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Beginning Graphs in MS Excel

Excel makes graphs simple and easy for beginners. Even my parent helpers are amazed at how much students can do with a simple F11 shortkey and a right click.

If the lesson plans are blurry, click on them for a full size alternative.

How the World Ranks Your Blog

Part of my job is teaching students effective search tools on the internet. There are many tricks that help students hone in on a topic with relevant, reliable information.

A second level of research is to check out the websites reliability. There are a few ways to do that:

Score in The Box

ScoreInTheBox uses a unique formula which consists of  page rank, banklinks, and popularity to calculate a score for each website entered.

Alexa

Free web traffic metrics, top sites lists, site demographics, hot urls, and more

Domain Tools

Find out whois record, site stats, site profie. registration and more.

Website Grader

Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

One of these tells you the value of your website. Click around and figure out which one it is.

A Holiday Card in Publisher

Publisher cards are easy enough for second graders–even early readers. Pick a template, add a picture to personalize, add their name–and they’re done. It takes about 15 minutes. Kids always feel great about creating these greeting cards:

A Holiday Card in KidPix

Create a holiday card in KidPix and reinforce early writing skills while teaching mouse skills, toolbars and tool use:

A Holiday Story in MS Word for Grades 2-7

Reinforce fiction writing–characters, plot, setting, climax–with a short story in MS Word. Then use color, borders, pictures to enhance the words.

A Holiday Flier in Publisher

This is the only project that’s easier than Project 21 (the holiday card in Publisher). There’s no folding and the templates are bright, colorful and exciting for kids as young as second grade:

A Holiday Memory in Word or KidPix

Use this not only to create a gift for parents, but to practice writing skills, grammar, MS Word’s spell check. I have student compose the memory one week and we format it the next. For beginning writers, use KidPix and its text tools.

Big List of Student-Friendly Websites

I’ve just finished it. Tell me what you think. Add a comment with any sites I’ve left out:

Great Websites for Kids–Click here

Kindergarten through Fifth Grade

A Holiday Letter for Grades 2-6

This holiday letter can be as simple (for 2nd graders) or sophisticated (middle school) as your students can handle. There are a gamut of skills–

• text
• borders
• pictures (from the internet, from clip art, from a separate file folder on your school server)
• different fonts, font colors, font sizes

I’ve included a grading rubric to guide students in accomplishing as much as they can. Start with the basics (text, a border, some pictures) and add more skills as students get used to the early ones:

How to Become Survivorman–or Bear Grylls–in Third Grade

If you want to spice up a unit on landforms, have students look into surviving these unique natural habitats. To get out with their lives, they’ll have to understand the flora and fauna, dangers and helpers. Here are some websites they can visit to improve their survival toolkit:

Use MS Word’s Tables to Review for a Chapter Test

I provide chapter headings in a table. Students fill in with details from class lectures and independent reading. The best part: They get to collaborate with neighbors in developing an effective study guide for a chapter test:

Teach Animal Adaptations with an MS Word Diagram

This project is part of a triptych that collaborates with a classroom unit on animals. The first was another diagram, that one to teach animal characteristics.

This one is a great project that mixes the visual with the written. Students loved collaborating to come up with the animal adaptations. Allow them to take ample time surveying the plethora of amazing animal pictures that represent the adaptations they selected. Overall a popular project that teaches a lot. Easily completed in 30 minutes.

Nomination for Edublogs 2009 Award

My nominations for the 2009 Edublogs Award are:

The Sizzle in Science — as the Best Resource Sharing Blog. Vote for it at Edublogs.

as the most influencial post. Vote for it here.

USNA or Bust as the Best Individual Blog. Vote for it here.

Blogging for Education: Teachers Without Borders as the Most Influential Blog Post

Use MS Word’s Diagrams to Teach Animal Characteristics

Use MS Word to organize an animal group (reptiles, mammals, amphibians, etc.) and their traits. This project is a favorite with my students, mostly because of the stunning animal picture they get to embed into the background.

3 Projects to Integrate Tech into an Animals Unit–Part I

Somewhere between third and fourth grade, students cover how animals adapt to their environments and what special characteristics they develop to enhance their survival. This is a wonderful time to use the internet to explore the amazing creatures that inhabit our world in all of their unique glory.

How to Use Technology to Teach Landforms

Every elementary school student learns about landforms–deserts, mountains, oceans–what they are, how they’re different. Here’s a great table to put some of those details onto one page for your students. The best part is they explore Google Images, finding some of the most amazing pictures of landforms you’ve ever seen.

A Holiday Newsletter in MS Word for Elementary School

This is another great holiday project for 5th graders (see the holiday calendar here). Publisher templates lay out the columns, headings, articles. All students must do is fill in with their topics and pictures. Be sure that they delete the extra pages at the end before printing.

A Holiday Calendar in MS Word for Elementary School

Kids love making this calendar. They get to talk about their upcoming vacations and hear what their friends are doing. It’s simple enough for third grade with advanced tools that satisfy a fifth graders growing intellect.

How Do You Use Twitter in Education

The most common reason for NOT using Twitter in education is it’s distracting, useless–maybe leaves the door open the wrong environment for students. Twitter is so much more than mundane details, as proven by its popularity. Here are some reasons teachers tell me they use and love Twitter in their classroom: