Skype

Do you Skype?  My husband and I have used Skype over the last few years to help us stay in touch with our college-aged kids and our German friends.  I think it's Bill's favorite technology.


I was excited to see that teachers are now bringing Skype into the classroom.  Kate Messner has a site that maintains a list of authors who will Skype with classrooms and book clubs for FREE.

Here's the link to her site.  Kate Messner - Authors Who Skype with Classrooms & Book Clubs

You can also connect to classrooms through Skype.  Skype in the Classroom matches classrooms up with experts.  Best part - it's free!  Here's how Skype describes it, a video, and the link for the site.

"A free and easy way for teachers to open up their classroom. Meet new people, talk to experts, share ideas and create amazing learning experiences with teachers from around the world."

Skype Video

Skype in Education

The possibilities are endless.  Language, culture, science, you name it.  It can be brought into your classroom.  Now that's innovative teaching!

Son of Citation Machine

I have never met a person who loved typing up a bibliography page.  Have you?  I think not.  But it's necessary, because learning how to properly cite a source is important.  Just as we should pay musicians for their work, we should cite our written sources for their creative and diligent work.  It's only fair.

Having said that, teaching the proper writing of a bibliography is no day in the park.  However, thanks to Son of Citation Machine, there's now an easier way to construct a proper bibliography.  Now it won't do everything for you.  For instance, you will still have to put the citations in alphabetical order.  You will have to sort out the font size and font style. You will still have to indent it properly.  You will have to enter all the information into the site questionnaire.  But if you do all of these things, Citation Machine, will make it easier for you to produce a bibliography that is properly italicized, underlined, capitalized, bolded, and punctuated.

All three of my children plus one of my exchange students have used Citation Machine successfully during their college experience.  That means it has been tested by our family at The Culinary Institute of America, James Madison University, George Mason University and Princeton University.  All four of them received quite a few As on their papers.  That means some pretty sophisticated and intelligent professors were pleased with the results.

Son of Citation Machine offers four formats: MLA, APA, Turabian, and Chicago.  It also has a nice feature called ISBN/Web Lookup.  My daughter loves this feature.  It works with MLA and APA.  We use MLA at our school, so I'm planning on adding this to my lesson.

If you have to write a paper that requires a citation, I hope you'll try this site.  Trust me, it will help.  It won't make it fun, but it will help.

Son of Citation Machine

Sweet Search

Wouldn't you love to have place where students could search safely and then find reliable information?  Seem impossible?  Not to fear, Sweet Search is here.  Sweet Search advertises that "Every Web site in SweetSearch has been evaluated by our research experts."  Love that!

And there's more!  Look at this!

Teaching Web Research Skills teaches Web research skills to educators and students

SweetSearch4Me is our search engine for emerging learners.

SweetSearch2Day is where students Learn Something New Every Day.

Visit SweetSearch Biographies for profiles of 1,000+ significant people.

Visit SweetSearch Social Studies for our best social studies content.

I love the bibliography section.  You can search on a group and it will give you a list of all the people they have researched for that group.  Here's a list of the various groups.  It's pretty impressive and growing all the time.

Activists
Actors and Entertainers
Africa
African Americans
Arab Americans
Artists
Asia
Asian Americans
Athletes
Australia
Business Leaders
Educators
Emmy
Europe
Explorers and Adventurers
Grammy
Hispanic Americans
Medical Professionals
Men
Military Leaders
Musicians
Native Americans
Nobel Prize
North America
Olympic Medal
Oscar
Philanthropists
Philosophers
Politicians
Pulitzer Prize
Scholars
Scientists and Inventors
South America
Spiritual Leaders
Tony
United States
US First Ladies
US Presidents
Women
World Leaders
Writers

finding Dulcinea

In Miguel Cervantes' classic work of fiction, the hero Don Quixote, accompanied by his squire Sancho Panza and his horse Rocinante, spends his life on a quest to find the perfect woman - Dulcinea.  Along the way Quixote takes a great deal of bad advice and goes down many wrong alleys.  Isn't that a little like searching on the Internet?  And so the founders of finding Dulcinea used this story in the naming of their site.

This is an excellent site!  It's filled with ideas and useful facts.  Most importantly, it's reliable.  That's every educator's dream!  I would encorage you to take a look at it and see how you can incorporate it into your teaching.

finding Dulcinea

Wikipedia - Reliable?

Can we use Wikipedia?  That's a common question among students.  Finding Dulcinea has come up with a list of 10 reasons why students should not rely on Wikipedia.  Check it out.http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/education/2010/march/The-Top-10-Reasons-Students-Cannot-Cite-or-Rely-on-Wikipedia.html