A Catch of the Day Holiday Bonus - TypeIt.org

If you have the need to type anything in a foreign language which has accents and other strange-looking characters, and you only have a US keyboard, your life used to be miserable.

Now, you can just navigate to TypeIt.org, type whatever you need in a text box, and then copy and paste it wherever you need it — into a word processor document, an e-mail message, a Twitter update, etc. You can type foreign characters by clicking buttons or by pressing intuitive keyboard shortcuts.

Demo - Typing Spanish Characters Using TypeIt.org

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Catch of the Day - HelpingWithMath.com - 22 Dec 09

HelpingWithMath.com, a math resource site, is today's fresh catch



HelpingWithMath.com is a web site for parents and teachers who want to help kids with math. The math worksheets, the printable multiplication tables and math charts, and other resources are completely free and easy to use.

HelpingWithMath.com Home Page

Some of what you'll find at HelpingWithMath.com:

• Worksheets on many topics
• Multiplication tables
• Charts such as Decimal/ Fraction Equivalents
• Number lines
• Drag-and-drop multiplication games
• The SWIFT online math tutor

SWIFT Online Math Tutor Page

All these free resources are categorized by type and by grade level (3rd - 7th) and are formatted for easy printing. Nearly all the worksheets, tables, charts, and other resources found on HelpingWithMath.com can be downloaded, edited and reused under a Creative Commons license.

Geometry Terms and Definitions Page

HelpingWithMath.com was developed by a small group of educators and technologists who got together to provide resources that can be used to help children improve in math. These resources include easy to find and easy to use multiplication worksheets, charts, tables and other materials and information categorized by subject, type and grade level. HelpingWithMath.com is dedicated to providing resources that are effective, easy-to-use, and free.

Two-Minute Tour of HelpingWithMath.com

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Catch of the Day will be on hiatus until January 4, 2010. Have a Great Holiday Season!

Catch of the Day - wickED - 21 Dec 09

Today's catch, wickED, comes from New Zealand


wickED is a quality-assured online environment for 7–12 year olds. It has been developed to complement The New Zealand Ministry of Education’s study support centers initiative.

wickED Home Page

Kids can explore lots of wickEDly cool things on this site! Quizzes, crosswords, interactives and games in English and te reo Māori, a gallery of student artworks, profiles of inspirational New Zealanders, an information station, and activities and games based around topics.

wickED provides engaging curriculum-based learning activities intended to support facilitated or independent use by students in English and te reo Māori, many of which have been developed with a focus on literacy, numeracy and ESOL.

wickED provides interactives in English and te reo Māori, online activities such as crosswords and quizzes, an online storybook, story creation tools, a student gallery, regular student-centered projects and mini-projects.

Topics Page

Topics include activities from several curriculum areas involving a range of thinking and learning skills. Students are provided with links to quality websites to explore the suggested activities or to engage in research.

Information Station Page

The Information Station provides a safe way for students to search the web. It offers:

• a list of quality-assured maths and language websites
• suggested search engines
• an online dictionary and thesaurus, maps, atlases, online newspapers, encyclopedias
• links to New Zealand libraries
• search hints
• webhunts

Kokona Māori provides a pathway to the Māori and te reo Māori resources on WickED.

The Student Gallery features work sent in to wickED’s virtual characters Ed, Wicki and Tipani by students who have completed topic activities.

wickED TV Page

wickED TV provides a forum to showcase students’ video work. It includes information about the video-making and editing process.

wickED is managed by the New Zealand Ministry of Education.

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Catch of the Day - LitCharts - 18 Dec 09

LitCharts™, an online literature guide, is today's tasty catch

LitCharts is the newest series of literature guides on the web, claiming to be a faster, downloadable alternative to SparkNotes®.

Beowulf Guide Home Page

LitCharts introduces a number of innovations that make their guides effective and easy-to-use.

• Summary and Analysis sections are side-by-side to facilitate a close reading of the facts, patterns, and details of the text.
• The Theme Bar is a visual tool that shows you when and where each theme is active in the course of the work.
• The ThemeTracker provides a quick review of the entire book on a single page, perfect for last minute studying.

A Summary and Analysis Page for Heart of Darkness

LitCharts are just as detailed and helpful as conventional lit guides. However, LitCharts are much shorter than conventional lit guides, 10 or fewer printed pages.

LitChart's newest offering is a collection of guides for the iPhone/iPod Touch including To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, Heart of Darkness, Beowulf and many more classics.

iPhone/iPod Touch Guide for To Kill a Mockingbird

Every LitChart and every feature on LitCharts is free online. Every LitChart is also available in its entirety as an easy-to-read, printer friendly PDF that is absolutely free.

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Catch of the Day - Hotchalk® Lesson Plans Page - 17 Dec 09

Today's deliciously fresh catch is the Hotchalk® Lesson Plans Page

The Hotchalk® Lesson Plans Page is a collection of thousands of lesson plans from preschool through high school, many developed by the site's users.

Hotchalk® Lesson Plans Page Home

The Hotchalk® Lesson Plans Page was developed to serve all kinds of educators.

• K-12 teachers can obtain lesson plans that are ready to use in their classrooms.
• College students can find model lesson plans and ideas on which to base their own lessons.
• Home schoolers can locate lesson plans for use at home with their own children.
• Parents can get ideas for educational activities to use with their kids.

The Hotchalk® Lesson Plans Page has over 4,000 free lesson plans. You can find lesson plans by selecting a subject, recent additions, or seasonal lessons, or search for specific topics.

Teacher Discussion Page

You can participate in discussions with other educators in the Teacher Discussion Forums or check out the Science Projects and Math Worksheets sections. You may choose to sign up for their newsletter.

Hotchalk® Lesson Plans Page Quick Tour


Since Hotchalk® Lesson Plans Page launched in October of 1996, lesson plans on the site have been developed by Kyle Yamnitz, students and faculty at The University of Missouri, and more recently by the users of this website.

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Catch of the Day - Science Pirates - 16 Dec 09

Science Pirates: The Curse of Brownbeard is today's nautically-flavored catch


Science Pirates: The Curse of Brownbeard is a 3D educational computer game that communicates food safety knowledge in an environment of scientific exploration. It's a free download for Mac and PC.

The USDA awarded New Mexico State University a grant to develop interactive games that help middle-schoolers learn about food safety procedures, such as hand washing, cooking food to the proper temperature, keeping raw meat and cooked food separate, and washing surfaces.

Science Pirates Home Page

The original goal of Pirate Science shifted from one of understanding food safety issues through science processes, to one of understanding science processes to better change food safety behavior. The educational focus is more centered on scientific understanding and processes, with the end result being a game that leads students through science processes, while giving gamers a culminating activity of experiment design to lead them to better understanding of hand washing.

Learners will ...

• observe hand washing behavior on the Isle of Misfortune
• predict possible solutions
• understand hypothesis formation, and how it differs from research questions
• engage in testing one variable at a time in experiments
• participate in a new approach to independent and dependent variable identification
• draft a hypothesis
• design an experiment
• draw conclusions
• publish findings
• make recommendations for hand washing behavior

Science Learning Through Game Play: Science Pirates


Science Pirates is ideal for middle school students and takes approximately two hours to play.

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Catch of the Day - Discover Life - 15 Dec 09

Discover Life, an encyclopedia of life on earth, is today's fresh haul.

Discover Life is a portal to information about all the world's living things. By simply clicking on a photograph you can examine the taxonomy, natural history, distribution, abundance, and ecology of insects, spiders, plants, fungi, birds, mammals and many more. This information can be very useful in education and enjoyable to kids.

Discover Life Home Page

The National Biological Information Infrastructure, with a team of contributors, now offer information on over a quarter-million species through Discover Life, hoping to catalog a million species by 2012.

The All Living Things Encyclopedia

The Global Mapper web tool has an easy interface that enables you to compare distributional information on a large selection of satellite images, maps, and aerial photographs.

IDnature Guides Home Page

Another goal of Discover Life is to develop an efficient label and database network that uses secure, globally unique identifiers because no standard method of labeling mounted specimens, microscope slides, DNA samples, photographs, virtual images, sound recordings, etc. exists, keeping track of individual items is inefficient and often impossible. Only a small fraction of the estimated 3 billion museum and herbaria specimens are labeled with specimen-level identifiers.

Discover Life encourages students to use the photographs in class projects. However, all rights are reserved by the photographers, artists, and authors.

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Catch of the Day - WatchKnow - 14 Dec 09

WatchKnow, a video resource, is today's delicious fare

WatchKnow is hundreds of thousands of short videos, and other media, explaining a cornucopia of topics taught to kids, rated and sorted into a directory to make them easy to find.

WatchKnow Home Page

WatchKnow is both a resource for users and also an online community that encourages everyone to collect, create, and share free, innovative, educational videos.

Directory Page

Put the Add to WatchKnow bookmarklet on your browser's toolbar. When you find a good video, click the bookmarklet and the page will be automatically processed and redirected to the WatchKnow website with the Add Video page pre-populated with the video embed code or URL, title, and description.

The Add Video Page

WatchKnow sources include YouTube, TeacherTube, Google Videos, National Geographic, SchoolTube, eHow, and more. Teachers and librarians were hired to add videos and edit the directory.

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Related articles by Zemanta

• YouTube gets automatic subtitles (news.bbc.co.uk)

Teaching Christmas

Teaching Christmas is a LiveBinder collection of teaching resources related to Christmas.

Teaching Christmas

Includes history pieces, Christmas math and science, and general activities.

Catch of the Day - Timeline Tools - 11 Dec 09

Today's bountiful catch features five online timeline tools

TimeGlider

TimeGlider is a tool for seeing the past and planning the future. On-line, interactive and collaborative timelines can be created quickly by anyone. Being web-based, TimeGlider lets you collaborate and share easily. TimeGlider's basic version is free with two levels of paid service available.

TimeRime

TimeRime has developed a web application, which allows you to view, create, share and compare interactive timelines. The subjects of the timelines can be anything which relates to time. The TimeRime timelines can be interactive and multimedia with text, music, YouTube videos, etc. Basic services are free with an ad-free, closed paid educational account available.

Dipity

Dipity allows you to easily build and share interactive timelines which may include a wide variety of multimedia content such as Flickr images and YouTube videos. Dipity timelines can be viewed in four distinct ways: Timeline, List View, Flipbook, or Map View. Dipity is free to use.

Timetoast


Timetoast allows you to create interactive timelines which you can share anywhere on the web. Timetoast timelines can include images, links, and other content. It's completely free. (Timetoast does not support Internet Explorer 6.)

Kronomy

Kronomy is a place to generate interactive timelines and share them with the world. It allows you to create timelines with all relevant media together in an interactive and 3D view. They can be easily exported to other social networks, blogs or sites.

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Online chart tool - Chartle.net

Recently I posted about two online chart creation tools, ChartGo and CreateAGraph. A tweet today from @sammorra reminded me of this tool, Chartle.net, which I had bookmarked in Delicious way back in May.

Chartle.net Home Page

Chartle.net is a bit different from the other two in that it runs as a Java applet. When you click on Create a new window will open in which the Java applet will run. A Flash/Ajax version reportedly is on the way.

Chartle Demo by Dieter Krachtus

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Catch of the Day - TweenTribune - 10 Dec 09

TweenTribune is the fresh catch for this day

TweenTribune is a daily news site for tweens (8-12 year olds). Links to the most compelling news, from a tween's perspective, are posted each day. TweenTribune lets kids interact with the news.

TweenTribune Home Page

Tweens, working closely with professional journalists, choose the stories for TweenTribune. Kids can share links to stories they like, submit stories and photos of their own, and comment on the stories they read at TweenTribune.

Tweens in the News Page

You can customize TweenTribune for your own classroom. Once your class starts using TweenTribune, the site will automatically create unique pages showing:

• The stories your class has commented upon
• Individual comments by each student, on his or her own page
• All comments by your students in one sortable report

You can moderate, edit, or delete students' comments before they're published.

Technology News Page

TweenTribune is easy to use, updated daily unlike other similar sites, and allows students to participate in numerous ways while encouraging tweens to look for news everyday. Democracy depends upon a well-informed public, thus the importance of having a daily news-reading habit. TweenTribune tries to foster this in tweens by regularly offering a few offbeat stories they wouldn't find elsewhere.

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