Discovery Education (formerly United Streaming) has tons of really wonderful resources for teachers and students! One of the participants in last week’s training said that it was the best training she’d ever had (Thanks, Angela J.!)!

With that in mind, for those of you having trouble accessing this great resource, here are the steps:

1. Go to http://tech.hylton.groupfusion.net and log in.
2. Under Links, click Discovery Education/United Streaming. If this is your first time using Discovery Education Streaming, be sure to write down the access code located just below the link.
3. To sign up, use the access code and complete the registration form. If you already have a username and password for Discovery Education, log in.
4. Once you are logged in, click “Streaming” in the upper left corner and have fun searching!

This week’s featured website comes from our very own special Librarian, Connie M. If you haven’t checked out Thinkfinity, there are a ton of really nice resources there, including lesson plans, assessments, enrichment activities, and more. Teaching is by far the hardest job on the planet, and anything that might make that job a little easier gets 5 stars from me. This is one of those tools!

SOLs are approaching very quickly! I remember when I returned to education in 2004 I was a bit taken aback by the World Geography pacing guide which had me finishing instruction by April 21. It did not make much sense to me since the last day of school was not until June. And then I remembered – SOL End of Course exams are actually given in May, many weeks before the end of the school year. (I still have issues with this, but that’s a topic for another day)

With that in mind, I know many of you are getting ready to delve into SOL preparation and review for your students. There are several resources available to help with SOL test preparation. First of all, the Department of Information Technology Services has placed an icon in our Novell desktop for the SOL practice tests, or ePats. If you have not already checked them out, they are a great place to start your SOL review. Secondly, we have many wonderful online resources bookmarked on Hylton’s Delicious site. The Jefferson Labs links are there as well as links to many other resources for each of our four core areas.

This site has been around for a very long time – http://webquest.org/index.php. A webquest is “an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web” and this site is chocked full of over 2500 of them that you can use for your classes! Be sure to click the link on the left that says Find Webquests. There are webquests here on virtually every topic!

This joke is in no way intended to demean anyone with an accent, but rather to recognize their ingenuity!

A Norwegian fellow wants a job teaching math, but the principal won’t hire him until he passes a little math test.

Here is your first question, the principal said. ‘Without using numbers, represent the number 9.’

‘Without numbers?’ The Norwegian says, ‘Dat’s easy.’ and proceeds to draw three trees.

‘What’s this?’ the principal asks.

‘Vot! you got no brain? Tree and tree and tree make nine,’ says the Norwegian.

‘Fair enough,’ says the principal. ‘Here’s your second question. Use the same rules, but this time the number is 99.’

The Norwegian stares into space for a while, then picks up the picture that he has just drawn and makes a smudge on each tree. ‘Dar ya go.’

The principal scratches his head and says, ‘How on earth do you get that to represent 99?’

‘Each of da trees is dirty now. So, it’s dirty tree, and dirty tree, and dirty tree. Dat is 99.’

The principal has one more question for the Norwegian, ‘All right, last question. Same rules again, but represent the number 100.’

The Norwegian fella stares into space some more, then he picks up the picture again and makes a little mark at the base of each tree and says, ‘Dar ya go. Von hundred.’

The principal looks at the attempt. ‘You must be nuts if you think that represents a hundred!’

The Norwegian leans forward and points to the marks at the base of each tree and says, ‘A little dog come along and pooped by each tree. So now you got dirty tree and a turd, dirty tree and a turd, and dirty tree and a turd, vich makes von hundred.’

‘So, ven do I start?

Thanks to our very own Cathy L. for sending this along for Feel Good Friday!

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Welcome to the first Website Wednesday of the 2008-2009 school year!

PBS Teachers is a wonderful resource from our friends over at PBS for just about every subject we teach. You might also want to check out the accompanying blog, Learning.now by Andy Carvin.

SOLs are approaching very quickly! I remember when I returned to education in 2004 I was a bit taken aback by the World Geography pacing guide which had me finishing instruction by April 21. It did not make much sense to me since the last day of school was not until June. And then I remembered — SOL End of Course exams are actually given in May, many weeks before the end of the school year. (I still have issues with this, but that’s a topic for another day)

With that in mind, I know many of you are getting ready to delve into SOL preparation and review for your students and you may not know where to find our SOL online resources. At the start of the school year, I moved them all to our web portal. You can find them under the category “SOL Preparation”.

If anyone is aware of any resources that are not included in the portal, please post a comment with the link so that they can be shared with your peers. Then, I will add them to the portal ASAP.

I love my PLN (Personal Learning Network). During the last few months, I’ve set up networks in Twitter, Diigo, Delicious, and Classroom 2.0 and I’m learning so much! Last night I needed to find another way to convert a .wav file to a .mp3 file because my converter wasn’t working. I posted a question to Twitter and had my answer within minutes!

This week’s featured websites are ones suggested by my “friends” in my PLN.

The first came from Jim Gates’ Tipline and is called Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning. The name pretty much says it all!

The second came from one of my Diigo contacts and is called 4Teachers. The primary objective for this site is to provide teachers with nice resources they can use to integrate technology with instruction.

The third one comes from Greg Smith at Tech Ed Know-How and is called Real World Math. This one looks really neat! It provides lessons where you use tools like Google Earth to teach math.

Here is a Feel Good Friday post provided by our very own Lauren B.!

Have a great weekend!

Math from Ma and Pa

I admit it. Math was never my strongest subject. I have an inestimable amount of respect for those of you who have mastered the foreign language that is Math. With that in mind, here is a fun video that both Math experts and the Math challenged should enjoy.

Math, Abbott and Costello Style