POST #3: Share a resource

So far, I have looked at two possible uses for learn360 in my classroom.  I went to AEA online and clicked the educator tab.  Then I selected learn360 and logged in.  I clicked on the browse content tab.  I selected language arts.  Then selected writing.  In my middle school language arts classrooms we do a lot of writing, but we also do some grammar review.  I found a some useful verb videos to use either as an introduction before our verb unit, a review before the verb test, or as a tutorial for struggling students.  I had my success period 8th grade students look at them and they thought they were cool because they had sports examples.  There are videos about verb tense, irregular verbs, action verbs, linking verbs, and helping verbs.  Because the videos can be paused or played again, struggling students will be given another avenue for success.
It can be tough to find interesting, factual information for students to write about that fits the Iowa Core.  I also looked in learn360 at the Browse Standards tabs.  I chose the Iowa Core from the pull down Standard Set menu.  I then selected a grade level 7. I chose Language Arts and hit the browse button.  I chose the writing standard.  I had many options of full videos or video clips to use in my classroom to support this standard.  I love that the site gives me instant access to resources for a specific standard.

This was tough for me, because I’m a substitute teacher and I go to different schools and classrooms on a daily basis.  I don’t have the access of the regular teachers.  I wasn’t able to get into a lot of the things, because I don’t have a user name and password.  I tried using the name and password I have for the main site, but it wasn’t able to work either.  I’m going to ask the school I teach in the most for access to these sites, because theirs many useful resources that I would like to use in the classroom.  I would use Book Flix, and Britannica School the most.  I researched them both a lot and like what they have to offer the students.  

I also like what the culture grams had to offer, I think it was interesting and in a geography or history class, it would be very helpful.  It seemed very easy to navigate around and use the different options.   I was able to go onto a similar one online and was able to click on each country.  It was interesting to read all of the different facts and information you gather from clicking on each country.   I hope to gain full access to these sights and use them in the future.  

I have found that the "Ask Dr. Jan" section of our THW is one of the best to use.
I think what makes it so effective is that the fact that the questions are very relevant to our students.
They also are right to the point.

The further research offered along with all ways present "Hot Line" number is good, also.

 http://www.teenhealthandwellness.com/question/12

I went into our school Library Media Center website and then into the Iowa AEA Online Resources. Once I was in there I found the SIRS issues researcher (9-12) on the left hand side clicked on that and put our schools user name and password. I went into SRS knowledge source, found the topic I needed. It showed the Pros vs. Cons on the topic. It will also give you some history and gives you research tools, they give you more information on the topic. You can also find newspaper articles and magazine articles and other viewpoints.
I think SIRS will help my college students with their papers they need to write. The students have been googling their topic to find more information. This will give them a different resource that is saver and more reliable . I also have study halls in part of the library part of the day. So I have a lot of students in the library at one time, working on different subjects. It's nice that you can go into the AEA and it can help you with about any subject. Learn 360 is a great source, digital library,britannica online etc. I will explore all the resources in the AEA so we can push the teachers and students to try AEA.

Culturegrams is a resource I am excited to use and already have the place to use it. We do a foreign policy project in class, where the kids have to find certain countries the US is involved with currently, and provide some basic information about the relationship between the two governments. Culturegrams will allow me to open up the information the kids are exposed to, expanding their understanding of the places we are currently involved in. This resource can make cultural comparisons easy, and allow the kids to view regions of the world based on those comparisons. While that is possible without Culturegrams, having all of that available in an interactive way on ONE website is super-cool. I am really stoked about this one.

To get to Culturegrams, you will need your school username and id number. That's the hard part. After that, the AEA home page has it displayed on the left side of the page. Click, log in and go to town!!

I would like to explore the Culture Grams Online Database with some of my families who are currently homeschooling and are dual-enrolled.  Sometimes dual-enrolled students are intimidated when they begin the transition back into public school. If I can help them learn how to use some of resources that AEA offers, they will be more comfortable in doing their research for classes.
For example,  I am thinking of social studies and the papers/reports that students are asked to write for assignments. Often times, students are also asked to work in groups doing projects that require research. Helping students learn how to effectively research can give them some confidence in working with other students perhaps sharing how they have learned to use AEA Online Resources. I want to introduce Culture Grams as a research tool that provides references for current cultural information on many countries around the world.  Here the students can become acquainted with daily life, history, customs and lifestyles.  Culture Grams has 4 editions that are World Edition(middle school and up), Kids' Edition(upper elementary), States Edition and Canadian Provinces Editions.
 The navigation tab on the left side gives informations for people and places, history, lifestyle, society and culture facts. The middle panel gives information about selected countries, states, and provinces.  On the right side, you can find multimedia tools, teaching resources and addtional features.
I plan to use the CultureGrams site http://online.culturegrams.com/index 

In order to make literature more interesting to middle school students, I think that TeachingBooks.net is a great resource to use.  To access the site, I went to the regional AEA site http://www.aea1.k12.ia.us/ and clicked on "Online Resources", then I clicked on "For Educators", then I clicked on "TeachingBooks.net", then I put in the user name and password, then I clicked on "Search" and typed in the name of a book (The Giver), then I clicked on the title of the book (which is a link), then clicked on "Meet the Author Movie with Lois Lowrey".
The resource is a short video of the author, Lois Lowrey, where she explains her writing process in general and specifically for The Giver.  The target audience for this resource is the middle school student who has already read the book The Giver. I would use this resource by showing the video to the students after they have read the book to help them understand the end of the book better from the author's perspective.  I would also use the "Meet the Author Slideshow with Lois Lowry" link where she reads the ending of the book The Giver because her rendition of the ending is beautiful and memorable.  These activities may spur an interest in the student to write their own fiction (Lowry uses no outline and just discovers the plot and characters as she goes along) and it may interest the students in the other books in The Giver Quartet (Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son).

I chose to use TeachingBooks.net    http://www.teachingbooks.net/ 
I love helping students make connections between science and their lives.  Both fiction and non-fiction books do this. (For instance, when Twilight was a huge bestseller and very popular with my students, we were studying the immune system and I did a read-aloud about the Spanish Influenza of 1918.  One of my students had such a funny look on her face that I asked if she was ok.  She just whispered "Edward" and opened the book to the paragraph that referenced the flu outbreak and its effects on Edward's family! It was a great moment for the whole class!

The book I can use with this resource is Fever 1793.  After accessing the site, I did a Search for the book. What is cool is I got 2 returns, one for the actual book, which is historical fiction, and the other for the non-fiction book, The American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. Both returns gave me book resources, including bookguides/lesson plans and Lexile scores along with author information.  I can do read-alouds from the non-fiction book while my students are reading the fictional version. Students get a deep understanding of the causes of disease, especially in overpopulated areas, are exposed to rich vocabulary, and a glimpse into history.  We tried using this book as a cross-curricular unit between reading, social studies and science but with a change in staffing, we no longer do that.

I went to kahnacademy.org to find a math resource for one of my students. Once there I browsed the offerings and was able to closely match up our current curriculum with a particular grade level that they have. I then went to the class description and tried to make sure that the topics covered in there class were sufficient to meet the requirements of our class. Once I was satisfied that the class I picked would meet the needs that I had, I set up a class and now am ready to go with this new method of learning for my student who struggles in math.

I will have students navigate to the Iowa AEA Online website. Since my target audience are my 6th grade Health students,we will choose the Health and wellness. During this unit, we have been working on nutrition and will go to www.supertracker.usda.gov to start logging in our daily caloric intake.  I have set up a group account for students to join. In the group there are options that you can set to have shared or not shared.  I have chosen to not share the information about there weight and goals.  We will spend a week logging in our daily food intake and evaluate what areas we might need to improve on and what areas we are good in.  The objective of this will be to have students become more aware of the food choices that they make and to make different choices in the future.  We will also explore the physical activity tracker to see how much exercise they are getting regularly.

I am a substitute teacher and I do not have a username/password to access the site. I will improvise.

The resource I have chosen is iCLIPART

My target audience would appeal to all ages, mainly K-12. With such a huge inventory, iCLIPART would definitely be a resource that I would utilize. I would use iCLIPART to decorate the classroom walls, to decorate worksheets and I would incorporate the pictures and animations into powerpoint presentations. I would also use the images to establish rituals and routines in my classroom. A picture is worth a thousand words...right?!
The high quality images would capture my audiences attention faster and hold it longer. Students will be fascinated and intrigued when they see the images that have been carefully selected by me and tailored to suit the ever changing subject matter. I would even use the images as gentle reminders of what the students need to do on a daily basis when entering my classroom such as: bring the textbook, a notebook and pencil to every class, so I would have 3 images on 1 sheet of paper outside of my classroom door.
By using iCLIPART through the Iowa AEA website, I will not need to worry about copyright laws. Once less thing for a busy teacher to worry about.

I am going to start my Great Barrier Reef project-based unit with the kids accessing Britannica
http://school.eb.com/.
They will use the site to gain basic knowledge about TGBR and it will serve as a jumping-off point to gain specific information about the organism their life-sized reproduction will replicate.
We will also contact a middle school in one of the cities along Australia's northeast coast (adjacent to the reef) and start a dialogue on the Internet about our two very different localities. I will talk to fellow teachers here at school and contact AEA Online and AEA resource people to find out how to make direct Skypeing? a possibility.

For this post I am using the CultureGram website for the students to do a project on one of the United States. The student will use the following site to complete their project.
http://online.culturegrams.com/states/
From this site the student will need to answer the following questions:
1. When the state became a state?
2. State bird, flower, and nickname.
3. What the climate is like?
4. A picture of the state flag.
5. Famous people from their state.
6. If any sport teams from state.
7. Any recipes from state.
8. Population.
9. Motto
10. Any other information they find interesting from website.

CultureGrams website has a wealth of information available to complete any project. I chose this site as all information needed to complete this project is real easy to find. Students will not have to go to another website. CultureGram is real easy to maneuver around to find the information. With the website easy to use, the project should be completed in no time at all.

I am a substitute teacher so I did not have to opportunity to share these resources with a classroom full of students but I did go through a lesson with my son at home. I used BookFLIX and this link to a Christopher Columbus book. http://bkflix.grolier.com/b/node-33980/bk0068pr 
The target age is a primary age student. I went through the lesson plan with my son and we discussed new vocabulary in the story. He listened to the story as the computer read it the first time through. He read the story the second time and we discussed it using the comprehension questions available on the lesson plan. Next we went to the search the web section where I read the biography about Christopher Columbus and we looked at pictures of him from the web. We had a great discussion!

As a music teacher, I love having access to free music.  I have taught a garageband unit students were to compose a piece of music, and they loved to use the loops, but there is a limited availability of free loops.  From the AEAonline website, I chose to link to soundzabound.  Without logging in, I was able to access all kinds of previews.  This link is one of the pages of lists of free music clips by artist:  http://www.soundzabound.com/sabcs?terms=2684. That many of the clips were the same artist, but there was a wide variety of styles, moods, volumes, genres, etc...  

By artist is not the only way to find music.  A couple of categories listed are cinematic magic, 21st Century beats, and a multitude of sound effects.  Not only would this website be a good resource for a music classroom, but sound effects are always necessary in drama.  As one of my units in my general music classroom, We performed a scene from a musical.  There are hundreds of sound clips for various things.  I searched here: http://www.soundzabound.com/sabcs?terms=1456, and found many clips of animals, with very detailed descriptions of birds, to start.  The sound clips ranged in length from 1 second to a minute and half long.  This is a great resource!

I am a substitute teacher and do not have subscriber log in privilege. I particularly liked the resource CultureGrams and if given the opportunity could see myself building a unit of each continent. The students would compare and contrast cultural differences and sameness.

Since I am a substitute teacher, I do not have access to AEA online with a username and password. I requested one just for purposes of taking this class but haven't received any support. I won't be able to tell you exactly where I would go to find a resource, but I do know that there are wonderful resources on AEA online for students to use. Teachers have a great resource to use to support the lessons they teach. If I were to currently have a classroom and incorportate AEA online into my lesson, I would use Britannica Digital Learning to do research on whatever topic I was teaching. If I had a middle school classroom and I were doing a lesson on space, I'd have students use Britannica to reasearch all of the planets and come up with ten fascinating facts about each planet. Then, I'd also use Atomic Learning to show videos of space exploration and the race for the U.S.A to get there. I'm sure there are some neat things on AP Images to use with this lesson. There are wonderful pictures that have been taken with rockets and probes that the students would enjoy seeing. That might be a good intoduction to the lesson.  

In reply to this post by eabbey
Since I am a substitute teacher I have no username or password and therefore I do not have direct access to the AEA Online Resources. Frustrating, being unable to explore at length, but during the course several of the sites stood out for me.
I liked the CultureGram site because it can be applied to a broad range of subjects such as Geography, Language Arts, Family and Consumer Science.
The Britannica Online site was also informative on a broad range of subjects with the information being clear and easy to follow.
The Teen Health and Wellness site has a lot of valuable information about the sometimes confusing age of young adulthood - an area I have subbed in quite a lot.
Whichever site is used, though, once logged-in the navigation is straightforward and the instructions are clear.

During the class I saw many resource that other teachers could use. One example is the Culinary Arts class. Preparing foods from around the world or even regional food of the USA is a wonderful resource.

For my students and myself the EBSCOhost was a bit of a challenge at first attempt. The first post in this section made a very good point about the need to train student (and the teacher) on EBSCOhost search terms and techniques before cutting students lose on the database. The Gale collection of periodicals is of interest to me. I can imagine finding many articles to share with students and staff.

We are set to begin a short unit on Islam. With all the rattle out there at the present time, I think it is important for the students to have at least a rudimentary understanding of this major religion. I first visited culture grams, thinking that the section on Syria might include some relevant information; nada.

Next I looked on the Britannica site and found some basic information on Islam at this url: http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/search/articles?query=islam%20religion. I will have the students log onto AEA online, after a brief introduction to the site (I'm sure many have used the site in other classes.) We will brainstorm pertinent search topics within Britannica and then I will divide the class into an appropriate number of groups and assign each a search.

Then we'll jigsaw the information, and then organize it in a logical order to be recorded.
 I suppose we could add some graphic elements from Britannica. If we want to tie current events (ISIS) to this, a resource from GALE ( I searched "ISIS" and found a good video at the bottom of the page.) at http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sort=RELEVANCE&docType=Video+file&tabID=Videos&prodId=MSIC&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchType=BasicSearchForm&contentSegment=¤tPosition=1&searchResultsType=MultiTab&inPS=true&userGroupName=50521bur&docId=GALE%7CCT394789343&contentSet=GALE%7CCT394789343 might help kids understand where this originated.

Of course my target audience is 7th graders in a social studies classroom. I feel like we have to address this, because at the current time, there is SO much misinformation out there. It's like many people have forgotten how to think......