August



= = =**August Monthly Highlights**=


 * Start the school year using exciting technology resources! Involve your students and stimulate minds!**

Enjoy learning!**
 * In just a few short minutes each day or in more involved projects, you can use for you students as well as yourself!

Wonderful lessons in all subjects! [|Back to School] (from ProTeacher) Links to those activities, icebreakers, year long ideas, classroom management tips, clip art, and more to help you get back in the groove! [|Bulletin Board Ideas!]** **Links to pages with examples for various subject areas and grade levels**
 * [|Back To School] --- [|Fresh Ideas for Opening Day] (from Education World)
 * [|Writing Bug: First Day of School] - Take advantage of writing prompts provided by EducationWorld during the school year! Wouldn't you love to hear what students would do [|If They Were the Teacher?]**
 * [|August Themes from EducationPlace] - K-8 Activities especially for the month of August!**
 * [|Google Earth] (free download) An amazing way to explore the world!** **Look up places your students have traveled or want to visit as well as places you study during the school year!**



[|Hurricanes!] - August and September are the peak months of hurricane season! This hurricane theme page will provide links to resources that provide interesting information about these powerful storms. In addition, there are special Internet research activities for use with your students. Your students would also enjoy making a graph of the most costly storms throughout the years. Enjoy learning more about hurricanes!

[|FEMA for Kids: Hurricanes]

[|Discovery Education streaming] videos about hurricanes are available! [|National Hurricane Center] - Tropical Prediction Center - Follow hurricanes like Charley or Frances from their origins near the African coast across the Atlantic Ocean. This is a wonderful way to teach longitude and latitude without a worksheet. Give your class a real life lessons on how these skills are used! (Click Maps & Charts or Satellite Imagery)

[|NetSmartz] - Internet Safety Presentations //The NetSmartz Workshop is an interactive, educational safety resource to teach kids and teens how to stay safer on the Internet. NetSmartz combines the newest technologies available and the most current information to create high-impact educational activities that are well received by even the most tech-savvy kids.// //Parents, guardians, educators, and law enforcement also have access to resources for learning and teaching about the dangers children may face online. NetSmartz was created by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® (NCMEC) and Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA).// [|Thinkfinity] - Search for high quality, standards-based and research-based educational and literacy resources for teachers, instructors and students. (Content Partners include ReadWriteThink (Language Arts), Illuminations (Math), Xpeditions (Geography), Science Netlinks, ArtsEdge, and more!) [|A Natural State] - (from [|Knowitall.org]) Explore how artists express a love for nature by shaping, twisting, carving, and weaving materials collected from the landscape. "Natural" artists across the five landforms of the state - the blue ridge, piedmont, sandhills, coastal plain, and coastal zone are featured! [|JenuineTech] Creative Online Projects for the PreK-6 Elementary Classroom are available throughout the year. Check the calendar to see current projects! Collaborative projects are an exciting way to integrate technology, connect your students to the world, meet a variety of standards, and increase student learning! [|Journey North (South)!] Participate in this global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change! K-12 students share field observations with classmates across North America. A variety of opportunities are available - Plant a tulip garden, send a symbolic Monarch to Mexico, track the Monarch butterflies or whooping cranes journey south, discover Mystery Classes by photoperiod clues, and more! Online Autumn (Revival) The goal of this project is to have students in grades K-4 share their creative writing and art work while giving teachers the opportunity to learn new tools. Participants will have their own page on this wiki and are welcome to link to their own web site, wiki, Flickr photographs, Teacher Tube, podcast, blog, slide share, etc. The project will begin on August 1, 2008 and end on November 20, 2008. [|Tooth Tally Project] - Enjoy this wonderful phase in your students’ life. This collaborative project usually begins in January each year, but you can make this a yearlong activity! Using MS Excel, your class can chart the number of teeth lost each month during the school year. Students compare tooth loss by month using the spreadsheet and chart. An easy activity your kindergarten or first grade children will always remember! ([|Tooth Loss Excel file]) [|Web 2.0] - What is it? Sharing & Collaborating! The future brings [|Web 3.0]! Use some of these applications in your classroom this year! [|VoiceThread] - A VoiceThread is an online media album (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. [|pbwiki] A classroom Wiki is an excellent way to encourage collaboration in your classroom! [|Edublogs] - Create a classroom blog for your upcoming students. A wonderful way to encourage collaboration and publish student writing! You can also post classroom podcasts to your blog -- cool!! [|Del.icio.us] * [|Diigo] - Keep your favorite bookmarks online and share! You can access your favorite web sites from any computer at school, home, or any location with Internet access. [|Google Docs & Spreadsheets] - The online way to keep your files - Create, Edit, Share - Free! [|GCast] - Podcast from your cell phone! //Make your voice heard...// [|Google Video] - Search, upload, and share videos online - Education category [|Flickr] - Manage & share your photos [|Box.net] - Free Online File Storage (1 GB free), Internet File Sharing, RSS Sharing, Access Documents & Files [|Wikipedia] - A collaborative encyclopedia under a Wiki platform that is written and maintained by volunteers. [|Incorporating Web 2.0 Tools in the Classroom] [|Web 2.0 Portal] - All the web 2.0 tools you could ever want!

[|Harcourt's "Think Math"] - Interactive activities for the math class! [|A Touch of Class] - An interactive science activity where students classify plants and animals into groups based on certain characteristics. Cool! [|Interactive Resources] - Organized by subject (from Global Classrooms) - Perfect for interactive whiteboards! [|Great K-3 SMARTboard Sites] [|Trees - Do They Always Look the Same?] Develop an appreciation of nature along with observation, writing, and technology skills! Students select a tree in August to observe //throughout// the year. They take digital pictures and write about how their tree changes with the seasons. Information is collected in a class book or Power Point show. The lesson is adaptable for younger and older student. [|All About Me] - Use Inspiration or OpenMind to let students complete a web-style graphic organizer about themselves. A perfect way to build community at the beginning of the year! Students use a digital camera to take and insert a picture into the organizer. Then add facts about themselves to complete the organizer. This can also be used weekly for recognition of student of the week or a printed version would make an excellent display for open house. When completed, the documents can be exported as images to Power Point for presentation in the classroom or at an open house.

[|Free Online Games & Quizzes!] - Terrific online educational games to improve skills - Geography, Animals, Chemistry, Vocabulary - Use them with a whiteboard, computer lab, classroom learning station, or at home! [|It's Financial Football Season!] Students learn financial concepts in this fast-paced, quiz-style game. Compete by answering finance-themed questions to earn yardage and score touchdowns. [|Practical Money Skills for Life] - Lesson plans (for all ages), Interactive Calculators (Save A Million, Travel Wizard, Gift Log, & more), Games, Banking Tutor, and other excellent resources to help students practice better money management for life. [|Center for History and New Media] - //Since 1994, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has used digital media and computer technology to democratize history—to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past. They sponsor more than a dozen digital history [|projects] (History Matters, Exploring US History, World History Matters, etc.) and offer [|free tools] (survey builder, timeliner, poll builder, etc.) and resources for historians.// [|Dinosphere - Now You're In THEIR World!] (Children's Museum of Indianapolis) Students love dinosaurs! Treat them to a virtual tour and imagine life 65 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs ruled the earth. There are free standards-based online activities, web quests, and unit lesson plans in English or Spanish available as well! (K-8) [|A Tale To Be Told!] - A Web Quest for those who are curious, want to explore, can't resist a good riddle, and are creative & expressive! Explore folk tales of cultures throughout the world and write your own! [|**Exploratorium: Science of Music**] - Why do some songs get stuck in my head? Why does some music give me goose bumps? Why does my singing sound so great in the shower?? Exhibits, Questions, and movies your students will love! [|Exploratorium Home Page] - Discover more about the Science of Gardening, the Science of Cycling, see living mouse stem cells at the Microscope Imaging Station, check Space Weather Research, create a Space-age Ant Farm, and even Explore the Origins of Matter, the Universe, and Life! Do take a look! [|America Dreams ... through the Decades]- What is the //American Dream?// Is it the same for all Americans? Is it a myth? Is it simply a quest for a better life? What is your dream? This Web Quest provides students a look through the eyes of those who lived before us and an opportunity to share their interpretation of the "American Dream." [|Ology!] (from the American Museum of Natural History) "Ology" means "the study of". This web resource contains interactive content in archaeology, astronomy, biodiversity, genetics, marine biology, paleontology, and physical science - makes science learning rich and engaging! ([|List of all topics].)