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!

From the folks who bring us the Nobel Prize — here is a fun site with great Educational games!

http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/

Click All Productions in the top left to see a complete list of everything they have. Most of the games are for Science, but there are also some that might be good for Language Arts and Social Studies.

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 week’s featured website comes from our very own Cathy L! It’s an awesome site for Science!

Geography in Animation from Wycombe High School

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.

Today I’m posting not one, not two, but THREE websites that our Social Studies and Science teachers might find useful. I can’t take credit for finding them, though. As usual, I depend on the generosity and intelligence of others to point me in the right direction.

The first site, Exploring Earth, was sent to me by our Oceanography teacher, Cathy L. Select a chapter from the left and then use the navigation buttons along the top to find some really neat resources.

The next two sites I discovered through Jim Gate’s Tipline. He is the bee’s knees (Do people still say that, or am I just a dork? – Don’t answer that. I already know the answer.) when it comes to wonderful tips and tricks. For our Social Studies teachers, check out 270towin.com to trace the history of our presidential elections. For our Science teachers, here is a nice ”clickable” periodic table.

Just two more days to go…..

This week’s featured website comes recommended by one of our wonderful Oceanography teachers, Cathy L.

http://www.vims.edu/bridge/