Office Suites and Image Editing

After looking at all of the options given to us this week and playing around with a couple of them I have decided I would recommend a couple from the Office Suites and One from the Image Editing section. I have possessed a Michigan Residential Builders License for 16 years. In the summer and any free time I have I run a small residential building company. If I were to use something from this group I would definitely recommend the Zoho site. This would be an outstanding site for a small business because of the links given and tools available through the site. There is a very nice introductory video that explains what they are all about on the site. They talk about creating a monster and having so many different soft wares and trying to run them or getting them to work together, and rarely are they all compatible. This is what you would call the one stop shop. This site has everything from online planners, chat spaces, web-conferencing, spreadsheets, Zoho wiki, and everything in between. This can all be accessed through your Zoho site, saved, anything you would need to run a small business, and as stated in the video it is all free.
If I were going to use one of these sites from a teaching standpoint, I would have to go with the ThinkFree. I think we have created a small monster with everything we have used so far this semester, but certainly a good monster. I really like the Thinkfree because of the handy links right there for you to use, such as converting documents, embedding, sharing documents, uploading, and searches. There are some links that I don’t think I would use, but that again is something you need to clean up as you use. You would use only those that are important to you.
From the Image Editing section I liked PicNic and FotoFlexer the best and I would chose FotoFlexer over PicNic if I had to. I think the photo editing options on FotoFlexer were easier to use, because I could find options that wanted easier. These two are very similar and I would think PicNic has these options as well, but I played with FotoFlexer more. The great thing about this is you can fetch photos from where you store them. I don’t have many photos on Facebook or MySpace, but I have many on my computer that send to my school computer. I really liked that option with both of these, but again I played with FotoFlexer more, therefore I would chose this one. After reading some of the posts from class, it appears many have used these types of devices and enjoy them. I have never used them, so I am curious to see what some of the other suggestions are.

Web site information and purpose

This would be a classroom web-site that I would use to keep students informed of progress and information about units we have covered to date. If I were to start this at the beginning of the year we would have multiple units entered. I would have a calender for the year and for each unit we were covering, but as things change and situations change, we would alter these calenders throughout the year.
Here is the website address: https://sites.google.com/site/mrgardnersscience/home

Screencast

With this video I would want students to find the three main types of faults found in the United States. The posted video has divergent and convergent boundaries. Also the posted image for the screencast has definitions they will need to apply to a work sheet that deals with their unit on plate tectonics. I did bring a microphone from school to use, so I could talk the viewer through what is expected. There is no sound for either, so I have a computer problem or the microphone I have is not in working order. http://www.screencast.com/users/ScottGardner/folders/Jing/media/c435fcc7-415e-4193-8232-6c0236225f8a

Science lesson using Google maps

I would like to use the Google map for a lesson on plate tectonics. I think the map creating for Google is a great tool. In an Earth Science setting you could create so many informative maps on geologic time, plate tectonics, geologic features and formations, etc.
Here I have created a map of some of the major earth quakes that have been recorded in the United States. I would like students to view the map and review the quakes listed. They will then explain to me if they thought the quakes happened where they expected or if there were some strange locations for some of these. Most middle and high school students only think of California as an area where quakes occur. This is a great way for students to see how plates and zones have a great effect on where quakes occur. I will have them pick a quake from 4 different areas of the United States and explain why they are occuring here. I will be looking for terms like Transform faults, Subduction zones, converging, and diverging as ways to explain what they find.
View Earth Quakes in the United States in a larger map

Scott's Science podcast

This is an Earth Science podcast. I really like it because the readings are only 1-2 minutes long and I think it would hold the attention of middle school students. Also, there are a number of options to choose from for the category on the page.
Take a look!
http://www.learnoutloud.com/podcaststream/listen.php?url=http://webcast.berkeley.edu/rss/course-archive.php?seriesid=1906978356&all=1&title=19704

Plate Tectonics

Vacation land

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