Take a visual trip to Washington DC to the World War II Memorial compliments of the National Park Service. This interactive site provides a moving collection of quotes, photos, and audio capturing the men, women, and events of World War II. Photos of the World War II Memorial are integrated into the footage. [10 mins, 30 secs]
Visit: http://www.nps.gov/features/nama/feat0001/index2.html
Although this is a great site to show your students , it doesn’t compare to seeing the Memorial in person. Thanks to the DEN, I had the opportunity to visit The Mall in DC for a chance to see and experience all the memorials. What a treat is was. Thanks Discovery!
Forecast Earth Summit Essay Contest
The Weather Channel is hosting a chance for students to attend the Forecast Earth Summit in December. Students need to write an essay and complete the information at https://www.forecastearthsummit.org/index.php as part of the selection process. Why not get started on the first day of school?
Leadership Failure
“The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” ~ Napoleon Hill
“Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success.” ~ William S. Gilbert
“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.” ~ Herbert B. Swope
“A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience.” ~ Elbert Hubbard
Web Wednesday* is a feature of the online “Big Deal Book”. This Wednesday’s theme is Media Literacy
Check out the book for more online deals. You’ll find everything from grant opportunities to free and inexpensive finds
TVY7?
Media literacy, just like any literacy, is about helping children to develop the ability to understand, interpret and communicate. Media literacy adds the ability to apply those skills to pictures and sound using different tools, which can include television, videos, DVDs and computers. What do you know about the media literacy of children today? Take this
online quiz and find out. Then see below for ideas on how to integrate media literacy into your classroom activities.
Mind the Message!
The
PBS Parents Guide to Children and Media helps parents and other caregivers discover how television, movies, advertising, computers and video games can shape a child’s development and what they can do to create a media-literate environment. The site is accessible in both
English and
Spanish.
Get the Facts!
Political advertising can be very informative and also very misleading. Candidates use ads to create a positive image and to publicize their positions on issues. They want voters to recognize them and vote for them. Encourage your students to analyze a radio or TV ad by answering the questions on this site.
* Web Wednesday is a feature of The Big Deal Book - Amazing Resources for 21st Century Educators
Start the year off with a reading incentive program from Power to Learn. View requirements and submit your class application now at http://www.powertolearn.com
/reading_lounge/knicks_read_to_achieve/index.shtml
Even if you choose not to enter the incentive program, you can still use the Reading Lounge for a post card club and video books.
Although Picnik has been around for awhile, it is worth mentioning again for all of you who don’t know about it. You don’t have to create an account to use it and it is FREE! Upload a picture and customize it in many, many, many, different ways. You’ll have loads of fun!
Here is a photo I created for the DEN Leadership Council Institute Attendees. I uploaded it into Picnik and was able to make the border B/W and keep the important part in color.
Why don’t you give it a try?
This looks like something fun. Over on Dangerously Irrelevant, Scott McLeod, is asking for you to get those creative juices going and create a song or poem about technology or instructional technology.
This could be a good activity for those students who have started back to school.
Submit your ideas at http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2008/08/contest—techn.html.
Web Wednesday is a feature of the online “Big Deal Book”. This Wednesday’s theme is Global Awareness
Check out the book for more online deals. You’ll find everything from grant opportunities to free and inexpensive finds
Join the Global Village
Global Action Week is an annual campaign organized by the
Global Campaign for Education to raise awareness of the importance of education for all. This year, Global Action Week is
April 21–27. On April 23, the
World’s Biggest Lesson is taking place.
Download the lesson (in English and Spanish) and join millions of children, teachers and parents across the globe in their attempt to ensure everyone has an education. Report back by May 10 and help to make a new Guinness World Record. See below for more suggestions on integrating
global issues into your curriculum.
Children’s Voices—Around the World
Cool Planet’s Wake Up, World! takes students through a
day in the life of four children from around the world: Anusibuno (Ghana), Sasha (Russia), Aparecida (Brazil) and Mohammad Shakeel (India). The children talk about what they see, feel and hear when they wake up each day, what their life is like at school, how they play and have fun, what they eat and how they help to prepare food, and where their dream-life takes them—wondering what their life will be like when they grow up and what they will do in the future.
Let’s All Join Hands
Through the Global Art Project for Peace, students create a work of art expressing their vision of global unity and exchange it with a person in another part of the world. As part of the project’s ongoing Let’s All Join Hands, youngsters of all ages are invited to send a paper outline of their hand, with their name, country and wish for global peace, love and friendship on it, to the Global Art Project. The hands may be created and sent at any time. Volunteers string the hands together as a visual expression of the thousands of people who join their energy together to create peace. The paper hands are exhibited as a source of inspiration and reproduced in The Handbook for Peace
* Web Wednesday is a feature of The Big Deal Book - Amazing Resources for 21st Century Educators
A fish diagram? Must be another fun thing I missed when I was in school. Check this out, it looks like some fun for your students.
ClassTools.net is a simple-to-use Flash-based game creator that allows you to use templates to make your own addicting online games. The beauty here is that the hard part is done for you. You don’t need to know a thing about Flash to make these games or play them. All you have to know is the content you want to place in the template. It really couldn’t get much simpler. Different games are catered to different subject areas, but you’ll be able to find something for any subject.
Along with the games, you will find templates for charts and Venn diagrams, for example, and each one is
terribly easy to use. Once you are happy with your creation, you can then save and embed them on your own blog, website or online course. You’ll find an example here. Some aspects of the site are glitchy, but then again, the whole Internet is a little glitchy sometimes. There are a bundle of games to choose from, though, so you are bound to find something that works. - JEREMY S.GRIFFIN
Get a promotional flyer about ClassTools Here
Web Wednesday is a feature of the online “Big Deal Book”. This Wednesday’s theme is Financial Literacy
Check out the book for more online deals. You’ll find everything from grant opportunities to free and inexpensive finds
Dollars and Sense
First convened in December 1995,
The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy determined that the average student who graduates from high school lacks basic skills in the management of personal financial affairs. Results of the
2008 Financial Literacy Surveys of High School and College Students were released on April 9. How do students in 2008 compare with their 2006 peers?
Read the report to find out. Then see below for suggestions on how to integrate financial literacy into your curriculum.
Teaming Up to Tackle Finance
Visa and the
National Football League have teamed up to help students across the country learn financial concepts with
Financial Football. Students tackle financial questions like professionals in this fast-paced, quiz-style game. Classrooms divide into two teams that compete by answering finance-themed questions to earn yardage and score touchdowns.
Becoming Money Smart
Practical Money Skills for Life, a virtual two-CD-ROM set, includes lesson plans, worksheets, calculators and games to help students develop personal finance, budgeting and money management skills. The resources span from kindergarten- to college-age appropriate and are accessible in English and Spanish. The program was developed by educators in coordination with the National Consumers League and The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy.
* Web Wednesday is a feature of The Big Deal Book - Amazing Resources for 21st Century Educators
Over on my wiki I’ve posted a very brief summary of the week’s events and the LC Institute. Just in case you would like to have the opportunity to be involved in an amazing week of professional development, hard work, fantastic networking and FUN - make it your goal to reach STAR status soon. It’s easy and the benefits are incredible!
Visit my I Learn, You Learn, We Learn wiki
Become a DEN STAR
Web Wednesday is a feature of the online “Big Deal Book”. This Wednesday’s theme is Visual Literacy.
Check out the book for more online deals. You’ll find everything from grant opportunities to free and inexpensive finds
I See What You Mean
Visual literacy helps children to learn to read—and to enjoy reading. A visual text makes its meanings with images or with meaningful patterns. View
examples of visual texts that are used to convey information. Then see below for suggestions on how to integrate information literacy and media literacy into your curriculum.
Picture This!
The J. Paul Getty Museum’s Education Department has created A Guide to Building Visual Arts Lessons. Included are ideas for preparing lessons, a step-by-step guide for teaching visual arts for each grade level and ideas for evaluation and assessment approaches.The visual arts experiences described below encourage students to seek and construct meaning through encounters with photographs.
Picturing Stories
Using images of children in Dorothea Lange’s photographs, students study how Lange tells stories related to the children. Then they practice telling their own written and visual stories in response to Lange’s images.
Picturing History
After analyzing one of Dorothea Lange’s photographs from the 1930s, students make connections to its historical context by creating a one-page written and visual response.
* Web Wednesday is a feature of The Big Deal Book - Amazing Resources for 21st Century Educators
This is a nice site which allows you to create calendars, planners, checklists and more. With the click of the print button, you can have a quick and easy paper copy of many organization tools. Although it doesn’t let you customize a document on the site, I like it because you can copy and paste into WORD and then use your WORD features to customize it.
Check out ePrintables.com at http://www.eprintablecalendars.com/
Here’s a really great resource for learning about the 8 strategies for reading comprehension: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing. There are activities, lessons, audio clips, videos and professional development videos.
Although the site is geared towards K-4, teachers who teach literacy at any level can get some really great ideas.
Website: http://reading.ecb.org/
Here’s a great site created by the Center for History and New Media with funding from the U.S. Department of Education.
In addition to great historical content, including primary sources; you can find best practices, professional development ideas and teaching materials. 
One lesson that caught my eye is learning about slavery through posters and broadsides. The lesson includes everything you need including the .pdf posters.
Find more amazing resources to teach history at http://teachinghistory.org/.
Recent Comments