In a recent eSchool News Online article, there is a story about museums, historical locations and others are creating a virtual look back at land formations, structures and lifestyles. This is done through modeling the dimensions of the ancient structure and animating the changes over time. It could be done by way of kiosk, or large movie screens or a virtual tour of an old village uncovered during an excavation.
As described from the site: "StudySphere provides fast, easy and free access to a wide variety of research-quality child-safe websites organized for education online from home, school, study abroad and home school. StudySphere’s goal is to help students, teachers, librarians, and other researchers find both highly targeted and closely related information quickly."
At this site you can review other teacher's ideas, or submit one of your own. They are free and look pretty good. As always, read the whole description before printing for your students.
This looks interesting, but I am not sure if there is or is not a cost involved. Here is the description from the site: "Over the last decade, the emphasis placed on global education has significantly increased in primary and secondary education. Students and educators are no longer limited by the geographic locations of their places of learning; new technologies can literally bring the world to the classroom. Through the Internet, ProjectExplorer provides students with access to peoples and places around the world."
I was watching tv last night and StumblingUpon different websites, I came across this site which has reviews of many FREE book sites, including digital resources. The comments from other readers are interesting too. If you are looking to start a digital book collection, but don't want to spend a lot of cash, try this site first.
Stanford University, Penn State, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT have all become part of iTunes U. That means hat you can listen to programs produced by these and other universities for free. The content includes sports highlights, campus tours, language lessons, lab demonstrations, class lectures and special programs. Be sure to click on the faculty and student tabs to see how schools are using ipods and podcasting in education. With this channel available for universities, can a K-12 public school channel be far behind?
Senior pole vaulter Allison Stokke has had her photo hijacked. Read this article by Eli Saslow in the Washington Post to see how a simple sports photo has caused this 18-year old her privacy. She has maintained her dignity through it all and has set many high school records in California. You Rock Allison, don't let them get you down.
Schools all over the country are under attack to find extra graduation tickets for those unexpected out of town guests. But now you can offer from the comfort of your own air conditioned home "Gradcast". Several districts have teamed up with their local cable company to offer a live feed of the ceremony. In addition, some schools go as far as to stream it through the internet. Remember, federal law requires that cable companies offer free services to public education, so take advantage of this offer.
To read the rest of this article from the Houston Chronicle click here.
To read the rest of this article from the Houston Chronicle click here.
Need a quick graphic organizer for tomorrow? Then look at this site: Freeology and find organizers, posters, journal topics and award certificates.
There are 190 fun math problems you can use as a classroom opener. Put one on the board while the class is arriving and getting settled. Here is a sample: "One hundred ants are dropped on a meter stick. Each ant is traveling either to the left or the right with constant speed 1 meter per minute. When two ants meet, they bounce off each other and reverse direction. When an ant reaches an end of the stick, it falls off." You have to visit the page for the answer!
"The ZebraMapTM time zone map is a free, customizable map that you can use on its own or as part of a blog or web site. You can pick from twenty color schemes, add locations and position the labels. The map initially comes with ads at the bottom. If you would like to remove the ads from your map you can do so at a small fee."
This would be great for geography lessons, current events, history, or calculating distances in math! You could also create writing prompts for different locations around the world. Create a story based on the points you have chosen for your class. In September, create a map for locations that your students have traveled during the summer.
This would be great for geography lessons, current events, history, or calculating distances in math! You could also create writing prompts for different locations around the world. Create a story based on the points you have chosen for your class. In September, create a map for locations that your students have traveled during the summer.
Eduhound works very hard to find good resources for teachers. This site is filled with advertisements, but don't let that get in your way. The dead center of the page includes many links to creative lessons plans. It is worth the time to wade through the information to find a great nugget you could use in your classroom.
By the way the CFPMS website was voted "Site of the Month" a while ago. Go Hawks!!
By the way the CFPMS website was voted "Site of the Month" a while ago. Go Hawks!!
If you need to fill a small slot of time in your lesson, or need a writing prompt, plug in to the Smithsonian's Animal Web Cams. You can view tigers, kiwi(not the fruit), Asian Elephants and many more. In addition to the web cam, there is a page of links and information about the creature you are watching.
If you do not have time to develop presentations for your classroom because you don't know the software, check in on ths page, "Powerpoint in the Classroom" for some starter tips an a good guide. I found this on the United Streaming website for DEN educators. There are hundreds of lesson plans, powerpoints and great resources available when you join DEN. Just create a new user and you are ready to search.
Having trouble getting your students to enjoy poetry? The University of Pennsylvania has started a website with audio files of poets reading their work. For a detailed list of authors and more visit PennSound, a project of contemporary writing.
I found this great tip on my Gmail account. If you would like visitors to your site or blog to have the ability to click on any word and get the definition, you can add AnswerTips to your html code. Not being a programmer, or a devotee of html, I found this quite easy to edit my template to add this option to my blog. This code can also be inserted into your Opera or Firefox browsers for any site! Unfortunately, at this time it does not work with Safari.
It must be difficult to grasp the idea of the size of our solar system when you are a youngster. This website has some good visuals for comparison of Earth to other planets. Then Jupiter to other stars! Visit How Big is the World to see for yourself.
Actually it is an acronym for Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. If you wish to take an online course or teach one, this could be a good resource.
"Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education."
"Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education."
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There is an endless supply of educational science websites. This one, ScienceDaily, seems to cover a lot of topics in one compact location. Hopefully it will suit your needs for a science lesson or reference for students!
In a recent Denver Post article, several scholars were asked to critique information on China, global warming, President Clinton, Islam and evolution that was listed in Wikipedia. Their responses are listed in this article. Overall, they agreed with the entries in Wikipedia.
There are many good resources for teachers to use for the Holocaust and here is another for your records.
Teachers get the best excuses for being absent, forgetting homework and now some words from student essays. Perhaps you have seen these before today. Here are the 30 Dumbest things from school essays.
Would you like to have 2 home pages open at the same time? This can be done easily in Firefox preferences. Just follow this:
Just put a link, the pipe symbol "|" and the other URL - handy! The | symbol is shift and the key just above the return key.
Like this:
http://cfpms.ucfsd.org|http://apple.com
or whichever pages you wish to open in two tabs in Firefox.
This from Jim Gates Tipline and Make Magazine Blog.
Just put a link, the pipe symbol "|" and the other URL - handy! The | symbol is shift and the key just above the return key.
Like this:
http://cfpms.ucfsd.org|http://apple.com
or whichever pages you wish to open in two tabs in Firefox.
This from Jim Gates Tipline and Make Magazine Blog.
Read this new report from Apple about how they are trying to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals from manufacture of their products. Did you know that you could order recycle boxes for old computers as well? How are you planning on recycling your old home computers?
Image from http://www.apple.com/, May 2, 2007.
Many pundits projected that the computer would lead us to more of a paperless society. I know at our school we use more paper than ever! The recycle box is filled much too often. Here is a post from Rebecca Carter's blog: Green Options. Some food for thought...
"Today we're going to ask you to think twice, or even thrice before clicking that little print button. When you see a good Tip o' the Day, is your first instinct to print it so that you can look at it later? And when later comes, just how long do you look at that paper before you toss it, file it, or start doodling on it?
"Today we're going to ask you to think twice, or even thrice before clicking that little print button. When you see a good Tip o' the Day, is your first instinct to print it so that you can look at it later? And when later comes, just how long do you look at that paper before you toss it, file it, or start doodling on it?
There are very few things in this life that we need to print, and they are: contracts that require an original signature and airline / travel e-tickets. Yes, that's all we can come up with. Really!
What about driving directions? If you decide to write it on paper, instead of storing it into your PDA, we guarantee it will take up just a tiny corner of scrap paper. How does it get there? Here's the old-school part: you jot down by hand.
Plus, you'll find that the moment you stop printing, your life will suddenly become more paperless. This leads to a simplified life, and we all like that! So go on, pretend that printer is broken and see how it feels to be liberated! The trees win, energy conservation wins, and your wallet wins (never buy toner again).
Rebecca says: I used to be a printaholic. Emails, maps, tips, recipes and articles. Then the best thing happened to me (for many reasons): I met my husband. He taught me to ease up on the printing drastically. Then another blessing happened, my printer stopped printing. That was almost two years ago. You'd be amazed what you don't need to print once your printer breaks (or you pretend it did)."
There are more hints on the rest of the site Green Options.
