đšī¸ Do Something Great! đ
There are free resources for students, teachers, and parents over at
Math Goodies.
Math Goodies is a free math help site featuring interactive lessons,
puzzles and worksheets. We have provided free homework help since
1999! There are more than 400 pages of activities for students,
educators and parents.
They also offer a CD with even more activities for use offline.
[Microsoft licences ‘not value for money’, say schools: ZDNet Australia:
Jobs: News Trends][]
In a series of interviews with education professionals at the Bett
educational technology show in London, ZDNet UK found broad consensus
that Microsoft educational licensing agreements are too expensive.
Especially when there happens to be good alternatives to Windows and
Office.
[Microsoft licences ‘not value for money’, say schools: ZDNet
Australia: Jobs: News Trends]: http://www.zdnet.com.au/jobs/news_trends/soa/Microsoft_licences_not_value_for_money_say_schools/0,2000056653,39233214,00.htm?feed=rss
Fifth grade students at Lewis Elementary in Portland, OR, are using the
free services Flickr and MapBuilder.net in their European Exploreres
social studies unit.
From KidsHealth.gov, Cold, Ice, and Snow Safety.
Andy Carvin on his blog presents a case for Turning Wikipedia into an
Asset for Schools. Instead of blindly following what’s in Wikipedia,
use it to present “teachers with an excellent authentic learning
activity in which students can demonstrate their skills as scholars”:
[…]Take a group of fifth grade students and break them into groups,
with each group picking a topic that interests them. Any topic.
Dolphins, horses, hockey, you name it.Next, send the groups of kids to Wikipedia to look up the topic they
selected. […] The horse, for example, has an extensive entry on the
website. It certainly looks accurate and informative, but is it?
Unfortunately, there are no citations for any of the facts claimed
about horses on the page.[…]The group of students breaks down the content on the page into
manageable chunks, each with a certain amount of facts that need to be
verified. The students then spend the necessary time to fact-check the
content.
Once the Wikipedia entry has been fact-checked, the teacher creates a
Wikipedia login for the class. They go to the entry’s talk page and
present their findings, laying out every idea that needs to be
corrected. Then, they edit the actual entry to make the corrections,
with all sources cited. Similarly, for all the parts of the entry
they’ve verified as accurate, they list sources confirming it.
Kathy Schrock has put together a ton of resources for using the Winter
Olympics in your classroom, including the history of the Olympics,
lesson plans, and activities. Check them out at her website.
*UPDATE*: Her site has moved to http://kathyschrock.net/blog/
Google Earth, a free application, allows the user to view in 3D
places around the world.
Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in — Google
Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search
to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips.
Create online flashcards with The Amazing Flash Card Machine – Online
Flash Cards:
Welcome to The Amazing Flash Card Machine, an interactive web
application that allows the user to create interactive web-based study
flash cards.Students! Create flash cards to help you study for your next exam.
Make them publicly available, and your classmates can study from the
same set.Teachers! Create flash card sets for your students. Assign each set
of flash cards it’s own unique username and password giving your
students access to them without having to register.
Need a way to easily create a graph? The National
Center for Education Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of
Education has put together an easy to use tool to create bar, line,
area, pie, and XY graphs. Users can email the graph to themselves, which
will also give a link to save the graph for 30 days.
From the Official Google Blog: I’m feeling silly:
Naturally, we were all curious to see what 250 pounds of Silly Putty
would look like, so before distributing the stuff, we put it all in a
single pile to see. Huge mistake.
