TWO NEW SITES

As I was cruising around the web searching for something to try with my students I came across two sites you might want to check out.

The first is called the Carrot Clustering Engine. According to it's blurb it:

... will search the Web with www.etools.ch and automatically organize the results into thematic categories

I typed in "vikings" and it did a pretty good job of sorting things out.


Another site I checked out is called Awesome Stories. According to it's blurb:

Enjoy an interactive learning experience as you see thousands of hand-selected and relevant links to pictures, artifacts, manuscripts, documents and other primary sources, IN CONTEXT, within each story. The first eight chapters of every story are available to all.

I was kind of impressed. I clicked on a link called Beowulf-The Story Behind The Movie and read all about the early history of Britain and the events that led to that fateful meeting between two foes. Then I discovered a button to click on and listen as someone with a beautiful voices read it to me.

They have dozens of awesome stories from the past for you to check out.

#

LEARNING IS MESSY

I have to share with you one of my favorite blogs. It is called Learning is Messy and is written by Brian Crosby a fifth grade teacher at Agnes Risley School in Sparks, Nevada. I love the title. It's perfect.

He a man after my own heart. I think we think a lot alike. The only difference is he's doing things I have only thought about doing. He does all kinds of cool things with his class. They don't always work and lately some interesting things have been happening in wonderful world of education in Nevada in general and his classroom specially ( You will have to read his post to find out what I am alluding to.) but he keeps on truckin.

You need to check his blog out. I think its one of the best. The post I am linking to here is about an idea he had that's both hi-tech and low tech. He has his kids using reading tubes to proofread their online stories. Check out the details. I tried it with my class and it is working great.

#

DINOUSAURS ANYONE?

This is the third time I've written this post. I found a fun site about dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum in the UK. I was going to share this game I found and tell you more about the site in general but the more time I spent on site the more cool stuff I found and the more I had to rewrite this post.

I found a lot of information, pictures, videos, and games here. I started with a game called WHAT KIND OF DINOSAUR ARE YOU? and ended up using the DINO DIRECTORY to scope out T-Rex.


The site is a great resource for teachers and students alike. Check it out.

A LOOK BACK

Well, I think its time for me to take a look back and see where this blog has been and what its future might be.

When I first started blogging here I had no real goal in mind. I was looking for a place to share videos and sites I can't share on my classroom blog because they are blocked out. Sometimes I understood why they were blocked and sometimes I had no clue. But there is a lot of cool stuff out there and I wanted a place to put it until I could use it. I think thats why I started blogging here.

And I pretty much have been using it for that. I've shared all kinds of ideas and tools to try in the classroom. Most of them I have used myself. I also added a few fun sites and videos of things I have found.

I stayed away from turning this blog into a discussion type site. There are lots of others who do it far better than me. You can check them out in one of my sidebars.

I am somewhat disappointed in the lack of comments from people reading my blog. I have had only three comments since I started. One from someone not happy with the blog, one from my wife defending me, and one from me to me.

So after mulling it over a bit I have decided not only to keep writing but to try to get something up at least twice a week. We will see how it goes.

:)

Picture Trail

Here is the latest new tool you can put in your learning tool bag. It's just one of about 35 effects you can do with you classroom photo's. I have just started using this on my class bog and already the kids want more.

It's from Picture Trail. Picture Trail is one of the many online picture album places you can join nowadays to store, view, and print your pictures. It's the only one I found so far that has a bunch of different ways to share your pictures. You can put them on a rotating cube, a fancy sideshow, or any one of a dozen or two different presentation models.

I am going to start putting up some pictures of my class on my blog every couple days using Picture Trail. I am already thinking of all the different ways to integrate it with reading, writing, and social studies.

EXTREME DINOSAURS

This month's National Geographic is all about extreme dinosaurs. It's a great article and you and your students will enjoy it. They also feature a great photo gallery, most bizarre dinos, wallpapers, and dino puzzles.

#

JC PENNY

Enjoy. This is from JC Penny.