"Say Goodbye to Microsoft Office"

I wish I would have bought stock in Google because every time I turn around they are developing a new way to make my life easier. Google Docs has become my new best friend and a valuable tool for both my personal and professional life. Through the use of cloud-computing, Google has enabled a person to transform the way they create, upload, share, and store documents. Check out the video below:

Visually Conceptualizing the Oil Disaster

Getting students to conceptualize how big, small, or far away something is can be difficult. A fellow colleague of mine, who teaches math, faces this difficulty all of the time with her students while teaching number sense. A method she uses at the beginning of the unit consists of her drawing a number line on the board. On the left hand side she writes the number 0 and on the right hand side she writes the number 1,000,000,000. She then asks each student to come up to the board and place a mark on the number line where they think the number 1,000 would be. 9 out of 10 times, the students place their marks in the middle of the number line, which is incorrect.

When teaching students about the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it may be difficult to get students to understand the severity of the disaster. If it was my Home.com is a great resource to use to help students understand how much of the Gulf of Mexico is being affected by the oil disaster. This site is great because it also allows a person to move the oil spill to cover the area in which they live. All a person has to do is type in their zip code and the enormous blob of oil will move to that location. Thank you Andy Lintner for the wonderful resource!

The Last 18 Years in Rap

The Week in Rap is a neat website that brings hip hop into the classroom. Because hip hop, and music in general, is such a big part of our students' lives, it is important for us to embrace their interests. The Week in Rap is a site that allows teachers to do just that. What is even better is that the site raps about current events - or in this video's case, the last 18 years!


View it in Quicktime version: here

Channel One's version: here

Attention Parents

Are you concerned with your child accessing inappropriate content from the internet? Well, there are ways for them to search without the risk! Check out the following:

Creating a Quiz using Google Docs

Sample Quiz created in Google Docs