A Teacher's Guide to the Website Galaxy

TGFWWW. This stands for: Thank Goodness For the World Wide Web! As I develop as a teacher and what my teaching style will become, of course I am learning of all the free resources available to me. This includes the Internet and in many ways the Internet is very useful in helping me form my own ideas and to tweak some of other teachers' ideas. But the problems that I often face include: which websites are liable and which are not, where can I find awesome activities to incorporate into lessons, what are some good websites that help my students research that will not waste time? (sigh) The Internet can be very frustrating, but very helpful, so I have come up with a list to help out my fellow teachers.

Teacher Resources

• http://softschools.com/math/worksheets/lessthan_greater.jsp This site is great for adapting worksheets to fit your own lessons.
• http://www.gamequarium.org/ This is a wonderful game site!

Student Resources

• http://turnitin.com/static/index.html The website allows students to turn in papers or assignments and it regulates their original work by comparing it with other documents.
• http://www.kidsclick.org/ An awesome search engine for kids

Professional Development

• http://www.education.com/ Stay current with education news
• http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/

I hope that these sites will help!

thanks for reading,

Kels

The Final Frontier

This Friday night was the famous Pops Concert at school. For any of you who do not know what the Pops Concert is, well that's too bad because it is AWESOME! This concert is filled with great music from famous movies and composers that a lot of people are familiar with a.k.a family friendly. For example, music from The Jetsons to Led Zeppelin. Also, every year the Pops Concert has a theme. Last year the theme was a red carpet Holly Wood theme and their music was based from many famous movies. This year the theme was The Final Frontier. There were pieces from Star Wars to Star Trek and even one from Michael Jackson! What really makes the concert a success is the musicians that play in it.Each section of players dresses up to a certain peice of music which is always fun to see. My roomate, Miranda played her flute with pride as she represtented Lady Liberty. The MC's also help out in the relief department making the show sparkle with pizazz.

This concert is the best concert all year and no one should miss it, so be sure to go next year!

Here We Go...

Anyone knows that a college kid only needs minimal distraction to get sidetracked from their mountains upon mountains of homework. Last week, I was very distracted by a book by one of my favorite authors. Deeanne Gist. Gist writes historical fiction set in the west and I often find myself loving the simplicity of the life back then, even if it is just ficitonal. The book that was keeping my attention all week, was her recent new release: A Bride in the Bargain.

So i proceeded to read this book (which did not take long) and found, once again, another good book. There is just something about being lost in a good book where the characters are the only ones who really know that world like you do. Lonely you say? No. I find that some things that I absolutely love, are better kept to myself because it is a treasure. Some books are worth discussion, but i remember when the Twilight series came out and no one knew about it. I loved those books because that was something that people had not know and over expose. Now it is too late. Twilight is just another mere book series that people are way to obsessed about and I don't really care for it anymore. This is the magic of imagination. I think that God created me with a weird mind, as if he has created this special way of letting me treasure something all for myself. This is what reading is to me and I am still not entirely satisfied with that description because I cannot fully describe how it makes me feel.

thanks for reading,

Kels :)

Who's Your Favorite?

So on Monday of this week, I had to present a bulletin board on an author or illustrator for my Children's Lit. class. The author that i choose was Ezra Jack Keats. Although I did not know of him before this project, I am pleased to say that I would be willing to send him a thank you note and tell him that he is an awesome artist and writer.

Ezra Jack Keats started as an artist at a very young age. His family was poor so it has been said that his father at one point traded someone a bowl of soup for a tube of paint. Also, he apparently started to paint on his mother's dining room table. Keats' got older and started to illustrate for various companies some of which include: backrounds for marval comics and even (brace yourself) Playboy (Yes, this blog may be PG-13 at times). Even though Keats did not marry he still loved kids and they loved him, illustrating over 85 books, making him a Callacott winner. Some of his books include: Snowy Day, Whistle For Willie (my personal favorite), and Peter's Chair.

So here is a picture of my bulletin board. Enjoy!

A special thanks goes out to a fellow teacher and aunt for providing a poor college kid with some awesome supplies! Love you Aunti Shari!

Lets Talk Technology

Something that I know that I may never be better at then my mom is (drum roll please) technology. But this is OK. I have come to except this fact. Fixing my own computer needs would be a lot easier. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind hulling my computer across campus and hanging with my mom, but I don't think that technology likes me as much.

It can be fun to get a new gadget that makes life easier than we expect and we may feel SO cool to hold that new iPod touch in our hands , but I also feel like technology can plug the toilet bowl of life. In other words,I would like to get back into the old fashioned way of doing things. Sometimes I try to find the time to send snail mail to my aunt, but even then it is just convenient to log on to Facebook and drop a note.

As for technology in the classroom, I think that most of the time, I will use it to plan lessons and activities, but I do not want to have to teach students to use it. I may not agree with myself in the future, but right now I am sticking with good ol fashioned learning. I want students to learn about hard work and that learning can be essentially from them.

thanks for reading,

Kels