I Wish My Teacher Knew...

Hi All,

I just heard about the on the radio and decided to follow up on it...

"One day, third-grade teacher Kyle Schwartz asked her students to fill in the blank in this sentence: "I wish my teacher knew______________."

"Some answers were funny, others were heartbreaking.    All were profoundly moving and enlightening. The results opened her eyes to the need for educators to understand the unique realities their students face in order to create an open, safe, and supportive classroom environment. When Kyle shared her experience online, teachers around the globe began sharing their own contributions to #IWishMyTeacherKnew."

There is an image gallery on the I Wish My Teacher Knew website! 

Here are a few news articles about the site.
CBS News
New York Times 
Washington Post 
Scary Mommy


Enjoy the links and the comments.

Regards,
Stu

National Gallery of Art - Kids Section

Hi All,

Betcha you didn't know that the National Gallery of Art (NGA hereafter) has a section just for kids!  Well, it does...This next link comes from TechLearning.com and is dated March 10, 2015 so it is a current article.

This is the gateway to the NGA site Kids Art Zone - what a fancy site.  And btw, the site is formally known as the NGAkids Art Zone - so there!  Note also that the NGAKids Interactives sections requires Adobe Shockwave Player - which can be downloaded from this link.

Once on the site kids can click on links for Sea-Saws (craete seascapes or abstract compositions), Brushster (brushes, palettes and specials effects let kids make abstract paintings) or Faces & Places (students can create animated portrais and landscape paintings) and many, many more. (Examples of the many more include  jungles, still lifes, Dutch Houses, Collage Machine, Flow, Paintbox, Swatchbox, Wallovers, 3-D Twirlers, Mobiles and Pixelfaces....)

Further down on the page are links for Learning Resources, Children's Guides and Family Programs (if you are in the Washington, DC area!).

So there you have it - a world renowned museum that has made its resources available to kids and children - in the hopes of fostering the love of learning (with an artistic twist).

Regards - and enjoy the site!

Stu

Hi All,

School and schooling is important - for kids - obviously.  Heck, without schools kids wouldn't be growing up with the skills they need to become productive, vital adults and human beings.  Imagine a world where there were no schools or colleges?  Yup - it would pretty much be chaos and not a good world to live in!

Anyway, I just found a website where users can find and share information about schools - the site is called Great!Schools.org and is easy to navigate and search.

Upon visiting the site, users can 'Find a School', 'Review Your School', and 'Discover'.  A bit further down on the page is a link to Great!Kids Milestones - which has lots of videos about the various milestones that kids should be reaching at various ages'. Note that users can select milestones by grade - which go up to 5th grade.


Users can enter a city name, zip code, address or school name when visiting the sites homepage.  Upon entering the information users come to a new page which explains what grades the school covers, whether or not the school is public or private, the location of the school, contact information and the number of students that are enrolled in the school.

Further down on the page are links for an Overview of the school, Reviews of the school, Quality of the school and Details of the school.

Users of Great!Schools.org can also sign in using Facebook or create an account with Great!Schools if they so choose.  Finally, users can get Great!Schools best articles, worksheet, and more delivered weekly to your inbox by clicking on this link!

In a future blog post, I am going to introduce another school-education related website: the New York State Report Cards section of the  New York State Department of Education website!  Its a very timely, information and well organized website run by the NYS Department of Education!

Enjoy Great!Schools.org and stay tuned for the next blog post about the NYS Report Cards!

Regards,

Stu