Friday, April 23, 2010

Diigo Bookmarks 04/23/2010


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Earth Day Activities

Tonight as I was checking out facebook, I ran across the Teaching Resources page that shared several Earth Day Activities that I felt was worth passing along. I am so totally impressed with the number of teachers who not only teach/share/promote Earth Day on this day but who also practice it daily. In this ever changing world we live in, I am beginning to realize just how important and necessary it is for us to preserve our environment and not take it for granted.
Anyway, here are a few activities that teachers locally and from around the world have done to help their students better understand the importance of being aware of the effects humans have on the environment.
1. Played Earth Bingo and gave out prizes from junk the teacher had from home.
2. Read the story "The World that Jack Built" and discussed what could be done by children to "Go Green". Students then wrote a letter to Jack suggesting ways that he could become more environmentally friendly.
3. Had our students clean, rake, paint, you-name-it all around town for 3.5 hours in the morning.
4.  Our school had lights out until 11:30. Only used sunlight. Then the 2nd half of the day we were paperless. Kids loved it! We picked up trash around school grounds too.
5.  My school is located about 100 feet off Lake Michigan in Gary, IN. For our specials time we had a beach clean-up! It was amazing what the kids found! Tomorrow it's cleaning the school grounds! Monday was making a pledge and discussing ways to help our planet, Tuesday was a competition to see what class could bring in the most batteries, CFL bulbs, and phone books (My class came in 3rd!). Yesterday, we turned off lights for the last hour of school!
6.  We did a tally chart of the materials of which everything we put in the garbage can was made. Then we made a bar graph and talked about how we could reduce the amount of plastic and being more conscientious of recycling what we can.
7.  We went to a local grocery store and got paper bags for each child. We then brainstormed tips and messages for Recycling and saving our Earth. The kids decorated the bags with these statements and pictures. We are returning the bags to the store and they will be used by local shoppers with a little reminder to keep our Earth healthy.
8.  At the begining of the week, our students took a recycling quiz to see just how much they knew about recycling. Then for one week had to track/tally the kinds/types of items they threw away. They also had to categorize which items could be reduced, reused, and recycled and this information was put together into a PSA and presented on Earth Day.

What's New in EDU Glogster?

Glogster listened to everyone's suggestions and here is what they delivered:

1) Student Login Name Controls – you can now easily change BOTH student login names AND passwords from your Dashboard - easy! (EDU Premium only)

2) School Database – in order to better respond to your needs directly, we built a new database for school information. Please update your profile (at "Edit my profile") and provide us with your information to serve you better.

3) School/Subject Area Categories – you/your students now have school subject area and other educational categories to choose from when you save Glogs– ALSO the categories are now searchable – find out what other educators are doing in your field! Please re-categorize old Glogs to be shown in EDU Categories. Thank you.

4) GLab – publish your ideas, share thoughts with others, make suggestions, in the GLab Forum.

5) Teacher Tube – Coming Soon! – videos available from BOTH Teacher Tube and School Tube for school appropriate video content!

(Taken from newsletter@glogster.com)

Check out the premimum subscription. It only cost $99 a year and it is well worth it. Check out the options that are only available through the premimum subscription. I think you'll agree. http://edu.glogster.com/product-informations/

I have been training my teachers on Glogster and as well as using some of these new features and I am quite impressed.

Keep your eyes open for even more advanced features sometime in August 2010. New and exciting things are happening.

EdTech Blog Swap

I am excited to be participating in the I Love EdTech Blog Swap program. This adventure is allowing me to share my thoughts and ideas with other bloggers as well as networking with other ed tech specialist.
As part of the swap, I will be posting my partner's blog on my blog as a way to gain new knowledge about technology, tools, professional development, etc. My guest blogger is Kim from Texas. She is a technology instructor for grades 6-8. I am excited about this adventure and look forward to sharing and learning new tools and integration ideas for the classroom.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010