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 site looks very promising.

http://www.shmoop.com/teachers/

The mission of the site is “To make learning and writing more fun and relevant for students in the digital age”. While the focus is on literature and poetry, there are also nice resources for social studies, too. Check it out and let me know what you think!

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!

Did you know President Obama was blogging?!?! OK, well maybe he isn’t the actual author of the posts, but it’s nice to see the White House joining in the 21st century’s Web 2.0 revolution. My favorite resent post was called A Good Day on the Swingset! Check it out!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/

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 one has been making the rounds. I believe it originated with our very own Officer Mark S. In tough times, with all the talk of recession, budget shortfalls, and home foreclosures, it’s important to still find time for a little laughter.

Enjoy!

blagojevichsfiredepartment

From http://www.wordle.net/

Here is a great site brought to us by our very own Jason F. Be sure to read the instructions that pop up.

http://historywired.si.edu/index.html

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.

When I first started teaching, this was the song that was at the top of the charts. In my US History class, we would listen to the song and then I’d have the students each research one or two of the events so they could explain the significance to the class. Then we’d all listen to the song again. It was a really fun activity that I would save for the end of the year when kids (and teachers) were starting to tune out.

I realize that this is more for Social Studies, but it’s a fun little video, so enjoy and have a wonderful Memorial Day holiday!

We Didn’t Start the Fire

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…..

We’ve added quite a few more links to Hylton’s PortaPortal that you will want to check out. One of these is Primary Source Learning that our Gifted Education teacher, Janice G., shared it with me. It looks like a great resource! She was also kind enough to share the training materials for the site. If you would like copies, just come by the IT Lab.

Additionally, if you are looking for the SOL remediation resource links, they are also now on the PortaPortal.

Yes, today’s Website Wednesday features a two-for deal! In addition to the MyRocketbook.com site you see below, I’ve also found a couple of great sites for free Social Studies videos — John Stossel’s 20/20 segments and izzit.org.

Enjoy!