read or write. I have no control over how they use these tools outside of my classroom. So, what do I do? I try to teach them about the potential pitfalls. I point out that just because it is in print does not make it a fact and I teach them that they typically sign away their right to privacy when they use the internet, I teach them that the person they trade messages with on MySpace may be a monkey.

I'm an educator and so I see education as the answer. I'm not a big fan of blocking a tool just because it can be used poorly or when used improperly could be unsafe. After all, a pencil could be used to stab someone, write a bomb threat on a bathroom wall, or write an anonymous threatening note to another student, but we still typically require students to have one when they walk into our classrooms.

Is it different just because it's the internet? We always talk about computers and the internet being a new sort of pencil and then we treat them differently.

Now, I teach high school. Maybe I'd feel differently about this if I was in a middle or elementary school. I just don't know. Anyway, that's the end of my rant for the day.

What do you think?

I wish I taught Earth Science

While helping a colleague play with Google Earth I discovered a cool website put together by the National Weather Service. You can download their weather radar loops into Google Earth.

The site will create a KML file for the selected radar which can be opened in Google Earth or NASA World Wind (I haven't tried World Wind with this yet). The data are real time and use the time slider that was added to Beta 4. You can hit play and watch or you can drag the slider back and forth. Each frame has to be loaded, so it can take a little time. You'll want to load it up prior to showing it to students. Some times it loads fast and other times it is fairly slow.

You can download different sectors and show them all at the same time. The one time slider will cycle all the open sectors at the same time. Goto the National Weather Service Enhanced Radar Images and check it out. You can of course simply view the loops as video files without bothering with Google Earth. The additional of Google Earth may not add much educational value, but it can make for a great anticipatory set.

Technorati Tags: GIS, Google Earth, weather, world wind, education, falconphysics

Google Earth Keeps getting better

I was just checking the Google Earth Blog (something I need to do much more often) when I stumbled across something I've been wanting for a while. You can now do Plate Tectonics with Google Earth.

I just love it when people create cool content that I need. I suppose need is very relative since I don't teach any Earth Science anymore.

Once you download the kml file you'll have to wait for each of the time frames to load. The you can drag the slider in the thing that appeared at the top of the window or just click the play button next to the slider.

Technorati Tags: GIS, Google Earth, education, falconphysics

Hey you kids. Get off my lawn!!!

Writely becomes Google Docs. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. My gut reaction is I don't like it. It's possible I'm just being an old curmudgeon. I liked the old interface better. I was used to it. Perhaps I'll find everything works the same, but for now it's uncomfortable.

That's a problem with web based apps I hadn't considered before. With "buy it and install apps" I have the choice to upgrade or keep the old software if I want. With online apps the entire interface can change over night and the users have no choice in the matter.

One of the big problems with this change is they provide a link for suggestions for new features and the link is broken. A couple suggestions I have are: give us the option of keeping the old look and feel, and give us the spell checker back.

Personally I don't care how well it looks like the Google spreadsheet ap, because I'm not likely to use the spreadsheet until it gets a lot of new functionality. I understand they want a united front, but Google bought Writely for a reason. It was good and people liked it. One of the things we liked was the design. Now the design is gone and so is the branding.

I just hope they don't screw up YouTube.

OK, I guess I'm done ranting...

Tags: Writely, education, falconphysics

I've been playing with an online word processor called Writely. So far I have to say I like it. It is by no means the most powerful word processor and that is one of the things I like about it. I use it as a fairly clean text editor that I can access from anywhere. There is no software to install, it runs right in your browser.

I use many computers on a daily basis. Heck even my MacBook is really two computers (OSX and WinXP). Writely allows me to easily share my most important documents among all my computers. This is good as I've been keeping my lessons plans on Writely this year and my MacBook seems to have died (note, I tried my MacBook again before I posted this and it has recovered). I freaked out at first, until I realized I'm still under warranty and all my most recent work has been on Writely and so is safe.

So far I have not really used one of Writely's most touted features, namely collaboration. You can set Writely up so that other people have access to your documents making collaboration much easier. This could make group projects much easier. I'm working on a lab manual (more on this in the future) with a retired teacher (my Physics mentor) who now lives in Colorado. I've uploaded the documents we've created so far and given him access to them, but so far he hasn't modified them, so I don't know how well the collaboration bit works yet.

I'm going to test out one of the other features as soon as I'm done typing. When I was making my last entry into my lesson plans I noticed a Blog tab at the top of the Writely window. Apparently I can blog directly from Writely. Being a Google product, Writely will apparently post to Blogger directly, but can also post to a number of other sites as well.

Technorati Tags: weblogs, blog, education, falconphysics