Some great sites for students

I am taking a weather and global climate change course and found this wonderful site
Stanford Solar Center. It is an excellent addition to an Earth science course. The educator page as 25 activities. The student page has a good interactive and two videos plus quizzes. This site went online in 2008.
eNature is an online field guide site. I did a quick register, only email address and zip code. The site actually gave me the birds and audio to their songs. Wow, I could have used this extensive (over 220 for western NY alone) collection when I did my birding for the summer grad course. Oh well.

Hope you enjoy perusing these. Have you found any treasures online?

New tech...maybe

Last week I asked if I could get the students registered to gmail and use google docs to turn in assignments. I found out that a student years ago did something that got student email accounts cut across the district. Yesterday there was a big meeting with the "powers" and they may give the privilege to the high school students. I have stuck to my plans to turn in their first inquiry lab electronically. Some did type at home and will email it. the others will deposit it into my folder at school.
I should hear soon the outcome of the meeting. There are many of us that are forward thinking tech users and that thrills our equally forward thinking IT department. The kids are thinking about the entire technology thing, one student bought his first jump drive so he could do more of his work at home and school.
In my other class, I used slideboom to post my power points on the blog and kids are actually using them. So far so good...........

two weeks and they love the tech

Hello everyone who happens to still be following. I have to tell you the wiki is a great hit. kids are logging on at home, coming in before the school day starts to get on to do an assignment. They send messages to each other via the comments at the bottom of the page. I had it up for open house and they jumped on to show their parents and siblings.
My challenge now is to keep it fresh and interesting. of course they will help. When they turn in their reports from the owl pellets inquiry lab I will post all of them on the wiki and they will comment on at least two, giving good feedback (one good, one needs improving). I did get all the students their own passwords from pbworks so I can track all edits. It works great.
They did listen to the voicethread (under Ecology Unit in the directory) and thought it was "way cool" Only one headphone set up didn't work but tech is on it. I paid $10 for the extra priveliges so now I have to figure out how to get them to sign in and comment. They will also make their own.

My 20week biology class is not into the blog at all. So I am using it strictly for adding my power points and assignments. It worked great the first day a student needed notes. I sent her to the computer and she got on the blog and took notes from the ppt that I embedded using slideboom.
I think this will be more for direct content from class instead of dialogue which is ok. Maybe some will get use to it and I will get some postings.

If anyone can help with the voicethread account please let me know.
How is your foray into technology going this year?

working the tech in the class

I spent the past two days in my room. Today was the first teacher day. We do wellness activities- everyone even administration! of the 20 activities (bowling, archery, dodge ball, biking included) I selected aerobics and a walk through our historic cemetery in town. We had full staff and building meetings. for teachers it was really like the first day of school- seeing everyone after the long summer. A great day despite the construction still not being done!

The teacher I am working with did her wiki and unveiled it today. It was great. Now we are wondering how to get kids to use it. Our questions are do they have to register with pbworks, our hosting site? Can we give them codes to get sign in? Do I have to sign up for the annual fee for management? I thought I saw $10 one time to allow for some management now I don't see it.
It will be quite a challenge to make it work.

We sent in labs for copies today- all total...over 400 copies for the first 3 days. We are even doing some class copies that require only 20 copies. A paperless classroom is still my desire but how?
here are some thoughts--
all written work must be turned in electronically
quizzes done in a e-document
I would appreciate any other thoughts. I would love to do labs electronically but the state says we need to have copies saved for years., just in case they want to see them!