Section of a poster created by Perrin Ireland during a presentation my students gave on challenges they face while blogging. Click on link for full poster.

I was invited to write a blog post for L’Oreal’s For Women in Science blog, Agora.  Thrilled at the invitation, I soon struggled with what to write.  After I finished the post, I decided to share my writing experience with several of my students in the hopes that it will help them see what we all go through when we write a blog post.  Hopefully, it will make them feel more confident in themselves and realize that the fears they have are shared by us all.

Deadline for post: Saturday, Feb 25

Started: Tues, Feb 21

Worried over what to write.  Stared blankly at screen.  Felt anxious.  Decided to work on it tomorrow.

Wed, Feb 22

Couldn’t come up with a beginning.  After about 15 minutes of staring at the screen, I decided to write my purpose for the blog.  What were the points I wanted to make to my audience?  Wrote down two ideas.

Couldn’t come up with anything to write.  Didn’t know how to start.  Decided I needed to start with a story that would hopefully draw my readers in.  Something I experienced in the past.  But, couldn’t think of anything.  Tried not to think of the deadline and decided to work on it tomorrow.

Thursday, Feb 23

Came up with an idea for a beginning and started writing.  Wrote quite a bit, but worried people wouldn’t find it interesting.  But, I kept writing.  Found a way to incorporate my two main points into the post with nice transitions from one to the next.  Felt proud.  Came up with an ending, but felt it was somewhat cheesy.  Started worrying again that no one would like or read my post.  Started doubting why L’Oreal asked me to write it in the first place.  I reminded myself that it was for a good cause, I had two important things to share, and hoped someone would find it interesting.

Sent rough draft to friend for feedback.  Friend liked post and only made a few suggestions.  I started to feel better, though I still had doubts.  Decided a fresh look at it tomorrow would be best.

Friday, Feb 24

Felt better about post.  Rephrased some sentences.  Added some new content.  Printed post out so I could read it on paper.  Seeing it on paper made me catch a few things I wanted to change.  Found a way to write a better ending that revisited the opening story I used.  Asked a different friend to read it for feedback.  Friend also liked post and had only one suggestion.  Made a couple more minor changes.  Printed it out again.  Decided post was final.  Felt a bit nervous.  Knew it wasn’t perfect.  But, satisfied nonetheless.  Excited to see it on L’Oreal’s blog.

Take home message

The main points I hope my students get from this post are the following:

• everyone experiences self-doubt and anxiety about their writing
• the important thing is to keep writing; it’s easier to edit and remove bad content then to try to write only great content all the time
• printing out your post might help you see it in another perspective
• always ask someone to read your post; better yet, ask two people

Gene 1

Gene 2

Gene 3

Gene 4

Photo source: Colin Purrington

While it isn’t possible for the average high school biology student to examine real fossils, with a little imagination you can design a really fun “fossil” cladogram activity for your students. Gather some simple household items – kitchen utensils work really well – or instruct your students to bring an item in from home. Break the class into groups of 3 or 4 students and give each group some of the items to examine.

*Note that the more items you give each group, the more difficult the activity becomes. Advanced students can work with between 7-10 items, while less advanced students should be given fewer.

Tell the students to pretend that the items are fossils and that their assignment is to make observations of each “fossil” and use their data to construct a cladogram. Instruct students to look for homologous structures that the fossils share. The structures could be the presence or absence of “teeth”, “appendages”, symmetry, etc.

For example, a salt shaker may have been a filter-feeder with radial symmetry.

Photo source: L. Marie

You can watch this video of some of my students performing this activity to get a better idea of how it can be performed.

Once the students have collected all of their data, they should create a cladogram. Students may feel frustrated initially because it will be difficult to place all of the organisms on the cladogram. Emphasize to students that for this exercise there may not be an exact answer and there are a lot of possible placements for the organisms on the cladogram.

You will want to grade the students on the logic behind their reasoning for placing the fossils on the cladagram in the order in which they did. Have the students present their findings to the class and explain their logic behind how they constructed it. If each group examined the same set of items, there is bound to be some differences in how they decided to construct their cladograms. But, this is exciting! Now, the students can debate their conclusions exactly like real scientists do at academic conferences. Again, grade the students on the clarity in which they present their findings and the logic behind their conclusions.

Check out this blog post a different group of my students wrote about this activity.  The post includes one of the cladograms a student group created and their explanation for how they constructed it.  In the post comments you will find more student discussion.

Here is my presentation from the NYSAIS Teaching with Technology Conference.

I’ve very excited to be one of the administrators of The Synapse, a social network of biology teachers.  It’s quite diverse with teachers across many grade levels and different years of experience.  Please come join us!

Why should you join?  You can share ideas, get help with lesson plans and lab activities, and receive encouragement and emotional support.  There are different groups you can join (general biology, AP Biology, Zoology, etc.) to discuss class specific topics.

If you’ve never used Ning or Facebook or some other social network platform you’ll notice there is a lot going on in the network.  So, let me point out the key steps to getting started.

When you go to the home page, click on Sign Up:

After signing up, check out some of the forum articles and add your own thoughts to the discussions:

Also, join a group:

Once you get comfortable with using the network you’ll notice there are some other really cool things you can do like add videos, music, and pictures.  The more teachers who join the network and share their ideas the better it will be.  I look forward to seeing you on The Synapse!

My students thought I was the coolest teacher ever when I showed them this Animoto trailer I created for our upcoming celebration of Darwin Day:

When they get back from break I’ll show them the trailer for my special Valentine’s Day lesson, The Biology of Love:

Yes, I know both these songs are copyrighted and I’m being a bit baaaaddd by using them, but I don’t think you’ll capture students’ attention by using songs they don’t know. It’s possible I can find some really great creative commons songs to use and I intend on looking for them. But, c’mon! I can’t think of any song cool enough to represent Darwin besides an ACDC song. Does Fair Use work here? I used more than 10% of each song. I need to research that. Does anyone know?

It doesn’t matter if I don’t publish them online I guess, but I like the idea of being able to publish them online where my students can access them later.

Anyway, for those who are wondering about each of the trailers and what I have planned for both special days, I haven’t planned out the Darwin Day presentation, yet. But, my Biology of Love lesson is on slideshare.

It’s pretty infamous. Last year it was the Slideshare of the Day for about two weeks and it’s been downloaded 952 times. I’m unabashedly proud of it. The videos I show aren’t embedded in the slideshare, but most of the presentation is shown. It’s my favorite presentation of the whole year. Can you tell?

Photo source: Castaway in Wales on Flickr

My current students are my guinea pigs.  I try not to test on them too much, though.  One group told me they love all the apps, but only if we use them one at a time.  I think that’s because to most of them all of these things are just too new.  In a couple of years I’m hopeful that my students will be more comfortable using educational apps and that I can use more of them at the same time.

The students are quick to tell me when something is or isn’t working.  Of course, a lot of things they love don’t have a huge educational impact.  Take polleverywhere.com.  Only about 30% of my students have cell phones with a texting plan so it isn’t practical to use in my classes.  Plus, my class sizes aren’t so big that I can’t conduct my own poll with just a simple raising of hands.

But, one student pointed out the appeal of this application when she literally screamed, “YOU’RE GOING TO LET ME TEXT IN CLASS?!?!?!”  It was awesome.  It didn’t seem to matter to her that she was texting for a class assignment.  Just the fact that she was able to text was thrilling to her.  Here’s the poll the students completed:

Another tool I find frivolous, but fun is Animoto.  It’s great for videos that show off what you’re doing in class.  I’ve used it to send home a video to parents at progress report time.

They’ve recently added the ability to include text in your presentations so perhaps this will make it more suitable for actual learning purposes.  However, the slides change so quickly (at least in time with the beat of whatever music you choose) and so this is a bit limiting.

To test it out, I created this Animoto based off of my introductory lesson to DNA and then asked the students’ opinion about its educational value.

Here are their responses:

1. List everything you learned from this presentation (I counted up 12 different facts).

• Out of 13 students, the most a student listed was eight and the least was zero.
• The average was 2.6 and the median was 2.
• The most common facts listed were DNA can be used to solve crimes and it can be used to cure disease.
• One student wrote that DNA gives you your identity although that fact was not included in the presentation.

2. Do you think this presentation could be used to replace/improve the traditional powerpoint lecture?

• 2 students answered Yes.
• 11 students answered No.

Yes and no.  Yes because it’s more visual and cooler but no because we might not be able to learn all the information correctly.

No, this short movie was too fast.  Maybe for entertainment but not to learn.

No, it was too flashy and distracted me from the topics.

Not replace, but I think it could be added into the presentation.

I do because it isn’t like the old powerpoint lecture which people usually find very boring.  This wasn’t boring.

3. Did you find the animations/music too distracting?

• 3 students answered No.
• 10 answered Yes.

The music was distracting.  I would rather learn without it.

The animations and music are very distracting because when a new topic shows up you first look at the pictures and not so much the information.

Yes, it was hard to concentrate during the presentation.

No, music helps me focus and the animations helped us see what we were learning about.

4. How did this animation affect your interest in DNA?  Increased it?  Decreased it?  Or had no impact?

• 8 students said the video increased their interest.
• 5 students said it had no impact.

This increased my interest but didn’t teach me much.

This increased my interest, but not greatly.

It definitely increased my interest.

It increased my interest because it was flashy.

Did not affect because the animation did not provide information.

Had no impact because I didn’t understand it.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that Animoto should be used to capture students’ interest about a topic with fun music and pictures, however, it cannot be used to replace a typical lesson.  Polleverywhere’s texting polls can only be used in large classes where the majority of students have cell phones with texting plans.

To continue the evolutionary trend I am updating the grading method I use for the blog project.  Inspired by Tara Richardson’s grading method I have decided to change my current method of students earning points for posts & comments.  Now, the students will be graded on whether or not they have met the goals of the project.

Here is the table they will need to fill in on their individual wiki page.

Here is an ideal table a student could create. Note that since I have not used this method before the examples listed are from a mix of students rather than just one student.

I’m handing this out to the students tomorrow. What do you think?  What did I leave out? Any suggestions?