Teach for America

I’m sure that most of you have heard of the Teach for America program. It seems like an awesome thing – benefits for those who are willing to commit to a struggling location and teach for a certain number of years. But how do teachers feel about this program? I found one opinion on this blog, and I found it interesting…

The blog post is called “Teach for Stable Employment“. What is your opinion?

For more information about the Teach for America program, visit their site at http://www.teachforamerica.org.

Teacher Tap — Into Resources!

This site is a great resource for teachers. It has a list of interactive websites for fun activities and games. Not only that, but it breaks up the list into different categories by specific subjects so it makes your searching even quicker. I would suggest this website as an awesome time saver for teachers. Check it out by clicking HERE.

Let it Snow!

Make sure you check out the snow falling on my blog screen! If you want to do the same on your blog, follow these instructions…

1. Go to your Dashboard.
2. Under Appearance on the left hand side, click Extras.
3. Check the box next to the option that allows falling snow on your blog screen.

And just so you know… the snow will automatically stop on January 4th.

ABC-ya!

This site is a great interactive site for elementary students. There are all sorts of educational games for them to play and as of right now, there are even Holiday games!!! I would definitely recommend letting students have some fun with these games… I tried a few myself and I had fun, so I’m sure that they would too!

Click HERE to go to the site!

Again… Higher Demands of Education

I just posted a video about how the world is changing, but yet education doesn’t seem to be changing with it. This video expresses that same concern, but in a different, more personal way. Not only that, but instead of focusing on how education is not preparing students for the workforce of today’s world, it focuses on students and their need to be engaged. I really enjoyed this…

Higher Demands of Education

I thought this was an interesting video about how the world is changing. It suggests that education needs to change with it in order to adequately prepare students… What do you think?

Photo Discussions

Lately, I have been having a great time experimenting with different online presentation and discussion options. I had never realized that there were SO many options other than PowerPoint. The latest one that I have tried is called VoiceThread.

In the classroom, VoiceThread would be a way for students to actively discuss photographs. The teacher could post a slideshow of photos and the students could discuss them online. Students, with an account, can choose to record a comment or type a comment that they might have. They can also web chat with other students about the photos.

The best part about VoiceThread is that the basic version (which is all that a classroom would need) is absolutely free. So… go to voicethread.com to try it out yourself!!!

REAL Christmas Spirit

So, now is the time that everyone begins to Christmas shop, which is how I stumbled across this really cool site. Tom’s Shoes is an online shoe store, but with an interesting twist. For every pair of shoes that you buy, Tom’s Shoes gives a pair of new shoes to a child who needs them. In my opinion, that would be considered REAL Christmas spirit… and as Tom’s Shoes calls it, it’s one for one!

Donate to the cause yourself, and get a pair of pretty cool shoes —->Tom’s Shoes

picture from www.tomsshoes.com

I did it!

In a presentation about presentations, Dr. Pownell introduced me to several different options for presentations. Typically, people use PowerPoint to present with, but to me, that that can become really boring and overdone. One of the alternate options that Dr. Pownell offered was an online presentation creator called Prezi. For a recent assignment about education, I created a Prezi to express my opinions. I would definitely encourage everyone to at least check it out because it is fun and free.

Click here to try Prezi yourself!

To give you an idea of what a Prezi looks like, here is an example of a presentation that I made. Click HERE to see my Foundations Presentation.

teAchnology

I found this site (Teachnology) and I thought it was a great online teacher resource. It contains all sorts of lessons, rubrics, tools, and more that teachers are free to use.