Election resource

Hello Metronet gang. Here's an interesting link to get students a little more interested in the campaign process. I'm going to give it a try next week. http://current.com/topics/88849451_election_night_2008

With my student teacher finishing his time here tomorrow, I'm curious when I'll make time to do my blogging and keep working on my "Things", but I'll give it my best shot!

Comments on Thing 4

I just finished reading and doing Thing 4 from the 23 Things list. I'll make a few comments on the On-line productivity tools.
First, I've been using igoogle as my customizable homepage. I love the streamlined and efficient nature of using this page. It's a real time-saver and I just read through the things that interest me most if I'm pinched for time.

While doing my Thing 4 assignments, I checked out google calendar and even set up an account and entered an appointment. I like the calendar but I don't know that I'll use it for the time being becuase I already keep a calendar for my students on my rSchool account and I keep my personal/professional calendars in my Outlook. I feel that keeping an additional calendar at this point is redundant. I may change my mind about that in the future.

Thing 2 and RSS readers

I just realized that I did "Thing 2" but forgot to blog about it. Now that I'm using it every day, I LOVE Google Reader. I've found several terrific sites on the RSS feed "Technology for Teachers".
It's quick and simple to check Google Reader once or twice each day and read things that look interesting &/or relevant to teaching World History. Today I'll be looking for good resourses on the presidential election to use in my classroom. I'll keep you posted on any great finds.

Power Point Palooza

http://pptpalooza.net/

Social Studies teachers might be interested in this site. It has many "ready made" power points for history and global studies type classes. I was looking for a power point on the Age of Exploration and found a very well done slide show at this site.

P.S. I found this site because of the "Free Technology for Teachers" RSS feed that Travis and Sarah showed us all recently. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, I recommend it as well. Here's the link:
http://freetech4teachers.blogspot.com/

Wordle plan for my E.L.L. class

I've made a lesson plan to incorporate the wordle website into my lesson plan for Monday. I teach one section of World History to an all E.L.L. (English Language Learners) class. Many are struggling to learn to write and even speak in English. On Monday, they are composing paragraphs to wrap up a Social Studies unit we've been studying about Islamic Empires.

After students write paragraphs summarizing important facts about two Islamic Empires, I'm having them cut and paste their paragraphs into the Wordle site and then print them. We'll talk about which words they see appearing in their word clouds and why they appear prominently (which I understand is all about the frequency of certain words in the text they entered). My hope is that this will be a fun way to talk about improving their writing skills. I'll keep you all posted how things go after Monday's lesson.

Delicious and This Day In History

Today I learned how to add other users to my Delicious account which is really cool because I can see what other teachers are using and saving too...seems like a potential time-saver!

Another cool thing from today's Metronet class was hearing from Sarah B. how to find little video clips on the History Channel about "On This Day In History". I'm frequently looking for simple and interesting ways to add technology to my lesson plans, so I'm sure I'll be using this clip in the future. Here's the link if anyone is interested in exploring it.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do