I had watched and commented on Heather, heidi, and Karyn's blog wall about their science challenge video they had done.

I actually enjoyed doing this technology assginment for once because i thought it was quite easy and not to complicated. I think this would actually be great to impliment into your classroom because it would not take up to much time on the planning part so it could be totally worth your time to do and show in class. I also believe that if you had the older grades in elementary education or even in junior high, i think that it would be possible to teach them and they could make their own video on a science project they are trying to implement. This would be a great assignment to show they know how and what they have learned in doing their experiment. The only downside to this technology assignment is that you may not have all the materials to do the science experiment to show the class. For example, you may not have the themometer rods, or the star program, you may not have the microscope item that hooks up to your computer, etc..
Overall, i believe if you have the materials to do this project, then do it because it can help enhance the students learning and add more variety into your lessons!

science challenge

1. In our technology enhanced science activity, we will be looking at the properties of water. We will be looking at water, as a solid, liquid and gas. Ihis actvity, the teacher will be talking about it, and they will be showing and demonstrating the change in each stage. There will be a bowl of water and ice. This shows two states. The ice will melt and the students will be observing it as it changes into water. The teacher will take the water bowl and microwave it or they could put it in a crock pot and they will see how water canges into steam. Along with showing the studdents the states of water and how they change, they will use a themometer to test the temperature that each of these states. This will show the students how cold or hot it has to be to make water, steam or ice. During this demonstration, the students will be watching and observing, they could fill out a work sheet or write a relfelction, whichever you perfer as a teacher. The students should also get a chance to use the themometers.
2.i. The content we will be focusing on, is the states of water and their temperatures. (solid, liquid, gas .. melting/ boiling points. This will show how we get to each states.
ii. We want to implement observing, classifying, predicting, aquiring, and processing data.
This is a great fit with the demonstartion we are doing, so they can understand the knowledge we are trying to see, and it is a visual activity so you can actually understand and see the processes happening in each state to another.
iii. We will be using themometers. It will be a good fit, so the students can learn how to use one and read one. They will better understand at what temperatures it takes for boiling/ melting points to takes place. And what temperature it has to be to be in different forms
iv. It shows the temperature that each state of water occurs at. I believe if you didnt use technology (themometers) to demonstarte, it could be harder to understand. This way it is visual and they can actually see for themselves they all occur at different temperatures. It just adds to the learning process!

I had watched and explored kindy's, Heathers, and Heidi's virtual tours and posted a comment about it on their walls.
I believe there are many upsides and downsides to implementing this virtual tour into your classroom as a teacher. I think that it is a great way to teach students about different places and learn facts on them by exploring the tour on their own. It is a fun exciting activity they can do, which will be engaging to them because it is totally different from a regular instructional day. It is a change in the media, and it gives variety to your lesson. This virtual tour can be a great way to get kids motivated and tied into the lesson if teachers were to present this at the very beginning of the unit or lesson that they were going to be learning. If i was a student that had to explore and do the application activities on a topic, i would love it because i would find it neat, and exciting that i got to explore this cool world on my own. Also using this at the beginning of a new unit can give ELL learners as well as the regular english speaking students a chance to get a little bit of background knowledge on the topic at hand that will be taught. It will give them a better understanding in the fact that there will be pictures and videos explaining rather than a teacher talking. They may also be able to make conections to their own lives. I believe a downfall to this virtual tour would be that there may not be enough computers to go round, and if you do get into a computer lab, it will take longer than the time given because of all the application assignments throughout the virtual tour. I think this is a major downfall to using this. Lastly, teachers should really get to know their students and how they behave and learn before doing this virtual tour because it may not fit the class they are teaching.

My visual tour is about physical activity for; health, enjoyment, challenge, self expression, and/or social interaction. My tour is to give a descrption of a couple different sports that different countries are great it. It is to help teach kids that there are many different fun physical activities that can be enjoyed alone or with others, like a team sport. And maybe it will get them excited and encouraged to get out and try different physical activities for fun, and maybe even competitive!