Friday Hot Links for 12/18/09 ~ Vacation Animation Edition

Click below for good info on helping kids stay safe online:

Thinkfinity has some great resources on helping kids to understand copyright issues.  As we have our high-abiloty students participate in independent research, this is important information for them to understand!

Pete's PowerPoint Station is THE place on the web to find fabulous presentations! This is a great resource for teachers as you lesson plan (yeah, over vacation!), and there are interactive games for kids to try out as well.  BEFORE you spend hours making a cool PowerPoint to teach your content, stop by Pete's first!

Friday Hot Links for 12/11/09 ~ Baby, it's Cold Outside!

Welcome to Friday Hot Links for 12/11/09, the "Baby, it's cold outside" edition!  Last week I think I overwhelmed you with SO MUCH to see and do, it seemed like a good idea to cut back a little this week.

Just a note - there will be Hot Links next week (12/18/09), and then we'll be on hiatus until 1/8/10.

Remember, if you come across something in your Interwebz wanderings that you think other teachers could use in their classrooms, please email the link to me!

1. UEN online brain games - Keep your brain power, even during the cold winter months. Warning - these brain games are addictive!

K-2:  http://www.uen.org/k-2interactives/index.shtml

3-6: http://www.uen.org/3-6interactives/index.shtml

2. From the  Gifted Exchange, a blog post on "Motivated Kids."  The key comment: "What all this boils down to is creating conditions where students want to learn something because they are personally interested in the answer."  Read the entire post here.

3. The Creative Connections Group in Ohio is sponsoring some gifted-topic webinars (they begin at 7 p.m. Eastern time, which is 5 p.m. Mountain). Sign up here.

Coping with Perfectionism - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 

Web Tools for Gifted Education - Thursday, December 17, 2009

4. EdHelper is an absolutely ROCKIN' site to download tons of free printables. Their graphic organizers are FANTASTIC, and there's material in every subject area. LOTS of stuff is available for free, and $20 or so buys you a year's membership to get access to everything.

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Friday Hot Links for 12/4/09

So much great stuff, I hardly know where to begin!  I know it's a lot, but perhaps there's a little something for for YOU buried in here.




See the WINTER 2010 Online Issue of Gifted Education Press Quarterly - great articles!

From the Digital Education blog:

At The Tech Awards, hosted by the Tech Museum for Innovation in San Jose, Calif., on Nov. 20, 

Salman Kahn was honored for the virtual learning site he developed, The Kahn Academy. The site features more than 1,200 instructional videos, on a You-Tube platform, that can explain everything from basic arithmetic to college level calculus, physics to finance. It's a popular K-12 resource in a number of countries because the lessons are offered in a variety of languages. 

From the ms_teacher blog:

20 Places to Learn More about History and Social Studies Online

 

The many resources that are available freely on the web can make learning history and social studies a fun and engaging experience. From primary documents to interactive historical games, the resources can be utilized by students and teachers alike. Here is a list of 20 sites that are perfect for learning more about history and social studies online:

 

History Matters - History Matters is a gateway site to Internet resources, teaching materials, primary documents, and guides for the purpose of teaching and analyzing American history. Through this site, you will find evidence, blackboard resources, audio, syllabi, and more.

 

History Channel - The History Channel offers informative study guides, programs, speeches, videos, and much more. The site also links to Biographies.com so that visitors can dig deeper into famous personalities throughout history.

 

Library of Congress - The Library of Congress, which is the oldest cultural institution, provides historical information through primary documents. The library also features an extensive teacher's site filled with ready-to-use classroom materials, lesson plans, collection connections, and news.

 

Digital History - The Digital History site uses the technological advances of the Internet to make historical documents more assessable to everyone. Within this site, users can find online textbooks, primary sources, ethnic voices, teaching resources, active learning resources, visual history exhibitions, and multimedia learning resources.

 

BBC - The BBC, a large online provider of educational material, offers online history resources for teachers and students. This site gives you a look at British and world history through biographies, ancient history resources, archaeology, interactives, message boards, and more.

 

HistoryTeacher.net - This site, created by a New York History teacher, offers over 2,000 pages of information on history from around the world. Through HistoryTeacher.net, you can find information on ancient, current, American, and world history.

 

National Council for the Social Studies - The National Council for the Social Studies features a wide range of social studies information including classroom resources. The classroom resources offer lesson plans, maps, book lists, and information on curriculum standards.

 

Voice of the Shuttle - Voice of the Shuttle is a humanities research site with a large world history page. Within the history resources, you can find information on everything from African to U.S. history.

 

Education World - The pages of this educational site hold 26 subcategories and 369 entries all pertaining to history. The Education World entries cover associations, directories, discussions, journals, museums, teacher resources, events, documents, people, and much more.

 

SchoolHistory.co.uk - SchoolHistory.co.uk is a historical resource site for both teachers and students. This site features worksheets, lessons, interactives, quizzes, and a teachers' section with guidance, advice, exercises, and a forum.

 

eHistory - This site provides a huge collection of historical resources for researching, learning, and teaching history. On eHistory, you will find multimedia resources, origins, timelines, online books, reviews, maps, images, and history links.

 

FREE - FREE, or Federal Resources for Educational Excellence, provides free online resources for U.S. history topics, time periods, and world studies. The pages of these resources feature images, primary documents, facts, and teaching materials.

 

EDsitement - EDsitement offers lesson plans and websites perfect for all age levels for most subjects including history and social studies. The lesson plans and website can be browsed or navigated by subject and grade level.

 

The National Archives - The National Archives is a huge database of historical information that offers historical resources, primary sources, and activities for students and teachers. Throughout the pages of this site, users will find lessons, training, research, workshops, regional resources, raw history, and many other materials.

 

Ease History - This site offers an accelerated visual experience for over 400 historical events, campaign ads for 1952-2004, and core values of events and campaigns. Ease History also comes with a learning guide that offers over 20 lesson plans.

 

Flight to Freedom - Bowdoin provides a free interactive game called Flight to Freedom. The game makes it easy for students to understand history after making decisions for historical figures and seeing the outcomes of their decisions.

 

History Mystery - History Mystery is an interactive game that allows you to investigate history through studying historical items, documents, and more. This is the perfect way to engage younger children in history.

 

ThinkQuest - ThinkQuest provides 62 world history websites created by students from around the world. The websites offer games, interactives, and facts that can be used to learn and teach history.

 

MoMO - The MoMO (Museum of Online Museums) is a site that features exhibitions from online museums around the world. Just a few famous museums that can be found on MoMO are the Met, MoMA, Smithsonian, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

History Now - History Now from The Guider Lehrman Institute of American History features on online journal with lesson plans, activities, and interactives.

 

Guest post on the ms_teacher blog from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online school for OnlineSchool.net.

From NASA: The Space Place 

  

The Space Place is an extensive, content-rich Web site for upper elementary-age kids, their teachers, parents, and anyone else who likes a simple, readable, fun presentation of a wide range of space and Earth science and technology topics. Most of the site is great for kids to explore on their own, with interactive games, hands-on projects and fun facts. A Spanish version of most of the site is also available. 

  

The Space Place: 

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov 

  

The bi-monthly Space Place Newsletter for educators has lots of suggestions on how to use the resources from this Web site in the classroom: See the "Teacher's Corner" at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/educators 

  

Rocket ahead with Cub Scout achievements and electives at The Space Place: http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/cubscouts/index.shtml 

 

"SciJinks" is a highly interactive Web site that provides middle-school students and audiences of all ages an amazing science education opportunity. Provided by NOAA and NASA, the Web site transports visitors to the wild world of weather to learn about predicting global weather patterns. 

 

SciJinks: 

http://scijinks.gov 

  

Click on the Educators link at the bottom of the page for suggestions on how to use the SciJinks resources in the classroom: http://scijinks.jpl.nasa.gov/en/educators/ 

UEN links:

UEN professional development calendar for December 2009 - May 2010

Become a fan of UEN on Facebook!

Set up your own Wimba classroom through UEN!

And finally, not rally gifted-related but cool nonetheless, you school can sign up to receive an NFL Play60 Wellness Kit - it looks awesome!

If you have something great to share, pass it on!  Email Amy and we'll add it to next week's Hot Links!

Friday Hot Links for 11/20/09

Interesting read: From the T.H.E. Journal “Is American Education Neglecting Gifted Children?”

Got a cool idea for a classroom project, but need some financing to get off the ground? Try Donors Choose!

The co-founder of Wikipedia has launched a Web site designed to offer free access to thousands of education-related videos for students ages 3-18. Larry Sanger, who helped create Wikipedia and has since left the organization, says the new site, www.watchknow.org, will allow students and teachers to sort through a library of online videos by content, and pick out what they need. Topics range from math and science to history. The site is meant to house and organize videos that are free and available online, yet which most people don't know how to find.  (via the Curriculum Matters blog).

Free historical figure books marks – Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Dwight Eisenhower, and more!

Ever wonder if your internet provider is really giving you the speed they promised?  Frustrated by "dropped" and "failed" connections?  Check out http://www.speedtest.net/  and http://www.pingtest.net/ to get the TRUE story of what's really going on with your internet service.

Got a great resource to share?  Email Amy, and I'll include it with next week's Hot Links!

***No Hot Links during Thanksgiving week - we'll return on December 4th. Have a great break!

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Friday Hot Links for 10/30/09

Young Inventors Contest

Young inventors ages 6 to 19 are invited to compete in "Invention Dimension," a contest in which they submit their own concept for future toys, indoor/outdoor games and sporting equipment.

  

Get details at: www.bkfk.com/inventiondimension/states. Deadline for entries is Jan. 29

Being an American Essay Contest

The Bill of Rights Institute is sponsoring an essay contest on what it means to be an American. There are ash prizes for students of up to $5,000, and the top 27 winners will get an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C.

Go to www.beinganamerican.org for entry details. Deadline is Dec. 1. Winners will be announced in late March.

You Don't Pay!

Freebies, software/discounts, supply samples and other items for the classroom such as after-school safety tips, educations CDs for home and school, and government educational resources are available at: www.idontpay.com/teaacher.html

Movie Making

Animoto lets you create 30 second videos for FREE using your own photos. Check it out at www.animoto.com.

Maps and More

At www.education-world.com/1_curr/curr109.shtml, you will find a collection of free items, including maps and materials for science and language arts.

Learn About Ancient Mesopotamia

Scholars from the University of Chicago have conducted excavations and research in Iraq from the end of the nineteenth century until 1990, just before the start of the Gulf War. The Museum’s Mesopotamian collection takes visitors back 150,000 years, and follows the development of human society from nomadic groups to the first cities. The gallery displays 1383 artifacts dating from the Paleolithic Period (around 100,000 BC) to the Sassanian Period (around 400 AD).

You can engage in a variety of interactive explorations!

•                Dig into ancient Mesopotamia

•                Collect and Catalog Artifacts

•                Curate a Museum Exhibition

Go to: http://mesopotamia.lib.uchicago.edu/interactives/DigIntoHistory.html

Learn about life in Mesopotamia at http://mesopotamia.lib.uchicago.edu/about.php?a=sitemap

Then, travel into the main Oriental website at: http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/kids.html

Where you can:

• Prepare a mummy for burial
• Find images on a carved relief from an ancient tomb
• Learn more about Egyptian artwork
• Use an interactive timeline

Germs and Diseases

Thinkfinity has tons of resources for teaching kids about germs, diseases, and how they are spread.  Check it out at http://thinkfinity.org/PageHiglights.aspx?showId=Flu_and_Germs

Thanks to Judy Eacker, Washingon district G/T Specialist, for suggesting several of these resources!

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Friday Hot Links

There is an excellent post (new today) at the Digital Natives blog  linking the concept of digital native-ness to Malcolm Gladwell's "magic number [of hours] for true expertise" (see his book Outliers: The Story of Success for more on this).  Read this post and think about how the digital native and true expertise notions collide within our high-ability students.

Ron Fisher, A HASIP participant from Box Elder district, shared a great resource related to my post about FLU!  Ron discovered a nifty tune by singer/storyteller/author Bill Harley called Wash Your Hands. Short and long versions are available as FREE DOWNLOADS you can play in your classroom to remind kids of the huge importance that personal and environmental hygiene plays in disease prevention.  Thanks for sharing, Ron!

Prufrock Press (an educational publisher and supplier of many gifted resources)  runs a gifted education blog written by various authors. Recently, Joel McIntosh, Prufrock's publisher, wrote a column titled "Nine Research-Supported Facts About Gifted Education" in which he summarizes a 2008 NAGC position paper written by Dr. Sally Reis of the University of Connecticut. Click above to read the Prufrock blog, which includes a link to download the actual NAGC position paper.

Want to attend the NAGC Annual Convention, but just don't quite have the bucks or the time to head to St. Louis in November?  How about virtual participation?!  Click on over to the NAGC Virtual Convention page to find out what, how, time, cost, etc.!

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