Monday, November 28, 2011

Welcome back from the holidays.  I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving.

This week, students will be focusing on the concept of biodiversity as they research various biomes. 

Today, students completed vocabulary and took notes on Biotic and Abiotic factors.  Their homework is to answer two open-ended questions on their notes foldable.  Also, several students did not complete the essay they were to write about aquifers and groundwater.  This essay, to be done in the journal, is a major grade.  Please ensure that it is done.

The next Current Event is due Friday.  

Importance of Online Surveys

I am learning a big lesson on paper surveys, namely, use online instead.  Have spent hours going through student surveys and am still working.  I did the same type of survey with teachers using Survey Monkey and it took just a few minutes.  When I do the mid-year survey, I will find a way to do student surveys online.  More data coming as surveys are dissagragated. 

Surveys out; still no Ipods

It's been over a month and we are still waiting on Ipods to be delivered.  Each teacher has theirs, but we need student sets now.  Continuing to wait and contact people to find out what is going on.

On a positive note, student surveys have been sent out are slowly coming back in.  Preliminary data shows that most students have at least some experience using Ipods, although most of it is for entertainment purposes.  However, it seems that we have a fairly large number of 7th grade students who do not have any computers or internet access at home.  This was not surprising, but it does limit the tyoe of homework and assignments that we can give. I should have all of the surveys done next week and start diagregating data.  I am very interested to see how the 8th graders fair on the preliminary technology survey.