Week 5 lesson and reaction

I am pretty sure that the only people that read my blog are the people that have to do it for my class, so if you don't understand what I am talking about you have stumbled across my blog by accident and I am sorry.
My lesson went well.  I liked the topic and the kids were great, considering that it was in the mid 80's in my room at the time of the lesson.  I wonder what everyone did to gather up a group of kids in the middle of the summer?  I was lucky enough to just kidnap a section of the summer school kids and get after it.

My only complaint is with the template that we had to use for the lesson plan.  I know that each one of the 6 sections are very important, however, it is not a real world template.  I mean no disrespect.  It is actually a nice template if I only taught one class a week.  It is very informative and leaves nothing to the imagination.  However, after teaching for 10+ years, it is just too wordy and lengthy.  Please give me some feedback on this.  I hope that our instructor doesn't put a hit out on me for voicing this:) but some others must have an opinion that could agree or disagree with mine.  Again, I do not mean to be disrespectful, it is just that after a few years teaching my lesson plans consist of a couple pages of notes and possibly a few references to a text or website.  Speak to me out there folks.  What have you got?
C. Gray

Natural Disasters as Teachable Moments

One of my goals as a middle school teacher is to help the kids understand empathy.  This is a very difficult thing to do with 12 and 13 year old kids.  It is normal for kids of that age to think about themselves and only themselves.  It isn’t because they are selfish, it is just where the kids are developmentally.  

Last year the world suffered a horrible disaster when Japan was hit with a large earthquake just off of their coastline.  This earthquake led to a horrible tsunami, which caused massive amounts of damage and casualties.  The most severe issues were with the damaged nuclear power plants that leaked harmful radiation that could affect people for generations to come.  

This, of course was an ideal time to teach kids about a tsunami, talk about the affects, and bring empathy into play all at once.  I did this with the use of technology.  Not surprisingly the media was all over the disaster and we were able to actually watch some live footage in class with kids.  At first they thought that the waves that were coming in were cool, and they talked about how fun it would be to float down the streets on inflatable tubes and play in the water.  Then as cameras rolled and showed cars being smashed into peoples homes and entire areas being destroyed it became very quiet.  The kids realized how big of an issue this was as it got more and more serious.  We discussed it as a class, and showed them some youtube videos.  The kids came up with the idea of collecting change and sending it to Japan to help with the people that lost their homes.  We made up some signs and collected some jugs for change and set up a table in the lunch room.  Kids were extremely generous.  In just a few days we were able to raise around 200 dollars.  Then the student council matched our efforts.  We researched a few charities that were set up for this specific cause and donated to the one we liked the best.  The money that we raised probably didn’t make a huge difference in the effort, but it was a huge step in making the kids think about others before themselves.

Ask a Scientist web site

So I was able to post a question to the "Ask a Scientist" web site.  My question had to do with the genetics of the Eastern Cougar and how they may have helped or hindered them in becoming a dominant species.  Unfortunately, I did not receive any type of reply from the site.  I am a little disappointed about this, but I can imagine that that sight may receive a massive amount of questions about any number of topics.

Since I posted the question I did some research of my own.  I discovered that due to the genetic traits of all cougars, an Eastern Cougar can mate successfully with any other type of cougar.  One would think that this would help the Eastern Cougar thrive, however it is still on the endangered species list.  The Eastern Cougar also has a few specialized traits that help it be hard to track and successful at hunting.  It has extremely large and sharp canines, which make a quick bite to the back of the victims neck fatal.  They also have the ability to retract their claws inside of their feet to help them walk through brush silently.  This trait also allows them to keep their claws extremely sharp.

I would have like to get some feedback to get a more technical and professional opinion, but as a teacher I have learned long ago to just roll with it.  I would like to use this site in my classroom to get kids to become more curious in their thinking.  I often do not have an answer that a student may want.  This is a great way for me to get them involved in self-motivated inquiry.  It is important to me that my students know that I don't have all the answers, but there are strategies that can be used to find those answers.

Is there anyone out their that uses a site like this on a regular basis in their classroom?  If so, how do you implement it?

Walden

Presentation Sites
I have been assigned to look at a couple web presentation sites for my class at Walden University.  I must admit that at one time, when I was the young teacher in school, I considered myself someone that had a good grasp on technology.  However, as I age a bit, I must tell you that I am the kid in the back of the room that is lost when the "young pups" are sharing stuff in staff meetings.  Therefore I think that this assignment is right up my alley.  If I can use one of these sights, than almost anyone can.

I first started by doing a quick Internet search on the topic.  I made a short list of sites that were mentioned and selected two of those to mess around with.
The first site I tried was prezentit.com.  I must tell you that I ma not a fan of this site.  I am sure that there are numerous people that use this and are happy with it.  I am not one of them.  First off there was no help video on the site.  I need to have one of these.  Sometimes it is a good idea to just jump in and learn as you go, but I didn't even know where to jump in.  The help menu was limited and it was a Spanish based site with a few translation issues.  In fact, one drop down menu was not even available at the time that I reviewed the site.  They did publish an apology, but an apology didn't help me figure out what was going on.  When I did get involved and started playing around I thought the options were very basic, and there was not a lot of room to spice things up without having to download stuff onto the site.  I must say that this site failed my expectations.

Next I tried the Google Presentation site.  This was much better.  You can make spreadsheets, documents, and presentations.  This is great for the business world because it allows more than one author.  So lets say you and your partner are in different cities, you can still work on the same project at the same time.  As with most of these sites you can access it from any computer as long as you have an account.  The help window brought you to a youtube video that introduces the site.  The video is more of a commercial for the site than a how to.  It is easy to navigate but I found there to be little creative options.  It was fairly black and white.  As most educators know, the flashier the presentation, the more of a chance you have that kids will pay attention.  Of the tow sites, I would say this was the better.

After looking at these two examples I think that I will be using prezi.com for my presentation.  I liked the intro video and it appears to be very easy to understand.  The construction of your site tends to be very visual and user friendly, which means that even knuckleheads like me will be able to use it.