What's In A Web Page - Things You Should Be Sharing. Part II

Reviewing and getting your students ready for testing always seems to be a daunting task but think of making things easier because as you prepare your students in the classroom for what they will need to know for the testing why not remind them and their parents from your teacher website. It would be great to add information onto your website that will help students beyond the classroom.  

Even if that page starts out with a reminder to the parents that testing is coming up and that their children should be ready for test day by getting plenty of sleep the night before and eat something on the morning of the test.  

A great web page to create would also be one that has the same information abbreviated that you are going over in class on the web with web links they can go to for further information.  

If you are a teacher that will not be changing grade levels or subject areas this page is now available ongoing for your students and parents as a reminder of what is coming up in the fourth quarter.  

Talking with other teachers can help you if you change grade levels or subject areas because you could share your information with them and visa versa so your web site stays up to date.  

With the summer months coming up you also want to have information on your site again that promotes yourself, your class and your school so if there are any potentially new students coming in they will be able to make an informed decision to attend that school.  

Other types of easy quick web pages that you could add to your site:

• A summer reading list for both incoming and outgoing students.  
• A list of local summer locations and activities that offer a learning environment in which students are interactive and a part of the learning process.  
• A page that talks about what students can expect as they enter the new school year in your classroom.  

What other types of pages could you create on your website that would offer the most information?  How about an individual page per Quarter that outlines what you are doing if you are an Elementary teacher.  If you are a subject area teacher you can put that class syllabus on the site.  How about those always great self-promoting pages that outline a great lesson, an incredible learning activity or field trip.  You can create a homework page that lets your students know when assignments are due.  

If you are a Magnet school you can have a page dedicated to outline your school classroom for the time of the year when Parents are looking to enroll their child(ren) into these schools.  Or as a Kindergarten teacher you can have a page that talks about all of the wonderful learning that is going on in your classroom for Parents during Kindergarten registration.  

With all things being said if you do some upfront work on your web page it will pay off in the long run with continued views from students, parents and community members.  It will ensure that the information you are sharing is up to date because all you will have to do ongoing is make small changes to keep things current.  And it will guarantee that you sell sell sell what you are doing in your classroom to get the buy in from whomever is looking at your website.

photo credit: w4nd3rl0st (InspiredinDesMoines) via photopin cc

What's In A Web Page - Things You Should Be Sharing. Part I

Let me start by asking you this question… 

What do you do when you open a web page to a site that you think has information about spring and Summer clothing and it is still talking about the upcoming fall collection?  

You would open up another web page with the information on it that you are looking for....right?  

That is the same thing that happens if a parent, community member or even your students do when they go to your web site and there is no information available that they are looking for.  They go somewhere else, and that is not good.  

I see this every day in what I do both in and outside of the school system.  I admit that I may not have the best patience when it comes to outdated web pages but just think about this scenario:

• I am a parent, living out of state, who is moving to the area this summer and I need to figure out what school I want my child to go to in the fall.  
• I start looking into the schools that are close to my new home and when I check the teachers’ websites many of them still say "Welcome to the new school year" or "Have a Wonderful Holiday Break."  

That would not be a great way for a prospective parent to start their search of a new school for their child.  This may even cause that parent to reconsider attending a school in the area based on their first impressions of what they see on a teacher’s web page.  

Think of it this way, your web site is selling a product.  Whether that product is something that is tangible that you can hold in your hand or an idea of what there is to offer.  If the web site is not current or full of non-relevant information you will lose the sale, and in a game of numbers could mean the difference between an extra classroom of students and a teacher or combining classrooms of students and losing a teacher.  

What if you are applying for and/or are receiving a grant and part of the requirements are that you keep a current account of activities on your website.  You may lose the grant because of an out of date web page or site.

This scenario may seem extreme and some of you may be saying: 

• "No way, that's not me." 
• "I keep my web page up to date."
• "My students won't go to my webpage so why bother."
• Some may be saying "It doesn't matter because a parent will see the school web page before mine and that is all they need to see."  

But let me tell you more often than not those first impressions are the ones that stick regardless of how good you or your school is.  

So let’s get away from the negative and look towards some positives.  Just some simple things that can enhance your websites to keep them informative and current for anyone that may be looking at them.

Let’s start with today, we are in the final week of March and we all know what will be starting up at the beginning of April.  Yes, its review and testing time.  Raise your hands if you agree that you will spend the bulk of the quarter reviewing for a week of testing, then retesting.  Caught you, some of you actually raised your hands and that's OK.  

Join me next week to keep in the loop as I talk more about ways to keep your web site up to date. 

photo credit: jinkazamah via photopin cc

How do you Edit a Photo?

Now that Digital Cameras have image resolution capabilities up to and beyond 18 megapixels what do you do when you want to edit those pictures after you have taken them.  How do you take an image that is 4000x3000 and reduce it or compress it so that it can be put somewhere else like a webpage, blog, etc.  What tools are out there to do this? There are programs out there that can help you out but what if you cannot afford to buy a program what is your alternative.  Well up until recently there was a website that offered the ability to edit an image on the fly for Free, Picnik.  The site offered more than basic editing features for images that some pre installed computer software could handle.  But as you know websites come and go everyday and Picnik was caught in that wave of passing websites recently.  So what do you do now if you were an avid user of Picnik?  What are your options now, some sub par or expensive software that will either not give you what you want or go way over the top and give you so much more that you will never use all of the it in your lifetime.

Recently Mashable put together a small list of viable alternative websites that will allow you to edit your images on the fly on the web, Free and without the need for a registered account.  I took a look at them and these are some really robust and feature filled websites to allow you to edit pretty much any aspect of an image you want to.  The only issue that I founds that might come up is that Thumba requires you to have the most recent version of Microsoft Silverlight.  I think that you will have a lot of fun editing images on any of these sites.

• PicMonkey
• BeFunky
• iPiccy
• Pixlr Express
• Sumo Paint
• Thumba
• Psyko Paint

Now if you are a teacher and are going to use any of these in the classroom with your students then make sure that you take a look at the sites ahead of time.  Some of them do have ads along the sides which could be of questionable material out of the grade level you are in which could cause some questions to come up from your students.   Some even have Apps that you can download to your Smart or iPhone.  Not that I want to promote any of these over another but PicMonkey does not have any ad space on its site that I could find as I was using the site.  But you make the decision on which one will be the best fit for your situation and comfort level.

photo credit: austinevan via photo pin cc

Election Season is Quickly Approaching

Election Season is quickly approaching and this season promises to be another scorcher!  You can sense it in the air and on TV.  One politician is going to save the world while sharing that their opponent is ready to destroy the world.  Yes it appears this is going to be a hot one that's expected to last until at least November.

Elections and politics can be an overwhelming and difficult subject to follow but luckily there are teachers out there to help us make sense of it all.  I was at West Forsyth High School a teacher shared with me many of her go to websites to help students find the truths behind politics and the political arena.

Below are her websites with a brief explanation of what they might be used for.


Often times people can tell a lot about a politician by the support they receive in election season. 

http://www.opensecrets.org/ is a great website that lets you explore who is funding the presidential and congressional candidates.  This website will be a great resource for students to back their arguments and leads to great discussion on how candidates vote while in office.  This website has data on fundraising amounts by candidates as well as their largest PAC supporters.

Many promises are made in election season.  One of my favorite websites is http://www.politifact.com/ .  Politifacts is a website that helps citizens follow a politician or idea (i.e. healthcare) and find the truths behind the claims made and the reality of those claims.  Politifacts is chocked full of information to help your students discern between what political ads claim and what is really happening.

During election season students may wonder where they stand compared to other Americans on certain issues.  Polls are a great way to determine this.  http://www.pollingreport.com/ is a great website that collects many polls and puts them on one website.  Polls from CNN, AP, Wall Street Journal and the PEW Research Center are just a few that this collection has to offer.  The homepage offers polls anywhere from the President and Congress to National Security and Issues that are recently trending. 

Three other local websites that would be of interest is the NC Democratic Party's website http://www.ncdp.org/ the NC Republican Party's website  www.ncgop.org/ and the Forsyth County Board of Elections website www.co.forsyth.nc.us/Elections/  

With the political season on the horizon I hope these websites offer a few tools to help you weather the storm.

A New Take on History

If you are a fourth grade teacher and have not been to the North Carolina History Project web page you might just be missing out on some new and interesting facts about North Carolina.  You might be asking how can this site benefit me?  Here is how they describe it. "... an edited, evolving, and free online encyclopedia of North Carolina that also includes commentaries, lesson plans, and a community calendar."

To me the site offers a lot about North Carolina that has been broken down into multiple categories and listing so that it makes it easier on the researcher to locate topics for discussion, reports, conversations an other information.

The site homepage is laid out well to offer the visitor a quick glance at what is available but to also provide the most amount of searching power in a few short clicks.  On the website you have scrolling image set of people, places and things inherent to North Carolina that you can click on and read more information about.  Across the top of the page you have an alphabetical list so you can perform a broad topic search just like an Encyclopedia by just clicking on the letter you want.  There is a Featured entry of the day section in the bottom middle of the page that offers you a one click link to read more information about the topic.  You can also browse through the Category dropdown menu on the right side of the page to filter information about specific topics.  Categories like Colonial North Carolina, Places, Document, etc.  Then in the bottom right corner of the page lists out the latest information that has been added to the site.  So far in just a few days of researching the site I have been able to find lots of information quickly and easily through the different search options available on the site

The North Carolina History Project site is funded by the John Locke Foundation and they are currently offering a Citizens' Constitutional Workshop from the link on the left banner.  This link takes you off of the site to the John Locke Foundation website for further information.

There is a separate Educators Corner on the site that offers some research and lesson plan information that has been shared with the site through user created content.  Currently there are not many user lesson plans available but there is a call to share on the site where if you create lesson plans from the content on the site you can share it with them and they will review and post the information for others to use.

If you are teaching North Carolina History whether in Elementary or Middle School this is a site that you just might want to add to your resource list not only for your use but for your students as well.

Create a Comic Strip or a Comic Book

Comic strips are a good activity for students. They allow teachers to see if students understand the concepts taught in class. They also allow the students to show their creative side while having fun at the same time. The sites allow you to drag and drop characters, backgrounds, dialog boxes and add your text. They are very easy to manipulate. Here are 4 comic strip sites that are free and school friendly.

http://superherosquad.marvel.com/create_your_own_comic

http://www.pikikids.com/

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/

http://www.pixton.com/

Superherosquad.marvel.com allows you to drag and drop super heroes (as the site name implies). This site also gives you the option to create a comic book. Pikikids.com gives you the option to upload your own photographs. The students could use their phones to take the pictures. The photography teacher in me advises you to teach your students about composition and lighting before you send your students out on their photo excursion. Makebeliefscomix.com allows the user to write the comic strip in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Latin. Pixton.com has a link for schools.

No matter what subject you teach, these comic strip sites give you the opportunity to assign a fun activity to your students.

Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers!

Yesterday I learned a great site for teachers and learners that I had not heard about before. The tagline for TeachersFirst is Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers! I love that concept since I feel like it acknowledges the creativity and intelligence teachers apply as they work towards the main goals of promoting student thinking and encouraging learning. I have often said recently that I don't only think of literacy now as just reading and writing but also thinking.


TeachersFirst is a free resource for teachers:

TeachersFirst is a rich collection of lessons, units, and web resources designed to save teachers time by delivering just what they need in a practical, user-friendly, and ad-free format. Busy teachers, parents, and students can find resources using our robust search tools.

You can search this site by grade or subject. You can also browse through safe Web 2.0 resources (those are called Edge on TeachersFirst). There are brain twisters and information on dates that matter as well as featured websites.

Here is a comment on the site that caught my attention:

This is an excellent resource for teachers of any elementary grade level. There are endless examples of graphic organizers that students can utilize in order to help them organize or present information. I have had a lot of experience with Inspiration, which is one of the graphic organizer programs mentioned in this resource. This program is easy to use and manipulate. Students can typically learn the basics in one session (50 minutes). I use this program often to teach reading concepts, such as main idea, comparing & contrasting, or character development. You could also use the program to show life cycles or concept development for mathematics. The great thing is that you can either create a template, where students merely insert information or students can create their own organizers depending on their levels of experience. Great resource!

There are areas in TeachersFirst for Classroom Resources, TeachersFirst Exclusives, and Professional Resources. You can join TeachersFirst for free to get even more teacher time-savers and collaboration/sharing with other Thinking Teachers. I plan to explore this site more in the future, so there will probably be future blog posts on what I find! Here are some Tips for Using TeachersFirst

*On a side note, Candace Hackett Shively who wrote a an article called "Grow Creativity!" in May issue of Learning and Leading that I have been so excited about (I have written a blog post on ideas I found in that article) is connected with this site.

Websites To Keep Your Students Mentally Active this Summer

Now that we are just a few days away from the end of yet another school year, the fear sets in, and a question comes to mind. Are my students/children going to forget what they have learned during the school year this summer? We all know that somewhere down the line we all seem to click off the learning button when it comes to the summer. The beautiful days, full of sunshine, trips to the pool, beaches and other areas to visit.

Fear not, try out these links to give your students/kids some fun time on the computer. Oh and it is educational too.

1. Have your students learn about the US Mint with History In your Pocket website.

2. Play all types of interactive learning games with Funschool from Kaboose.

3. Learn lots of fun and interesting facts about everything at Fact Monster.

4. Get more information that you want to know about in Math at Math Playground.

5. Learn about the Geography from the National Geographic Kids site.

6. Did you ever want to learn how to play a musical instrument, try out Play Music.

7. Learn about America's Story from the Library of Congress.

8. Get a grip on Art with the Art Junction.

9. Learn about the Science Experiment of the Week.

10. Learn how to create computer programs with Scratch from MIT Media Labs.

These websites range in difficulty to offer challenges to all grade levels from Kindergarten to High School. So after your students/kids have visited their favorite vacation spots or have been outside running around all day getting physical exercise. Give them the opportunity to exercise their minds too with a couple of these websites.

Simple, yet Great Sites - Vol. 1

Sometimes - we all run across websites we think are simply great. They can be very simplistic in nature but achieve huge things! Well... here are 5 that I want to share with you.

1- http://www.rhymezone.com/

Writing poetry? Stuck on a word that rhymes with "__" Check out this site... it adds to your creative juices by quickly giving you rhyming words!

2 - http://www.ocrterminal.com/

Need to convert scanned images or .pdf's into editable text? This online optical character recognition site gives you that ability!

3- http://www.wdl.org/en/

Need to find some historical maps or documents within a certain time period, in ANY country? This site is the place!

4- http://www.climate-charts.com/World-Climate-Index-Map.html

Want to know about the climate in ANY region of the world. This user-friendly site gives you climate information quickly!

5- http://langid.net/

Trying to figure out which language you are looking at? This website allows you to paste in the text and it instantly recognizes what foreign language the text is written.

Web redesign 101

Conversations abound regarding website development and design. What is good, what is appropriate, what is functional? Some say you can never have too much, others have a minimalist approach. Do you put the fancy animated logo that rotates and flashes or a plain static logo that gets the point across?

My personal philosophy... "Less is more." I struggle sometimes when searching for information on the web because sites are too busy, or there is too much going on that it distracts from what you're looking for. I have also seen sites that are great and have specific content I am looking for but take’s me five to ten minutes to locate it because it is buried under multiple layers.

I recently read the article "Build it Better" which outlines a number of educational institutions that have recently undergone a total redesign of their school web page sites. This short, to the point article provides additional viewpoints on what a good website has to offer the public.

4 main topics are covered in the article, "Pepper the site with links," "Many Moving Parts," "A Look of Continuity" and "Colors Matter." Each topic provides some insight and background testimonials from school districts that have recently undergone a redesign of their web site. The information in this article can provide insight to anyone who is thinking of creating or redesigning their personal or professional website.

Stop and Go with PBSkids

Stop and Go with PBSkids, http://pbskids.org/stopandgo, visit the stop and go website to find out more information about how students can help to write online books. Students are able to watch somewhat of a mini-movie and then they may help to complete their version of the story.

News from website - Ten by Ten

What: Ten by ten
About:
According to their website, http://www.tenbyten.org/about.html “10x10™ ('ten by ten') is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour,”

How do they do it?
According to their website, “Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources”

Where do they get the news they report?
According to their website, the following websites are a part of their source for news and pictures:
Reuters World News
BBC World Edition
New York Times International News

Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology (DO-IT)

Finding resources for students with disabilities is not always easy. One great resource is the DO-IT website.
According to their website "The Project DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology) provides a website that serves as a portal which links to many valuable resources for students, teachers, parents and administrators. This portal provides links and information about the use of computer and networking technologies and how they may be utilized to assist in increasing the independence and productivity of individuals. In addition, Project DO-IT strives to assisst individuals with disabilities to pursue academic and career opportunities." (the above description can be found on their website along with additional resources for students with disabilities.)

Blue Web'n

Visit Blue Web'n. According to their website, "Blue Web'n, is "an online library" Their website includes a listing of Internet sites." Information about the sites is grouped together by grade level, format, and content area. The resources from this site is a scoring rubric. One great thing about this site, is that the company that manages this website attempt to keep current. In fact they strive to add additional links to the website on a monthly basis.
See: http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/bluewebn/contentTable.cfm for more information on this site.