TEACH & LEARN GENETICS

It seems to me that at the very least, biology and anatomy would benefit from the University of Utah's Science site. There are a great deal of interactive options, as well as a what they label "PRINT AND GO LESSON PLANS" Check it out!

The Genetic Science Learning Center is a science and health education program at the University of Utah. Their mission is making science easy for everyone to understand.
To achieve their mission, their web site provides educational materials and programs

These include two websites, available free of charge to Internet users worldwide:

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  Learn.Genetics delivers educational materials on genetics, bio science and health topics. They are designed to be used by students, teachers and members of the public. The materials meet selected US education standards for science and health.
  
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  Teach.Genetics provides resources for K-12 teachers, higher education faculty, and public educators. These include PDF-based Print-and-Go™ activities, unit plans and other supporting resources. The materials are designed to support and extend the materials on Learn.Genetics.

Glogster - Poster YourSelf

Glogster is a great platform for moving stale, 20th Century, poster projects into the 21st Century. Students can use content from the web or their own content to create informative collages about a wide range of topics. They can also use Glogster to create a dynamic digital portfolio.

Admittedly, my "GLOG" is not very creative or inspiring-But this is a cool web based program that can tranform the way we have students create posters or collages.

Using Glogster students can create multimedia collages about anything. One of Glogster's employees, Jim Dachos (a former Maine teacher) has compiled a great list of examples of Glogster being used in academic settings. Jim has examples covering the whole spectrum of educational applications for Glogster from elementary school through high school.

This is a creative, dynamic, and innovative digital outlet that captures learner's excitement for online creations, keeps learners engaged in course content, and makes teaching and learning more fun.

Once you register, you can create up to 200 accounts for your students. It is a private and safe platform, monitored directly by YOU. The teacher controls all the activities of their learners.
This is a valuable teaching tool that provides the opportunity for unique alternative assessments, and differentiated instructional activities.
For Students, GLOGSTER is a fun, imaginative, and powerful learning experience which fosters independent creative self expression, positive learner-teacher relationships, and teamwork on collaborative class projects.
As well, it is a vibrant, multi-sensory learning experience which integrates learner's knowledge and skills into traditionally text-oriented subjects and motivates learners' desire to explore topics in which they may previously have been less interested.
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Here is the process to get started:

Register at http://edu.glogster.com/
Create student accounts.
Become familiar with the site and build your own glog.

Using Contests in Teaching

Teaching With Contests is a site designed to help you find contests in academic or content areas that you and/or your students can participate in. A review of the site will lead you to contests covering all content areas. The creators of Teaching with Contests state that their goal is to assist educators in finding contests that can be used in the classroom to motivate students: "We are here for the student and the teacher not the promotion of products or company public relations. Our goal is to select contests and programs whose primary goal is education and secondarily business/product promotion."

Academic contests can be a fun way to get students excited about writing an essay, creating a video, writing a poem, or completing any number of learning activities.--who knew that there is a national contest in sculpturing tape(sponsored by 3M)?? At any rate, there are varied contests listed and updated-Just a page that you might want to bookmark and check periodically!

LEXIPEDIA - More Word play!

Look what I found !!! I'm pretty sure that I am Anastasia's new best friend!!!

Lexipedia is a really cool visual dictionary, thesaurus, vocabulary website that gives results as a web/mind-map. Users can click to find different parts of speech, synonyms, antonyms and more.

The site also adds "Fuzzynyms (my new favorite word)"- which are words that have a strong relationship but do not have the same meaning as synonyms do. The site can also change languages- French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Italian. Beginning next week, this will be an addition to the Word of the Day email that goes out as well as an addition to the PSHS Word Play blog.

Happy Week-end!

Hajj

Celebrate Diversity! - This has been a cornerstone of PSHS's school improvement plan since we opened. We recognize that the differences in all of us make us a better school-- and that recognizing and celebrating those differences is important. We have had our struggles, but we continue to believe as a school community that diversity and respect are important values.
It is that time of year when various religious groups have their own special celebrations-Muslims are nearing the Hajj- Following is information that might be of interest:

Millions of Muslims make an annual pilgrimage, called the Hajj. It is a journey that every Muslim, with the means to, must make before they die. Because the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar based on the motion of the moon, the time of the Hajj is different time each year in terms of the Gregorian calendar. This year it begins on November 25th.

The UK newspaper The Guardian has an excellent interactive about the Hajj. Unfortunately it doesn't go full screen- but it has good information.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,5860,875224,00.html

Daylight Saving time

So- We "fell back" this week-end- Always sad as far as I am concerned- as it means that winter is coming. Here's a quick "starter" or end of class snippet about Daylight Savings Time and why we change clocks- Do you know???





Click the sun for the movie-Select "Play in CBS Video Viewer-There is an ad first- sorry no way around it!