My Experience with Ask a Scientist...

So, my first experience with Ask a Scientist was a little bit of a let-down.  At first glance, I was excited about the potential of asking a "real" scientist a wondering question and getting a "real" answer.  I immediately thought of what this would mean to my students...and that excited me even more about the potential of this site.  We were assigned to ask a question about cells.  I asked, "With regard to brain cells, how do multiple hits to the head affect the brain cells?  What are the ramifications to brain cells from concussions or other sports related injuries?"  This is a question that interests me because of my sports history (I played at the high school and college level) and because I currently am a high school coach.  Although I received no answer, I still see the value in this type of site.  If we could be assured of more timely responses, I would definitely use this in my classroom instruction for students to interact with scientists.  Just as students have pen pals and write to authors in ELA, interactions with professionals in the field bring a positive, real-world experience to students. 

Evaluating Web 2.0 Presentation Tools

During the first week of Investigating the Living World, I experimented with five of the presentation tools that were listed on the "cool tools for school" wikispace.  I further investigated Prezi after viewing the tutorial in this week's resources.  Then, I investigated Perzentit, Museumbox, 280 Slides, and finally, Google Sites.

I like Prezi because of the "thinking map" feel of it.  My students are masters of creating thinking maps and I feel that they would not only be able to understand the way that Prezi presents information, but also transfer this understanding to make their own Prezi.  This brings a useable application to my own classroom instead of relying on PowerPoint presentations all of the time.  After viewing the tutorial, Prezi seems easy to use.  I really like the connections that you can make between each focal point.  Prezi will be the presentation tool that I use to develop my course project on the Bog Turtle.

The Perzentit was interesting because you can work with a team at the same time to update the presentation.  I think that Perzentit was a bit more elementary.  I did not see many features in my investigation, but I do think it would be useful if assigning a group project that needed to be completed outside of class.

The Museumbox was really cool.  It is good to pinpoint specific topics, or perhaps detail the life of a scientists.  I found Museumbox to be geared a bit more to the social studies/history areas.  Also, your school has to be approved before you can use it.  I think it is a really neat idea, but it also appears to be more difficult to use.

The 280 Slides seems very easy to use.  It looks a lot like PowerPoint, but much quicker when uploading pictures and videos.  I liked the ease of this site, but if given the choice between 280 Slides and PowerPoint, I would choose PowerPoint at this time because I did not see anything that really stood out on the 280 Slides.

Finally, the Google Sites presented a neat, FREE way to develop web sites.  This was a really cool presentation tool.  I really liked the layout of the classroom site and I thought that the Science Fair Project Template would be very useful to develop to give guidelines, post due dates, answer parental or student questions, and posts grading requirements and rubrics.  Google walks you through the free set up of the web site, so it seems very easy to implement.  This is a site that I will definitely be back to.  For some time, I have been interested in developing a classroom website.  I am excited about this venture.