Views of the World from Your Classroom

As we enjoy this wonderfully crisp Minnesota weather. . . wait, I am not enjoying it anymore. Are you??? 

How awesome would it be to check out other parts of the world from the comfort of your own home or classroom?! Web Cams can offer that to us. Using a web cam can enhance curriculum from science, to social studies, to geography, and more.

Check out this cool web cam showing off the Pandas at the San Diego Zoo:

www.sandiegozoo.com/pandacam/index.html

The next time that you have a unit of study check to see if there is a web cam available related to it. What a great opportunity for your students/child to see something that they might otherwise have not seen.

Kid-Friendly Search Engines

With so many projects and so little time, the internet is a wonderful tool to use for fact finding.

There is so much information out there just waiting to be found with one small problem, some of the content that pops up it's exactly what your student is looking for, nor is it what you want them to see. Luckily, there are some great kid-friendly search engines and I have listed them below for you:

Quintura Kids - This is a great site for 6th grade and up

KidsClick! - This site provides over 600 subject areas and it provides the reading level for its material

Little Explorers Dictionary- Also called Enchanted Learning, this site provides great information with easy to read text for grades 2 and up.

Ask For Kids - Super site where you can filter the information by kids, teens, or advanced teen. This site is from the makers of Ask Jeeves.

All of the links that are posted above are hot-links, meaning you should be able to click on the blue words and it will take you directly to the site.

I hope that the next time your child comes home and says, "Mom and Dad, I have to find out some stuff about The Revolutionary War. . . . by tomorrow. " You will have a wealth of knowledge at your finger tips.

Here We Go!

I attended a fantastic workshop today about using technology in the classroom and I have come to the conculsion that we are doing about 2% of what we could possibly be doing. As I am coming down from my "workshop high", I am trying to think about what I should start first and the blog won.

Using a blog is a fantastic way to communicate with parents and the best part is, it's FREE!! On the blog I will post what we are doing in class, web sites we have visites, sites for you to visit at home, examples of student work, pictures and video (all with parent permission of course!). I will also be encouraging the rest of the STFX staff to start their own blogs as an effective way to commincate classroom information and goings-on throughout the school.

So, welcome to the very first blog! Enjoy!