To find your second article, log into Destiny and click on EBSCO Host and then Biography Reference Center. Search for your person there.

Read the article found here and be prepared to summarize the main points about the important leadership characteristics. While your class is reading The Girl Who Owned a City, you’ll be looking for these characteristics in the children who have survived the plague.

Socrative gets around that. This is perfect for the computer lab or a mobile lab. The teacher creates a classroom and a quiz. Socrative generates the room number. Students then go to Socrative and type in the room number. They type in their name and then are presented with the quiz.

I did my test run with a laptop and my phone, with the laptop being the teacher station. My phone showed a message that said it was waiting on the teacher. Once I was ready on the laptop, it automatically updated on my phone and I answered the sample question. The teacher station then saw what I got and started a grade report. Students don’t see how their classmates scored, which is good. They are able to see if they got the right answer if you set up the quiz to do that. There is also a game mode called Space Race where they are divided into two teams and their right answers fuel their rockets. It’s not a huge motivator, but it still beats a worksheet.

What is great is that the reports export to Excel. There is also a quiz creation template in Excel that you can import so that you can make a backup copy and not have to rely solely on an online copy. The fact that it’s free definitely helps.

With more school districts moving towards a “bring your own teachnology” policy for portable devices, I see a lot of potential for this.

Here is the answer to today’s Future Professionals challenge.

Here are the sites:
WebElements
Dynamic Periodic Table
ChemicalElements.com
It’s Elemental

Treble – Beginner
Treble – Advanced

Bass – Beginner
Bass – Advanced

I especially like the frantic music in the background and the countdown timer. Nice find, Mr. Durham.

That being said, here are some sites that you might be able to find clips to use:

Khan Academy – Even though YouTube’s blocked, Khan Academy videos are still viewable. These are amazing videos that demonstrate in simple language pretty complex math and science concepts.

5min.com – http://www.5min.com/Category/Knowledge has 5-minute videos (thus the name) that explain concepts in a quick but thorough manner. I easily found a video about the Homestead Act and then discovered a video from the Khan Academy about why (not just how) borrowing works in subtraction problems.

MovieWeb – Do you want to show 30 seconds worth of a film instead of the whole thing? Try http://www.movieweb.com/.

and then you have the classics TeacherTube and SchoolTube if you want to share videos (and find ones shared by other educators…I prefer SchoolTube over TeacherTube because it loads faster).

Hopefully that helps!

At our junior high, some of the teachers read the novel Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen with their students. In it, one of the major forces is a giant white bear.

So, how likely is it for a spirit bear to be born?

National Geographic has a great article about the Kermodism genetics that causes the white fur. The really cool part is the Punnett square visualizing how the recessive trait is passed on.

This is an excellent opportunity for science and English teachers to team up for a cross-curricular lesson.

You can download it here.