Using Apps

Educational organizations are finally embracing apps for smartphones such as the iPhone and tablet computers, such as the iPad. Learning with apps is often more convenient in this mobile world. Many of these apps are free to use for educational purposes.

For example, an app to get students thinking about how biomechanics and anatomy are related is the Vernier Video Physics app. Students can videotape animals using the app and analyze how the anatomy might be different between animals and why. It's a neat way to use a comparative approach to learning about anatomy. It's available for free from the Vernier app store.

Other apps to teach anatomy include XRayFX Lite, 3D Cell Station, 3D Head and Neck, 3D Body Systems Quiz, 3D Brain and Anatomy Lite. If you teach about Global Warming there is an app for that. So look for new apps whenever you visit your favorite science sites.

Web Video & Innovation

TED's Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation -- a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness.

Copyright-Friendly Wiki

Copyright Friendly is a wiki with links to copyright friendly images and sounds. You may not need to ask permission to use them when publishing them on the Web for educational purposes, but it's a good idea to check and to cite or attribute these resources to their creators. If you see any copyright notices on the source pages, read them for further instructions. There are also links to resources where you can create avatars, concept maps, graphs, and other graphics useful to teaching. If you need help in using copyrighted materials, consult the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.

Sharing Multimedia

One of my assignments in an educational technolog course was to embed multimedia I created (as opposed to pre-existing multimedia, which I have embedded in the previous post "Enjoy the Video"). This worksheet was designed using the free diagram drawing tools on Gliffy.com (click worksheet to view larger image). I have created a website/blog evaluation worksheet for students based on Kathy Schrock's criteria. Gliffy keeps a copy of my graph on file. This means I can share the diagram with others; particularly useful when members of a team are working together to develop a concept. I can also provide a link to or upload the completed diagram (in my case, a worksheet) to a class web site. Gliffy gives you options to allow students (or anyone else) to write on the worksheet online. I'd love to share the worksheet with you but Blogger won't let me hyperlink to it. Try pasting http://www.gliffy.com/publish/1148218/ in your web browser. Let me know if it works. I can't verify because I am a Gliffy member and the URL may work only for members.

I'm sure there are more sophisticated tools on other websites, but they may not be free. I would have liked a diagram that has a built-in calculator, so the total score on the worksheet would be automatically generated after students completed typing the scores for each evaluation row. Please let me know if you have suggestions for free worksheet templates, with computational features, available on the Internet.

Enjoy the Video

Today I spent several hours trying to include a video or interactive game in my post. I discovered that Blogger won't accept certain html code from other sites. The video above was easy to insert because it came from YouTube, a web site that has figured out how to avoid code glitches for the not-so-tech-savvy user. Does anyone have any hints about which code works and which doesn't?

I hope you enjoy the whimsical video above. It has nothing to do with the theme of my blog other than it's an example of multimedia embedded in a post from another source. I chose it because I needed something cheerful after hours of trying to search for video sources. Whenever you need a happy moment, come back here and replay the video.

There are thousands of videos to choose from at YouTube. So it's not an easy task to find what you need for teaching. Searching using the main categories is cumbersome. I had better luck using the search option. Words like "geology" and "microbes" yielded some interesting possibilities, like the clip about how and why penicillin was discovered. None of the videos are reviewed for accuracy and that may also be a problem for teachers. Has anyone used YouTube in class? Did the clips help student learning?