This is a link to a website with 100 ways to use an Ipod educationally.
Baby Picture March 21, 2009
This is an ultrasound picture of my baby at 20 weeks. She is waving at the camera!
Learning Disability Website March 21, 2009
This is a link to a website that offers lots of resources to help students with learning disabilities.
From the Elementary, My Dear, Blog March 21, 2009
In the Elementary, My Dear, or Far From It blog, the author wrote about activities she did for her students for Saint Patrick’s Day. She staged her classroom to look as if a leprechaun had visited it! Throughout the day as the students left the classroom to go to lunch or the computer lab, the leprechaun returned and left green footprints in various areas of the room, along with notes instructing them to help him to find his lost pot of gold. He left some directions using units of measurement for the students to use in order to locate the missing gold. Later in the day the students were given some time to discuss ways to catch a leprechaun. I thought this was a really creative way to engage the students in educational activities. I can’t wait to try an activity like this in my classroom!
Great Website March 20, 2009
This is a link to a website with seemingly endless amounts of resources. It offers lesson plans, advice on classroom management, a newsletter, opportunities for professional development, printable graphic organizers and activities and much more. They do charge for a membership, but I have used the free trial and found it to be a really useful website. It can definitely save teachers time and it is very user-friendly.
STAR Tech March 14, 2009
STAR Tech stands for Supporting Teachers to Achieve Results by Integrating Technology into the Curriculum. It is a professional development program designed to help teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms. Their website provides information on what types of technologies can be used in a broad range of classrooms. There are links about using technology in pre-K to eighth grade classrooms as well as in general and special education. The technologies are broken down into the categories of low, mid, and high tech. The technologies they have posted on this site range from using sticky notes to using speech recognition software and each category is filled with multiple uses for each technology. I think this will be a great site to return to once I start teaching! Here is the link to the site.
From the Digital Education Blog March 13, 2009
I was reading the Digital Education blog on my blogroll and read the posting this week. It was about e-textbooks and their rising popularity. They listed some of the pros as reduced cost, convenience, and interactivity, as well as environmental-friendliness. I think the prospect of schools switching to the use of e-textbooks is really exciting. However, I still think that elementary-age students can really benefit from the use of actual paper books. They can take them home and receive extra help with reading and understanding them from their parents. For some students who don’t have access to the internet at home, paper books are obviously a better tool for learning. I think that e-textbooks would also be an amazing option for college students to help to reduce the astronomical costs of education. It would be a really nice change especially because many college courses require that students purchase a book that is hardly even used in the course. I also really like the idea of an interactive text because it could definitely help students with topics they are confused about and lead to a deeper understanding of the material.
National Geographic for Kids March 10, 2009
National Geographic has an amazing website! There are endless amounts of educational activities for kids! Here is the link to it:
