Must SEE Video of the Week

I received a email from Barbara Feldman about this video made by Don Crowther.
Like I always tell my students, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game."
I am going to show this to my 6th graders in homeroom to pump them up for the NJ ASK tomorrow.
They keep asking so many questions about the NJASK such as: "Why do we have to take it?"
"Does it count?"
"What does it mean?"
I tell them this their one chance to show how much they have learned and how much they know. The only person it really matters to is YOU! If, at the end of testing, you feel like you did your personal best, then that is what counts. So I guess it really is about "how you feel at the end of the day."

Top 15 Educational Tools/Sites for Middle School Language Arts

These are the top 15 websites for use in a middle school language arts class. My students either used these tools or were exposed to them. They generated this list and rated them on Survey Monkey. I will post survey results as soon as everyone has taken it, but here is the list:

1. Classtools.net
2. Quizlet
3. Exploretree
4. Survey Monkey
   
5. Spelling City
6. Writing the City
7. Legacy Project
8. wiki
9. Skype
10. Quintura
11. readwritethink.org
12. Voicethread
13. Google Earth
14. Notestar
15. 21 Classes
    

Next year's tech resolutions:

• Learn more about mynoteIT
• Use iTunes University in the classroom
• Each student will have a Google account and notebook
• Use yourtake.org for persuasive... if you create an account you can get a free subscription by entering "teffriend" in the Activate Subscription option