Tag: A2-Find

I do it all the time in order to greet a friend or a relative. I think everyone does it at some point; everyone’s learned how at some point of their lives. But what, really, is the core of this simple motion, this simple greeting we offer to our friends and loved ones?

It is the wave, my friends, and it is not simply the back and forth motion of your arms or hands. It has a particularly deep occupation in the world of science, from climatology to meteorology to oceanography; to physics, psychology…everything. Waves are connected to everything and everyone.

During my research concerning waves, it boggled my mind how delicate the nature of waves is, as well as the tenacity and strength that they can have. Add in the ripple effect and the other properties that come along with it, well….it’s just amazing. Every time I think of the ripple effect, I am reminded of the proverb or saying about a butterfly’s wings? Something about starting from a butterfly and ending up as a strong gust of wind halfway across the world? Something like that.

While I was looking for media, I was really inspired by all the creativity that I found when looking at images. I found the pictures that I saw on Flickr especially to be super calming and definitely something worthwhile to look at.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/8491721799/in/photolist-dWoi3x-dL9xct-iUVZmf-dL9zMZ-bzkNYr-cRiHF7-xW4vP-nW5Ee1-bnSmFE-dLf5mE-67qjfb-peNUYh-9Ndj98-dLf2AE-bHayha-aGT1vT-7yztt-3JnCge-3JUjA-edj6Xq-b64C2v-69dvSD-69dw5K-fN83Fc-3JrPYJ-4s3pkL-FSkGXy-oqmWLV-pDpBRn-3JUm7-aF45uC-dL9y2T-5jpdrD-9QSpTG-9Ndj4a-bwk3cG-qs6auG-3Hxni-9NdiVV-7wrBC3-34Rmuy-CUiaZM-9DYoe6-4rYkZF-q47QZn-qJuGZr-FRSS9-qwJx8H-bNmDk8-9oiLxa/

Like the one above from AJC1. Doesn’t this just make you want to go swimming/surfing/whatever you do in the ocean? Isn’t it weird to think that this picture of a particular kind of wave makes your brain send out a different kind of wave? (a brain wave…duh.)

Waves are super calming, and I loved seeing all the creativity that went into trying to convey that. I looked at some of the science-y stuff that I found as well, but there were some things that I didn’t really understand, mostly because it was really late at night and I didn’t feel like delving that much into hyper-physics (I’m pretty sure that’s a thing). Not only waves super calming, but they’re also essential to nature for various reasons. (Again, more science-y stuff) In the link, I have provided my OneNote compilation of said calming pictures of waves and such, and there’s an article there that explains the benefits of the ocean’s waves in 6 easy little blurb-y paragraphs.

I found that I spent most of my time on Flickr, just looking at pictures of the ocean. It made me kind of homesick to be honest. This is probably the reason why I switched to science. Then the science aspect started to speak in…well, science lingo, and that bored me out of my mind. I had the (bad) smart idea to look into brain waves, and I saw lots of MRIs of brains in lots of different bright reds, greens, yellows, and some in some really calming blues and grays…although I think the calmer colors mean little to no activity? I also used a lot of regular Google searching.

What made this experience really fun was being able to use OneNote in a way that wasn’t notes. It felt sort of like scrap-booking, and I’m really into that kind of thing. Maybe now I’ll be able to use it more like a scrap book than anything educational.

That’s it for now!

 

My OneNote Thing!

Featured Image: Waves from Tutorvista.com

The internet is a jungle – vast, dense, and full of resources.  This task challenged me to pick up my hypothetical machete and trek into it, learning how to find needed resources efficiently and then use them fairly.

On this particular trek, I delved into the virtual jungle to find pictures of the actual jungle – or at least pictures of Venezuela to get started on a presentation for a Spanish class I’m taking.  I chose Flickr to search for photos, limiting my search to Creative Commons photos.  I noticed how many high quality photos disappeared when I added this limiting term, but what could I complain since I could use the material free of charge (with reference and non-commercially)?  I further noted that I could limit the search by size, orientation, date, and content, which could make the search process more efficient.

My archive tool of choice was Google Keep, which centers around “notes” that can include a mix of text, content, colors, and links.  Once I found my photos of choice, I simply downloaded them, uploaded them to Google Keep and added a short description and photo credit.  For fun, I tried using Bitly to shorten the link addresses to the Flickr photos, which was self-explanatory and simple.  When all finished, I had a neat collection of photos, ready to use for content creation since I could easily include the image sources.

(My assortment of images and sources on Google Keep)

And that concludes my short foray into the jungle, learning about the mesas of Venezuela, and digital literacy and content curation at the same time.

Image: Tomorrow by Matsography  – Link

 

For this task, I chose to collect public domain sources related to the native trees and plants of Oregon.  After fiddling around on Microsoft OneNote for a few minutes, I felt as though I was completely incapable of operating a computer.  There were so many toolbars and sidebars that I had no idea where to go or what to do in order save my sources.  I decided to switch over to Google Keep instead.  I found Keep to be fairly easy to use.  The user interface of Keep was a lot simpler and didn’t have nearly as many options as OneNote, which I personally find to be a good thing.  I downloaded Keep as an extension to my Google Chrome browser.  Every time I found a source that I was interested in saving, I simply clicked on the Keep logo in my browser’s toolbar and a link to the webpage was saved in Keep.

I found a few of the public domain search tools to be very helpful.  Flickr was a great source for finding images.  It was easy to search for images and identify the type of license associated with each image.  My only problem with Flickr was that many of the images were incorrectly labelled by the person who posted them.  For example, I found this image of a lady fern when I was searching for a sword fern.

I’m not a plant expert, but I was able to identify several other images on both Flickr and Google Images Creative Commons Search that were incorrectly labelled.  This could potentially be a problem for students who are researching native plants for a school project.  Incorrectly labelled images might cause confusion about what plants look like.  On the other hand, it might be good practice for students to filter through information and identify which sources are reliable.

 

Image credit to vladeb

My AP Lit students have a Chaucer unit coming up, so I thought this week I could use the Creative Commons search opportunity to gather some resources.  I was honestly pretty unfocused about it so I’m not sure it will all be helpful, but the process of gathering data was super easy and I think I found some things I can actually use.

The Creative Commons search tool was great because of the quick access to different types of media. I found a few classic images of Chaucer/depictions of the travelers on Flickr. There were also a lot of photos of a boxer and a chameleon, ostensibly named Chaucer. Cute, but not exactly what I was looking for. I found more useful images on Google images. The Internet Archive was the most useful resource for this dusty old topic. I found PDF versions of the Middle English and translated versions of the text, which is really useful because we have less than a classroom set of books.  I also found an audiobook version, which, while terribly voiced, could be really helpful for struggling readers and my busy seniors in general who are traveling to work etc. I wish I could have found better video sources, but I see how it would have been easy to do so if my topic was something else. Overall, it’s nice to use things that I know I have permission to use.

I chose OneNote to store these resources. I found the program perfectly serviceable and easy to navigate, but not particularly exciting. I like that organization was really clear with the different sections, and that you could add different file types etc, but it would take some getting used to for me to curate things this way. I get the point of having everything in one place and accessible from any device, but in my world my devices are more reliable than my internet connectivity, so I need to change my living situation and my mindset before something like this would be fully useful to me.

Here’s a link to what I came up with.

 

Image Credit: The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer edited by FS Ellis, Kelmscott Press, 1896 by Kotumi_ on Flickr

 

As I already have experience with OneNote, I decided to explore Google Keep to record my notes for this assignment. I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to use! I chose to look at hippos and their environment for this assignment because they are one of my favorite animals.

Google Keep was very user friendly and easy to navigate. You can also customize the layout to be a grid of posts or list in order to fit your task. When uploading an image, it automatically recognized the link and attached it for quick access on each post. I thought that was convenient because you don’t even have to open the whole note, but can quickly select the link below the title. The notes are fun because they can be highlighted in different colors for organization or just a pleasant appearance. You can also make checklists, set reminders, and pin important notes to the top of the page. I prefer the grid format as it makes me feel like I’m creating my own Pinterest board. You can also create links on posts that connect to other note pages you have created.

For students or teachers, it seems like Google Keep would be great for sharing ideas and collaborating because there is a quick button to add anyone. I also believe this would be great for students researching for a project. They could save images or notes with quick links to the online source to refer to. They could pin a checklist of the criteria to the top and check things off as they find the information as well. Overall, Google Keep is user friendly and could be incorporated into the classroom for both students and teachers.

 

Image: Hippo by Noel Reynolds link

Feature Image: Hippo by Andrew Mason link

Captured! The Beauty of Guam!!

I used Microsoft OneNote to store my collection for this activity.  In my honest opinion, OneNote was the easiest storage-maker(?) to use.  When you open the application, up at the top of the page, in big letters, are the options of what you can do within OneNote.  Insert a picture, take a picture from your camera, insert a link for a video or audio, and so on.  It was just that easy.  I mainly used pictures for my collection though.  Also, it seems if you downloaded any fonts onto your computer to mess around when using Microsoft apps (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.), they are available to you on OneNote.  Sadly, you guys cannot see it unless you have the font in your device too.  But, I will attach a picture of what I was seeing as I made my collection!

Sorry about the quality!  Happens when you take a picture of a screen.  But, yeah, the font is called “Burton’s Nightmare”, which is the font of “The Nightmare Before Christmas”.  Awesome movie!  Recommend watching it then re-watching it every Halloween and Christmas!

I wish I was introduced to this earlier! It is fun and easy to use!  It is not that I am afraid to try new things, but that I am just too comfortable (*lazy*) with stuff I am familiar with.  I already have some pages (note sheets?) saved on OneNote to be used to help me with my student-teaching so we can see that I plan on using this app more in the future and, hopefully, for a long time too.

Featured Image: Island of Guam

How does a human fulfill their hunger by looking at pictures? By looking at pictures of New Orleans cuisine of course! For this task, I pretended that I was collecting data for a presentation on New Orleans food and all that jazz (HA, get it? Jazz! Right). Anyway, I wanted to get pictures first so I went on the Flickr/creative commons search engine and started typing away. My first search was “red beans and rice” where I found a plethora of pictures that fit what I needed. Then, I searched “gumbo” and something strange happened: pictures of the food gumbo did not come up, but rather the word “gumbo” written in graffiti on random dilapidated walls. I had a hard time sifting through these, or finding an option to allow me to narrow my search result. Anyway, after enough scrolling I found an adequate picture of gumbo.

I put all of the pictures I was going to use for my hypothetical presentation on OneNote. And boy oh boy, the frustration of inept user friendliness in anything Microsoft shone through it–at least it is consistent with all other Microsoft  designs. I did not understand the purpose of such an app. Am I to take my life notes on it? Take school notes? I appreciate its function to take in pictures and how easy it is to write under them (which is how I sourced all the pictures I used), but I just don’t see its necessity when planning such projects.

I really enjoyed the internet archive search bar. I think that will be incredibly useful to students who need to find information that may be outdated or thought to be off the internet. In my opinion, all of the tools in the “digital hygiene” section are great and they are able to teach students how to properly do research. If a student is able to master all of these techniques (as well as cite the original author properly) then they will undoubtedly be able to conduct research on a project/paper that they need to complete.

All in all, I liked this exercise because it forced me to surf search engines that I would have never gone on before. I love the “digital hygiene” and think that all of the links in it are essential in teaching digital literacy.

Picture: “Char-grilled Oysters” by Robert Kawasaki

When starting this assignment I thought about what note taking tool I should use and immediately decided on OneNote. It seemed an obvious choice to me, because I am a student at the University of Portland I have free access to OneNote. I looked it over when UP first did the diabolical switch from Google to Microsoft that most students I talked to were so fearful of (What about Google Docs they said?!?). However I still find myself being very much a traditionalist as a student. When I’m in a classroom I like a pad of paper and a pen in front of me, not a laptop. I find that if I type it just does not filter through my brain the same way and I end up leaving the class having gained nothing. I need to physically write to learn. So I quickly tossed aside the idea of using OneNote.

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This assignment gave me the chance to give it a second look in a slightly different capacity.

And this time I enjoyed using OneNote. I still would not use it as a student in a classroom because I know myself enough to know if I’m going to learn and remember something I have to handwrite it. But I liked it for the purpose of a project. It gave me the space to put my notes in more of a free format then Microsoft Word does which was satisfying. I could start typing anywhere on the page. It would embed the video links and actually allow me to watch them from the page. I could organize the material however I chose, and then reorganize it when I actually had my assignment figured out. I like using OneNote and could see myself using it for planning lessons or future projects. Its nice to keep everything in one spot but be able to have multiple pages and separate notebooks.

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Students in classrooms now are fairly digitally literate, and might not have the same issues I do with needing paper and pencil. I could see in a 1-to-1 school having a class use OneNote to take notes, work on projects or even as a study tool. I could also see the potential to create lessons on it, share it with each student and then have them actually interact with the notebook and return it with completed “homework” or activities that were outlined. This would have to be in a technology able class but that is where I see most schools heading towards so it is a good idea to keep in the back of your pocket.

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I would be interested in using other notetaking applications to see what the benefits and weaknesses of each are but I enjoyed using OneNote and could see its applications in the classroom, plus I always have a enlightening time when I’m able to research a scientific topic that interests me. I hope you learn something when looking at my notes on antibiotic resistance!

Antibiotic Resistance pdf

Image: Ully Beil