My daughter and I are participating in Project BudBurst. First, I downloaded the Project BudBurst Activity Guide. We then used the provided map to select a plant that we hoped to find in the lot across the street. We needed to find a specimen that hadn’t budded yet, or at least not bloomed. After printing a field guide and locating our plant, we determined the latitude and longitude of the plant. We recorded our observation with a photo, a description of the weather, and the phenological stage of the plant (first bud burst, first leafing, first flower, and seed or fruit dispersal). We will record our observations each day, studying the timing of the life cycle events. The data that we report online will be compared to historical records to document the effects of climate change.

The site for this online collaborative project includes options for classroom participation including Teacher resources and student games (K-6).

Image Credit: Takshi* CC: by-nc-nd
tag: edtech, k12, Project BudBurst, plants, life cycle, phenological stage, science, collaborative project

During Spring Break, my family traveled to Dallas, Texas to visit my husband’s sister and her family. We enjoyed touring the city’s World Aquarium. My daughter’s “assignment” was to select one animal from the aquarium to bring home to Missouri. She had to choose an animal based on its ability to survive in our habitat, as opposed to one she liked. No, the animals aren’t available for checkout. I was just once again using her as a guinea pig while preparing for my first digital storytelling workshop. Another part of her inquiry lesson was to collect video footage and provide narration. Below is our first digital story. Click the big triangle play button to stream the  video, or right-click on the Download link and choose “Save target as” or “Save link as” to download the video.

Download World Aquarium

The technicalities: Using Windows Movie Maker, we captured and cut the video. Then imported some images from our digital camera, and a few downloaded public domain images. After recording the narration, I added in some creative commons licensed music. The title and transition features polished off the project. Then I saved the project as “video for broadband (340 kbps)” in a Windows Media Video (wmv) format. I uploaded the wmv file to archive.org, where it was automatically converted into other formats and various file sizes (flash, mpeg4). I chose archive.org because it is free, and not blocked by our District’s filter. The flash version was the fastest to load, but too blocky for my daughter’s standards. The wmv file is the best quality, but a large file (better to download and not stream). It is the one I used for this blog post. But I’m guessing since this is a wmv file, it won’t play on all computers. Next we will publish a Voicethread version, and a then Photostory version. Please leave your recommendations, comments, or suggestions.

tag: edtech k12 Dallas World Aquarium digital storytelling Windows Movie Maker Creative Commons

The other day my 4th grader was pondering the difference between an alligator and a crocodile. The PBS Nature Interactives webpage site had a great interactive diagram that answered her question. The critter guide then explained how some Egyptians worshiped the crocodile. From the video database we watched a short clip from the Supersize Crocs episode of Nature, which airs on PBS on Sunday nights. This same clip is available as a video podcast. We decided to subscribe to the PBS Nature podcasts so she could watch new clips from upcoming NATURE episodes on the iPod.

This is a great resource with beautiful images and videos, interactive activities, teacher’s guides and lesson plans. The site mentions a new resource coming soon, Windows Into Nature, that sounds promising for high school students:

Find teacher-created lesson plans and a rich video bank tying downloadable NATURE video clips into high school curricula in Living Environment/Biology and Earth Science.

tag: PBS Nature video science k12 edtech images podcasts animals biology Earth Science lesson plans

Google Earth now include the Milky Way.

Willard Staff: The YouTube video below will be blocked at school. It is worth the time to watch it elsewhere.

Google Earth is a bandwidth hog and must be used conservatively. It should not be run on multiple lab stations at one time. One suggestion from Google is to access the pages prior to the lesson and your computer will store some of the information in its cache. Then when you use Google Earth in your lesson, some of the data comes from your hard drive, as opposed to the Internet.

Technorati Tags: Google_Earth science edtech geography space

Registration is now open for the O.R.E.O. Project. (Visit the site to see what O.R.E.O. stands for.) For this basic collaborative project, students stack Oreo cookies as high as possible. All the student results are averaged to create a class average which is submitted via an on-line form. The data is graphed in an Excel spreadsheet. Jennifer Wagner, aka TechoSpud, also provides a long list of language, math, science, and technology activities that teachers can choose to do. You’ll even find some fun Oreo recipes and a voluntary side project of sculpting with Oreos.

• Grades: PreK-6
• Project Dates: September 17 to October 12th
• Final Posting of Data: October 13th

Image Credit: mihoda

Technorati Tags: Oreo collaboration project education Jennifer+Wagner TechnoSpud