Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Visit my new blog at www.coolcatteacher.com .  Here's more about the move... It is official, I'm moving from  Blogger  to  Wordpress . It has taken almost 4 months but it is as ready as it is going to get. I've powered up the wordpress over at  coolcatteacher.com  and made the jump from  weebly . (nothing against weebly, it is a great place for static sites.) I thought some of you might want to know why I am moving and also how I did it: My new blog is on Wordpress using the Get Noticed theme. I've still got some tweaks to do (like the twitter and other icons running across my head on the top right) but it is good enough to make the swap Why am I moving from Blogger to Wordpress? First of all, the decision to move is a very hard decision for many reasons. The time it has taken and the learning curve are two big reasons. Plus, it is very easy to really mess up the old site I've spent so much time building. 1.  Wordpress  has...

THE BELKIN TABLET STAGE | Belkin Business Very interesting tool to use for your classroom that sort of turns your ipad into a document camera/ presenter tool. It has already won several awards in the Apple app store. You might want to take a look at this if you're 1:1 ipad as an option to get rid of document cameras or not buy them at all. Very cool tags: education news edu_newapp Life Noted App This app is Life Noted and merges camera, video, notetaking and more. It was recommended to me as a notetaking/ capturing tool for observation in the classroom by teachers of students, but I think that anyone evaluating another person might benefit from this sort of tool. Capture your notes and the speech about the notes and share it. Very interesting idea. It is free right now. t...

EveryArtist Live! November 21. Creativity matters as we focus on the worldwide art project of gratitude. Sign your students up today. On November 21, 2013,  Everyartist Live!  will have an exciting project for all elementary students. Here’s how it works. Elementary Art Project Theme Gratitude How to prepare for this art project: Visit the website  and  view videos  about the event, creativity, and this year’s theme. Your students don’t need Internet access, but if they have it, they’ll have more places to create. What will happen: Teachers, parents, or mentors will upload the gratitude-themed art through the app (to be launched in November) or via the website. What will happen with the artwork? Share your artwork with the world on November 21 in the  EveryArtist Live! Art Project  Photo credit: iStock Photo The artwork will be displayed in two places: online and at your school as you choose to do it. Student Art On the...

Booktrack - Halloween Short Story Contest Booktrack also has a Halloween writing contest for booktrack as well. This would be a fun creative activity with your students. tags: education news writing literacy Museum of Science and Industry | GoREACT This is a very cool app. You look at the periodic table and drag elements to mix them together and see what happens in the app. The GoReact app is a "drag and drop" laboratory. If you introduce the periodic table, you'll want to see this. tags: education science scichat news all_teachers Scholastic Book Fairs - Video Scholastic Book Fairs now have a mobile ap...

Microsoft's photo and movie making apps revealed ahead of Windows 8.1 release | The Verge Here comes Windows 8 with a lot of new settings. These are talking about the Windows phone updates but other updates are on the way. "While Windows 8.1 adds a lot of features and improvements across the OS, the built-in apps include some of the biggest changes. Microsoft is detailing a few of the more creative ones ahead of the Windows 8.1 release tomorrow. The photos app in Windows 8 included Facebook and Flickr integration, but the Windows 8.1 version drops that in lieu of some improvements to editing. You can now select auto fix for a selection of different corrections, and there’s also manual cropping, red-eye removal, retouch, and other basic contrast and brightness settings. One of the more interesting features is color enhance that lets you pick an area of a photo to brighten up or darken areas of photos." tags: ...

BGSU Wiki - Embed a Google Document Yes, you can embed a google doc on a wiki page -if you just have to edit simultaneously. Here's how. tags: education news google Kids Book Reviews - Book Reviews and Ratings by Kids at DOGO Books I noticed that Wikispaces included Dogo books under a new "Education" category in the widget menu. (This looks like a television on the edit bar when you click to Edit a wiki.) So, Dogobooks is a place where kids ar writing book reviews about everything. Very cool. You can see the most popular books and ti also has book clubs and other ways for kids to connect. This is a very cool site for helping kids love learning and may also augment Accelerated Reader programs nicely. tags: education news ...

How to Free Up Space in Gmail: 5 Ways to Reclaim Space Some great ideas for clearing up space in your email. tags: email productivity education news gmail bestpractices Chat and real-time collaboration - Drive Help Little tip: "If you're a Google Apps administrator, note that disabling Google chat across your domain now disables chat in Drive" I think we have to work with chat. It would be nice if chat could be enabled or disabled by document but it is a whole-domain thing right now. I hate to see it disabled. tags: education google drive news collaboration techintegrator ...

Hidden Costs of Being a Teacher | Block Talk - The H&R Block Official Corporate Blog H&R Block asked me to write an article to help people understand the hidden costs of being a teacher. It is important to help people understand the profession we love. If you agree, I hope you'll like and share this article to help others know what it is like to be a teacher. tags: education news teaching Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Connected/CEM Cafe | Connected Educators Most weeknights of Connected Educator month #cem13 there are Connected Cafes with many online leaders in education. They are free and will be great conversations. I'm on October 3 at 7:30 pm and we're talking about connected leadership with Dean Shareski and moderated by Steve Hargadon. Take a look at the calendar to see more. October 4 is Larry Ferlazzo and Angela Maiers, October 8, Ira Socol and Kathleen Cushman and many more. tags: education news cem13 Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2013 Jane Hart has her list of 100 Top tools for learning 2013 based upon her 7th survey. This is usually a pretty good indicator and I would agree with it for the most part. tags: education news edtech elearning tumblr Tweeting Down The Classroom Walls | EdSurge The guidebook from Edsurge on how to connect. Share this with educators to help them learn how to connect and use the many online resources for educators. tags: education news edsurge cem cem13 tumblr Five Essentials To Create Connected Students | EdSurge News Connected educator month is here! Edsurge has cr...

This post is inspired by Everyartist Live!, a national, collaborative art event with the goal of engaging a million elementary school children on November 21, 2013 - the largest art event in history. Want to get involved? Join the effort to show that creativity matters. Sign up at http://everyartist.me November 21 will mark the largest art project in history (we hope.) Here's how you and your students can join in.  Creativity for kids: will it keep kids healthy? Recently, I came across a book that listed the “12 apostles of ill health.” 1 I was stunned to see that one was “a lack of creativity.” How can lack of creativity lead to ill health? Is this true? Think for a moment… it seems like the faster the arts and music have been removed from schools, the higher the drop out rate has escalated. Students are disenchanted and disengaged as they've had paint brushes replaced by pencils as they figure math problems instead of drawing figures on a page. Join th...