Ride The Line for Physics Fun

Website: http://www.official-linerider.com/play.html
Grade: A
Cost: Free

This amazing online application lets students create a track using simple line drawing tools for a little sledder to ride down. It is very easy to get started and create a simple coarse, but more advanced sledding including stunts and tricks are possible, but not easy. The neat thing about the site is that it also includes movies of some of the courses that show what is really possible. If the track does not work then the sledder crashes so being successful in track design involves planning understanding the physics of the sled and a fair amount trouble shooting and problem solving. This is a great site to get kids to really stretch there minds in an enjoyable exciting way. This is a great application for fourth grade on up.

How to Study

Web Site: http://www.how-to-study.com
Grade: A
Cost: Free

How to Study.com is an well written site that gives very good instruction on the best study methods for a given situation. In addition to study skills it gives tips on how to improve your test taking skills. The instructions are broken down well and easy to follow. This is a site that I personally recommend to parents of my students. I also print out some of the skills to distribute to parents.

Hubble Heritage Gallery

Website: http://heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/gallery_category.html
Grade: A
Cost: Free

This is simply a gallery of the amazing photos taken by Hubble. The images are stunning and well organized. There is even a wallpaper section to download these amazing images for your desktop.

Visualizing Math

Web Site: http://dmc.utep.edu/mouratt/vis_math/misc.html
Grade: B
Cost: Free

Mathematical concepts are sometimes difficult to understand as we enter the world high school and college level math. This website makes understanding those concepts by giving a animated visual representation of the mathematical concept. The videos are simple and show the equation along with the visual representation. The downside is there is no detailed information or explanation. So using the site with students that do not already have an understanding of the concept, or without a teacher further explaining the concepts it is of little use.

Experiments Galore!

Website: http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com/
Grade: A-
Cost: Website (Free) Book (£7.99 UK Only) I know I have a few UK Readers.

With over 200 experiments this website is full of useful activities to enhance learning. The experiments are easy to implement and fun. they span the curriculum covering math and a wide variety of science topics. If you are looking for hands on activities to enhance your lessons this is a great place to start.

Teaching about Fractals?

Website: http://www.enchgallery.com/fractals/fracthumbs.htm
Grade: A
Cost: Free

If you are teaching about fractals in your math class, it is fun to show kids the amazing things that can be done with them. The Fractal World Gallery has an amazing collection of images that are simply amazing. It is well worth a look.

Google Earth Updated

Ok this is just for personal gratification. I live in a small town in Southern Utah and the maps on Google Earth have not been that great for my town. Just recently I have found that my town has been updated with higher resolution images and it is very cool. If you have been disappointed in the past with the low resolution images of your area before it is worth checking back occasionally to see it your area has been updated. You might just be pleasantly surprised.

Online Multiplication Games at Game Quarium

Website: http://www.gamequarium.com/multiplication.html
Grade: B
Cost: Free

I recently had a teacher ask me about multiplication games that can be used on older Mac computers. Although there are older programs out there it is getting more difficult to find. The solution is on the internet. Game Quarium is a good location to find fun online games to teach kids about many subjects. It is worth looking through the many available games. Not all of the games are that good, but some stand out and are interesting to kids. The downside is that these games are not very good at teaching new concepts. The games are essentially a fun way to do flash cards.

Keeping Kids Safe on the Net

Website: http://www.ikeepsafe.org
Grade: B+
Cost: Free

The Internet Keep Safe Coalition group teaches basic rules of Internet safety to children and parents, reaching them online and in school. On this site you will find great free videos, online books, worksheets and more all aimed at teaching kids to be safe online. Kids are being targeted at astonishing rates through many different methods. The best way to protect kids is to teach them how to be safe. This site offers a powerful resource to help us reach kids in a way that is interesting to kids.

SRA Distributes Free Science DVD

Product: SRA Snapshots Video Science
Grade: B+
Price: Free (Demo DVD)
Website: http://www.sraonline.com/mail_downloads/sra_snapshots_vcab.html

SRA has developed a new science textbook that correlates directly to DVD based science videos. The new program is called "SRA Snapshots Video Science". Science is one area where seeing things in action can greatly enhance understanding. The way the program works is that you have a introduction video for each lesson, then students go to the book to get detailed information and assessment activities. This tight relationship between video and text is very beneficial. The down side is that there seems to be a lack of hands on activities built into the program.

Right now they are offering a free DVD demo of the program. It is worth looking at.

EdTechReview Released 1st Podcast

EdTechReview is expanding the way in which we bring you technology information. We are now doing a weekly podcast to enhance our blog. This podcast is found at http://edtechreview.libsyn.com
The podcast will give you a first hand view of the software and technologies written about in this Blog.

5 Best web 2.0 Sites for teachers

http://calendarhub.com/

This is an online Calendar system that allows you to make public the events that will take place. This is a great place post due dates for assignments, special events, school activities ect. You can post your calendar to your own website if you like.

http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour1.html

Google Docs and Spreadsheets seem to be the most solid choice for online office applications. They work very well and have an easy to use effective interface.

http://flickr.com/

This site is known as a great place for individuals to share their digital photos with family and friends. It is also a great place to keep your collections of educational photos and images in a safe location for students to view and use.

http://protopage.com/

Protopage is a start page that is easily customizable. I set up a protopage that has notes for the classes, all of the website links we will be using, the local weather, and any other relevant information and then set it as the default boot page for all of my student computers. This makes it easy for students to find what they need quickly.

http://www.wikipedia.org/

This is a very solid online encyclopedia that contains far more information than any paper based encyclopedia could dream of. Because it is constantly changing and being updated by it’s users the information is very current. You should also let students know that because it is editable by just about anyone, it is possible that articles may contain inaccuracies.

Constitution Day Lesson Plan at National Archives Website

Website: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/constitution-workshop/index.html
Grade: A
Cost: Free
In the news we hear a lot about constitutional rights and privileges yet unfortunately many Americans do not truly understand the Constitution and far to few people have actually read it. According to the Associated Press In a contest between Americans' knowledge of "The Simpsons" and what they know about the First Amendment, Bart and Homer win hands down. About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half of Americans can name at least two members of the fictional cartoon family, according to a survey.
This lesson plan gives us a good start on changing future generation’s knowledge of the Constitution. It contains everything you need, including downloadable forms of all of the primary source documents. The down side is that is only designed to be taught in two hours where a more detailed study could be helpful but it’s a good start. It’s well worth your time, and the National Archives website is filled with valuable information and thousands of great primary source documents.

Adobe Digital School Collection Released

Adobe Digital School Collection Released

Website: http://www.adobe.com/education/instruction/adsc/

Grade: A

Price: $159 Single License, Volume License Available

Purchase at: Academic Superstore

Adobe has released a new collection of software specially for the k-12 market. This digital school collection priced at $159 for a single license is a good value. Although, you do not receive the professional versions of Photoshop, and premiere the Elements programs are still very capable and provide students with powerful tools for image manipulation and video editing. This package has everything you need to create web pages, create and manage digital documents, work with digital photos, create images, and create videos. All the fun stuff that we like to do with our classes is in this package. The strength of this program bundle lies in the resources available from Adobe. On their website they have many lesson plans, tutorials, templates, and many other tools to help you get the most out of these applications.

Collection Includes

• Adobe Photoshop® Elements 5.0
• Adobe Premiere® Elements 3.0
• Adobe Acrobat® 8 Professional
• Adobe Contribute 4

Education System Report Card

Website: http://www.uschamber.com/icw/reportcard/default
Grade: B
Price: Free
This is a quick post to let you know about a website that gives us a rundown on how your state stacks up when it comes to education. Unfortunately it doesn't let you drill down to specific schools, but it's fun and interesting, and a little eye opening. It is also fun to look at the irony in the system. For example Montana ranks an A for academic achievement, but a D in there data quality. Take a look, have fun, get mad, and then go back to teaching well.

Create Great web Pages with NVU

Software :Nvu (pronounced N-view)
Website: http://www.nvu.com
Grade: A-
Cost: Free
Platform: XP, OSX, Linux

NVU is an open source software based on Netscape Composer from a while ago. It has been significantly improved and is now a very powerful and capable WYSIWYG (What you see is What you Get) web editor. With many powerful features that make it easy to build and manage a website. NVU is relatively intuitive and easy to use, however due to the complexity of the task managing links, menus, and web management takes a little effort to learn.

The support system for NVU is better than most open source projects, and has a wide variety of support options to help you learn the product. The manual and online guides are very helpful and cover most basic topics needed to create a great website. For more advanced help there is a forum, but it may not be active enough to get help for everything, or to get immediate feedback. Over all it is a very good program.

Audacity Free Digital Audio Workstation

Software of the week, March 6, 2007

The power of music and audio recoding and mixing can bring a lot to lower and upper grade students alike. We have used tape recorders for years you record and playback lessons and for recording Readers Theater. In teaching music creation students can learn about fractions, rhythm, and patterns. Admittedly a tape recorder provides an easy to use tool any teacher can use. Now we have tremendous recording power through our computers, that can out perform any tape recorder available, and truly expands our students ability to create. Setting up a Digital Audio Workstation can be done for a very low cost now days. In fact, if your PC has a built in mike you can download a reasonably powerful and easy to use program for free. Audacity is an open source program that really built very well.

I was able to start recording immediately after installing by simply pressing the on screen record button. This actually surprised me because some of my professional audio applications require a little more setup than this to function. The recording quality was really good. I also learned to do basic cuts and edits without any trouble. The use of the program was very intuitive, and I have not yet needed to go to support documents to perform a variety of tasks. This program is not much more difficult than your tape recorder to operate, but is far more powerful. It is easy to apply effects, clean up noise and cut to create the perfect audio recordings.

Audacity gets an A because of the great features, easy to use interface, and the great price. This is a free application that really is worth much more.

Spice up your Power Point with PowerBacks.com

Teachers site of the week March 5, 2007

As Technology toting teachers, PowerPoint presentations have likely become a part of our daily instruction routine. One way to make your PowerPoint stand out is to step beyond the typical background images and put backgrounds with a little punch in the slide show. Our site of the week http://www.powerbacks.com provides you with just the slide templates you need to make your slide show stand out. This site is free and the download is fairly efficient because you download whole sets rather than each individual background. Site Navigation and design could use some improvement, and installing and using the templates requires a little manipulation which is outlined in the included instructions. The themes located on the left of the screen such as education and technology did not impress me that much and many are not usable for much, but the more abstract sets on the right of the screen are very attractive and will receive a lot of use in my classroom. With a better site design and perhaps a revision of the education templates this site would be an A, but as it stands it receives a respectable B, and for free it’s well worth your time.

In my Video Pod Cast on Friday I will show you what the site has to offer, explain the site navigation, and take you through installing and using the templates. Please check back for details on how to subscribe to the podcast.