The Edublog Awards - My Nomination - Vote for Larry

For the tenth year in a row Edublogs is hosting their annual celebration of teachers and school leaders. The Edublogs Awards nomination process is now open. If you're not familiar with the awards they are designed to recognize the work of bloggers in education. Anyone can submit nominations and anyone can vote. I've been fortunate to have been supported by many of you over the last five years and have been the recipient of five "Best Resource Sharing Blog" awards. This year Larry Ferlazzo nominated me again, thank you Larry.

My nomination for the 2013 Edublogs Award for Best Ed Tech / Best Resource Sharing Blog goes to Larry Ferlazzo. He deserves it more than anyone else. He's been blogging far longer than any of the now more popular resource sharing blogs. His lists are free from the SEO-grabbing headlines like "ten awesome sites every teacher must see." Larry's content is always original and he always cites those who help him create his content. Larry's blog is the one that I go to and refer people to when I can't find something in my archives. Larry always has great lists for holidays (American and international), world events, and just about anything related to education. In short, this year I want you to VOTE FOR LARRY!

Math@Work - Discover Math Where You Might Not Expect It

Math@Work is a new video series from Scholastic. The seven part series features Project Runway's Tim Gunn showing students how math is used in fashion design. The

The first episode is embedded below.



Applications for Education
Even if your students don't have any interest in fashion design, showing them a clip or two from this series could be good way to get them to start thinking about how mathematics appears in career fields that they might not expect. Challenge your students to find other careers that incorporate mathematics even though it might not be obvious. For example, ask your students to investigate how mathematics is used in the packaging and shipping industry (I never thought about that until I spent 6+ years working for FedEx).

Paleontology 101 - Putting Together a Dinosaur Skeleton

Untamed Science and Pearson OLE recently published an extensive blog post about how dinosaurs are discovered and named. The full post includes links to free lesson plans about dinosaurs. The lesson plans are suitable to use with elementary school and middle school students.

The part of the Untamed Science and Pearson OLE dinosaur post that I found most interesting is the following video about how dinosaur fossils are un-earthed and examined. It's not at all like we see in movies.

Practical Ed Tech Webinar - Blogging for Teachers and School Leaders

Over the last five years I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to facilitate many workshops on creating and using blogs in school. And through the course of using blogs with my own students as well as writing more than 8,000 blog posts for Free Technology for Teachers, I’ve learned a lot about blogging. Now I’m sharing that knowledge through a three week Practical Ed Tech webinar series titled Blogging for Teachers and School Leaders.

Blogging for Teachers and School Leaders is a three week webinar series during which teachers and school administrators will learn the how to choose the best blogging platform for their situations, how to set-up a blog for classroom and school-wide use, and learn about strategies on how to manage blogs in classroom and school-wide settings. Participants will also learn how to avoid the mistakes that often lead to blogging endeavors being abandoned. The next series will meet on December 2nd, 9th, and 16th from 4pm-5pm Eastern Time. All sessions are recorded for participants to watch as many times as they like.
Click here to register today!

Who is this webinar series for? Teachers, school administrators, media specialists, and technology integrators who:

• Have never created blogs... or…
• Have have tried blogging but didn’t get the results they hoped for...or…
• Are planning to lead PD sessions about blogging and want to learn how to structure their trainings as well as access hand-outs they can use in their own training sessions.

Cost:

• This webinar series costs $87 per seat. (There is a $15 processing fee for registering with a purchase order. That fee is waived for those who register and pay online).
• Click here to register today!

Participants receive:

• Three hours of live instruction with Q&A opportunities.
• Access to recordings of each session (recordings can be downloaded for unlimited personal use).
• Digital hand-outs to download and re-use for personal use as well as re-use within their school districts.
• A dedicated discussion forum to access throughout the three week course.
• Certificate of completion.

Course Dates: The live webinar sessions will be held at 4pm ET on December 2nd, 9th, and 16th, 2013

Click here to register today!

About the cost and my decision to advertise it on my blog:
Sometimes when I advertise one of these webinars I get messages from people who are upset that I am advertising it here and or that I am charging for it. I understand why some people feel that way. I thought long and hard about how to offer this series. In fact, I thought about it and talked about it with trusted advisors for a year before offering the first webinar series last December. The purpose of this blog and my goal for years has always been to help people use free technology in their classrooms. The tools and strategies featured in my webinars are free to use. However, my time for teaching isn't free. Likewise, I pay licensing fees to GoToTraining and to Wistia for hosting all of the media content of the courses.