Friday, December 30, 2011

Bill Nye Worksheets

If your middle school kids are anything like my middle school kids, they love watching Bill Nye the Science Guy.  I try to show the movies as much as I can because I know the kids like it and I think it's nice to have material presented to them in a different way.  I usually just show them the movie and that's was it, but I found this site that has worksheets to go along with the Bill Nye videos.  The site from Star Materials.  The worksheets are not anything fabulous, but just enough to make sure that the kids are paying attention during the movie.  It also gives you a good follow up to the movie and a closure to the lesson.

I'll be trying them out this year with all of the videos I show in the future....will you try them too?

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Regents Chemistry - worksheets, labs and notes

For those of you who teach Chemistry I have a website that has great worksheets on it.  It's called Evan's Regents Chemistry Corner.  While it is geared towards those who teach in NY, Chemistry isn't all that different around the country.  It also some worksheets and activities for those who teacher honors classes and might be preparing their students for the SAT II.
As a new science teacher, this website has helped me out so much when I needed a homework assignment or worksheet to do in class.  Some of the worksheets are better than other...I like the worksheets the best.  The lessons is a good thing to give students who are absent or those who need read a topic in a different way.  It's also a good reading assignment for the students (hello Common Core!), especially when you are going to be absent and you want to leave something substantial.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Do you know Mobi?

For the past few years I have been using a product called Mobi from a company called EInstruction.  What is this product you ask, well it's really just a giant mouse that you carry around with you, but it does so much.  It's about the size of a composition notebook and it wirelessly connects with your computer.  Now you can stand at the back of the room and interact with your computer.  You can do simple things that you would normally do with a regular mouse but it also has the added feature of allowing you to write on the computer like an interactive whiteboard. 
I love it because it does everything that you can do with an interactive whiteboard, but you don't need to feel trapped at the front of the room in order to manipulate the board.  As a traveling teacher this is really easy for me because I don't need to reconnect to the board that in the classroom.  I have the used both the Interwrite electronic whiteboards that are in the classrooms and the Mobi that I bring along with me and I love the flexibility of the Mobi.  (Plus it's A LOT cheaper and much easy to get your school to buy or get a grant for).

What interactive whiteboards do you have?  Do you have any fun accessories that go with them?

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Create your own eBooks

One of the things I have started in my class this year is online textbooks.  I created a book as a .pdf so that it could be viewed on a computer or an ebook reader (Nook, Kindle) or IPad.  The problem is that eBook readers display things best when they are ePub files.  I came across this great website that allows you to take anything that is PDF, Word document and select other files and turn it into an ePub file.

Now my students can read their Chemistry textbook on their Nook while they on the couch (or one can hope, right?)