Group items tagged

"With classes, homework, and projects-not to mention your social life-time is truly at a premium for you, so why not latch onto the wide world that Google has to offer? From super-effective search tricks to Google hacks specifically for education to tricks and tips for using Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, these tricks will surely save you some precious time."

You've completed your lessons for the day, but you still have some time left and a group of eager students with nothing productive to do. What can you do in this time to keep your class under control until the bell rings? Here is a list of 10 things to do when you only have 5 minutes left in class.

SweetSearch is a Search Engine for Students. Most search engines search billions of Web sites and return tens of millions of results; some are from reliable Web sites, some are not. SweetSearch searches only 35,000 Web sites that have been evaluated and approved by a staff of Internet research experts at Dulcinea Media, and its librarian and teacher consultants. SweetSearch excludes results from the unreliable sites that rank high in other search engines, and waste your time. It lets students choose the most relevant result from a list of credible results, rather than having them waste time on unreliable sites.

A nice resource for K-5 mathematics. Links and resources for Angles, Length, Money, Perimeter-Area, Temperature, Time, Volume, and Weight, all for use with the Smartboard!

"If you bought a computer a few years ago, it would invariably come with a free CD-Rom encyclopedia. At the time it seemed like a life-changer, but after an hour or two spent looking at ancient wildlife clips and a timeline about the Romans, the excitement wore off. Today's internet equivalents are bigger, faster and more interactive, whether you're helping youngsters with their homework or cramming for the pub quiz. "

"The purpose of this resource is to provide "Just in Time" training through an online interface for K-12 educators based on the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). These standards are the basic technology skills every educator should possess. In the process, educators will develop their own skills and discover what students need in order to meet the NETS for Students, as well as the new MMC Online Experience requirement. "

"It is essential that educators be supported in their time of need. We have created the Help Desk website to provide more support and materials to help you be successful as you utilize the SAS Portal. Here you will find system requirements, answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), directions for uploading videos to your website, and documents that highlight SAS and our tools for teachers."

"Eight-page newsletter published four times a year. Each issue of Tools focuses on a single essential component of school improvement and features timeless "tools" and resources that can be used in school improvement efforts now and in years to come. "

"Useful Resources for First Time MAP® Users"

"Summer is a time when many of us are thinking about and planning professional development workshops for our schools and for other schools. I've always found that a short 3-5 minute video can be a good introduction to a PD sessions and or make for a nice thought-provoking break during a PD session. Here are seven videos that I think serve those purposes well."

or much of the world, it's that special time of the year when students head back to school. The good news for students is that even though that means waking up early and doing homework, there are a number of web-based and social tools to help you get through the school year. From staying organized to improving study habits to making sure you reference your research sources properly, the web can help you be a better student.

As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally-our willingness to be disturbed. Our willingness to have our beliefs and ideas challenged by what others think. No one person or perspective can give us the answers we need to the problems of today. Paradoxically, we can only find those answers by admitting we don't know. We have to be willing to let go of our certainty and expect ourselves to be confused for a time.

I must admit I have a bit of an aversion to drill-type activities, but I realize there are times that students need to practice and memorize certain concepts in order to succeed. Certainly we all know that studying makes for more successful learners. Abraham Lincoln clearly knew the value of studying when he said, "I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come." I doubt that Abraham could have imagined the neat Web 2.0 flashcard-type applications that our students can now use to help them with their studies.

EtherPad is the only web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time. When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate on text documents, useful for meeting notes, drafting sessions, education, team programming, and more.

In this day of high-stakes testing and frequent complaints from teachers that they "don't have time to use technology" in the classroom, this wiki seeks to bridge the gap to help teachers see that technology doesn't have to be an add-on that distracts them from focusing on the curriculum. Rather than accepting an either/or mentality, we can begin to connect technology to the accepted "best practices" that our districts expect to see in our classrooms. Readers and contributors will learn and share information about specific Web 2.0 tools that can be used by teachers, and strategies that can be used with those tools that align with and support research-based effective instructional methods. Reference will be made to specific instructional strategies and a variety of examples will be shared covering all content areas from K-12 to college/university levels. This wiki is an information resource as well as an interactive space where readers can add their own insights and strategies.

"The Interesting Ways to Use series has been really successful. I measure their success in how useful they are to teachers and other educators in helping with professional development. They have been a great example of crowdsourcing good quality classroom ideas and it has been great fun connecting with all of the people who have taken time to add an idea. It is remarkable what can be achieved and created together if you give people the right way to do it. Thanks for all the help so far."

"Digital Media Scoring Guides First choose one of the following communication types and then customize your scoring guide by checking ONLY the traits and elements you want to use at this time. Click on each keyword for descriptors. For more detailed information on these scoring guides and further resources, see Overview of Digital Media Scoring Guides. "

Challenging times create economic and social pressures that can undermine our most basic values. For more than 30 years we have been offering teachers and students ways to confront prejudice, apathy, fear, and violence. By teaching students to think critically, to empathize, to recognize moral choices, to make their voices heard, we put in their hands the possibility-and the responsibility-to do the serious work demanded of us all as citizens. Founded in 1976, we are an international educational and professional development nonprofit organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives.

"Chris Dede, a professor of learning technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is a leading authority on online teacher professional development. For 16 years, beginning in the early 1990s, Dede taught a course at HGSE called "Learning Media That Bridge Distance and Time." The rapid changes in interactive technology during that period brought the potential of online teacher learning into sharp focus for Dede. "I saw it as an important way of scaling up quality instructional practice, and an important lever for education reform, but also I saw that it wasn't going far very fast," he explains. Dede's investigations into online professional development led him to gather a group of researchers, distance-learning experts, and professional development providers at a conference at Harvard in 2005, and subsequently to publish, as editor, Online Professional Development for Teachers: Emerging Models and Methods (2006). The book, which explores the strengths and tensions of online teacher training, has become a key resource in the field."

"There was no shortage of prescriptions at the time for how to cure the poor performance that plagued so many American schools. Proponents of No Child Left Behind saw standardized testing as a solution. President Bush also championed a billion-dollar program to encourage schools to adopt reading curriculums with an emphasis on phonics. Others argued for smaller classes or more parental involvement or more state financing."