Monthly Archives: February 2017

//February

Tool Tip Tuesday: Black History Month at Time for Kids

In honor of Black History Month (and to keep black history relevant for the other eleven months of the year) Time for Kids has put together a great collection of resources about the lives and contributions of influential African-Americans.  There are videos, websites, activities, and book lists to share with students to help give them [...]

By | 2017-09-12T10:34:10-05:00 February 28th, 2017|ePortal|0 Comments

Digital Learning Day

It'd Digital Learning Day today!  Time to put all those skills you've developed to good use in creating a rich digital learning environment for your students.  Hop over to the Digital Learning Day website to see what teachers around you are doing to celebrate and what has been done in the past, and even add [...]

By | 2017-09-12T10:34:28-05:00 February 23rd, 2017|ePortal|0 Comments

Tool Tip Tuesday-Teacher Edition: Samepage

When you're working on planning an event or a focus unit with someone else, there are a lot of things to coordinate and complete.  If you've got multiple people in your team, this usually means a lot of reply-all emails and a Google Doc or two.  Samepage gives you a place to collaborate with your [...]

By | 2017-09-12T11:02:19-05:00 February 21st, 2017|ePortal|0 Comments

#LoveTeaching

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, this week we invite you to share the reasons why you love being a teacher with the #LoveTeaching project.  You can blog, tweet, chat, or post pictures on social media using the hashtag #LoveTeaching, create posters and share Valentine's cards with your coworkers, and view responses from teachers from [...]

By | 2017-09-12T10:34:53-05:00 February 16th, 2017|ePortal|0 Comments

Tool Tip Tuesday: Rewordify

Rewordify is a handy tool that students can use to simplify complicated vocabulary in texts that they are reading online. Students copy and paste the difficult text onto the website and a simplified version with changed words highlighted is returned.  If there are still words in the text that students don't understand, they can click [...]

By | 2017-09-12T10:35:26-05:00 February 14th, 2017|ePortal|0 Comments

Manners and Gibsonian Affordances

Look around at some of the things in your classroom.  You automatically know how to use most of them just based on how they are designed: for example a pencil has one pointed end and middle part that is covered in wood that makes it easy to hold in your hand.  Traits like these are [...]

By | 2017-09-12T10:35:40-05:00 February 9th, 2017|ePortal|0 Comments

Tool Tip Tuesday: Tween Tribune

Passing over the cutesy title, Smithsonian's Tween Tribune is a great way to get students involved with current affairs without overwhelming them with technical jargon.  If students know their Lexile level, they can select the appropriately leveled version of the article or just choose the one (low, medium, or high vocabulary) that fits their reading [...]

By | 2017-09-12T10:36:16-05:00 February 7th, 2017|ePortal|0 Comments

The End of OER?

Back in 2012, Open Educational Resources (OERs) seemed like the future of education.  Five years later, educators are changing their minds.  Teachers now don't want to string together OERs from lots of different sources and the formative assessment possibilities offered by platform-based education programs (like those offered by Pearson) make hunting out an OER and [...]

By | 2017-09-12T10:36:48-05:00 February 2nd, 2017|ePortal|0 Comments