Making Teachers Nerdy

Ah, Spring.  Poetry writing, field trips, research papers, and all those great units we love to teach after the state assessments.  It’s definitely one of my favorite times of the year, yet I know how much we all cram into those last few weeks.  Even I have been guilty of playing beat the clock with content until Field Day rolls around. 

Today’s blog post will feature one of the most common spring teacher projects – the end of the year slideshow.  Yep, you’ve seen dozens over the past few years and even created one or two, but today I’ll discuss ways to improve, simplify and enhance them.  I mean, there has to be an easier and cooler way, yes?  You bet!

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1.  Crayola Educators –  Believe it or not some amazing art linked lesson plans to many of the K-12 core curriculum units can be found here, and most of them require simple art supplies.  Lesson plans for sculpture, painting, drawings, and more are available with unit topics. 
2. Delicious – This is a free service where thousands of people keep their web favorites, enabling you to view and save the bookmarks to your own account.  To utilize, you will need to think in one word tags (topics) such as “underground_railroad”, “angles”, or “romeoandjuliet”.  Click on Explore Tags which is located on the middle of the screen and type in your topic.  The results will be other people who have bookmarked items with that topic that you can now save.  For more information on Delicious, here is a video.
3. Intel Assessing Projects – This is an amazing resource that provides you with assessment ideas for everything from blogs to drama skits.  The assessment strategies and assessment plans are fantastic, but definitely check out the “Try It” section for a demo of the tool.  If you have a login for the Intel Thinking Tools, it will work here, as well.
4. Microsoft Templates and Google Document Templates – Believe it or not, there is an amazing amount of resources for teachers at Microsoft.  You will find bookmarks, labels, behavior contracts, calendars, brochures, parent letters, and more.  The Google templates are also vast, but they do require you to create an account to utilize.
5. PBS Teachers – Wonderful for PreK-5^th grade on the elementary level and targeted for science and history on the 6-12 level, PBS Teachers is a great resource.  Here you can find videos from NOVA and the American Experience and interactive sites for elementary reading and math.
6. PDF Search Engine – This is a brilliant tool that allows you to locate premade handouts and worksheets in no time.  Simply type in the topic and a list of .pdf printable documents will be available.
7. Quia – Highly recommended for Foreign Language and Language Arts Teachers.  Though it is a subscription based site for you to create interactive games, quizzes, and more, you can take advantage of the thousands of activities without joining.  Simply paste site:www.quia.com into Google along with your search query.  For example: underground railroad site:www.quia.com.  The results will be a list of interactive games and quizzes.
8. Teachers.tv – An educational video site from the United Kingdom that offers wonderful case study classroom videos and more.  Simply click your curriculum area on the left to browse what is available.  You will not be able to download videos from here, but they will play from the website. I do believe teachers do need YouTube and TeacherTube, as well, but this site's focus is on improving teacher instruction.
9. The Library of Congress – We all know that teaching with primary resources is a wonderful tool.  Here you can access over 10 million digitized artifacts to use within your classroom.  Photos, manuscripts, sheet music, and audio recordings are at your fingertips.  
10. Thinkfinity – Hands down one of my favorite websites for teachers.  Thinkfinity is sponsored by the Verizon Foundation and it is actually an impressive partnership with major groups such as the National Geographic Society, The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and more.   Here you will find some of the best project based learning units, classroom interactives, premade worksheets, and standards-based activities.

More and more teachers have the opportunity to cut a slice of the Internet pie and share content with administrators, students, and parents.  Many, however, are unsure what to do with this slice or how to serve it up to waiting guests.  Fear not, I have a few suggestions that might get you started.  I’ve broken it down to “Should” and “Should Not” lists in hopes of making it easy.

SHOULD POST

• Inspirational quotes on your homepage are an excellent welcome to your parents and students.  Need help finding a quote?  Try Quote Stumbler (“find a quote” is in the top left corner), Quotiki, or The Quotations Page.
• Upcoming events that pertain to your classroom should always be posted on the site such as field trips, major project deadlines, guest speakers, themed days (I know a Chemistry teacher who has Mole Day once a year), and final tests.  As much as you love the basketball team, it simply isn’t necessary to post those games on your class site.
• Homework assignments should be posted, but I do understand the difficulty with this.  I was never one who could stone in my lesson plans two weeks in advance since my lessons seemed to alter regularly depending on classroom situations.  If your web site does not already offer an assignment calendar, my suggestion is to create an RSS type calendar at RSSCalendar or Kiko.  Students can subscribe to the feed on their own sites and even receive email reminders with Kiko.
• Weblinks that go hand in hand with current curriculum.  Honestly, this is the most important component to your web site.  The most common mistake I have seen is the posting of generic links to grammar or math games rather than the specific units the class is currently studying.  If Ancient Egypt is the topic for February, then post interactive and informational links on Ancient Egypt.  Even if you are a math teacher, put links up on current concepts, not just homework helpers.  Traffic to your webpage will increase and you will find you and the students becoming more dependent on the web page.  Plus, when you need a link for an interactive whiteboard computer lab activity, it will be there without students having to type out 12” URLs.
• Vocabulary and spelling words should be posted.  Yes, I know this seems trite, but trust me.  As parents and students visit your site more regularly, these words will be “in their face”, so to speak, and can be easily referenced.
• Student artwork is one of the best features to add to your site.  Don’t have a scanner?  No worries!  Take digital pictures of the artwork and make a slideshow.    I would update this every few weeks to keep new color and vibrancy on your page.  Even if you are a high school teacher, consider this opportunity.  When I taught language arts, I would spring an art pop quiz on the students asking them to draw the major conflict of last night’s reading in stick people.  I instantly was aware of who actually read the content and it was a wonderful way for students to be alternatively assessed.
• Photo of the day or week with a brief caption.  Have students take photos not just of what is happening in class, but of a stack of novels students are reading, the view out the classroom window, a sculpture in the library, or the dessert at lunch.  It doesn’t need to be a glamorous photo, but it gives parents unique insights to school happenings and encourages students to notice the little things.
• News from the front lines.  Use your web space as the current event news feed for your parents.  Don’t feel that this needs to be lengthy, but it should be relevant.  Include highlights of the week or student quotes. 

SHOULD NOT POST

• Images copied from other websites.  UNLESS you have posted images that you have taken yourself or are in public domain, copyright to everything does not belong to you.  Sorry darlin’.  I do have some light in this dark tunnel, however.  You can purchase royalty free images for less than $2 at many sites such as iStock Photo and StockXPert, and public domain images (aka FREE) can be found at Discovery Education Clipart Gallery,  Public Domain Photo Database, WP Clipart, Photos8, US History Images, and Karen Whimsey Public Doman Images.   There are some wonderful images that you can also use from the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress, but each one has unique copyright rules, so be sure to read closely before posting on your site.
• Your weekly schedule of when you go to PE/Music/Art and recess.  This is only needed at the beginning of the school year and will clutter up your webpage.   The students know the routine fairly quickly, so save the virtual real estate for more enlightening information. 
• Anything that does not fall under district policies.  Be sure to check on rules for posting student names, photos, and work.  This will save you from a great deal of grief later.  I promise!  Oh, and if you need a quick fix for blurring student faces, try FotoFlexer, a free online image editor that has a pixilation tool for blurring.
• Nothing.  I know it takes time to post content on your web page, but you will find the more you post relevant and current information, the more traffic and successful communication you will have with your parents and students.

Good luck with your slice of the Internet pie, and be sure to save a bite for your students.