Live Binders

Live Binders - http://www.livebinders.com
This site is my newest and possibly my best find. I love it. I have embedded a "binder" here that will explain it a bit more. It is such an easy way to keep track of bookmarks and make changes easily to them.

Blog Links

Fractions - Paper Folding Books to teach

Fantastic Flexible Foldables  - You won't need an internet connection to use this resource with your students. Instead, you download the worksheets  that can be used to teach fractions. I think that the Fraction Flipper is great to introduce the concept of fractions to kids.  I found it easy to make and would give the students something fun to do with fractions. I also think that the Fortune Teller Fraction Game is a good idea. You might think of other ways to use these booklets. If you are teaching fractions, check out this site - http://pages.sbcglobal.net/cdefreese/foldables/

WatchKnow

WatchKnow - This is a great site that has taken videos found on the internet and put them in an easy format for students to access without all the comments from YouTube showing on the side or advertisements. The motto is - Videos for kids to learn from. Organized. There are not LOTS of videos out there but it would appear to be a growing site. It has a very easy interface to find out what videos are on the website. There is a search engine, but also categories are there on the side that will expand when you click on the green squares. I wish there were more videos, but it is a great place to be able to send students to, much safer surfing than Google.

Tutput Math Practice

I found a new site that I am going to use with my students next week to practice math facts. It is called Tutpup. Teachers can set up a site for their children to use that will track their progress in the program. However, it does NOT collect names of the students. The only name connected on the site will be mine, so I am not 100% sure how I will know what student is WHO. It gives them all different types of drill games that they play against students from other countries. There is a win wall where students can see how they are doing. The word games are spoken to the student, there is a word list that you can print out so you can see what words are on each level. If you are at my school and want to use it, contact me for the class code that I have entered!

OCR Recognition

Online OCR  This is the best news for many of us that do not have a powerful scanner. This site will take documents that have been saved as a .pdf - something that our school scanner can do - and you can upload them to the site and it will make an editable copy of it for you!
If you want it to save it in a formats, like Excel or Word,  you need to set up an account, but it is an easy process to get an account. This would allow you to keep the formatting in the document. There is a small fee for processing the files this way, but if you have a lot of work to do, it might be worth it!
Without signing in, you will have to reformat your document, but it seemed to be quick to get all the text in. The pages that I tested came out perfectly. I think this is a good site to know about.

Downloading Pictures from Groupwise

I had a question about how to take pictures that were sent in Groupwise and put them into a document. I thought I would post the answer here so others could reference it. When you are reading a message in Groupwise, when you go to save the message, you can choose to just save the photos. As you can see on this clip, the text of the message is there, but there is a .jpg file that contains the picture. You would click on that .jpg file and save it. You might want to rename the file as something that would be more meaningful to you than img_5691.jpg.
This will give you the file that you will import later on in the document you are making.

Selenia - Science Cartoons

This is a great science site that has 10 lesson plans for science built around comics of a student. There are downloadable investigation sheets that go with each of the comics. There are topics on density, insulation, and geysers to name a few of them. Selenia is a fun loving girl who can work magic, but still is keeping to science topics.

Google Earth and Literature

I was reading about a workshop offering about Google Earth and literature. I don't have time to go to the workshop, but thought I would investigate it myself. It turns out there is an amazing blog about this GoogleLit. If you have Google Earth installed, you can go to this website and download virtual tours of books. It looks as if this site is being added to all the time by teachers.If you had access to a projector and a computer, this would be a wonderful way to lead a discussion about literature. Give yourself some time to really explore this site. I love it and am trying to find a way to include it in our curriculum. They have titles about the Civil War, Revolutionary Way, Paddle to the Sea and Big Anthony. There is a really interesting mix of books and I do expect this will grow to a great resource.

Books for beginning readers of all ages

This site, Tar Heel Reader has books that have been created by others on a wide range of topics. These would be great for the older student who is just learning how to read or for younger students to read with the class. There are some books that might be inappropriate for the very young, so make sure you have read the book before you recommend it to others. You can sign in and make a favorites page so you can access your books that way.

There is a program that lets you make a book that you could post. This might be a good exercise for students to do on their topic.