MOREnet PD options

If you are a teacher in MO be sure to check out the MOREnet Training Schedule.  If you teach at a school that is a full MOREnet member you are able to attend the training for free.  If your school is not a full member there is a charge for the class.  I have taken the SMART Board part 1 and 2, Intro to Pod Casting, and the Google class and would suggest all off them! You can also take these classes for graduate credit at three different universities.  I received several graduate credits this way from Central Methodist University as a part of my Master of Education.  It is much cheaper and very time effective to completed classes this way.

Free PD for 2012

Looking for some FREE PD opportunities for 2012 then you need to read this post by Shelly Terrell. 

On the Horizon: 20+ Free Professional Development Opportunities for 2012 lists many FREE PD opportunities that you can take advantage of. 

Free Mini Books

Do you need more reading resources for your classroom?  Do you have a classroom budget?  Then the free Mini Books from Scholastic are just what you need.  You can search by topic, reading level, and grade level. This tool is wonderful for reinforcing concepts from other subjects in your reading lesson.  If you have students that are above or below the level of books you have in your classroom library this could also be a valuable tool.  If you create an account, or have a Scholastic account all ready, then you can save books online to use in the future.  Happy reading!! 

Top Post of 2011

To start of the new year I wanted to post the top two post from 2011.  They are listed below!

ABC Tracing Pages 

Technology in The Music Classroom 

Pin This!

I got a Pinterest account a couple of days ago and it is has been a fun distraction to some of the stresses of life and I have learned some things too.  T night as I was pining things and looking at pins I thought of something that we talked about in one of the classes that I took for my masters.  Students now are becoming visual learners because of all of the media that we are subjected to everyday.  I then thought...How are we compensating for this in our classrooms?  How much media should we have in our classrooms?  How do we use the media to help prepare our students for high stakes testing?  There are some things to think about for the new year.....maybe I will find a photo that will answer my questions on Pinterest.

Diigo Group

As some of you may know that in January I will become an adjunct faculty member at Central Methodist University.  I will be teaching Instructional Technology for the Masters of Education program.  This is an online class for all three campuses that have the Masters of Education program.  As part of my prep for this I have created a group on Diigo called CMU ED 514 Instructional Technology. I plan on using this as a place to post information that might be useful to the students in my class.  As I was thinking about the information I was sharing it would be helpful to any educator. Please feel free to join!  The more input my students can get from other teachers the better off they will be.

History on Twitter

I am trying to find a image of Etienne de Bourgmont for one of our 4th grade teachers.  As of now I am empty handed. My next thought was how will I find someone to help me? I decided Twitter was a good place to turn for help.  I can not Tweet at school so I decided to do some recon on hash tags to use and Twitter users that might be able to help me out.  Well I found a wonderful blog post on the History Tech blog.  The blog post Tip of the Week - 65 History Twitter Feeds gives you lots of places to get new information, or sometimes just a needed reminder, about teaching history. You can also check out or post questions to the hash tags #history or #historyteacher.  Some time tonight I will post my Tweet and I will let you know what I find!  Remember you can follow me on Twitter @musictech02