How Big is the Sun

This blog post from Free Technology for Teachers features a video from Minute Physics, the video is really nice, short and easy for students to understand, but Minute Physics on YouTube has a lot of other videos too.

How Big is the Sun?

A Classroom Timer

I love little internet tools that are free and make life a little easier. This is just such a tool, a popup timer with a buzzer.  It is very simple, easy to use and who doesn't need a timer now and again.  I got this from one of my favorite blogs, Free Technology For Teachers.

Timer Pop

Love this really cute site I found on the Technology Tidbits blog, I think it would be a fun way to help students work on Language Arts and also digital storytelling.  Students create their own monster, they play a game where they identify parts of speech by having their monster eat them and students can create and watch their own story.


Story Monster

A great blog about Hello Ruby

I was not a computer person growing up, in fact I am old enough that there weren't any and when I started college you had to get time at a terminal to access the main frame!  I was a theater major, totally right brained and thought computer programming was gibberish.  I had my first in depth introduction to computers in my 40s and it was love at first sight.  Mostly because of the ability to correct and rearrange my writing.  Organization is not my strong suit, in fact, I work for disorganization because it was to discouraging to try and be organized.  Computers changed that for me, I am so much more able to organize myself.  I don't forget meetings as often, my files are alphabetized!  Amazing stuff.  I learned about programming in my early 50s and I really loved it.  Programming is a language and I am good at languages.  It has vocabulary, syntax and punctuation, I could do this.  I still love programming, I never really got very good at it but I really enjoy it and love watching children master programming.  I cannot wait to introduce my granddaughter to Scratch, Alice and all of the other wonderful tools that are being developed for kids.  I just read this blog from iLearn Technology about Hello Ruby, a book about programming for children and now a whole website.  I ordered the book right away, I can't wait to see it.  This is one I definitely want to share!

Hello Ruby: A whimsical way to learn about computers and programming

I found a cute YouTube Channel from Free Technology for Teachers that uses video to reinforce math concepts.  It was really nice and looked like a good way to add a little more to math lessons.  I loved these types of things when I was a kid, Schoolhouse Rock was a favorite!

Numberock - Math Music Videos

Another one of my favorite bloggers comes through

Larry Ferlazzo is an ELL teacher who posts tons of great resources for ELL classrooms, for that matter they are great for any classroom.  He has written several books and continues to find the best resources to help students progress.  He does a variety of Best of lists, you should take the time to look at them but the one I want to feature today is The Best of Online Games. Lots of resources to make learning a more fun experience for students and teachers, plus ways to track your students progress.  He works to find free resources, some do have premium levels but usually they have a free level.  This blog also points out some of his other Best of lists so once you get going you will be hooked, I was!

Excel

I get lots of newsletters and follow lots of blogs but a few of them really stand out for me.  I get a daily Excel tip newsletter and I always take a few minutes to view it because of the info I find.  One particular newsletter stuck out, it was about creating dashboards in Excel.  I love Excel and manipulating data, it is a totally geeky thing but I will own up to it so when I see a new way to I jump on it.  this was awesome!  It provided a link to a webcast that explained a bit about dashboards and how to create them.  Of course it also offers extensive courses you can take if you are interested in furthering your skills.

Here is a link to the Newsletter and here is a link to the Excel Dashboard site.