Weekly Core Subject Resources

Hard to believe that Friday will be April 1st.  The good thing is that means Spring Break is next week.  Looking forward to the time at home with family.  Hopefully I can get online and still post next week.  Just depends on the weather and how much time I spend outside.

English
1.) Free Reading Worksheets provides worksheets in various forms (RTF, PDF, HTM, and PPT) as well as interactive reading lessons in various forms as well (YouTube, Flash, HTM, and PPT).  Created for 7th and 8th graders, they are still adaptable for grades 6-12. 

2.) Exquisite Corpse is a Poetry game where you can submit a sentence to a poem and then you provide how many lines in the poem there is and provide the 2nd persons name and email address for them to submit the second line.  If you want to work in pairs or groups you can easily just supply each other emails and create a poem with each other.  Collaborative Poetry.  You can also view previous submissions by other people.

3.) Current.im is your free and private online journal.  The difference is that each entry is limited to only 140 characters. 

Mathematics
1.) http://url3.tk/graph.tk/ is a website that provides users the ability to input a formula and get a plotted graph.  You can add in multiple formulas or just one.  You can also take a screen shot when you are finished. 

2.) Off-Road Algebra provides 30-segment video resources that  focuses on ninth grade Pre-Algebra and Algebra.  What is different is that it  revolves around the world of off-road motorcycle racing.  Some interesting videos bringing math and the real world together.

3.) Mangahigh provides free math games for various levels of math curriculum.  There are games and quizzes for shapes, algebra, data, and numbers. 

Science
1.) "Scirus is the most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web. With over 410 million scientific items indexed at last count, it allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists' homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information."

2.) Middle School Chemistry provides Lesson Plans, Multimedia, and workshops for science teachers.  "Investigate the world of atoms and molecules through hands-on inquiry-based activities and molecular model animations."

3.) "Exploriments are simulation-based interactive learning units for enhancing conceptual understanding in Science and Math in an experiential manner. Useful for students and teachers alike, Exploriments provide a highly interactive, exploratory, and engaging experience."

4.) NBC Learn - Chemistry Now provides videos every week related to chemistry and real life examples of how chemicals impact various aspects of our lives.  Right now you have access to 9 weeks worth of videos.  

5.) Spongelab Biology provides the history of biology by allowing students to play a game.  In the History of Biology game, you, the assistant, are required to navigate through a labyrinth of clues, objects, and internet sites trying to figure out why Dr. Shyre has disappeared. What secret project was he working on? Who might be after him and are they after you too? Hidden amongst the history of biology, Dr. Shyre has left clues and puzzles to unlock the secrets of his most important and controversial research ever 

Social Studies
1.)  Picture History is a website dedicated to providing free primary source historical images.  There are various ways to search for material whether it be through a basic search or by categories, photographers, decade, or anniversary.  These are intended to be purchased to have a hard copy, but you can still search for the images and show them to students in the classroom.  

2.) Best History Sites is a portal for finding websites related to various time periods in history.   A great starting point for discovering resources for the subject matter that you are covering.  Worth looking through. (Source: US History Teachers Blog)

3.) Teaching History is a website dedicated to history teachers.   You will find resources, activities, lessons, and materials for teaching history at all grade levels.  You will also find videos related to various methods for teaching history.

Piazzza - Online Q & A Forum For Classrooms

Primarily advertised for use with higher education, Piazzza is a viable option for replacing other forums and newsgroups to communicate with students.  Its sole purpose is to create a blackboard type area where students and teachers can interact online by asking and answering questions as well as participate in a discussion.  Teachers can easily create classes and add students one by one or in a large group.  The user interface is simplistic and provides an easy method of interaction for students and teachers.

As education moves more and more towards online interactions, a website like Piazzza provides a safe and valuable educational focused method for students and teachers to interact online.  On the software students and teachers can use hashtags to tag popular words or terms of interest.  Students can easily respond to questions and when new questions are asked they will appear in red.  Students can also receive feedback for asking a good question or providing a good answer.

Below you will find an introduction to the software.  When visiting Piazzza you will see several tutorial videos in the lower right side of the website.  I encourage you to watch them so that you can learn more.  I could really see this as a valuable tool for teachers of AP students.

SENDtoREADER

I don't have a Kindle, but you might and so might your students.  SENDtoREADER is a bookmarklet that you can install on mostly all the main browsers out there: Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, Internet Explorer.  You must register for an account to use the service, so I suggest that you do that.  When you use the bookmarklet it will automatically remove all unnecessary content including: ads, polls and banners but leaves the main content intact.

SENDtoREADER "retains all images that are part of the text you send to your Kindle reader so you don’t miss out on seeing them when you have the time to read the material you have saved.   If you have long articles, items you don’t have time to read, or you don’t want to strain your eyes by reading from the computer screen, you can send articles to your Kindle for comfortable, stress-free reading from its legendary e-inc display at your leisure.  You can keep track of every single item you have sent to your Kindle from any other source and can always resend items if necessary. This means you don't have to keep the articles on your Kindle once you have finished with them. This also eliminates the concern that you may have deleted something important."

As textbooks become more mobile, software and applications such as SENDtoREADER will become a valuable addition to reading various sources. 

TinyVox

TinyVox is an iPhone application that allows users to easily link to a recorded audio file to their Twitter, Facebook, and/or Tumblr feed.  If you are using Twitter with your students then TinyVox would be a great way to provide students information via an audio recording.  You could explain a homework assignment or project.  You could easily record an extra credit assignment as well.  Voice reminders work a lot better as well, so you could remind students to study or return a form the following morning.

When you complete your recording you can preview it so that you know it sounds like how you want it.  You can also provide a title for it.  You then easily can send it to your followers on Twitter.  With TinyVox you will be able to easily save your recordings to review later or record several at one time and then send them when you are ready.

It Isn't Going Anywhere - My 400th Post

Fad, by dictionary definition, is "a temporary fashion, notion, manner of conduct, etc., especially one followed enthusiastically by a group."  There is and always will be fads in education.  Sometimes those fads just take on different names.  When I was in college, it was called "Team Teaching."  Now it is called "Collaboration."  In the 21st Century, collaboration is taking on a whole new meaning.  The idea of being able to collaborate with educators outside your building/district is the newest fad.  Most people will tell you that fads come and go in education.


This fad though; it isn't going anywhere.  Social Networking is here to stay.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Diigo, Skype, Mobile Technology, RSS/Blogging, and other forms of collaboration, in my opinion, are here for the long haul.  It is not just a fad.  So, how do we as educators who have embraced this fad, get others to join in and be a part of the "group who enthusiastically follows" this fad?


Recently there was an infographic shared about the number of people who are on LinkedIn, which is a professional social networking site.  There are over 100 Million registered users.  Of those, 997,000 thousand are teachers who use the site to network with other educators.  I have a LinkedIn Profile, but don't use it as often as I probably should.  Linkedin provides valuable "Professional Collaboration"


I have learned that the best way is to get teachers to understand social networking is to help them see it first hand.  I realized that attending a conference where participants and presenters are using Twitter to show connections was a valuable method.  Every teacher who attended a recent conference with me now actively uses Twitter. Some are collaborating with other educators and some are collaborating with their students/parents.  Following that conference, we had a session of PD's at one of the schools that I work at and one of the teachers shared their use of Twitter.  From that session, a few more teachers have started to use Twitter with their classes.  In the future, those teachers will then be able to share their experiences, thus creating a chain reaction.


Twitter is valuable tool for social networking, but it serves so much more of a purpose.  I learned about Elizabeth Taylor and the Earthquake/Tsunami  in Japan from Twitter before hearing anything about it on the news.  I learn so much about educational reform, educational policy, educational technology, and other important aspects of education.  Twitter is "Informational Collaboration."  


I continually encourage teachers to sign up and use Diigo to manage their web based resources.  3 years ago, such a service was not necessary, but with the growth of Web 2.0, the resources for teachers are abundant.  I have created a group for the teachers in my district so that they can follow other teachers and share links with each other through the Internet.  I encourage them to join other groups in the community so that when new resources become available, they can easily find them.  Diigo provides a valuable method of "Resource Collaboration."

Last year I attended a meeting about creating a Social Media AUP for our district due to the growing use by stakeholders in our community.  I mentioned the need to look at having a District Facebook page.  It was turned down because of all the negative publicity, which I completely understood.  Then this year, in another meeting I mentioned it again and shared examples of other districts (some smaller, some larger) who were using Facebook to connect with parents.  From that meeting, our CIO and other faculty created our Disrict Facebook page.  We also created a Twitter account to share the same stories from Facebook.  In about 5 months, our district Facebook page has reached almost 1500 followers, thus allowing our district to collaborate and inform our parents.  Facebook provides "Stakeholder Collaboration."


More and more students, teachers, and administrators are embracing blogging.  There are several hundred thousand educational related blogs out there.  There are several ways that you can find educational blogs just by doing a simple Blog Search, or using the Edublogs Directory.  Even though the majority of this blog is about sharing resources, it provides me a method of personal reflection, while at the same time providing collaboration with other educators about my own ideas.  Blogging provides "Reflective Collaboration"


Skype in Education is becoming a valuable tool for collaboration.  It provides people from all over the globe the opportunity to meet and talk with each other without being in the same location.  Conferences are using Skype to bring presenters in who are to far away to make the trip in person.  The InnovatED Conference coming up has several presentations via Skype; myself included.  There are tons of Skype Resources available for educators to use making it easier to integrate it into the classroom.  I have come to realize just how valuable Skype is for "Distance Collaboration" 

In the past couple years there has been a drastic increase in mobile technology and websites for using cell phones in the classroom.  I recently wrote 10 Tips for Using SMS in the Classroom and I firmly believe that in the coming years the argument around cell phone use in schools will be a thing of the past; because like social networking, cell phones are not a fad that will be going away.  Cell phones provide "Mobile Collaboration"

My question to you is; how are you going to join this latest fad?  What type of collaboration are you and your fellow educators involved in? "Social Collaboration" isn't going anywhere, so how you are going to get involved in this latest fad?