lifelong learning from dol.gov  

 

“Learning is not achieved by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” – Abigail Adams

 
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[This was a Professional Development presentation I did several years ago]

Welcome to yet another Wednesday afternoon - Technology for Teachers!

Did you know that there is an on-line social network for math and science
teachers?

MSP2 is the Middle School Portal2 for Math and Science Pathways.

I'm still new there, and there is so much to find that it can be daunting.

  • There are several groups that you can join, depending on your interests.
  • There are a LOT of blogs
  • I particularly like Sarita Pillai's blog, as she always has interesting and useful entries.

Are you interested in cross-curricular resources?

I put this in my blurb, but really, everything I'm going to show you today is cross-curricular.

How can we make homework more meaningful?

I came across this via MSP2. An article described flipping your classroom - the students watch a video or screencast about the forthcoming lesson for homework, so that the lesson time itself can be spent on practicing and understanding. A related site on vodcasting provides practical help. You don't have to use it for homework - I am using it for lessons, as my class is self-paced, and also that students can go back and refresh their memories. This is one of my lessons.

Did you know that there is a symphony based on pi?

I found this on 10minutemath, a most amazing web site that I can get totally lost in (in a good way). I really love the symmetry alphabet book, which you can buy on lulu.com (I love lulu.com too, they have the most amazing books on paper sculpture and all sorts of beguiling topics.)

What free technology resources are available?

Oh, where to start ........?

First, there is www.freetech4teachers.com , another site which traps you for long periods of time. A great section here is the list of all-time most popular posts, which includes a section on four free tools for creating screencasts. There are several links about building a social network for your school - sounds interesting. [Added summer 2012 - the County is encouranging us to use Edmodo and Symbaloo.]

Teachers First is just an amazing resource for all sorts of on-line material. They used to send me emails with interesting sites every week - I'm not sure why they stopped.

This is really cool if you use Blackboard or any on-line component in your course: Thinglink , where you can annotate on-line images and send them to others or embed them in your web page.

I know that there are WAY too many blogs to keep up with, but ScienceGeekGirl has a lot of interesting stuff!

Don't reinvent the wheel - there are a ton of webquests and resources for integrating technology into the classroom at Dr. B's On-line lessons and resources.

And now, bringing out the pedant in me, I'd like to show you the Society for Promotion of Good Grammar!

 

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