Author: ryan

  • Technology give parents control of student lunches

    According to CNN.com, Houston School’s will soon be able to allow
    parents control of their student’s lunches:

    Primero Food Service Solutions, developed by Houston-based Cybersoft
    Technologies, allows parents to set up prepaid lunch accounts so
    children don’t have to carry money, said Ray Barger, Cybersoft’s
    director of sales and marketing.

  • NYT Lesson Plan: Active Reading

    NYT Lesson Plan: Active Reading

    In this lesson, students write encyclopedia articles focusing on
    topics in American history. They practice fact checking, assess their
    own ability to read actively and skeptically, and write memos that
    educate others on how to do so.

  • Multitasking Realities

    Smelly Knowledge » Multitasking Realities

    Merlin Mann of 43Folders posits that when one says they are
    multitasking, they are really just slicing their attention into
    smaller and smaller chunks.

  • Educational Freeware

    Here’s a site with Educational Freeware, listed by downloadable or
    online. Most of the downloadable is Windows only, but a few pieces of
    the software will run inder Linux.

  • Teacher resources at Education World

    Billed as “The Educator’s Best Friend”, Education World®, has a ton
    of resources for teachers and school administration, such as:

    • Lesson Planning
    • Professional Development
    • Administrator’s Desk
    • Technology
    • School Issues
    • EdWorld at Home
  • Free math materials for students, teachers, and parents

    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

    [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

  • Great integration of social studies and Internet tools

    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.

  • Can Wikipedia can be saved for our schools?

    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.