Wow. Websites for teachers!!

Thanks to teach4the heart...these are amazing websites for teachers.  I have shared, tweeted, and now added to my blog.  This is how good her blog is!  Check is out and follow her

http://teach4theheart.com/2014/09/01/50-best-websites-for-teachers/

Getting organized?

Trying to get organized? It is that time of year for most teachers.  I am on the search. In reading blogs I came across this... My favorite so far

http://www.thecurriculumcorner.com/thecurriculumcorner123/2014/07/24/student-data-binder/

Hope it helps you get ready for back to school.  It is fast approaching.  

Back to school...collecting resources for students!

In researching tidbits my students will need, I ran across this on FB shared by Cool Cat Teacher

This will be a valuable resource for my students. We do a lot of research in science and I teach them to give credit.  This will be the first hand out I give.  

Hope this is helpful to your class.

26 ways to go paperless!

For a teacher paper is a big deal! I am constantly fighting my students to bring paper. I am always buying paper for my class. It is a fine line between pencils and paper and you can't teach without it.  

Last year my district adopt a new policy that students can bring their own device to school.  So I quicky tried to become paperless.  We put almost everything on google docs.  They emailed me their work.  I edited, graded, and sent it back. It was great.  I am working out the bugs, but I like it.  

I found this post I wanted to share ;

http://www.teachthought.com/technology/26-ipad-apps-paperless-classroom/

Let me know what you think! 

Mocomi. Check it out!

So I was on Facebook and saw a new website that caught my attention. 

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2014/06/mocomi-offers-hundreds-of-short-video.html?m=1

It has lots of neat videos that teachers can access for your classroom. I wanted to share.  

Let me know what you think!

Bingo for the IPad...a viewer shared!

Shared from a great website...Over the last few weeks, http://www.educatorstechnology.com/ has been posting articles featuring different iPads activities teachers can use with their students.

The last thing they published in this regard is these 5 iPad learning tasks. I am doing this in reply to the multiple requests I received from teachers asking for suggestions of iPad-based activities to use in class.

Today I am sharing with you an iPad Bingo card created by iPad Bingo. This card is available for free download from this page. iPad Bingo card is a chart that features 6 iPad apps and with each of these apps is attached a set of activities to be achieved through the use of that app. These activities are divided into three levels with different layers of difficulty.

I loved this activity and wanted to pass this along.   I hope you will continue to follow them and find their website useful.  I visit them frequently and use many useful tips with my students.  

Favorite Apps...Kid Approved

I was asked today what are some of my favorite apps?   It was easy for me to answer.  I keep them organized on my IPad by subject.  My kids are free to play them when they finish an assignment.  I tell them they are testing them for me and I need honest feedback.  I am constantly adding new and deleting ones that have bugs or ones that the kids tell me are boring, or are not fun.  They can only play a game that is on our subject matter, at that given time.  I do have puzzles and fun games for free time for them to evaluate.   

Here are our favorites at the moment:

Most if not all of these are free.  I never pay for an app!  I have won a few apps at tech workshops, but that was only two.   There is an app called Appsgonefree that you can download that gives you 5-7 apps free everyday.  These are apps that normally cost.  It is a very good deal.  

Copyright for teachers...From Free Technology For teachers by Richard Byrne

Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Bryne wrote a blog this week on Copyright.   It was ironic because this week a friend was asking me about giving credit when we use pictures from the internet. Too often we let our students copy and paste pictures in their reports and projects and forget to give credit.  We need to start teaching them how to give credit for what they borrow.  When I saw the blog Richard published, I had to share part of it with you...

Copyright and Creative Commons Explained by Common Craft tells the story of a photographer who uses Creative Commons licensing on her images. 

Copyright on Campus was produced by the Copyright Clearance Center which is a for-profit organization. That is probably why the video lacks a balanced discussion ofsection 107 of Title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States. Rather than making you go look it up, I've pasted the content of section 107 below. (Richard pasted)

"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; 
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work; 
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and 
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. 
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

The Copyright Foundation offers a thirteen page guide (link opens PDF) to Copyright for Educators. Included in the guide is a glossary of important terms. At the end of the guide you will also find some lesson plans that are available on the Copyright Foundation's curriculum pages.

For helping students learn about Copyright Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright is a use resource produced by the Library of Congress. Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright is intended to help elementary school students understand the purposes and functions of copyright. "

I invite you to follow Richard at http://www.freetech4teachers.com 

He always has something new everyday...

I'd like to thank Richard Byrne for his blog and his valuable information.  I always learn something new and can't wait to share.

Summer is here...Keep Kids Learning

This is my first blog on technology tidbits.   I am always doing research and finding new information that I want to share.  I usually end up sending too many emails to my friends and they don't have time to read them.  I am trying to find a way to organize all the cool apps and websites I find.  I keep them in iBooks but that is becoming full on the cloud, and others cannot access it.  I send it on google drive, but it is not very popular.  So I am going to try blogging...

I will start out simple to see how it goes?  So give me feedback, suggestions, and keep in mind this is for teachers who are not tech savy.

The Richard Dawkins Science Foundation shared...