Spotlight

I came across these great fun sites for sharing Halloween. The first is a timeline of Halloween history!

1. Halloween Timeline
2. Larry Ferlazzo's sites for learning about Halloween
3. Carve a pumpkin 1
   
4. Cat bowling
5. Carve a pumpkin 2
   

Image by danagraves via FlickrIf you are tired of telemarketers calling your home, you can register at the national Do Not Call website. It is a simple process where you fill out the form with phone numbers that you want on the Do Not Call list and they will send a verification email. Click on the email link and you are on the list!

Additionally, if you are tired of getting too many catalogs, visit this site, Catalog Choice to register for do not send. I did this 3 years ago and have dramatically reduced the number of catalogs I receive in the mail. With the holiday season gearing up, you may want to get on this right away so your mailbox is not stuffed with catalogs you do not want. Plus it is good for the environment.

Image via CrunchBaseIf your school is using Google Apps for Education then you already know of the excellent resources available. I just want to point out one of the more recent additions, using Weekly Reader. Google has joined with Weekly Reader to prepare materials for teaching reading with google docs. There are many links on the page to offer suggestions for reading, writing and using Google within your curriculum to help students.

Most people are very set for the first month of school. Review of material, setting the climate of the class and reminder of your rules. Here is a site that offers handouts, lesson ideas and more for most subjects and includes K-12. I thought it would be just a few black line masters, but upon closer review I found that even after 3 clicks deep, the site revealed pages of links to sites for additional information. If you teach more than one subject, you could get lost in this site for days!
Enjoy....Free Teacher Handouts

iIf you have not created a cartoon animation of yourself as an elf, santa or trekker, then here is your chance. Make a fun avatar for use on your website or send an e-card to a family member. These are fun, but check them out completely before using with students. Some sites contain partial nudity or characters in skimpy outfits.

1. Yearbook yourself
2. Create your own Marvel Comic SuperHero
3. The Hero Factory
4. Bless This Chick
5. Spud Yourself
6. Simpsonize Me
7. Elf Yourself - not available until November 1st
8. Terminate yourself - turn your face into "The Terminator"
9. Madmen Yourself - men and women
10. 12 sites to cartoon yourself - preview yourself - not sure about some of the images for school
11. Santa Yourself
    
12. Scrooge Yourself - available at holiday time
13. Many many create yourself and make items site - preview before using with students
14. Jib-Jab
15. Animate yourself - preview before using with students
16. Trek Yourself - make yourself a StarTrek character
17. Build your Wild self
18. Make an Anime
19. Lego Yourself - make a LEGO character
20. Create an M&M piece
21. My Avatar Editor
22. Monster Mash by JibJab
23. Make a Western Style Wanted Poster
24. Mr. Picassohead
25. Make a beast!
    
26. Diary of a Wimpy Kid! - wimp yourself too
27. Avatar in video using webcam
28. Digimi - starts w/characters in underwear-caution for kids - risque outfits
29. MyWebFace - cartoon yourself
30. DoppleMe - small cartoon style join free to make more choices (some alcohol in item choices)
31. Portrait Icon Maker - from a photo or from scratch
32. Meez - moving avatars, can make one for free, if you join, be aware of the games section not sure if appropriate for your school
33. Zwinky - photo to avatar - PC only no Mac version so it says on site
34. TizMe - some alternative clothing (risque) and alcohol as items
35. WeeWorld Avatar - no alcohol, but can change the size of the breasts! Ads were OK today, but may not be sometime. Looks like movie ads.
36. Digital Tools for Teachers Blog - with ideas for using avatars in class
37. RasterBoy - simple, but 2 alcohol items
38. My Designer Games - not compatible with Macs - PC only
39. Super Dressup Girls - not compaitble with Macs - PC only
40. Fairy Maker - free click buttons to change the features on the butterfly fairy
41. Komono Maker - dress up the female on the page by clicking on buttons
42. Elf Maker - dress up a female elf
43. 15 more Makers from same site including dragons and unicorn, warrior, and history.
44. Faces I make - use food objects to create a funny face
45. iVatar - app for iTouch/iPhone to share avatar to Facebook or email
46. Switcheroo Zoo - change features on animals, and learn about habitats
47. Creature Creator from Underland Chronicles
48. Mr. Magorium's Toy Creator - simple for small children more creators at the bottom of the page
49. Sonic Charrie Maker - from Deviant Art fun and simple
50. Sonic Character Maker -
51. Male Furry Doll Maker - cartoon style
52. Female Furry Doll Maker - cartoon style
53. Spore character maker - like the game
54. Chao Maker - cartoon
55. Pokemon Trainer character -
56. Many movie characters, Shrek, Robocop, Minnion, and be in the Dove commercial, e*Trade ad and more.
57. Clay Yourself
    

Also, if you know of any other sites like this, please leave a comment!

More and more schools are adding Google Apps for Education as part of their scheme for low cost services including GMail, Docs, Sites, Video, and Calendar. Our district has made the decision to move to this as well. The benefits are: low cost (free), integration of the 5 products listed above, ease of use for students home/school connections, ease of collaboration for students as well as teachers and simplicity of use of the products.

Our teachers are pretty computer literate and this should be a welcomed transition. We have FirstClass email at this point, and will keep it for faculty use. Part of our training session will be to show teachers how to get their contacts from FC over to their GoogleMail. Another important part will be to show them how to have one email account push all messages to the other so that they only have to check one mail service. This is particularly important for teachers who are new to Google services.

I want to recommend two great services for training your teachers as well. The first has been developed by Google as in a comprehensive support page for the GoogleApps for Education. There are video tutorials as well as written instructions for the tools. The second resource was created by several Google Teacher Academy members as part of their project and is called Tech Training Wheels. This site was created to be a resource for those who train others in their district to use Google tools so we could share resources. Rather than have 100 people creating the same videos and documents for training, this site offers videos and documents to share. Start with this video and hopefully you can add to the library or learn something there.

For other Google links to resources, I share my delicious library: http://www.delicious.com/RMOM/google

Image via Wikipedia We are about 1/2 way through hurricane season and it has been pretty mild. Can you believe it was 5 years ago that Katrina hit the Gulf Coast? There is still a lot of rebuilding going on. That year the number of hurricanes and tropical storms exceeded 25, causing over 3,000 deaths in the US alone. Prepare your students for this year by examining these links from Teacher'sFirst. Quiz your class to see if they know what happens when we run out of the alphabetical names for storms. Do you know?

Looking for another way to share insect biology with your class? Check out Orkin's Virtual Cockroach. Really, it is not gross, but a scientific view of the parts of this insect. If you zoom in you can see an actual photo of the anatomy. I found it quite fascinating. Another link takes you to the Orkin Learning Center. There are lesson plans a pest zoo and games for young children. So use this as a great opportunity to share the love!

One of the new programs I saw demonstrated this summer is ZooBurst. It is a site that allows you to create an online popup book. Here is my sample:

Image by mtsofan via Flickr

While looking for some tutorials for Google, I noticed quite a few links to some great teaching information. The first one is for back to school discounts and specials for teachers from many stores. Watch your local paper for other deals and specials from Target as well. In addition, Dollar General is offering 20% off with the coupon printed from this page.

There are thousands of great websites teachers use to inspire students, but here are a few games that I'll bet you have in your basement, closet or can get your hands on quickly. They are classic games that teach many different skills, thinking, compromise, teamwork, problem solving and of course being a gracious winner or loser!