MSM 300:  Firefox says, “Hello!” to a Teacher’s Day.

Jokes You Can Use:

A man got hit in the head with a can of Coke, but he was alright because it was a soft drink.

 

A man gets pulled over by the police for speeding. The cop walks up to the car and says to the driver, “Sir, did you know that you were going 60 miles an hour?” The driver says, “Officer, there is no way I could have been going 60 miles an hour!” The cop says, “Really! Why is that? The driver replies,” I could not have been going 60 miles an hour because I’ve only been out driving for 25 minutes.”

 

Q: What do you call a line of rabbits walking backwards?

A: A receding hairline!

 

Officer to driver going the wrong way up a one way street. “And where do you think you are going?”

Driver: – “I’m not sure, but I must be late as everyone else is coming back.”

 

Did you hear about the red ship and the blue ship that collided?

The survivors were marooned.

A fellow was telling his buddies that in the evenings, he goes out and drinks and carries on with women, but always goes back home by 8:00 O’clock.

He describes it as “sin till 8 ting”

 

Eileen Award:

  • Twitter: Keith O’Neil, Rob Actis

 

Advisory:

Dan Pink Videos

A variety of videos.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLivjPDlt6ApSiVoVJVXswIQYCfEj-UEDR

 

Diets Around the World

15 people and the food they eat for a day.

http://twentytwowords.com/diets-from-around-the-world/

 

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

Deforestation

 

I was recently reading the January, 2015 issue of “Science Scope,” a magazine written for middle school science teachers, published by the National Science Teachers Association.

 

In this issue, I read an article written by Robert Liftig, Adjunct Professor, Department of Ethics, Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut.  He shares his thoughts on deforestation and how we can instill in our students a sense of collective responsibility to work toward conservation, restoration, and preservation of species, habitats, and resources.

http://k12science.net/Podcast/Podcast/Entries/2015/2/13_Middle_School_Science_Minute-Deforestation.html

 

From the Twitterverse:

Melinda D. Anderson ‏@mdawriter

Debunked: Those delicious-looking photos of school lunches from around the world are totally fake http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/02/school-lunch-around-the-world-photos …

WeAreTeachers ‏@WeAreTeachers

Test prep tips for vocabulary plus flash-card templates! http://ow.ly/Jrv6h  #30daysvocab #edchat

Scorebusters ‏@Scorebusters

David Knuffke: How Do Other Nations, States Evaluate Their Teachers? http://dianeravitch.net/2015/02/25/david-knuffke-how-do-other-nations-states-evaluate-their-teachers/ … @DianeRavitch
https://medium.com/@davidknuffke/who-rates-teachers-this-way-e1758db02655

Yong Zhao ‏@YongZhaoUO

New Research Shows That Teaching Preschoolers More and More, at Ever-Younger Ages, May Backfire http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/03/why_preschool_shouldnt_be_like_school.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top … via @slate

MiddleWeb ‏@middleweb

MWSmartBrief: Curr Dev in CC states; 58 Reasons for teachers to write; making personal connections w/Ss. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/gyxCCdwpfbCNpbxeCidWgdCicNhDVG?format=standard … @amle @naesp

Secondary Principals ‏@massp

Can students opt-out of standardized testing? @LuskAlbertson | Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals http://mymassp.com/content/opting_out_standardized_testing …

#mschat every Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.  And as Troy says, “The Twitter never stops!”

 

Strategies:

9 Guaranteed Ways To Become A Public Speaking Master

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/work/9-guaranteed-ways-become-public-speaking-master.html

http://www.friedtechnology.com/2014/12/updated-student-choice-continuum.html

Movie Trailer Listening Lessons

I think movie trailers are an amazingly powerful media for use in the classroom. They are dramatic, motivating and short enough for intensive practice and assuring that students don’t get bored/lost.

Here’s one really easy and standard way to use movie trailers in your classroom.  Took me all of 10 minutes to put this lesson together – honestly!”

http://ddeubel.edublogs.org/2015/02/19/movie-trailer-listening-lessons/

 

Resources:

FireFox “Hello”

As easy as saying hello

Meet Firefox Hello, the easiest way to connect for free over video with anyone, anywhere.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/hello/

 

WeVideo

“WeVideo is the leading online video creation platform for video editing, collaboration, and sharing across any device.”

Use WeVideo on all devices – mobile, tablets, laptops, Chromebooks & desktop computers. Students can create from computers both at school and at home … as well as on their smartphone from anywhere.

https://www.wevideo.com/

A Teacher’s Day

A teachers day is like no others. Having worked in the business world prior to going into teaching I understand this but doubt few who have never taught can imagine just how different a teachers day is to that in any other industry.

http://sweattoinspire.com/2015/02/23/a-teachers-day/

Google Science Fair

Due: May 19.

https://www.googlesciencefair.com/en/

https://www.googlesciencefair.com/en/how-to-enter?id=insert_how-to-enter_1

 

Web Spotlight:

Google Docs Update

Better Headers/Footers. Better page numbering.

https://plus.google.com/+GoogleDocs/posts/TovBH2EPCpL

 

Why would students feel valued at school?

Without having seen the exact survey questions, here are some quick reactions Dr. McLeod has to these data…

  • Why on earth would students say they feel valued at school? In most schools, students are told what to do nearly every minute of every school day, are generally treated as passive recipients of whatever adults foist on them, have their thoughts and opinions routinely and blatantly ignored or dismissed when it comes to day-to-day operations, and are punished whenever they deviate from organizational compliance structures. The number of schools in which students have significant input into things that actually matter is miniscule. But, hey, it’s all about the kids and we care.
  • Kids are bored. Gallup boredom data reinforce the Quaglia boredom data, as do the tidal waves of anecdotes from anyone you want to ask about their school experience. But we don’t seem to care enough to do anything about it.
  • Everyone’s a learner, everyone’s a teacher. Online we exist within interconnected, interdependent webs of learning and teaching. But not in school.

http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2015/02/why-would-students-feel-valued-at-school.html

 

Random Thoughts . . .

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