Above and Beyond the Blog

There are many things you can do on a blog that we have not yet learned in our technology class. I will show you some of my favorite things.

Games/Simulations

One thing that you can add to a blogs are things like games. This could be very useful in education if you are using your blog to communicate with your students. This can help in the education if you want to put things like simulations on on your blog so that students can better grasp a concept. To do this all you need to do is find the embedded code of the game and add it to your blog.

Below is and random fun game as an example.

You can also add video to your blog. You can either do this by uploading it from your computer or by finding the embedded code like with the game/simulation. This can be very helped in a classroom for many different reasons.

Here is a great example of a wild physics experiment.

There are many cool things that you can do with blogs that we have not even touched on yet.

These can include all the different kind of casts, such as podcasts. You can also add many things

with sound and voice. You can do much more with blogs than most people think. They are a great

way to display information.

PLN

I joined a PLN called the Educators PLN. I chose this PLN because it directly connects me with other teachers. I shared my delicious account and my blogger with these teachers and they also have these things and many others shared with me. With this PLN you can also view many other things such as videos or chat. I think that this site will be very useful and that I will learn from the other teachers.

Summative vs. Formative Assessment

Summative Assessment

• Summarizes the development of learners at a particular time.
• Given periodically to determine at a particular point in time what students know and do not know.
• Means to gauge, at a particular point in time, student learning relative to content standards.
• Can only help in evaluating certain aspects of the learning process.
• Important for state or district programs.
• Does not help make adjustments.

Formative Assessment

• Part of the instructional process.
• Provides the information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are happening.
• Informs both teachers and students about student understanding at a point when timely adjustments can be made.
• Adjustments help to ensure students achieve, targeted standards-based learning goals within a set time frame.
• Think of formative assessment as "practice."
• Do not hold students accountable in "grade book fashion" for skills and concepts they have just been introduced to or are learning.

Examples:

Summative:

1. Standardized tests
2. Chapter tests
3. Midterms or Exams

Formative:

1. Open Questioning
2. Any practice problems
3. Peer assessment (groupwork)
4. Teacher to Student Discussion

Communicating with students/parents.

To communicate with my students I wll use a website. This will be a website similar to oncourse or moodle. I will use this sites to give my students a schedule, assignments, grades, and many other things. With this site my students will be able to contact me when needed. They will be able to send messages to me and I can reply accordingly. With this site, students will also be able to communicate and help each other through an online chat or messaging system. This will make it easier to do activities such as group projects.

I will also use this site to communicate with parents. Through this site the parent can see everything that thier child can see and more. The parents will be able to see the students grades, schedule, assignments, and everything the student can, but they will also be able to see things such as comments by myself about their child and how they have doing in class. Through this site parents will easily be able to contact me or I them. I will also post my schedule for them so that if they want to have a conference or anything of the sort with me, they will be able to better see when I will be able to do so.

Station 8: Lego Racer

In this activity we were asked to find the velocity of a lego car going down a ramp. We had to do 4 different trials. We had two different cars, one weighted and one not, and two different ramp heights. We released each car down each ramp. This activity shows examples of friction and gravitational acceleration.

Trial 1
Trial 1 low ramp: This was done with a basic car with no added weight. This was simply done with the wheels and green lego sheet. The car was released to roll down a ramp that was placed at about 35 degrees.
Trial 1 high ramp: This was also done with a basic car, using no added weight. With only the wheels and sheet the car has less friction. This trial was released at about a 45 dgree angle.


Trial 2
Trial 2 low ramp: This was done using the full version of the car as seen in the image of the Lego car below. The car was dropped from a low angle in "Trial 2 low ramp" which was estimated at 35 degrees.
Trial 2 high ramp: This was another experiment in which the full version of the car was dropped down a ramp, however this ramp was set at a 45 degree angle.



Below you can see the results of the four trials.

Below is a picture of the successful weighted car.

These four trials were different because or friction. The weighted of the car changed the amount of downward force causing more friction. The ramp also changed the amount of friction on the car. With the low ramp more gravitation force is being put on the ramp than there would be if the ramp were at the high stage.