Staying Actively Engaged - Public

Voila! Systems and Life Cycles--A Perfect Place to Start

Debby Acevedo — Fri, 7 Aug 2009 19:09:59 -0400

Sometimes it's hard to find a good educational website that gives you the comfortable feeling that you can just let your students explore, knowing that they're bound to learn something in the process. Voila! I have the perfect spot for you--Lincoln Park Zoo, Z.E.B.R.A Online. Start with the Students' Home Room where students in grades 3-5 have a variety of options, all of them dealing with animals in some way. But wait! This isn't your usual encyclopedic information source. This one deals with adaptations, ecosystems, and generally shows the ways that we are interconnected with all of nature. Students can play games that aren't just edutainment, listen to interviews with zoo experts, and check out the animal stories that make students read, think, and make choices. Everything is interactive and engaging. I also visited their list of links to other sites—all informative and safe. Take a look at this great website and make a note to use it in your upcoming lesson plans!

When Was Your First Time?

Debby Acevedo — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:49:43 -0400

My first year of teaching was a struggle, I student taught in the mornings and had special certification to teach classes in the afternoon. What a year! When April rolled around and I thought that my learning curve was finally becoming manageable, I was called into the principal's office. It seems that teachers were required to have a certain number of professional development hours per year, and I being a newbie who didn't begin the school year with other teachers, wasn't aware. But the principal did have an idea; a new computer store was offering an introduction to basic computer use. So I found myself on an April Saturday morning earning professional development credit and learning how to use an Apple IIe. This was my first time--April 1982.

Resources for Keyboarding--QWERTY Style

Debby Acevedo — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:08:19 -0400

Take a look at any standard keyboard, and you’ll see its name spelled on the top letter row—QWERTY. These keyboards were designed in 1875 by Christopher Sholes and Amos Densmore who wanted to keep the most commonly used keys separated so that the typewriter’s bars would come from different directions and wouldn’t jam together. Since that time others such as Dvorak have attempted to rearrange the letters on keyboards to avoid hand fatigue because they are no longer dependent on the clacking type bars, but with little luck. Typists learned the unusual keyboard, and to this day continue to use the same configuration built for a need that no longer exists.

Next Best Thing to Being There--Panoramas.dk--A Virtual Vacation

Debby Acevedo — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:34:57 -0400

Where would you like to be right now? Perhaps you'd choose Ayers Rock in Australia, the Great wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome, Monte Carlo, Mount Everest, a gondola tour in Venice, Hawaii's Kahana Valley State Park, the tomb of Ramses IX, a BMX dirt jump in New York, or even the Weiner Dog Races. Panoramas.dk offers some of the world's best virtual reality photograpy weekly in a full screen feature, especially effective in a large presentation mode as in classrooms with interactive whiteboards or shown from a projector.

Archives contain more than 600 full screen panoramas published since February 2002. Load panoramas directly from the drop-down menus, or use the search feature to find specific locations or events. Be sure that QuickTime is loaded on your machine before attempting to view these awesome sites, and give plenty of time for the photos to load.

Become TappedIn

Debby Acevedo — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:21:23 -0400

Educator seeking other educators with ideas and expertise. Desires professional growth. No cash investment.

Who steps up to answer this ad? An online community of teachers helping teachers, TappedIn provides teachers in K-12 as well as higher education groups a site for professional development online, and it’s completely free—no trial period, always free.

Over 20,000 members have participated in this cooperative group for educators since its start online in 1997. Bringing together people from all over the world, TappedIn provides a home for teachers who want to interact professionally with others beyond their schools and districts. Members can attend activities hosted by education organizations, conduct their own discussions, participate in online courses, and expand their professional networks.

A Voyage of Discovery (Education)

Debby Acevedo — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:55:08 -0500

So we’re heading toward the final phase of school . . . the countdown mode. It seems that the better the weather gets the more of their attention we lose. How can we keep their (and our) interest from leaving the port? One answer is to let them go; take a voyage with them to discover new ways to learn and engage minds.

Most of you have used Discovery Education streaming videos in your classrooms already. You know how to log in, and you search for video segments that supplement your lessons. What you may not know, however, is that DE offers more than just video streaming, and there are some exciting ways to apply these resources.

1st grade TeacherMates pilot project

Debby Acevedo — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:05:43 -0500

Selected first grade students learn math and reading skills using handheld TeacherMates at Bluebonnet and Caldwell Heights elementaries.

Rules--They're a Good Thing

Debby Acevedo — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:38:28 -0500

Are you tired of wasting time deleting junk from your email box at work? Here’s a way to make your Lotus Notes work smarter for you, saving time and organizing your mail automatically.

At your Inbox screen, you’ll want to start by creating a folder called Junk or something like that, but not ‘Messages from Debby’. To do this, click the Folder button, New folder, and give it a name.
Next, on the left-hand directory tree for your Mail application, click on Tools (below Folders), and then Rules.
Choose the New Rule button.
The 'Create condition' field will default to 'sender contains'. You will now type in the blank field the name of the sender you want to junk. Be careful. You do not want to put in a sender name that could block the mail from a parent or other district employee now or in the future.
Click the Add button.
Under 'Specify Actions', leave ‘move to folder’ and then use the Select button to choose your new Junk folder.
Click the Add Action button, then OK at the bottom of the screen.
You may repeat this process for as many senders and conditions as you wish.

Remember to check your Junk folder from time to time and delete the contents on a regular basis. Notice I said to check the messages before deleting because you need make sure there’s nothing important that was accidentally junked. Note: Did you see that I did not suggest that you use the delete option under specify actions? Please only delete messages manually, and don’t set your machine to do it for you. You do not want to be responsible for missing important email messages because it somehow fell into a rule you created for deletion.

Kinder students use laptops

Debby Acevedo — Wed, 7 Jan 2009 15:20:06 -0500

Are You Smarter Than an Elementary Student?

Debby Acevedo — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 16:53:31 -0500

We all hope to be able to easily answer a resounding YES to this question. After caring for my grandson for a week this past holiday, however, I'm not even sure that I'm smarter than a 2 year old!

Wouldn't it be fun to let students test others on what they've been learning in your class? Now it's easy to do with a FREE online application called Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere is completely online, so there's no installation necessary. You will set up an account (do not set up accounts for students, please), and the screen will prompt you to complete the multiple choice question for polling in easy on-screen steps. Participants will have the opportunity to answer questions by web, text message, or SmartPhone, but with the free application you will be limited to 30 responses for each question. Each time you log on, you will be taken to your poll page with a link to the polls you've created. You can edit, clear results, close, or delete a poll any time you choose, and the results are downloadable to Excel where you can make graphs and charts with your students or use the data in other ways. Let me know if you'd like help with this part. Even easier, the application will create a graph for you, and by clicking on a link at the right side of the page, it will create a PowerPoint slide for you with the graph that you can save to your files--so cool!