Lesson One – Chevy Does Not Ride Dragons

Pictured above is a young man named Char’Von…better known as Chevy for short. Chevy is a student that was in my world history class, but earlier this week I was informed by him that he was transferring schools. While Chevy will admit himself that he can be a class distraction, he is definitely a great kid with a fantastic personality that will be missed in our 4th period class. Before he left he had one request and that was to make it on our weekly lessons learned, which of course I had no problem with. Fourth period will miss you Chevy.

Lesson Two – Tech Talk

This week I was introduced to a couple of very useful tech tools for classroom teachers and of course I felt it was necessary to include on our lessons learned for this week. The first is of which is a website that was introduced to me by my old friend Mr. C called Mark-Up. Mark-Up allows it’s users to write on a currently existing web page and save it as a screencast…all by just saving a application to your bookmarks. This is especially useful to users that enjoy the the writing features that come along with smartboard or interwrite technologies with a simple, free web tool.

The second is a web tool that I happened to stumble upon earlier this week. Many teachers, including myself, were greatly effected by the “Ning Disaster” that took place earlier this summer. After Ning moved to a pricing system for it’s services, it left my class videos homeless and lacking a host site. After trying various other sites, I finally came across DropShots. DropShots allow users to very simply upload and share video using a drop box that you download to your desktop. All you do is take your video file and click and drag it into your drop box and in about a minute your video is upload to DropShots profile. For me this finding this website was just short of being heaven sent and allows me to continue to use class video on my blog.

Lesson Three – Flex Your Charity Muscle

This week teachers all over Woodland Jr. High were busy flexing their muscles for a great cause. Each year Woodland has a fundraiser to support The United Way by leading a very unique fundraising campaign. Last year’s “Sexiest Legs Contest” featured teachers here at Woodland striking their sexiest pose and having the students vote whose legs were the “sexiest”. This year it is all about they muscle, students will vote who has the most Hanz and Franz like muscle pose. The trick to voting is that students have to pay a quarter each time they cast a vote and are allowed to vote an unlimited amount of times. All proceeds from this contest will benefit The United Way and is a great way to finally figure out, who has the best muscles in the school…I’m voting for the guy with the tattoos.

Mr. McClung