Learn for life.

People choose their professions for many different reasons.  It could be a passion, a skill, monetary, a calling, or for a humanitarian cause. But for teachers, it is a safe assumption that they choose it for the intrinsic reasons of truly valuing the human mind and the ability to make a difference in a child’s life.

The motive behind teaching varies, but stays basically in the same category of giving back to society.   Students receive a formal and informal education that a price cannot be placed upon.  It’s a gift given that a tangible show of appreciate could not hold value to the intrinsic gift that is received. A teacher passes down knowledge of the past that will help make sense of the present guides a young mind to making logical choices for their future. That gift of knowledge received by the student is an irreplaceable present that is build upon through a persons’ lifetime.   

DEVS

DiscoveryEducation.com provides a vast amount of educational content that can be applied to any subject in any grade level.  As a subscription based site, it allows the subscriber to do much more than share videos with the classroom: it has assignment builders, quiz centers, writing prompts, and also helps the educator to customize and personalize lesson plans.   Streaming about 9,000 full length videos and 71,000 content specific clips that tie directly to state and national standards. With this many videos and clips, there must be a more exciting resource to help students remember (more importantly learn) for the SOL's.  The website is "designed to encourage exploration, stimulate critical thinking and deepen understanding (of science)"  by the "real life situations, through a variety of media, full length videos and segmented clips, virtual labs, integrated simulations, explorations, and reading passages." With the input of about 150 publishers, such as PBS and Scholastic, there is no question why they have been recognized by the Bessie Award for the Best Educational Software.

www.discoveryeducation.com

SmartBoard Activities

SmartBoard is widely used for interactive enrichment activities that alleviates the stress of time consuming lesson plans. There are endless resources in the teaching profession and with technology such as SmartBoard, the options can become overwhelming! It takes just a few minutes to create whole group and individualized enrichment activities like matching for work recognition.  The navigation tool bar is basically self explanatory and easy to choose from a pre-made template, edit to your preference with color, text, pictures provided by SmartBoard or insert from another source, animations, ect.  Quick, simple and educational, SmartBoard provides essential learning tools for teachers to present information in an engaging  and motivating way for students to want to continue to explore the world around them. 

TeacherTube

TeacherTube is an educational resource for students and teachers that can be applied in the classroom. It has the same concept as YouTube but without the fear of stumbling upon unrelated information. An account member is able to  search for videos, search teaching related classified ads, photos, channels, videos, and documents, all which YouTube does not provide.  All of these can be implemented in a planned lesson, assist in lesson planning, used for “educational” transition time between, and as part of the class’s reward system.  It is a great resource to heighten students awareness of the world they currently live in, spark interest and motivation to learn new topics, and provide enrichment or in-depth material included in a specific topic.  With the vast amount of information TeacherTube provides, the whole classroom is guaranteed to reap the benefits.

11th Grade VA SOL - 

CONSTITUTION RAP

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?title=Bill_of_Rights_Rap&video_id=50123

11th Grade VA SOL 

George Washington- "I'm on a boat remix"

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=166968

~* I would provide extra credit and make sure any of my students got the recognition for creating a parody like this! *~