“It’s Your Experiment!” High School Science Teacher Conference 2008 (Oct 24th & 25th)

Thanks to everyone who came out! And kudos to Science World and GenomeBC for their roles in this as well. Looked like things went pretty well overall. The website should be fleshed out by weeks end, with the talk videos going up, and pdfs of teaching activities ready for display. Would love to hear some feedback, which you can always leave as a comment (see “leave a comment” text above).

In case, you’re a totally new reader to this website and someone who didn’t participate in the conference, here is the first post reprinted so that you can get a feel of what this website is all about.

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Stuck in here for a day or two (link)

Click to see more photos…

As another way to capture your ideas, we’d like you to fill out this survey!

To login use the link on the left hand sidebar.

Login using the “team…” username. Don’t forget the “…team” password.

Once you’re in, you see what wordpress calls the “dashboard.” The dashboard is something that allows you to look at the activity incoming to the website. i.e. people leaving comments, other websites linking to the site, etc.

To create content, you’ll want to “write a post”. Here you can click on “write” (at the bar near the top), or just use the “write a post” button.

Once you get to the “write” page, this is where you can add a title, and type content in the box. This is pretty straightforward (kind of like using microsoft office).

Adding links

Adding links is pretty easy. Essentially type away (something like “click here to see…”) – Then highlight the word you want for the linking (say “here”), and press the link button above. This will take you to a smaller window, where you write in the website address.

Finding images

There’s lots of ways to find an image, but if you want the ability to publicly share your work. You need to be aware of copyright issues. In the world of web, the mechanisms looking after this is known as “creative commons.” Essentially, this allows people to present their work (be it a photograph, writing, audio, movie, etc) and provide copyright instructions related to how the public can use the image. In this respect, there are two great photo sites worth showing.

1. Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/).

Flickr is cool. It’s a huge (and I mean huge) community of photographers all around world placing their work online. Many folks use it as their central harddrive for keeping images. If you search on Flickr, just enter the keyword at the top. Then what will happen, is that you will get a list of images where that tag word has been used.

Now before you use an image, you also have to filter these images to ensure that copyright isn’t an issue. To do this – click the “advanced search” link (near the search box). This will take you to another page, which you can scroll downwards, until you see a box marked “creative commons.” Check this box, and research. NOW, you’ll see images you can use.

If you see one click on the image. To actually download the image, go to “all sizes” choose a size and hit “download.”

2. Wiki commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page).

This site also rocks. This is a subpage of wikipedia that just collects all media associated with all the different entries on wikipedia. Because you can only use creative commons material on wikipedia, all of the media you find here is good to go!

Adding an image

Also very easy. Leave you cursor in the area of the writing box, where you want the image inserted. Then press the framelike square picture next to the “Add media” tag. This will take you to a page that allows you to pull the image from your computer (i.e. the flickr or wikicommons image you downloaded). As well, the window that opens allows additional features (such as the link you can go to if you click the image), alignment, image size.

Anyway, when you’re happy with these parameters, you can just click “insert image.”

Adding video

WordPress makes it pretty easy to use YouTube videos. If you want to embed a movie into your post, simply use the following code:

Publishing your post

Just hit the publish button!

Re-editing your post

This is also easy. All you have to do is go to “Manage.” Here you’ll see all of the posts on the website, and anyone that you have written, will be accessible (click on the title). Doing this, you will be taken back to the write mode for that particular post.

Brainstorming… bring it on! (great movie by the way).

1. What kinds of things would you like to try in your classroom?

The DIY microscopes for sure.
Make a telescope – HOWTO website has a “fancy” one. MacGyver’d it to make it a little easier to construct (teac

2. What are challenges?

Inquiry based learning. How to incorporate student led inquiry to test theories, rather than forcing a set curriculum? The system is kind of screwed – but maybe easier access to materials/experiences that address this issue.

Demands on schools to cover a huge amount of material. This includes not just technical aspects, but also societal elements.

Use of technology is something that should be fostered. Web based learning. Learning these tricks…
Social network computer tools are very useful (also low maintenance)

blogs, wikis, jing, google tools.

Biodiversity is cool… Biology 11 has a significant element on Biodiversity.
American Society of Microbiology
Next year’s teacher conference is in collaboration with the Vancouver Evolution Festival (big year for Darwin!!!)

Crossing over – physics explaining biology. Interdisciplinary approach? science-science arts-science interconnectivity.

i.e. Like heart rate lab – PE – science – math.

3. Care to share any of your successes?

DRAW!