I FOUND A GOLDMINE!

I did. It's called Tammy's Technology Tips for Teachers.

It is put together by one Tammy Worcester. It is full of links for all kinds of cool links. I haven't had a chance to look at it all but I saw a lot of creative math and reading links. I already have a couple of new ideas to try in my classroom and I just started looking at her site.

She has a tab called Tech Tip of the Week and another called Ideas and Activities you should check out.

If you find an idea that works (or doesn't) for you, hit the comment button and share your experience.

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

I teach fifth grade and our class has a class blog. It is called "The Skinny". As I was typing today's post to that blog I though that you might like to know this stuff too. When you are done reading this entry please hop on over to our class blog and check it out.

I haven't confirmed this yet but I just got an email that says that on Monday, August 27th (at 12:30) there will be two moons in the sky.

Well, not two moons . What you will see is our moon and the planet Mars.

Mars is traveling very close to our home planet and it will only be 35 million miles away and although seems like a long ways off, and it is, its going to look pretty big in the sky.

The neat thing about this is that it is not going to happen again until the year 2287. No one alive now will be alive then to see it.

Soooooooooooooo, don't miss out on the chance of a lifetime.

Can anyone tell me why Mars is called the Angry Red Planet?

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> HOW NOT TO POWERPOINT

PowerPoint can be a great tool to use in the classroom. It can also be easily abused. I know because I've done it. I've shown kids lessons with 20-40 slides in it. I couldn't figure out why they were falling asleep during my amazing PowerPoint show. I now use Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule whenever I put a PowerPoint presentation together. Although Guy's main focus is marketing his rational works for teachers as well.

Don McMillian has put together a funny video to show you some the of the perils of using PowerPoint.

> NAME IN LIGHTS

They say everyone craves their 60 seconds of fame. Well now you and your kids can have yours. This is a neat little program called Name in Lights. It allows you to put your name up on a billboard. I used it to start my daily blog. How might you use it in your classroom?

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> Truth Happens

"Despite the ignorance, ridicule and opposition… truth happens."


What a cool piece of video. This is an old Linus ad. Linux and Bill Gates have been at odds with each other for a long time. You can google that story up if you are interested.

I intend to use this with my fifth graders as an introduction to our Civil Rights study. You can use it in science class when your talking about inventing.

Anyone else see a place for it in their curriculum?

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SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM

No, not that kind of spam, I am think more the Monty Python type of SPAM. Enjoy this easy little game.

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Tips for Starting School

This post was going to be full of great ideas for getting your school year off to a great start. I had all kinds of neat ideas to share with you. But last night I was cruising the Cool Cat Teacher Blog and discovered Vicki had already written about it. Actually she wrote three great articles about starting school off with a bang so I'm just going to quit talking her and let you check it out.

Setting the Pace
Establishing the Flow
Create the Plan

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