Most of the students went with the “cell is like a city” analogy, followed closely by the “cell is like a factory” – pretty commonly used analogies for a cell but I suppose that’s because they are effective for helping to visualize not only the anatomy of a cell but also the cellular processes. There were also some unique analogies like “A cell is like a beehive”. The best one was “A cell is like the human body” not just for the analogy but also for the quality of the presentation that was given to explain it.

Some afterthoughts – I think I gave them too much class time to do the research but that’s because I left the research topic too broad so they took more time to find some information. I told the students to make some notes about the important parts of the cell but let them decide what is important. I was hoping that would elicit some good thinking and comparing the different parts of the cell and their relative importance. Instead, I think students went for a shotgun (i.e. search in google for “cell parts” and check the first 5 results) approach. Next time I think I’ll give them a list of the organelles that they should research.

Despite the shortcomings of the project (meaning my requirements, not their work) I think I’ll give it another try with some further refinements. Sadly, I’m not teaching any more biology this year so I’ll have to wait until the next school year to test it out again.

Any advice would be appreciated!

(wife) “Don’t forget to call Grampa today” (me) “Ok” (Now the B.S.O.D. kicks in) 1. Get up to go to the phone 2. Oh look, the coffee pot light is on 3. Pour cup of coffee, turn to get sugar, BUT 4. The cat is at your feet telling you he needs fresh water 5. Set coffee cup down and fill cat water dish 6. Notice that kitchen floor is dirty 7. Go to get swiffer mop. 8. On the way, notice that the bathroom light was left on 9. Go into bathroom to turn light off but, wait, the toothpaste cap is off the tube. 10. Reach for tube and phone rings. 11. Leave bathoom (with light on and cap off of toothpaste tube) to answer phone. 12. Answer phone to be asked by wife if you have called Grampa yet. 13. Hang up phone and start to dial Grampa’s number only to see that the dog needs to go potty. 14. Hang up phone to let dog outside. 15. Notice that the bird feeder is empty. 16. Go to wood shop to get bird feed using an old coffee can. Fill feeder, return to wood shop to return empty coffee can only to notice that last week you left the roofing hammer in the wood shop. 17. Hammer in hand, go to main shop to return hammer to correct place. On your way, you hear the phone ring in the house. 18. Run to get phone, but miss it by one ring. Oh look, the bathroom light was left on. 19. Start to turn light off only to see that someone left the cap off of the toothpaste tube. Start to put cap back on, only to see your perscription meds on the sink that you forgot to take. 20. Take meds to kitchen to get water to take them with. Oh look, theres your coffee on the counter! Did you put sugar it in? Don’t remember, so pour coffee in sink only to hear dog scratching at the door to come back inside. 21. Go to door to let dog in, but can’t open the door because you have a hammer, a coffee cup, a bottle of meds and a tube of toothpaste in your hands.

Thanks for the suggestion for how to organize feeds. If/when I start subscribing again, I think I’ll give your idea a try.

I mean, I subscribe to a lot of people in EdTech. I can’t possible read everything they post, and only manage to comment and connect with a few on a regualr basis. But by having their feeds in GReader, I can use the search feature when I am stumped, or want to find information about how my particular network solved a problem. It’s like having a custom Google search engine that searches only sites and sources I trust.

So, instead what I have done is created folders that contain my must reads, and folders that contain everyone else. Now, I only worry about reading the top reads (which tend to be the people I have a fairly strong connection to) and let the rest float. To go along with this is a switch in behaviour to begin to use GReaders search functionality, and start my searches for edtech related stuff there instead of a generic Google search.

If I’m not mistaken, that’s a Dell Latitude. I test drove one of those with GNU/Linux last year and the thing was very fast. Not a big fan of Unity…yet. I think it needs more time in the oven before I abandon GNOME. Also, with Wayland coming to push X out on the Ubuntu distribution, there’s going to be some massive changes/improvements over the coming year.

Our 1:1 is sort of in limbo at the moment. I don’t think I generated quite enough momentum to pull off a switch to GNU (I’ll just call it GNU from now on…for the sake of brevity ) when we do go. But at least we have Ubuntu running on the desktop machines and my tech classes all work with GNU.

Good luck Rob, I wish you success.

Since it’s my post about book reports that you linked to, I thought I should offer some clarifications and explanations.

At first glance, yes some (perhaps) all five suggestions are just “jazzed up” book reports. However, what I have found is that when students know that their work is going to become, for lack of a better term, a “performance piece” they tend to invest more effort and care not only in making their products look good, but also in making sure that they look for and include as much information and insight as they possibly can in their final products. In my experience this happens because classmates, parents, and others are much more likely to look at one of these short performance pieces than they are to read a two page book report. Therefore, the students creating the alternative book reports take care to include as many details as possible.

I’m not suggesting that traditional book report assignments are inherently bad. They’re not. In fact, they can be excellent exercises in analyzing and writing. I’m simply suggesting that if writing is not the purpose of a book report assignment, there are alternatives that students can use to convey the meanings and main ideas of a book.

(Granted, the following example is with a research assignment instead of a book report, but I think there are many parallels). In my own classroom over the last week and one half my 11th grade students, many of whom have in the past been reported as having a poor attitude toward school, have worked on creating short videos about the Revolutionary War. Those students have worked as diligently as they possibly can to make sure they know their content and convey their stories as clearly as possible. Many of them have revised their works, without my prompting, three or four times. I know that I probably would not have gotten the same effort out of those students if I had made the assignment a standard research essay. Why? Because they know that the whole class is going to see their final product whereas if it were an essay assignment they know that the whole class is not going to read every student’s essay. Are my students learning more about the content because I made their final product a video instead of an essay? Yes. Will there be times that my students do write traditional research papers? Yes, because I do believe that writing skills are important, but I’m sure that that process will not be as cheerily undertaken by my students as video creation projects are.

Richard