ECO Challenge

ECO Challenge - Make money, while saving the World!

Scholastic.com and Lexus are sponsering an Eco Challenge for Middle School and High School teams. They are giving away up to $1 million dollars, with the largest prize being $50,000.
Part of the incentive to the kids is a large portion of the money they get to keep.

This may present certain clubs or classes with an opportunity to get money for things they are doing, or as part of the school's sustainability initiative.

The flyers are in Casey Asato's classroom.
You can check out the program details at www.scholastic.com/lexus

Saving Paper

Aloha fellow faculty members:

During the Curriculum/Sustainability meeting today one of the hot topics was the amount of paper we use. One thing we talked about was digitizing handouts so that instead of giving students a hard copy we can just post the file online for them to retrieve, and even if ¾ of them eventually print it out, it does save us some paper.

1) One great tool that we have is the Xerox copier in Cooper House. If you have a hard copy of something, instead of making copies, you can easily have the machine scan it into an Adobe PDF format (which it then emails to you) that we can easily distribute to students via the homework web site. We won’t have to make copies.

2) Another option you have is if you have a computer document, you can make it into a PDF files (by choosing File-Print and choosing “Adobe PDF”, you can easily make a PDF that can be put on the web site.

Most internet users have the ability to read PDF files easily.

3) Lastly, you can print double sided on the printers in the lab/library.

When you go to File-Print you need to choose Properties and under the General tab will be the settings for double sided printer, similar to the picture below.

If you have any questions on how to print in PDF format, or on double-sided printing, please contact me.

If you have any questions on using the Xerox, please talk to Bridget who uses the scanning feature every day!

C-SPAN: Free Resources for Social Studies Teachers

C-SPAN classroom is a free service for educators.
Visit c-spanclassroom.org to join.
It has free video clips which you can show in your classroom.

MISO Conference - Podcasting

Okay! For those of you at the conference presentation on Podcasting, here is a PDF file of the Powerpoint presentation and Dr. Kate Ireland's lesson plans.

Thank you for attending.

Open the Slideshow (in pdf format)

Here are the PDF lessons from Dr Kate Ireland.

Calendar Magic

Google Calendar Sync is a neat little program that will allow you to sync your Outlook calendar with your Google Calendar.

This is handy if you need to access the same calendar from your home PC or your school laptop. If you have Outlook on your PC at home you can use Google Calendar Sync to synchronize your calendar on your work laptop to your home PC.

Google Calendar is a cool feature that it allows you to be reminded via email, or text message to your phone, for any appointment.

The downside: it only works with Windows XP/Vista and Outlook 2003/2007 - sorry MAC folks.

SMART training & solutions

At NECC the SMART Technologies people were pushing a couple of web sites I thought anyone using a SMART Board or Sympodium might find useful.

The first site is: http://smarttech.com/trainingcenter/
This is a training center that SMART has up for users to get more knowledge of the SMART Board, Sympodium or Notebook. They have weekly online-live training sessions and there are a lot of materials you can download for free.

The second site is: http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-us/
This is SMART's Education Solutions Web site. They have resources and contests you might be interested in. It's applicable to the SMART Board and Sympodium. Maybe it'll give you an idea you might find useful in your class.

I have a 48 page instructional booklet "SMART Board Interactive Whiteboards for Dummies".
If you have a SMART Board and want this booklet, just post a comment letting me know and I'll give it to you. Middle or Upper School teachers -whoever uses a SMART Board.

Lulu.com

An interesting site I came across at NECC was LULU.COM.
This is basically a self-publishing book site. You upload your writing, create your cover art and they will 'publish on demand'. No cost to the writer. You can even set the 'profit' you want to make per copy. For $3 profit, if a book costs $7.00 to publish, they'll sell it for $10 and get you the funds. Some schools have even done yearbooks this way.

It's perfect for combining a classes writings (poems and short stories) and publishing them. The thought is the students will actually try to do better work if they know it will be published for anyone to read...similar to publishing writings in a blog for peer review.

(Middle School Teachers Read This)
They have a program for K-8, a teacher can sign up a class to 'publish' a book (individually) and they will ship the student the first printed copy FREE. For details go to:
http://www.lulu.com/en/products/aspiring_authors/

First Contest

My first 'contest' prize give-away. A winner will be drawn randomly from all entries posted by Aug 13th. Winner will be given their prize at our faculty meetings on the 14th. Open to Upper and Middle School Faculty.

Prize: Software "Wheel of Fame For Interactive Whiteboards". Value $29.95 single user license.
Basically it is a Wheel of Fortune type game that you type in the puzzle/answer to and 3 teams compete against each other.
This software will still work even if you don't have a SMART board, but it's not as interactive for the kids.

Leave me a comment on this blog entry letting me know what type of short and quick tech training sessions you would like to see this year. Maybe it's how to use TurnItIn.com, or AtomicLearning.com, or how to do blogging, anything you want technology related. It could be something we can cover in 5-10 minutes at a Divisional Meeting, or a 30-45 minute training session we can do during lunch or after school. I'm looking for ideas of what you want to learn about.

Be sure to leave me your first name on the post so I know who to credit for the drawing :-)
The winner will also receive free tech support from me to get it installed and up and running!!

NECC Conference Notes #1

Over the next couple of week, I'll be posting up information I gathered from the National Education and Computing Conference I attended in San Antonio, TX.

I also got a bunch of 'freebies' that I'll be giving away to interested SH faculty who follow this blog.

Texas was very hot (100+ degrees every day) , but the Convention Center and everywhere I went was air conditioned so I didn't feel the heat too much, except when I walked along the RiverWalk area and went to the Alamo.

First off, two web sites I think some people might be interested in.
1) TeacherTube.com - It's similar in look to YouTube, but videos are posted mostly by teachers for their students or other faculty to learn from. Might be a good resource for some of us to just learn how others are doing things or using video.
Here is one video I like that I think we should show at a Freshman Seminar.
But there are a lot of math and science related videos.
2) SchoolTube.com - This has a lot of videos by kids for kids, but it also has stuff for teachers.

I'm still looking into these site, but seems SchoolTube is a bit more moderated so only 'safe' videos make it online - everything is reviewed before being posted for all to see.

Both are definitely safer than YouTube.

CONTEST ALERT:The first 5 SH employees to visit one of these sites and leave a comment HERE on what they liked/disliked, or found useful will be entered into a drawing to a DVD movie by Discovery Education called "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions, Landing The Eagle"

Another copy of this video was given to the Library if you want to see it.

When you leave a comment, be sure to put write in your first name so I know who to credit :-)

Follow Blog updates easily with Google Reader

Google Reader is an RSS Feed Agregator. It allows you to be notified (similar to email), when a web site or blog is updated. This way you don't have to go to the web site every few days to see what has been added. You just log into Google Reader (like you would for an email account) and it will display any updates on sites you have asked it to track for you.

Go to http://www.google.com/reader and sign up for a free account.

I've actually found Google Reader, Gmail and Google Docs all very useful.

P.S. - RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication

Free Wiki for Teachers

Wiki's are a tool that allows everyone to edit and post comments on a web page/site. There is a lot of potential collaboration uses for it.

Wikispaces.com is offering teachers a free wiki's from their "Plus" program. Normally it costs $50/year - which means no advertising and no usage limits. Check it out at:
http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers100K

Phone - Voicemail doesn't pick up

If voicemail does not pick up, reset “forward no answer/busy” to voicemail:
1) Push the "infinity" button
2) Enter access code: 358
3) Choose "voicemail" from the screen menu

Voice Mail Forwarding

I know Jon talked about it at our last staff meeting, but remember to not use the Do Not Disturb feature on the phones, or you will not get emergency notifications. Here is a clip/reminder from a previous email Jon sent out.
===============================================================
If you do not want your phone to ring, do not use the “Do Not Disturb” button. This will prevent your phone from receiving an emergency notification. Instead, use the “Forward” button to transfer all incoming calls to voicemail.

To do this:
1) Press the “Forward” button (upper right side)
2) Choose “Voice Mail” from the LCD screen
3) The “Forward” button will have a red indicator light.

To turn off forwarding:
1) Press the “Forward” button
2) Press the “Speaker” button (above the number 1)

Please note: I have reprogrammed the “Do Not Disturb” button on your phones to do the exact same thing as the “Forward” button in case you press it by mistake.

Later, we can assign some other function to this button and change the label on the face plate.
If you do need the “Do Not Disturb” function for some reason, let me know and I’ll tell you how to set it.
Please see me if you have any questions.

Jon Toda

Email Autoresponder

When you are going out of town, or won't be able to access your email for awhile, please remember to set an email autoresponder so that people will know you are not checking your email.

Jon has set up everything you need (with instructions) at:

http://seaburyhall.org/tech/facultyresources.html

FlashMyBrain.com - Online Flash Card

Here is a web site that Makalani bought to my attention: FlashMyBrain.com

She has purchased a license so please ask her about this program if you find it interesting/useful.
She is having students use it to create flashcards and study. It sound very good and seems like it will keep their attention.