Monday, February 22, 2010

One Club to Rule Them All--Middle Earth


This post has very little to do with science, and just a little more with technology. However, I really wanted to share about my "club". Like many middle or high schools, my school has "activity" or "club days" every few weeks. The intent of this is to foster non-academic relationships student-student and student-teacher.

Over the last few years, for scheduling reasons, "club days" as they are called in my school have felt burdensome. More work for me, and less fun for the kids.

NOT ANYMORE!

A genius faculty member who happens to be a friend of mine started a club called "Middle Earth: One Club to Rule Them All". It revolves around most things Tolkien, and all things Lord of the Rings.

Today, our activity was Discovering our Lord of the Rings Names. Mine, since I am trying to embrace my inner orc is "Ufshash, the Devastator". My students (in and out of class) may call me Ufshash, or Mrs. Devastator as they wish. To find your LOTR name, use these name generators:


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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Memonic--your own Internet Research Secretary.

Okay, so I found this webinar the other day through the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI--google it!). I would have overlooked it, but the episode was on "Research Projects" and was hosted by one of my very very very favorite blog authors, Richard Byrne (freetech4teachers.com). So I listened in...

One of the many tools he showed us was Memonic. It's like doing internet research with your own personal secretary. The only thing it doesn't do is write your works-consulted for you, MLA style. At least, not for now! Anyway, right now, there's a cool no-need-to-sign-up feature that let's you try it out without running the plugin or signing up.


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Sunday, February 14, 2010

Classroom JEOPARDY! for SMART Notebook, Version 10


This JEOPARDY! Template for the SMARTboard is so awesome! The creator of this template is Missy Fuller, and it rocks. Click here to download it.
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Thursday, February 11, 2010

SMART Notebook Lesson on Flowers and Seeds


I used this lesson in a second grade classroom as a demonstration lesson using a SMART board. It incorporates an animated video, camera captures from the video and several question prompts for eliciting responses and participation from the class. The kids loved it! You can set up the "cycle" slide so that students can place the pictures along the cycle themselves.

Download the lesson by clicking here.

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Monday, February 8, 2010

Free Download--SMART Notebook Lesson on Levers



Great middle level or 9th grade lesson on Levers...click here to download it. It includes two matching games to identify first, second and third class levers, two interactive mini apps--one is more advanced to calculate load and effort. The last few slides are a lab activity idea for older students who are very self-directed. Enjoy!
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Friday, February 5, 2010

SMART Notebook Lesson on Food Webs


This lesson is a FREE download, just click this link to download a terrific lesson on foodwebs. It includes an interactive "miniapp" from ClickScience that graphically demonstrates the relationship between producers, primary consumers and secondary consumers. There is a sorting game at the end for food web vocabulary and an additional link to an online food web interactive activity at the end of the lesson, for kids to explore with you, or on their own.

It was created using Notebook v10, so make sure you upgrade your software (just use the product key on your board for free upgrades) before you download it so you have full functionality of all of the features in the lesson.

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