This site features resources helpful to Smartboard users as well as a number of sites offering lesson plans.

Hello Heather and Joe!
My school has been using Think.com. It is run by the Oracle corporation and we have had tremendous success with it. Students are able to create their own websites where they can interact with eachother, post blogs, other interactive features such as polls, Q and A's, and a lot more. They are able to upload songs and pictures. All of the features are controlled by the administrator for your school. In our case it is a few teachers. Any time a student adds pictures or music to their pages, it will not appear until it has been approved by the admin. It is a great way to keep tabs on what the students are posting. Websites are only viewable by Think.com members. Students are also able to send e-mails to eachother as well as post "stickies," little virtual post-its, for eachother. I don't think the e-mail can be used to access other sites, but it is still a great way for teachers and students to interact. I had 5th grade students post their homework on my site! Think.com is a great site and is geared just for kids. Give it look.

Scott

Joe Dixon wrote:
> Hello Heather and thank you for commenting! I do not know that much about COPPA abut I do know there are some excellent resources available on the web. The Federal Trade Administration, the folks who enforce the law, have an extremely helpful website: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/kidzprivacy/teachers.htm . . . (I Diigoed this link for anyone following this strand). If you visit the site you will note that the FTC still provides teachers "in loco parentis," which allow you the teacher to make decisions about what personal information your students may provide. I seriously doubt that any teacher these days would want to take on such enormous responsibility, but it is nice to know it is an option. I would strongly suggest that you check with you school's student privacy policy.
>
> Work around . . . it is possible as the teacher on some sites to create a private group and then let all of your students share one common login to a site or group. Another solution I have used is to contact he creators or publishers of a site and ask if they would create a class account from me. This way no student is supplying any personal information.
>
> Great questions and I hope someone else in the group will respond. I will make this a separate discussion.
>
> J
> Heather Ciccone wrote:
> > I work in a middle school and because of COPPA (which I agree with), it's difficult to use many WEB 2.0 tools in the classroom with students. Many of them need to join by entering an email address which they may or may not have at that age. I am looking into school issued email to help with this but was wondering what everyone's experience has been with this. I would LOVE to have my students create a user account so they can post to Wiki's, blogs, social bookmarking sites but do not want to run into COPPA problems.
> >
> > http://www.coppa.org/comply.htm
> >
> > Thanks for any help.
> >
> > Joe Dixon wrote:
> > > Share some of the successes and obstacles you have faced while integrating these technologies into your classroom. Please try to be constructive w/in your descriptions.
> > >
> > > J

This site offers a lot of great resources for students and teachers. There are games in reading and math and lots of extras.

This is a great site for students to explore various Math concepts. Many games for practice as well as many just for fun.