Kathy Dorr, one of NCCE’s Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Trainers, has put together a great resource list for teachers looking to find quality teaching resources around Presidents’ Day. Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln: Three Great Presidents http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/presidents/pdf/teacher_guide.pdf This primary source set includes four documents for each of these great presidents. These documents can help students explore various aspects of these presidents’ lives. One document shows something about the president’s home or family life, the next one represents one of his great achievements, a third item is a portrait of the president, and the fourth is a photograph of the monument or memorial dedicated to his memory. Presidents of the United States: Image Collection http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/057_intr.html Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/portraits/file.html Presidential Inaugurations http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/inaugurations/file.html The Path to the Presidency: Political Speeches http://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2012/08/the-path-to-the-presidency-political-speeches-2/ The Person Behind the Presidency: Humanizing History http://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2012/05/the-person-behind-the-presidency-humanizing-history/ Abraham Lincoln: Rise to National Prominence http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/lincoln/ Inaugurations http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/inaug/ Themed Resources: Abraham Lincoln http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/lincoln/ Elections http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/elections/ Voices, Votes, Victory: Presidential Campaign Songs http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/presidential-songs/issues-and-slogans.html Herblock’s History - Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/herblocks-history/presidents.html The post Library of Congress: Presidents’ Day Resources appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

This week in Keep Kids Coding, Kiki turns her attention back to a more elementary site from CSisFun, Magic Pen. That said, you will find that 5 through 125 year olds will enjoy the challenge set forth on this site. Your task is simple: Move the red ball to the flag. In playing this game your students will interact with geometric shapes, fulcrums, pins, hinges, and mass. In Kiki’s overview video she makes an important point that Magic Pen does a great job of being fun while forcing students to persevere:   Have you used Magic Pen with your students? Share your experiences below and remember: Keep kids Coding!   The post Keep Kids Coding! Magic Pen appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Tech-savvy teacher friend Rob "Rocket Rob" Reynolds from the Eureka Public Schools has announced that Eureka, Montana will once again host a GoogleFest on March, 27, 2015, in beautiful Eureka, Montana! For those that have been past readers of our blog, I presented last year at GoogleFest (see here for details of my presentations) and I can say two things for sure. First, there is no more beautiful place on Earth to attend any event!  I loved my time there last year and would encourage you to come for the conference, stay for the natural beauty! Second, there are excellent presenters from in and around the Pacific Northwest that will be attending this year, including  Michael Jabber and Dan Sitter, and Beyond the Chalk‘s Jeff Crews and Dean Phillips. And… if course, I will be there!  I will be presenting two sessions: "Screencasting in GoogleLand" and "Podcasting: Join a Revolution!" Registration is limited.  For more information, click here! NCCE can also provide Google-related training, personalized for you and teachers in your district!  Contact NCCE to find our more how we can help provide personalized professional development, year round! The post GoogleFest heading back to Eureka, Montana! appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Are you into listening and consuming podcasts?  If the answer is no, it is not surprising.  While podcasting has had a steady audience over the past few years, Pew Research estimates that the number of those that have listened to a podcast actually decreased in 2013. The landscape changed in 2014, due to the release of Serial, from the makers of the popular public radio show This American Life.  By all metrics, the series that chronicled a true crime story of a convicted murderer that claimed he was wrongly accused was an absolute hit, engaging millions of listeners each week during its run. The popularity of Serial has spawn what some are calling the "Serial effect:" many other podcasts experienced significant bumps in their overall downloads and listeners as podcast consumers were hungry for more content. NCCE’s Tech-Savvy Teachers are interested in this story, and believe that podcasting could impact classrooms more now then when podcasting first grew in popularity over a decade ago.  We presented a workshop this month in Bozeman, Montana on the issue and are working on a more extensive half-day and full-day workshop for teachers and school districts looking to take on this media creation challenge. In the meantime, this weekend, you should listen to this two-part episode from the Tim Ferriss podcast.  Part 1 in an excellent interview with Alex Blumberg, who started his own podcast company in 2014 and released a podcast chronicling his adventures.  There is excellent information on professional-level podcast production, the art of the story and the advantages and disadvantages of expecting perfection.  Part 2 is excerpts of a master class taught by Alex on the art of the interview. Both episodes are excellent and very much worth your time! Are you interested in more information about podcasting in the classroom, either as a media resource or an excellent project for engaging kids in making their own media?  Contact NCCE for details on bringing the Tech-Savvy Teachers to your district! The post Weekend Listen-and-Learn: Alex Blumberg on Making Podcasts appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

In this weeks addition of Keep Kids Coding! Kiki looks at an intermediate site from CSisFun.com called Manufactoria. Manufactoria is a puzzle game about putting robots in their proper place. Using conveyor-belts, ‘pullers’ and ‘pushers’ students get to build a machine that will work no matter what gets thrown at it! Have a question for Kiki? Want to share a student experience? Drop us a line in the comment section below! The post Keep Kids Coding! Manufactoria appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Teachers often hear the refrain that education will never be the same because of Google: the massively powerful search engine offers its users access to mindbogglingly huge archives with just a few short clicks.  While there is certainly a debate of how much this changes the need to teach students certain content (meet me at the NCCE tweetup in Portland and I’ll talk your ear off about this ), it IS true that schools should be helping students harness this powerful tool by teaching some Google and other search engine basics. In my own classroom, I have successfully used the Google "Search Education" curriculum.  Especially if you are in a 1:1 classroom environment, you owe it to students to give them a powerful toolset of excellent search skills.  Learning to search a search engine is somewhat akin to learning coding: excellent searchers have to use a systematic pattern of good search terms to find the best information about a given subject. If you don’t have time for that in your classroom, I like this infographic from eLearning Infographics.  It is short and to the point, and provides some powerful advanced search strategies: Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics What’s your trick for helping students become search-savvy in your classroom?  Hit us up in the comments below! The post Infographic: 13 Google Search Tricks appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Great news!  Microsoft has announced a Microsoft Train the Trainer event on March 17-18 in Portland, Oregon.  Although registration to the NCCE conference is not required, you could easily couple this with your with our Portland conference to created a great technology 2-for-1 experience! Details include: Program Title: Microsoft 2-Day Teacher Trainer Workshop Date: March 17-18, 2015 Location: DoubleTree Portland, the conference hotel! Description: The Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) program is Microsoft’s flagship teacher professional development program designed for trainers responsible for delivering professional learning in their districts.  This free workshop delivered in conjunction with NCCE 2015 is a train the trainer model, providing in-depth training across a range of Microsoft tools including Office 365, OneNote, Office Mix, and a number of free tools Microsoft makes available for teachers and students.  Attendees who complete the program have the opportunity to become Microsoft Innovative Educator Trainers and are empowered to deliver the program with free use of the training materials in their schools and districts. The MIE program was designed by teachers and teacher trainers for K-12 educators across all subjects. The training is aligned to 21st Century Skills, as well as ISTE NET-S and Common Core Standards.  It increases the knowledge and integration of technology tools to enhance teaching and learning in the classroom, enabling teachers to get more out of the Microsoft products. By completing the training you will receive a certificate for your participation and become a Microsoft Innovative Educator. This event is designed for school district and building trainers who have responsibility for training educators on the integration of technology in the classroom and have a willingness to commit to training 75 or more educators annually. For more information and to register, click here to get to the Microsoft event page! The post Microsoft Train the Trainer Event Announced for NCCE Week in Portland! appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

This week we are going to look at a much more robust programing environment called Alice. Alice was created at Carnegie Mellon University in the late 90’s as a way to inspire a generation of programers. The platform has evolved over time and is currently in its third version to be able to take advantage of the latest 3D object creation. So what is Alice specifically? Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student’s first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects. In Alice’s interactive interface, students drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program, where the instructions correspond to standard statements in a production oriented programming language, such as Java, C++, and C#. Alice allows students to immediately see how their animation programs run, enabling them to easily understand the relationship between the programming statements and the behavior of objects in their animation. By manipulating the objects in their virtual world, students gain experience with all the programming constructs typically taught in an introductory programming course. Alice is definitely in the intermediate to advanced category, but an advantage of working with Alice is that there are many guides to help you along the way. For instance, Alice 3 has a site dedicated to instructional resources for the program. In prepping this post, I found a wealth of resources by a teacher, Ms. Distler, from North Broward Preparatory School in Florida. She has compiled an amazing site of resources that can be found here. Here is one of her students from a few years ago using Alice to tell a story about two snowmen: In addition to these resources, Duke University has a site called Adventures in Alice Programming where they have lessons plans that range from 4th to 12th grade. Their site also lists workshops and tutorials to help you become comfortable using Alice in your classroom. Please Share: If you are using or try using Alice with your students, please add a link or video in our comments below. The post Keep Kids Coding! Alice appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Grants, Competitions and Other "Winning" Opportunities Achieve Blended Learning Success The Waggle Blended Learning Grant will award up to $5 million to districts and charter school organizations to recognize outstanding blended learning models withWaggle, Personalized Smart Practice. Waggle is an online, adaptive program developed by Triumph Learning for English language arts and mathematics for students in grades 2-8. Waggle champions productive struggle by creating a safe and engaging environment for students to explore, grow in confidence and accelerate learning. Grant winners will receive up to $50,000 for Waggle, professional development and implementation. Deadline: Applications accepted through September 30, 2015 Click Here for More Information About Grant Opportunity Click Here for More Information About Waggle Make a Mark on the World Every year Kohl’s recognizes and rewards young volunteers across the country for their amazing contributions to their communities with up to $10,000 in scholarships. Students can find out how to get started by visiting generationOn, where they will find project inspiration, instructions and in-depth toolkits that they can download for free. They can choose projects that are just for children or perfect for teens. To be eligible, students between the ages of six and 15 must be legal US residents of a state in which a Kohl’s store is located. Deadline: Nominations accepted through March 13, 2015 Click Here for More Information Shine a Spotlight on a Music Educator The GRAMMY Foundation creates opportunities for high school students to work with music professionals to get real-world experience and advice about how to have a career in music. The GRAMMY Music EducatorAward was created to shine a spotlight on the excellent and impactful work that thousands of music teachers across the US are doing. The nominee will be evaluated based on having made a measurable difference in the lives of students and a significant and lasting contribution to the field of music education. In addition, the nominee should have shown a commitment to the broader cause of maintaining music education in the schools and have made a significant impact on his or her school and community. To be eligible, teachers must teach music in public or private schools, kindergarten through college. Teachers in after-school, private studios or other educational settings are not eligible. A custom award will be given as well as a monetary award ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Deadline: Nominations due by March 15, 2015 Click Here for More Information Inspire Safe Teen Driving Toyota and Discovery Education have launched the 2014-2015 TeenDrive365 Video Challenge (formerly known as the Toyota Teen Driver Video Challenge). Now in its fourth year, the Video Challenge invites teens across the country to create short videos to inspire their friends to drive safely and avoid distractions. Ten finalists will be chosen, and their entries will be posted online for public vote. The winner of the public vote will receive the People’s Choice Award along with a $5,000 cash prize and a trip to see a taping of a Velocitynetwork show. In addition, a panel of judges from Discovery Education and Toyota, as well as educators and community leaders, will select a first-, second- and third-place winner. The winners will be chosen based on the creativity, content and presentation of their videos. The grand-prize winner will receive a $15,000 cash prize and work with a Discovery film crew to reshoot his or her video as a professional, TV-ready PSA. The second-place winner will be awarded a $10,000 cash prize along with a trip to attend a taping of a Velocitynetwork show, and the third-place winner will receive a $7,500 cash prize. Deadline: Entries due by March 16, 2015 Click Here for More Information Improve Learning Through Community Funding Anyone involved in education (teacher, administrator, parent, student) can start a crowd-source campaign on PledgeCents. The goal should be the amount needed to fund a project. Educators receive the money raised, with the check sent to the school. They can close their campaigns and receive whatever funds are raised even if the goal wasn’t reached. Posting campaigns on PledgeCents has no cost. Deadline: Ongoing until goal reached or campaign closed Click Here for More Information Supplement Your Stretched Budget GetEdFunding is a free website sponsored by CDW•G to help educators and institutions find the funds they need in order to supplement their already stretched budgets. GetEdFunding hosts a collection of thousands of grants and other funding opportunities culled from federal, state, regional and community sources and available to public and private, preK-12 educators, schools and districts, higher education institutions and nonprofit organizations that work with them. GetEdFunding offers customized searches by six criteria, including 43 areas of focus, eight content areas and any of the 21st century themes and skills that support your curriculum. After registering on the site, you can save the grant opportunities of greatest interest and then return to them at any time. This rich resource of funding opportunities is expanded, updated and monitored daily. Click Here to Visit Website   The post Grant opportunities March 2015 appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

This week in Keep Kids Coding! Kiki takes a look at a unique site called Auditorium. Auditorium is listed as a beginner level site at CSisFun. As Kiki explains in her video breakdown, Auditorium is great at teaching your students persistence and how to find clues within a puzzle. These are the types of characteristics programmers need to be successful. Below, Kiki gives a breakdown of the game and some assistance in thinking through a few of the first levels:   Developed by two indie game developers, Dain Saint and William Stallwood: Auditorium is really all about the experience, both visually and aurally. Take a deep breath, relax, and start playing. As Kiki said, share a video or screenshot of your students working with Auditorium in the comments section below. Enjoy the experience with your students and remember to Keep Kids Coding!   The post Keep Kids Coding! Auditorium appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.