Walmart Gift Card Give Away

Middle School Teachers:
You may either make a comment to the earlier post about how you can use technology in your classroom or you can respond to this one to be entered in the give away.

The question to answer is to make a brief comment about one of the sites you looked at today during our time together. Make sure to include your name on the post.

Signature Files

This is a sample of how to use a signature for each post.
http://www.mylivesignature.com is the website to use.

Survey - Free Walmart Gift Card giveaway

This is an example of how a blog could be used as a student response journal.

For GMS teachers:

How can you use a blog in your classroom? Leave me a comment.

Under Major Revision

Notice there are pages or tabs at the top now. After going to the TCEA convention, I have decided to update this site to be user friendly and to include the many great websites that people need to be aware of. I could not decide between a webpage, a wiki, or a blog, but I decide on this format after several of the teachers that went to Austin with us chose to use blogs. Also it was easy since I already had this one created.

Hot Topics at TCEA 2010

Excel Tip

Here is an update for the Excel Tricks and Tips.

This was not included on the handout.

How to get your students at the top of every page of your mastery without copy and pasting the row at the top of each page. This is for printing purposes and this is different than freezing the panes that we did in the inservice.

To Repeat Rows (names of students) for Mastery

View > Page Layout

File > Page Set Up

Sheet tab

Print Files > Rows to Repeat at Top Click on grid at end of box.

Highlight the row of your worksheet where the students' names are. You should see a formula appear in the box with $ signs.

Click OK. Now at the top of each page will be the students' names.

More Uses for the Video Projector in Your Classroom

True tech integrators know the digital projector can be used for much more than projecting. Here is a sampling of some creative ways to use your projector in any curriculum.

• Reading/Writing. Display images, words, or phrases for writing prompts in creative writing or poetry class. Model savvy formatting and editing skills by giving live demonstrations in your word-processing software. And put away those old flashcards—young students love singing karaoke to practice their pronunciation and identify targeted sight words.
• Mathematics. Utah State University's National Library of Virtual Manipulatives offers hundreds of multi-sensory games, illustrations, exercises and puzzles for K-12 students that explore numerical operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, and data analysis. (nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vLibrary.html; free online, $39.99-44.99 for enhanced desktop version).
• Science. Ask students to add their experimental data directly to your spreadsheet and project graphs of their results for everyone to see—you'll identify those pesky outliers in no time. Protect your eyebrows and your budget by showing videos of dangerous chemistry demonstrations.
• Social Studies. Google Earth (earth.google.com) works wonders but loves to crash on older computers. Try the University of Texas at Austin's renowned Perry-Castañeda Library Virtual Map Room (www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/; free) for a wide array of PDF maps from around the globe.
• Timer, Stopwatch, Countdown. Using a simple freeware program like TimeLeft (www.timeleft.info), students will see exactly how long they've been working on a project, how much time is left, or how many days until the ice cream social after your final exam.
• Games and Quizzes. Turn those groans to glee come quiz-time with hyperlinked Powerpoint presentations that mimic popular quiz games like "Jeopardy!" or "You Don't Know Jack." Free Sheppard Software (sheppardsoftware.com) has dozens of interactive games that will have your students begging for more.
• Board Work. Standing at the whiteboard terrifies many students. Why? Writing large print on a vertical plane isn't easy for everyone and little handwriting slips can turn into big, embarrassing mistakes. Ask students to do the work on a sheet of paper, fire up your doc camera, then project their results. No more stage fright!
• Graphic Organizers. Online diagramming software like Gliffy (www.gliffy.com; free basic membership, premium account varies by number of users) or Bubbl (bubbl.us; free) can make creating lively instructional flowcharts, cluster diagrams, and spider maps a breeze.