Point A to Point B

Category: Content Area Focus

  • Middle Ages Project Rocks!

    Hi everyone! So my blog is an example of a website where the web address is not the same as the title of the site. It can sometimes be difficult to determine all the details from a website, but with a little detective work you can do it! From a website, you want to try…

  • If I had this in college…

    This year we have started using an awesome new online citation assistant called NoodleTools. With it, you can plug in the information about each source for a project, and get a properly formatted works cited list to print or download. All 7th and 8th graders have created their personal folders at NoodleTools, and are already…

  • Online Classroom “Comes of Age”

    For quite a few years now WITS (Williamsville Information Tracking System) has been growing in the amount of information it stores and provides. In the last year it has become the starting point for most teacher and student work. It acheived a milestone recently, I believe, in its ability to be the online virtual classroom…

  • Music Notation Software

    Mr. Marinaccio’s classes just started coming into the lab to notate their rhythmic speech compositions. We are using the free version of the notation program Finale, called Finale NotePad. You can download and use this program at home as well. To get the download, click here Happy composing!

  • Keyboarding

    There is a lot of talk right now about when keyboarding should be taught in school. Historically it has been done at the high school, but since computers and keyboards are ssuch an integral part of our daily lives, it appears that keyboarding instruction should come earlier. Research shows that early keyboarding classes will help…

  • makeworksheets.com

    Looking for a quick way to create worksheets? The Williamsville Teaher Center has purchased a district subscription to makeworksheets.com. With the site, you can create printable teacher worksheet makers, rubric makers, math worksheets, graphic organizers, language arts worksheets, puzzle makers, and teacher time savers. See me for the login info. The web address is www.makeworksheets.com

  • SMART Part 2

    I attended a SMART Master’s Training day here in Buffalo with a bunch of Williamsville people, inlcuding 4 Heim teachers who have SMARTBoards full-time in their classrooms. The day was AWESOME! I picked up lots of tips & tricks on using the boards. The mix of people was cool – there were 4 from Oregon…

  • Get SMART

    We had an AWESOME inservice today after school on SMARTBoards. Myself and the comptuer teacher from Mill, Judy Labiak, taught a very enthusiastic crowd of teachers. Many creative ideas were shared during the session – we are looking forward to next week’s class!

  • eThemes

    Looking for quality web resources for your classroom? I was introduced to another free online resource called eThemes. It is teacher-reviewed, kid-appropriate web content based around over 900 different themes, or topics. The site, and themes, are maintained by an outstanding program called eMINTS, based in Missouri. This is a site for teachers to go…

  • Face to Face Finally

    I got to meet face to face for the first time last night with lots of people from MarcoPolo whom I have known virtually for the last few years. The MarcoPolo partners did an overview of upcoming developments for the site, and wow, there are some neat things coming online soon. Xpeditions alone covered 7…