Spelling City

Everyone ready to start back up? One week and counting. Here is a helpful link to get you started this year.
If you teach spelling, you'll want to check out Spelling City. It is a free (there is a premium version for minimal cost) site that lets you post your spelling words and allows your students to test themselves, play games, and more. I have posted a link to some short "how to" videos that will help you get started. Even if you used Spelling City last year, check out the videos, as they have added some new features.

http://www.spellingcity.com/how-to-videos.html?utm_source=SpellingCity&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=SC%20NL%2009Aug10

National Archives search

Here is an interesting site that allows you to search the National Archives in a cool format.  It is a flash program that allows you to see a thumbnails of many documents that are collected together depending on your search.  If you search the Supreme  Court, you could go the route of D.C. buildings, the court itself, individual cases, justices, the nomination process, etc.  There are primary documents and photos from the archives, all digitized, at your service.  The flash format makes it fun to search and the fact that you can see thumbnails of each document makes searching easier, or at least easier to dig deeper.  Try it out.

Mitt and Minn's Illinois Adventure

Our classes have been busy learning about Illinois as they read Mitt and Minn's Illinois Adventure.  Our One School, One Book adventure has been a real learning experience.  Check out some of the additions to our wiki at http://www.whiteside115.wikispaces.com/  Please comment if you'd like.

Wolfram Alphra

Here is an awesome research tool I found called Wolfram Alpha.  http://www.wolframalpha.com/   It is a search engine, but not quite.  They call it a computational knowledge engine.  You can ask  a question and the info that comes up is pretty amazing.   It will give you the answer to your questions, plus other pertainent info.  The site does give you a few links to other sites, but not like google.  For math, it's pretty cool.  You can type in an equation, and it graphs it for you and shows the steps to solve.  (alternative to the graphing calculator)  They have an educators site which is worth looking at too.  http://www.wolframalpha.com/educators/  The educator's site has lesson plans, a video gallery with ideas on how to use it in the classroom, as well as other resources.  Watch the video from Stephen Wolfram on the homepage.  It's pretty amazing.  It's a very "smart" interface.  Check it out.

Thinkfinity and Earth Day

I've written about Thinkfinity before, but wanted to share some more.  They have an Earth Day page, with many lessons that pertain to the topic.  Ecosystems, Energy, What can you do to save the planet?, Polar regions, Earth Day and the Arts, Earth Day and poetry are just some of the lesson plans.
BTW, I will be attending a workshop on the ins and outs of Thinkfinity next week.  So I'll bring back lots of "how tos".
http://www.thinkfinity.org/EarthDayResources.aspx   

Graphic Organizers

I have come across a couple of great sites for online graphic organizers.  These sites are very similar to Kidspiration or Inspiration, if you have used that software.  This is online, though, so you don't have to load any software onto your computer.  The sites are collaborative, which means that you can invite others to work with you on your project.  They can be saved, printed, imported, exported, and embedded.  Bubbl,  Webspiration,  and Mind Meister are the three sites that I have found.  They do  require you to register as a user, but they are free.  Check them out.
Bubbl   http://bubbl.us/
Webspiration  http://www.mywebspiration.com/
Mind Meister  http://www.mindmeister.com/

Wordle

Okay, just one more post today.  In the last posting I said I loved the word disaggregate .  To prove it, I used it over and over in the post.  Well, now, to show you another way, here is a link to a Wordle of that posting.  http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1871258/Disaggregate_your_Data 
A wordle is a picture of words, with the word used most often showing up larger and bolder.  The next most often used words are just a little smaller and so on.  It's a great way to see the main idea of a paragraph or piece of writing.  Try it yourself.  http://www.wordle.net/