What Teachers Make

As an (future) educator, if you've never heard of Taylor Mali, or even if you have, enjoy!  Mali is an advocate of teachers and of the profession, as he himself spent nine years in the classroom.  He is also one of the most well known poets who has come up through the slam poetry movement.  His words are uplifting, reassuring, and make me smile.

Week 7: Tech Lab 4 - Ms. Mooney can PodCast!

       

   
   
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This article is an abridged version of Watson and Crick's classic 1953 article published in Nature magazine about the structure of DNA.  I imagine I could use this article in several ways through a podcast.  My first idea for an assignment would be to assign a homework or classwork task after teaching students have studied DNA's structure and function.  The article is quite technical and scientific, but also has a lot of information that students learn in Biology class about the structure of DNA (i.e. base pairing rules, double helical structure, purines are hydrogen bonded to pyrimidines, etc.)  Students could listen to the PodCast and list the aspects of DNA's structure that they have learned that are also present in Watson and Crick's piece.  I would listen to the article aloud with my students after they completed to assignment on their own to help scaffold and demonstrate where the things that they have already learned about DNA's structure are present in the paper.

I also could use the article as a writing prompt or opinion piece that gets students thinking about current ethical issues and debates surrounding DNA in today's day and age (i.e. genetic cloning, designer babies, etc.)  In particle, Watson and Crick's line, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a copying mechanism for the genetic material," would be a great way to rope students in and get them to think about what Watson and Crick would think of today's biotechnology. 

I find this technology to be really useful and appropriate as well as culturally relevant for  communicating with students.  I could create review sessions that students could easily access from their ipods, and even teaching students to use it to communicate with me or the rest of the class.  This time around, I took advantage of the new version of GarageBand on my mac, and found it really simply to use to create an mp3 and upload it to PodBean.  I did, however, Google a podcast on how to record a podcast on GarageBand and export it as an mp3.  I myself am getting more resourceful.  Overall, this went over well. phewww.