Final Project Demonstration

I finished the Google Earth sky demonstration. I had never used Google Earth before, but it is definitely a cool tool. As a Physics instructor, I will get to explain the universe and discuss a bit of astronomy with my students, though unfortunately it will not go into too much detail. This software will enable students to learn additional information on their own. It was a little tricky to figure out the tools to make a decent recording, but once I understood what to do it was very user friendly. I feel that I could explain how to accomplish this to my students and explain how they could use this tool to learn more about the universe and astronomy. Here is a link to the finished site, unfortunately, I have not figured out how to upload the demonstration directly. I added a downloadable attachment to the site for you to view my demonstration. You will need to have Google Earth installed to view it. If anyone has any suggestions on uploading to my blog directly, I would greatly appreciate it.

Final Project

So far I have created the Lesson Plan for my students in performing this project on my website. I have instructed them on the due dates and am still working on my example presentation. I should be finished with it by tonight. I know that this would be a great project for students to work on. It allows them to explore and use a new technology and learn more specific detail then what I could give them in class.

This is the Website development so far.

Video and Youtube Post

This is the first time that I have ever created and edited a video using Windows Movie Maker. I also uploaded a video to youtube for the first time. It took me quite a while to figure out how to record video and to decide what I wanted to make a video demonstration for. Once, I got used to the tools, it seemed to flow easily. Uploading to youtube takes a long time. I am a little nervous to have something of mine posted online. We will see what happens.

Internet Communication

Another advancement for me. I developed my first internet based website. I have developed a few websites through the use of HTML, but never one designed to be used on the internet so I was excited to do this assignment. I developed a basic class website that would meet the basic needs of a teacher teaching physics. I really think that I am going to take advantage of this training and will try to incorporate a website into my classroom. I can definitely see the advantages of having a dedicated class website. My website which I feel I will continue to use and develop to hopefully be able to incorporate into a classroom tool.

Copyrights

We were assigned the task of watching at least two items to check the legitimacy of the material and to see if they were within copyrights. I watched the copyright for educators videos and learned some things that I had never known. I did not realize that education and teaching has special copyright privileges. Able to use material without permission as long as it is for an educational purpose and they are cited correctly.

So to critique some videos I decided to go where anyone would go to find videos... youtube.com. I decided to look at an old favorite. Numa Numa. This version of the Numa Numa song does have the entire song in the video and therefore would be against the typical 30 seconds for songs. They do recognize the record label owner and even have the contains content from section to cite the owner of the label. I am not clear if this video remake has been done by the owner of the song as the song is able to be downloaded directly from this site.

The next clip was another favorite from my childhood. I used to watch tiny toons when younger and I still remember this clip using They Might be Giants Song Particle Man. As can be seen from the youtube notice, they did not have permission to use the entire song and therefore the song has been removed due to copyright infringement. The video has not been removed though as it is shorter than 3 minutes. The rules to copyrighting are extremely confusing. But I feel that I have a better grasp of it now.

Internet Safety

I had never really considered all of the hazards involved with the internet. From a religious stand point, I can see how Satan has taken such an amazing new technology and quickly stuck his nasty fingers into it. Pornography, gambling, and addiction are prevalent on the internet and so precautions are necessary. There are also identity thieves trying to steal information.

A few of the articles discussed preventative measures. Software measures including website blockers and parental controls. The location of the computer also can aid in preventing issues. Having computers in public locations deter individuals from seeking out the materials on the internet. It is also important to be quick to remove any inappropriate items from the screen as quick as possible, even if it means force shutting down the system.

I talked with my wife about ways that we can improve our own internet security at home. We discussed the importance of preventative measures, especially in keeping computers public. We will also discuss the dangers of the internet with our children as they begin to use it. We feel that by understanding and being open with these hazards they will be more likely to discuss the issues with us as they pop up. We also decided to always have good backgrounds that remind us about our commitments, either family or church pictures. We will definitely apply some of the things that we learned in our discussion about internet safety.

PLN Feeds

I added quite a few feeds that fit into my field of study. I found feeds for different classroom experiments and examples. I also added NASA's feed. I am excited to see how these feeds change over time.

I chose to add this HS as an example of technology being used in a school.

I also added a link to HS science job posting to keep myself up to date on available jobs.