Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 03/30/2012
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Learning independence with Google Search features | Official Google Blog
Very proud of my dear friend Cheryl Oakes from Maine who is on the Official Google blog with her work with those with disabilities. Cheryl is an amazing woman who loves children. My youngest son has met her only once (in San Antonio at ISTE) and still calls her Aunt Cheryl. She has that effect on people. Great post.
"One teacher who has taken advantage of the web as an educational tool is Cheryl Oakes, a resource room teacher in Wells, Maine. She’s also been able to tailor the vast resources available on the web to each student’s ability. This approach has proven invaluable for Cheryl’s students, in particular 16-year-old Morgan, whose learning disability makes it daunting to sort through search results to find those webpages that she can comfortably read. Cheryl taught Morgan how to use the Search by Reading Level feature on Google Search, which enables Morgan to focus only on those results that are most understandable to her. To address the difficulty Morgan faces with typing, Cheryl introduced her to Voice Search, so Morgan can speak her queries into the computer. Morgan is succeeding in high school, and just registered to take her first college course this summer." -
Here's the earth hour Facebook fan page. Saturday, March 31 at 8:30 pm (your time.) 685K have already liked this page - I bet it is over a million by the end of the day. We as educators should be part of this movement to turn off lights on Saturday at 8:30 pm. This is a teachable moment about the environment.
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The students are talking about this - are you? On March 31 - earth hour day is the "largest environmental event in history." Can you switch off for an hour? Can your students? This is a great thing to do with your students but also to have as a writing prompt. Did you participate? Why or why not? What did you do with your hour? Here are lessonplans to share and use to discuss this. It is Saturday.
But Earth Hour Day (31 March), the largest environmental event in history, reminds us that switching off can be a good thing. Make a stand in 2012 and teach students about climate issues – prepare them to take responsibility for change in the future with this hand-picked selection of lesson plans and activities.
The official Earth Hour Day website http://www.earthhour.org/
