Issue 18, Volume 10 January 7, 2010     Thought for the Week Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein   Martin Luther King Day - January 18 Celebrated this year on Monday, January 18, 2010, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a United States holiday marking the birthdate of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is always observed on the third Monday of January each year, around the time of King's birthday, January 15th. The MLK Holiday celebrates the life and legacy of a man who brought hope and healing to America. We commemorate him, as well as the timeless values he taught us through his example -- the values of courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility and service that so radiantly defined Dr. King’s character and empowered his leadership. Find lots of ideas and activities for the classroom to help remember him on that day. EducationWorld: http://www.education-world.com/a_lesson/lesson248.shtml EducationWorld editors searched the Web for the best King lessons and activities for classroom use. No matter what grade you teach, you'll find valuable resources related to Martin Luther King, Jr. including two picture books about King's life. A Teeny Tiny Book About Martin Luther King, Jr. is an appropriate resource for primary grade teachers, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., written in comic book form, is sure to appeal to kids in elementary grades and up. ProTeacher: http://www.proteacher.com/090159.shtml This site provides a collection of activity ideas, resources and links for celebrating Martin Luther King Day in the classroom. You will also find ideas for your bulletin boards, a poem for choral reading, craft activities, discussion topics, language arts activities, and songs. Teach-nology: http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/holidays/mlk/  Find lesson plans for teachers to use on Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Students will benefit from lessons on Dr. King's speech, the civil rights movement, timelines and much more.  LessonPlansPage: http://www.lessonplanspage.com/BlackHistoryMonth.htm Find a a very large collection of 50 great lesson plans, ideas, and unit components for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Black History Month from Lesson Plans Page.  There are many more sites available for teachers to use for Martin Luther King Day. Just do a search for MLK lesson plans.  Featured Blackboard Site The featured Blackboard site was created by Renee Fiser, a high school Web Design and Database Design teacher from Lake Charles Boston Academy. Mrs. Fiser created the site to serve as a resource for all of her students and as well as a communication resource with parents. Visit Mrs. Fiser's site. Google Squared Finding information online is easy. You go to a search engine, type in what you are looking for and with a few mouse clicks you have an answer...most of the time. Teaching students how to do quality search is a bit of a challenge but not impossible. Google Squared is a search engine that changes the way you look at information on the web. Type in a search term and you are presented with results. What is different about Google Squared is how the results are presented and what you can do with the data.   With Google Squared the search results are presented in a table. Results are organized horizontally with several pieces of information (or what Google calls Attributes.) All of the results in each column come from different places on the web, organized in the squares. You can check the information for each result and attribute by clicking the link in the square. (Remember, it’s always a good idea to double check from where the information is coming.) In the square you can designate what attributes you want displayed. There are suggestions for attributes or you can type your own. Try it out for yourself at http://www.google.com/squared/. Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision Competition ExploraVision encourages K-12 students of all interest, skill and ability levels to create and explore a vision of future technology by combining their imaginations with the tools of science. All inventions and innovations result from creative thinking and problem solving. The ExploraVision program, sponsored by Toshiba and administered by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), challenges teams of two-four students to research scientific principles and current technologies as the basis for designing future technologies. Since the program's inception in 1992, nearly 260,000 students have submitted entries. To enter ExploraVision, students work in groups of two, three or four — simulating a real research and development team. Projects may be submitted online or via mail. Be sure to check out the requirements now if you have some innovative students with visions of the future. A teacher coach must register the student teams. Students on the four first-place ExploraVision winning teams will each receive a $10,000 U.S. Series EE Savings Bond valued at maturity. Students on second-place teams will each receive a $5,000 bond valued at maturity. The eight teams will also receive an expenses-paid trip with their families, mentor and coach to Washington, D.C. for a gala awards weekend in June 2010.  Entries must be received at NSTA headquarters by Tuesday, February 2, 2010. To find out more, visit http://www.exploravision.org/. Get Creative With Your Digital Pics Turn your photos into artwork. It's free and no registration required. Upload a photo using your computer, web camera, from a URL, and photo sharing sites. You can rotate your picture and crop it. Add goodies to your photo such as frames, shapes, accessories, graphic text, speech bubbles, and more. Share the photo by email or download and save it to your computer. The URL: http://www.befunky.com/index.php PDF to Word If you need to grab elements from a PDF, edit part of its text, or cut down its size, you might try converting it to a Microsoft Word file. For doing that task, PDF to Word is more than just adequate—in three easy steps. Simply upload a PDF, provide an email address, and your document is on its way to you. Maker NitroPDF has other free PDF tools worth checking out, and paid software to entice you with, but PDF to Word is a webapp that does exactly what it says, no catches or gimmicks. Try it out at http://www.pdftoword.com/.  Free Interactive Flashcards Cue Card is a free download that allows teachers or students to create interactive flashcards. Once downloaded it is very simple to create flashcards using Cue Card. Not only can you include text in your flashcards, you can also incorporate audio and pictures to assist students in retaining the content they are reviewing. After creating flashcards students can view the cards in study mode or test mode. The URL: http://download.cnet.com/CueCard/3000-2051_4-10075304.html?part=88333&subj=dlpage&tag=button/ Valuable Resource for Promethean Users Why reinvent the wheel?  Promethean Planet is a valuable site that has online resources ready for you to use. Go to www.prometheanplanet.com to access this site. Create a free account with a personal username and password. This website contains pre-made flipcharts that you can download and alter to fit your own personal teaching needs. Lessons, flipcharts, News stories, and other valuable resources are available at this site. Use this site to assist you in developing highly interactive lessons in your classroom. 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) Grape Soda Chromatography http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/ATG/data/released/0351-ErnieNicol/description.php Students will be separating and analyzing the dyes used in grape soda -- a great eye opener -- while learning about chromatography as well. Note that grape drink mix can also be used for this high school science lab activity.   Discovering Great Artists Activity Cards http://www.brightring.com/Bright%20PDFs/DGAartcartds.pdf Introduce your elementary students to the masters this year with these wonderful artist activity cards. Each activity card comes with a student exercise to try out some aspect of the selected artist's technique.   Spelling Bee! http://www.learner.org/interactives/spelling/ Choose your grade level -- including high school -- and then spell words as dictated from selected sentences. Middle school students will listen to story passages for words in context, and can review words in audio before entering the terms.   An official publication of the CPSB Technology Department If you have any questions or comments please e-mail the Webmaster. For Technical Support:  tech.help@cpsb.org Calcasieu Parish Homepage  Technology Department  Tech Help Site  Best on the Net Tech Guides  Computer Purchasing Information  Tech Connect Archive