Spotlight

I'll bet your could find any number of ways to use the information on this site. Math, science, language arts writing prompt, lesson plans, puzzles and video are available to anyone. Being green is so vogue right now and many companies are providing a rich variety of materials for educators, this site is one of them. If you are stuck inside for a rainy day activity, have students sketch their idea for a car of the future!

Topics include:

• fuel efficiency
• energy conservation
• fossil fuels
• car emissions
• greenhouse effect

• global warming
• biofuels
• hybrid/electric cars
• ...and more!

Image by Rev Dan Catt via Flickr

Wow a site that offers worksheets and activities for preK through middle school. Subjects include math, language arts, counting, science, social studies, Spanish, French, teacher links, fun games and phonics. Each of the links brings you to a page with numerous choices for the topic. There is too much to cover here, just visit the site to see what I mean!

Image via Wikipedia

I have always wanted to paint a world map on the blacktop at our school. Our students study many places in the world for science, current events and geography, so why not see where they are in relationship to the USA? Many years ago when I was an assistant principal, we found a price of $600 just for a map of the US, but it was too pricey at the time. Now National Geographic has a FREE kit you can download from their site. In addition to the map toolkit, there is a companion CD with lesson plans, templates and many other ideas for teachers. Look for the "Mapping the Americas" title on their page.

I just seems like last week when I went to HyperStudio Fest in SanDiego. What a fun time it was. Hyperstudio was on top of the world and was THE multimedia program to use in schools K-12. We loved it, the kids loved it and it was priced just right for the education environment. A few years later, much to my dismay, it slowly dissolved as it was purchased by another group. Out of the dust, David Wagner, Melinda Kolk and Dallas Jones started another company: tech4Learning and a new era of educational connections began.

This morning I received an email announcing the 10 year anniversary of tech4Learning. Their devotion of educational computing is unmatched. The monthly newsletter/magazine is filled with fantastic ideas for using their products. The pics4learning website is an excellent source of free images and they provide some of the best "at show" product demonstrations at NECC.

My school district has not bought in to their software at site license program, so we do not use their product on a full scale implementation. However, as a DiscoveryEducation STAR, I have received complimentary copies of some of their products. I must say that they are intuitive to use and blend well with other programs. I use their site, pics4learning all the time with my multimedia classes. The photos on the site are taken by ordinary people and freely shared. Anyone can submit photos to this excellent resource.

So send them a note of encouragement for continued success and thank them for their dedication to providing services and products to the educational community. Congratulations tech4Learning, I wish you 10 more years of prosperity.

Part of my PPLN (personal professional learning network) to reading and contributing to Twitter and Plurk. I learn so much from all the teachers there. Tech/teachers are so willing to share their masterpieces of lessons, web pages and ideas. Often they will ask each other to critique something before it goes public including presentations and lesson plans. I find this so unassuming and nonthreatening to ask for advice and critique. What all of that said, here is my adaptation of the ABC's of technology. There are quite a few of these on the web. Below is the PPT version:


And here is the print version I have on GoogleDocs. Now what else can I do with this idea? Use it with whatever you teach, a science or reading vocabulary, math symbols, geography locations, FCS or health terms, sports equipment for PE, word wall, holidays, space science, or a literature study, or book covers from books read by the class. The ideas are limitless, but you must share with your colleagues.

That was the DuPont Company from 1935 through 1982. We heard it all the time on television. Now you can view videos about each element on the Periodic Table. There is a special Olympic video about the elements of gold, silver and bronze. They have been created by the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. The videos are quite short, although I didn't watch ALL of them, and can be used for many purposes. Assign them as a homework activity or have kids create their own video about combined elements.

I have heard about all of the Ivy League or top 10 universities who have published podcasts, tours, class lectures and more in the iTunes U library. I wandered around there tonight and found some interesting programs for our school to follow. First I clicked on the iTunes U link in iTunes. Just exploring the opening page could take a day with the variety of information you could read, listen to or watch. One can't help but to see Carnegie-Mellon is at the top of the download list because of the passing of Randy Pausch. If you have been under a rock and don't know his story, download his "last lecture" here for free.

In addition, there are commencement speeches from celebrities like Oprah, studies about energy consumption, becoming a greener household, and stories about nano-technology. With the price of gas so high, people cannot travel to hear or see many cultural events. So in that case, take a virtual tour through a museum. Living close to Philadelphia, I am partial to the Art Museum. Just by typing museum into the search box, a complete list of museum tours will appear. You can go on a talking tour of the National Portrait Gallery to a Zoofari at the San Diego Zoo!

See, hear, and learn. Put it on your own child's iPod and see what they can learn. Better yet, assign it for your students as a listening exercise!

If you want to venture outside your classroom this year, then check out the projects on the I-Earn site. From here, you can connect with teachers in the next community to across the globe. Look for topics that fit your curriculum and dovetail them to fit. No need to create your own project. You can choose something simple the first time, they step it up a notch when your students are ready for a more in-depth study. Check out the newsletter for past projects and how they worked too.

Discovery Education workshop and co sponsored by AFI (American Film Institute) was held at Bucks County IU for two days in February.

Day One: Joe Brennan from Discovery has given us a lot of information to digest about film making. There is a LARGE (88 page) document you can download from AFI website and it is a comprehensive guide to helping your students create digital video stories.

Day Two: The title link takes you to Jennifer Dorman's wiki with all of the links for digital storytelling. Suggested programs you can use just for storyboarding:


You can download and edit every DiscoveryStreaming videos, except for those which are labeled for non-editing only. You cannot talk over it, chop it up and you can see a comment that says "non-editable content" in the Media Settings window. To search for this option, go to the ADVANCED SEARCH and put a check in the category editable titles.

This is a good format to use with learning support students. You can put the video together and have them write the narration! Actually why not do that for ALL students.
You can not upload DStreaming material for pubic use on your web. Students can not upload material from DStreaming and enter it into a contest with a monetary reward.

Creative Commons
Allows you to use music, images that have been listed here. If you want to use commercial music or artwork, you need WRITTEN permission from the author to use it within the boundaries of copyright. See Jen Dorman's copyright page for specifics. Using Creative Commons teaches kids about digital ethics.

PHOTOS online

1. flickr - your accept a CC license for others to use your images as long as they are cited. Be sure to model good copyright practice when posing or downloading images. You can set up a user group and put images in that group for student's to use. Do not allow them to freely search, but put the content YOU want kids to use.
2. everystockphoto.com - there are a lot of organizations such as museums etc, that place their content online. This is licensed for you to use. You can create you own collection after you set up an account. They can collect photos and later put them into their project.
3. Library of Congress, American Memory Collection - Now located on flickr and has fallen into the public of domain. In addition to the image, the information has more information for the citation.
4. flickrstorm - you can do the search and collect the images with citations and you can download in html.
5. GoogleMaps - what ever you do, be sure to check out ALL of the Goolge Tools, enough said!
6. FotoFlfexer - photos must be imported from flickr first.
7. Use some of these image manipulation tools to create your avatar.

Chroma Key with Windows MovieMaker. There is a simple video "ChromaKey with Colin" that is a short tutorial to show how to do this process. You can use blue butcher paper or green. For a fun effect, put some of the green in front of the person. Later you can insert a ocean liner and make it appear as if they are on the deck of the ship, thus putting them actually INTO the image.