Remind 101

This is a great way to send all your students text reminders about homework, tests or deadlines approaching.  Even better you might want to text your student's parents.  Here is what an educator says about the app,

"Remind101 is a fantastic app - my students do not use it. I teach 2nd grade, but their parents ALL use it. It's changed the way we connect at school. Information is delivered to where the parents 'already are' - on their phones. They don't have to wait for a newsletter or log in to a separate site.  It's fantastic! - Safe, Secure, Easy, Free... YAY!"

Click here to go to their site.

Reaching through the computer screen

A group of 5 engineers from M.I.T. has come up with a way to reach through the computer screen.  Take a look at this amazing video.

Colours Around the World

Since my last post was about Colour here is another post about Colour.  The infographic is from Nowsourcing.  Thanks Larry Ferlazzo.

by NowSourcing.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

What Colours Communicate

Are you making some slides for a presentation or other visual project?  Well maybe you might want to read Dustin Stout's blog by clicking here or look at the summary below.

 

From , Larry Ferlazzo writes about the Cultural Significance of Colour which can be seen by clicking here.

Great Canadian Geography Challenge

This competition is open to students up to grade 10.  You might want to enter your class in this.  To see more information click here.

USGS Secondary School Resources

The US Geological Survey has a ton of resources available for teachers and students.  Clicking on their Secondary School link they cover such topics as: Biology, Climate Change, Ecosystems, Geography, Map Teaching Resources, Topographic Maps,  Map Tools and Satellite Imagery.  Some of the lesson plans include "27 Ideas for Teaching with Topographic Maps", which can be seen by clicking here.  To see their Seconday School link, click here.

Bonjour Paris

For your Travel and Tourism class or French class take a look at

From their website, "Bonjour Paris is the Guide to Paris and France from the top insiders in Paris. Join now and uncover all the hidden secrets most American tourists will NEVER discover about Paris."  To view their website click here.

Reading Comprehension with Science Passages

From their site, "ReadWorks provides research-based units, lessons, and authentic, leveled non-fiction and literary passages directly to educators online, for free, to be shared broadly."

Even though this website is for elementary school, the new grade 8 material would work in the high school Science and English classrooms.  Registration is free and there is a myriad of material for teachers.  There are 12 new grade 8 passages in science to teach reading comprehension.  Such passages as "Wetlands and Habitat Loss", "A Bird with Many Beaks" and "Everyday Compound or Poison", to name a few.  Included with these passages are some multiple choice questions and an extended response question.  Also included are solutions.

To go to ReadWorks click here. The new Grade 8 Science passages can be found here. The following video explains readworks but is a couple of years old when it was just K-6.

Intro to ReadWorks from ReadWorks on Vimeo.

Correlation and Causation

If you teach math and correlation coefficients is one of your topics the following might be for you.  This one is from XKCD

The following is from Dilbert

Now if you teach a stats based course like Data Management the following videos show some of the above concepts and more through dance.  Yes I said dance.  The first one is on Correlation.

This one is on Frequency Distribution.

This one is on Sampling and Standard Error

This one is on Variance.

More JFK stories

The most iconic picture of the whole JFK assassination to me was little John-John's saluting his dad's casket.

What I did not know was that John Jr turned 3 that day.  See a couple stories here.

Google's Best Managers

A tweet from The Harvard Biz Review that I thought fit with the job interview infographic I posted today.

Read into this anyway you would like.  Maybe this applies to teachers or other people in the education industry and maybe it does not.  What do you think?

Job Interview Infographic

Do you have a job interview in the near future?  Take a look at this infographic.

by NowSourcing.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

Azendoo for collaborative tasks

If you have or assign group work then this might be for you.  Azendoo lets you organize all your online apps like google drive, dropbox and evernote in one online site.  Members of teams can send reminders to each other about collaborative tasks.  See the video below.

Azendoo : Online to-do list & collaborative task management solution from Azendoo on Vimeo.

To go to their site click here.

John F. Kennedy - 50th Anniversary of his Assassination

Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  There has been much hoopla leading into this anniversary.  Movies, TV specials and books have come out lately.  NBC has a site on JFK.  You can see it by clicking here.  Tomorrow at 9PM they will be running a show at 9 PM.  They have been running some stories and posting them here.

You may want to look at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum to see their interactive exhibit.  Click here.

The CBC has an interactive post on their website about JFK.  To see it click here.  They were suppose to run a documentary on The National on this past Monday night but the Mayor Ford of Toronto interview was put on instead.  What a fiasco that is.

The Washington Post also has an interactive post on their website.  To see it click here.

The National Geographic has an interactive post comparing the lives of JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald.  To see it click here.

The Dangers of Smoking

We all know smoking is bad, right.  Here are some resources that you might be able to use in a Health class.
You could play the Longevity Game to see how long you might live.  Sure it is probably not accurate but it gets the point across.  To see the site click here.  The Wall Street Journal did an article to show some of the flaws in the calculators that are out there.  To see this article click here.

The following infographic could make a nice poster for your classroom.  Go to Staples or Quicksigns or Vistaprint etc to get one made.  The website that this came from also has many links and a Cost of Smoking Calculator.  To see the site click here.

by bayouki.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

Social Networking Safety For Parents

Just thought some of you parents might be interested in this presentation.

Bridging World History

These classroom resources are organized into 26 thematic units.  Each unit includes a video about 28 minutes long (perfect for our school).  Each unit also includes a pdf with unit activities.  There is also a "content overview" for each unit that lays out AP themes and Big Questions for the unit.  This website is made possible by 

To see the website click here.

World Toilet Day

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for pointing out that today is World Toilet Day.

To see their site, click here.

Citing

"Why We Cite" is a short video on citing.  At the moment it does not allow embedding so you can watch it by clicking here and going to the youtube page.  Here are a few websites to help you with citing:
Bibme

Citationmachine

Cite This For Me

EasyBib

Knight Cite

OttoBib

What is Plot?

Here is an anchor chart I made a zoom.it from.  It originally came from Katie Klohn which can be found by clicking here.

Funderstanding Roller Coaster.

The Funderstanding Roller Coaster is a free game where you add loops and hills and set different initial conditions like speed and mass to see if you can make the roller coaster stay on the tracks, not fall off the loops and finish the course.  To see this site, click here.

Forensic Science

Are you or your students interested in Forensic Science?

There are a couple of great sites to check out.  The first is from the Smithsonian Channel.  It is the Catching Killers game.    Click here to see the webpage.

You can click here to see the  webpage by David Andrade.  There are a ton of links relating to Forensic Science.



The CSI Experience is produced by CBS, Rice University and a few others.  It is an educational web game that has 5 levels in increasing order of difficulty.  Check it out by clicking here.

Educational Leaders who have never taught

Not trying to say anything but I am not trying to run the fire department either. Some are doing good though. To see this click here.  Another interesting article can be found here about Texas Superintendents.  Why do you teach?  This is an interesting and inspiring blog.  To see it click here.

Geography Awareness Week

Geography Awareness Week is November 17 -23 and you can check out National Geographic's website by clicking here.  They have also archived their Geographic Awareness Week material going back to 2000.  You can see that by clicking here.  

Here are some activities that I have posted about in the past:

Geosense - posted on November 19 2012 - click here.

Overlap Maps - posted on December 5 2012 - click here.

Creatively Simple Ways to Teach Geography - posted on March 6 2013 - click here.

Mission Map Quest - posted on April 17 2013 - click here.

GeoGuessr - posted on November 13 2013 - click here.

Search for Data with Google Docs

On November 11 2013, Google announced the addition of data tables in the Research drop down menu. Click here to see this announcement. Let say I am creating a lesson or if I am a student writing an essay on WWII and I decide I need to get some data on death rates during the war.  I could look to the internet or my librarian or better  yet use a data base that our board subscribes to (see the librarian) or even use the many databases available through the Windsor Public Library (see me) or I could follow this post.

To use this, first go to google docs by going here.

Click on "Create".  You will then get a drop down list.  You can now select "Document".

From here you can now select "Tools"

Select "Research".

Now select "Tables" (you could select the other choices to get other types of information).  By doing this you will now be able to obtain data.

Now I can enter the data item I am looking for.  In my example it is World War 2 deaths.

You can now scroll through the data.  Again some of this data might be bogus as it is from various websites.  However you can scroll through most of them and see if there is any patterns.  If you would like to copy and paste one into your document, just mouse over it and select "Preview"

If you like this table you can now just highlight it and then copy and paste it into your google doc.  You can now edit the tables by making the columns wider etc.  When you are done you can publish your document to the web easily by selecting "File" and "Publish to the web".

According to David Doherty, "there are several benefits to publishing a Doc over merely sharing it: Publishing a Google Doc it is viewable (but not edit-able) by an unlimited number of people; it is accessible by URL;  it can be embedded into a website or blog; it can be automatically updated as the Doc is edited, or can be a “one time snapshot” of the Doc.  To publish a Google Doc, go to the file menu and find the “Publish to the web” button at the bottom and follow instructions."

Jobs of a Teacher

From a tweet from coolcatteacher.  Have a great weekend.

Classmint

Classmint is a free online website that allows teachers/students to make flashcards or notes.

These interactive notes can include pictures and annotations that can be folded and unfolded.

 Classmints notes are designed to follow the Cornell Notes format.

To go to their website click here.