S I D N E Y C I T Y

S C H O O L S

SHS Library News

J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4 V O L U M E I I , I S S U E 5

S P E C I A L

P O I N T S O F

I N T E R E S T :

Educreations

GoalBook

PE.Links.4u

Lessonopoly

Vialogues

Phet Interactive

Simulations

Online CPR

Courses

New Year’s Resources

The New Year is a great time for setting goals, reflecting,

looking ahead, and making some resolutions! This web-

site of reviewed resources offers ideas to incorporate

New Year’s activities in the regular curriculum. Whether

you focus on a specific activity or simply share these for

enrichment outside of class, your students will find some

refreshing new ideas!

http://www.teachersfirst.com/holiday/newyear.cfm

BetterLesson

This is a website where you can find

lesson plans, classroom materials,

and instructional resources from high

performing teachers. You can browse

through thousands of documents,

presentations, lessons, units and

courses.

http://betterlesson.com/

P A G E 2

Lessonopoly

Hot Stuff: and other things!

Teach what you know, learn

what you don’t know! This

website allows you to create

and share amazing video

lessons with your iPad or

browser. You can create your

own videos or share videos

that others have created.

Goalbook empowers teachers

to adapt instruction using re-

search-based strategies. The

online toolkit of learning goals

and teaching strategies, along

with their best-in-class profes-

sional development, empowers

teachers to adapt instruction for

special populations.

The Silicon Valley Education Foundation and Gooru have partnered to host Les-

sonopoly content on the Gooru site. Gooru is a free search engine for learning that

makes it easy for teachers to discover educational content, organize it into learning

playlists, and teach and share it with students to study. Gooru indexes over ten mil-

lion online resources, making it easy to discover topic relevant and standards-

aligned content. Gooru lets you save your favorite resources into sharable playlists

that you can assign to your students. Gooru is a non-profit organization with the

mission to honor the human right to education.

Over 5,000 lesson plans from Lessonopoly can now be found on Gooru, includ-

ing the popular lesson plans on the:

Science of NFL Football,

Science of the Olympic Winter Games, and

SVEF's Stepping Up To Algebra!

We recognize that there are a number of websites with lesson plans and we want to

make it easier for you to find what you need for the classroom so that students have

a great learning experience! Lesson plans have been placed onto the Gooru Les-

sonopoly partner page and are also searchable via the main search engine.

http://lessonopoly.org/

S H S L I B R A R Y N E W S

“The best teachers are

those who show you

where to look, but don’t

tell you what to see.”

-Alexandra Trenfor

This website has a plethora

of resources regarding phys-

ical education, health, fit-

ness, nutrition, and athletics.

P A G E 3 V O L U M E I I , I S S U E 5

Vialogues

Phet Interactive Simulations

PhET provides fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena for free. To help students

visually comprehend concepts, PhET simulations animate what is invisible to the eye through the use of

graphics and intuitive controls such as click-and-drag manipulation, sliders and radio buttons. In order to fur-

ther encourage quantitative exploration, the simulations also offer measurement instruments including rulers,

stop-watches, voltmeters and thermometers. As the user manipulates these interactive tools, responses are im-

mediately animated thus effectively illustrating cause-and-effect relationships as well as multiple linked repre-

sentations (motion of the objects, graphs, number readouts, etc.)

To ensure educational effectiveness and usability, all of the simulations are extensively tested and evaluated.

These tests include student interviews in addition to actual utilization of the simulations in a variety of set-

tings, including lectures, group work, homework and lab work.

All PhET simulations are freely available from the PhET website and are easy to use and incorporate into the

classroom. They are written in Java and Flash, and can be run using a standard web browser as long as Flash

and Java are installed.

Online CPR Courses

This website allows you to take CPR, First Aid, and Blood Borne Pathogen Training online for a minimal

cost. The courses enable you to learn in your preferred learning modality whether it be reading, listening, or

watching. After you complete a course you are able to print your own certificate of completion.