Welcome Back to School 2012-2013  Doing I.T. Right! SIS is Westran's student information system. Support is available for staff, parents and students using this system. On the student portal you can find a variety of information including grades, lunch account, attendance, medical, assessments and more. Technolgy Support is also available to enhance the students' educational experience.

Online Degree Programs

Recently added websites!!! Pete's Power Points  EdHeads Zoo Burst The Week in RAP Secret Millionaires Club Lighting Bug Aunty Math Study Jams Prezi ePALS Glogster  Smithsonian's History Explorer  National Geographic for Kids

ACT english study guide :

SAT Grammar Rules :

Living Memorial

PBS this site is updated regularly NEW 2011

Mathwire
has many “I have….who has” activities for you download.

StudyJams
has many songs that kids can sing to learn concepts. It is like karaoke.

PowerfulWords
Here is a website on the 12 most powerful words for testing:

ABCya is the leader in free educational kids computer games and activities for elementary students to learn on the web. All children's educational computer activities were created or approved by certified school teachers. All educational games are free and are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way for children to learn. Grade level lessons incorporate areas such as math and language arts while introducing basic computer skills. Many of the kindergarten and first grade activities are equipped with sound to enhance understanding. Fun children's Holiday activities are available in grade level sections!

Planet Orange is a website developed by ING Direct for the purpose of helping elementary school students learn some basic money skills. Through a series of "missions" (games) to Planet Orange students gain or lose money. Students can design an avatar to represent themselves on their missions. The students gain invest or spend the money they gain to match their budgets and reach their goals.

Sites below are Dr. Seuss

Make a "Cat in the Hat" Hat

2. Positional Words Word Find

3. Word Search

4. Addition

5. Subtraction

6. Greater Than

7. Pattern Pieces

8. Word Problems 1
Word Problems 2

9. Seuss Reading Passage and Questions

10. Yertle the Turtle Word Problems

12. Literacy Center Task Cards

13. Foot Paper 1

14 Foot Paper 2

15. Green Eggs and Ham 1
Green Eggs and Ham 2
Green Eggs and Ham 3

16. Cat in the Hat ABCs

17. Cat in the Hat Word Search

Welcome to the World's Largest K-12 Learning Network!
EPALS is the leading provider of safe collaborative technology for schools to connect and learn in a protected, project-based learning network. With classrooms in 200 countries and territories, ePals makes it easy to connect learners locally, nationally or internationally.

Web Stuff:

Website classjump

animated banners

create an avatar

counters

Gadgets

One of the easiest ways to find images :
google images
But be careful... these images are not necessarily free. You should check the web site where the image is found to see what the restrictions might be.

My favorite site for Background Texture Images and Clipart:
GRSites This is a great site, with a huge collection of backgrounds, as well as clip art. With the backgrounds you can even modify their color and brightness right in youur web browser.

BestofWeb This is a HUGE starting point, and it leads to thousands of images

ClipArt Connection Another large collection, with a good search feature.

Wizard of Draws This is a great site, with a large collection of original cartoon-like images.

Barry's Clip Art

Animated Gifs This is a HUGE list of animated gifs. Use your browser's "find" function to search through this page.

Animation Attic

Animation Factory

ClipArt Connection Animation

Animation Library

Clipart Warehouse - Animations

SITES FOR CONSTRUCTING TEXT IMAGES
These sites allows you to MAKE your own banners, animated images, etc.

Flaming Text Highly recommended!

cooltext

MediaBuilder

Flash Vortex buttons and banners

SITES FOR ONLINE IMAGE-EDITING
These sites allow you to upload images and perform basic editing functions. Very nice when you don't have access to image-editing software. Perhaps the most useful function is making transparencies in your GIF images.

Gifworks This one allows you to edit GIF images only. You can even edit Animated GIFs!

Myimager This one allows you to work with both JPEG or GIF images (you can convert between these formats).

DESE Instructional Technology Newsline
This is a monthly newsletter that always has an extensive list of current grant programs that are available (not all of them are specifically technology grants). The grants are typically in about the middle of each month's newsletter.

Public Education Network
They have a listing of Existing Grant Opportunities (updated each week).

GrantsAlert.com Weekly Recap Be sure to dig around in this site and find the listings of grant opportunities.

Hotchalk Grants and Contests An extensive list of grant opportunities.

Grant Wrangler Online listing service of grants and awards for teachers and students. This is actually a social-networking site for both grant seekers and grant givers to share insights
and experiences.

Library Spot - Getting Grants A site with tips and articles as well as grant funding programs.

Fundsnet Services Online - Education and Literacy Grants

Foundation This is grand central station for access to foundation and corporate grants, with directories of foundation and corporate grantmakersfunding, foundations and grant writing.

Sugar Stacks is a good website for understanding how much sugar is in the food and beverages that we consume. Sugar Stacks lists popular food and beverage items in ten categories. Every item is pictured with a stack of sugar cubes. Each sugar cube represents four grams of sugar. This is a great way to see just how much sugar you really consume in your favorite snack or beverage.

Get The Glass is a game produced by the California Milk Processor Board. Obviously, the game is designed to promote milk consumption. The game takes students on a journey with the milk-deprived Adachi family as they try to break into "Fort Fridge" where they will find an unlimited supply of milk. Throughout the game students will learn about the benefits of drinking milk and making healthy beverage choices.

CoolFoodKidz is a kid-friendly website about nutrition, exercise, and general health. Cool Food Kidz provides easy-to-read lists of things they can do to take care of their health. For example, there is a list of "building healthy habits" tips which walks kids through ten basic things they can do to keep themselves healthy. Cool Food Kidz also provides students with tips for dental health and tips for keeping their brains sharp. The tips for eating out section offers advice to students on picking a healthy lunch and healthy snack foods.


NourishInteractive is a great resource for elementary school health and nutrition teachers. Nourish Interactive offers lesson plans, printable guides and forms, resources for parents, and games for students. In the printables section teachers will find things like fun coloring pages as well as educational pages like "name the food group" and "exercise tracking sheets." The parents' section of Nourish Interactive offers parents tips on teaching healthy eating habits at home. The parents' section also offers tips and recipes for cooking healthy food with kids. The games section of Nourish Interactive contains ten online games for elementary school students. The games are designed to reinforce the lessons learned from parents and teachers using the teaching resources on Nourish Interactive.


FatWorld is an educational video game funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The game isn't designed to tell students what they should or shouldn't eat rather it is designed to get students thinking about the results of food choices. In the game students explore the socioeconomic, geographic, and cultural factors that influence the nutrition choices people make. Students will also explore the roles of the government and interest groups in the marketing of foods. Fat World is available as a free download for Windows and Mac users.

AdDecoder is produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The game appears on the B.A.M. (body and mind) section of their website. BAM is full of great resources for health and physical education teachers. The Ad Decoder provides students with two virtual magazines which they flip through to see examples and explanations of advertising tactics used to grab the attention of tweens and teens. After flipping through the magazines students can test their new knowledge.


We all know that SLEEP is important and that there is a correlation between the amount of sleep students get and how the perform in the classroom, but what about us? Are we, as teachers, getting enough sleep? National Geographic has a quiz to help us answer that question. The Secrets of Sleep quiz asks ten questions related to your sleeping habits. The quiz uses your responses to tell you if you're getting enough sleep and, if necessary, what you can do to improve your sleeping habits.

FamilyMeal is a twenty minute film about obesity in America, its causes, its effects, and the disappearance of the family meal in American homes. The film focuses on how developing the habit of eating "family meals" at home can reduce the rate of obesity in American children. You can watch the film and view a discussion guide here.

ScrubClub a website designed to teach students why they need to wash their hands. The Scrub Club offers videos, comics, and games designed to promote healthy hygiene habits to prevent the spread of diseases like the flu. For teachers, Scrub Club offers free downloads of posters, cartoon books, and lesson plans to promote hand washing. The downloads are available in English, Spanish, and French.

States

TimeRime allows users to create timelines that include text, images, audio, and video. One of the better features of TimeRime is that you can have more than one type of media for each event on your timeline. TimeRime users can also select which media type they want as the feature piece of each event. As we've come to expect with any web 2.0 tool of this type, you can embed the timeline in a blog or share it via email. TimeRime can be used in English or Spanish.

Historypin is a service developed by wearewhatwedo in partnership with Google. Historypin allows anyone with a Google account to place images within the setting of current Google Maps Streetview imagery. If you don't have images to add, you can simply explore the imagery added by others. To explore the imagery on Historypin, zoom in on a location then select a range of dates on the Historypin timeline. Learn more about Historypinvideo.

SnagLearning offers free access to high quality documentary films from notable producers like National Geographic and NOVA. Snag Learning categorizes documentaries by grade level and content area. Additionally, Snag Learning offers a series of guiding questions for each film. You can embed previews of each video into your blog, but you have to watch the full-length versions on SnagLearning

ExploreMonticello Recently, while looking for something completely unrelated, I stumbled upon the Monticello Explorer on History.com. The Monticello Explorer is a series of virtual tours of Thomas Jefferson's estate. You can explore Jefferson's home and the grounds of his plantation through self-paced tours in the Monticello Explorer. Narrated video tours are also available through the Monticello Explorer. In fact, the narrated video tours are probably the best part of the Monticello Explorer.
Applications for Education The MonticelloExplorer is a great way to learn not only about Thomas Jefferson's home, but also about the man himself. Through the video tours viewers learn about Jefferson's slave holdings, his thoughts about the importance of working efficiently, and his desire to entertain his guests with interesting books and artifacts.

smart board links

Center

bgfl

raypec

salem

leesummit

Tying Your shoes Interactive site (new 2011)

Yucky Sites (new)

BooksShouldBeFree is a provider of free audio books.

Cooperative Writing Through Google for Educators Weekly Reader has published a small collection of pdf guides for teaching the collaborative revision process
Online Exclusives A Narrated Slide Show for elementary Martin Luther King Jr. Day is January 17. Share The Story of Martin Luther King Jr. You'll find this story and many more interactive features in this month's digital editions.

On AdLit teachers can find book lists, video interviews with authors, and a comprehensive list of strategies for teaching reading and writing

Math Worksheets:
Do you spend a lot of time searching forCo worksheets with
practice problems to give your students? Now you can easily
create your own in just a few seconds with the Math Worksheet Generator.

Yummy Math is a website designed for the purpose of sharing mathematics problems and scenarios based on things happening in the world today. For example, the activity for December 4th was based on Lebron James's return to Cleveland. Yummy Math lists activities chronologically as well as by mathematics subject area.

Opensource Geometry

Math Live presents students with animated stories that teach mathematics lessons. In all there are twenty-three lessons for elementary school and middle school students. The lessons are divided into four categories; Number, Patterns and Relations, Shape and Space, Statistics and Probability. Each animated lesson is accompanied by a mathematics worksheet that students complete either while watching the lesson or after viewing the lesson.

Conceptuamath These tools are designed for teacher-facilitated, whole-class instruction in fractions, Each visual math tool includes a short instructional video, Common Core State Standards alignment, key vocabulary, and IEP goals.
38 week Algebra Curriculum complete with slides, handouts, and just about everything you need in order to deliver the lessons. You can download each week individually or download the entire collection as one file. Dan Meyer also has his entire
38 week Geometry Curriculum available for free. Again, you can download each week individually or download the entire collection as one file.

Math Puzzles

Flashcards

Collage is a software that has been
created exclusively for supporting instruction in a K-12
classroom. The tool enables teachers to display digital
scans of textbook pages along with digital multimedia in an
interactive fashion.

Ribbon Hero is a *gasp* game for Office 2007 and Office 2010
(Word, PowerPoint, Excel and now OneNote!) designed to help
you boost your Office skills and knowledge.

Ever struggled to find just the right chart for your data?
Chart Advisor was created as a concept test to explore new
ways Excel users can create graphs quickly and effectively.

Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office 2.0 provides education-specific tools for students and educators to get
the most out of their familiar Microsoft Office applications.

With Microsoft Interactive Classroom, students participate like never before while staying up-to-speed on instructor notes. It gives educators the power to add in-class polling and to share lessons over a wireless network. If a teacher
updates a presentation, students capture the notes in
real-time via Microsoft OneNote.

Office Tips If there's a new trick or skill you want to learn in Microsoft Office, but you don't have the time to take a course, check out Community Clips. It offers a portal through which you can easily browse, view, share, and
discuss informal "how-to-use" Office videos from around the world. It also gives you the ability to record your own
screens and voice, so you can create your own training videos to share.

Microsoft Mathematics provides a graphing calculator that
plots in 2D and 3D, step-by-step equation solving, and
useful tools to help students with math and science studies.

A Home for the Future Click to enlarge
And to learn more about home design, history, and the way people interact with their homes see the Living Rooms section on The New York Times site.

St Pats

Try some of these technolgy links to enhance your classroom lessons

More.net

Elearning for Educators

Emints

Free Technology for Teachers

Teaching with Technology

PBWorks

What is new this week?

WordPress

Blogspot

Teachers can request training on SIS topics, or a variey of technology sources.

Westran High School
Ginger Tipton