Issue 24, Volume 11 February 17, 2011     Thought for the Week Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. -- Dr. Seuss   Read Across America – March 2nd On March 2, the National Education Association calls for every child to be reading in the company of a caring adult. NEA's Read Across America Day, NEA's national reading celebration, takes place each year on or near March 2, the birthday of Dr. Seuss. Across the country, thousands of schools, libraries, and community centers participate by bringing together kids, teens, and books!Need a suggestion on some activities to celebrate NEA's Read Across America Day? Go to the following link to access some ideas: http://www.nea.org/grants/13019.htm. There are also other resources available on the NEA site to print and reproduce like posters and bookmarks as well as reading lists to use: http://www.nea.org/grants/13023.htm. LPB & THE LOUISIANA ASSOCIATION OF EDUCATORS WILL READ ACROSS LOUISIANA – AND AMERICA! On Saturday, February 26th from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., LPB and LAE present Read Across Louisiana at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge. Bring the kids out to hear wonderful stories read to them by local celebrities and others. There will also be literacy-related hands-on activities and giveaways. A similar event will be taking place here locally at the Prien Lake Mall, 496 West Prien Lake Road, in Lake Charles. On Wednesday, March 2nd, LPB and LAE are asking celebrities, teachers, librarians, parents, grandparents – anyone and everyone – to read “The Cat in the Hat” to a class at a school, Head Start, daycare, or at a library. March 2nd is Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and the organizations have chosen “The Cat in the Hat” in honor of the new PBS kids’ series The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! There is also a special Facebook page at www.lpb.org/readacrossla. Please fill out your pledge to ready today! You can even upload pictures to this page. Remember – “You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read with a child!” Grammar Bytes Grammar Bytes is a website for Language Arts teachers, offering a glossary of terms, handouts, interactive exercises, and slide show presentations for teachers and students. There are eighteen slide show presentations available for free downloading from Grammar Bytes. Each slide show is accompanied by a handout for students to complete as they view each presentation. The interactive activities on Grammar Bytes require students to do more than memorize the rules of grammar. The site's interactive activities require students to read sentences and identify errors. In some of the activities students have to correct errors in a sentence. Each interactive activity is accompanied by a handout on which students can record their scores and measure their progress. Grammar Bytes is designed for students in grades 6-12. Check it out at http://www.chompchomp.com/menu.htm.  Produce Animated Movies Students can direct and produce their very own animated movies using Zimmer Twins. Students can watch a “starter” video and finish the story however they would like. The first time you introduce the site, it might be fun to complete a video as a class. Then students can take over and create their own ending to a Zimmer Twins movie. These video clips make excellent story starters for journal writing even if you can’t take the time to make it into an actual video. To use as a story starter, show the beginning of the short animation to your students on an interactive whiteboard or projector, then let students take over on classroom computers, working together, or writing a journal entry. This site would make an excellent alternative to the traditional book report. Learn more about it at http://www.zimmertwins.com/. Who Will Win $25,000 and Be Named America's 2011 Top Young Scientist? The Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge is officially open for entries! Students in grades 5-8 can enter today for a chance to win the following: $25,000, a trip to 3M's global headquarters to work alongside leading scientists, and the coveted title, America's Top Young Scientist. The Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge is the premier national science competition for students in grades 5 through 8. The Young Scientist Challenge is designed to encourage the exploration of science and innovation among America's youth and to promote the importance of science communication. Over the last ten years, more than 600,000 middle school students have been nominated to participate in the competition, and winners have gone on to speak in front of members of Congress, work with the nation's top scientists and pursue academic careers in the sciences. Encourage your young scientists to enter! The students must create and submit a one- to two- minute science video that meets this year’s challenge. For video topic guidelines, tips from previous winners and more, visit www.youngscientistchallenge.com. Video entries will be due on April 15, 2011. Preview Attachments in Outlook 2007 For most of us receiving Word or Excel files as attachments is a daily occurrence. In previous versions of Outlook you had to open the attachments separately to view them. In Outlook 2007 you can display an attachment's contents inside Outlook. This avoids having to open Word or Excel just to preview the document. This also works with PowerPoint presentations. If the sender is someone in your safe senders list, the attachments can be previewed automatically. If the sender is not on your safe senders list, click the Preview File button to preview the attachment. To add a sender as a safe sender, right click an email from them and choose Junk E-mail, Add Sender to Safe Senders List. You can still save attachments as you did with earlier versions of Outlook, but the ability to view them inside Outlook will save a lot of time. Free Online Video Games for ESL Students’ Language Skills In this article from Digital Learning Environments, the author uses online video games with his ESL students as a language development activity. Not all games online are appropriate for the classroom or provide good language development experiences, so this article might just be for you since the author has already selected online games especially for language development. All of the games listed are both free and online but do not require any downloading. In addition, the games have no sexual content. Lastly, the games have a fair amount of English text shown and, ideally, spoken in the course of the game. If you have ESL students, then you may want to check out this article: http://www.guide2digitallearning.com/teaching_learning/free_online_video_games_esl_students_language_skills Use It or Lose It! Windows 7 Backup and Restore creates safety copies of your most important files, so if you lose something, it won't be lost forever. Let Windows choose what to back up, or pick individual folders, libraries, or drives. Windows can back up files on whatever schedule you choose. Just set it and forget it. In Windows 7, you can back up files to an external device of some kind (i.e. CD, DVD, external hard drive, or jump drive). Backup and Restore for your personal PC and attached DVD or external hard drives comes with all editions of Windows. So, how do you do it? Open Backup and Restore by clicking the Start button, then the Control Panel, the System and Maintenance, and then clicking Backup and Restore. The best source for backup is a external backup storage device. Johnnie’s Math Page Johnnie's Math Page is the site to find fun math for kids, math games, and even a little help for math homework. Interactive math activities from across the web have been organized by topic to make math learning enjoyable and interesting for kids. Johnnie's Math Page is meant to be a window onto the world of worthwhile math activities available for children on the web. A great number of websites offer math activities for children but too many do not engage children or, just as importantly, do not have much math content. There are now approximated 700 links to math activities and tools across the web on Johnnie's Math Page. Make math exciting and check out this site at http://jmathpage.com. It’s All Greek To Me! Whenever we discuss quantities of data in terms of storage space, we tend to do it in the abstract. We speak of a kilobyte, or a megabyte or a gigabyte without really knowing what it represents. So, what does it all mean? Perhaps we can put some of this in perspective. Below are some examples of data terms that are approximate and rounded. 1 byte One character 10 bytes One word 2 Kilobytes Typewritten page 100 Kilobytes Photograph, low-resolution 1 Megabyte Small novel; 3-1/2 inch floppy disk 5 Megabytes Complete works of Shakespeare; 30 seconds of broadcast-quality video 700 Megabytes Audio CD 1 Gigabyte broadcast quality movie 4.7 Gigabyte DVD quality movie Best on the Net!! -- Visit this site for hundreds of websites for teachers! We would love to hear from you about the best educational sites you have found on the web. Please submit, via email, the sites you feel merit inclusion. Send to tech.connect@cpsb.org. Please include the URL and a short sentence about the site.  Featured Sites: (These sites were submitted by teachers in Calcasieu Parish) Chocolate Web Trek & Answer Key http://everydayteaching.com/Treks/chocolate.Mini.trek.html  http://everydayteaching.com/Treks/upper_elem/ChocolateMiniWebTrekAnswerKey.pdf  YUM! What could be more fun than learning all about that most delicious treat, chocolate? (Well, maybe having some chocolate at the end of this research project!) Students will be using an online resource to learn more about the history behind our demand for and consumption of chocolate, answering a series of guided questions. The 2nd link above provides an answer key.   NASA Kids' Club http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids/kidsclub/flash/index.html?flash=1  Nasa Kids' Club is an interactive site of NASA where kids can play educational games about math, science and technology, learn about space and astronauts. They can also chat with NASA experts.   San Francisco Symphony Kids Site http://www.sfskids.org/templates/home.asp?pageid=1 SFSKids is a site where you can learn about music and instruments, hear, learn and have fun with music.   An official publication of the CPSB Technology Department For Technical Support:  help.cpsb.org Calcasieu Parish Homepage  Technology Department  Tech Help Site  Best on the Net Tech Guides  Computer Purchasing Information  Tech Connect Archive