Beyond Four Walls: Mrs. Smith's Tech Blog

Beginning in February, I will be offering an alternative to traditional staff development.  For those of you who are early birds, 30-minute online “webinars” (web-based seminar) will be available to you each Wednesday from 7:45-8:15.   To access these sessions, you need only be sitting at a computer with internet access.   Each week you will [...]

Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators
Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators is a categorized list of sites useful for enhancing curriculum and professional growth. It is updated often to include the best sites for teaching and learning.
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/
2010 Winter Olympic Sites (as per Kathy Schrock’s webpage)
The XXI Olympic Winter Games are soon approaching!   Below are some websites [...]

Elementary mini-techs for the month of January have been added to MyLearningPlan.   Come create a class blog or Moodle site.  If you already have these set up, join us to learn more and add content.   There will be Open Lab sessions following each workshop for those interested in staying to work with support.   These will [...]

Below are some cool student websites I’ve come across recently.  I am going to try to post more each week, so check back often.  If you have a great website you’d like to share, email it to me and I’ll post it here!

Recycle Roundup Game - National Geographic Kids
Students sort trash into three bins: Recycle, [...]

I’m working on adding links to my blog.   I have a new category for teachers to use when they need images for student projects.   The sites listed allow images to be freely used for educational purposes, but do require that the site of of origin is listed below the image.  The Nasa Images site has [...]

Read Across America goes Global!!!
TWICE (Two-way Interactive Connections in Education) is offering classrooms the opportunity to participate in a videoconference event in celebration of reading.  Similar to the traditional “Read Across America” events, this activity will allow students to share with a partner classroom somewhere in the US or world.    Students would create their own [...]

The fifth graders at Farmdale Elementary participated in a webcast today with R.L. Stine.  During the presentation, the author shared information about how he became an author and came up with ideas for some of his books.   He answered questions from the live audience, as well as those sent in by students viewing the [...]

As we settle in the the new school year, students are beginning to use Study Island to build skills that are needed in order to be successful on spring PSSA testing.   Although most teachers are familiar with the program and have been using it for a few years, some may be new to it [...]

Mrs. Swarm’s third grade class participated in a videoconference event on May 7th with the Hands On Museum in Ann Arbor, Michigan.   Students discussed the three states of matter, then combined ingredients to create two mystery “slime” substances.   They used four of their five senses to describe their slime to the activity leader at the [...]

30 astronauts, 3 moon bases, only one moon, and KC2035. What will happen?  Ready to go by 9:10 on this early Friday morning. Nervousness is filling the room. Stress might be visiting the teams as they are working.  The word “over” is ringing in my ears.  Mrs. Grimm and Mrs. Smith say there [...]