14 Minute Webinar

How to Engage Your Students with 21st Century Projects

Simplek12.com is offering another webinar that you may be interested in .  This webinar is based on 21st Century Projects and ways that you can help engage your students using these great tools.  According to Simplek12's blog post this webinar will only take 14 minutes.  You can choose from three different days.  The webinars are Tuesday, March 22 at 5:00 PM, Wednesday, March 23 at 9:00 AM and Saturday, March 26 at 11:00 AM.  To register for the webinar just go to this link.  

Discussions in Google Docs

Thinking about using Google Docs!  Here is another great reason to start using it.  As you may know Google has a feature within Google Docs that allows a collaborator to comment on the document itself.  The comments are placed in the margins of the document.  Well now Google has set up discussions that can take place within the margins of the document.  For example I can comment on a student's work and then they can reply to my comment as to what they were thinking when they were writing the paper.  This is a great way to help your students fine tune their writing skills and also a way that students can help each other with writing projects.  Check out this video if you would like to see more.

Transforming Education through Technology

For the past year I have been receiving a wonderful publication from The Journal that I would like to recommend to everyone.  The Journal whose goal is to Transform Education through Technology is a great way to learn about new tools that are available in this ever-changing world of Education and Technology.  Each month you can choose to receive the digital or the print version of the magazine.  Within every issue there are many ideas that may help you implement technology into your classroom.  This is a great way to learn about new ideas that will help push you towards having a 21st Century classroom.  If you have a minute visit The Journal website and sign up for this free publication.

Online Learning Opportunity

Getting the Most Out of Your Interactive Whiteboard

Simplek12.com is offering a live online webinar on Tuesday, March 22, 2011.  The webinar will begin at 1:00PM and last about an hour.  If you are interested in this free webinar just click on this link and sign up.  The webinar states that it will help you discover some new ways to use your interactive whiteboard.

View Google Search Results Based Upon Reading Level

I recently just learned about a new tool that Google offers that will help you sort your search results based on Reading Level.  Although the new tool is fairly new and needs a little bit of work it is a great start to something that can make things a lot easier for teachers.  Google uses a very simplified leveling system which includes basic, intermediate and advanced reading levels that you can sort your results by.

How do I use this new feature?

• Go to www.google.com
• Type in your search term and then click on the "Advanced Search"
• On the next screen you can choose the Reading Level you want to work with or select "Annotate results with reading levels".

• Click on Advanced Search
• You can now choose which reading level you would like to sort by and the percentage of results within that reading level.

• You and your students can now use this feature to help narrow down the results and hopefully make things a little easier on everyone.

Classroom Use:
This is a great tool to use with students who may be researching information on a specific subject.  Elementary students can view the basic results where as High School Students might find that the intermediate or advanced results will better suit them.