Spotlight

This is quickly becoming a hot topic and producers are frantically creating the next "Oregon Trail" or "Zoombini's" for this generation of students. One of the keynote speakers at NECC 2005 talked about gaming in education and MIT is actively creating edcational games. Here are some resources to get you started in your reading about gaming in the classroom.

1. FableVision and MIT project.
2. Marc Prensky biography and website: Games2Train.
3. List of resources and site to exlore, thanks to Marc Prensky.
4. Summit on educational gaming.
   

This interactive Discovery Channel site about Global Warming shows some fantastic photos of past and present effects of the temperature changes. There is so much to see and use in your classroom. Use it as a science study, or math to compare statistics, English to write a narrative about a personal theory, or geography to describe the effects on the physical landscape or the local people.

I just found this post on a Discovery Educator Network page. There are tips for using Google Earth in your classroom. Since this GE is free, try it out and you can add your ideas to their list! If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will be able to download several .pdf files. We are taking a family trip to England for a wedding. I was able to put in our starting point in the UK and a tourist location we want to visit, and GE plotted out the directions. But the BEST part was that it allowed me to "fly" the route exactly as the directions stated. That was really fun. Imagine what you could have your classes create! How about the route of George Washington as his soldiers went from Valley Forge to Philadelphia.

The snow arrived early Tuesday and by noon, many sessions were cancelled, the exhibits were gone and the last 100 or so attendees stayed for the prize drawing. There were many great sessions scheduled for the afternoon that I wanted to see!! Good news, Bridget Belardi created a wiki for the presenters to post their information to share. So even if you didn't attend the conference, you can access all of these great resources and learn from many experts. Just go to the PETE & C wiki.

Before exploring these great wiki examples, you should read a bit about the definition of wiki.

1. First of all, if you are interested in technology and teaching, you should go to Will Richardson's wiki.
2. Jim Gates not only offers great tips each day, but he has a great example of how you can use a wiki in education.
3. MathCast is a great resource for math activities in the form of a wiki.
4. Here is a new concept, a wiki book; Using Wiki in Education. You can read, but for a small fee, you can add to it and download the chapters.
5. The first online conference in the fall was done in the form of a wiki. Visit K12online Conference to see all kinds of resources for using technology. I learned a lot about many different best practice models at this free conference.
   

There were many web2.0 resources shared with attendees at PETE&C this week and I want to give you some to use as well.

1. The Connected Classroom by Linda Nitsche contains a great PPT presentation, along with some resources for electronic field trips and a web2.0 tool YackBack.
2. Google Mail is free with use of 2.5GB of storage space. If you need more space than that, simply open another gmail account. To manage the gDisk easier, download this application.
   
3. If you use TechToolPro, then check out the free version for MAC called ONYX.
4. If you want to follow a certain tv program such as Discovery Channel or History, or even something fun you watch such as Grey's Anatomy, go to MeeVee and you can set up a schedule of your programs and have the program email you reminders. It is like a personal TV Guide.
5. There are many free blogging sites, but VOX allows you to add Flickr photos and videos, along with your written word.
6. Do you want to IM with people from different services from one IM client? Then you should try Adium an you can do this very thing.
7. Are you tired of putting $$$ into Bill Gates pocket? Then download OpenOffice for free and use a similar product.
8. Use GIMP if you want a PhotoShop like program with no cost.
   
9. If you read a lot of information from many websites, make you life easier by subscribing to them on one page. There are two recommendations here: Protopage and NetVibes.
10. Minti is about advice, friendship and community for parents. Join for free, get your own family page, keep a blog and make friends with other members.
11. WetPaint is a new wiki that is free and acts like layers of paint on your page.
12. Need to create a great looking website easily, then try Weebly.
13. Need a 3D-animation program, then try Blender.
    

This a a great desktop if you like to see a view of Earth from above. Even though the cost for Earth Desk is $19.95, you might enjoy the view of Earth as it falls into darkness in the opposite side of the world. The demo version also shows cloud formations. If you are a hurricane watcher, this could be fun!

The snow chased some of the people away, but not the UCF crowd. Susan wanted to win the large flat screenTV, so we waited around until the end! And not one of us won a prize even though there were only about 100 people left at the drawing. There were a lot of great sessions about web2.0, and I will post the links here that are worth your time. I am sure there are many more, but you can find them as you explore. A lot of the links are on my del.icio.us account. This link takes you directly to the links I tagged with PETE&C.

This website, SlideShare, allows you to view presentations that other teachers have uploaded. Of course they want you to share you presentations as well. There are some good educational presentations about technology(wikis, blogs etc.), but there are others as well.

Subscribe to this blog if you are a United Streaming user. This blog, Media Matters, is written by Hall Davidson who has been regarded as one of the top educational technology gurus.

Another blog to watch is Digital Passports, also posted on the Discovery Educator Network blogs. Digital Passports is going to feature explorations into new and interesting online technologies.

Developed by the NCTM this site, Figure This, helps students with high-level concepts in the classroom and at home.

If your mouse looks like this, you have been on the computer too long!

Here is a copy of the email I get from CSPAN. You can sign up to get lesson plans, special links and videos for your classroom.
Dear Educator,
Use C-SPAN Classroom to help your students become experts on the presidential election process! In addition to our Clip of the Week, C-SPAN Classroom will now feature weekly "Campaign 2008 video clips" highlighting video from C-SPAN's Road to the White House. C-SPAN Classroom's Campaign 2008 video clips will appear in a separate section under the box containing The Clip of the Week and will be archived in our Political Participation topic page.
You can watch Road to the White House in its entirety each Sunday at 6:30 pm and 9:30 pm Eastern Time.
This week's Campaign 2008 video clips feature:

∑ Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) in Iowa
∑ Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) in New Hampshire

To view these Campaign 2008 clips visit www.c-spanclassroom.org.
If you have any questions, please contact us at educate@c-span.org. See you on the campaign trail!
C-SPAN Classroom

1. This interactive site, DNA Interactive, allows you to create your own DNA lessons, or download lessons on file. Standards are included in the lesson plans. and student worksheets. The images really bring this concept to life!
2. Plant life - Through a series of mysteries, students will learn about plant science and how foods grow. Visit this site, The Great Plant Escape, and help Detective Leplant unlock the mysteries of plant life.
3. The Virtual Laboratory will allow you to design and perform experiments in acid-base chemistry, thermochemistry, solubility, and redox chemistry. You may runt them on the web or download the lab and run it in your room as a stand alone product.
   

Whether you use a SmartBoard or not, this is a good magazine for the technology using educator. The magazine, Interactive Educator, is published by SMART Technologies. Inside there are articles which provide the websites for further review. It covers everything from hiring tech savvy teachers to articles to links for arts classes to English and Spanish math puzzles. Check out the latest issue before you subscribe!

Google is offering a lot of FREE services that may be incorporated into your classroom. The site; Google for Educators, offers GMail(free email), GoogleEarth, BookSearch(can access full text to many books), Google Calendar(put family events in one spot for all to access), SketchUP(designed for architects to help them design buildings, but kids make 3D models), Picasa(photo sharing, editing, searching on web-NOT FOR MACINTOSH, PC ONLY), a personalized webpage if you need a place to post one. Fortunately our school district provides that service for us to use for our classes. If you know of someone who needs these tools, pass on this link.