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It sounds like an infomercial, doesn’t it? I lost 15 pounds in 6 days and you can, too! Although it may be hard to believe, I really did grade that many essays in less than one week. I’m finishing up my stay here in Kansas City. I, along with over 500 of my peers, spent 6 days grading the AP Biology exam essays.  This is Sparta! It was a rewarding experience and I recommend that all AP teachers experience it at least once. I’m not sure of the rules ETS has about releasing information on how the exam grading works so to err on the side of caution I won’t blog about it. This is Madness! But, if you’re an AP teacher and you want to ask me about my experience, contact me and I’ll give you some of the inside scoop.

A couple of months ago I had to sit through a hour-long meeting where the importance of athletics was emphasized as a powerful way to build connections with kids and their families. Well, duh.

I love sports, but that hour long meeting left me shaking my head. Do we really need to convince people that sports are a great way to attract kids? Sports are easy. Now, by this I don’t necessarily mean the playing of sports. Building a championship team takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (literally). What I mean is that building enthusiasm for sports is easy.

Now, try doing the same thing in academics. This is hard. It’s also overlooked and unappreciated when it actually happens. After that meeting I mentioned to a colleague that I thought my blog was building connections with all of the 9th graders. I mentioned that those connections could lead to students caring about each other more and help build a community among them. She looked at me like I had grown two heads. As if something like academics could do such a thing. Well, I dedicate this student remark recently left on my class blog to her and everyone else out there who doubts such a thing could happen:

I love how the blog has connected us so much more to each other.

So, there.

The advantage I see in this application is that all of my Facebook “friends” get a news feed telling them that I have updated my blog. Most of my friends don’t use blog readers, but they check their Facebook pages religiously. However, the downside to this is that I have purposely not become “friends” with my students (see below) and so they cannot receive one of my Blog It Facebook feeds. This is still a useful function for this particular blog, however, as I am willing to be friends with educators.

By the way, my whole entry into the Facebook world was done quite reluctantly. After much begging by my friends I finally relented and opened up a Facebook account. I was a bit nervous because I wasn’t sure how protected I would be from students viewing my profile page. To be honest, I was also worried I would see their profile pages! But, thankfully I soon discovered that unless I agree to be their “friend”, a student cannot access my information and vice versa.

So I started a group page for my students who went on a trip to Alaska with me last summer and I joined my current AP Biology students’ group. But, the question I am pondering at the moment is whether or not Facebook is a positive tool to use in the classroom. If so, what is the appropriate way to use this tool?

Here are my teacher-tested, favorite cases:

• My Dog is Broken - cell signaling pathways. The dog has erectile dysfunction so the students thought it was pretty hilarious.
• Gender: Is it in the Genes or in the Jeans? - differences in males and females.
• Woe to that Child - good after the unit on cell organelles and osmolarity.
• I’m Looking Over a White-Striped Clover - natural selection.
• Why Sex is Good - advantages of sexual reproduction. For obvious reasons the students loved this one.
• A Bad Reaction - immune system. The students felt like doctors straight out of House or ER (okay, maybe more like Scrubs).

I loved the immune system case study so much that I created this powerpoint in order to present the case. You can also download the pre-case study notes I use here.

There are still several I plan on using this year, but since I haven’t tested them out yet, I’ll wait to see if I should recommend them. If anyone reading this post has tried out other cases studies either found on the same website or elsewhere, I’d love to hear about your experience!

Student and Parent Blog & Wiki Contract

Blog Safety Rules

I also show the students the following video.

Download Video: Posted by mjhasley at TeacherTube.com.

The only thing I don’t like about it is that it negatively portrays the janitorial staff (which the kids already do on their own), but otherwise it’s a great video.  After I show it I have a lengthy discussion with the kids about internet safety.

Slideshare
Share powerpoints online and embed them into your blog (works just like youtube)

Google Docs
Create and share documents, spreedsheets, etc.

Box.net
Upload documents and link to them. When people link to your document they can either download it or just preview it (this is great if students don’t have the software to download the file).

Widgetbox
Want to add an Amazon booklist to your blog? Or a countdown? Widgetbox has a lot of fun widgets. You can even turn your blog into a widget (blidget) to include on another website (you can see my Extreme Biology blidget on the right sidebar).

Sitemeter
A great way to track your site visitors. I like to check referring sites to see how people have found my blog.

Clustrmaps
I don’t really find it useful for anything, but it provides a fun graphic of the location of your blog visitors. Edublogs just added it as a widget so it’s now super easy to add it if you use the edublogs service.

Technorati
This site lets you see when other people write about your blog or include you in their blogroll. It’s really useful for building connections.

Feedburner
Wonderful tool to track how many people subscribe to your blog. My favorite part is that you can make personalized feed signatures to include in your emails. Set up isn’t for the faint of heart so give yourself a Saturday to work on it.

Voicethread
Make your slideshows/videos interactive by adding voice and video comments. You can embed them directly into your blog.

Slideshare doesn’t support videos so I had to take those out.  I use various clips from youtube that show interesting courtship rituals and then, of course, the finale which is the dance scene from Saturday Night Fever.  The kids love it.  We eat sweetharts candy and I give out small giveaways for correctly answering trivia questions.  This year I’m only going to give the presentation to my AP students because sadly, my 9th graders are not mature enough.  I did successfully show it to my 9th graders last year, though.

I’ve tried really hard to get my students to think critically on the blog and avoid a standard report style of writing. However, it’s a science class so I’m never going to be greatly enthusiastic about the type of creative writing you’d find in an English class. Science writing requires a more technical approach. But, technical doesn’t have to equal dry and boring.

Richardson’s post made me think about the kind of writing on the student blog that has been the most successful at engaging readers and sparking great conversations. It becomes immediately obvious after a brief perusal that posts that dealt with controversial issues have had the greatest impact and it certainly makes sense why. However, I’ve shied away from putting too many controversial issues on the blog for fear of upsetting people. But, I’ve decided to include more starting with my most recent posts on racism and evolution. Although I authored these posts, I’m hoping my students will feel more inspired to submit their own posts that deal with controversial topics. I just published a student post today on morality and next week I’ll publish one on human evolution. Either I’m being brave or incredibly stupid.

I didn’t realize how many controversial topics there are in biology until I began teaching it. Here are just a few of the hot button issues biology teachers delve into each year:

1. Evolution
2. Sexual reproduction
3. Animal behavior (including things like altruistic behavior)
4. Ecological issues (global warming, habitat destruction, pollution, animal rights)
5. Bioengineering
6. Medical research

I’m sure I forgot a few. I’d love to hear from other teachers with blogs and find out what their experience has been like in dealing with controversial topics. Any tips or suggestions are greatly welcomed.

Think carefully about your point set-up. While my students love the blog, they wouldn’t have participated if it weren’t for a grade. I gave them 2 points per comment and 10 points per blog post. I have 66 students and with this point set-up I had to grade a lot of comments and posts. Next semester I will change to this point-set up: 5 points per comment, 8 points per comment made to another biology blog, and 20 points per blog post. I will expect even better content from my students in return for the increase in points. This point set-up will be more manageable for me grading-wise. In other words, the number of students you have should be considered when deciding on your point breakdown.

Design an easy way for students to check their grade during the semester. Next semester students (and their parents) will sign a consent form allowing me to post their grade online. For those students who are not comfortable having their grade posted for all the world to see, I will give them a worksheet that they will use to keep track of their own posts.

Save procrastinators from themselves. Last semester, students could earn 100 points at any point during the semester. The only restriction I had in place in order to keep students from procrastinating was to only accept one blog post per week and 10 comments per day. This semester, students must earn 25 points by designated dates during the semester. There will be four designated block dates. Students may not make up any missed points after a set date has passed. For example, if a student only earned 18 points during the first block, the maximum score that student can make on the project is a 93, regardless of how many comments or posts made the rest of the semester. Students can still only submit one blog post per week, but they may only submit 2 comments per day.