A perfect site to enhance your whiteboard presentations can be found at a ClassTools.net This site is full of interactive graphic organizers. Students can create simple learning activities to share with others: ManicMiner, CannonBall Fun,and Word Matching. Teachers can utilize interactive graphic organizers templates. Many teachers will recognize many of the basic graphic organizers. For example, the ” Burger Diagram” is often used to help elementary students write a basic paragraph  in a fun way. Students would enjoy this activity and others, even more because it’s interactive. Teacher will also find tools to assist in classroom management. The Random Name Picker, Quiz creators, and fun musical Countdowns( i.e. Mission Impossible) are fun.

Just for fun … or is it?  Several educators  are all a buzz, over the following site: http://plasq.com/comiclife-win . Reasonably priced, this may be the perfect antidote for antsy students (or teachers) still in school for most of the month of June. A free 30 day  trail is available. Another free site  that allows students to create their own comics around the classic book Charlotte’s Web can be found at Scholastic. Time to play!

I was unable to attend the My Classroom to Yours Conference at Stockton College on Wednesday May 14^th . However, Kevin Jarrett, Northfield Community School’s technology facilitator K-4, presented a Google Applications Case Study with our very own Kathy Fields.

Kevin writes, “My co-presenter, Mrs. Cathy Fields, arrived soon thereafter with her own gear, including a tablet PC, actual “sludge” samples, test tubes, finished “Sludge Test” reports, and a variety of other lab tools. All this was crammed on a podium that had about 2′ x 2′ of open space to begin with. Like I said, if only I’d take a picture.”

He also presented Please Me: Creating a Personal Professional Development Learning Environment. Kevin said that overall, the conference was professional and well organized. There were a variety of presentations, which differed in quality. Kevin concluded that the morning sessions seemed more dynamic than the afternoon sessions. He was disappointed that he was unable to attend some of the morning workshops because he was presenting at that time When learning  about new “best practices”  technology applications, Kevin prefers  to have the “big picture” presented rather than a step –by –step “how to” demonstration. We discussed how as a technology facilitator this was understandable, but for a teacher, the “how to” might be a better option. Overall, it sounds that the conference offered something for a very diverse everyone. Generalizing, Kevin observed that the educators from North Jersey seemed more informed than our South Jersey counterparts. I guess we have some catching up to do!

Luminosity is a Web site that was developed to provide basic training in brain fitness. The games are based on research in neuroscience and have been proven to be effective in clinical trails. I am not and have never been a “gamer”. Years ago, I played a game on one occasion called Mario Brothers.  I lost to a six year old and decided it wasn’t my cup of tea. However, for the sake of brain fitness I tried the games on this site and found them to be engaging. I would be interested to know what others thought. I think children could profit from these exercises.  I tried Birdwatching.  This game is designed to promote and measure attention. This game could be used as a spelling exercise with students.. Word Bubbles  is also a great activity to encourage language skills. Monster Garden is intended to advance memory skills. There is a fee for this site, but a free seven day trail is available. Check it out! http://www.lumosity.com/