Showcasing Student Video

School Video News (SVN) Student Filmmaking invites your students to submit short films (documentary, drama, comedy, scary) and trailers, along with their bios, to help launch this new site. The deadline is June 1, 2012. To submit a video, send an email to SVN that includes a link to where the video can be seen. The site will be a free companion site to School Video News (SNV-TV).  If you and your students are interested in filmmaking, register now.

 

Dover’s Free Samples for National Pet Month

May is National Pet Month, and in celebration of pets, Dover is offering free samples of a book about Presidential Pets. Your students, for example, can enjoy learning about President Theodore Roosevelt and a pony in his son’s bedroom. Then there’s President John F. Kennedy who had a house full of animals including a rabbit “who could play the first few notes of the Star-Spangled Banner on a tiny trumpet.” On the Dover site, you’ll also find free samples, which are available from other pet coloring books.

Great Software to Look For

Peggy Healy-Stearns’ popular and affordable Community Construction Kit and Diorama Designer will soon be available in wonderfully updated versions. Be on the lookout for when they are announced at Tom Snyder Productions, because they’ll be a great addition to elementary classrooms for the 2012-2013 school year. These are programs that stimulate student creativity and thinking skills by enhancing traditional subjects in the regular school curriculum. You can download sample cutouts of the current versions of Diorama Designer and Community Construction Kit to get an idea of what these programs offer.

What Can You Do with an iPad in the Classroom?

Tom Barrett, in his 103 Interesting Ways to Use an iPad in the Classroom, has developed a presentation with tips and ideas for teachers. You can browse his tips and tips contributed by other educators through a Google Docs presentation, and you can add your own ideas if you wish. Barrett wants to keep track of how people are using the resource and urges you to email him or tweet him @tombarrett.

My Robot Nation

My Robot Nation is a fun place for kids and adults. On the site, simple robots can be designed, decorated, and checked out by rotating them on the computer screen.  These are not robots that receive commands from computer programs, but instead are like small (2”-6”) statues. Creating and observing the robots is free, but once finished, the robots can be purchased and sent to your address. You can also send a robot gift to someone, who will be given the challenge of creating his or her own robot. These personal robots are brought to life off-screen using a 3D printing process and “environmentally-friendly additive manufacturing”. They emerge from the process in colored high-performance composite resin.  The robots would be too expensive (starting at $17.99 for a 2” robot) for a school project, but art teachers may want to consider using the free design function of My Robot Nation and then having their students try to recreate their design using materials available at school.

Teacher Morale at 20-Year Low

The MetLife Survey of THE AMERICAN TEACHER, completed between October and August of 2011, talked to 1000+ teachers K-12 by telephone, to 100+ parents and guardians of students in Grades 3-12 online, and almost 1000 students in Grades 3-12. According to the Executive Summary of the report, only 44% of teachers are satisfied with their job and many feel that their job is not secure. Twenty-nine percent of the teachers interviewed said, “They are very or fairly likely to leave the profession.” Why? Answers given by those in the survey included problems of school budgets; layoffs; larger classes; lack of salary increases along with higher insurance costs; reductions in programs in art, music, foreign language, and physical education; reductions in health services; lack of up-to-date technology; and pessimism about student achievement. In 2008, the MetLife Survey showed that 62% of teachers were satisfied with their jobs. 

Serif’s Inexpensive, But Highly Effective Software

Serif’s software works well and gets excellent reviews. Besides that, it’s quite inexpensive and all the products, whether for desktop publishing; video, panorama, or art creation; photo editing, Web design, or craft projects, work with the same interface. If you use Windows, Serif products are well worth looking into. The programs do not work with Mac OS. The latest versions of the software products sell for $99, but there are often specials offering them for lower prices. If you don’t need the latest versions, you can get Serif’s desktop publisher, for example, anywhere from about $20-$45 on Amazon.

Anime Studio 7 from Serif

Serif is offering its Anime Studio Debut, an all-in-one 2D animation software program for Windows computers, for $29.99. With it, your students can create their own cartoons and animations. The program is designed to be used by everyone from beginning animators to those who are already adept at the skill, so it includes a beginner’s mode, ready-made artwork, timeline animating, animation tools to bring photos to life, and more.  

Amazing Apps to Use in Elementary Classrooms or Homes

Jinny Gudmundsen, USA Today, recommends five super apps for children. One is free and all cost only a few dollars. There’s Painting with Time for the iPad “which lets kids explore how things change over time. With this app, which was partially funded by the National Science Foundation, kids select from tubes of paint that represent different intervals of time.” For example, if landscape is selected, the tubes represent the seasons. When children “paint” with their fingers, they can transform the scene into colors of the different seasons. Other of Gudmundsen’s favorites are the stories: Hogworld: Gnats Adventure for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, and Kindle Fire, where children engage in adventures through 3D visuals, sounds and interaction; Cinderella – Nosy Crow Animated Picture Book for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, in which the characters talk to the reader, and on the iPad2, the reader’s face shows up in all the mirrors; and Auryn – Van Gogh and the Sunflowers for the iPad, an eBook that brings Van Gogh’s life and painting to life through visuals and interaction. The app Out-A-Bout for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad uses parent-child interaction as it teaches early reading skills and encourages physical play. The app involves the reader in the story through photos and recordings. All of these apps would be wonderful for our Preschool to Primary students.

Professional Development: Online Recertification & More

Knowledge Delivery Systems offers online courses that cover a variety of professional development such as recertification, salary advancement, and specialized learning.
Go to the Knowledge Delivery map and click on your state to see what is offered in your area. In New Jersey, if you are a member of NJEA, you are eligible for free professional development courses. New York teachers can earn, for example, three “P-Credits” from the NYCDOE, which can be applied to MA+3, BA+30, and BA+60.  In many of the states, eClassroom 2.0 courses are available. The courses range in pricing; you’ll need to check the Knowledge Delivery site for details.