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 April 2009
ITRT Customer Service
Is there equipment you would
like to try but don’t know
how? Let me know and Iwill come show you how(one on one) and I will alsomodel it for you with yourstudents. I will work withyou until you are comfortableusing it.Is there a lesson using tech-nology you would like to try,
 but you aren’t quite sure you
can do it on your own? Let
me know, I’ll come and work 
with you on it.Is there a resource (involvingtechnology) that you would
like to develop but don’t have
the time or know how? Forinstance, a TurningPointpresentation, a SchoolPadlesson, or an animoto video?Give me the details and timeto do it, and I will do my bestto provide the resource. Onlyrequests for SOL materialswill be granted. Oncecreated, the materials will bemade available on the re-source page for all teachers toaccess. Resources will bedeveloped on a first come,first served basis. Enoughtime must be given for quali-ty resources to be created(plan ahead).
New AdaptationOld Concept
My latest efforts in helping ateacher with technology is
something I’ve not seen any
Accomack teachers try in theclassroom before.One of our foreign languageteachers has a friend in Puer-to Rico who teaches English.These two teachers wouldlike to take the old pen palidea and adopt it to the 21
st
 century
 —they’d like to use
web cams and the Internet toallow their students to literal-
ly look in to each other’s
classrooms. Mr. Carey hasprovided the web cam and
we’ve found a S
kype type
site (which isn’t blocked) and
run some initial tests. If youare interested in trying some-thing similar you might check with me to see how this goes.
Get a Look at This!
 Here is a great video entitled
―Shift Happens‖,
 and here isa slightly more up to date re-mix with more illustrationsand more up to date music.
I’m not sure which I like be
t-
ter, so I’ll let you decide. E
i-ther way, this may help moti-vate you to use more tech-nology.
My Newest Webpicks.
I’m sure I’ve already
emailedsome of you about this site,but this is a site that a teacherof just about any subjectcould probably come up witha way of using.Xtranormal is an interestingsite
 – 
 
―if you can type, youcan make movies‖
. Choosebetween one or two actors,pick your scene, type yourscript, add actions and sounds
 – 
then publish and share. All
for free. You don’t even need
to create an account unlessyou want to save your movie.This is a great project for stu-dents - reinterpret a scenefrom a novel, re-enact a pe-riod of history, discuss thesteps to a math problem, car-ry on a conversation about atopic in civics (or science, orart, or music, or
 – 
you get theidea).
 
I created a movie forteachers about using Xtra-normal, which you can viewon a ClassJump page which I use as a sample.Click  here r an interview with Jacques Cartier that MelodiPower (elementary ITRT)created. A Spanish class atAHS has made a bunch of these but, I see they are nolonger posted on the Internet.
EtherPad 
Here is a site that I’m really
excited about. On numerous
occasions I’ve convinced
teachers to try GoogleDocs asa site for on line documentstorage and peer review. Inother words students can goon line from any location andcreate text documents,spreadsheets, or PowerPointtype presentations which canbe shared from any computerthat has Internet access. Ad-
ditionally, if given ―rights‖
other students can alter thedocuments or insert com-ments
 — 
giving them theability to help edit another
student’s paper.
The biggest obstacle toGoogleDocs has been that itis necessary to create studentaccounts and to do that stu-dents need to have email ad-dresses.
 Now I’ve found a site that, in
many respects functions likeGoogleDocs, but you cantake a class down to the com-puter lab and use it imme-diately, without having to es-tablish student accounts.The site is EtherPad.com.They bill their site as being
―insanely useful‖ for drafting
and wordsmithing.Students can sit at differentcomputers, enter text in acommon document with each
student’s entry
highlighted ina different color. Entries ap-pear on every
 body’s screen in
real-time. They can view
each other’s contributions.
When they are through thedocument can be stored andshared on the web or printedout.
 _______________________Most of the content in theremainder of this newsletteroriginally appeared in Melis-
sa Rollosson’s middle school
ITRT newsletter and appearshere with some modifica-tions by me.
4 Multimedia LearningPrinciples that will ImproveYour Slides
 http://blog.slideshare.net/2009/02/03/4-multimedia-learning-principles-that-will-improve-your-slides/  Many of us think we makefantastic PowerPoints. Butdo we really? The link aboveis to an article that discussesways to implement effectiveinstructional design in a pres-entation.Slides have two design ele-ments: the graphics (font,colors, design) and the in-structional element (the partsof the slide that help peopleunderstand and retain thecontents of the slide. The au-thor of the article offers foursuggestions to help teachersdesign effective slides forstudents.1)
 
Research shows thatusing words and graph-ics together help stu-dent performance ontests more than wordsalone.2)
 
Pictures that are in-cluded in the slide(s)should be 100% con-ceptually relevant.3)
 
Words presented asaudio rather than on-screen text work betterthan the words alone(this item is more forpresentations oneviews outside of aclass).4)
 
The last suggestion is
to implement a ―virtualcoach‖ – 
a visual cha-racter on the slide thatacts as
a ―host‖ for 
your presentation.Many will initially think thiswill all take too much time
 – 
 
 but isn’t the time worth it if 
students retain more know-ledge from your efforts? Youmight try implementing one
 
principle at a time. If you area words-only type of Power-Pointer, try adding graphics(not clip art, but meaningfulgraphics). Make sure anypictures or graphics you useare completely relevant toyour topic.http://www.quizville.com/ This site has some math andgeography games that are ap-propriate for high school.Math games cover some top-ics in geometry, algebra andtrigonometry. There are geo-graphy games to test conti-nents, bodies of water, statesand capitals, rivers and more.You might want to check thisout and see if it would merit atrip to the computer lab orchecking out the laptop cart.
http://timeglider.com/  
TimeGlider(formerly Mne-mograph) now has an extraset of tools that allow formore management and con-trol of timelines calledTimeGlider "Plus".In addition to creating regulartimelines, one can quicklyadd a set of users (i.e. a groupof students) who can then beassigned to timelines, or whocan build their own. Also, da-ta can be imported into atimeline. They have beenworking to make this featuremore intuitive and usable.For the time being, it's allfree. Eventually, TimeGlideris planning to charge a smallmonthly fee for these extratools. Meanwhile,
they’d
liketo get as many teachers usingit as possible so they canlearn more about what worksand what doesn't. TimeGlidertruly depends on feedback todevelop their product. If youcan give in-depth feedback about the application andabout things like pricing,marketing, and so forth, theywill be thrilled to give you alifetime, free account.Some examples:World War I The Wright Brothers 
Other TimeLineCreators
A second on line site forcreating timelines is Time-toast.com.Here is a link to atime line created with Time-toast, on the history of theabolition movement in Amer-ica.And a third site for creatingon line timelines is xtime-line.com This timeline of 
Shakespeare’s l
ife will serveas a sample of timelinescreated at xtimeline.
Texas 2008 TAKS
PDF (AdobeReader) files of the released 2008 TAKS (theTexas version of SOL tests)can be found athttp://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/resources/release/taks_items/index.html Interactive online versions of the Texas tests are found athttp://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/resources/online/index.html 
http://www.diigo.com/  
Diigo is a combinationbookmark and highlight toolfor web pages. What followsis the description of Diigoprovided by its creators
. I’ve
not yet investigated the sitefor myself, but it sounds wellworth pursuing.
 If you browse or read a lot on the web, we believe youwill find Diigo indispensable. Diigo is two services in one --it is a research and collabor-ative research tool on the onehand, and a knowledge-sharing community and so-cial content site on the other.
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