3 Sites to Help You Use Current Events as Classroom Resources

A common theme runs through several of the blogs I read this evening: teaching with current events. Nowadays using current events to help teach is not limited to social studies. See for yourself!

Winston Retrieves the News / S. Carter / CC BY-SA 2.0

Word problems. Story prompts. Creativity triggers. Data.


Richard Byrne (Free Technology for Teachers) shares two BBC News Magazine Monitor weekly features in his blog this week. The Week in Pictures and The Week in Numbers both feature interesting photos. The Week in Pictures provides a brief description that gives you enough information to help you find more information about the news story. The Week in Numbers gives a statistic and a link to the story that the photos illustrate.

Byrne discusses the value of these weekly features to interest students in the news articles. I agree. And I would add that they are rich resources for word problems in mathematics, story prompts for writing, triggers for creative multimedia stories, and data for problem solving.

Both teachers and students could use these interesting photos, statistics, and the related stories to help share ideas, investigate topics, and support viewpoints.

The Learning Network provides teaching materials for content in the New York Times. They publish lesson plans for NY Times stories for each subject at the end of the school year. See their roundup for 2013-2014 for social studies, history, geography, and civics.

To emphasize the locations of current events you might want to check the site that Larry Ferlazzo describes in his blog this week. Breaking News allows you to find stories about a topic you choose. You can then navigate to the story… and to a map that shows the location of the story.

8 Tips and Tools for Organizing Your Digital Files for Teaching

File Cabinets / Jared and Corin / CC BY-SA 2.0

I taught two graduate workshops for teachers this Summer. Both included ideas for organizing teachers’ digital files. (Organization was not a main feature of either workshop, but instead a by-product.)

#1
In the SMART Board 101 workshop we talked about keeping teaching units organized with the Attachments Tab in Notebook software. When you create a unit with Notebook software you can place other (from Notebook or other applications) files in Notebook’s Attachments well. The next time you teach that unit you will have all the files you need at hand.

#2
In the Teaching in a Digital World workshop, the teachers learned how to create and use wikis (and other tools). They liked the idea of creating wikis to organize their work. They also decided they would like to create wikis with information for substitute teachers.

#3
Looking online for organization ideas for teachers, Evernote, of course, stands out as a major tool for organizing. But other tools and techniques can also be found.

#4
The Organized Classroom Blog describes a method for using Pinterest as a filing cabinet for your teaching ideas. For this project you create pins that do not have links to websites.
Get Rid of Your Filing Cabinet?
http://www.theorganizedclassroomblog.com/index.php/blog/get-rid-of-your-filing-cabinet

#5
Techie Teacher & Character Coach also includes a post for organizing digital files. Ali, the blogger, describes her file and folder system.
Resources #1: Organize Your Digital Files
http://techieteacher-charactercoach.blogspot.com/2013/01/resources-1-organize-your-digital-files.html

#6
A guest blogger on Owl-Ways Be Inspired uses apps and applications to help her organize her files. She likes the iDoceo App for student grades, attendance, and anecdotal records. She also uses an online lesson planner that allows you to tag the Common Core Standards. She likes and uses Dropbox, Notability, and the Common Core app from Mastery Connect.
Getting Organized: Go Digital
http://owlwaysbeinspired.blogspot.com/2013/08/getting-organized-go-digital.html

#7
I use LiveBinders for curation, but it’s also an excellent tool to collect your unit resources and organize them!
LiveBinders – Your 3-ring Binder for the Web
http://www.livebinders.com/welcome/home

#8
Laura Santos at Core Inspiration likes to use Symbaloo and Blendscape to organize her online resources. Both tools are web-based, have visual appeal and are classroom-friendly.
Tools for Organizing Your Online Teaching Resources
http://coreinspiration.blogspot.com/2013/10/tools-for-organizing-your-online.html

How do you organize the digital files you use for teaching?

Finding Appropriate Images for Blogs and Other Web-based Projects

#455572129 / gettyimages.com

A blog post is usually more interesting to read if images are included to illustrate the text. I'm frequently looking for sources for images to use in my blog, my class wikis, and other web-based projects. My interest in finding good photos is one of the reasons that I am doing my Project 365/2014 this year. In effect, I am creating my own folder of stock photography to use.

I still use many photos in addition to my own, however; so, I was impressed with Dan Leeman's resource on The EduBlogger blog. He has compiled The Ultimate Directory of Free Image Sources (http://theedublogger.com/2014/07/09/the-ultimate-directory-of-free-image-sources/). His criteria are subjects, high resolution, license, and safety. His categories are search engines, large crowdsourced collections, U.S. Government collections, unique collections, specific subjects, and clipart.

If you use photos to illustrate your writing, I recommend that you check out Dan Leeman's blog post.

Summer Plans

Vacation / jonycunha / CC BY-SA 2.0

What are your plans for this summer? Do something just for yourself? Improve lessons and procedures? Learn something new? Read? Reflect on the past school year? Rest? Spend time with family and friends? Take a workshop? Travel? Work? So many choices... so little time!

Here are some suggestions from Vicki Davis, Reading Horizons, and about.com: Secondary education:

Top 12 Summer Tips for Top Teachers
http://www.edutopia.org//blog/top-12-summer-tips-teachers-vicki-davis

The Teachers Guide to Summer Break: Tips for Fun, Relaxation, & Professional Development
http://www.readinghorizons.com/blog/post/2012/04/27/Teachers-Summer-Break.aspx

Top 10 To Do’s for Teachers During Summer Vacation
http://712educators.about.com/od/teacherresources/tp/summer_activities.htm

My favorites are Davis’ revitalize your physical health, Reading Horizons’ create family time, and About.com’s try something new. Of course, I’m going to do the school-related items such as reflecting, improving lessons, and preparing for the new year. But, it’s important to take care of ourselves, too. Enjoy your summer!