Review of Free Websites

I went to http://www.picnik.com/app#/home
. This is a great website where you can add text to a photo,clip art to a photo, change a colored photo to black and white, or make a collage. This software has so many options for every pictures and the best part is the software is free. I definitely recommend to alter your pictures with picknik. Currently I have the basic software which is free but I can see myself purchasing the more advanced package at a later date. Down below I included a couple pictures I altered through the website.

A free office suite I reviewed is google documents. The nice thing about google documents is the site acts as a back up hard drive that you can access anywhere. I like the fact I can save any form of document including pdf files, excel, office, or powerpoint in a safe location. Sometimes I get to school and wish that I had a document from my computer. That problem is solved with this website. I also enjoy how easy it is to organize your documents. I set-up a tab with school articles, and then tabs for extra practice worksheets for each of the books I teach.

Google Site

Here is a link to my new google site. I made my google site for students and parents to use. On the site I included vocabulary terms we are covering along with assignments students may complete. There is an extra credit assignment where students must listen to two raps on slope intercept form and tell which rap had the best information. I also included a district calendar link. My favorite feature is playing original pac-man. Please have fun on my site. I think students will find my site interesting and will learn more math.


https://sites.google.com/site/mrelsheikhi/home

Using bubbl.us was a new experience for me. I could use a map of how to solve two step equations in my classroom. The students could be assigned to create their own problem and make their own map for it. This will allow the students to practice writing in math.
Another possible assignment would be half the class would be given the description of what's happening in the 2 step equation and the other half of the class would be given the algebra work. So, each student would have to either write a description or write out the algebra steps depending on what they are assigned.

Idea for a project

Here is a embed jing video. As a teacher my assignment with this video would be to find a powerpoint on a country that you are going to research. Copy the link to that powerpoint and have it functional in your assignment. Your job as a student is to alter the powerpoint and provide sources for each slide. By altering I mean change every single slide add information/pictures/audio. When the student has altered every single slide and added more information then I want a summary of the things you changed and how you confirmed that the powerpoints information was correct. Students may want to put in a timeline and you can find information by advance searching and looking at google timelines. (This lesson was inspired by the Macul Conference I went to about how to block students from stealing projects from the internet)

Google Maps

There are so many fun assignments that students can do with Google maps. The assignment I made on Google maps involved picking a major city and researching places to visit. I would like my students to pick a city or a state to visit and write information/include picture for a variety of activities to do. Students should research places to shop, eat, spend the night, sight see and etc. I want students to include in their review the cost to all their places and create a budget for their trip. An extension from this assignment could be students need to come up with a travel route and add up all the mileage needed to get around to their places to visit. Students can convert their mileage to how much money the gas would cost. Students can look at my example and create their own Google map trip. My example below

View jtotheotothee Chicago trip in a larger map

 The Tenacious Teacher (http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-strategies-for.../id263604316) does a good job of responding to a variety of areas like differentiated instruction, lesson planning, visual aids, and learning styles. I could see many teachers getting ideas and improving methods by listening to this podcast. I listened to the podcast on differentiated instruction and the teacher gave an example of a lesson with differentiated instruction using the same text. She recommended each student with the same text but different assignments for example lower level could do writing on characters, intermediate will write on the setting, and advanced will identify and write about the plot. She also talked about how magazines as an alternative to text books create interest and engagement. She then said student could have the choice in class to use an audio version of a book and read, or watch a movie and read the book.

The NPR Education Podcast (http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/npr-education-podcast/id270655782) is about National news and laws being looked at in education. The episode I listened to was on the hot topic of teacher tenure (airing 2-17-11) and the host interviewed two people on different sides of the issue. The two main arguments that came out of the episode were there are no jobs that don’t take into account performance and just look at years in the profession. (this was a person against tenure) The person for tenure said, that the union should come up with ways of evaluation and the most successful case is in California where teachers rate each other and discuss improvement plans together. The person for tenure also brought up an incident where a Principal of a school was evaluating teachers poorly before stepping foot in the classroom and telling there assistant Principal to do the same. I found this podcast to spark lots of arguments within myself because there are teacher who don’t try after they get tenure.  Those teachers are not there for the kids and hurt everyone else’s academic progress with the students. However there is a scare when people want to judge you on academic progress with each student sometimes we have no control over what a student does with their life.