Jim's USF Tech Cert Blog

Hello Class, This lesson will be for my 9th grade biology class.  The class consists of 90 total students in 3 different periods throughout the day.  It is a co-taught classroom and we have 25 students with IEP's over the 3 periods.  For the first year, students all have their own chromebook so we are a 1:1 classroom.  The unit I've decided to re-vamp will be one of the most difficult topics we talk about all year, protein synthesis.   In the past, most of the instruction has been in lecture format, with some worksheets and practice problems to understand how DNA codes for proteins which when linked together make a gene that codes for a trait.  I did enhance the unit by doing one quick animation where students were able to build strands of DNA, transcribe them into mRNA, and translate them into the correct amino acids.  Other than that, the technology piece is weak for this unit, which is the main reason I have chosen to revamp this lesson.  My modification for this u

Hello Class, Wow, this week really made me think about how much I rely on technology not only to deliver my lessons, but also to organize my time here at school.  I thought about writing about my google site which houses all my lessons and a calendar for students to access but though everyone already knows about that tool.  I then thought about Mastery Manager which helps me not only deliver assessments but also helps me collect data and trends to reshape my future teaching but another student in our class covered that tool well.  I settled on a tool I use almost everyday in my class to communicate with my students called REMIND. Remind is an app/ website that does exactly what the name says.  It is a tool that gives the teacher the ability to "safely" contact all of their students, athletes, or even parents through kids most comfortable method of communication.... Text.  With remind, you are able to set up a class that students can join when given the pass number and cla