Jason Thomsen's Blog

http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listweb20s.html<br /><br />The above address has hundreds of websites that could be used as teaching tools. However, there was one link that I looked at that can be very valuable for myself and hopefully for some of you. The website is RubiStar (http://rubistar.4teachers.org). Rubistar is an online rubric generator. It has all kinds of different categories that could be used for different types of projects. If you use rubrics a lot this website is worth checking out.

Below is my final video about kidneys. The video gives a detailed description using pictures and models of where the kidneys are located. The video also discusses the functions of kidneys. Finally, the video looks at the structure of a kidney using pictures and video clips of a dissection.<br />There were several pictures that were edited using Photoshop Elements. Most of the pictures edited in Photoshop were at the end of the video. I took several pictures of the dissected kidney and then used Photoshop to label the different parts. The second photo that was edited using Photoshop was the collage of kidney pictures. The final picture that was edited was the final slide. I used the magnetic lasso tool and copied a picture of a kidney and then pasted the image over a microscopic image of a kidney.

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Below is the URL to my Podcast. The Podcast covers important concepts related to the cell cycle. The Podcast has pictures of the main steps of mitosis and narrations of the important concepts of each step. This will allow my students to have a digital tool that they can use to study instead of only traditional paper tools.<br />I plan on expanding on this idea in my everyday classroom. Each week I plan to post a Podcast of the main concepts covered that week which my students would be able to listen to. By doing this my students would have a great DIGITAL tool to use to study and review important concepts.<br />In my Podcast I edited three photos using Photoshop. In the opening slide the text “The Cell Cycle - By: Jason Thomsen” is filled with an image of mitosis. The second slide in my Podcast is also edited. I used the magnetic lasso tool to take an image of the cell cycle and paste it over an image of mitosis. The final slide in my Podcast that is edited using Photoshop was the second to last slide in which I made a collage of all of the steps of mitosis.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bellevuepublicschools.org/ishare/bcrenshaw/documents/PS3FinalProject.mp4">http://www.bellevuepublicschools.org/ishare/bcrenshaw/documents/PS3FinalProject.mp4</a>

This week I subscribed to the Discovery Channel Video Podcast. I watch a lot of shows on the Discvoery Channel including the "Human Body." The Human Body shows are very well done and are educational, especially for my Medical Biology class that I teach. The graphics on that show are unreal. I could show these videos to my students, which would give them a better understanding of the Human Body.