Sunday, June 29, 2008

Something Very Clever

Hi Everyone,

I know that I have not blogged for some time, but I am hopeful that many of you are taking a little break yourselves, so that you have not been concerned with the every day life of teaching as you are during the school year. In other words, I am feeling certain that you are not waiting each day for my newest blog!

I have had this one on my "To Look At" list for quite a while and I have finally played with it and think it is so cool. I will leave it up to you to decide how you will use it with your classes, but you may enjoy sending a message or two to friends this summer.

It is Geogreetings found at www.geogreetings.com . It was devised by a computer science student in Minnesota, who by his own admission, has become obsessed with it. What he determined is that many satellite maps show different buildings in the shape of letters. So therefore, any message that you might want to send, Geogreetings converts it into places that will give the image of each individual letter in your message. You can then click on the letter and zoom in and see the building that was the letter used. It is just downright fun! You can either send the link to a friend or do it in the form of an Electronic Greeting.

Here is a message that I did for you!

http://www.geogreeting.com/view.html?yrkFoUkUqBokDUCEwwoBa

Judi

Monday, June 16, 2008

This Looks Interesting

Do you have teaching supplies that you no longer use, but are in decent condition? Are you in need of certain supplies that you do not want to pay "big bucks" for? Well, TeachersPayTeacher http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/ seems like it could hold some answers to these questions.
I saw this in the Middle School Newsletter MiddleWeb - To subscribe send a note to norton@middleweb.com with SUBSCRIBEin the subject line. This is how they explained TeachersPayTeachers:
Paul Edelman, a former NYC public school teacher, had a great ideaback in 2006, when he established a website where teachers could swaptheir lesson plans and other classroom teaching materials and payeach other small sums for the privilege. Scholastic Inc. liked the idea enough to buy Edelman's start-up and keep him on board to run the service. With the change in ownership comes a change in website.It's "all new," Paul writes, and TPT now offers no-cost membershipsto sellers. Drop by and try out the catalog quick search.
Our own EBay - What could be better?

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

A Great Summer Project

Many of you may be teaching summer school or have a week or two left of this year. Some may have your own children who you would like to motivate with a good project. Here is one that could be used in all of these settings and I thought some of you might have an interest in participating. National Geographic and ePals has collaborated in this project. They are publishing a book about children's thoughts on Human Rights. All of the information can be found here: http://content.epals.com/projects/info.aspx?DivID=HumanRights_HRProjectPage This book will probably be published very professionally and I believe all children could become quite eloquent when speaking of the rights of others. I am going to try and get my grandchildren excited about participating when they arrive on Wednesday!

Hope the heat is not getting to the east coasters too badly. And to you in the northwest, I have heard that winter has returned!
Judi

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Literature To Go

Hi Everyone,

I think for many of you it is almost or has been the last week of school. I would suggest that I may not see you checking in on this site until September, however, I have watched teachers for too many years and I just know that will not be the case. It always amazes me how active my listservs are during the summer with teachers making plans for the Fall right after they have finished a school year. If only the general public would understand how hard you work! Well, I do!

I subscribe to a email list which provides new websites throughout the school year. The man's name is Pete McCay and he is from Canada. I may have mentioned him before. You can look at archives and subscribe to the list here: http://www.theteacherlist.ca/ He usually stops posting for the summer. This is from his latest post:
Lit2Go http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format. You can download the files to your Mp3 player and listen on your iPod, listen to the Mp3 files on your computer, view the text on a webpage and read along as you listen, and even print out the stories and poems to make your own book. If you have a battery-operated stand for an iPod, you could let students hold the printed story and listen to someone read it as an Mp3 file. Or if an individual child were listening, he/she could do it on the computer or on an individual iPod with earphones.
There are so many stories to choose from and the readers are quite good. I think this is a fabulous way to help children develop visual imagery as they imagine the scene and what the characters look like as they listen to a story. Great for your own little ones at home.

If you are embarking on some lazy days of summer, I hope you enjoy every minute. I will try to keep writing as I come across things that I think you could use.
Judi