- A staff that is dedicated to student learning.
- Respectful, responsible students.
- An active Parent/Teacher Organization.
- Student Multi-sensory Approach to Reading (SMART Room)
- Literacy focus at all grade levels.
- Student Council Leaders.
Here are some fun web sites that I haven't quite found their rss feeds to connect them to the protopage.
Create your own comic strip and make your characters talk to each other! Click on the image above, and in the new screen, click on a face to make your character appear in the first frame. Select emotions, and then insert a thought or speech bubble. Enter text to tell your story!
Click on the story ideas and writer prompts tabs at the bottom of the screen for wonderful curriculum ideas. Another great storytelling application for younger students.
BuiLD YourR WILD SeLF is a free data mashup tool sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the New York Zoos and Aquarium. It permits users (no account needed) to create an image, starting with a human form and adding animal parts. The resulting image is shareable.
Think about using this with a story-writing exercise, or a discussion of animal habitats.
Click on the image above, and start building your wild self!
Quizlet allows teachers or students to create online flashcard with as many questions and answers as they would like. Access the flashcard sets online for studying or reviewing subject matter or print out the flashcards for use in class.
Create a group so members can study together and discuss their answers via chat.
Avoid reinventing the wheel by searching for flashcard sets which have already been created. Click here to view the top 100 topics for which flashcards have already been created.
Ed.VoiceThread is a web-based communications network for K-12 students and educators. This online application permits users to create and collaborate on digital stories and documentaries, to explore geography and culture, or to solve math problems,
Ed.VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to leave comments in 5 ways: microphone, phone, text, audio file, or video. With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. Click here for a VoiceThread on "The Networked Teacher."
The application is web-based so requires no special software. A free membership with limited capabilities is offered for free. Other price options are quite inexpensive. Click on the VoiceThread logo above to learn more. In addition, visit the VoiceThread Ning to learn about educational applications for VoiceThread.
Students and/or teachers can use this free application to set a timer for their discussion or group work. The countdown appears on a full screen and a buzzer sounds as an audible reminder that time has run out. Click on the icon above, and in the new screen, set the timer and click "go" to see how it works. No membership required!
Curriki is a wiki created by educators and learners who work together to create quality curriculum materials to help teachers and students around the world. It is the result of work done for the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC).
Classroom 2.0 is a social networking Ning-based community of K-12 educators interested in integrating technology into their classrooms.
Remember The Milk is a free online list-creator which provides users with a robust program to create tasks, prioritize them, categorize them, share them, and embed them in your Google calendar.
When creating a group project for your students, have them create a task list in Remember the Milk.
Learn more by clicking on the Remember The Milk icon above.
Here are some websites that either don't have a rss feed or do and I couldn't find it to insert it into the protopage.
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service whose users communicate with others in text-based posts up to 140 characters in length. Users can choose whose Tweets they wish to follow, and with careful selection, could actually create a powerful professional learning community. Tweets can be sent and received via the Twitter website, via cell phone, or though third-party applications such as Tweetdeck or Twirl which reside on the desktop.
Click here to view a short Commoncraft Video titled "Twitter in Plain English." If you wish to visit the Twitter website, click on the Twitter logo above.
For an excellent overview of the educational aspects of Twitter, view "7 Things You Should Know About Twitter" from Educause.
And finally, check out "25 Ways to Teach with Twitter," just in case you aren't convinced!
Using this free tool designed by Intel for teacher use, students assign order or ranking to a pre-determined list of items. They must explain their reasoning and can compare their choices with others in a visual diagram.
Visual Ranking supports activities where students need to organize ideas, debate differences, and reach consensus.
Click on the Intel icon above to visit the Visual Tools site to explore its contents. For a quick sample of an actual Visual Ranking activity, click here.
General Electric's virtual sketch and collaboration tool permits users to create a sketch, send the sketch to a friend through email or share with a link. Think of it as a free whiteboard which can be shared with others. It was created as a promotion for GE's slogan, "Imagination at Work,", but still finds relevance in the classroom.
Click on the GE icon above, click on the marker, and create a sketch or write a message. Click on Clear if you don't like what you've created. A tool bar offers a choice of shapes, a stamper, lines, and a variety of background themes. From a file button, you can print, send, or add a grid.
Shelfari is an online gathering place for authors, publishers, and readers where you could create your own professional learning community.
Click on the Shelfari image above and in the new screen, select the blue Explore tab to navigate.
As a Shelfari member, you can:
TeacherTube is a free site dedicated to user-provided video content related to teaching. A video could be one of a teacher demonstrating a method, a scientific experiment, or an acted-out conversation between a college admissions counselor and a high school student. Registered users can upload videos and share them with others by tagging them with appropriate descriptors so they are searchable. Click on the icon above to launch the TeacherTube site. In the new screen, enter a topic in the search box of a video you'd like to use in your classroom.
FlowGram permits users to create guided interactive presentations by combining web pages, photos, PowerPoint, and other documents. narrated by recording the author's voice. The presentation is interactive because users can actually click into the links on a web page or view a video on a web page included in the guided presentation.
Teachers could create a lesson using collected web pages, text documents, and photos, and then record a narrative explaining the presentation for students. The Flowgram can be shared via a link or could be embedded in a blog or web page.
Students could create a project using resources collected over the course of a unit of study and share their Flowgram with the class.
Click on the Flowgram icon above, and in the new screen, click on the FlowGram video to learn more. Then, to view an actual FlowGram, click on the green button labeled See Flowgram in Action.
Weebly is a website-building tool which permits the user to create a web page which is hosted by Weebly. Simple to use, it requires no knowledge of HTML code.
Users can choose from a variety of templates, and embed videos, pictures, and maps with a simple click and drag tool. It's easy to add new pages to your website because Weebly automatically creates the link for you. Create a practice page or click on the Weebly icon above to create an account. Then you can begin building a website for your classroom!
BeFunky is a free online tool which permits users to upload a photo from their desktop or online photo storage location such as Flickr or Facebook, add special photo effects available at Befunky, and then save the photo and/or share it with others. BeFunky helps users enhance the look and feel of their blogs, personal websites and profiles on social networking sites. It includes a special tool for creating an avatar.
The BeFunky PhotoEffects allow users to easily create photographically rich and artistic results without any technical knowledge. Just click on an effect and then view the results.
Click on the BeFunky icon above, and in the new screen, view the various Photo Effects as they loop automatically in the center of the screen.
Woogi World is a social networking site for young elementary school children which focuses on teaching them how to interact properly online, and prepares them to become global goodwill ambassadors. Read more about the philosophy behind this website and click on the icon above to tour the site.
Here are some informative websites that I am still working on how to insert them into Protopage
Reading guides for parents
http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/reading/products/praidepar.pdf
http://www.justreadfamilies.org/greatideas/PutReadingFirst.asp
http://www.justreadfamilies.org/greatideas/NCLB.asp
Math