Most of the teachers that I know are still using power point to give lectures with and to have students produce projects.  It’s not that I still don’t use it but it is my starting point and not the end.  Recently I made a power point on cyber bullying for a presentation that I have to make to our middle school staff next week.  I made the power point, then I saved it as jpgs and put some of them into a glog.  I then made a video of them with photostory, and I made a slide.com presentations as well.  My goal was to show my fellow teachers how to take a simple power point and change it up.  Students could easily accomplish these alternatives once they have their power point, then they could get feed back from people outside of their own classroom.  Plus it just adds a lot of fun to working on a project.  At least I think so.

Plus I came across this at the Arizona k-12 site and found that it makes all the points that I wish I could have said so creatively.

Life After Death PowerPoint from EMT Media on Vimeo.

I have also decided on a new classroom mantra. Fun, Fun, and more Fun.  After listening to the teachers at my school that went to ISTC last weekend and their discussion of one of the sessions on the ‘reasons to have fun’ in the classroom, I realize that I am a closet ‘fun teacher’.  I do think that if students can equate fun and excitement with learning than we will have life long learners on our hands.  So when the statement was made in the lunch room that mass murderers come from households that did not have any fun time it home that even though none of my students will ever be mass murderers I need to make sure that we have fun in the classroom just because.  Therefore, even though I normally daily try to inject a sense of fun everyday with my general demeanor in the classroom I am going to find activities that allow students to have more fun.  Some of the ways that I do this already is to use smart board games for review, to make sure that in my chemistry unit we burn stuff up, and now I am going to include making glogs.  Glogster glogs are my new fun addiction.  I am old (over 50) and if I can have fun and be inspired by such a simple concept what will my students think.  I know.  They will LOVE it.

The first thing that we are going to do is to film ourselves doing chemical reaction experiments and then put them in a glog.  I can’t wait to share them with all of you.  I encourage everybody to become a glogger.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14062777/Twitter-Handbook-for-Teachers

http://misterpfoxford.blogspot.com/

Check out the following wiki for relevant guides on “How to’s”

http://area6ict.wikispaces.com/

Using wallwisher in history.

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/isthistory

Have fun.

High School

http://www.ourcourts.org/play-games/argument-wars

http://www.absorblearning.com/en/Free_online_Absorb_resources/

http://www.arkive.org/

http://freezeray.com/

http://www.periodicvideos.com/  This site is amazing.

http://lgfl.skoool.co.uk/index.aspx

http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/index.php?cat=Featured_Sims

http://www.kscience.co.uk/animations/anim_1.htm

Middle School and

Elementary

http://www.eduplace.com/tales/

http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/

http://www.storylineonline.net/ The stars read stores online to students.  Streaming video.

http://www.arkive.org/

http://www.stellarium.org/

http://illuminations.nctm.org/

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games_menu.htm

http://www.signedstories.com/page/index.cfm

http://www.tutpup.com/

http://ecodazoo.com/

http://www.tes.iboard.co.uk/

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/

http://www.memorialhall.mass.edu/home.html

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/famouspeople/

http://bensguide.gpo.gov/flash/states_puzzle_lines2.html

Smart board Resources

http://annemarie80.edublogs.org/2009/07/20/smart-board-resources/

Music Resources

http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/

http://www.y8.com/games/Music_Match

http://www.kenbrashear.com/

http://www.helpkidzlearn.com/creative/making_music.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/cartoons/shaunthesheep/games/bleat/index.shtml

http://www.muxicall.com/

http://www.toytheater.com/music.php

http://www.poissonrouge.com/piano/index.htm

Just for fun

http://mugtug.com/sketchpad/  Sketchpad

http://www.sense-lang.org/typing/games/typingchef.php

http://www.nbcolympics.com/science-of-the-games/index.html  Olympic Science

Does anyone else have this problem?  What are the rest of you doing to combat this issue?

I hope to engage them this spring by using Glogster, wordle, animoto, voicethread, and a webquest with jogtheweb.  Hopefully, these projects along with the standard lab activities on forces, Newton’s Laws, and simple machines will motivate everybody in the classroom, as well as myself to fulfill our individual potentials as we move toward spring.

Let me know what you think.