Keep Your Classes Focused before Holidays

We know that it’s not easy to keep kids’ attention on studies just before holidays. Should you give in and just show movies, play games, and have parties those last few days? Not a great idea, because you don’t want to waste their time in the classroom. Perhaps you might structure some of your lessons with the holidays in mind. Think about engaging students in research about the origins of the upcoming holiday, creating a spreadsheet showing presents purchased with costs, writing holiday feel-good stories, creating holiday poetry in the foreign language they are studying, planning a project to help others—you’ll think of lots of other ideas. TeachHUB lists 10 Ways to Stay Focused Before Holiday Break that contains good advice for all of us. The list includes the topics: Stick to Your Structure; Plan and Engaging Project;  Keep Expectations High but Appropriate; Don’t Be a Grinch wit Classroom Decor; Add Holiday/Seasonal Cheer to Themed Lessons & Activities; Use Movement to Get Kids Focused; Keep Your Countdown Quiet; Spice Up Your Instructional Game; Dedicate Time to Short, Fun Activities; and Beat the Holiday Stress Through Efficiency.

When the Moon Turned Red-Copper

Those who live in the western parts of the United States and Canada were treated to a full lunar eclipse on December 10^th early in the morning hours. They say that a Red-Copper moon passed through the shadow of the Earth. Because it was a morning eclipse, the moon appeared beautifully magnified as it set on the western horizon behind trees and buildings.  Even if you don’t live in the west, you and your students could have watched the eclipse as it happened by tuning in to NASA’s SpaceWeather. To find out ahead of time about space events, you can subscribe to NASA’s free Space Weather Alerts.

Beyond Cost-Savings: The Benefits of Free (or Low Cost) Software

Shahzad Saeed is a student and author of the ebook, Definitive Guide to Google Summer of Code. In his blog, he helps students with his knowledge of open source software. In Edutopia, he lists what he believes are the benefits of using free or low cost software. With it, as opposed to using corporate software, students can open the door to exploration and learning about the software. Also, there are no imposed upgrades and there is no spying on users; in addition, it provides better security. Saeed says that this type of software is much more user-oriented, has open standards, and if you want to switch to another company’s software, it’s easy to do. You’ll want to read the article to find out more about the social movement to free and low cost software.

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.

TurfMutt is Saving the Planet

Sign up your school today to be eligible for a free environmental program and a $5000 grant to transform your school campus into an eco-friendly green environment. Lucky, the TurfMutt, takes students into a world where they “save” one yard at a time by learning the importance of grass, flowers and trees in every community. The program helps teachers by providing resources such as videos, activities and puzzles for K-5 students. Each school can investigate its own region’s ecosystems by using Lucky’s interactive map. —And don’t forget to sign up for Mutt Mail.

USAC—eRate News

For those of you who have been waiting on funding decisions by USAC (Universal Service Administrative Company), the School and Libraries News Brief of 12/09/11 announced that for the Funding Year 2011, decision letters for Internal Connections and Basic Maintenance at 90% will be going out beginning 12/13/11.   Funding letters for the year 2010 for Internal Connections and Basic Maintenance at all levels will be going out beginning 12/14/11.  Don’t forget, even if you haven’t received your commitment letter for this school year, you’ll need to get started on completing your 470 Form for year 2012. The funding letters are slower to come out this year because the deadline for the 471 forms was in March and because there was a need to recheck applications from the 2010 year for Internal Connections and Basic Maintenance. If you’d like to subscribe to the Schools and Libraries News Briefs, just enter your email address on the USAC site.

Pearson’s Social Studies Apps

Pearson’s Apps for Social Studies received an Award of Excellence from Technology & Learning Magazine. If you teach social studies or are a school administrator or curriculum director, you should take a look at these free Apps, which are available for a limited time. You can pick four Apps from a list that include flash card makers, games, and test prep for American History, World History, Civics, and Economics.  Some of the Apps, like World History, challenge students with over 100 games like “Wacky History” and “Clues to the Past”. Normally the Apps would cost $.99 to download.

LEGO Robotics

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) offers LEGO Robotics, a guide for K-12 teachers. If you’d like to include robotics in your coursework or as a special activity, this book can help get you started. It contains information on what hardware and software you’ll need; resources from LEGO, Robolab, and Mindstorms; how to manage robotics lessons; activity ideas and competitions, connections to learning standards, and much more. There are interviews with teachers who use LEGO Robotics, which will give you ideas about how your can incorporate this STEM learning into your course of studies. If you’ve ever watched students working on robotics projects or in robotics competition, you know how excited these students are about their problem solving to achieve what they want with their robots.

Cassette Tapes? Do You Have Some You’d Still Like to Use?

Do you have some cassette tapes you’d like to keep using in your classroom? Maybe they include some of your favorite songs for young students or perhaps you use them in your foreign language teaching? Some of your aging tapes might contain perfect stories to introduce a literature unit or fun learning for children with special needs or English language learners. When CDs and DVDs took over, you might have had difficulty finding resources like these. The good news is that Califone has come out with a quality product that’s perfect for learning languages as well as for playing those cassette tapes you couldn’t bear to throw away. Called Deluxe Cassette Player/Recorder, it has excellent sound for classrooms and seven built-in headphone jacks for small group learning. If you want to learn more about it, go to the Califone site and watch the video.

Microsoft Partners In Learning

Microsoft and its partners are working on a nearly $500 million program to help teachers improve their teaching. The program includes 114 countries and about nine and a half million educators. Offering professional development through virtual seminars, envisioning workshops, the Partners in Learning YouTube Channel, and the Partners in Learning Facebook page, the program is growing a community of educators who share their experiences and help each other. Join Partners in Learning not only to get help from other professionals, but to share your knowledge as well.