Teachers Guide to Teaching Using Social Media
Are you using social media in your classroom, for professional development, to connect with students, teachers and beyond the community? This linked article offers suggestions for using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and blogging sites to embrace powerful learning opportunities for you and your students. These ideas aren't just for high school teachers, but all K-12 teachers. Trying just one social media site is a challenge I offer to all MPS teachers if you haven't yet. If you have questions before diving in, be in touch with me or Vera.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
District Wide Information
March is National Reading Month
February is I Love to Read Month followed by March with National Reading Month. The following article 9 Great Things to Read in (Roughly) 9 Minutes shares some great ideas to illustrate that reading doesn't have to be a novel, but short stories, song lyrics, children's literature and other written works promote reading, increase vocabulary, and help gain an understanding of the writer's message or political connection with events of the time when written, as well as other reading standards that can be met. The article above also suggests a great free vocabulary building site Vocabulary.com. This site uses Adaptive Vocabulary Instruction where it is like having your own personal trainer. Vocabulary lists can be generated from the site or can be designed by a teacher related to a novel study. This year's Newbery Award Winner, Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo would offers an excellent story to increase vocabulary with words such as, illuminated, cynic, quarks, normalcy, illusion, vanquished, unanticipated, and many more!
February is I Love to Read Month followed by March with National Reading Month. The following article 9 Great Things to Read in (Roughly) 9 Minutes shares some great ideas to illustrate that reading doesn't have to be a novel, but short stories, song lyrics, children's literature and other written works promote reading, increase vocabulary, and help gain an understanding of the writer's message or political connection with events of the time when written, as well as other reading standards that can be met. The article above also suggests a great free vocabulary building site Vocabulary.com. This site uses Adaptive Vocabulary Instruction where it is like having your own personal trainer. Vocabulary lists can be generated from the site or can be designed by a teacher related to a novel study. This year's Newbery Award Winner, Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo would offers an excellent story to increase vocabulary with words such as, illuminated, cynic, quarks, normalcy, illusion, vanquished, unanticipated, and many more!
Sunday, March 16, 2014
District Wide Information
This is IT 2014 - SW/WC Technology Conference
Last Friday SW/WC's Technology Conference titled This is IT 2014 offered many great sessions! One session I attended that I want to highlight for this week's post is:
Primary Sources - More Powerful Than You Think by Mary Mehsikomer, Technology Integration Development & Outreach Coordinator for TIES.
This session focused on the Library of Congress National Archives and Records Administration DOCS TEACH and Guides to Minnesota Reflections: For Educators. Each of these outstanding sites provide teacher guides and resources (including photos, documents, posters, and much more) organized specifically for teachers. These primary source sites are cross-curricular including math topics with price inflation, geometry, circles and arches within Architecture plus so much more. If you are interested in further demonstration or explanation of these sites, I am happy to meet with you.
Last Friday SW/WC's Technology Conference titled This is IT 2014 offered many great sessions! One session I attended that I want to highlight for this week's post is:
Primary Sources - More Powerful Than You Think by Mary Mehsikomer, Technology Integration Development & Outreach Coordinator for TIES.
This session focused on the Library of Congress National Archives and Records Administration DOCS TEACH and Guides to Minnesota Reflections: For Educators. Each of these outstanding sites provide teacher guides and resources (including photos, documents, posters, and much more) organized specifically for teachers. These primary source sites are cross-curricular including math topics with price inflation, geometry, circles and arches within Architecture plus so much more. If you are interested in further demonstration or explanation of these sites, I am happy to meet with you.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
District Wide Information
Pi Day
Friday is Pi Day! This is not just for math class. Consider incorporating some of the suggested activities from the following links:
Great Pi Day Activities for Teachers
Pi Day 2014
How to Celebrate Pi Day
What a great way to introduce the mathematical symbol or learn a little more about pi in a fun way!
Sunday, March 2, 2014
District Wide Information
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!
Today is officially Dr. Seuss's 110th birthday. In his honor, I continue to post information to encourage teachers, staff and students to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading is more than achieving well in school or passing standardized tests. It brings much more to our lives and makes us richer, thought provoking citizens. The following article Read Across America and Dr. Seuss Themed Resources for Teachers provides several resources to celebrate this wonderful annual event. There are resources for people working with young students as well as high school students to gain a better understanding of Dr. Seuss's work from Green Eggs and Ham, a fun story written using 50 words for beginning readers to the political side of Dr. Seuss's stories such as, Yertle the Turtle represented Hitler. As we work to consider reading, the following article Reading 2.0 looks at how students are reading differently today.
Pics4Learning
This site offers free, copyright friendly images for education. Check it out next time you are looking to use images in your work or next time you ask students to include images in a project.
Today is officially Dr. Seuss's 110th birthday. In his honor, I continue to post information to encourage teachers, staff and students to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading is more than achieving well in school or passing standardized tests. It brings much more to our lives and makes us richer, thought provoking citizens. The following article Read Across America and Dr. Seuss Themed Resources for Teachers provides several resources to celebrate this wonderful annual event. There are resources for people working with young students as well as high school students to gain a better understanding of Dr. Seuss's work from Green Eggs and Ham, a fun story written using 50 words for beginning readers to the political side of Dr. Seuss's stories such as, Yertle the Turtle represented Hitler. As we work to consider reading, the following article Reading 2.0 looks at how students are reading differently today.
Pics4Learning
This site offers free, copyright friendly images for education. Check it out next time you are looking to use images in your work or next time you ask students to include images in a project.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
District Wide Information - Wow! I just realized that this is my 200th post on this blog.
I Love to Read Month
I Love to Read Month is almost over, March Madness is just around the corner, April testing season is fast approaching and we are on the heels of promoting summer reading! I always tell classes that just because I Love to Read Month is celebrated in the month of February, we should love to read everyday all year long forever and always. I found Tips to Help Promote a Love of Reading, 8 Apps to Introduce Reading and The Tangible Benefits of Reading (Real) Books to Kids to share this week. Although these articles focus on promoting reading for preschool and elementary aged kids, it is important to glean simple tips to help all students (K-12) develop a love for reading. There are many fabulous books out there! Encourage reading, model reading, promote reading!
I just realized that I forgot this site...
Book Love Foundation
More Info about OneDrive (SkyDrive)
As teachers move their documents and files to OneDrive, know that with this free account each account has 7G in storage. It is recommended that OneDrive is used primarily for documents rather than pictures and videos or SMARTBoard Lessons that tend to be much larger in size. A suggestion is that teachers can open a "personal" OneDrive account to allow for more storage (another 7G of storage).
Students, in contrast, have OneDrive (SkyDrive) through their Office365 email accounts. They get 25G of storage with this.
I Love to Read Month is almost over, March Madness is just around the corner, April testing season is fast approaching and we are on the heels of promoting summer reading! I always tell classes that just because I Love to Read Month is celebrated in the month of February, we should love to read everyday all year long forever and always. I found Tips to Help Promote a Love of Reading, 8 Apps to Introduce Reading and The Tangible Benefits of Reading (Real) Books to Kids to share this week. Although these articles focus on promoting reading for preschool and elementary aged kids, it is important to glean simple tips to help all students (K-12) develop a love for reading. There are many fabulous books out there! Encourage reading, model reading, promote reading!
I just realized that I forgot this site...
Book Love Foundation
More Info about OneDrive (SkyDrive)
As teachers move their documents and files to OneDrive, know that with this free account each account has 7G in storage. It is recommended that OneDrive is used primarily for documents rather than pictures and videos or SMARTBoard Lessons that tend to be much larger in size. A suggestion is that teachers can open a "personal" OneDrive account to allow for more storage (another 7G of storage).
Students, in contrast, have OneDrive (SkyDrive) through their Office365 email accounts. They get 25G of storage with this.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
District Wide Information
Future Name Change in SkyDrive
Just as Marshall Public Schools learns the name SkyDrive as a cloud source solution, the name is changing in the near future. The following article, Following Trademark Dispute With BSkyB, Microsoft Rebrands "SkyDrive" to "OneDrive," explains the rebranding of SkyDrive to OneDrive. Watch for this change and know that it is one in the same product.
Just as Marshall Public Schools learns the name SkyDrive as a cloud source solution, the name is changing in the near future. The following article, Following Trademark Dispute With BSkyB, Microsoft Rebrands "SkyDrive" to "OneDrive," explains the rebranding of SkyDrive to OneDrive. Watch for this change and know that it is one in the same product.
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