Presentaion in .pdf and Embedded Presentation in Blog

To create a PDF version of my Drake Equation presentation, I uploaded my latest presentation version to GDocs. Then I viewed the presentation in GDocs. Within the viewing mode, Google allows a viewer to download a PDF version of the presentation to their home computer, which I did to obtain a PDF version. So now I had a PDF version on my home computer. I then uploaded this PDF file to GDocs. I then was able to share the PDF version by invitation only (GDocs does not support global viewing/sharing of .pdf files, (WHY?)). If you want an invitation, just let me know in the comments at the end of this blog entry.

I also sent the PDF version to Fairmont's FTP site where it is readily available.


I have also created a link to allow the Drake Equation presentation to be viewed from Google Docs. This was done by simply publishing the presentation, then copying and pasting the provided link address. This link will launch a large screen version of the presentation. Note that you can expand the view to full screen by toggling the F11 key. The presentation is best viewed in full screen.

I have also embedded my Drake Equation presentation as a mini presentation module. This took some time, thinking, and experimenting. Suffice it to say that the route is not self-evident.



When I published the presentation, GDocs asks me if I wanted to publish my presentation online using a mini presentation module. GDocs gave me a HTML code in a box at the bottom of the page that is to be copied and pasted into Blogger's edit page. Sounds simple enough. But when I did this, a window would be open on the published blog, but the address could not be found.

After much experimenting and reflecting on how Blogger works and what exactly GDocs was saying, I suddenly realized that I must paste the HTML code into the Blogger edit page with the Editor in the "Edit Html" mode. (Apparently when I pasted the HTML code while I was in the "Compose" mode, the Editor changed the HTML code when the edit page was published, thus producing a wrong address.) I also suspect, but did not test, that I must publish the edit page in the "Edit Html" mode, at least initially.

Note also that there are several application available that allow you to generate a file from your Power Point presentation and embed it in your blog, such as SlideShare.net. I found these when I was searching the Internet to find hints on how to embed presentations in blogs.

Jeopardy Rocks

I chose to focus my Jeopardy game as a review for the Earth Science chapter on the classification and description of the three type of rocks. We will be covering this chapter in a couple of weeks and I plan to use the computer lab to allow each student to use the Jeopardy game as a review. The questions in the game are a good general review and cover the required CSOs for this unit.

After some playing around with the downloaded template, I fixed its problems. This took some time, but allowed me to become more familar with the buttons and the editing process. With this template, I can now simply replace the old text with new material.

Enjoy.

PowerPoint Presentation of the Drake Equation

Beware, this is my first time ever using or producing a Power Point presentation! I understand that PowerPoint is being taught in the elementary schools now, but I seem to have missed that opportunity until this week. I found it very powerful and easy to use once I understood the layout of the tools. The examples that I found on my fellow students blogs were helpful and I thank them.

I chose a topic that I am asked about often. When we cover any subject in astronomy, the question invariable arises, "Are there aliens?" I see this as an opportunity to introduce the students to science reasoning, using the Drake Equation, first introduced right here in West Virginia at the Green Bank radio astronomy observatory, back in 1961.

My presentation discusses the Drake equation and the factors that allow us to estimate the number of civilization in our galaxy. I have also saved a power point show (.pps). Finally there is a web version (.htm). I was wondering if I could overlay a narrative, but I was not confident enough to experiment with that feature.

I was also able to save the presentation to Google Docs.

Jupiter as a mini-Solar System Podcast

(Ahh, this was a tough assignment!)
I chose a topic that my Earth Science students found particularly interesting, the similarities of Jupiter's Galilean moons with the structure of the solar system. In this podcast, I point out the various parallels between the nature of the four moons of Jupiter and the arrangement of our solar system and the process that produced these arrangements.

My script was 1 1/3 typed pages, producing roughly 5 minutes of lecture. I used Audacity to record my lecture and added music to the front end and back end. Audacity was initially intimidating, but after playing with it for a couple of hours, I was able to do most of what I needed to do. If I would use this application more, it could be a great tool for mixing all kinds of audio together.

I exported my project as a .mp3 file after experimenting, straining, and downloading a converter from .wav to .mp3. I could not click on the Library in ITunes to drag my .wav file into as was kindly suggested in the discussion group.

I finally published my podcast via Podbean. Podbean has the same feel as Blogger and I would like to use it to publish more podcasts.

The ISTE NETS addressed by this activity include 2a) design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity; 3a) demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations; 3c) communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, using a variety of digital-age media and formats; and 5a) participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning.

My Picasa/Google Web Album

I have created a web album using Picasa Web Album. I have also loaded Picasa 3 onto my machine and it is a great photo editor, much more so than Photoshop Express. It is intuitive and user friendly, BUT beware of what photos you are editing. I thought that I had open a photo on my Web Album, did some experimenting with the Picasa features, and ended up saving the photo over top the original photo on my machine. I thought I had lost the original forever, but I reloaded it into Picasa and backsteped the mods using "undo" many, many times.

I was also able to geotag my album and also individual photos. Google has Google Moon, Google Ocean, Google Sky, and Google Mars; I wonder if I could link Earth Science photos to locations on the Moon, Mars, in the oceans or the sky? Then students could understand where the subjects of interest are located.

This assignement yielded a great discovery. I could use it to archive photos to be used in an assignment and direct the students to find the album on GPhotos!

Photoshop Express Modified Photo

I have embedded an image I took of the Moon. I played with several photo adjusting the highlights, exposure, color saturation and all the available tools provided by Photoshop Express. Then I stretched it to make it look as if it had been sketched. It looks like a geological map now. If you want to go to the Photoshop Express website click on the title of this blog entry.

My initial upload to blogger produced an image what was very large and overflowed the blog screen. The photo was not reduced from Photoshop Express when it was posted into Blogger. I assumed that it would be automatically resized to fit. So I fiddled with the image size parameters that were given in the image address when I hit the "link" button in Photoshop Express. I changed the width from 1600 to 400 and the height from 1200 to 300, preserving the aspect ratio. This worked and allowed the image to fit.

The link to the photo will give you an automatically resized image in a new window that can be expanded by clicking on it.

This technology will allow me to use photos taken in the lab, with a microscope or telescope, enhance and annotate the images, and use them to illustrate subject material in class.

The ISTE NETS addressed by this activity include 3a) demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations; and 5a) participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning.

Useful graphic from Crappy Graphics

I have produced a Venn diagram using Crappy Graphics to illustrate the overlap of the fields of Earth Science. The concept of interdisciplinary fields is introduced during the initial classes of most sciences now. The emphasis is on how interdisciplinary studies are very important to the advancement of today's sciences.

I have also produced a line graph showing the motion of a mouse searching for food. I can download this graph at school tomorrow since we are starting a module on motion. Crappy Graphics allowed me to quickly throw this together, however drawing straight lines with the brush tool is tough.

To allow the class to view these graphics, the most direct method would be to log into this blog and project the computer output using the science deparment's ELMO. I frequently use the ELMO to explore websites relevant to our subject matter.

The ISTE NETS addressed by this activity include 2a) design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity; 3a) demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations; 3c) communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, using a variety of digital-age media and formats; and 5a) participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning.

Using Kid’s Zone to Produce Quick, Easy, and Good-looking Graphs

I have used the Kid’s Zone website to produce a good-looking graph of the NAEP 4th grade mathematics scores from 2000 to 2007, comparing West Virginia’s scores to the national average. From this graph, I can quickly conclude that West Virginia students have kept pace with the national average, although West Virginia’s math score are consistently lower by a few points. The source for this data is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Is the high number of West Virginia students with an IEP due to the low per capita income of West Virginians? To answer this question, we can look at other poor states and determine if they also have a high number of IEP students. Using the data provided by the website infoplease http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104652, I was able to determine the four poorest states for 2006. In order of lowest per capita income, they are Mississippi ($27028), West Virginia ($28206), Arkansas ($28206), and Utah ($29406). This data is sourced to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Survey of Current Business. Web: www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/spi/.

To obtain information about the number of IEP studnets in these states, I used the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, which gives the desired data for each state. Plotting these data on a bar graph for the four poorest states and the U.S., it is immediately clear that the per capita income has little or no effect on the fraction of students with IEPs. If there was an anticorrelation between income and IEP, we would expect that Mississippi would have a high percentage of IEPs and that there would be a gradual decline between West Virginia and Arkansas. Yet Mississippe is right at the national average and Arkansas and Utah is even below the national average, suggesting that many other higher income states have higher percentage of students in IEP. Thus we can not say that per capita income itself has a direct bearing on the number of IEP students in West Virginia.
I used the Kid's Zone graphing tool to produce the above graphs. I found this online application to be very intuitive and it produced great graphics. It should be easy to introduce to my students and encourage them to use. My procedure for using Kid's Zone was to produce the graph using hand-entered data (I found no feature to allow importing data, but I should research this a little more). When I was finished producing the graph, I saved it as a .jpeg file, and saved it to my PC into my EDUC6305 folder. I then open my new blog entry, presses the Add Image button, and uploaded the files to Blogger, starting with the last graph in the blog first (thus the first graph in the blog was loaded last). Blogger always adds images to the very top of the blog entry, or I have not figured out how to position images within the previously written blog text yet. Note that I always center my image in the blog entry; this prevents the text from being pushed over to the side if the image is small enough to allow it, and most blog use this style anyway. I also opened the Kid's Zone graphs with MS Paint and could manipualted/copy them from there also.

Image Capture of Satellite Collision

For my image capture assignment, I grabbed an image showing the predicted debris from the Feb 10 collision between an Iridium communication satellite and a defunct Russian weather satellite. We have been talking about this event in my Earth Science class lately and I could use this graphic to illustrate some salient points.
After I found a desired graphic on Explorer, I used the Print Screen button on my keyboard to grab the entire image on the monitor. (Note that if you use Alt+Print Screen, you just get an image of the Explorer window.) I then opened Word and pasted (Ctrl V) it to the blank Word document. This is just a storage point so I can regrab it if I mess up. Then I copied and pasted the image to MS Paint. There I used the selection tool to crop just the part of the image I wanted (just the graphic, excluding the windows and Explorer stuff around the edges). I copied and pasted that to a new Paint document. From here I used the paintbrush, eyedropper, pencil, and text tools to modify the graphic for class. Note that the text tool is extremely crude; I had to magnify the text and use pencil tool to clean up the text pixel by pixel. I finally decided that it would be better to use the pencil to write the text I wanted. I used some of the graphic tools to add a crude image of the Moon and labeled it.

The file is a 797 kB bitmap image, that is 597x455 pixels in physcial size. It is a MS Paint file.
Or you can use the GDocs address below.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=d6j5vqr_15hbdrbzgw

Solar System 2010 Desktop Graphic

Here is my desktop graphic,
http://www2.fairmontstate.edu/users/lbartlett3/solarsystem2010graphic.doc
Open and enjoy my specualtion as to the Great Planet Debate in our near future. I will use this graphic in my Earth Science class to illustrate that Pluto does not need to be demoted to a non-planet. We must simply realize that there are different classifications for ALL the planets.

This is a 69KB MS Word.doc file. I grabbed the image from a Google image search. I then copied in into Word since I have no experience using any graphics software. I did look as a couple of freewares, but decided in the interest of time I had to use Word. I added the catagory labels and created black blocks to cover unwanted labels on the original. I then cut, pasted, and saved the image into a new Word.doc file.
Initially I wanted to send it to GDocs via gmail and publish it from GDocs. We need to become more familiar with GDocs since ftp may eventually be fazed out. But in the end, I was not able to get GDocs to open the image with the mods I made, they were appended below the original image. Does anyone know how to get gmail/GDocs to open images correctly??
Finally, I simply sent the .doc image file to ftp and linked my blog to it there.