Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Shakespearian Digital Experience
Classroom 2.0 and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. are teaming up to present Classroom 2.0 members with A free webinar for all things Shakespeare. Tomorrow night, March 18, from 8:00-9:30 p.m. EST, "speakers will be presenting and demonstrating methods for teaching Shakespeare using digital media. Participants will learn practical and exciting ways they can incorporate Shakespeare's King Lear and other literary works into history, social studies, English, and language arts instruction." Sounds like a unique experience! Here's the link to register if interested: http://www.classroom20.com/events/pbs-cr-20-remixing
Monday, March 16, 2009
Online SOL resources
In preparation for the upcoming VA SOL tests, I have been updating and locating several more resources for review.
I have updated our Portaportal Page: http://guest.portaportal.com/heim. Look under SOL resources and you will find lots of new websites and online SOL activities. I have also found some additional review websites and those are located under your specific curriculum. I found a lot of Language Arts activities recently.
Also, I found some new Quizdom activities on the Internet. All of these are located on the staff shared drive, under teachers resources in a folder labeled "Downloaded Quizdom Activities". You will need to import these activities into Quizdom. See me if you have any questions on how to do this.
Last, I have updated the math folder on the staff shared drive (under teachers resources) with PowerPoint lessons that various schools have shared on the Internet.
I hope these resources will be a big help!
I have updated our Portaportal Page: http://guest.portaportal.com/heim. Look under SOL resources and you will find lots of new websites and online SOL activities. I have also found some additional review websites and those are located under your specific curriculum. I found a lot of Language Arts activities recently.
Also, I found some new Quizdom activities on the Internet. All of these are located on the staff shared drive, under teachers resources in a folder labeled "Downloaded Quizdom Activities". You will need to import these activities into Quizdom. See me if you have any questions on how to do this.
Last, I have updated the math folder on the staff shared drive (under teachers resources) with PowerPoint lessons that various schools have shared on the Internet.
I hope these resources will be a big help!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Wordle Up
Trying out wordle today. I've seen it and heard of it before and even played with it, but never to share one before. I was talking with a teacher yesterday who shocked me by bringing it up! I was so impressed that she knew what it was AND wants to use it with her students this week! Of course, excited me started sprouting out ways we could use it - I think I scared her! Look for some of the student's examples soon. For now, here is my play on the character Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables, one of my favorite books:
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Melzoo, The Internet's Newest Search Engine
I received an article today from our Library Assistant on a new search engine called Melzoo.
At melzoo.com, you can search for information and preview result websites all at the same time. It’s pretty nifty looking and from my brief use, very handy. Melzoo boldly states on it’s website’s “About us” page that they are going to beat the competition, (Google and Yahoo) and become the number one search engine out there, “MelZoo is planning on becoming one of the most Mindblowing Mega Projects ever on the internet.” From what I’ve seen, it could possibly do that.
The idea behind Melzoo is it’s "visual previews" of the search results.
In the picture above, the results are viewed on the left and the preview of a result website is on the right. They are very confident that their website will result in being time-saving, efficient and will be result-increasing. Similar to any search engine, type in a topic to search and many websites will appear. The difference with Melzoo is the preview feature.
I went to Melzoo and did a search for resources on economics, for upcoming lessons for the Civics department. I typed in economics for middle school education and instantly found several websites. As I hovered over the first website, the preview of the webpage came up on the right side of my screen. This occurred every time I hovered over a website. The advantage to this, was that I could see what resources the website had to offer before going to the results website and then decide if I wanted to use it in my research. Another advantage is that you can go to the result website by clicking on either the result side or the preview side of the screen, however, this does lead to my biggest compliant about Melzoo as well.
There were a few times that as I was going to the preview side of the screen to check out the actual website, I ended up getting a preview of another website. If you go the tiniest bit close to another website, your preview is going to change. I found that I had to keep my mouse moving in a straight sideways position to keep this from happening, which to me is a little aggravating. Another disadvantage is that unlike many other search engines I can’t search for pictures. For example, both Google and MSN have a special images search tool. I could still search for images, but all of them were associated with other websites. For this, I did a search on prohibition images and found many websites that have images of prohibition on them, but that would require going to the website, instead of just going through search results.
Here are some links to what others are saying about Melzoo:
Preview Your Web Search Results With Melzoo
MelZoo takes on Google with split-screen search
At melzoo.com, you can search for information and preview result websites all at the same time. It’s pretty nifty looking and from my brief use, very handy. Melzoo boldly states on it’s website’s “About us” page that they are going to beat the competition, (Google and Yahoo) and become the number one search engine out there, “MelZoo is planning on becoming one of the most Mindblowing Mega Projects ever on the internet.” From what I’ve seen, it could possibly do that.
The idea behind Melzoo is it’s "visual previews" of the search results.
In the picture above, the results are viewed on the left and the preview of a result website is on the right. They are very confident that their website will result in being time-saving, efficient and will be result-increasing. Similar to any search engine, type in a topic to search and many websites will appear. The difference with Melzoo is the preview feature.
I went to Melzoo and did a search for resources on economics, for upcoming lessons for the Civics department. I typed in economics for middle school education and instantly found several websites. As I hovered over the first website, the preview of the webpage came up on the right side of my screen. This occurred every time I hovered over a website. The advantage to this, was that I could see what resources the website had to offer before going to the results website and then decide if I wanted to use it in my research. Another advantage is that you can go to the result website by clicking on either the result side or the preview side of the screen, however, this does lead to my biggest compliant about Melzoo as well.
There were a few times that as I was going to the preview side of the screen to check out the actual website, I ended up getting a preview of another website. If you go the tiniest bit close to another website, your preview is going to change. I found that I had to keep my mouse moving in a straight sideways position to keep this from happening, which to me is a little aggravating. Another disadvantage is that unlike many other search engines I can’t search for pictures. For example, both Google and MSN have a special images search tool. I could still search for images, but all of them were associated with other websites. For this, I did a search on prohibition images and found many websites that have images of prohibition on them, but that would require going to the website, instead of just going through search results.
Here are some links to what others are saying about Melzoo:
Preview Your Web Search Results With Melzoo
MelZoo takes on Google with split-screen search
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Interview with Julie Evans
Join Classroom 2.0 for the Future of Education series on Wednesday, Feb. 11th at 8 p.m. EST for an interview with Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow, formerly known as NetDay, the group does those surveys for school communities on technology use. Register at: http://tinyurl.com/aqvhyv. Hopefully I will be able to hit up the archives as I will be at color guard rehearsal tonight.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Inspiration Webcast
One of my colleagues sent me this email today:
Inspiration® Webcast: Writing a Research Paper with Inspiration
Date: Thursday, February 12, 2009
Time: 12:00-12:45 p.m. Pacific Time, 3:00-3:45 p.m. Eastern Time
Lucy Belgum, our Education Development Manager for Language Arts, will host a 45-minute webcast demonstrating how to:
- Use visual techniques to select and narrow a topic
- Use prewriting notes and organizers to formulate the research paper
- Write a thesis statement and support it within the paper's body
Kidspiration® Webcast: Learn to Use Kidspiration's Visual Math Tools
Date: Thursday, February 26, 2009
Time: 12:00-12:45 p.m. Pacific Time, 3:00-3:45 p.m. Eastern Time
Meg Courtnage, our Education Development Manager for Math, will host a complimentary 45-minute webcast. Participants will:
-See a demonstration of all five math tools � color tiles, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, fraction tiles and fraction boxes
-Discover ready-to-use activities and lesson plans, customization options, and tips for starting projects from scratch
-Get ideas for using Kidspiration's math tools to support K-5 curriculum
Use this url to register for either session:https://inspiration.webex.com/mw0305l/mywebex/default.do?siteurl=inspiration
The webcast will be archived and you can visit this link for other archived webcasts: http://staff.staffordschools.net/gw/webacc?action=Item.Read&User.context=gq6lv9Qdatwddg5Gi0&Item.drn=6459z14z0&merge=msgitem&Url.Folder.type=Folder.UNIVERSAL
Inspiration® Webcast: Writing a Research Paper with Inspiration
Date: Thursday, February 12, 2009
Time: 12:00-12:45 p.m. Pacific Time, 3:00-3:45 p.m. Eastern Time
Lucy Belgum, our Education Development Manager for Language Arts, will host a 45-minute webcast demonstrating how to:
- Use visual techniques to select and narrow a topic
- Use prewriting notes and organizers to formulate the research paper
- Write a thesis statement and support it within the paper's body
Kidspiration® Webcast: Learn to Use Kidspiration's Visual Math Tools
Date: Thursday, February 26, 2009
Time: 12:00-12:45 p.m. Pacific Time, 3:00-3:45 p.m. Eastern Time
Meg Courtnage, our Education Development Manager for Math, will host a complimentary 45-minute webcast. Participants will:
-See a demonstration of all five math tools � color tiles, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, fraction tiles and fraction boxes
-Discover ready-to-use activities and lesson plans, customization options, and tips for starting projects from scratch
-Get ideas for using Kidspiration's math tools to support K-5 curriculum
Use this url to register for either session:https://inspiration.webex.com/mw0305l/mywebex/default.do?siteurl=inspiration
The webcast will be archived and you can visit this link for other archived webcasts: http://staff.staffordschools.net/gw/webacc?action=Item.Read&User.context=gq6lv9Qdatwddg5Gi0&Item.drn=6459z14z0&merge=msgitem&Url.Folder.type=Folder.UNIVERSAL
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