Thank you to those that showed up for my in-service today! I appreciate you taking the time out of your summer to come in and see what I’d put together.
I covered three new technology components today. First I went over the elementary portaportal, which is a collection of links organized by SOL for grades 3, 4, and 6. The address is www.portaportal.com. The guest access is PPS-ELEM-SS. Your students and parents may access this as well.
Then I covered Historyspace, which is similar to Myspace. Since so many students spend so much time on Myspace, I set up a template to resemble the Myspace profile pages. It’s set up in a word document, so everything is very easy to type, cut, and paste. I designed this with the intention of students setting up their own “Myspace” pages for the various historical figures you cover throughout the year. It has a webpage feel and should be very familiar to most students, so it is my hope that they take interest in designing their own pages for historical figures.
Finally I covered blogs. I know blogs are becoming more and more popular in the classroom, and I would like the Social Studies Department to be on the cutting edge. It is very easy to set up an edublog for your classroom. You can add various categories for homework assingments, class news, discussion boards, parent news, etc. You can also organize links to other webpages on your blog. If you need to check out an example, I have one set up. Check out http://pennington.edublogs.org. Of course the example isn’t perfect and if I were to use it in an actual classroom I would have much more up there. I just wanted to give you and idea of how it could be used.
If you have any questions or problems, please e-mail me or leave me a comment here and I’ll do my best to answer it. Thanks again to those that showed up!
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