Great Sites for Teachers

I'm creating a "hot" page of great websites each month for the faculty here at KLHT, and thought I should make it available for everyone else, too. So here's the link to october's websites.
I pulled 99% of these from the Scout Report, which you can subscribe to if you want it delivered right to your mailbox each week.

It's supercalifragilisticexpi....well, you know!

I've been teaching the 7th graders about copyright and plagiarism, which is always cause for discussion and outrage (what do you mean I can't put an entire Sheryl Crow song in my presentation?!). If you haven't seen it yet, this fantastic video from the Media Education Foundation is lots of fun and useful for discussing both copyright and fair use. (Thank you for finding it, Leah Lindemann!)



I'm not entirely sure how legal it is--speaking of copyright!--but TubeTV from Chimoosoft is a great little app for Mac users that allows you to download videos from YouTube onto your computer in a Mac-friendly format which you can then play on your iPod or AppleTV (does anyone have that???)...or keep on your computer to show students.

Finally, Naveed Ahmed posted a great resource on the Teacher/Librarian Ning, which provides links to thousands of newspapers from around the world.

Tooting My Own Horn

Ah, the irony! After weeks of desultory blogging, if that, I was digging around Technorati to see if my authority level had changed. Lo and behold! There was a link to Joyce Valenza's blog in SLJ, where she mentioned me as a new blogger worth listening to. See, this is what you miss when you're not blogging regularly for two months!

A hundred thousand thanks for Joyce for the mention; I'm now even more encouraged to blog regularly and fruitfully (i.e. more content, less rambling!)

Westerfeld in Fairfield, CT!

I'm so psyched! Gerald saw I was reading Extras last night and said, "Oh, hey. When I was at Borders the other day, I saw he was going to be at the library for a book signing." And, of course, didn't think to tell me at the time, despite hearing me RAVE about the Uglies trilogy for ages!

So, very cool--I'm leaving work early to go to the signing. (How wonderful is a principal who'll let you do that?) If you haven't read these, they're a must!

How Do They Do It?

I'm growing increasingly impressed with working teachers and librarians who also manage to keep up on their blogging. By the time I arrive home in the evening, after spending a good part of the day on the computer, the last thing I want to do is blog during the two to three hours I have for the evening. And who has time at school--though I've now managed to unblock my blog from the filter, so at least I can access it!

I'm afraid to even look at my aggregator! I, of course, blame everything from having too much to do setting up a new library program to it would be nice to have a chat with my fiancee every now and then. I need to make/take the time, however. The reading and writing are integrat to my new job--I've had so much fun showing teachers how to set up wikis and blogs, making suggestions for way to use technology to enhance the learning process, not just as an add-on to impress the boss.

I guess I need to pare down my feeds to an essential few, and vow to blog at least twice a week as a way to process and consolidate.

Need an Archive?

I found this yesterday when I was hunting for sites to put in a 60's pathfinder. It's a search engine/database from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries that searches libraries and musems from around the world for archives and exhibits.

Subject-Specific Search Tutorials

I talked to one of the teachers this morning who teaches anthropology, and he wants me to work with his students on how to search. I'm thrilled, but also clueless about anthropology. So I was hunting around on the web and found this great site from the UK, a series of tutorials on how to search, created for each subject area.

Specialists from UK colleges and universities write the tutorials, and each tutorial consists of four parts:

• "Tour" leads to reviewed websites in the subject area
• "Discover" teaches how to search effectively
• "Judge" gives advice on determining the value and authority of a site, and
• "Success" sets up subject-based practice searches

Very cool, and lead me to anthro.net, billed as a "research" engine for anthropologists, which will be very useful for the students. (And which, apparently, is having troubles loading today as I blog this, though it loaded fine yesterday. Don't you love the internet?)