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BigHugeLabs: Do fun stuff with your photos
This is a great website that lets you do fun things with your photos. In particular, I like having students create a magazine cover of themselves in 10 years inspired by their goals of today. If they keep doing what they are doing now, what things will be their genius? Great, fun website. I also use the motivator to make fun sports photos for playoff games, etc.
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When you're studying a particular subject, it makes sense to dig deeper. For example, the Civil War Trust has some excellent lesson plans on the Civil War as well as a field trip planner, glossary of civil war terms, civil war coloring book, and more. If you cover the civil war in the US, you'll want to visit this site. If you're studying anything, try searching for the word "lesson plans" in quotes along with the topic with a plus like +"civil war" and you'll be amazed at the results. Many of them align with standards from the states or National Council for Social Studies.
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Hungry History — Food & Culinary History
It is a great way to study culture and history to incorporate food into the lessons. As I've been perusing history websites to update my knowledge of what is out there, I came across hungry history on the history channel and love some of these ideas. If you're studying the UK, why not try scones? The South - fried chicken?
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THC Classroom — Study Guides — History.com
The history channel has printable study guides to go along with their content including Beowulf, Odysseus, World history, Civics, Geography, and more.
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History Content | Teachinghistory.org
A US website funded with a grant from the US government that has history content, teaching materials and best practices in history. They also review website. They also have a historian that you can ask questions to and a database of previously asked questions. In a feature I like, they have a section of the site for the digital classroom.
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My friends at Edtech teacher have a fantastic "best of history" websites. This is a must share website for history teachers where you will find many great resources.
Thursday, 7 February 2013
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PopClip - Mac - English - Evernote Trunk
This very cool Mac app, Popclip, lets you highlight and send text on a page just about anywhere (including evernote.) I wish I had this for sending quotes to buffer, etc.
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10 Apps That Work Great With Evernote
I've used some of these apps like Kustomnote. I like vjournal as my daily diary that goes into Evernote. This is a nice list of apps that work well with evernote. Take a look.
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
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technology rocks. seriously.: School Signs
Teacher Sarah Thomas on Facebook got the link to these incredible free classroom posters from a "pin buddy" - if you click the link, you can download the PDF. Don't bemoan your budget is cut, get up and print and laminate your own signs!!! This site has them for just about every subject. Love it!
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| Sometimes a KIND teacher is like a rainbow on a grey day. Enough brightness to help everyone else feel hope. Be that KIND of teacher. |
You can tell a lot about a teacher at the copier machine. People are watching you and certain small things earn a great amount of respect because they tell a bit about you. When you have a school full of this KIND of people, things just run smoother.
When the copier runs out of paper, do you load just enough for your job or do you top off the copier?
Think about it ... if everyone loads just enough for THEIR job and the copier is used 50 times a day, that tray is opening and closing 50 times. Then, you have 50 times that people are frustrated that SOMEONE ELSE didn't top off the copier. Your copier breaks more often and people are MORE on edge. If just 2 or 3 people topped off the copier, wouldn't your day run much more smoothly? I know of people that just pop in and load the copier when they are waiting on something else ... it seems little, but I notice how much paper people put in the copier because it says whether they think of others after them or just themselves.
Do you have labels that you use consistently for students and other teachers that are limiting your thoughts and interactions?
Label maps not people. People can change, but not when you try to hold them in a certain place. Smart. Hard working. Sorry. Lazy. Struggling. Emotionally unstable.
There are some teachers who consistently use certain terms relating to kids. "Lazy" is one of those terms I just cannot stand. A child may not be doing your work, but are they really lazy? What if you're so boring that they have to pinch their arms to stay awake, like I did with a history professor in college? What if they are so lost they don't know where to start? What if they think you hate them and they're just trying to get by? What if you make fun of them every time they try something and make them feel like an idiot in front of the class? What if they had to take care of their little brothers and sisters while their parents fought again last night? Can you honestly condense your assessment of a student down to the word "lazy."
Do you go to bat and help those teachers who are so tired they can't even get out of the dugout?
There are times when there is so much work to be done, or a teacher is so loaded down, they can't see straight. Right now is one of those times for me - I'm so tired I can't see straight.
I had a down day and a teacher did something for me. When it dawned on me what she had done -- I looked at her and said "thank you, I can't believe you did that for me" and she said, "I went to bat for you because you're worth it." I could have cried, what she did for me was huge.
Another teacher jumped in and helped solve a problem for me with a few minutes of her time...she went to bat for me too. Another offered to keep a class for me during what will be a very busy time...she went to bat.
Do you notice who is losing their mind with work and worry and do you come up under that burden for them? My sister brings me a diet cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper when she knows I'm having one of those days. She shows up at my desk, puts in on my desk, smiles, says "I love you" and leaves. I know what it means. She loves me and she loves me enough to give up her (and my) favorite soda. She goes to bat. She is that KIND of sister.
What kind of teacher are you?
Teaching is tough. Tough, but very rewarding. We put up with the yucky stuff kind of like you put up with those dirty diapers on your toddler - you love the squirming, sometimes fussy little child that makes those awful packages. We have students and stress and that means we have someone to teach. Because we teach, we have all these extra stresses and worries. The kids are worth it.
But when other teachers take a moment to be unselfish in little ways, it makes a difference. Because the KIND of teacher who is KIND makes that KIND of school where everyone wants to work. Not a perfect school but the KIND of school where mutual respect and kindness underlie the very hard work that we're called to do.
Let's be that KIND of teacher - whether people notice or not. Whether they say thank you or not - let's love and be the KIND of teacher who is helpful to others.
During stressful times that KIND of teacher may just make all the difference in a school.
Written by Vicki Davis, author - Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds - Posted with Blogsy from my iPadTuesday, 5 February 2013
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Some more resources, in particular on space, astronomy, aquariums and more on the mega ed resources for education.
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This website has activities organized from K-8 for science experiments and online activities. Some interesting ideas here.
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Elementary Science Olympiad 2000: ESO in the Classroom
You can go to this website and find some cool ideas for science competitions. "The Elementary Science Olympiad offers over 80 challenging and motivational events which are balanced among the various science disciplines of life science, earth science, and physical science. These individual and team events also offer a balance among events requiring knowledge of science facts, concepts, processes, skills, and applications. While a number of the events are in the form of a general quiz, the majority provide an element of "hands-on" participation allowing the "active" study of science. The emphasis is on learning, participation, interaction, and having fun."
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| English: Cyber analytics is the science of analysis that derives behavior from a variety of data to answer questions about the past, present, or future. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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Some teachers recommended the book "When Marion Copied" for teaching kids about plaigarism in elementary.
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Freeplay Music, Broadcast Production Music Library, Mp3 Music, See Terms of Use.
A website with music that you can use for classroom work. (not safe for podcasts, though.) This was recommended at Kyle Dunbar's 3rd session for the Flat Classroom virtual book club discussion tonight as we talked about Digital citizenship.
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Coursera forced to call off a MOOC amid complaints about the course | Inside Higher Ed
Sad to see that the first major fail of a MOOC would happen at my alma mater, Georgia Tech, but I do applaud their transparency and moving forward with it. I hope they do it soon. With 41,000 students in the #foemooc - they had 40,000 students in a google doc which has a limit of 50 simultaneous editors - and with no backup - they weren't ready for the problems that would happen. This was a Coursera course and it just couldn't handle the load. Interestingly this was a Fundamentals of Online Education MOOC which makes it even more ironic. Read this article for more about what happened. "Maybe it was inevitable that one of the new massive open online courses would crash. After all, MOOCs are being launched with considerable speed, not to mention hype. But MOOC advocates might have preferred the collapse of a course other than the one that was suspended this weekend, one week into instruction: "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application.""
