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.

Stars, Birds, Chords, Puzzles

Netted by the Webbies has announced its six favorite iPad apps, three of which may be useful in your classroom.  Star Walk ($4.99) is called “awesome” and “fantastic”—a perfect way to learning about the night sky. It is available in English, Chinese, Russian and several other languages.  Karajan®Pro-Music & Ear Trainer ($9.99) helps train ears to ”recognize intervals, chords, scales, pitch, tempo (bmp) and key signatures with detailed statistics.” Audubon Guides – A Field Guide to Birds, Mammals, Wildflowers, and Trees ($29.99) helps with identification and with keeping bird and nature lists.

YoungArts National Competition

Until October 14, 2011, applications may be submitted to the 2012 YoungArts National Program, which honors artistically talented high school seniors and recent graduates for their work in the visual, literary, and performing arts. The program features $500,000 in awards, all-expense paid trips to Miami for YoungArts Week Finals, Master Classes with world-renowned artists, Presidential Scholars in the Arts nominations, network contacts, and scholarship list services.

How to Get Teachers Involved with Tech

Some teachers love technologies and find all sorts of wonderful ways to enhance their courses with computers, other digital devices and media. They are constantly learning about new ways to use tech in their teaching and are eager to tell others about their successes. Others are slower to adapt and seem hesitant to get involved with hardware and software given to them for their use. Years ago, after purchasing what I thought was a particularly wonderful (and expensive) software product for my teachers, I learned that every educator wasn’t going be enthusiastic about what I thought was perfect for their classrooms. The expense was a waste of money. From that experience, I learned two things: (1) that as the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow Study noted, you have to be patient with teacher adoption of technologies, and (2) you have to work with your teachers to find out what types of technologies will work for them and their preferred methods of teaching. In other words, wait until they are ready, while perhaps giving a little push by discussing with them what technologies they could and couldn’t use. Tech only works in classrooms if teachers want to use it. As for that software that no one used—this year there was a request that we purchase that product—a new version, of course. For more on getting teachers to use technology, see Teaching with Technology.

Learn More About Google’s Offerings

Everyone’s talking about Google Docs and how they are useful and economical for our classrooms. Google’s place to start you off right provides you with information about creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations online; sharing and collaborating; safely storing and organizing work, and controlling who can see documents. You might want to take some time to experiment with Google collaboration in action by watching the collaboration demo for documents, spreadsheets and drawing. Google also offers videos that may be helpful in learning how to use Google sites and Docs, understanding Google Chrome, etc. There are Google Webinars as well that you may want to take advantage of.  Check them out at the Google Resource Center.

Would Online Courses Save Your School Money?

To ease budget problems, Ridge High School in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, will eliminate one of its instructional periods. Students, however, will be able to sign up for online courses and earn credits after successful completion of the courses. They can select from about 3000 courses, but have to have approval from the school administration to sign up. Fees of from about $200-$500 will be charge for taking each online course. One school administrator estimates that about 10% of the school’s 1700 students will choose to expand their studies with these courses. For its online courses, Ridge subscribes to the Virtual High School Global Consortium. To learn more about the Virtual High School experience, take a look at a Day in the Life on the Virtual site.

PBS Teacher Innovation Awards

If you are an innovative teacher, you’ll want to apply for a PBS Innovation Award. Twelve teachers from different subject areas and grade levels will be selected to attend a week-long “Innovation Immersion Experience” at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan from July 31 to August 5, 2011. Each winner will also receive a wireless SMART Slate™ and a free PBS professional development course. Thirty-six other teachers will also receive prizes from PBS, and all 48 selected will be invited to partner with PBS and local PBS stations as leaders in classroom innovation. To enter, you’ll need to join PBS Teachers (It’s free.), share your innovative ideas through a video, and complete the application before March 31, 2011. Make sure to read the instructions about uploading of video larger than 3M.

Arts for School Improvement

It was obvious to the new principal of Ron Brown Academy that something had to be done to improve student performance, but Celeste Douglas knew that she had to find a way to engage her students first.  Working with the Center for Arts Education School Arts Support Initiative and with outside grants, she and her staff created spaces for arts courses. In Grade 6 students experience a variety of arts disciplines and at the end of the school year, select their “art major” for Grades 7 and 8. Friday afternoons are devoted to arts, and all of the arts classes are used to reinforce learning throughout the curriculum. Principal Douglas says that after adding the arts curriculum, attendance and test scores improved and parents became more involved.  In a time, when schools are cutting back on arts programs because of budget problems, the Ron Brown Academy is headed in the other direction.

Better Web Searching with Power Words

Here’s a new way for you and your students to search for information online. It’s called SortFix, and it works with computers, iPads, and iPhones. What SortFix does is to help pinpoint the best keywords to use in searches and also to help eliminate by keyword sites that don’t fit a search. The application works by giving you “Power Words” that you can place in “baskets” such as “Add to Search” and “Remove”. You move the “Power Words” into the baskets to help you better specify what type of sites you’d like to find. To learn more, go to SortFix and watch the demo about picking the perfect house pet. You might also want to watch the YouTube video about using SortFix to find a homemade ice cream recipe and use these tips.

Sing and Learn Languages

Recorded Books K-12 now offers Sing and Learn, a unique series of books and CDs designed to make foreign language learning easy. The products ($20.75 each), which feature languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, French, Italian, and German,use pictures and songs to make learning fun. The Sing and Learn Arabic!, for example, teaches through pop and jazz with the Arabic instruments oud, qanoun, and ney and includes the following themes: colors, greetings, animals,  parts of the body, seasons, foods, Arabic countries, and Arabic musical instruments. After working with these recorded books, your students may want to make their own audio or video recordings using the target language.  With a flip video camera or a recorder, they can input their work into the computer and share it in digital format.