ED 300 and Wheat Thins

My friends from college created this site.  They found a movie they liked and they now have a podcast, a website, and merchandise for sale.  I think it would be a fun thing to challenge my students to do this for some animal or composer.  Have them get creative and make a website about it.  They might find people all over the world interested in the same animal or composer and then start collaborating on different things about the topic.  The website is The Lebowski Podcast down in my blogroll.

I use this website from my blogroll to listen to pieces before I buy them.  The piece I want is 24 Caprices, Op. 1 No. 1 in E major.  It’s nice to be able to listen to it first so I know I like it and to see how it should sound.

I got a call from the people who make the Inspiration software we used in class.  They were talking to me about their product and mentioned this website they recently created.  It is a place to post the things created on the Inspiration 8 software.  He was a nice guy.  It’s good to know they have good, english speaking support for their product.

Chip Webster wrote this piece a while back.  I like how it starts off with the familiar Bolero feel.  As I watched, I was thinking, “This isn’t too hard.”  I kept watching though and I realized that those sticks are really moving fast.  It is a difficult piece to play even though it sounds simple.  I plan on learning the piece someday.

I bought my dog a new collar yesterday.  It’s called the gentle leader.  It’s the kind of collar that goes around his neck along with going over his nose.  It makes it so when we go on walks, he does not pull really hard anymore.  I was amazed at how well it works.  My dog does not like the feel of the collar on his nose yet, but he will get used to it.  If you like to take your dog on walks but he actually walks you, I would advise getting this kind of collar.

This is not for my subject, but it is pretty cool.  The site is called Larson Math.  It is an online math tutor from grades 3 to 6+.  I have a coworker who’s daughter has used it.  She logs on and does assignments.  Her parents can look how she is doing.  She would then go to school and a tutor would look at her performance and tutor her on the things she was struggling with.  A very cool tool.

This is from a calendar with random things on each day:

“She had difficulty completing simple calculations.  For example, when I asked her what three times three plus one equals, she said, “Ten”.”  That can be right, but it can be wrong.  Depends on which way the teacher looked at it.  Seeing the numbers would really help clarify which answer is the correct one.  It was just a fun little word game.

I found this website and it has some good lesson plans for music education.  One thing I like is how they use music to teach other subjects.  There is one on music and math and using each subject to teach about the other subject.  The example given does not use technology, but it could be added in easily.  Using a Smart board for writing things down or making questions and using the clickers to have the students answer them are easy ways to integrate technology into this lesson.

I was looking around at other blogs and came across Jamie’s.  He had a link to the history of entertainment.  I looked around on it and found audio files recorded in the 1920’s of jazz artists.  One song was “Keep you skirt down Maryann”.  In music, we would listen to the instruments and see what kind of instruments were being used along with what style were they playing.  In sociology, the same song would be analyzed by the words and their meaning.  I listened a little and Maryann’s aunt was telling her to keep her skirt down, but Maryann thought she had a nice dimple on her……….knee.  Oh how times have changed.  That could spark a lot of interesting conversation with high school students.

Here is a website made by two college students.  They are both going to be secondary biology teachers.  It was made for a class project.  They have some good information on the site.  Even though it’s a biology classroom, they mention teaching students how to find credible websites.  They have links to online quizzes and promote having a classroom website that the students can go to so they can always know what’s going on in class.  They give a good explanation of all the links they provide on the page too.