Yahoo! For Teachers

Dale Basler has been a teacher of science in Appleton, Wisconsin since 1998. He currently teaches physics and physical science at Appleton East High School.

In 2004, Dale was elected President-Elect of Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers (WSST) and served for four years on the WSST Board of Directors. For two of those years, Dale served as President of WSST.

Q: What types of digital tools or social media are you using in your classroom?

A: Nothing affects my classroom more than RSS feeds. I follow a variety of sites and podcasts that I share with my students. My news reader allows me to share information with the class and keep up with current topics without spending valuable time searching for it– the news comes to us.

I’ve also been trying to get my students to create more videos. I just cannot see a future where my students won’t be asked to create multimedia presentations in their careers. I want to push their creativity and help them become comfortable using new tools– all while learning physics too!

Creativity requires feedback and encouragement. I’ve had my students post their projects to a variety of online video sharing communities. The teacher can comment on a student’s work but nothing motivates students more than feedback from their peers.

I require my students to comment on their classmates’ work. Students learn from both the comments their video receives and through the process of critiquing others.

Last, but not least, is Twitter. This seems to be the perfect tool for a teacher. It’s quick and easy to use. I’ve used it to network with other teachers and as a way for my students to journal (via their cellphone) during a field trip back to the students in the classroom who couldn’t join us. Now that I’ve convinced my school district to stop filtering it, I plan to use Twitter even more with my students.

Q: How have your students responded to the integration of technology into your curriculum?

A: Over the past two years I have been doing a podcast for my students as a way for them to review and reinforce what we’ve been learning in the classroom. However, not a lot of my students are big podcast listeners. This was new to them. I started putting tips for quizzes in the podcasts to get them into it. The reaction has gone from, “What are you doing?” to kids coming in on Monday and asking, “Hey, where’s the podcast?”

Q: Why is Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) important?

A: There are many reasons to promote and encourage STEM education. We can talk about the future competitiveness of our country if we slip behind in STEM fields. Yet, I argue that STEM education is important for all students– not just the ones who are heading toward a career in this field.

A solid STEM education helps all students become better citizens. It helps us become more aware of our surroundings, what our political leaders are saying and what our stores are selling. I shriek when I overhear customers at big box stores being bamboozled by the store clerk because they are not technologically literate. Or when they’re duped by fuzzy mathematics at checkout time.

What really gets me is when science is misused and misrepresented. Magnetic bracelets, crystal therapy and all sorts of other quackery take advantage of people daily. We need to improve STEM education for all of our students so they cannot fall victim to such dubious claims.

Q: You and your colleague Brian Bartel co-host NSTA’s Lab Out Loud, a bi-weekly podcast on science education, news and technology. Who has been your favorite guest so far and why?

Lab Out Loud has been an absolute blast. We’ve had so many wonderful guests. One of my colleagues put it best, “Even if nobody listens, you’ve gotten to talk to some extraordinary people in science.” Fortunately people are listening too.

If I had to pick a favorite, it would be our most recent interview with Phil Plait, otherwise known as The Bad Astronomer. Plait’s website, badastronomy.com, often discuss topics that are close to my content area so it was easy for me to make a connection to what he was saying. He pointed out the need for us to teach our students to be skeptical– a point I also agree with tremendously. Plait was also quite funny which makes our job as interviewers a breeze.

Q: Dark chocolate or milk?

A: As a proud resident of “The Dairy State” I have to say milk.

Q: Favorite Quote?

A: “There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.” -Richard Feynman

Thanks Dale! See you at the NSTA Conference in Boston.

Note: If you’d like to nominate an educator for our Teacher Spotlight, or would like to share your story on the Yahoo! For Teachers blog, just send an email to yteachersblog (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know.

Educators and students from across the globe are planning a 24 hour long “Webcastathon” on Earth Day 2008 (Tuesday, April 22nd). Thanks to our good friends over at World Bridges, the audio from the conversations will be broadcast live at Edtechtalk.com/live.

The goal of the day is to share stories across the globe about what we’re doing to help better the health of our planet.

Our conversation will follow the 24 hour day in GMT time, which basically means we’ll be observing the day as it passes through Greenwich, England.

There are many ways that you and your students can participate right now. You may start contributing content by visiting the Earth Day Webcastathon planning page at: enviroscims.wikispaces.com/Earth+Day and leaving an audio comment on the two VoiceThread projects.

Or if you and your students publish any videos, pictures, podcasts or any other digital media online in the days and weeks leading up to Earth Day, be sure to tag them as, earthcast08, so we can aggregate the material in one central location.

Also, if you and your students would like to moderate an hour long block live (or even 30 minutes), there is still an opportunity to do so. You may fill up your time slot in any manner that you wish (interview scientists, local leaders, folks doing positive things in your community, etc)

Contact Matt Montagne at mjmontagne at gmail dot com if you’d like to moderate a portion of the day. Finally, if you’d simply like to listen in during the day, you can do so by visiting the Webcastathon planning page throughout Earth Day.

We’ll have a live, moderated chat room that we’ll be using to allow for greater participation.

We hope you and your students are able to join us is some capacity for the 24 Hour Earth Day Webcastathon!

Thanks!
The Earth Day 2008 24 Hour Webcastathon Planning Team

Note: If you’d like to share your project with other educators, or know a teacher we should showcase on the Yahoo! For Teachers blog, just send an email to yteachersblog (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know. We’re looking forward to hearing and sharing your projects with educators around the world.

One of the best things about working on the Yahoo! For Teachers initiative has been the opportunity to travel around the country to meet teachers and hear their stories. Here are just a few of the amazing teachers we’ve met:

• Last year at the 2007 NSTA Conference in St. Louis we met a science teacher from Kansas who, for three years, sold popcorn at the school basketball games to raise enough money to buy a SMART Board for his classroom.

• At NECC in Atlanta, we met Ms. Vickie from South Carolina. Many of the children in her classroom have parents serving in the military who are stationed overseas. When Ms. Vickie and her classroom heard that children in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t have enough school supplies, they began a campaign to collect pencils for the soldiers to distribute to schools.

• At our Yahoo! Teachers Workshop in NYC we met Mr. Circe, an innovative and cutting edge teacher, who is finding creative ways to integrate and use technology in his classroom practice. He is also sharing his knowledge of Web 2.0 technologies, mentoring both new and veteran teachers in his school community.

These are just a few of the outstanding educators we’ve met who have shared their stories with us. And we, in turn, have shared these (and more) experiences with our colleagues here at Yahoo!.

We thought it was time to provide an opportunity and forum for educators to share their stories, best practices, social activism and innovative uses of technology with their community. So starting this week, we are pleased to begin a “guest post” feature on our blog called “In Their Words.”

If you’d like to contribute your story or know a teacher we should showcase on the Yahoo! For Teachers blog, just send an email to yteachersblog (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know. We’re looking forward to hearing and sharing your stories.

Derek Baird
Yahoo! For Teachers Team

Celebrating Educational Blogging is a fantastic project created by edublogger Steve Hargadon. It’s a mash-up using Blogger and VoiceThread.

Go check it out and get involved—add your audio, video or text story to the community VoiceThread and share with colleagues around the world how you incorporate blogging into your classroom!

Related Links

• Support Blogging
• Yahoo! Teachers Group > BloggingEDU
• Students 2.0 Blog
• Wes Fryer > BloggingEDU
• Yahoo! For Teachers > Twitter

Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team

On February 1, the Yahoo! For Teachers team will be joining our colleagues from the del.icio.us team at the Classroom 2.0 Live meet up in San Francisco. For those of you who are unable to attend, here’s a copy of the del.icio.us 101 handout.

Classroom 2.0 Live SF is being organized by Steve Hargadon and will feature workshop sessions on using Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom.

We’ll also have some spiffy Yahoo! For Teachers schwag too, so be sure to step up and introduce yourself! We’re really looking forward to attending this event and meeting all of you.

Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team

Did you know that when you search for a project in Explore, the project(s) with the highest number of points are displayed at the top of your search results? Yes, it’s true. But you may be asking yourself: What are these points? And where do they come from?

Here’s the scoop…

The number next to the star is the project rating. The number equals the total number of teachers who have copied the project or left feedback for the author.

These project points will help you gauge both the reputation and quality of a project and/or author. This built in system of “peer review” helps push the highest rated projects to the top of the Yahoo! For Teachers Explore results.

Here’s how to leave feedback on a Yahoo! For Teachers Project:

• Click > “I like this project” button
• Write > Use the default message, or leave your own feedback, tips or suggestions
• Click > “Send My Comment”

You can view comments left by your colleagues by scrolling to the bottom of the project page and hovering your mouse over your icon. To learn more about the colleague who left a comment, click on their name and see what resources and projects they have in their portfolio.

So go ahead and copy projects or leave feedback on your colleagues’ projects! Doing so will help make the Explore results more relevant, save you time, and help build a vibrant and robust community for teachers, by teachers!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to post your question over in our Yahoo! For Teachers group.

Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team

It appears that Earl, our Yahoo! For Teachers spokesowl, has discovered the joys of Twitter. And even though he would much rather “hoo” than “tweet“– he still thinks Twitter is pretty slick.

He’s agreed use Twitter as a way to keep everyone up-to-date with breaking community news, links to useful resources along a few random bits of information.

You can follow Earl by clicking here:

http://twitter.com/yahooteachers

Related Resources

• Twitter
• A Guide to Twitter in the Library
• Yahoo! For Teachers + Flickr

Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers

“The challenge lies in bringing administrators and faculty together in ways that leverage their individual talents, while capitalizing on their differences.

In this way we create a tension between ways of thinking and knowing that results in better research product than could ever have been created without such diversity.

No one “expert” can teach everyone else how to design or carry out the best program research. Those decisions must rely on the strength of a community of individuals with various perspectives that, when summed together, produce the best possible product by leveraging what is known at large.”

~Dr. Mercedes Fisher

Last week it seemed like everytime we turned around, someone was saying something nice about Yahoo! For Teachers.

We couldn’t be more thrilled to read all the nice things people are saying about us and we are working hard to get Yahoo! For Teachers into the hands of as many educators as soon as possible.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for an invite, put yourself on the Peer Network Map, and join our official Yahoo! For Teachers group.

You can also check out what people are saying about us:

• SF Chronicle: Yahoo! Teachers enables teachers to share lesson plans, ideas and more
• Ars Technia: Hacking Education with Yahoo! Teachers
• WebProNews: Yahoo! Teachers shaping up nicely

Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers

We’ve created an official Yahoo! Teachers account on del.icio.us where we’ll be sharing resources and links that you might find useful.

If you find links that might be of interest, share them with us via del.icio.us and we’ll add them to the Yahoo! Teachers collection. So be sure to add us as a contact!

Here’s the link to the Yahoo! Teachers account:

http://del.icio.us/yahoo.teachers

If you don’t already have an account, you can get one by going here: https://secure.del.icio.us/register

Need help getting started? Watch this excellent del.icio.us tutorial over on TeacherTube.

Thanks!

Derek, Community Manager
Yahoo! For Teachers