What We're Doing

•  Alice Hall in the High School Science Dept has started recording her smart board presentations with audio! Here is a sample from one of her classes on teacher tube. Redox Reactions. Get with her to see how it's done!

 

• Bill Young at the High School did a photostory for his online Master's degree class. He used all free software from the list below. This is a great tool to enhance writing skills since the students must write a story out before they can put photos and music with it. It requires them to think about structure and content. They must PLAN it all out! A Tide of Memories

 

 

 Joey Recommends:

•  Presentations ETC

   

• Spanish Language Encyclopedia

  Encyclopaedia Britannica has changed partners in Spanish language encyclopedia. Here's what Janet Rodriguez from ESC 20 says "The Enciclopedia Universal en Español  is being replaced with Planeta Saber, the online version of the popular Gran Enciclopedia Planeta, the most comprehensive encyclopedia in the Spanish language. It includes over 144,000 encyclopedia articles, 10,000 maps, photos, and media pieces, and 8,000 Internet links. Special features include a visual navigator, interactive atlas, and multi-language dictionary.

   

  Younger users will continue to enjoy Enciclopedia Juvenil, also part of Britannica’s Spanish Reference Center. Enciclopedia Juvenil includes an encyclopedia, dictionary, videos, and classroom learning activities for users in the Kindergarten through 8th grade range.

   

• Atomic Learning - www.atomiclearning.com

            username:  wyliehs

            password:  See your librarian or email Joey Light or Bill Young

   

• GALE - http://access.gale.com/esc14

   

            Select Wylie ISD -

            Select appropriate campus

   

• Poetry for Students - http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/tlc149125150

   

            Password - See your librarian or email Joey light or Bill Young

            Scan down and click on Gale Virtual Reference Library - Literature - View Publications

   

 

• EBSCO - K-12 TexShare- http://web.esc20.net/k12databases

   

            Click on - Access K-12 - EBSCO

            Click on EBSCO

            ID # - Wylie

            Password - See your librarian or email Joey Light or Bill Young

   

 

From the Treasure Chest- Randy Talks about Teacher Web Pages (September 2006)

I am getting numerous requests from teachers asking how to update their Academic Planet web pages. This is a free service that has been made available to WISD through Region 14 and many of our teachers already use it. Each year WISD has more parents that prefer information on line. Grades, scholarship information, lunch accounts, schedules, etc... are all on the WISD web page at the present time and much more is being added each year. Many WISD teachers use their web page as a tool to communicate with parents and students about upcoming events, course requirements, homework, etc... Here are few examples of teacher web pages. (Click to follow the link)

 

Here are some examples of how the pages can be put to good use.

 

HS Theater Arts, Lea Hutt

HS Spanish, Bill Young

MS 4th Grade, Diana Parks

MS 4th Grade, Laura Donaway

 

There are many other great WISD teacher pages out there so take a look around and find something you can use.

 

You can take advantage of this tool as well. To update your own page, please go to http://wylie.region14.net/ (There is a short tutorial at this site as well)

and log on with the username and password as the first letter of your first name and your entire last name. (Example: username, rburks; password, rburks)

 

Once at this site, please update your information.  If you changed your password previously then use what you changed it to. If you have problems logging on, please let me know.

 

(Note from Bill: The district is in the process of changing over to a new web page provider, but Academic Plantet is working just fine and is still very easy to set up and use. Just ask one of the teachers profiled here.)

 

Cool Free Software!

Software

 

Download YouTube (and other) Videos - Cool if you want to show something educational and can't access YouTube or any other Tubes in school. 

http://savetube.com/ - Another site to download YouTube videos.=

 

Must have player for YouTube downloads (flv files).

 

Freeware Alternatives to Commercial Software

Free Program	Substitute For	Category
Open Office	Microsoft Office	Productivity
Wink	Camtasia Studio	Screen Recording
Windows Media Encoder	Camtasia Studio	Screen Recording
Cam Studio	Camtasia Studio	Screen Recording
Photo Story 3		Photo Slide Story Editing
PhotoFiltre 6		Photo Editing
Virtual Dub	Apple iMovie	Video Editing
Windows Movie Maker	Apple iMovie	Video Editing
Gadwin Print Screen	Snag It Pro	Screenshot Capture
FileZilla	DOS/UNIX FTP	Komodo File Transfer
Wavepad	Goldwave	Audio Editing
NVU	Dreamweaver	HTML Editor
PageBreeze	Dreamweaver	HTML Editor
SnagIt		Screen Capture

 

 

Tutorials and Curriculum Resources

 

Wavepad tutorial

 

Great photos: http://www.sxc.hu

 

A new kind of copyright and beginning site for copyright safe "stuff":  http://www.creativecommons.org

 

Software Help Resources: This page has a bunch of resources that you may find useful. From video to audio editing to webpage development. I hope you like it.

 

All my tutorials - licensed under Creative Commons 3.0 attribution license. You can use any of them, modify them and share them as well.

 

 

Free and Safe Music

 

Lots of folks have been asking where to get copyright safe music and I highly encourage you to learn about Creative Commons.  Two of my favorite sites for music are CC Mixter and Free Sound Project (thanks to those folks for wild sound effects). While I do like to use some commercial music for personal stuff - I really am gravitating over to the Creative Commons music. Take a look and see what you can find.