Welcome to Fantastic Fridays: Technology at IHM!

Hi Everyone! 

Welcome to our first segment of "Fantastic Fridays". This weekly posting will spotlight three elements of technology here at IHM. I will email you a copy of the posting, but you may also access it through this blog address.

1. Classroom Spotlight Project: Haiti Project
Sigrid's Wednesday afternoon 8th grade class is working on a multimedia research and action project covering Haiti. In anticipation of the Sept. 27 "Haitian Dancers" visit, these students are researching, writing, and creating a multimedia project (drama, dance, podcast or other format). Students will learn to use Glogster, an online poster creator (http://edu.glogster.com/) as a media for information. I will post links to their final projects at the end of September!

2. Student Websites: Math Computation 

All students need practice with basic math computation. Although these websites may not be the most enriching, they are a proven best practice for math fluency.

• Math Fact Cafe: http://www.mathfactcafe.com/view/default.aspx?t=F 
• IXL: Try using a "problem of the day"! http://www.ixl.com/math/practice/
• Math Mayhem: Almost too much fun :) http://members.learningplanet.com/act/mayhem/free.asp 
• Leon's Math Dojo: http://www.iknowthat.com/com/L3?Area=Dojo *NOTE: This site will ask you to register. Click on "Maybe Later" to access the games without registering*
• Math Baseball: http://www.prongo.com/math/addition.html 

3. Teacher Productivity Tools: Edline
By now, most of you have had some fun accessing the online version of Gradequick. Most parents should be regularly checking Edline for classroom news. Did you know...

• You can post videos to Edline? Try using a digital camera to take a short video of a great activity in your classroom. To save it to Edline, add a "News" document, and click on "Import an Existing File"
• Edline does not save a copy of your emails? You may want to consider composing your emails, newsletters, or other postings in Word, and copying/pasting them into Edline. This also saves you from Edline's charming habit of logging you out and losing what you're working on. 

And for dessert.... here's a funny (but edgy!) video interpretation of Taylor Mali's poem "What Do Teachers Make?":