Leading From the Heart: “Lessons from a baby giraffe” – Tracy shares a video showing the birth of a baby giraffe.  Its amazing and inspiring.  Take a moment to read through the comments, too!  How could you use this in your classroom?

Sue Waters – The Edubloger – shared a post on Crappy Graphs in regards to creating graphs for blogs.  You can create line graphs and Venn diagrams.  Would be good to create graphs for lessons/teachers; however, since the finished graph is saved to the Crappy Graphs site and anyone can create a graph (with some interesting titles and content), you may not want to use it live with students.

LibraryStuff.net: shares this little gem: “Is it going to rain?”

TwitTip: “10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners” – got this from one of my Twitter network folks (can’t remember who) and realize I’m not such a good twitterer.  I forget to open Twitter every day to post at least one tweet.  Just don’t feel people are interested in my day to day minutia.  It doesn’t help that some of my buddies are Plurkers and no longer use Twitter.  BTW: both my Twitter and Plurk IDs are HeatherLoy in case you want to follow me!  The only thing I can promise is that I wont bombard you with a bunch of tweet/plurks!

FORA.tv: “Guy Kawasaki on the Power of Twitter” – and the power of social networks.

LibraryBites shared a cool site “You as a the Dewey Decimal System.”  Enter your name, birthdate, and/or favorite 1-3 digit number and the site will calculate your Dewey Decimal Classificaiton.  This is probably just a librarian thing, but see where you’d fit into Dewey!  Here’s Mine:

NYTimes: “Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death“

CNN.com: “Wal-Mart Worker dies in rush; two killed at toy store“

What is wrong with people?  I know times are tough but no discount is worth KILLING over!  And you wonder why kids act the way they do – they see it from the adults around them and on the news.  I want to know do the people who trampled this poor man to death, who ignored and/or pushed the people who were trying to give aide out of the way, who continued on with their shopping, even have a conscience?  Have they stopped to reflect that they are all responsible for a mans death?  That said, how can we use this incident to educate our own students so they don’t repeat this horrible tragedy?

FlickrCC Credit: Red-y Set by flattop341

SignOnSanDiego.com: “Funds sliced, teacher sells ads on tests“ – I can’t remember who I got this from, but it is so apropos to our school right now.  Teachers have just been budgeted to one case of paper (for how long, I’m not sure) so this could be a creative way to offset costs.  I just don’t think our district would allow this ‘fundraiser.’

Scott McLeod – Teachlearning Blog “Teaching administrators about Wikipedia” – I must admit that when Wikipedia first made my radar I, too, was adament about my students not using it and/or treating it as an unreliable source.  Since learning more about it, especially after watching the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales TEDTalks video, I’ve changed my mind.  While I think students should be allowed to BEGIN their research on Wikipedia, just as with any encyclopedia, they shouldn’t use it as their ONLY source.  Just as with Google, it’s a way of finding out quick information or answers to questions, but students still need to judge for bias and accuracy.

Time for a Story – a Windows Live Messenger service that allows you to share storytime with your child even when you are apart.  Seems an easy enough setup – PC, Internet access, Windows Live Messenger, a webcam, and microphone.  The benefit of this method over say, Skype, is that your screen has the narration and your child’s screen shows the story/animation.  Watch the demo.  Unfortunately, I’m on a Mac and don’t think Windows Live is available for Macs.  Bummer!

Here’s one that is not really an educational or professional tidbit, but in this economic crunch, you may find it useful:  CouponMom.com Registration is free and you can print grocery coupons, resturant coupons, and request free samples.

“Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.”

Great for:

• primary source materials for DBQs (Document Based Questions) for AP History
• helping students grasp concepts in history – visualize events
• sparking class discussion
• use in student projects

You can search Google Images just for LIFE photos by using ’source:life’ in your search.  For example, if I wanted photos of World War II, I’d type “WWII source:life” in the search box.