Issue 13, Volume 8 November 15, 2007     Thought for the Week Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained. -- James A. Garfield   Time Is Running Out! Don't Miss LACUE 2007! 23rd Annual Conference November 28-30, 2007 River Center Baton Rouge, LA Pre-registration closed at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 14th. You will be able to register on-site at the Conference beginning at 3:00 p.m. on November 28th. It's not too late to register for Louisiana's largest conference for educational technology! Help us celebrate the extraordinary successes of our Louisiana schools and gain valuable information on improving student achievement using technology. Register now – online registration and conference information is available at www.lacue.org. Register today for only $125. Full conference fees include a complimentary LACUE membership. Once you register, start planning your conference experience with the online LACUE 2007 Conference preliminary program. If you have any questions please feel free to email Eva Smill esmill@ebrschools.org – LACUE Conference Chair or email Yvette Ardoin at yvette.ardoin@cpsb.org or Diane Mason at diane.mason@cpsb.org – LACUE Conference Co-Chairs. Any questions about the program, please contact Sheryl Abshire – sheryl.abshire@cpsb.org - LACUE Program Chair. If you have other conference or registration questions please email lacue@lacue.org. More than 2,000 participants are expected to attend this year; so, mark your calendar now for November 28 – 30, 2007 and prepare to participate in a premiere technology learning experience.  Congratulations To Region V LACUE Winners! The Louisiana Association of Computer Using Educators has announced the regional award winners for the organization. There were numerous entries from the Region V area. The state winners will be announced at the annual LACUE state conference held November 28 - 30, 2007 in Baton Rouge. Administrator of the Year Amy Allen, Episcopal Day School Educator of the Year Kim Leblanc, Calcasieu Parish Public Schools, eLearning Coordinator Elementary Teacher of the Year Tevya O'Quain, St. John Elementary, ITEC Teacher Middle School Teacher of the Year Renee LeJeune, S J Welsh Middle, ITEC Teacher Secondary Teacher of the Year Yessica Walker, Sulphur Ninth Grade Post Secondary Teacher of the Year Sharon VanMetre, McNeese State University Special Person of the Year Dru Stains, Frasch Elementary School Want/Need Computers In Your Classroom… How About A Promethean ActivBoard? Apply NOW! I-TEC Classroom Grants for 2007 -2008 are Due Tuesday, December 11, 2007 ... I-TEC - Implementing a Technology-Enriched Curriculum A Project of the Calcasieu Parish School System Technology Department You have the expertise, your students need the access, but how are you going to get a Promethean ActivBoard and 3 brand new computers connected to the Internet with a LCD projector to display work, etc??? Well, short of winning the lottery, the next best way is to apply for the Calcasieu Parish Technology Department I-TEC Grant. Fill out the application, cross your fingers and wait to be called to say you WON!!! If you have always wanted to apply for this grant….but just could not find the time….well this year the grant is due December 11, 2007. So you will finally have the time to write this very easy-to-complete grant! Visit this web link http://www.cpsb.org/resources/itec/application.doc and print out the application, NOW! Don't wait! The applications must be received no later than noon on Tuesday, December 11, 2007. Interviews will be held during the week of December 17th. Questions? Please contact: Kim Leblanc: kim.leblanc@cpsb.org or 217.4120 ext. 1028. Speak Up 2007 The Speak Up National Research Project is facilitated each year by Project Tomorrow; the project collects and reports out annually on authentic, unfiltered feedback from K-12 students, teachers, parents and school leaders from every state on 21st century education and technology issues via online surveys. Your school can “speak up” to share ideas and opinions in this national online survey, which will be open 24/7 until December 15th, 2007. Students, parents, teachers and school leaders can access the survey from any internet-connected computer. Why Participate in Speak Up? Speak Up provides a direct voice in the development of national and state education policies and programs. The national data is shared each year with Congress, the US Department of Education, National Science Foundation and many State Governors. All Speak Up participants have free online access to the school’s own quantitative data with national benchmarks. The data will be available to you in January 2008 –in time to use it for planning, training, budgeting and purchasing decisions. To find out more information about Speak Up 2007, visit the website at http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/index.html. You can even find some convenient tools for helping make the 2007 Speak Up Survey a success at http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/speak_up_how_to.html. In order for your comments on the survey to be part of the Calcasieu Parish School Board statistics, please go to this website http://www.netdayspeakup.org/.  The surveys will be open October 15th through December 15th, 2007 - visit, www.netdayspeakup.org. You do not need to activate the survey. We have already activated the survey for the entire district. To access the survey, you, your students, parents, teachers and administrators will need the secret word: cpsb Please send this information home to parents and work with students to take the survey in your class. We need our voice to be heard! Eye Pleasing News! It's often surprising that so many computer users don’t use this little tip. You can get softer, clearer fonts on your windows XP by turning on a setting called ‘ClearType’. It’s off by default. Simply click on Start, Control Panel and then Appearance and Themes in the Category view. Then, click Display. Click on the Appearance tab. Now click on the Effects button. Put a check on “use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts”. Now make sure that it's set to ClearType. Click on OK! You’ll notice that all of your fonts in XP are now smoother, clearer and softer to your eyes. Sorry, you may still need those glasses, though. Plimoth Plantation You may like to checkout this link to free plethora of free instructional materials for classroom units on Colonial American life, Native American life, and the Thanksgiving Holiday. Plimoth Plantation, a bicultural museum, offers powerful personal encounters with history built on thorough research about the Wampanoag People and the Colonial English community in the 1600s. Their exhibits, programs, live interpreters, and historic settings encourage a new level of understanding about present-day issues affecting communities around the world. The URL: http://www.plimoth.org/   Seeing In The Dark Astronomy can be a wonderful way to approach required science principles and ideas. The Seeing in the Dark website includes how-to videos for stargazing, star charts that can be customized and printed out, special effects videos of fascinating astronomy topics, and images from a high-powered Internet telescope. You will find a selection of proven hands-on activities that teach basic astronomy to your students. Links to activities are organized by topic. You can also find great astronomy related activities in the PBS Teachers website http://www.pbs.org/teachers/. Browser Add-ons Can Cause Problems Add-ons are special programs that work inside of Internet Explorer and other web browsers. Add-ons can include search tool bars, games, and programs that let you view Web sites off line. However, add-ons can also invade your privacy, especially when spyware or adware installs without your knowledge or permission. The Internet Explorer Add-on Manager lists all add-ons installed on your computer that are used by Internet Explorer. You can use the Internet Explorer Add-on Manager to enable or disable each add-on individually. To access the Internet Explorer Add-on Manager in Internet Explorer 7, click Tools, Manage Add-ons and then select Enable Or Disable Add-ons. If you want to disable an add-on, click to select it and then click the radio button next to Disable in the Settings area of the Manage Add-ons window. When you’re finished changing the add-on settings, click OK. You will need to restart Internet Explorer in order for the changes to take effect. 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) Spanish Professor http://www.spanishprofessor.org/ Spanish Professor is an educational Web site created to help people learn Spanish. A lot of people make language acquisition harder than it really is. Everybody learns a new language in a different way, and this site aspires to make learning Spanish as easy as possible by guiding you to online language learning programs, or to where you can buy Spanish learning CDs. They also provide lessons for students of Spanish to learn how to speak the words, and understand the basic grammar of Spanish.   National Institutes of Health http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements The National Institutes of Health (NIH) now have available curriculum supplements that are aligned to state standards. Supplements are available for elementary, middle, and high school in science, mathematics, English language arts, and, when available, health. Find interactive teaching units that incorporate real scientific data. Each supplement is a guide to lessons on science and human health that is available on the Web, in a PDF file, and on a downloadable CD-ROM that includes multimedia activities.   Teach Students to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson308.shtml This site offers five lessons to help you teach students about trash and the importance of recycling. 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  Best on the Net Tech Guides  Computer Purchasing Information  Tech Connect Archive