This Is Way Too Cool For Words!

I was just reading a blog that is rather new to my Feeds, GO2WEB2.0 and it introduced me to the coolest tool. Well, at least I was really impressed. You find an article that you want to read on the Internet. It has lots of advertisements or distractions around it. Just click on the tool or marklet that you have placed on your toolbar from the TidyRead website and TidyRead takes away all those distractions. It makes any web page into an easy to read page that removes all of the clutter that can make reading on the internet so hard sometimes. How fabulous is this for students?
Give it a try. You will be happy that I just put down a really good book I was reading to dig through some unread blogs!

Learning About Plants and How They Reproduce - Pollen Park

This suggestion is taken directly from Sandra Gluth's wonderful newsletter to which I subscribe and would recommend for you. It is called Worthwhile Websites for Learning. All of her past websites from the newsletters are on this website. Go to Site of The Week Tab at the top to sign up to get the newsletter weekly. It is very worthwhile. Now on to this week's site that would fit into any unit on plants:

In Pollen Park, children join Bumbles the playful honey bee, on a pollen-collecting mission by completing activities and making amazing discoveries about plant reproduction. Students will learn the names of the different parts of the flower and understand the function of each in the reproduction process, the process of pollination and the varied methods of pollen transfer, the process of fertilization and how this differs from pollination, different methods of seed dispersal and why this needs to occur, and the process of seed germination and the necessary conditions for it to occur.

Tell Them They Are Great - Time For Awards!

I remember at this time of year ordering box of Award Certificates and filling in the To: and For: lines and then signing each one. Besides the time that this took, I also spent a substantial amount of money for these blank awards. There are several websites that now offer free award certificates ready to print. I usually refer to Education World Tools and Templates for award certificates. However, this week I saw references to a new site at both ILearn Technology and on Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day and I know I received it on a few list serves and saw it on Twitter. I finally gave it a good look and decided that I had to pass it on to you.
My Award Maker is a free, quick and easy website that allows you to make and print out certificates for all types of categories including sports, school, special occasions, etc. Each category has so many different types of awards to choose from and you are able to type in the name, your name, the date, etc. When you are ready to print it out, it has a finished, professional look.
Another "freebie" brought to you by the Internet! Life is great!

Bring American History To Life!

Seeing it in video form as a student has the ability to read the transcript provides the best of both worlds into gaining information about a subject. All of the content matter from this website is from events that have taken place in American History. It is very cleverly done as the transcript is highlighted as the film is shown. I learned about it by reading the blog Free Technology For Teachers, one of my favorite blogs. The website is called American History in Video .

Quoting straight from the blog:
more than 400 hours of documentary and news videos on American History. In the future American History in Video will provide more than 2000 hours of video.

The content on American History in Video can be searched by historical era, event, person, and places. American History in Video features documentary-style videos and videos of old newsreels and news broadcasts.

American History in Video offers users the option to create a clip of a video. The clipping option could be particularly useful when dealing with long videos that you may not want to show in entirety to your students. All of the videos on American History in Video can be embedded into a blog or website.

Being able to use just a clip of the videos make it useful for even the younger students.

Rhyming Time Help

Write Rhymes is a wonderfully fun website that gives your kids a little help in rhyming words as they write a poem. I heard about it while listening to an older podcast of the Women of Web2.0, a wonderful podcast that is now on every other Tuesday evening, 9:00 eastern time. It is a simple website with a space to write a poem. When you get to a word that you would like a rhyming word for, hold the alt key at the end of the word and click on it to find a rhyme for it. A new box will appear with one, two, and three syllable words that will work as a rhyme for the word that you clicked.
At the bottom, you will have the opportunity to save it to a text file, like Notepad, copy it to put into a document, or print it.

Dig It! A Study of Soil Website

If any of you have the study of soil in your curriculum, you will want to know about this website called Dig It! This web site is a virtual exploration of the Dig It! traveling exhibition now on display at the National Museum of Natural History. The site contains wonderful videos and downloadable activity sheets and experiment directions.

Like the exhibition, the educational activities, under the Education Tab, explore the importance of soils and how they surround and support people everyday in both obvious and hidden ways. Life on Earth would not exist as we know it without soils. Any study of geology should include this resource.

I learned about this amazing site from the blog, Phyllis' Favorites, a blog written by a librarian from New Jersey, Phyllis Anker.

I hope that you all have had an enjoyable Easter and Passover holiday. I, myself, would have much preferred the candy that the Easter Bunny brings over the matzah that is crumbling throughout my house all week!

Judi

New Website For Lots of Teacher Tools

I know I have not written in this blog for a while, but, to tell you the truth, nothing new has really excited me in the last week or two, and I am sure you do not want to just hear me "talk". I think it had to do with many educators being on Spring Break. Sometimes, i read about or listen to many, many ideas all at once, and then there is a "dry spell". I am sure we have so many things to explore on our plates, that having no new things for a while is sometimes refreshing!

Today I received my monthly newsletter from Jen Wagner. She is the wonderful California educator who organized the best online collaborative projects. Anyway, Jen publishes a newsletter ever month and if you want to subscribe to it for a very minimal cost, I would suggest you sign up HERE.

This month she wrote about another great website for helping teachers make some interactive online games to use as review for your students. There is a template for making Jeopardy Games and Speed match Games as well as a Seating Chart Maker and some other great tools. Take a look at SuperTeaching Tools. I think you will find it to be a very useful site.