Technology Times » Social Studies

Mini-Byte: Accessing Discovery Education

tekkieteacher — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:47:28 +0000

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:

Go to http://tech.hylton.groupfusion.net and log in.
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.
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.
Once you are logged in, click “Streaming” in the upper left corner and have fun searching!

Game Time!

tekkieteacher — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:39:15 +0000

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.

Shmoop

tekkieteacher — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:20:41 +0000

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!

Thinkfinity

tekkieteacher — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:26:15 +0000

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!

The White House Blog

tekkieteacher — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:58:39 +0000

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/

Mini-Byte: SOL Test Preparation

tekkieteacher — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:46:05 +0000

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.

Webquests.org

tekkieteacher — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:40:24 +0000

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!

Blagojevich’s Fire Department

tekkieteacher — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:05:21 +0000

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

Wordle of Obama Speech

tekkieteacher — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:07:33 +0000

From http://www.wordle.net/

On Obama

tekkieteacher — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:57:24 +0000