Award Your Students for Their Accomplishments

Class Badges is an online program which allows you award students custom made badges. Students create an account and teachers can award badges to student accounts when earned. Every kid enjoys being recognized for good work, don't they? At the moment you have to request an invite (I did it this afternoon and am waiting to hear from them...) Here's a sample of a badge I saw on their page which I would like to use with my library-media council members:

If You're New to the Blog.....

If this is your first time her, welcome to "A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet". Here are some quick info-bits about the blog:

Tabs at the top mark specific pages where information is constantly updated.

Recently updated posts include:
The 2012 Presidential Election- more resources added

eReader Books- added as a page (top) and updated


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Banned Websites Awareness Day

Wednesday, October 3, 2012 is a day where we recognize how Internet filtering is impacting our students' learning in school. I've already spoken about how we are blocked from everything in my school, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, just to mention a few. Even when YouTube created an education link which filtered out objectionable videos, our school did not back down. Does your school district have excessive filtering of sites? As a media specialist/ teacher-librarian how do you go about convincing the administration that they need to loosen that lock on the Internet? Please share below.

NJASL Video Says it All!

Here's a wonderful promotional video produced by the N.J. Association of School Librarians. (NJASL)

Resources for Family & Consumer Sciences (Home Economics)

When I was in 8th grade, they called it home economics. My cooking teacher had us make apple turnovers by using the Pillsbury cylinders, which was nothing more than open, lay out the dough, squeeze the apple filling in the middle, close the turnover, bake and put the icing on. Today, known as family and consumer sciences, the students actually learn how to bake from scratch. (What a concept!) Anyway, if you teach in this area, I've collected a list of resources for you below. A good starting point is Family Consumer Sciences.

COOKING
38 Free Cooking Worksheets

Cooking Calculator- also find kitchen conversions

Cooking Terms-  lesson plan complete with downloadable worksheets

Food Resources for Teachers- nice listing by grade level from TeacherVision

NUTRITION
Food History Lesson Plans-includes diversity lessons, food science and technology

Free Printables- nutrition, food, health


Mypyramid: Simple Steps for Healthy Living- lesson plan from Discovery Education

Nutrition Lesson Plans- from TeAchnology

FASHION
Fashion Design Lesson Plans and Activities- teacher reviewed and listed by grade level


Fashion Design and Merchandising Lessons

Fashion Lesson Plans- from the Lesson Corner; nice listing covers grades 6-12

The History of Fashion- many attachments, including PowerPoint presentations, MS Word docs

Lesson Plans: Costume Design- Project Runway costume, garbage bag costume

SEWING
About.com's Listing for Sewing Techniques- many resources

Beginning Sewing- from CraftandFabricLinks.com

Sewing Lesson Plans- from Lesson Planet

Sewing Lessons-Level 1

Sewing.org- free sewing projects, learn to sew articles, templates, blog posts

Sewing Tips

Infographic: Anatomy of a Great Teacher

Source: Top Teaching Colleges

30 Places to Find Chemistry Teaching Resources

20 Things You Didn't Know About the Periodic Table - Discover Magazine

AP Chemistry PowerPoints-  6 units covered

AP Chemistry Study Cards

Chemistry 11- lessons and handouts

Chemistry 12- lessons and handouts

Chemistry Animations- 8 Flash animations

Chemistry Comes Alive- Chemistry Video Collection from the Journal of Chemical Education

Chemistry Demonstration Videos- 10 packets on various subject

Chemistry Lab Safety Tutorial

Chemistry Lecture Notes 

Chemistry Lesson Plan Links- from the Science Spot

Chemistry Lesson Plan Menu

Chemistry Software and  Science Teaching

ChemSpider - free chemical database which provides "fast text and structure search access to over 28 million structures from hundreds of data sources."

ChemSynthesis- Chemical Database

Doctor Mad Science- videos of experiments

Finding Science in Ice Cream

Flynn Scientific's Teacher Resources 

Free Chemistry Video Lectures- long list from LearnersTV

General Chemistry Glossary

General Chemistry Online!- includes simulations, compound library, tutorials and much more

High School Chemistry Education Resources- from the American Chemical Society

Interactive Chemistry Simulations- nice collection from the University of Colorado at Boulder

Mole Clip Art

NeoK12 Periodic Table Videos- reviewed by K12 teachers 

The Periodic Table of Comic Books- choose an element and see which comic book involving that element

The Periodic Table of Videos- includes quizzes

Reactions in Chemistry- from the Annenberg Foundation; VOD (video on demand)

Reeko's Mad Scientist Science Experiments- chemical reactions, chemistry experiments here; experiments are rated easy, medium, hard, dangerous

TeAchnology's List of Chemistry Lesson Plans

Top 10 Mad Science-Worthy Chemistry Experiments