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Featured Post Scholastic's The First Thanksgiving What it is: Scholastic has amazing resources all year long but the interactive on The First Thanksgiving is topnotch!  Students learn about how the Pilgrims reached America, and what daily life was before the First Thanksgiving.  Students can take a tour of the Mayflower, take the virtual journey to America, compare and contrast modern life with when the Pilgrims lived (housing, clothes, food, chores, school, games), and the Thanksgiving feast.  There is a great slideshow and play a webquest feature where kids can learn more about the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag and the famous harvest feast.  The site includes audio for every page and activity.  This is great for younger students. How to integrate Scholastic's The First Thanksgiving into the classroom: The First Thanksgiving is a collection of great activities for students to learn about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims.  Students can use this site independently as young as first grade because of the audio features on The First Thanksgiving.  The site can be used as a center activity that a few students can explore together, independently in the computer lab setting, or as a whole class with a projector or interactive whiteboard.  The webquest at the end of the activity checks for student understanding with a quiz.  Increase students participation further with some The First Thanksgiving bonus features and extras.  Print out a Thanksgiving Readers theater, door signs, a fact hunt, a vocabulary quiz, and some letters from historical figures.  There are also research and historical fiction journals that students can continue learning with.  These range from a Plymoth Colony research starter to Our America: Colonial period. Tips: Check out Scholastic's Teaching resources for The First Thanksgiving as well as the literature connections that are available. Leave a comment and share how you are using The First Thanksgiving  in your classroom. Read More

I don't really give details about the sites I'm listing here because they're all very similar - the music and sounds here are royalty-free and it's just an easy matter of searching and downloading them. Of course, credit should be given to the source when they're used in online projects. I've also tried avoiding sites that have obvious content not appropriate for classroom use, but something might have slipped by me. I also don't believe that any of the sites here require any software download or registration. Here are my choices for The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects:

Within this site you will find lesson ideas, examples, and downloads for mathematics that embrace active learning, constructivism, and project-based learning while remaining true to the standards. The initial focus will be for grades 5 and up, but teachers of younger students may be able to find some uses or inspiration from the site. Higher level thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and creativity are encouraged as well as technology skills and social learning. The scope of this site is mathematics, but many lessons lend themselves to interdisciplinary activities also.

After examining the convergence of MMOs with social networking sites and their game-like similarities, we are faced with the question: Should schools leverage social sites for academic purposes?

If you are looking for basic physics information, stay on this site. It's not just physics for kids, it's for everyone. We have information on motion, heat and thermodynamics, electricity & magnetism, light, and modern physics topics. If you're still not sure what to click, try our site map that lists all of the topics on the site. If you surf and get lost in all of the information, use the search function on the side of the pages.

service iframe your video on top of a webpage - eg: to comment a webpage\n\nBenefits of Sending Branded Video E-mails:\nProfessional Looking: once you've subscribed and saved the Eyejot This! Bookmarklet onto your toolbar, shooting and sending a branded video email is easy. In fact, the whole process takes less than a few minutes (depending on the length of your message of course).Easier to Create than Written E-mail: In most cases, recorded a video email is easier than typing out a full on email. Why? Because on video, you're conversational and spoken word comes out more naturally. It's a great way to get face-to-face with clients (at least virtually) and works well with both existing clients and clients that you're trying to court.Great Way to Capture Attention and Have Site Visitors Spend More Time On-Site: my favorite part about Eyejot is the ability to share a webpage with someone while branding it with your email message. It's a great way of sharing relevant information with a personalized touch. Sharing a particular blog post, listing or teaching someone how to navigate/use the IDX on your blogsite increases the chances of someone spending more time on your site.

A Note to Teachers and Parents These sites provide actvities that practice reading skills. Almost all these have a sound component so that the children can hear the stories. Some sites provide reading comprehension practice. When children use these sites, ask them to reflect on what they learned from them.

Fun and easy place to create a fake magazine page with your picture on it. It can then be embedded to many different sites including Google free websites and many blogging sites.

Fun and easy place to create a fake magazine page with your picture on it. It can then be embedded to many different sites including Google free websites and many blogging sites.

By Claude Almansi and Jan Schwartz October 3rd, 2011 "Scoop.it is a new application that is still in beta, although it's fairly easy to get an invite to join. Claude Almansi found the app, sent an email about it to a list serv, which prompted Jan Schwartz to join. We've only been at it for a month or so, but already both of us have found some good information that we otherwise would have missed, and we are helping to spread the good work about education technology and change. First, some information about Scoop.it that Claude dug up. The web service was conceived in France, launched in December 2010 and its web site is in English. It's a social site for sharing news events and articles via subscription. Even if you don't subscribe, Scoop.it can be used to look for information items selected by others on a given theme via its public search engine. You do need to subscribe if you want to create and curate your own topic on a given theme or subject. For example, Jan was particularly excited to find a blog written as a result of a live chat sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education, which talked about the topic of Cathy Davidson's recent book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn. There were four panelists and 1500 participants on the chat and one of them, David Palumbo-Liu, wrote a blog about his experience, which was very different than Jan's and so an interesting read for perspective. She would not have found that blog if not for Scoop.it. Claude curates a site for Multimedia Accessibility. Currently Jan is 'scooping' under the title Technology for Teaching and Learning . You can curate as many different topics as you like."

This is a list of sites compiled by librarians to safe use internet sites. A great reference for school administrators, techies and teachers. It is a maintained directory of sorts and you can submit safe sites.

Excellent overview of Rupert Murdoch's taking on of Google and that they should not index his sites, even though he can easily opt out of indexing, that they are somehow demonetizing his work by searching since he wants to "reduce his audience to those who will pay" not "increase his audience." This is a fascinating read and case study for those following Fair Use.

You can create a backup of your google site with this handy tool that is easy to use.

Fascinating link for social studies and some samples. I LOVE how some web pages were inserted using bitty browser. What a cool tool. This site also features several dipity timelines. This is a GREAT site for history teachers to see.

Great site with tons of history examples.

Susan Etteneheim uses Google Sites for her school and set up a customized start page for students in her school using google sites. Very nice work.

Susan Ettenheim's start page for students at her school. They customize it with their google site ID from their school.

Online social networking is now so deeply embedded in the lifestyles of tweens and teens that it rivals television for their attention, according to a new study from Grunwald Associates LLC conducted in cooperation with the National School Boards Association. Nine- to 17-year-olds report spending almost as much time using social networking services and Web sites as they spend watching television. Among teens, that amounts to about 9 hours a week on social networking activities, compared to about 10 hours a week watching TV. Students are hardly passive couch potatoes online. Beyond basic communications, many students engage in highly creative activities on social networking sites - and a sizeable proportion of them are adventurous nonconformists who set the pace for their peers.

The Web site iWASwondering.org is a project of the National Academy of Sciences intended to showcase the accomplishments of contemporary women in science and to highlight for young people the varied and intriguing careers of some of today's most prominent scientists. The site draws from and accompanies the publication of a ten-volume series of biographies entitled Women's Adventures in Science, co-published by the Joseph Henry Press (an imprint of the National Academies Press) and Scholastic Library Publishing.

This site aggregates those social action sites into one searchable site. Are your students looking for a cause to support? Maybe it's Darfu, or animal shelters, or homelessness, or climate change. One stop shop to find them.

A site that helps you find the 'action' that matches your interests, so that you can help by volunteering, donating, signing, loaning, and more.

From Joel - I'm a business teacher and member of Minnesota Business Educators, Inc. I've put together a little website with some of my lesson plans for high school web site design courses, and I'd like to offer this to other business teachers. The lesson plans are totally free. I'm wondering if you might be interested in adding a link to my website, http://highschoolwebdesign.com, on your Cool Cat Teacher blog. The site contains a complete, twelve week course in high school web site design, including projects with step-by-step instructions and rubrics. Thanks so much and have a great day! Joel Roggenkamp Business Teacher Author, http://highschoolwebdesign.com