Text to Voice Lesson

I tried a matching sound lesson with my class this week. It went really well. I gave a problem like 3x + 5 -6x - 4. I made eight sounds altogether of which there were 4 matching pairs. For instance, one of the sounds was the word "coefficients". Another matching sound was the words "three and negative six". Remembering that they can't see these words. They have to hear them. I think they even have to visualize the numbers. This to me reaches a whole different set of students that are auditory learners in a visual classroom.
Structurally, I picked a student at random to come to the Smartboard and to pick two of the sounds. The student would play each sound twice and then return to their desk. I would then pick another student from the class at random. They would do the same thing. Eventually, the matching sounds would be discovered. A student would then be able to pick the pair and put them together. Success! Students were called up until all four matches were found. Give a try and let me know what you think.

I have a podcast on Smartboard Lesson Planning called Teaching with Smartboard. It is a site trying to help teachers with the integration of Smartboards into the classroom.

I last posted about a site called Hearwho.com. Since this post, the site has added a clip at the end of the MP3 file that advertises their product. This doesn't work out well in the classroom. I have found another site that I'm now using called vozme.com. It works great. Let's hope this site will continue to be free without the added advertisement.

Have a good week!

Cool Site

http://www.hearwho.com/
A colleague showed me this site and it is awesome. You just paste in some text to the site and it will change the text to a sound file in MP3 form.
You can change your text to a male or female voice (Mike or Crystal).
I see a variety of educational uses for this. Specifically for me, I can use MP3 sounds in SMARTBoard software.
I can't wait to make a lesson involving sounds with my Smartboard.

Brain Breaks

I think we all need a break from whatever we are doing at least every 25 minutes. This keeps us fresh and engaged. I know myself that I get antsy when I sit too long. I usually get up and take a walk, or find a couple minute distraction. In my classroom my students can't just get up and do that. I feel strongly that I need to create a brain break every 20-25 minutes.
I first heard about these breaks from Jean Blaydes Madigan. She has a lot of ideas about movement within the classroom. She came and did a workshop at our school and it was excellent. Since then, I have just heard of different ideas that I can use in my classroom. They have come from colleagues, speakers, or blogs. I want to hear about other peoples brain breaks so I created a website that we can do just that. It is called Brain Breaks. It is at http://brainbreaks.blogspot.com. Check it out and you can write a post as well.

"Do Hard Things" a book by Alex and Brett Harris

I have been reading an excellent book by Alex and Brett Harris called "Do Hard Things". The idea is that we have low expectations for teenagers and usually they fulfill them. However, I have been challenged in my own journey by this book to take a leap of faith and Do Hard Things. The section that I'm currently reading is "You can't get to success without risking failure". This is how we often are paralyzed by the fear of failure into doing NOTHING. I certainly can relate to that. The amazing thing about this book is that these guys are actually teenagers themselves. They are (were) 19 when they wrote the book. They are twins.

So get the book, and then Do Something Hard this Week!

Teacher Movies

I saw a couple of teacher movies this summer and it made me think of my favorite teacher Mr. Voorhees. He was a math teacher. He has retired recently. I have made contact with him this past year and it was a thrill. He was always demanding, funny, engaging, and supportive. He believed in me. I will never be able to thank him enough. It makes me realize that the teaching profession has a lot of power. Teachers have the power to change someones life. We should not take this lightly.
I have seen all of these movies and would recommend any one of them. I have not put them in any particular order.

Mr. Holland's Opus
Freedom Writers
Lean on Me
Stand and Deliver
October Sky
Akeelah and the Bee
Dead Poet's Society
To Sir, With Love
Finding Forrester
Tuesday's with Morrie (TV Movie)

Diigo

I just found out about http://www.diigo.com/ . It is very much like http://delicious.com/ in that it is an online bookmark system. However, diigo has the added benefit of being able to highlight something in the favorite site that you have saved. What a bonus. A further bonus is that it will simultaneously save your favorites at diigo and delicious.
Just yesterday, I created a new free diigo account and had all my Delicious sites exported then imported to diigo. It was about 10 minutes worth of work. Now I can use my diigo account, yet keep my Delicious account active.
Lucy Gray taught me this. Thanks.

Here are my two sites. Feel free to check them out.
http://www.diigo.com/user/dsladkey
http://delicious.com/inbox/dsladkey


Dave

Wordle.net

I found a cool site on a blog the other day. The blog is called Practical Theory by Chris Lehmann. Click here to get to it. It is called Wordle. It is at http://www.wordle.net/. It makes a cluster of words that you place into the site. You can change the colors and make a new layout if you want. I love the result. It is very easy to use. Here is a wordle I did recently regarding a 350 mile, 6 day bike trip that the Naperville Central Fellowship of Christian Athletes took. Click on it to see it better. If you want more information about the bike trip see http://www.redhawkfca.org/.

Let me know what you think,

Dave