netTrekker Blog

Connect with Us

Connections are made when two or more people have a common thread that ties them together, and are often made at an event of some sort.

netTrekker Village has several events listed on the calendar, including both online and onsite events. At NECC this summer, we are proud to feature six special guest speakers who each will be presenting a 15- minute session in the netTrekker booth #931 on how they use netTrekker or on a special feature in netTrekker. Marci Campbell, Jill Allen and I (Danielle Abernethy) will also be presenting in the booth at NECC, so there are plenty of opportunities to make a connection and learn from other educators about how you can get more from your netTrekker subscription. We are also pleased to announce that our two scholarship winners, Ryan Evans and Teresa Diaz, along with Teryl Magee, Chad Lehman, Jill Hobson, and Tom Turner will also be presenting in our booth, sharing insights about netTrekker from an educator’s point of view.

Our Sunday Night event at NECC, which was announced on the Village, is already full. We announced this one through the Village Message System and were pleasantly surprised by the quick number of people that signed up. But don’t fret, we have more events planned! If you’re in the Ohio, Indiana or Kentucky areas, there’s a netTrekker Fest happening on August 13th that is definitely worth checking out. Check the calendar for details.

Other events are online, including free webinars. Currently we have free webinars for how to make the most of netTrekker Village and the new Customer Resoruces section of netTrekker.  More of these events will be announced, and through mid June. We will also have many other free webinars on how to use netTrekker’s My Portfolio, special guests sharing how they use netTrekker, and more!

It is important that you RSVP for any of the events you are interested in. The RSVP feature is found on the right side of the event.

So join us at an event, and connect with us!

Tags: connect, NECC, netTrekker, netTrekker Fest, netTrekker Village, village, webinar

Hidden Gems

There are so many gems in netTrekker, and with over 300,000 resources, it’s easy to get sidetracked by a few. A few of my favorites are actually found in the netTrekker Reference Section.

Aside from the typical encyclopedias, dictionaries, converters, and such, you’ll also find some valuable resources to help with the creativity side of things in the classroom. Classrooms that are creative are gems for our students. Those are the classrooms in which students can participate and come alive rather than simply sitting on the sideline.

Pics4Learning is absolutely one of my favorite places for images to use in storytelling. This resource is found in all three of the grade level tabs in the reference section, under the “Finders” near the bottom. What’s a digital story without images? And these images are fantastic for classroom use!

Also in the “Finders” section is another one of my favorite resources, FindSounds. I use to play a sound for my students during our creative writing segments. I would tell them to close their eyes and just listen. I would play that sound two or three times and then tell them to open their eyes and write me a story based on that sound. FindSounds is a perfect place to go and get these great sound bytes to use in digital storytelling and for other creative writing projects.

You can learn more about digital storytelling by reading an article from Forsyth County, GA in our latest newsletter or joining Jill Hobson in her presentation on Digital Storytelling: The Tools to Create the Magic at NECC 2009.

cheer This sound alone has so much potential! But I’d rather you think of it as netTrekker cheering on you!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Tags: digital storytelling, netTrekker, reference

New Teacher Tools

As part of our latest update, in addition to all the great science, math, language arts, and social studies resources, we’ve added 66 new items to our Teachers Tools area, including graphic organizers and template-creation tools. Our hope with these resources is to help you save time, especially as the school year sprints full-steam to a close. If you’re finding yourself with much to do, but with little time, see if you can find assistance via resources found via a drill-down search to Template Creation (Teacher Tools > Classroom Resources > Template Creation), as well as all the areas beneath it (e.g., Puzzle Makers, Worksheet Generators, Classroom Games, Graphic Organizers, etc.).

New from Freeology.com are collections of “printables”: Free Graphic Organizers offers .pdf files for Venn Diagrams, SQ3R, note taking, cause-and-effect organization, and timeline creation; Free Awards and Certificates provides a small collection of colorful award templates for “Good Attitude,” “Student of the Week,” and “Reader Award,” and Forms for Teachers has a calendar template, parent-contact form, homework pass, and other forms to help teachers keep track of classroom activity.

Also for this update, we’ve added the popular resource ClassTools.net, which provides a collection of templates that you can edit and interact with online, and even embed into your blog, wiki, or website. Fast and intuitive Flash animations guide you through the template-building process, and you’ll be creating arcade games, flashcards, Venn diagrams, puzzles, and charts in no time.

Tags: Graphic Organizers, Teacher Tools, Template Creation

nT’s Latest Update: Over 4,800 NEW Resources

netTrekker’s Content Editors are happy to announce that the latest update offers over 4,800 new resources, just in time to boost the classroom experience during these final weeks of the school year, which, as we all know, are often plagued by spring fever, thoughts of summer vacation, and senioritis. A vast majority of our new items reside in the Science and Social Studies areas. Take some time to check out some of the new offerings listed and described below.

Science

1,000 of our new resources are in Science, and 185 of these are new from NASA, bringing our grand total of NASA resources to over 1,200. Noteworthy NASA sites include:

• NASA Earth Observatory’s “Global Maps”, offering a visual exploration of our Earth’s Land Surface Temperature, Snow Cover, Total Rainfall, and Chlorophyll Concentrations;
• NASA’s Educator Guides, which cover topics like Astronaut Training, the Solar System, Spaceflight History, Mars’ Missions, and important Physics concepts and how they apply to Space Exploration.

In addition, more links from PreparatoryChemistry.com have been added, bringing our total from this excellent Science online-textbook site to 114 resources. We’ve also added links from the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’ Dinosphere, Carbon Footprint, Weather Wiz Kids, and the Lemelson Center’s Spark!Lab.

Social Studies

Nearly 2,000 of our new resources are in Social Studies, and notable items you’ll find include biographies of Civil Rights Activists, courtesy of the National Park Service’s International Civil Rights: Walk of Fame website. Individuals profiled through this site include President Jimmy Carter, Lena Horne, and Rev. Jesse Jackson. You can find a majority of these biographies by doing a search for “Civil Rights Activists” or through a drill-down search (Social Studies>U.S. History>The Upheaval of a Nation (1960 to 1975)>American Society>Social Revolution>Minorities>Civil Rights Movement>Civil Rights Activists).

You’ll also want to look at resources from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African History and Culture, which is scheduled to open in 2015. This site has a wealth of classroom resources, including an interactive timeline that “provides a sweep of the events and individuals that have shaped the African American experience from the earliest days of America until the present day.” Also from the Smithsonian are 29 new links from the National Postal Museum, featuring stamps commemorating famous people and events, bringing our total from this site to 96.

In addition to these, the Social Studies tree subject area continues to be filled with sites on the current financial crisis, pages from the new reorganized WhiteHouse.gov, and various resources from the Library of Congress, PBS, and CongressLink.org, which provides information about the U.S. Congress, how it works, its members, and the policies it produces.

Math & Language Arts

Math and Language Arts teachers, we’ve got your areas covered, too, with nearly 1,000 new resources, including many from the following sites:

• MathsIsFun.com: A collection of lesson plans, interactive worksheets and manipulatives, diagrams, and tips for elementary and middle-school math, covering arithmetic, geometry, data, algebra, measurement, and money skills;
• PearsonLongman.com: Lab Activities as part of a collection of “Sentence Resources for Writers”, which cover the writing process, parts of speech, fragments and run-ons, punctuation, good word choice, and other important grammar topics;
• BBC.co.uk:  From GCSE Bitesize’s English Literature section, a collection of study guides on context, plot, character, and theme, for important literary works such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Of Mice and Men, and Othello.

Tags: resources

Teacher Appreciation Week: “Thank You” from the team at netTrekker

Teachers today wear many hats as “teacher”, from classroom manager, safety specialist, assessment manager, curricular developer to integration specialist…..I could go on and on. Let’s face it; a teacher’s work is never done! As our way of saying “thank you”, the team at netTrekker wanted to highlight some of the great resources available to you; all reviewed by educator evaluators to ensure appropriateness for use in the classroom.

netTrekker has some fantastic links related to current events. You will find a curricular area of your home page dedicated to current events. Follow these instructions for yet another way to search: When you are in netTrekker click on the high school tab and enter “swine flu” in the keyword field. You will get two results. Click on the PBS site, “PBS Teachers: Medicine and Health Care”. Click on Teachers Resources in the blue heading bar.

On this next page click on the “NewsHour Extra, Lesson Plan”. Great lesson plan for a current event!

Teachers Hold the Key: Unlocking Abilities

My son, Joey, has a T-shirt that says, “If you can read this, thank a teacher”. Joey has a learning disability, or rather, disabilities. If I’ve conducted training for you, you’ve probably heard the story of Joey and Read Aloud. I recently demoed how to use Read Aloud with a special education teacher at a technology fair and we were discussing my son. The teacher quickly corrected me and said, “Joey doesn’t have a learning disability. He has the potential to learn, so he has learning possibilities. We just need to find the right tools that enhance each learner’s capabilities, and helps them reach their potential.”

I want to take that statement one step further. netTrekker is a cool tool, and we definitely have the tools to help you unlock students potentials. But it goes back to the shirt “If you can read this, thank a teacher.” If the students are using netTrekker in their school, or ANY other tool, it’s because the teachers have taken the time to learn the tool, they have taken the time to implement it in their classroom and integrate it into their lessons. They have taken the opportunity to truly unlock all the possibilities.

And for that, on behalf of all the different children that you teach, netTrekker thanks you.

I would love to hear stories about teachers who have helped you unlock your potential and you would love to thank. We’d also love to have you join us on the netTrekker Village to share how you unlock all of your students’ abilities. If you participate in the commenting or the blog, you’ll have a chance to get a small thank you from netTrekker!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Tags: abilities, disabilities, read aloud, Teacher Appreciation Day, Training