The students have been working on designing rollercoasters in order to understand potential and kinetic energy. To make sure everyone understood what it was like to ride a rollercoaster, we took a virtual rollercoaster ride. The rollercoaster simulation is posted below. We also checked our roller coaster designs using the following website to see if the coaster worked: sideshow.questacon.edu.au/maketracks.html.

Mrs. Willyerd's seventh grade science classes created Storm Stories where they were on location of a severe storm. Our classes explored hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and lake effect snow. The students were grouped in fours and the group determined a role for each student. There were two weather people who would be in front of the camera and delivering the weather report. There was a prop person who was in charge of brainstorming props that would make the weather report look authentic and assigning who would bring in which props. There was also a producer who was in charge of keeping the group on task, facilitating rehearsals, and coaching the other teammates for authenicity. All students in the group were required to write a script that would educate the viewers as to how the storm formed as well as including safety tips for viewers at home. We originally wanted to replace the green background with clips of storms, but we found that our prototype needed to be a more neon shade of green to reflect more light. Thus, the following Storm Story montage only debuts our raw green screen footage, but it is still educational and, at times, humorous. Enjoy!

Okay, seventh graders. I attempted to make our green screen work. It appears that the color of the board plus the lack of illumination does not reflect enough light to allow us to have the complete green screen experience. I will still let the classes view the raw video to see others' work, but it won't have the backgrounds in the back. We might re-do one or two, though, so you can see what it would look like. For now, here is what I am getting. It only replaces 1/4 of the green screen.

The Everts MS Science Fair was held Tuesday, March 9, 2010. The students did a great job explaining the scientific inquiry skills acquired throughout this extensive project. Thanks to everyone who helped to make this day a success!

Mrs. Willyerd's science students have been busy learning about the atmosphere. We've studied the composition and the layers of the atmosphere so far. We found a fun science rap about the atmosphere created by a middle school teacher. It is pretty catchy, so I posted it on this blog so students may view it at home.

Timetoast.com is a free Web 2.0 technology that creates interactive timelines in minutes.  This site does require one to sign up for a free account; however, this program is quick and easy to use.  The timelines can be easily adjusted to view different time intervals, so you can zoom out or zoom in for perspective.  Other timelines created by other users are available for public use, so if you want to use a timeline but don't have the time to create one, then there might already be a timeline created for you to use during instruction.

The timelines can be published to give an embedded code that you can cut and paste into a blog, wiki, or placemark in GoogleEarth.

For example, here is a quick timeline for my science fair students for this year:

Slideboom.com  allows students to use a PowerPoint that has already been created in the classroom and upload it to slideboom.com to easily make this a file that can be quickly embedded on a classroom wiki, blog, or website.  These PowerPoints may also be uploaded into a Google Earth virtual tour, so when a student clicks on a particular location then the student is able to view an informational slideshow as well that correlates with that location.

Presenters at the E-Tech conference continuously commented about how students were motivated by having their work published to the web.  Web publishing onto a class wiki or blog allows students to be proud of their work since the work is readily available for family members and other friends to view at any time. 

This is also a great way of making a e-portfolio of student work throughout the year so students may be able to self-evaluate and reflect on their performance at different times throughout the year.  It should increase confidence in the student's performance by seeing how much the work has improved as the school year has continued.

PhotoPeach.com allows teachers to create slideshows with any jpeg image.  This site is FREE but it does require you to create an account.  Royalty-free music is already available on this site to accompany any slideshow you may want to create, but you can also upload your own.  You have the capability to embed these slideshows in a blog, class wiki, or in a GoogleEarth virtual tour.

Possible educational applications would be:

• Social Studies
  • Learning about a specific region, i.e. Egypt
    • Students could be assigned a certain geographic area of Egypt and pull together a slideshow.
    • Then, students could embed their slideshow into a GoogleEarth virtual tour of the region where the class could view their work as a whole to learn about this region.
  • Learning about people
    • Students could work on slide shows that focus on the culture of each area as the school year progresses to create almost an e-portfolio of knowledge gained.
• Language Arts
  • Virtual Field Trips
    • This might help bring a novel to life when discussing the setting or background history on a particular author.
    • Use this is combination with GoogleEarth so students may view the slideshow when clicking on a particular destination.
• Science
  • Biomes
    • Students may create slideshows of various animals, plants, and/or tourist attractions within specific cities/countries in their biome.

The pros to using this web 2.0 technology is that it can create easy slideshows with music that would engage the students.
The deltas to using this web 2.0 technology is that one must have an account to use it, so the teacher might create a general account for all to use or specific accounts for students.

Do you like the avatar version of Mrs. Willyerd on this blog post? Voki.com is a free Web 2.0 tool that I learned about today at the Ohio E-Tech conference. The popular movie "Avatar" makes this tool relevant to students who might want to make their own avatar while learning at the same time! How - you may ask? The session I went to allowed students to incorporate Voki into a GoogleEarth virtual tour, which could be used in science to discuss biomes; language arts to discuss the setting of a novel; or in social studies to explore different locations. The students could create their own avatars that are associated with different bookmarked locations in GoogleEarth, type in up to three factual sentences per location, and create a virtual tour for other students to take. It would almost be like a Jigsaw 2.0 activity. How do I use Voki? This is really simple, and you don't even need an account. If you go to voki.com, then you click on "Get Started." You can pick the character - male, female, dog, cat, etc. - and then add all the extra touches - accessories, voice, etc. Type in what you want the avatar to say, and then publish. Cut and paste the "My Space" code into your GoogleEarth bookmarked location, and then the students can get a narrated tour by the created avatar. (Don't worry the My Space code doesn't link you in anyway to My Space. I just is the html code to allow the avatar to be embedded in the different programs.) Have questions? Let me know and comment!

Students studied how science is intertwined with technology this week.  Students were given an inquiry-based project where they were to design a package that would prevent an egg from cracking and/or leaking for the Egg-ceptional Packaging Plant.  The students were given the constraints of limited materials and time to complete their prototype.  Once students designed their prototype, they were able to test their egg-ceptional packages outside.  We dropped each package from the top of the bleachers onto a blacktop landing pad.  Each egg was timed on the drop, and the results were recorded.  Students then went back inside to examine their egg following the drop.  The students were then asked to troubleshoot and think of ways in which they could re-design the package to perhaps prevent the egg from breaking and/or cracking the next time.

We related this experiment to how inventors at Apple troubleshoot and re-design each time they unveil a new generation of I-pods or I-phones.  We talked about what the first I-pod looked like, how big it was, the technology used, etc. and compared each generation's improvements.  Hopefully, this enabled students to connect science and technology to their real lives.

To view photos from our eggs-periment, click here.