technologies for teaching
sporte | July 31, 2014What’s the first you think about when you see a spider? Running away? Danger? Fairies? Spiderman?
Do you wonder if spider silk is really strong enough to stop a train, like they showed in Spiderman 2?
Whatever your thoughts, you’re probably not thinking about 3D printing in space. Yet, the time might be near when astronauts will be using 3D printers filled with spider silk to make replacement parts in space. I learned about this idea in a presentation from Dr. Ron Sims, Utah State University, at the Bioman conference at Salt Lake Community College a couple of weeks ago.
Spider silk, as I…
sporte | January 18, 2010Have you ever wanted to volunteer your talents and help with fun projects like these:
* Refurbish computers for schools
* Teach students how to use popular software or online services
* Build a database for a nonprofit
* Help out in your school's computer lab
* Become an online mentor for students across the country
In the spirit of MLK day, Serve.gov is calling on educators and tech people to participate in connecting schools and non-profits with tech needs to those who can help. You can use the widget below to find projects in your area.
To quote Serve.gov, and Dr. King…
sporte | January 15, 2010Okay, I'll grant that visiting Second Life can seem a bit uncomfortable, especially at first, but it does open some new doors and present an alternative to travel.
In flu season, virtual visits could be the next best thing to being there. (Yikes, that sounds like an ad. No more yahoo news for me!)
Here's where you can attend ScienceOnline 2010 in Second Life (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Research%20Triangle%20Park/128/129/25).
The next excuse might be that you don't know how to use Second Life or what to do. Never fear. That's a solvable problem.
I have a primer on attending a…
sporte | January 6, 2010"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet"
- Juliet, from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
I realized from the comments on my previous post and from Mike's post that more explanations were in order.
It seems we have two topics - why do we need a new name at all? and why the current names (biologist, computational biologist, bioinformatician, etc.) don't work. What really distinguishes a digital biologist from a regular, garden variety biologist? Why isn't a digital biologist a computational biologist?
So, I brought along two "show and tell…
sporte | May 6, 2009We always enjoy home science experiments and it was fun the other night to learn about a new experiment we could try with our teenage daughter and an iPhone.
As it turned out, the joke was on us.
My husband is an enthusiastic fan of the iPhone store. Last night, he downloaded this application called "Army Knife."
This application has, I kid you not, the following nine items:
unit converter - these are always helpful, especially if you travel
ultrasonic whistle
protractor
Heart (beats per minute) counter
measuring tape
digital caliper
Two levels
flashlight
emergency SOS light
Some of…
sporte | April 30, 2009Last night, the phone rang at 9:22 pm. I quickly glanced at the caller ID. Hmmm. Why is the Seattle School district calling us at this time of night?
Apparently the swine flu has come to Seattle and the school district thought we should know.
Those messages are helpful if you're a parent, but they don't tell much about the rest of the world.
Health Map is a really wonderful, user-friendly, resource for following the epidemic.
When you get to Health Map , choose Select None to clear the map.
Then select Swine Flu.
You'll see a Google map with markers representing reports. The colors show…
sporte | January 7, 2009Teachertube looks and works much like YouTube, but you're much less likely to run across videos that Not Safe For the Classroom.
All of these videos are made by students and teachers. According to the Dallas News, there are 54,000 videos on the site already and 800,00 visitors every day.
I especially enjoyed watching Abbot and Costello doing math problems.
sporte | November 30, 2008The grocery store magazine covers all say that home made gifts are big this year. So I thought, some of you might like to channel your inner Martha Stewart and make gifts with a science theme.
Reposted in honor of the holiday and the economy.
I'm here to help to you make a merry mug with one of our favorite molecules. Yep, we're talking caffeine.
1. First, we'll go to PubChem at the NCBI. It's not an exclusive (or even last) resort but there are lots of fancy molecules hanging around, just waiting to be discovered and put onto drinking containers.
2. Now, we'll look for a molecule. I'm…
sporte | November 25, 2008It's funny but even though I work with data on a regular basis, I can't always predict the best way to manage data until I have my own data to manage.
My classroom wiki site is no exception.
Now, that I've been seriously using a wiki with my class, I've found that I should have set a few things up a bit differently.
Technorati Tags: teaching, teaching technology, wikis, wiki, science education"
The biggest challenge has been making sure that the right people can do the right things - or who gets to see what and upload what where.
Not knowing what methods would turn out to be useful, I…
sporte | November 24, 2008Now that I've downloaded really important applications like a timer for cooking, a program for playing with molecular structures, and an app that lets me listen to NPR on my phone, I'm ready for more.
I'm seriously overwhelmed by the iTunes App store. I found a program for learning human anatomy, a laboratory calculator for making solutions, music programs, wow!
Who knew?
I know some schools are using iPhones for teaching, but I never realized how much was out there.
Deepak recommends something called TouchPhysics.
What are you using? What cool apps do you suggest?
Technorati Tags…
sporte | November 23, 2008Some people, like Imelda Marcos and our new Dr. Isis, have a thing for fancy shoes.
I go crazy for gadgets.
technorati tags: iphone, DNA, molecules, molecular structure, molecular modeling, Science education
For my birthday this year, my family bought me a new iPhone! Yeah!
So, I've been killing several hours today filling it with cute little iPhone apps. Who knew one little phone could be so much fun?
One app, I enjoy, is called Molecules.
Molecules lets you download structure files from the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and play with the structures on your phone!
Spreading your fingers…
sporte | November 21, 2008There's no question that the ability to work with information is one that will be required and valued for a long time to come. I think it's imperative for teachers to have students practice this skill whenever an opportunity comes about. The problem for many teachers is finding the time to identify good data sets.
MRSA stands for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a serious problem for hospital patients. Six of out seven people who become infected with MRSA, get it from some kind of health-care facility. In 2007, the CDC issued a report claiming that 18,000 people die every…
sporte | November 18, 2008In our last episode, I wrote about embedding Google forms in my classroom wiki pages.
Recently, we've been working on a project where students enter results into a Google Docs spreadsheet, via our classroom wiki. All the students were able to enter their results.
Except for one.
When other students went to the spreadsheet page, they saw this:
When this student went to the same page, he saw this:
We tried all kinds of things to see if we could remedy this situation. I checked and rechecked permissions, both in my Google account and in the wiki. We closed and reopened pages, we…
sporte | November 15, 2008Poor PZ! Stranded without a working laptop in a strange town! This is the kind of situation that gives me nightmares, so I like to upload presentation materials to the web just in case.
Lately, I've been looking at different methods for doing this to see which ones l like the best.
A few days ago, I tested this with Scribd.
Today, I'm going to see what we can do with Google Docs.
TomJoe said that he started using Scribd because he couldn't share things with Google.
I use Google docs quite a bit, but I haven't tried to share any documents with more than a few people, so I took at look…
sporte | November 13, 2008Well, I had to test Scribd with something. Why not use a document on the Massachusetts Life Sciences Industry?
Scribd is sort of like the YouTube of electronic paper. I found Scribd from TomJoe's post about Life on Mars. His PowerPoint talk is really much more interesting than the life science document that I uploaded as a test, but since you're here anyway, you might as well take a look.
What does Scribd do?
It solves the "waiting for another application to open" problem that I find so frustrating when I want to quickly read (okay, skim) a pdf document that's linked from something on…