Internet Safety: Doing

So in order to complete this assignment I talked to my dad about internet safety and the world online.  I shared with him the talk by Elder Bednar about the secret life that people live online I mentioned in my previous post. It was a positive experience.  He actually really enjoyed the talk and wanted to share it with the rest of my siblings. I think it was good for him to see and hear about what the internet has become since his exposure to it mostly deals with business and official work.  He was able to see how some people are wasting away their lives online and hearing it from an Apostle of the Lord had a big impact.  Overall it was a positive experience and I'm glad I could share it.

Internet Safety: Reading, Writing, and Blogging

I watched the frontline special about kids online available here
I also read two talks, one by Michelle Stocking titled "Finding and Sharing the Gospel Online"
found here and one by Elder David a Bednar titled "Things as They Really Are" found here.

1. What were the most important things I learned from the readings and video? -I would say the most important things I learned had to deal with how the internet is a source for good and evil.  There are so many things we can do with the internet, but it can be such a distraction from the real world.  Things that seem to matter online can make us loose sight of the long term.  When you get sucked into this world so far safety begins to be an issue.  People share more and more of their personal life searching for some sort of connection and privacy and safety often gets sacrificed.
2. How will what I have read influence my actions as a parent and/or teacher of children and youth? -As a parent who is technology savvy I will be able to monitor my child's internet activity.  Also I'll be sure to use an internet filter such as B-safe.  I think another big thing is just to be involved in the lives of my children and what they do.  In terms of my students I will definitely have to use more technology in my teaching so that I can engage my students.
3. How can I use what I have learned from the reading to have a positive influence on family and friends? -All the things I've learned will help me to remember to take internet safety a little more seriously.  Having been involved with the internet for basically my entire life, I feel like I might have become a little ignorant of all the bad that does occur on the internet.  Now that I have been reawakened to what is going on, this will help me let others know about interenet safety and good internet usage.
4. Am I aware of the benefits and dangers children face when online with cyber bullying and online predators? Do I know how to prevent cyberbullying?  -Cyber Bullying can be a big issue.  The easiest way to prevent cyberbullying is to be careful how much others share online.  If someone is bullying you, then most websites and email services have the ability to block people.  
5. Where can I go for information and resources that can be used to teach internet safety? -There are multiple online sources a simple google search for internet safety comes up with multiple sites.  The FBI has a page giving advice to parents and teachers that can be found here.
6. What internet safety issues am I likely to face as a teacher and how will I address them? -I feel like one of the biggest safety issues I will face is with my students and their internet activity.  My students may be involved with a lot of things online, like Sara from the video who said online was the only time she was 100% her.  I just need to maybe make a few points about being safe on the internet.
7. How can I leverage the power of the Internet so students can learn, but in a safe way? -I just need to make sure to design any assignments I give using the internet to be safe and not involve any risk.  This can mostly be done by using set agendas and sites that are deemed safe and otherwise low risk.

Overall, I gained so much knowledge from these resources and my perception on internet safety has changed.

Video Presentation for Flame Tests

So for this week I made a video tutorial on how to use the flame tests in Virtual Chemlab.  Below is my video on youtube with copyright info at the end.

Prezi

So for my third and last independent project, I decided to learn how to use Prezi.  Below is an example Prezi I made for teaching an introduction lesson for catalysts.

Technology Blog Assignment on Prezi

Prezi for me seems like an alternative for giving presentations.  Typically any presentation you give is done with power point or a similar program.  Since the slideshows can get rather boring, Prezi lets you mix things up by zooming in and out and teaching overall concepts.  It also lets you draw connections between multiple ideas and almost build a map.
Prezi could be used as an engaging introduction, but in addition to the stunning visuals it can also be used to link topics, and to have overarching connections.
Like mentioned earlier, I could use Prezi to introduce a topic.  Oh! I just thought of an idea!  I could use prezi to make my own powers of ten movie.  A powers of ten movie shows the relative size of objects in our universe, starting at a well known object and zooming in.  From a person, to their finger to a hair, etc, all the way down.  This could be used to introduce how small the atoms and molecules and electrons actually are.  You could use prezi and just zoom in and in on each click.
I could also make presentations of lessons so students could have them available online wherever they are if they have to miss school.

Stellarium and Debut Video Capture

So as I was viewing the tutorial for Stellarium, they showed how to use Debut Video Capture as well.  I thought that I could do the same thing and found out it was some pretty neat stuff.  Instead of taking screen shots of myself using the program, I figured a video would be much cooler.  So below you'll find my video of a few of the features in Stellarium.

Since I already looked at Celestia, I'm going to be comparing Stellarium to it.  If you want to see my review on what I learned in Celestia, check out my other post.

Stellarium is cool because it is from earths perspective and you can zoom in as if you were using a telescope.  You can't fly around in space like you can in Celestia, but the ability to have the constellations labeled makes it good for an astronomy class.  Also the program mostly uses the mouse which makes the interface a little more intuitive and user friendly.

This software would be useful for a number of assignments in astronomy.  If you live in a large city with severe light pollution you could use Stellarium to give your students a perspective of just how many stars there are.  Also, if you have an assignment for your students to view the sky every night, and it was cloudy, you could tell them to use stellarium as an alternative to viewing the sky.

Specifically I could use this for two assignments.  As a prequel to both I would have the students download the software or have it downloaded in the schools computer lab.  Part of my astronomy section will be naming constellations, the students could use stellarium as a study aid for quizzes, they can start with the constellations turned on with picture and all, then slowly turn some of the helps off until they're able to name them.  Also, I would use the program as an introduction to constellations and how the sky actually rotates at night when we view it.  Since school is during the day and we can't look at the stars, this software would be excellent because it gives us that opportunity.  

Celestia

So Celestia is an open source project that allows you to view a variety of objects in space and time.  The quick 4 minute tutorial video is all you really need to get started and find your way around.  You can see the orbits of all the planets and their moons, you can view other galaxies, you can search for comet's, lots of possibilities.  I just sat and flew threw our galaxy checking out all the planets and their moons and their orbits.  To be honest I lost myself in this new found ability to navigate space and time.
This technology solves the problem that we sometimes have visualizing things.  I can sit in class and say that the solar system is a certain way.  I can even show pictures, but there is just something gained from being able to navigate space on your own in real time.
This technology could be awesome if I do teach astronomy at some point in the future.  It's free and easy to navigate, and students will probably enjoy it.  It allows for them to be astronauts, to be able to see what these planets look like and how far away they are.  You could give assignments to find distances between certain planets or solar systems.  You could get students to count the number of moons on a certain planet in maybe a different system.  There really are a lot of options.
As a chemistry teacher (what i'm planning on doing now) I would offer and extra credit assignment when we are learning about unit conversions.  First I would have the students download the program and watch the tutorial video here (Celestia tutorial).  Second, I would have a few objects that I wanted to know the distance between.  The sun and the earth in meters, jupiter and venus in inches, halley's comet and mars in miles.  The distances are in "au"s a lot of the time so having students convert that to miles and other units could be a good and interesting assignment (1 astronomical unit = 150 billion meters).  This will be useful in that it can reinforce the scientific notation and unit conversion process we've been practicing in class.
If I do end up teaching astronomy at some point, an assignment using Celestia would be a big help.  It would be optimal if we had a computer lab at our school with all the computers already having Celestia installed on them.  First we would just take a class period to go down to the computer lab and get started, they could watch the tutorial in the lab and ask me any questions they might have.  Second I would have them travel to various objects in the solar system just to see them, the sun, the planets, etc.  Third I would have a list of other places or objects the students could go to and I would have them pick a few.  I would then ask the students to reflect on what they learned and if they found anything cool.  This would mostly be done as an introduction to the course and will probably be assigned in the first few weeks of class.
Below are a few screen shots of my exploration of the program.

 Check out the sunset on the day I was born.

 

 A picture of Jupiter and its moons with their orbits.  Time is going at 100x normal speed in this picture.

 Hally’s comet with our sun and a few other planet’s in the back ground.  Notice time is going 100000x faster than normal.  You can actually see the planets moving and the comet rotating in the program.

A picture of the Ursa Minor Dwarf with time going 100000000000 times faster (but in reverse)  I’m going back in time!

The program is stunning and well done.  I will use it in the future.

Copyright Assignment

First off, there are a few things I learned about copyrights and how to address them.  I had no idea about the ten percent rule.  It is nice to know that if i only use less than ten percent of a work then it isn't copyright infringement.  Also I found it interesting about the common license.  I hadn't realized that there was so much material out there available to me to search and to use.  I also did not know that you could record something off of TV and use it for ten days, but it makes sense that you cannot use it longer than that.  Overall I would say that i learned a lot from this assignment and I will be more careful in the future.

First example, a good one!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz_egMtdnL4

This video is a guide to what exactly HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography) is.  While there are no citations given for the images at 4:21 or 4:26, it is probably safe to assume that they created those images on their own.  Also the graphing program they used at a few times in the video (5:00) was never given credit, but it might be an open source program.  There is no music in the video, so they don't have to worry about any copyright issues there.  At the end of the video they give credit to the lab, the staff and students in the film, the company who provided the instrumentation and the authors and writers of the scripts.  

Overall, I would say this is a pretty good example.  It was produced by a professional university for educational purposes and while there are a few questionable usage of materials, it is probably safe to assume that they did not use anything without permission.

Not so great example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGLLp1sWtkU

This is another example of a chemistry educational video.  This one discusses chemical reactions, unlike the previous video absolutely nothing is cited in this one.  There are images and a few figures and nothing is credited.  Also the background music is not credited either.  The girl who is acting in the video is not even given credit.  The only thing that might cover the publisher of this video is that in the caption they give credit to the Australian primary educational program 'Science in the Kitchen', Classroom Video, 2010.  However, in my opinion they should have given some credit in the video.  I guess this might fall under the fact that they used less than 10% of the video, but I still feel like there is a good amount of work in this video that is not given credit to.

So there you have it, a pretty good example and a not so good example.  Overall it is kind of hard to find bad examples of copyright issues on YouTube since the site is pretty well managed, however I have seen some more blatant issues on some other material before.