United Classrooms

Image your students connecting with other students not only in their classroom, in their school, in their city, in their state BUT connecting with students around the globe? Image the wealth of knowledge that this connection will provide for your students and the experience they would obtain. United Classrooms, a FREE resource, connects classrooms around the world. Teachers simply sign their class up and students are connected to a secure classroom profile page which enables them to share content with their teacher, classmates, parents and collaborate with classrooms around the world. Go above and beyond the classroom walls and enter in to a world of connectivity. Need inspiration on what United Classrooms can do? View this video and be "wowed"!

United Classrooms from United Classrooms on Vimeo.
The official United Classrooms video. Connect your classroom to the world at UClass.org.

Here's more of what United Classrooms has to offer (taken from uclass.org):

From the classroom profile page, students…

• Dialogue with their classmates, their teachers and students around the world in a continuous feed of thoughts, questions, comments and reflections on current events, homework and other educational topics.
• Message their classmates, teachers and students in other classes to build pen pal relationships, extend learning opportunities, discuss assignments and turn in homework.
• Upload text, images and videos to show where they are from and what they are working on in class.
• Explore other classroom profile pages in their grade level and build relationships with students with diverse backgrounds and learning experiences.
• View and download homework assignments and/or teacher announcements.

From the classroom profile page, teachers…

• Engage students by creating projects, posting homework/announcements, uploading assignments, messaging students and prompting dialogue on the classroom feed.
• Collaborate with other teachers in their community and the world.
• Communicate with parents by posting classroom announcements and information.
• Manage all student content by deleting communication and suspending accounts.
• Use content generated on United Classrooms to springboard lessons and discussions.

From the classroom profile page, parents…

• View announcements, homework and assignments posted by teachers.
• View student projects and posts on their child’s classroom profile page.

Study Like a Champ!

With Study Champs, tutorials make learning easy with animated flipbooks and presentations. Math, English, Science and Social Studies tutorials are readily available via the website but that's just a portion of what this site has available. There are worksheets, interactive activities, fun activities and more.

Snag-gy!

snaggy allows you to paste images straight to the web!

Simply copy an image to your clipboard, then press Ctrl + V. Click the "remix this image" button and you can crop, write, draw and add text. Add several web safe font texts and sizes. Now that's cool.

Internet Essentials

Internet Essentials wants to bring the power of the internet to the homes of students across the country for a very low price. For under 10 bucks a month, students can have access to the world wide web for research and learning.

About Internet Essentials:

Four ways Internet Essentials gets you connected — for less.

While participating in Internet Essentials:

• You get fast home Internet service for only $9.95 a month, plus tax
• You never have any price increases or pay any activation or equipment rental fees
• You can buy a computer at initial enrollment for the low price of just $149.99 + tax
• You can get free Internet training — online, in print and in person

How it works:

How to qualify

To qualify for $9.95 a month Internet service and a low-cost computer, your household must meet all these criteria:

• Be located where Comcast offers Internet service
• Have at least one child receiving free or reduced price school lunches through the National School Lunch Program
• Have not subscribed to Comcast Internet service within the last 90 days
• Not have an overdue Comcast bill or unreturned equipment

How to apply

• Call 1-855-8-INTERNET (1-855-846-8376) to request an application
• We will mail you an application. Complete and return it, along with lunch program documents from your child's school
• We will notify you by mail about the status of your application. Allow 7-10 days for a response

Get SMART!

Check out this easy steps to being SMART when using the SMARTboard. Tech Talk for Teachers has a blog post on Starting Your Day the SMART Way which gives you 21 fabulous ways to Get SMART! Click This to head on over and Get SMART today. Also check out their SMART Resource button in the navigation bar.

Side Note: It made me smile to see they have the same quote on their blog as I do: "If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow." -John Dewey

Teq has an awesome site that links to SMART resource downloads all categorized for you.

Mrs. Meacham's has a really neat site with SMART board resources. Click This to head on over to her page and explore the many resources she has collected.

http://www.jmeacham.com/smart.board.htm

PDFs...Meet Good Notes

For those educators who have embraced Pinterest like I have, if you haven't heard of Good Notes, then hold on to your seat because this little jewel of an app is pretty awesome. As I browsed the education category of Pinterest this weekend, I ran across a pin from a blog of a mother of a four year little girl with special needs. She blogged about how to use Good Notes with PDF files on your iPad. Her Blog entitled "Transferring Worksheets to Your iPad" gives you step by step directions and if you'd like to view the original post, click this. In a nutshell, if you have an iPad, pdf files, a file storage/file sharing app such as Dropbox or Box and the GoodNotes App, you'll need to do following:

1. Gather your pdf files and have them readily available for step number 3

2. Have Dropbox or Box downloaded to your computer

3. Copy and paste your pdf files in Dropbox

4. Open up GoodNotes on your iPad (it's a $3.99 app in the app store but well worth it - try out the FREE veriosion to make sure it's what you want/need)

5. Click the + sign at the top of the screen

6. Open up Dropbox and navigate to PDF file and Open it

7. Enjoy the pdf file by using your finger or a stylus pen to "mark it up"

8. Now say, "that is awesome" :). GoodNotes brings the Love of PDF files to your iPad...sweet!

ClassDojo...Yep, They Have An App!

ClassDojo launched their new mobile app today so now you can use it on you iPod, iPhone or iPad.

What's new with the app?

• The fastest, smoothest ClassDojo experience
• Award multiple students
• Randomly select a student with a shake of your device

Cool, eh? Click This to get the app now. Android version coming soon.

Never Forget 9/11

Today is Tuesday, September 11, 2012. Eleven years ago, America experienced one of the most horrific attacks remembered.

The month was September. The date was the eleventh. The year was 2001. The day was a Tuesday. 

Snippet from Wikipedia: On that Tuesday morning, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets. The hijackers intentionally piloted two of those planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City; both towers collapsed within two hours. The hijackers also intentionally crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and intended to pilot the fourth hijacked jet, United Airlines Flight 93, into the United States Capitol Building^[2] in Washington, D.C.; however, the plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers attempted to take control of the jet from the hijackers. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks, including the 246 civilians and 19 hijackers aboard the four planes.

The official 9/11 Memorial app has been created thanks to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The app is a guide to understanding 9/11 and is based on those who witnessed the events. Due to the nature of the material from in this app, viewer discretion  is strongly advised.

Get the FREE app now, click this.

Pixlr!

Can you say that name fast? It's the most popular online editor in the world according to their website. You get three ways to edit: Advanced, Efficient and Playful. And yep, there's an app for that! And even better than that, you can get the app for Apple and Android. Sweet!

Pixlr not only has online editing tools but a screen grabber as well. In Firefox, you can grab the screen as a webpage and it will load in Pixlr for you to edit and in Chrome, you can grab web parts or the whole page and edit in Pixlr. Click This to go check them out now.

Free Logo Maker

Logos take time and creativity and if you've got both of those, then you're in luck with a free service from Graphic Springs. All you do is choose a logo element, font and color and boom...new logo. Now that is awesome if you are in the market for a fresh school look and you're on a tight budget which most schools are the days. Check it out now and get started o n creating something fabulous!

Elementary School Rules

This morning on my way to the office, I heard a unique song from a little elementary school girl entitled "Elementary School Rules". Her mother, a former educator with Sheldon Independent School District located in Houston, Texas, wrote the song for her daughter, Amaya Hernandez, to sing. Amaya spoke on Houston 97 The Box this morning and stated she has dreams of one day becoming a singer.

Check out this catchy song which details the daily schedule of an elementary kid:

Flocabulary

According to Flocabulary website, it is an online learning platform that delivers educational hip-hop songs and videos to students in grades K-12. Founded in 2004, Flocabulary is now used in over 15,000 schools and reaches a weekly audience of 5 million students. Our mission is to motivate kids and help them reach their full academic potential, not only by raising test scores but by fostering a love of learning in every child

I learned about Flocabulary a while back but my assistant superintendent brought it back to my attention today. Parents and teachers can get a free 14 trial to try it out first to see what all the hype is about.