Teachertube is an awesome web site for teacher collaborating. These are videos created by teachers to help teachers. You’ll find everything from complete lessons to How to make a poster with Word. I really enjoyed Mrs. Burk the Rapping Math Teacher. Her Rapp about Area and Perimeter was quite entertaining. This site works just like YouTube, but it’s clean and only for educational purposes. Teachers are the most creative people on the face of the earth and this site proves it. I’m inspired by the creativity that these teachers incorporate into their classrooms.

Schoolr is a web site with tools for both teachers and students. I could be considered a one stop shop for vocabulary. It even has a citation builder that helps students build citations for their research papers like this.

Schoolr has Dictionary Search, Thesaurus Search, Acronym Search, Encyclopedia Search, Citation Builder, Book Summary Search, A unit Converter and the cool one is the Text Translator. If it works correctly for Spanish, “I went up the elevator.” Is translated “Fui encima del elevador.” I wouldn’t know, so trust it at your own discretion.

It has other languages as well.

Weekly Tech Tip

I’m sure there have been times that some of you have needed to provide a specific type of file for someone, or a student will bring a file and you can’t open it because you don’t have the necessary program. Well, there is this nifty little web site that can convert just about any file you’ll come across, at least all the majors. You’ll upload the file, it converts it and then it emails it to you. It is www.zamzar.com

For example: You need to email a document or letter to a parent. You don’t want the little red squiggly lines to show up because the spelling is right even though Word says it’s not, so you want to convert it to PDF file format. Upload the Word Doc and you get your PDF file emailed back to you. Awesome!

Do Not upload any private information of any student or teacher.

Weekly Tech Tip

The first is a web site for Kids called www.kids.gov. It is a web site developed in partnership with our national government specifically for kids. On this site you will find activities, lessons, materials, etc. If you teach anything about the government or anything related to the government you’ll find it on this site. It covers everything from Money to Homework. I enjoyed my reading about the History of the US Marshals. Yes, the site was designed for kids, but I learned from it anyway!