A while ago, Google announced that they had made all of the complete works of William Shakespeare available for searching online. While nothing noteworthy can be said about putting the works of the Bard online (it’s been done before), Google’s ability to search for specific passages and lines within each scanned text is rather helpful […]

I noticed that my last few posts have been focused almost entirely on Science, so I thought it was time to write about processing and mapping skills that work across disciplines. I have to thank Kevin Clark, an instructional technologist who works for our local REMC, for blogging about a fantastic new tool for allowing […]

At the end of March I posted about the continued, and in some cases increased, need for supervision of students using the Internet in the classroom. Many schools have been blocking blogs, wikis, and other social sites in an attempt to eliminate the need for supervision. Rather than embrace the new technologies they have “washed […]

I know that I’ve discussed the possibility of students taking and working on notes in a collaborative effort before, but after a quick search I realized that I hadn’t yet blogged about the possibilities of students using technology to help one another focus on key points and note taking skills.
The idea has been floating around […]

For those that read the forum, you’ve probably noticed the recent entry about the Visual Thesaurus by Steve, one of our active new members that attended the MACUL session.
Thanks Steve (aka falconphysics) for providing the link to this wonderful tool. I played with the thesaurus all day yesterday before school, during breaks, and after my […]

My experiences of reading during High School were mixed. As many secondary students across America do, I read many books that captured my imagination and encouraged me to seek out other works by the same author (Wells, Huxley, Hersey, Shakespeare). However, like secondary students across America, there were plenty of authors that I would not […]

I know that this post has been a long time coming as I took a break from the March is reading month series almost two weeks ago, but this penultimate online reading post has arrived at last. These are just a few resources that I think would work very effectively at the secondary level, both […]

I’ve been overwhelmed so far by the great sites that everyone has been mentioning in the comments and on the forum. I thought that many of the March is Reading posts would go by unnoticed, or at least uncommented as people shrugged off the notion of reading online instead of paper-bound books. That hasn’t been […]

As promised, here are a few online story sites for those readers well past their primers, but not quite ready for the world of Harry Potter and Mark Twain.
Walks with Red Dog
The memoirs of a naturalist and his farm dog, Red Dog. Most of the stories are just a few paragraphs long, so you can […]

The school where I previously taught was fanatical about March is Reading Month. They planned assemblies with motivational speakers, coordinated month long reading projects, and held a competition among the grades to see who could read the most. While many schools and teachers won’t have the energy, time, and commitment to organize such a large […]

Against my wife’s better judgment, I’m at school today despite spending most of Sunday on the couch dealing with a flu-like fatigue. There was too much to take care of today in class today, so I took some Vicks Dayquil and am powering through this morning.
Not wanting to dwell on my personal health, I though […]

While reading Barbara’s blog, I found this terrific tutorial for using Excel or OpenOffice to create a word search from scratch. By following Barbara’s directions (which were very simple and thorough) I managed to create my own word search quickly and easily. If you have a few minutes click on over to Plugged In HomeSchool […]

A few months back I talked about how useful the Comic Creator was on the Read, Write, Think website. While it allows for quick and easy publication of creative cartoons using pre-drawn characters and backgrounds, it doesn’t include a drawing tool to allow the user to make their own unique creations, nor does it have […]