Workshop materials & Downloads

In 2002, The No Child Left Behind Act said that students should be technologically literate by the end of the 8th grade. Texas developed a long list of specific technology skills students should know, but nobody has required that students learn them. "We have a difficult time finding the time for the students to be taught these technology skills since teachers have to focus on preparing students for the TAKS test," said Mark Gabehart, AISD's technology chief.

Before you write off Twitter as just the latest social media "fad," take a look at how some clever educators are using it to enrich their classrooms and even forge informal professional networks.

What if we asked our students to become the teachers? What if we asked our students to articulate the process of something that they have learned? The SmartBoard hsoftware includes the capability of recording what is happening on the computer screen.

Governor Schwarzenegger, Superintendent O'Connell, and the State Board of Education have announced the Free Digital Textbook Initiative, a project to provide a list of standards aligned free digital textbooks for high schools that cover the course content in mathematics and science subject areas.

The presentations on this site were originally inspired by Tom Barrett's 'Interesting Ways' presentations. These Google Docs presentations were created by Tom, with lots of contributions from the fantastic teachers who read his blog and are part of his Twitter network.

National Geographic, Airbus, and ePals have partnered to raise awareness of biodiversity worldwide, especially among young people. A major component of this effort is a summer photo contest for students age 6-16, called "See the Bigger Picture". Students can submit digital photos online or via mailed electronic media until September 8th. The contest is open to kids aged between 6 and 16.

National Geographic, Airbus, and ePals have partnered to raise awareness of biodiversity worldwide, especially among young people. A major component of this effort is a summer photo contest for students age 6-16, called "See the Bigger Picture". Students can submit digital photos online or via mailed electronic media until September 8th. The contest is open to kids aged between 6 and 16*. Submit one color image that you think captures the spirit or idea of biodiversity. It could be a favourite tree or a plant, an animal or an insect, even a whole ecosystem (from your own back yard to somewhere you've visited on vacation) - your image should show people why biodiversity is a good thing that we should try to preserve.

Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, New Image for Computing (NIC) is currently in the first stage of what is planned as a multi-phase project that aims to improve the image of computer science among high school students (with a special focus on gender and ethnic disparities) and encourage greater participation in computer science at the postsecondary level. Download the full report.

Online Safety Quiz for Kids from SecureFlorida.org. Questions cover privacy issues like online profiles, pictures, passwords and screen names.

Open source, digital textbooks coming to California schools The cash-strapped Golden State has decided that, starting next school year, schools will be able to use open source, digital textbooks for a number of math and science subjects. Ars talked with Brian Bridges, the Director of the California Learning Resources Network, which will be reviewing the texts, to find out more about what the program entails.

Lesson Ideas and Literacy Curriculum from PBS. Site resources are also available in Spanish.

Searches other search engines for pictures (Flickr, Photobucket, Google, Yahoo etc). Windows-only but the Mac version is under development. Some images have copyright info on them, but not all. Can see a lot of different images at once.

Public domain image resources is a copy of the master wikipedia page at Meta, which lists a number of sources of public domain images on the Web. The presence of a resource on this list does not guarantee that all or any of the images in it are in the public domain. You are still responsible for checking the copyright status of images before you submit them to Wikipedia.

In this section, you can find lesson plans and related reproducible activity sheets to suit your classroom needs. These materials are appropriate for children in grades 1-4 (or ages 6-9).

Lets you decide what help students need with vocabulary. Just paste in some text and try it.