Fact Checking

Every student (and teacher) should have a resource or two that they use to check facts and authenticity. We all know of those e-mail chain letters that circulate, ridiculous claims, warnings about the latest computer virus, or that bizarre photo circulating of "Hercules" the three headed dog. And try as we might to ensure that students use school approved data bases for research, Google is so much easier...

Here are my favorite fact checking sites:
1. www.snopes.com -One of the Internet's most trusted authorities on urban legends and all things Internet. Good search engine!
This is my first resource when I get that annoying forwarded email about the latest scam.

2. Scambusters.com for useful, practical, and trustworthy information on identity theft, Internet scams, credit card fraud, phishing, lottery scams, urban legends, and how to stop spam.

3. TruthorFiction.com ferrets out the truth about rumors, inspirational stories, hoaxes, scams, humorous tales, pleas for help, prayer requests, calls to action, and other forwarded emails.

4. From the folks at about.com comes UrbanLegends.about.com. They categorize their information into three main categories: Basic, Current, and Classic. A very nice layout makes this on easy to read and navigate

2 Content Specific sites

English and Math- this is for you.

First-English teachers check out ClassicReader.com. Classic Reader was created by a Canadian company in 2000. All books published on the Classic Reader website are out-of-copyright, meaning their copyright protection has expired. This means you won't find the latest Stephen King, Tom Clancy, etc. You will find classic literary works from the start of the 20th century and previous centuries, from authors like Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, William Shakespeare and more.All of the books in the Classic Reader collection are the full unabridged versions. And, since all of the books in the Classic Reader collection are in the public domain (expired copyright)they may be used in any way you wish.
Finally, here is the cool part- if you create an account for yourself--or use mine
(username:cfloros password:cougar), you can then annotate the works.
Seems to me that especially for some of the hard to read(understand) Shakespear works, that annotating(interpreting) would be of great assistance to stuggling readers. (Tip of the hat to Stephanie Stashak!)

Math-this might be a fun review possibility for fractions and ratios. Arcademic Skill Builders are research-based and standards-aligned educational games. The games have incorporated features of arcade games into fun online games. Unfortunately, most of the games are elementary--but I would think that the fractions/ratio games might be useful. Check out the SMART lab(130) or a SMARTBOARD and try them!

I realize that it is T minus 10 and counting down to the end of the school year.
AND I know that the last thing that anyone really wants right now is to think about next school year. So- maybe take a look, park this in back of your brain to review more closely at another time. I think it is worth your time.


ClassChatter offers web tools for teachers at all levels of education. The site has been created by a full time teacher(goodness knows how he has the time!). The goal is to provide a safe haven for teachers and students on the web in a social networking kind of environment. It is secure and private, and free of any advertising. It appears to be useful tools that will help move your students more rapidly into communication and collaboration!

The site includes the ability for you and your students to create blogs, exchange Cmail(class mail), organize assignments and communicate via forums. There are very nice video tutorials included. Most importantly it is a safe, controlled environment.
Again, I would encourage you to take a look-This could be a nice way to start off 2009-10.

Doodle for Google Finalists

The is a follow-up to the Doodle for Google contest that I wrote about earlier in the year. Doodle for Google is a competition where K-12 students were invited to play around with the homepage logo and see what new designs they come up with. This year's theme is "What I Wish for the World."

The finalist have been chosen. You can help select the National Finalists from 40 Regional Winners. Just click on each grade group tab (e.g., K-3) and select your favorite doodle for the grade group by clicking the vote button. You can also click on each doodle to view it in more detail.

For a list of our State Finalists that are not a part of this online voting round, please click on State Finalist. Sadly none of the COUGAR entries won. There are some very neat entries- Enjoy!

The Week In Review

If you find yourself looking for some good "week in review" news summaries, following are some great resources:

The Week in Rap may be my favorite and certainly the most entertaining news summary that I have seen. As the name implies, every week a new rap music video summarizes the the week's news. (It is produced by Flocabulary. Flocabulary is the publisher of multimedia educational tools. They create original hip-hop music and standards-based curricular materials to teach academic content for grades 3-12.) It is fast paced entertaining review. For those who are leary of hip-hop--The lyrics are published as well-All very appropriately done and presented. you can even SUBSCRIBE and get the video each Friday.

Check it out:


For those looking for a more traditional review of the week-I have two options:
The New York Times offers a version based on all of their content from the preceding week. The collection includes articles and images of political and cultural news.
MSNBC offers The Week in Pictures - a slideshow of images with captions of the week's biggest news stories.

Finally, MSNBC also offers a week's worth of political cartoons .

Thanks to Richard Byrne!