Another year is quickly coming to an end. With this in mind, I share with you a few things I learned about this year.
#10- http://pbskids.org/electriccompany/#/games/escapes/ Electric Company on the Internet- This is a fun way to expose your children to building sentences. I will also note that the pbskids.org has a bunch of interesting educational games on the Internet. Obviously, the games and resources vary in quality. Despite that, it is definitely worth your time looking at.
#9- Wii Fit- There has been much hype about this product. Having said that, it is a fun product that is helping many people get into shape. However, I should forewarn you that when you run the initial fitness profile, it will tell you that your fitness level is comparable to someone that is 10-20 years older than you. Do not get insulted. It probably means that you are not familiar with how to use a Wii. Subsequently, it is giving you a lower fitness rating. The important thing is to have fun.
#8- http://www.kutoka.com/_en/products_mia_reading.html Mia- Mia is a cute little mouse that offers young children an engaging platform to learn literacy, math, and science. Mia involves higher order thinking skills and does not distract children with too many non-educational tasks yet is very engaging. You will not be able to find this software easily as it is a French import.
#7- Guitar Hero and its Spawn- Not only is this game very entertaining it’s a great way to learn how to play music.
#6- The secret to buying trains- If you have a 8 year old boy who loves trains avoid buying the smaller trains. While the smaller scale trains are cheaper, they are not easy for a growing boy to handle. O Scale is the way to go. For more info check outhttp://www.trainworldonline.com/.
#5- http://faujsa.fau.edu/jsa/home.php Jewish Music Archive- A great collection of Jewish music
#4- http://www.pandora.com Pandora.com- A great web application that allows you to create your own customized music channels
#3- Wayne Steel- Its All About Chanukah- Last year a musician passed me along his CD. In short, the CD went to my bag of CDs that people give me. Anyhow… long story short, I did some cleaning around the house and discovered this gem just in time for Chanukah. For more details, check out http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/waynesteele
#2- Blogging and rediscovering my writing roots- For the past 12 years I have been writing grants as a part of my job. Thankfully, most of these grants becoming award winning grants and schools/districts directly benefit from my efforts. While this was going on, I have been trying to figure out when, where, how, did I learn to write. Certainly, I did not major in English. Well… blogging helped me rediscover that it all started writing for fun. With this in mind, I am glad to jump on the blogging bandwagon as it has proven to be a great forum to express a variety of ideas. To see my blog visit http://thefutureofeducationaltechnology.blogspot.com/
The awesome power of FileMaker Pro- A few months ago one of my schools needed help building a database that would help them create customized goals for their students. They also wanted the database to include the following features; multiple pull down menus- e.g. Grade selection provides a choices of classes and then provides a choice of students, parent letter generator, the ability to set up to 20 customized goals, report card generator, and of course easy navigation. Needless to say. a learning curve was involved with this process. Interestingly enough, none of the manuals really explained how to do this. In the end, one of my Apple reps hooked me up with a FileMaker Pro rep from the UK. He then explained me that the best way to learn this was to an existing sample file and cannibalize it. It took me 3 hours to figure out what I was looking at. Three hours later I figured out how to define relationships in FileMaker Pro. This in turn proved to be the catalyst for developing the database. Along the way, I learned some more cool FileMaker tricks and I am excited that this database will only become more powerful.
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