no matter what discipline you teach, ARTstor can be a great resource for you. ARTstor is the most comphrensive image database out there and the WA library has it.

Go to the Library website and take a look.

If you use images for your teaching, you need to take a look at ARTstor. I have included a introductory video on how to use ARTstor.

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Are you looking to do something for the upcoming election?

Check out Googlitics, Google's site dedicated to politics and the election. It has lesson ideas and resources that will help you examine the election.

They also have tools dedicated to creating a mock trial and studying the election.

Ever think of something but weren't near a pen and paper to write it down so you would remember to do it later?

Now there is Jott

http://jott.com/

Here is Jeff to give a few examples of what you can do with Jott...

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Derek Segesdy found this physics simulation and thought I would let y'all know about it. It seems like a useful teaching tool. If you teach physics you should check it out. Thanks for the find Derek.

Phunland - a 2D physics sandbox

In the video below, Howard Rheingold, a professor at Stanford and Berkley, speaks about the importance of having students participate in the classroom using social media. Rheingold discusses how "student-led collaborative inquiry and involvement... enlists their enthusiasm in ways that even very good lectures and texts don't." He covers what he calls meta-skills, which include: critical inquiry, pathfinding, balancing individual and collective voice, and attention-to-attention. Check it out.… Continue

Struggling to figure out what to do on the first day of school? Here is a website that is dedicated to ideas on how to start your first day. There are categories for every discipline. Check it out. There are some interesting ideas.

I read this blog entry the other day about how many major companies are looking for people to be able to solve non-routine problems. The entry went on to state that companies like Google want students to major in leaning problem solving skills more than anything else.

To lean more about this read the blog entry.

Are you a middle school teacher and now have to wonder how you can use the new laptops? Have your students struggled with taking notes because they are a better typer than hand writer?

You should try Google Notebook. Google Notebook is an easy way for students to take notes on their laptop save the notes and send the notes to others. If a student misses class, a classmate can easily share their notes with their absent friend with the click of a button.… Continue

this is more about a curriculum that public schools are adopting but it has some interesting points about HOW to use technology most effectively.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/technology/17essay.html

With the increasing use of technology in classrooms, it’s no wonder that teachers have a growing interest in using YouTube and other online media sharing sites to bring information into their classrooms. Here are 100 YouTube videos that can provide supplementary information for the class, give inspiration, help you keep control of class and even provide a few laughs here and there.


http://www.smartteaching.org/blog/

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54641

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9928174-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

This site has a list of recommended tech applications based on what you're looking for. It's a great resource.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/toolbox2007.html

Here is a link to some video tutorials on how to create a web site with Google Pages. If you're looking to create a simple web site for your class, project, or event, Google Pages is a great web application for that.

http://kevin.jarrett.googlepages.com/whataregoogleapps%3F7

Kevin Jarrett is a K-4 technology integrator and his blog has a lot of good information on it as well. http://www.… Continue

This article from The Science Daily states that incorporating the arts into our lives can make us smarter. They state, "children motivated in the arts develop attention skills and strategies for memory retrieval that also apply to other subject areas".

This data came from the DANA Foundation.

As the year begins to wind down, perhaps this summ… Continue

Some people of asked me what twitter is and how it can be used. Here is a video from Common Craft that explains how Twitter work. I will write more later on the potential of Twitter in the classroom.

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Do you want to use or already use You Tube videos but don't want to worry about the streaming lag? With Miro you don't have to worry about delays as you can download videos to your hard drive and show them as you please. Some of our faculty are already using Miro with great success. Check it out, you'll find that it is extremely useful if you like to use Internet videos.

Did you know? Worcester Firsts

• Worcester, Massachusetts was host to the first national Women's Rights Convention in 1850.


• The launching of the first liquid fuel rocket took place in Worcester, led by "the father of modern rocketry," Robert Goddard (also a graduate

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Found this site today. Learn It Lists is a language tool, providing 10 words for translation every day. This could be a useful addition for your students to memorize the vocabulary they need for your language class.

This week's creative tip is one of those handy shortcuts you can use all the time. As basic as it is, a lot of us missed this feature along the way.

In many Adobe application (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop), hold down the Shift key while dragging a guide to snap to the nearest ruler mark. The cool part is that your guides snap to the visible tick marks on the ruler whatever the magnification level. Once you've tried it, you'll be using this trick every day.

Credit and full article can be ob… Continue