Easier Scheduling for Parent-Teacher Conferences

Three of our blog readers recommend programs they've developed/and or they recommend to help teachers and school administrators with parent-teacher conference scheduling. Parent Locker offers parent-teacher scheduling plus tools such as gradebooks, photo albums, calendars, chat, and more. PTCWizard, which concentrates upon scheduling only, does PT scheduling and team scheduling. PTConference handles Parent-Teacher conference scheduling and provides a method of distributing information to parents. If you are looking for parent-teacher conference software or online scheduling programs, you'll want to investigate these three products to see if they will help you take the drudgery out of scheduling conferences.

Keeping Up with Tech by Watching Videos

As educators we hear so much about tools and sites we can use, but often time to learn everything we want to learn isn't available. We go to conventions and workshops, and think, "I'm going to master that" but we don't get around to it. One way to keep up is to try some of the free educational videos online that describe some of things you want to learn. Perhaps you are interested in developing online surveys, using Podcasts in your classroom, investigating Second Life, creating blogs, or using Delicious, Blackboard, Flash, PhotoShop or.... ? Russell Stannard, who writes about the Web and multimedia, offers a series of free videos to help you tackle the topics you've not found time for. If you are interested in ELT/ESL teaching videos, you'll also find a number of useful ones on the Stannard site.

New York Tri-State Area Educators! Free Day of Discovery

Looking for creative ways to use technologies in your classroom? Join in the free Day of Discovery on August 12, 2008 (8:30 a.m.-4:15 p.m. with lunch and refreshments) when Cablevision's Power to Learn and Discovery Education team to present a technology-infused full day of professional development and digital learning. The event will be held at Cablevision's Corporate Headquarters, 1111 Stewart Avenue, Bethpage, NY 11714. RSVP as soon as possible because seating is limited. Discovery's STAR educators will demonstrate how they use digital media in their classrooms, and there will be a sneak preview of Discovery Channel's Expeditions with Josh Bernstein, sessions featuring Web 2.0, Digital Natives, and much more.

A New Planet: The World's Largest Whiteboard Community

 
If you use an interactive white board in your classroom or are hoping to get one, Promethean Planet is the perfect place to visit. It's packed with teacher features ready to put to work. -And if you have some great whiteboard lessons to share, you might just win an iPod. You must be a member to download materials from Promethian, but registration is free. Just sign up to upload your best lessons and download flipchart lessons, resource packs, Weblinks, best practice suggestions, tips and tricks, and other resources developed especially for Promethian Planet.  Already with about 150,000 members worldwide, this site that's received recognition for its innovative pedagogy, is a perfect way to expand ideas for use of interactive whiteboards in your classroom. Check out the July theme: "Sports and Olympics"-there's a new theme each month that will keep you up-to-date in the latest ideas to make your whiteboard lessons dynamically interactive, not simply a display of content.

Buy a Whiteboard: Get a Student Response System

Turning Technologies LLC is bundling student response systems with its mimeo® interactive whiteboard solutions. The two products complement each other and enable you to get students more involved in learning. Response systems are fun for your students and help you gain a better understanding of how your lessons are going and if your students are mastering the concepts presented. Think of the excitement that these two technologies could bring to interactive lessons! Turning Technologies LLC also offers a grant program for K-12 where teachers can apply to for a student response system grant.

Momentum in Online Learning

More schools and students are turning to online learning according to the findings in Learning in the 21^st Century: A Trends Update survey of over 250,000 students, teachers and parents. The percentage (41%) of students agreeing that "online classes will have the greatest positive impact on their learning" doubled from the percentage in a 2006 survey. Twenty-six percent of teachers now say that online learning is their favorite teaching method. In the previous survey, it was 7%. Eighty-eight percent of the school administrators surveyed held that the effective implementation of tech was "core to their mission." Although everyone's not rushing to online learning just yet, it's evident that online learning is becoming a valuable resource for enhancing classroom instruction, providing additional help for students, and providing coursework that is not available in a local school. It's interesting that only about one-third of the students suggested that more time with Web 2.0 technologies-blogs, social networking, wikis, etc. be put to use in classrooms. Do you wonder what that percentage will be in the next survey?

Not the Whole Video!

For years teachers have been hearing, "Don't play the entire video. Play the parts that fit your lesson." That, of course, is easier said than done. Sometimes it's just not all that easy to find the part of a video that is just right for your lesson. Discovery Education Streaming Video makes it easy. Let's say you want to have a discussion on the problems of teenage driving with your students. If your school subscribes to Discovery Streaming, then you might want to use the video Drive It Right, which is divided into clips such as Drinking and Driving, Speeding, The Teenage Brain, etc. Just click on the clip you want and up it comes to your computer screen in Window Media or QuickTime. -Or maybe you want to explain to your Grade 4 students about perimeter, circumference, and area? You might select one of the math clips in Discovering Math: Measurement (Grades 3-5), and your students will learn how to calculate the circumference of a Frisbee. Besides the videos and clips that kids can watch, there are over a thousand editable clips available for your students to enhance.

Do Kids Still Want to Change the World?

As the economy fluctuates and parents and students worry about the future, what is happening to student dreams of making our world a better place? Think about all those student loans-loans that will take years to pay for. Are students opting for job-security and financial security over community service? The New York Times article by Sara Rimer Big Paycheck or Service? Students Are Put to the Test discusses how several selective colleges are trying to encourage students to consider careers in community service over financially lucrative careers. Some of the colleges are offering public service fellowships and internships. Some are recruiting students for community service such as teaching in low-income schools for a few years. The move is an effort to counter what has become a path from selective colleges to top-paying jobs on Wall Street. Are kids revising their dreams when they think practically about their financial future? What does all this mean to K-12 schools?

Turning Technologies K-12 Grant Program

Be sure to get your entries in by September 15, 2008 to enter the Turning Technologies grant program. Designed to increase awareness and usage of student response systems in Kindergarten through Grade 12 classrooms, the program is open to educators working in accredited, public and private schools in the United States. The grant includes wireless response cards, state-aligned questions, Turning Point 2008 interactive PowerPoint software, web-based polling application, a license to Vantage Point, and more. To apply, complete the Turning Technologies K-12 Grant Application and write short essays about what you hope to accomplish with the response system, how you plan to integrate it into your teaching, your classroom technology, your technical background, and how you will transfer your knowledge to others. You'll also need to fax letter of support from your principal, IT Director, and others who may help you with implementation of the response system.

Want to Learn to Podcast?

It's not difficult to create a podcast but that depends upon the type of podcast and how professional (or splashy) you want it to be. Tech for Teachers - Podcasting Classes provides a nice introduction to examples of podcast use in education. You can watch an easy-to-understand video describing podcasting, check out classes at Cal Berkeley, and visit a school in New Mexico that's putting Microsoft's Zune to use in podcasting. One of the easiest ways to put a podcast together is to use Apple's Garage Band software. If you need them, you'll find tutorials on the Apple site.  About.com has a step-by-step tutorial for learning to create for all those MP3 players, and Power to Learn's Jim Lengel has some excellent guidelines to help you with podcasting. . Have you created any podcasts for your students and/or are your students creating podcasts for assigments? Think about creating a podcast as your summer technology project. If so, we'd love to hear about your successes, and even problems with, podcasting.