Kay Lera's Page

Karla Karr from Botetourt County presented this well at VSTE 2009.

I think I will further explore EduDiigo and then share it with teachers...http://edudiigo.wikispaces.com/aboutdiigo
Check it out. It is Delicious on steroids!!!
*highlight specific sections of your bookmarked material
*make student groups (which exclude the general public
*create discussions
*allows students to collaborate when researching
...and more -I am a newbie… Continue

I am facilitating Effective Writing Instruction (LA 215.19) for the WHRO strand of courses. I am excited to do so as I am also beginning a 4th & 5th grade Writing Team, which will meet after school on Thursdays. This course and guiding the new Writing team will hopefully prove to be a terrific experience.

Why not join the course and have some fun discovering new ways to "beef" up writing instruction in your classroom (or school)? The course begins Jan 26th and ends on March 8th. You have th… Continue

I am considering using a blog service for my school's book reviews. I want it to have both text and podcasting capabilities. I have some services in mind. However, I thought I'd put the question out to my base to see if there is a service I haven't seen as of yet.... what's your favorite blog service and why?

I have decided to accept a position as the library media specialist for the Wenonah Elementary School community (http://waynesboro.va.schoolwebpages.com/education/school/school.php?sectionid=5&sc_id=1186489337). I am very excited about my "new" role. I put new in parenthesese because I feel much of my job will be similar to that of the ITRT. However, I will have the perk of not… Continue

OK.. A sixth grade science teacher shared with me an idea that made me slap my forehead and say, "Genius! Why didn't I think of that years ago!" Here's how to make your own document camera. Get a desk lamp with a flexible neck and a heavy base (or weight the base yourself), attach a web cam to the lamp, hook the webcam to your computer and presto ... you have a document camera. I thought if you got a USB extension cord, you could have even more flexibility as you might not always need the lamp f… Continue

OK. Here is a nifty perspective on creating interactive environments in the classroom. Johnny Chung Lee at Carnegie Mellon University has an amazing imagination! It appears he is able to use common objects to recreate expensive technology. For example, he has recreated interactive white board using a wii remote and a couple objects from Radio Shack. Check it out!
Visit http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/ and scroll down to "Low-Co… Continue

Have any of you, or your teachers, participated in the River City Project? (see http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/rivercityproject/index.html)
I saw on their website that it is being implemented in VA. I would really like to "speak" with someone who has participated in the program. It looks like a time commitment is involved and in this testing world, I have to make sure it suits the VA curricla. If you used it, were the students en… Continue

Hi to all,
Lucia Thomas and Laura Burdik, ITRTs for Fredrick County Schools, shared this awesome cyber-bullying video entitled, "Let's Fight It Together" found at http://www.digizen.org/cyberbullying/film.aspx . It highlights cyber-bullying from a teenager's perspective using powerful video production techniques. A must see! The ITRTs invited a police officer to speak about the legal implications of cyber-bullying. Language arts teache… Continue