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:

YouTube for Schools

Is YouTube blocked in your school/district? Want to show an awesome video to your students but can't because it's on YouTube. Wondering about what workarounds you can use? There's a service from YouTube that's caters just to the educational world. Bring the power to your classroom for free and access free high quality videos on YouTube in a controlled environment.

First learn about it here (get the FAQ's), then contact your administrator to set up your Google Account if you school/district does not already have it.

Let's Chill!

 Wanna CHILL and watch your favorite videos all in one online place where you ave easy access to your own CHILL page. Well with Chill, a free service for creating and sharing collections of your favorite videos, you can do just that! With support for YouTube, Vimeo, VEVO, and Hulu, you'll love your new "chill" spot on the web.

As a teacher, I think it would be great to have instructional videos all in one place. You can add categories too. Here's my new chill spot but it video-less...for now. I'm looking forward to adding video and chilling.

Watch Know Learn...Just Got Even Better!

Just a day ago, I briefly mentioned WatchKnowLearn as I blogged about a wonderful FREE product available for educators and parents to use to assist with phonics learning. Today as I browsed a couple of blogs that I adore, I ran across the post from Richard over at Free Technology 4 Teachers on WatchKnowLearn Classroom pages. It's a service where you can set up a page on the WatchKnowLearn site and direct your students to that page and you decide what videos appear there (there are over 30,000 to choose from and you can add more for approval). The layout can be edited, you can edit the color theme and add your logo for example, and you can set up classroom accounts for your students to login.

I must say it took a moment to get it going but really, it's fairly simple. I suggest looking at the Getting Started Video. You will have to have your account approved to get the classroom edition but it took about 10 minutes for me to receive the confirmation email and there are 2 (one to let you know they received your application and one to confirm your account). The video tutorial gives a few pointers because the setup can be a little tricky. Even Richard said it didn't work for him but I kept at it and got it to work. Patience, patience. I switched over to Google Chrome from Firefox after it gave me more trouble than I felt like dealing with and that helped but then I switched again to Internet Explorer because I still had some trouble and it worked perfect. It could be the server where I am so I suggest switching browsers if you run into trouble.

I added videos so I could take a snippet of what my page looks like for you to view. I'm totally excited about this resource. I see great promises!

Once again, click this for the video tutorial, click this for the main site to set up an account (make sure you get the contest account) and click this to see/visit my classroom page. Enjoy! I know I will.

YouTube has tons of educational videos to teach concepts in the classroom. I found this neat little tube video on what animals need. Catchy song will grab students attention and teach them what animals need at the same time. Share your favorite YouTube video for the classroom by simply sending me a quick email.

[youtube=[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2fRMhYP5n8&w=640&h=360]]

Educators need to watch this video by this talented kid.