SRI&ETTC

While sharing collaborative documents in Google Drive, you might notice the faces of your collaborators up in the top right-hand corner.  When you mouseover their faces, their profile will appear and you can easily add them to your circles in Google+ without having to leave your document. The visual display also includes the chat feature, which is represented as  speech bubble, and once clicked upon, immediately opens the chat window.  These two simple changes permit us to communicate easier. There are more changes coming in the next few days and we will keep you posted as we  hear about them.

Use this video as a hook in a lesson on Figurative Language.  After reviewing the video as a class, and discussing figurative language, allow students to examine their own favorite songs (School appropriate) to identify literary elements to share with the class.

                          Search through the many topics available to find copyright friendly images for your students to use in their projects and presentations.   What is especially helpful is the metadata that comes with each picture for citation purposes.  

Have you been using YouTube Teachers with your classes?  It is easy to search this channel for content area and grade level to find helpful video to use with your class. Find the "Classroom Videos." Choose content area and grade level, don't forget to use the expand +.      Select the topic you are looking seeking. There are many informative videos to be found, we will feature them in the coming blog posts.

This blog post comes to us from Fairfield Township School in Bridgeton, New Jersey.  Mr. Kenneth Rafter is the Music teacher for Grades 1-8 and integrates technology on a daily basis.  We caught him with this fun activity involving  'Recorder Master' from the www.joytunes.com .      --------------------------------------------  "Students use the game "Recorder Master" to enhance and reinforce recorder skills. At the same time it is a fun game that the students enjoy.  Recorder Master teaches proper breath control which on the recorder is very important in obtaining a good tone quality.  The game can be described as what I call a cross between Super Mario Bros, Angry Birds, and Guitar Hero.  The objective is to have students perform various tasks on the recorder and collect music notes throughout the game.  As students collect the notes they earn points that can advance them to harder levels. This activity meets...

Now that all teachers have access to the latest version of edmodo, there are numerous upgrades to the product of which educators need to be aware.  Insights  is one of the many new features and provides  teachers real feedback on how students feel about the assignments they are completing.  If you are using the latest version with your students, they are now required to post a reaction to assignments and quizzes. They do have the option of posting reactions to your posts and those of their peers. The insights link on the new home page shows teachers how their classes are trending; they can see overall performance at a glance, most active groups and which content was the most popular for the week.  Reflective teachers can use the insight information from assignments and quizzes to adjust future assignments based on student reflections. If you need help with the latest version of edmodo for your classroom or school, you have the option of asking...

 Our  Guest Blogger today is Faraja Thompson, at present a Technology Literacy Teacher at Maplewood Middle School in Maplewood, NJ.  We first met her through the Talent 21 Grant where she was a Technology Integration Specialist for Roselle Public Schools.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------ R eprinted with permission of Faraja Thompson 2013 Edmodo - The Perfect Learning Management System I signed up for  Edmodo  in spring of 2011, while working full time as an integration specialist/teacher mentor.  At the time, I did not foresee what an integral part of my life this learning management system (LMS) would become.  I made a couple of teacher connections, figured out ways to earn badges on my profile, and set up a few sample student accounts--that was about it.  But my perspective changed over the summer, as I made preparations to teach three brand new middle school technology courses. The...