If it is on Google .... I can take it. Why is this wrong?

Danielle Smith from St. Louis can tell you exactly why. Someone else could grab YOUR picture.

As NPR reports, a Czech supermarket chain used a family photo Ms. Smith posted online as the centerpiece of their advertising campaign.

Many of our students are under the impression that "if it is on the web, it is free". We have an obligation to address these teachable moments that come up in our classrooms. Information literacy and copyright are two areas of concern among most educators in the country. It is the responsibility of all content areas to address this in our courses.

I have a number of resources available on my wiki that can be used to educate both teachers and students with regards to Internet Safety, Copyright, and Information Literacy.

After reading that article one lesson I have learned is to be sure that you only post your best looking pictures online!

Create Interactive Games for Review

With the end of the year upon us I have noticed a lot of faculy members looking for creative opportunities to create review lessons. The website Classroom Games and More hosts a number of game templates. The templates are all made in PowerPoint. All you have to do is plug in your information and you are ready to go. These games will work well on a smartboard.



Enjoy!

Connecting With Subject Area Experts

Are you looking for a way to connect your content with real life experiences for students? Are your students struggling to see the relevance in reading a particular story or learning a particular critical thinking skill? Would you like to have a Nobel Laureate show your students how he or she uses the skills your are instructing?

The open source teaching project is an excellent tool to make real-world connections between your curriculum and the work done everyday by industry leading professionals.



A recent article in the THE JOURNAL stated this about the site:

"The open source teaching project is a Tennessee based program that helps students make real-life connections to academic content. It is a free digital resource that brings students up close with leading professionals across a variety of fields to help them see the real-world relevance of their studies."

This program send interviewers to speak face to face with experts in a range of fields. The interviews are posted online and are free for anyone to access. They also include teacher resources, lesson plans and blogs.

One section of the site contains interviews with college admissions officers. Districts who have utilized these interviews in instruction have witnessed a distinct transition in the way students organize and prepare college admissions materials after taking part in these lessons.

A majority of the interviews are audio only. However, they are in the process of adding video components as well. Included on the site are the questions that are asked for each area of expertise. I found this to be a valuable resource. With the technology we have available in Jefferson we could easily conduct some of our own interviews. We are also setup to host video conferencing sessions. These questions would be useful for those projects.

I encourage you to take a look at this resource. If you are interested in putting together a lesson using these tools I would be happy to assist. If you would like to organize your own video conference or interview with a subject area expert please let me know. I am always here to assist.

Enjoy this new resource!

Interactive Websites and PowerPoint Presentations

The following website was introduced to me by Sherry Brzostowski, White Rock School. The main site has a number of interactive websites that are categorized by subject. These are great sites to use on an interactive whiteboard, center activities, or as part of a larger project.

The content that I found even more interesting on this site after exploring further is the huge collection of PowerPoint presentations compiled for Language Arts k-12. There are PowerPoint presentations that can be downloaded for many of the topics covered in the language arts curriculum. The largest collection is for grades 3-5. In many cases you could use these presentations or modify them to fit your plans.

The presentations are free to use. If you do use them I would recommend citing the source and maybe sending them a note letting them know you found their resource helpful. I am sure they would like to hear that.

http://jc-schools.net/PPTs-la.html#Grades6-12

Enjoy!

Visuwords

Visuwords is a visual dictionary / thesaurus. When you lookup a word it displays the results in "Web" format.

I will let the creators explain:

"Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

It's a dictionary! It's a thesaurus!
Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists.
The online dictionary is available wherever there’s an internet connection.
No membership required. "

This is a great tool to use for whole group instruction on a smartboard. It can also be used by students individually. Introduce this tool during a pre-writing session. It can pair very well with mind mapping software such as kidspiration, inspiration or www.bubbl.us. r

Bibliography Maker

I came across this resource today. http://www.bibme.org It is free web based bibliography maker. You can search for a book, journal, website, film, newspaper article or other publication. Once you find the source you select it. The site will create a bibliography.

Here is what the owners of the site say:

BibMe is a free automatic bibliography generator that supports MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian formatting. BibMe leverages databases provided by Amazon, FindArticles, Yahoo! News, and CiteULike to quickly and accurately AutoFill citation information for you. BibMe will then format the citation information according to the rules and guidelines of the style guides. If you prefer, you can enter your citation information manually. BibMe also contains a quick citation guide to show students the correct syntax for citing in various formats.

Once you have added all of your resources you can download them into MS word with the click of a button. You now how a complete works cited page. Take a look at bibme today!

Enjoy

My Own Books

I learned about this next site from Larry Ferlazzo's Blog. He Teaches English Language Learners. My thoughts are that this site would be a great resource for not only ESL Students but also any struggling readers.

Here is a quote from Larry's blog:

My own books is a fantastic site for fostering reading skills and thus, English language acquisition. It was created by Anne Pemberton, a retired Special Ed. teacher and she has done a marvelous job.
Students simply chose a story they want to read. Then, they put in their own name and BINGO! The story is all about them! You can print or read on the screen with pictures to support comprehension. Really cool and I suggest students print these out and share their stories. A great way to create a classroom , personalized library!

ENJOY!

Create a Digital Story with Grades k-3

Good Morning,

I came across this excellent resource that was posted on the blog of Kevin Jarrett. It is a digital story tool developed by Carnegie University. It is called My Story Maker.

My StoryMaker is a free, easy-to-use, Flash-based interactive story development platform developed by The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, with the generous support of Carnegie Mellon University and The Grable Foundation. The basic idea is that you start by selecting characters and a goal:



You then are given an editor and a guide to help you build the story.




All you have to do is drag and drop and arrange the objects where you want them. You can add dialogue and pages to your story. Once you build your story you can choose to share your story. This will generate a six-digit number that can be plugged into the Main Site to search for the story. You also have the option to print you story. It prints as a foldable book and can be printed in color. The site does not require any registration. You just visit the site and start your story.

Enjoy!

Novellinks - A resource for Teaching Novels in Grades 6-12

I recently was introduced to this site and wanted to share it with everyone. It is Novel links. The site contains an amazing collection of reading strategy resources for most of the popular novels taught in grades 6-12. It also contains a number of resources for literacy units.

Please visit the site and click on Reading Resources.

Novel Links - Click Here

Enjoy!

Google Docs

Would you like to be able to access your word, powerpoint, excel or pdf files from any computer? Have you ever created a document at home and forgot to bring it with you to work? Would you like to be able to work collaboratively on a document? Would you like your students to collaborate on a powerpoint presentation? Would you like to share a word document or powerpoint presentation with another faculty member and not have to email it or post it in a common shared folder where it could be manipulated?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then you must check out Google Docs. Google Docs is a web based version of MS office. You can create and host word, excel, powerpoint and PDF documents. They are accessible from any computer with an internet connection. You can upload all of your existing office documents. This includes office 2007 docs as of this week!

Google docs also allows you to share your documents with others. It allows multiple users to collaborate on a single document. With its forms features you can create a form that will collect answers/data from individuals.

The best feature is that it is totally free!!! All you need is a google account to get started.

Stay tuned for more details and workshops on Google Docs.