Welcome Guest Bloggers

This is a photo of the SPED 440 Assessing and Diagnosing Reading and Writing Difficulties class I am teaching this semester. These students will be guest blogging on reading assessments, interventions, and technology throughout the upcoming months. I hope you will enjoy their informative posts and get some ideas to incorporate into your classroom.

Online Graphic Organizer Tool

Let the brainstorming begin with bubbl.us!

What is it? Bubbl.us is a simple and free web application that lets you brainstorm online.
Why use bubbl.us? Because you can: create colorful mind maps online, share and work with friends, embed your mind map in your blog or website , email and print your mind map, save your mind map as an image , and it's FREE!

Guest Blog Post-Clay Burrell

Read Clay Burrell's blog about how to incorporate bloggging into the classroom. http://beyond-school.org/2007/11/17/from-the-classroom-blogging-doldrums-what-would-teacher-20-do/

Reading Interventions Website

http://www.freereading.net is an open-source site for free reading interventions for k-3 students. Click on the activities for lessons on everything from phonological awareness to letter naming to reading passages based on the types of words your students know or need to work on. Type "intervention a" into the search bar to find up to 40 weeks of intervention lessons ready to go-select the ones that are appropriate for your students.

What kind of technology user are you?

Where Do You Fit?
Do you cringe when your cell phone rings? Do you suffer from withdrawal when you can't check your Blackberry? Do you rush to post your vacation video to your Web site? The questions below allow you to place yourself in one of the categories in the Pew Internet Project's Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users. To identify the typology group to which you belong, please answer the questions below. When you press the 'Calculate My Results' button, a new page will tell you in which group you fit, along with a description of the general characteristics of that group. Take the quiz here http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/quiz.asp

Free Online Promethean Foundations Skills course

This course can be taken online and is a great introduction to Promethean Boards. You do not need to have a Promethean Board to this skills course.

Level 1 - Foundation Skills course - FREE These courses have been developed to introduce the main features of our Activprimary and Activstudio software. To enroll on one of these courses you first need to create a new account. If you already have an account click here.

Brain Pop-Where Have I Been?

I'm wondering how many of you are already familiar with the Brain Pop website? I found it today while searching for some videos and lessons to use with Promethean Boards, and it is really neat! A subscription is needed, but they have many free videos, quizzes, and resources, and you can get a free trial as well.

BrainPOP creates animated, curriculum-based content that supports educators and engages students. Our award-winning online resources include BrainPOP, for grades 3 and up; BrainPOP Jr., for grades K-3; and BrainPOP Español. Our newest resource, BrainPOP Educators, features free tips, tools, and best practices by and for our teacher community. Ideal for both group and one-on-one settings, BrainPOP is used in numerous ways, from introducing a new lesson or topic to illustrating complex subject matter to reviewing before a test. Content is aligned to state standards and easily searchable with our online state standards tool. All products are fully compatible with PCs, Macs, projectors, and interactive whiteboards. No downloading, installation, or special hardware is required.

Teacher Tube-Video for Spanish Teachers

I know you are loving Teacher Tube as much as I am! I have found that some schools' firewall will block You Tube, but often allows Teacher Tube. Check with your technology administrator for details about your school's firewall. In the meantime, check out these two teachers who have created an AWESOME video about conjugation done to the tune of Justin Timberlake's Sexy Back. You may not know who he is, but trust me, your students do! http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=de9da6da41723b5ab427&page=2&viewtype=&category=

70+ resources for tablet/laptop classroom

Check out this article from Tech & Learning magazine http://www.techlearning.com/article/14480 for over 70 resources for teachers in tablet/laptop classrooms, including ideas for blogs, wikis, digital ink, managing technology, online homework assignments and more. Plus, this article is by a fellow South Dakotan-pretty cool.

Assistive Technology

Teachers have always been required to meet the needs of diverse learners, and now more than ever, those students are being served more and more in the regular classroom. Using assistive technology is one strategy for providing differentiation. The Family Center on Technology and Disability http://www.fctd.info/ provides a great background on assistive technology in their fact sheets, which includes Assistive Tech 101, Assistive Tech and the IEP, and Assistive Tech Laws. Monthly newsletters and family guides for parents are also available in English and Spanish.

It's Science Fair Time!

As the parent of a 6th grader, I am knee deep in a science fair project! Luckily this process started before Christmas, with the students having to get teacher approval for their ideas before the kids could get started. Our supplies have been gathered, a hypothesis formed, and the research has begun. For those of you who haven't started, or are still looking for an idea, go to Steve Spangler's science fair website http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/category/science-fair?utm_source=081231&utm_medium=homepage&utm_content=top25&utm_campaign=image for items that can be purchased or just a list of ideas for projects you might have all the materials for already. FYI-not sure what we learned from the Mentos is the 2 liter pop bottle, but it was a blast on a long winter afternoon! Try it and take a video-you'll be glad you did.

Teaching Social Interaction

Teachers can recognize which students know how to interact appropriately with others and which don't, often within the first few days of the school year. LDonline, a comprehensive website with ideas for working with diverse learners, offers this article http://www.ldonline.org/article/21025 full of ideas for teaching social interaction with those students who struggle in the social and behavioral setting of the classroom.

ESL Lesson Plans and Class Activities

Teachers of English as a Second Language (TESL) publishes a monthly EJ or electronic journal. This link http://iteslj.org/Lessons/ houses over 170 lesson plans and class activities complied from previous issues of the electronic journal. Included are ideas for getting the ESL students involved in classroom activities and groups, articles, and other resources all housed in one web page.

Resources for Tablet PC Users

Teachers looking for new ideas for using their Tablet PCs in presenting content to students can check out http://www.tabletpcpost.com/ TabletPC Post is a directory of over 192 software downloads for use on tablet PCs. Read about the downloads, see them in action, and have access to reviews of each software.

Another presentation software is Classroom Presenter. This is a Tablet PC-based interaction system that supports the sharing of digital ink on slides between instructors and students. When used as a presentation tool, Classroom Presenter allows the integration of digital ink and electronical slides, making it possible to combine the advantages of whiteboard style and slide based presentation. The ability to link the instructor and student devices, and to send information back and forth provides a mechanism for introducing active learning into the classroom and creates additional feedback channels. Find it at http://classroompresenter.cs.washington.edu/