Technology Tidbits October05 Newsletter

Technology Tidbits Newsletter
From
Leanna Prater and Paula Whitmer
District Technology Resource Teachers

	Welcome Fall! Paula Whitmer and Leanna Prater are District Wide Technology Resource Teachers who can help out with your technology needs. We hope in this newsletter you might find some interesting ideas, websites and lessons to keep you up to date with technology integration.
October 2005 Vol. 2 No. 2
(Formerly know as United Streaming) Imagine you’re an elementary teacher planning a unit on desert biomes. Or a high school English teacher whose students are reading The Red Badge of Courage. Then imagine a single online source that lets you choose among hundreds of related instructional resources—full-length videos on desert environments or the Civil War, brief video clips, digital photographs, clip art—and then lets you easily incorporate those materials into your lessons. It may sound like a fantasy, but KET EncycloMedia, a new Internet-based comprehensive learning service offered free to Kentucky public schools, turns this fantasy into reality. The result of a partnership between KET and the Kentucky Department of Education, KET EncycloMedia offers teachers and students more than 4,000 videos, 40,000 video clips, and thousands of digital images, all searchable by key word, content area, grade level, and Kentucky academic standards. Interested in using this wonderful resource? Check with yourmedia specialist about obtaining a pass-code to set up your own account, or you can e-mail Leanna Prater to help. Looking for ways to use this resource in your classroom? Feel free to contact Leanna or Paula for suggestions. Video clips can be inserted into PowerPoint, Inspiration, TimeLiner and more!	Technology Tips from Kim Overstreet Old Favorite Attaching a file to an email message Want to be able to send out that homework sheet to a parent of a student that's missed school? This week's tip is how to attach a document or file to an email message. Open the email message. Click on the paper clip on the toolbar or if that isn't there, click Insert then File. Then look for the place where the file is saved. Highlight the document and then click Insert. Once it's inserted, you will see the icon in the email message. Then you can type a message or send the email. New Favorite *Inserting comments into Word electronically* Did you know that you can attach comments to a students' paper electronically that they can read, but that will not print out? Here's how: Open the document. Highlight a passage on which you wish to comment. Choose Insert from the menu bar. Select Comment. Type in the comment you want to make. Once you have added comments, they will show up in the margin of the electronic version, but not in a print out. Also after the first comment is made, the Reviewing Toolbar will show up so students may choose to reject/delete comments once they have made their revisions. This is a great tool for ePals to help revise written pieces.

Favorite Sites from Riverdeep Newsletter THE NATIVE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE WITH LEWIS AND CLARK: What would the Lewis and Clark Expedition have been like without Sacagawea? Her contributions will be explored, along with Native American economy and wampum, and patterning in beads. Students will also construct a simple loom and weave their own wampum belts in this hands-on lesson plan. SUGGESTIONS FOR CALENDAR WALLS: If you are counting the days until the one hundredth day of school, learning days of the month, graphing the weather, or learning the day of the week, there are several suggest- ions here to help create great calendar walls for element- ary learning concepts.	Math Activities Math Cats Find lessons and online activities for fall like leaf symmetry and spider coordinate graphing HEKKO Here is a neat site that is free for schools to use. The company relies on funding from parents subscribing to the service to make this service free for teachers. Currently they have K-1 math activities available, but plan on adding other content and grades. Some of the activities are quite challenging for K-1 students and may be appropriate for use with upper primary students. Activities are based on California State Standards, many of which are similar to KY standards. The program is designed to keep track of individual student progress and students must pass checkpoints before they can move on to the next level. The site also mentions ways that schools can use Hekko for fundraising purposes. The only draw back about this Internet based program, teachers can only use the service from 8 AM to 3 PM (PST) or 11 AM - 6 PM our time.

Social Studies Ideas	Ten by Ten Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. In this way, a constantly evolving record of our world is formed, based on prominent world events, without any human input.
Boston Massacre... Was it really a massacre? Does history accurately tell us what happened? This site addresses those questions about this important event leading up to the American Revolution. Great for Art integration!
All About Masks Exploring culture and self through art and poetry African Masks Greek Theatre Masks Paper Bag Mask	Arts and Humanities PlayMusic.org Lots of neat activities to do here, from drawing music to taking a seat in the orchestra. Architect Studio 3-D Take a lesson from Frank Lloyd Wright in how to design a house from the outside in.
Literature Links A New Coat For Anna by Harriet Ziefert Cyberguide-Unit for the book from California's Cyberguide site. Island of the Blue Dolphin by Scott O'Dell Cyberguide- Unit for the book from California's Cyberguide site. Literature Circle Resources Find role sheets and descriptions, bookmarks, reading logs and much more.	Physical Education and Health Great Activities (sample issue) A Newspaper for Elementary & Middle School Physical Education Teachers Included are games, ideas, and activities that are typically found in one of their issues. Safety Tips for Trick or Treating From the Los Angeles Fire Department