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Volume 3, Issue 8
Use My Bookmarks
Recently I had a “duh” moment
when a teacher asked me if I had
“all those neat websites” on my
Portaportal. Well, duh
 – 
no, I
didn’t. But I more or less do now.
I have gone through emails I havesent (and received) and previousnewsletters. I am not finished(never will be since bookmarksare quite dynamic), however mostbookmarks are there.For those of you not familiarwith Portaportal (there is an iconon computers logged into Novell).Portaportal is a way to bookmark pages and have access to your fa-vorites from any computer withInternet access. Teachers canbookmark pages they use whenstudents are in the lab
 – 
no typing
except for the teacher’s guest l
o-gin. The guest login allows usersaccess to your bookmarks withoutbeing able to make changes.Teachers can also mark book-marks as private so guests cannotsee them.With my Portaportal you canfind pages I have sent email aboutor included in newsletters withouttrying to find them in Thunderbirdor a newsletter. Trywww.portaportal.com,my guestlogin is mrollosson.
Inspiration Resources
I recently found templates forInspiration that I thought many of 
you could use. (Don’t forget, we
have plenty of licenses for Inspira-tion for middle school teachers.)http://teachers.henrico.k12.va.us/fairfield/marshall_g/INSPIRATION/Inspiration.htm - These areInspiration templates from Fair-field Middle School in HenricoCounty.http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/resources/Inspiration.htm - In-spiration templates from Rocking-ham County.Both websites divide the tem-plates by subject. The Henricosite further separates the templatesby grade level.
Summer Course
With
Virginia’s new focus on
incorporating 21
st
Century Skillsinto the classroom, this summerthe technology department isplanning to offer either one three-credit hour course, or three singlecredit hour courses covering stu-dent use of technology to learnSOL material. Likely topics will
include Microsoft’s MovieMaker 
and Photo Story, podcasting withAudacity, and a variety of othertools to engage students whilelearning. The bulk of the coursewill be taught face-to-face with anemphasis on student-centered ac-tivities. Participants will spendtime creating projects for theirstudents to use in the comingschool years, as well as spendingtime becoming comfortable withthe tools presented.
Resources by Subject andGrade
 In looking for lessons to teachlong division and fractions to 3
rd
,4
th
and 5
th
grade at MES, I foundresources from a Virginia schooldistrict for each subject/grade.Some subjects and grades havemore resources than others:English 6 (6.3 & 6.4)English 7 (7.4, 7.5, 7.9 andreview)English 8 (begins with 8.4)Math 6 Math 7 (some Interwritelessons already in ourpage, as well as reviewitems)Math 8 (mostly reviewitems)Algebra I (only a few re-view items)Science 6 Life Science (LS2, LS3,LS5, and review items)Physical Science (PS1,PS2, PS3 and PS10)USI (lots of foldables here)USII (only some reviewitems here)Civics and Economics (CE9 and review items)
Virus Messages andWarnings
Over the last few months ACPShas been dealing with an on-slaught of viruses and spyware.Numerous teachers have had tohave laptops re-imaged, techshave spent hours trying to fixproblems. One of the more com-
 
mon causes is a message will ap-pear saying you have a virus alongwith instructions to go to a certainwebsite or click a link to fix theproblem. These messages are bo-gus.Before distribution the techs
create an “image” with all the pr 
o-grams and settings needed
 – 
this isthen cloned to all the laptops (theyalso create images for the labcomputers). The image for ourlaptops includes Symantec Antivi-rus Client. This includes real-timeprotection for which updates areautomatic as long as you log intoNovell. When the real-time pro-tection detects a virus a messagewill appear with the name of thevirus, the name of the file andwhat Symantec has done. It willnot direct you to do anything.Any message that appears direct-ing you to click or purchase is bo-gus. Do not even close the mes-sage as that often begins thedownload of the virus. The bestthing you can do when one of these messages appears is poweroff your laptop, manually if youmust (hold the power button untilthe laptop shuts off).
Tools for Reading, Writing, andThinking are in-depth graphic or-
ganizers designed “to help st
u-dents engage in rigorous thinking,organize complex ideas, and scaf-fold their interactions with texts.They should not be used simply asworksheets or activities for theirown sake.
 
These tools include an “ac
a-
demic organizer” – 
a note-takingpage with helpful reminders in themargin that help students to de-fine, summarize, serialize, classi-fy, compare, and analyze ideasand concepts. There are organiz-ers for cause and effect, com-pare/contrast, fact/opinion, charac-ters, inference and more. All thetools are in PDF format to makethem easy to download and/orprint.
"Interactives" provides educa-tors and students with strategies,content, and activities that can en-hance and improve students' skillsin a variety of curricular areas.Math interactives include
“Geometry 3D Shapes”, “Math inDaily Life”, “Metric Conve
r-
sions”, and “Statistics”.
 Science interactives include
“Amusement Park Physics”,“DNA”, “Dynamic Earth”, “Ga
r-
 bage”, “The Periodic Table”, and“Weather”.
 There is a United States HistoryMap
 – 
 
Become a geography whizas you learn how the United Stateswas settled. Discover how the con-tinent was irrevocably changed byEuropean colonization, the eventsthat caused the wholesale dis-placement and decimation of theland's original inhabitants, andhow the 50 states came to beformed.
 Language interactives include
“Elements of a Story”, “Historical
and Cultural Cont
exts”, “Liter 
a-
ture” and “Spelling Bee”
(listen toa story and then spell words fromthe story).
Sexting and Teens
From NetSmartz:Sexting is an emerging trendamong young people involvingsharing of sexual images and textsvia cell phones. Due to the wide-spread availability of mobile tech-nology, the sky-high hormone le-vels of young people, and the dif-ficulty that they can have under-standing the consequences of theirdecisions, not-so-innocent textmessages arebeing sent fromcell phones allover America.The following isavailable in PDFformat by clicking the title:
THINK ABOUT THE CONSE-QUENCES
of taking, sending, orforwarding a sexual picture of 
someone underage, even if it’
s of you. You could get kicked off of sports teams, face humiliation,lose educational opportunities, andeven get in trouble with the law.
NEVER TAKE
images of your-
self that you wouldn’t want ever 
y-one - your classmates, your teach-ers, your family, or your employ-ers - to see.
BEFORE HITTING SEND
, re-
member that you can’t control
where this image may travel. Whatyou send to a boyfriend orgirlfriend could easily end up withtheir friends, and their friends, and
their friends…
IF YOU FORWARD
a sexualpicture of someone underage, youare as responsible for this image asthe original sender. You couldface child pornography charges,go to jail, and have to register as asex offender.
REPORT
any nude pictures youreceive on your cell phone to anadult you trust. Do not delete themessage. Instead, get your parentsor guardians, teachers, and schoolcounselors involved immediately.
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