Cross-posted on cliotech
A friend of mine recently asked if I knew of any applications that would allow her elementary students, many of whom cannot read, to listen to her class blog. I shared that I had used Talkr in the past, but didn’t know of any other applications. So, I threw it out to my Plurk/Twitter network.
Here are some of the other suggestions shared by my network:
* vozME - vozMe allows users to copy/paste text for translation into an MP3 audio file. It also has plugins, widgets, and gadgets that can be incorporated into most blogging engines and Internet start pages (like, iGoogle.)
* odiogo - odiogo offers a free text-to-speech service for all major blogging engines. odiogo stores the audio files on their servers. Listeners/readers can download them and listen to them anywhere.
* SpokenText - SpokenText allows registered users to convert web pages, RSS feeds, PowerPoint, PDF, Word, and many other file types into audio files. SpokenText has some nice help tutorials so that you can maximize your use.
* Read The Words - Read The Words allows users to translate web pages, documents, and RSS feeds into audio files. The service is very simple to use and has instructions for adding a widget to your blog to convert your enteries to audio format. The instructions are very easy to follow and their FAQs page details how to embed a player directly into your blog.
* Blogboard - Blogboard lets users turn any blog into an audio file. Blogboard will create a new feed for the blog to which users can subscribe with their RSS aggregator. This service also generates a feed and embed code for your own blog. Here is Cliotech as an audio file.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
math money sites
from:
Money Fun
Filed Under (Sites 4 Students) by JenW on 09-15-2008
Enjoy these online money “games” !!
Change Maker
http://www.funbrain.com/cashreg/
Counting Money
http://www.hbschool.com/activity/counting_money/
Lemonade Stand
http://www.coolmath-games.com/lemonade/
Math At The Mall -
http://www.mathplayground.com/mathatthemall1.html
Money Instructor
http://www.moneyinstructor.com/games.asp
US Mint For Kids
http://www.usmint.gov/kids/
Young Investors
http://www.younginvestor.com/
Money Fun
Filed Under (Sites 4 Students) by JenW on 09-15-2008
Enjoy these online money “games” !!
Change Maker
http://www.funbrain.com/cashreg/
Counting Money
http://www.hbschool.com/activity/counting_money/
Lemonade Stand
http://www.coolmath-games.com/lemonade/
Math At The Mall -
http://www.mathplayground.com/mathatthemall1.html
Money Instructor
http://www.moneyinstructor.com/games.asp
US Mint For Kids
http://www.usmint.gov/kids/
Young Investors
http://www.younginvestor.com/
Gender Equality
Wait Time for Students
You are probably nodding your head at this. You learned about wait time in your training, and you are sure you use it. But go back and listen to your tape or watch your video. Do you really use it? Do you really wait 4-5 seconds until you call on someone? Do you look around to get eye contact with almost everyone before you make a choice? This gives you time to think about whom to select, and more importantly, gives all students time to formulate answers and volunteer. Research shows that this technique is particularly valuable for girls and students who are learning English, more than half the students in all of our classrooms.
Wait Time for You
This is probably a new one. I know I didn’t think about this in college. But after a student has responded, wait 4-5 seconds to reply. This gives you time to process the student’s answer and think about how to respond most effectively. This also shows students that you value their responses. It models the kind of behavior you want them to emulate. Waiting to reply helps both you and students.
Move Kids Around
After observing your own teaching, ask youself, which kids got your attention on your recording? Was it the ones who sit in the front rows, the ones who sit in the middle of the room? I know that when I watch videos of myself teaching or presenting, I see that I tend to look to the right side of the room—probably because I am right-handed. When I am sitting on the floor with children, it is excruciatingly obvious. I have had to make a concerted effort to turn my body to face and talk to the people on my left side.
Do you stay in one place? If you do, you may notice that you tend to talk to kids who are closer to you. Remember, the most important thing you can give your students is your time and attention, even if it is negative attention. The child who misbehaves has gotten your attention, and the quiet students lose out. Simple as that. So shuffle yourself or your students to compensate for your natural tendencies.
Listen to Your Responses
Many teachers have been observed giving different kinds of feedback to boys and girls. Boys tend to receive correction, help, and criticism. Most follow-up questions and suggestions for improvement are directed at boys. But girls tend to receive comments on the appearance of their work, rather than the academic content. We want all children to dig deeper into academic understanding, and we can foster this by providing constructive thoughtful feedback to all children.
Pay attention to the kinds of informal interactions you have with students. Do you ask the boys about the weekend soccer game and tell the girls how pretty they look? Do you acknowledge the hard work that all students do, thereby helping them understand that effort produces improvement, or do you just grade the work?
Research shows that many girls seem to grow up feeling that they get good grades or perform well due to luck, not skill or effort. By feeling this way, they also feel that any failure is internal and due to their lack of intelligence or ability. They personalize it. Boys seem to feel that failure is due to illness, poor instruction—external factors. These two different approaches lead to girls downplaying success and boys taking credit.
Cringing again? Me, too. In all my life, I don’t think I have ever taken credit for an achievement by saying, even to myself, “I earned that. I worked hard for that and I deserve it.” All children need to see that hard work and perseverance pay off.
-Laura Reasoner Jones
You are probably nodding your head at this. You learned about wait time in your training, and you are sure you use it. But go back and listen to your tape or watch your video. Do you really use it? Do you really wait 4-5 seconds until you call on someone? Do you look around to get eye contact with almost everyone before you make a choice? This gives you time to think about whom to select, and more importantly, gives all students time to formulate answers and volunteer. Research shows that this technique is particularly valuable for girls and students who are learning English, more than half the students in all of our classrooms.
Wait Time for You
This is probably a new one. I know I didn’t think about this in college. But after a student has responded, wait 4-5 seconds to reply. This gives you time to process the student’s answer and think about how to respond most effectively. This also shows students that you value their responses. It models the kind of behavior you want them to emulate. Waiting to reply helps both you and students.
Move Kids Around
After observing your own teaching, ask youself, which kids got your attention on your recording? Was it the ones who sit in the front rows, the ones who sit in the middle of the room? I know that when I watch videos of myself teaching or presenting, I see that I tend to look to the right side of the room—probably because I am right-handed. When I am sitting on the floor with children, it is excruciatingly obvious. I have had to make a concerted effort to turn my body to face and talk to the people on my left side.
Do you stay in one place? If you do, you may notice that you tend to talk to kids who are closer to you. Remember, the most important thing you can give your students is your time and attention, even if it is negative attention. The child who misbehaves has gotten your attention, and the quiet students lose out. Simple as that. So shuffle yourself or your students to compensate for your natural tendencies.
Listen to Your Responses
Many teachers have been observed giving different kinds of feedback to boys and girls. Boys tend to receive correction, help, and criticism. Most follow-up questions and suggestions for improvement are directed at boys. But girls tend to receive comments on the appearance of their work, rather than the academic content. We want all children to dig deeper into academic understanding, and we can foster this by providing constructive thoughtful feedback to all children.
Pay attention to the kinds of informal interactions you have with students. Do you ask the boys about the weekend soccer game and tell the girls how pretty they look? Do you acknowledge the hard work that all students do, thereby helping them understand that effort produces improvement, or do you just grade the work?
Research shows that many girls seem to grow up feeling that they get good grades or perform well due to luck, not skill or effort. By feeling this way, they also feel that any failure is internal and due to their lack of intelligence or ability. They personalize it. Boys seem to feel that failure is due to illness, poor instruction—external factors. These two different approaches lead to girls downplaying success and boys taking credit.
Cringing again? Me, too. In all my life, I don’t think I have ever taken credit for an achievement by saying, even to myself, “I earned that. I worked hard for that and I deserve it.” All children need to see that hard work and perseverance pay off.
-Laura Reasoner Jones
Monday, September 15, 2008
Be the Best You Can Be by Kirby Puckett
1. If you believe in yourself, really believe in yourself, you will succeed.
2. To be the best you have to practice.
3. When you feel pressured to do wrong, stand up for what is right.
4. Be responsible for yourself.
5. When things go wrong, you have to keep going in life.
6. Like yourself just the way you are.
7. Find out what your gift or talent is and do it.
8. To be the best that you can be you have to have confidence. Never be a quitter to something that is really important.
9. Know that you can change and learn from your mistakes.
10. You CAN do anything.
11. Try new things.
12. Be honest; be kind
13. Good friends, family, and reaching out to others is more important than money, awards, and titles.
2. To be the best you have to practice.
3. When you feel pressured to do wrong, stand up for what is right.
4. Be responsible for yourself.
5. When things go wrong, you have to keep going in life.
6. Like yourself just the way you are.
7. Find out what your gift or talent is and do it.
8. To be the best that you can be you have to have confidence. Never be a quitter to something that is really important.
9. Know that you can change and learn from your mistakes.
10. You CAN do anything.
11. Try new things.
12. Be honest; be kind
13. Good friends, family, and reaching out to others is more important than money, awards, and titles.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
2.0 web sites from another blog
http://vimeo.com/1713323
http://cliotech.blogspot.com/2008/09/making-your-blog-talk.html
Here are some of the other suggestions shared by my network:
- vozME - vozMe allows users to copy/paste text for translation into an MP3 audio file. It also has plugins, widgets, and gadgets that can be incorporated into most blogging engines and Internet start pages (like, iGoogle.)
- odiogo - odiogo offers a free text-to-speech service for all major blogging engines. odiogo stores the audio files on their servers. Listeners/readers can download them and listen to them anywhere.
- SpokenText - SpokenText allows registered users to convert web pages, RSS feeds, PowerPoint, PDF, Word, and many other file types into audio files. SpokenText has some nice help tutorials so that you can maximize your use.
- Read The Words - Read The Words allows users to translate web pages, documents, and RSS feeds into audio files. The service is very simple to use and has instructions for adding a widget to your blog to convert your enteries to audio format. The instructions are very easy to follow and their FAQs page details how to embed a player directly into your blog.
- Blogboard - Blogboard lets users turn any blog into an audio file. Blogboard will create a new feed for the blog to which users can subscribe with their RSS aggregator. This service also generates a feed and embed code for your own blog. Here is Cliotech as an audio file.
Number thirty-one is Webon . It appears to be one of the easiest website-builder I’ve come across. It’s very easy to grab images off the web and write captions. One of its features that I like a lot is that your images automatically become a slideshow. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that other slideshow creators have, but it seems to work well enough. It’s an excellent place for students to display their oneline work.
Number thirty is Jog The Web. It allows you to easily create a slideshow of websites or images, and you can leave comments on each page. It’s a nice tool for categorization, and I’ll be describing that instructional strategy in the context of other web tools on this list.
Number twenty-nine is a bookmarking site called Sitemark,
and, like a couple of other similar applications on this list, it’s a great tool for students to apply categorization skills. That instructional and learning strategy requires higher-order thinking, and you can read more about how I use technology for this purpose at The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students.
Number twenty-eight is Selfcast. It lets anyone with a webcam immediately broadcast over the web for free, and anyone (without registering) can watch and also participate via live text chat. The presentation is also recorded and can be watched in the future, too. It’s an ideal way for students to record presentations.
Number twenty-seven is The Broth. It lets you create password-protected private “rooms” where people can cooperate on creating a piece of art. In addition, it has a chat component that lets you talk with people who are in the room at the same time. With our International Sister Classes project, it’s unlikely because of time zone differences that we can make that happen. However, the chat messages remain, so students can leave messages about what and why they’ve contributed to the community art work.
Number is twenty-six is My Jugaad, a new web tool that allows you to easily make slideshows of webpages and post/share links to them. You’re also able to write descriptive notes about each slide. I’m always looking for new applications that could provide ways for students to use higher-order thinking and categorization skills, and this could be another one. I especially like that it’s extraordinarily easy to use, and that images from the web can be included without any problem. There are a number of other tools trying to fill the same niche, but many are more complicated to use.
Number twenty-five is Book Glutton , an intriguing web application that allows groups of people to read books over the Internet and “chat” and leave comments about what they’re reading. That’s okay, but I think it’s their “uploading” feature (that they recently began) that will really be useful. You can then upload your own materials and have groups chatting and leaving comments about it. I could see that really having potential for online discussions of short articles between classes in the same school that meet during different periods and with sister classes in different parts of the world.
Number twenty-four is Fo.reca.st. It’s a free online polling application that lets you easily add sound, images, or video to your polls/surveys; has a variety of ways to see your results; and many different formats to show your survey. Creating polls and analyzing their results can certainly be educational activities.
Number twenty-three is Tokbox. It’s a free tool for a video conference call. You can participate with a Webcam or just if you have a mike for audio, and can be used for students in different cities or countries to communicate. They used to have a limit on the number of people who can participate in a call, but now they say they don’t have that anymore. You do have to sign-up for an account, though.
Number twenty-two is MeBeam. It allows you to have up to eighteen people on the same video conference call, and it’s all browser-based. But you can participate in the call if you only have a microphone, too, so a Webcam is not necessary. It’s free and doesn’t require any pre-planning with the site — you don’t even have to register. All you do is go to the site and give your “virtual” room a unique name. Then others can log-on, too. Up to eighteen people can participate in the call.
Number twenty-one is an online comic-creation site called Pixton, If you make a series of comic strips, lets you put them into a virtual “book.” It also seems to have a very overt and pro-active (at least it says it does) policy on ensuring that only appropriate content remains on the site.
Number twenty is Wix. It’s a fairly easy site that lets you use Flash to create a website or content that you would like to embed into a website or a blog. The final product can look pretty neat. There’s so much you can create that I think it would be a little too overwhelming to English Language Learners. I also suspect that my mainstream students would would want to spend far too much time using it to make their creations look cool and spend less time on the actual content. However, teachers, I think, might want to use it to create content their students would then access.
Number nineteen is Synthasite, another website-building application that seems very similar to Wix, but seems just a little less complicated to use.
Number eighteen is Zunal. It’s an easy way for teachers (and students) to create webquests. I know there are some specific parameters involved in using the term “webquest,” so you can also use Zunal to create much simpler “online scavenger hunts.” At their most basic, it can be a series of questions students have to answer, along with links to websites where the information can be found. Zunal also acts as the host for the webquest or scavenger hunt after its been created.
Number seventeen is ZeeMaps. You can make maps without registering, though it’s slightly more complicated to use then some of the other mapmaking tools that do not require registration. However, unlike the others, ZeeMaps lets you insert images in addition to writing, Students, for example, can write about different natural disasters that have occurred around the world.
Number sixteen is Nile Guide. I’ve posted before about online sites that allow you to decide where you want to go, search for things that you would do and see there, and then easily “drag and drop” an itinerary that can be posted on a website or blog. Nile Guide now appears to be the most accessible of them all.
Number fifteen is Graspr a site where users can upload (and watch) “how-to” or “instructional” videos to do just about anything. One of the features, though, that makes Graspr a little different from the others is the ability for the viewer to write online notes about what they see — while they’re watching. I help my students learn reading strategies (asking questions, making connections, etc.) so they can become better…readers. We also talk in class about how we can become better listeners by using these same kind of strategies while in conversations and while watching movies. This site is an interesting, and challenging, way for English Language Learners to try this out.
Number fourteen is Awesome Highlighter. I often have students use sticky notes in class when we’re reading something to demonstrate reading strategies (summarize, evaluate, predict, connect, etc.). Awesome Highlighter is easy to use and no registration is required. It would be rated much higher, but my students and I periodically find that it doesn’t work very smoothly, and a fair number of the webpages we’ve wanted to use aren’t compatible with the application. However, even with those drawbacks, it definitely deserves to be on this list.
Number thirteen is Middlespot. It’s sort of a combination Search Engine and a little bit of a social bookmarking application. After you enter your search term and click “enter,” your search results appear both as images and short text blurbs. Obviously, showing these screenshots benefit English Language Learners, and several other search engines I’ve listed on my website under Search Engines have this feature. The unique tool offered by Middlespot is called a “workpad.” You can drag-and-drop the webpages you want onto your workpad, give it a title and description, and then Middlespot will give your workpad its own url that you can post on a blog or online journal, or email to someone else. They are planning to add the ability to search and save images. They also are planning on adding an embedding option, so you won’t just have to link to the url of your saved screenshots. This is another tool that can be used for developing higher-order thinking skills like categorization.
Number twelve is the site formerly called Fliptrack, and which recently changed their name to Moblyng. It appears to have kept all their attractive features — plus making it even more accessible to English Language Learners (and others). It seems even easier to make a slideshow and it continues to allow you to invite others to collaborate on your creation. Plus, and this is the best addition, you don’t have to register on the site to create slideshows anymore. The only negative with that last change is that, if students are using a public or school computer, they need to click “Clear Your Personal Info” so that others don’t have access to it.
Number eleven is Rock You. It has many of the same features as Moblyng It’s easy, has lots of options, doesn’t require registration, and seems just a little easier to use.
Number ten is Quikmaps. It has recently added the ability to “draw” lines on your map between various markers. You can write in the markers, and also write a general description of your map. Then, you’re given an embed code as well as a unique url address. And you don’t even have to register to use it!There really isn’t a mapmaking site out there that’s easier for anyone, including English Language Learners, to use. The only disadvantage is that it doesn’t appear that you can import images in your marker descriptions.
Number nine is “The Digital Vaults.” It’s an entry into the vast resources of the National Archives, and allows you to use those resources to create your own movies, posters, and what it calls “Pathway Challenges” to… challenge others to find connections between a series of images, documents, and other resources you put together.
Number eight is Tikatok. It’s a new site that is a real find for English Language Learners (and lots of other students). Users can create online books that they write and illustrate (they can also use lots of images available on the site). It has a number of features that really make it stand-out. You can make a book from scratch, or you can use one of their many story frames that contain “prompts” to help the story-writer along. In addition, you can invite others to collaborate online with you to develop the book. Once the book is done you can email the link to a friend, teacher, or yourself for posting on a blog, website, or online journal. You can create the online version for free, but have to pay if you want them to print a hard-copy version.
Number seven is Edublogs.TV, the newest tool from the Edublogs, the best educational blogging tool in the world. Edublogs.TV is a “video-hosting site dedicated to education.” You can upload videos, such as educationally useful ones from YouTube, and then Edublogs.TV does magic to it so that schools can access them when the original site might be blocked.
Number six is My Studiyo. It’s without question, I believe, the best way to create online tests and quizzes. It’s easy to use, you can include multimedia, and others can add questions (that are moderated before they appear).
Number five is 280 Slides. It’s the newest and best addition to my The Best Ways To Create Online Slideshows. I especially like its feature that lets you search for images and videos off the web right inside the slide-show creation process. Except for the wonderful Bookr tool, which is still by far the easiest way to make an online slideshow, all the other slideshow sites that I’ve seen require that you open up a separate window to search for images in order to get their url address first before you “plug” it in. This feature just makes it easier for English Language Learners and everybody else to create their shows. And 280 Slides has far more “bells and whistles” than Bookr.
Number four is Posterous. It’s definitely the newest addition to my list of The Best Sites To Easily Create And Display Online Projects. Basically, users just email what they want posted on their “micro-blog” (it’s similar to Tumblr) and it is automatically posted with the subject line as the title and the body of the email as its content. I was able to copy images off the web and paste them in my email, along with a written description, and it all immediately appeared in my “Posterous.” You can also email attachments and some embeddable applications. There’s not an easier application out there for blogging and keeping an online journal.
Number three is the Search Me search engine. It’s an excellent search engine that shows snapshots of the webpages in addition to text information, which makes it very accessible to English Language Learners. In addition (and this is why it’s so high on my list) you can create “stacks” of categorized sites, images, and videos; embed them in a blog or website; and/or email them to a friend or teacher. You can also write some kind of description, or tag, for each site. Thiskind of application is great fo categorization activities, and teachers can also easily create “stacks” of webpages, videos, or images that they want students to review.
Choosing between the two remaining sites was so difficult it proved to be impossible. So, unlike practically all of my other lists, this one has two number ones. They both offer exceptional online tools for students, and I just could not choose between them.
The first number one site is Flowgram, an amazing screencasting, link-sharing tool. Flowgram lets you show one or multiple pages on the Web, and, when you’re making this screencast, you can move the screen up-and-down to focus on particular areas on the page. You can show videos or images. You can provide an audio commentary, and people can leave comments. This kind of application offers multiple language learning opportunities for all levels of English Language Learners. Plus, they’re incredibly responsive to input and suggestions from users of their service. They’re planning more upgrades soon, and I suspect that when they’re completed this is going to be the most versatile and useful web application out there for education, and will not only be number one for this year, but may well be the number one best web 2.0 application — period.
My pick for the other number one Web 2.0 Application for Education for this year is Book Goo. It’s a new tool that lets you upload documents or webpages and then annotate and share them. Others can also then annotate the same document. You can draw on the documents as well. I have students use the notes to demonstrate reading strategies on webpages. Their staff is also very responsive to user feedback. And it’s always worked whenever my students or I have used it.
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/09/11/the-best-web-20-applications-for-education-2008/
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
It's still THE DAY Before
It's the day before the kids come to school. The day before energy comes into the school. The day before my New Year really starts. Some believe this day is the day staff comes into the building, but that was yesterday. That day was a restful day for me, almost boring, as I sat for two hours listening to policy and rules again....and again. Two hours of no break, asking myself why, when we as teachers don't promote violence or bullying, we have a picture of a boxing match in the faculty room. Going out for lunch, the last time we'll be able to have a grown up lunch without rushing until our next in-service (since we don't get food anymore for any school sponsored meetings), sitting with my student teacher going over things with her. It's delightful to see how excited she is about meeting the kids for the first time. The tinge of fear in her voice that she'll be able to do this...and she will. She's worked with autistic kids for two years, is wonderfully enthusiastic, and hopefully, more than I am, organized.
It's the day before the sleepless night, the day before I'll have afternoons to run to watch high school tennis matches and get there on time. It's the day before I get to see "my" kids.
But, I am making it THE day that I realize I need to take better care of myself. Making arrangements to do things OUTSIDE of school, whether it be playing tennis once or twice a week, or meeting with friends outside of the the faculty friends I have, making time for family and loved ones (who sometimes forget to make time for me)....this is important. Last night I was able to get to a tennis match and play tennis and do yoga before going to sleep. These are all important, not just to me, but to my students as well for me to be a more rounded, more at peace person with myself.
This is also the day to STAND UP for what I believe will be good in education. To NOT sit for two hours and be lectured, to stand up for sites that should not be blocked in my school so my students can get the practice they need and information they should receive.
This is also the day to to make contacts with those in the administration office who promise to come and work with my students. Those that say, "Invite me into the classroom, I want to be there." Well, okay, come on in.
My universal advice today is:
Even when the earth suddenly shakes, tides unexpectedly surge, and all hope seems lost, in the split second that follows I have a brand new plan, I know what we'll do, and I've got the pedal to the metal.
This is the day...like all days...to make it the best I can make it as it won't be here again tomorrow. That will be another THE DAY
It's the day before the sleepless night, the day before I'll have afternoons to run to watch high school tennis matches and get there on time. It's the day before I get to see "my" kids.
But, I am making it THE day that I realize I need to take better care of myself. Making arrangements to do things OUTSIDE of school, whether it be playing tennis once or twice a week, or meeting with friends outside of the the faculty friends I have, making time for family and loved ones (who sometimes forget to make time for me)....this is important. Last night I was able to get to a tennis match and play tennis and do yoga before going to sleep. These are all important, not just to me, but to my students as well for me to be a more rounded, more at peace person with myself.
This is also the day to STAND UP for what I believe will be good in education. To NOT sit for two hours and be lectured, to stand up for sites that should not be blocked in my school so my students can get the practice they need and information they should receive.
This is also the day to to make contacts with those in the administration office who promise to come and work with my students. Those that say, "Invite me into the classroom, I want to be there." Well, okay, come on in.
My universal advice today is:
Even when the earth suddenly shakes, tides unexpectedly surge, and all hope seems lost, in the split second that follows I have a brand new plan, I know what we'll do, and I've got the pedal to the metal.
This is the day...like all days...to make it the best I can make it as it won't be here again tomorrow. That will be another THE DAY
Monday, September 1, 2008
The Day Before
I am constantly amazed at the writing of some of the people I have "met" this year. It is incredible. But what I figured out is that they TAKE THE TIME to write in their blogs. They put it on their calendar and update more than once "whenever they think about it." Good writing takes practice. It's not a hit or miss thing. While it may not be an every day occurrence, days should not go by without some sort of reading and writing the written word. Of course we couldn't go a day without reading...just not possible...but I bet people could go a day without writing...and that would be sad.
Of course I'm off topic. I was originally going to write about the day before school starts. Not the day with students, that IS the actual day, but the day of meetings and getting the room together. I can't believe that anyone doesn't spend days and days getting their room together. Mine is all done, with Nancy, my student teacher's help. I know that tomorrow will be spent in long meetings and new policies and talk, talk, talking. But at least I have a school to go to.
In Louisiana, there is yet ANOTHER hurricane. It's name is Gustuv and it was predicted to be as bad as Katrina, the disaster of three years ago. The weather and news channels are making something out of everything (flying tree branches and chairs at pools being blown around), and it is serious. Serious for the thousands of people who had to leave New Orleans, for the thousands of children who had to be uprooted yet again in their young lives. I can't imagine the mental anguish these people are going through. Levys may break, barges become loose, all of these things can cause so much flooding in this at sea level city. New Orleans' water is also the sight of many oil riggs which means higher oil prices for everyone in the country.
It also affected the Republican National Convention. It was supposed to start today, and it will, but without the fanfare the Democratic Convention had. John McCain will be presidential candidate and Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin the VP candidate. They will be running against Barack Obama and Joe Biden, senator from Delaware. It is a historic race as Obama is the first African American to run for President, and, if the Republicans win, Palin will be the first woman VPresident. It will be an interesting two and a half months.
So, these are things happening the "day before". The reading of blogs, the anticipation of school opening, the hurricane, and the political race. Oh, and it's a gorgeous day here in NJ...now THAT is important.
Of course I'm off topic. I was originally going to write about the day before school starts. Not the day with students, that IS the actual day, but the day of meetings and getting the room together. I can't believe that anyone doesn't spend days and days getting their room together. Mine is all done, with Nancy, my student teacher's help. I know that tomorrow will be spent in long meetings and new policies and talk, talk, talking. But at least I have a school to go to.
In Louisiana, there is yet ANOTHER hurricane. It's name is Gustuv and it was predicted to be as bad as Katrina, the disaster of three years ago. The weather and news channels are making something out of everything (flying tree branches and chairs at pools being blown around), and it is serious. Serious for the thousands of people who had to leave New Orleans, for the thousands of children who had to be uprooted yet again in their young lives. I can't imagine the mental anguish these people are going through. Levys may break, barges become loose, all of these things can cause so much flooding in this at sea level city. New Orleans' water is also the sight of many oil riggs which means higher oil prices for everyone in the country.
It also affected the Republican National Convention. It was supposed to start today, and it will, but without the fanfare the Democratic Convention had. John McCain will be presidential candidate and Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin the VP candidate. They will be running against Barack Obama and Joe Biden, senator from Delaware. It is a historic race as Obama is the first African American to run for President, and, if the Republicans win, Palin will be the first woman VPresident. It will be an interesting two and a half months.
So, these are things happening the "day before". The reading of blogs, the anticipation of school opening, the hurricane, and the political race. Oh, and it's a gorgeous day here in NJ...now THAT is important.
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