Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Curriki is a nonprofit organization that encourages teachers and learners' to collaborate in developing quality educational materials in a global community. Click What We Do from the top menu and slide to CurikiStudio, and click Creators to create a free account and find resources like questions, photos/images, multimedia, and more for interactive lesson creation. Next under Solutions is CurrikiGo, where you will publish your lessons, etc. Last on the dropdown list is the CurrikiLibrary, where you can search by subject area, grade level, or resource type (interactive, video, or podcast). For a thorough summary of Curriki click the Explore a CurrikiStudio Activity. Join different groups for a more involved way to explore new areas in online learning, subject area interests, or focus questions. Create collections of your resources to keep private or share with others. This site focuses on providing free access to teachers, schools, students, or parents to many new creative ideas for in-class learning, digital learning, and hybrid or blended learning in a global community. Free membership includes monthly newsletters. Follow Curriki on Facebook, Twitter, or blogs.
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Easily convert Microsoft applications to PDF with the installation of CutePDF onto your computer. Follow the directions and system requirements to install. Once installed, select print for any Microsoft document that allows printing, then select to save as a PDF.

This portal site is loaded with links, information, and resources to use in your classroom to teach about this timely issue. Although it is a Canadian affiliated site, information applies to all youth around the world. Highlights of this site include fact sheets (in PDF format), examples, warning signs, links to more resources, and others. Especially take note of the Resource tab on the top menu. Sliding down to Students find Tik ToK, Digital Dating Abuse, Cyberbullying Fact Sheet: Identification, Prevention, and Response, an several others.

CyberWise provides tools for parents, educators, and kids to help them understand and use new media tools safely at home and in the classroom. The site provides an extensive collection of videos and resources that explain current media tools and ways to use them. Guides include Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Blogger, Prezi, Glogster, Facebook, Snapchat, Vine, and many others. Enter any tool name into the search box to see if there is a guide. Find information about media literacy, digital citizenship, cyberbullying, sexting, and more. The CyberCivics blog has the latest issues, trends, and tools to keep you an informed digital citizen. Sign up for the free newsletter and subscribe to the blog to stay current with information included on the site. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.
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Use this resource to find great educational chats (#hashtags found on X (formerly Twitter)! View the various hashtags that have been created for a multitude of educator chats in different content areas. Scroll down the page to view a schedule of the various chats organized by day. Be sure to note the times that these chats begin on those days. View the various tools that you can use to "follow" the chats. Follow these chats to find incredible support and ideas for creating positive change in teaching and learning. Consider X (formerly Twitter) one of the best professional development opportunities teachers can participate in.

Promote reading by encouraging school-wide participation in the Drop Everything And Read campaign. If not school-wide, then definitely set aside 30 minutes on April 12 (or a nearby date if April 12 falls on a weekend) to show that reading comes first. At this site, families are encouraged to read for 30 minutes, but teachers will glean essential information to make the event effective. This date has been chosen in honor of Beverly Cleary's birthday. Find information about some of her famous book characters, books suggestions, D.E.A.R. activity suggestions, reproducible pages, and more at this site.

Daily Lit offers short clips of literature sent to you daily by email or by RSS feed. You can receive the episodes on a Blackberry, RSS reader, email, web-enabled cell phone, or any "connected" device. You students would find it "cool" to read their daily lit excerpt on the cell phones! Most offerings are classics and in the public domain, but some recent selections are available for free due to Creative Commons licenses. Most books are free but some have a charge. Since only a few pages arrive in your email at intervals you select, it takes quite a while to read a complete book. You do have the option of receiving another section when you finish your daily reading. Students can browse for books by category or search by title, author, etc. Currently hot titles are displayed on the home page. There is a Children's book category, as well, so you can have a daily reading "arrive" on your desktop RSS reader without using email, thrilling your young readers! There are also books written in various world languages.

Because this is a site for the general public, there may be some books with content not desirable for your classroom. Avoid sending students directly to the home page to see "Featured" books without previewing the page that day and/or announcing a policy about which books they are allowed to investigate.

RSS feed to a classroom RSS reader account such as Google Reader might be the safest way to control the content that "arrives" without safety/policy concerns. If you want students to receive emails from this site, check with your school's Acceptable Use Policy AND be sure to check with the parents! You may want to consider creating a Gmail account (rather than your personal or work email). If you plan to have students register individually, you may want to create your own Gmail account with up to 20 subaccounts for each group of students (by code name or number) within your classes. Here is a blog post that tells how to set up GMail subaccounts to use for any online membership service.

Create and share data with the different GIF formats offered by Google News Lab. Choose from the three theme options - rectangles, circles, or racetrack to begin. Follow the prompts to add a title and data values. Add data as a percentage or numerical values then customize your GIF by selecting from different color options. When finished, save as an HQ (high quality) or LQ (low quality) GIF. Once created, save the GIF to your computer or share using the provided link.