Jokes You Can Use:

What goes up and never comes down?

Your age

1 egg takes 5 minutes to boil. How long do 10 eggs take to boil?

The same 5 minutes.

How many times does a tailor have to cut 100 yards of cloth to get 100 equal pieces?

99 times. You don’t cut the last piece, it is already there

What side of the teacup is the handle on?

I really don't know the answer

Which is heavier? 1 pound of hay or 1pound of metal.

They both weigh a pound

Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers, Peter piper picked. If Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peckers, how many pickels did Peter piper picked? How many Ps are there in THAT?

None...T..H...A...T.....there are NO P's in the word THAT

What has 100 eyes and cannot see?

A potato

Two Indians standing on a bridge. One is the father of the other ones son. What is the relation between the two Indians?

Mother and Father

What has NO legs and CAN run?

Water

On Our Mind:

ISTE 2011 (#iste11)

The problems with skipping a show

Eileen Award

Gabe Walker & Michael Cohen

Advisory:

BBC - Witness

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/witness

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or [email protected])

In this podcast, I look at the ELA Reading Common core for grades 6-8 and see how they apply to science. This is the first in a three part series. It focuses in on Key Ideas and Details.

From the Twitterverse:

Don’t forget to join the conversation on MiddleTalk and Twitter at #midleved this Friday at 8:00 pm EST.

News:

University of the People

http://www.uopeople.org/

What's the Best Way to Grade Teachers?

By Kristina Rizga| Wed Jun. 29, 2011 11:35 AM PDT

http://motherjones.com/contributor/2011/06/grading-teachers-evaluations

First Digital Only Textbook:

http://mashable.com/2011/06/27/iste-textbooks-k-12/

The many health perks of good handwriting

http://www.healthkey.com/sc-health-0615-child-health-handwriti20110615,0,5764943.story

Resources:

ISTE Online:

Free PD for you. What happens at ISTE . . . goes social:

http://tumblr.com/xtl38xls1q http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/07/webcasts-and-keynotes-from-iste-2011.html

Socrative:

Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational games and exercises via smartphones and tablets. Our apps are super simple and take seconds to load and run. Teachers control the questions and games on their laptop, while students respond and interact through their smartphones/laptops. Run it as an app or on any web browser.

Currently free. No mention of what prices will be once it is out of beta.

http://www.socrative.com/

Weaving History

Create 'factlets' — places, people, events — and string them together into 'threads' at the click of a button.Automatically visualize the results temporally and spatially, search by any attribute, automatically import Wikipedia articles and much more …

Very bare bones currently. It’s reliance on Wikipedia could cause some problems for schools (but maybe not).

Potential to be exciting and useful for students and teachers.

http://www.weavinghistory.org/

Web Spotlight:

Ujam

You sing the lyrics, it figures out the tune. Even if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket, sing into the mic and it comes up with the music to go along with it. Anybody can become a musician with this app. Think of it as your answer to the kid who says, “You can’t make a song out of that!” Now you can. http://www.ujam.com/

ISTE 2011

Led by Scott Meech

References:

https://profiles.google.com/smeech.net/posts

http://www.linkedin.com/in/smeech

http://globaleducation.ning.com/profile/ScottMeech

Related:

Scott McLeod (http://bigthink.com/blogs/dangerously-irrelevant)

UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE)

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events: