A Digital Christmas Gift to You: Nintendo8.com and 8Bit Christmas Music

Picture from Wikimedia Commons

Nintendo8.com is an old school gamer's dream, it hosts emulations of some of the best early console games of my generation including the Sega Master System, the original 8-bit Nintendo, and even some Commodore 64 games. If you have never experienced these early games, I would suggest you take a look and appreciate the evolution of gaming. This will make you appreciate your now generation consoles!

Here is a link to the top games played on the site. This is a good place to start your adventures!

As an added bonus here is the link to the 8Bit Christmas music all you OG's (Old Gamers) have to have for Christmas. You can listen to the songs or download them and play them on your MP3 player.

A special thanks goes to Dusty our WebMaster for showing me the game site. Thanks!

Build Your Own Snowman from Yahoo

Here is a fun little site that lets you build your own snowman. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of different choices you can make with the snowman and the ways they have for you to share your creation are extremely limited. To save your picture you will have to do a screen capture!

My Recomendations for the Edublog Awards 2009

Here are my votes for this year's Edublog Awards. While I realize I am not influential enough to lead any of these suggestions to a victory, I hope my explanations for why I chose these will be appreciated.

If you would like to vote for any or all of these, simply click on the badge and it will take you to the appropriate site.

Best individual blog Learning Is Messy
This blog is one of my favorite blogs to read. The reason I enjoy it so much is because the author, Brian Crosby, shares his successes and failures from his classroom. I love being able to look into his thoughts and see what he sees.

Best new blog East Dragon Den
I chose this blog for the Best New Blog because of the amazing experimentation that is taking place here. Mr. Moore and Mrs. Vander Velde have incorporated back channeling throughout their curriculum. If I were still a regular ed teacher I would "borrow" their great ideas regularly.

Best class blog Mr. McClung's World
Yes, this blog has been nominated for this award, but I chose Mr. McClung's World as my choice for best class blog. He is consistently blogging about what his class is doing and is incorporating those posts in his daily work with his students. An amazing example of what class blogs should look like.

Best student blog Tiffany
Tiffany is a student at the Shanghai American School in China. Her blog posts are top notch. When many students would write as little as possible, Tiffany does much, much more. This student blog should be used as an example of what we should expect out of our students.

Most influential blog post This, This, That
This post started what became a very important part of the education of two different schools. It started a series of events that connected Jabiz Raisdana, Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class at University of South Alabama, and my class. To completely understand what happened, I suggest you read these two posts: Singing Hearts, and Kai and Room 10

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion #edchat
Edchat allows me to vent about what is happening in education today.

Digital Media Reflections

Here is the link to the spreadsheet with your answers.

Make Your Own Winter JibJab

JibJab is a fun site where you can take pictures and insert them into movies. I have picked two movies you can use Elf Snowball Fight and ElfYourself. There are many JibJabs you can make, but most of them require you to purchase a membership.

Here is the link to our eighth grade picture set on Flickr. You will have to download pictures and then upload them to create your movie. Just click on the the pictures you want to download. Right click on the picture and save as: name of person to your desktop. Then you will have them to upload.

When you have created your JibJab, download the video and upload it to the video section of the 8th Grade Ning. Don't forget to log in first.

Bomomo: Create a Visual Masterpiece

There really is no way to explain the beauty and simplicity of this creative art site. I would suggest you go and check it out immediately. If this doesn't make you happy, you need to get a head check! Here is the link to Bomomo.

I found a link to this site and several others I will be sharing at East Dragon Den, which has been nominated for Best Class Blog in the Edublog awards.

Snow Ball Fight

Justin's Part Time Job

Here is what Justin does on his day off. I was as surprised as you!

Create A Graph: Explore and Learn

Create a Graph is a wonderful tool for creating graphs (especially if your students don't know how to create spreadsheets). You can use the program to create bar, line, pie, and other types of graphs and you can print them or save them as a pdf or jpeg.

I want you to explore the site. Find three neat things you can share with the class. Create a graph using made up data and then save them to the desktop of your computer as a jpeg. Then upload the picture to the class Ning.

This is the site you will be using to graph your data for your science fair project (unless you want to use a spreadsheet.)

Cool Site: Grammar Ninja

Grammar Ninja is a grammar game where you identify parts of speech by throwing shurikens.

There are three difficulty levels in the game. It tests your ability to find adjectives, adverbs, nouns, verbs, conjunctions, articles and more. This is a pretty fun way to drill yourself over the parts of speech!

My Nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards

Here are my nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards:

Best individual blog Learning Is Messy
Best new blog East Dragon Den
Best class blog Mr. McClung's World
Best student blog Tiffany
Most influential blog post This, This, That
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion #edchat
Best educational use of video / visual Little Voices, Little Scholars

I want to encourage you to nominate your favorites as well. While not everyone can win, being nominated is an honor. It is a small thing that can make someone else very happy!

Here is a link to my nominating post from last year.

MAP Rewards Assembly, November 24

Noel Lady Tigers vs. White Rock Lady Roosters

Here is the link to tonight's program. If you right click and open in a new tab you can view it without losing the stream.

Science Fair Ideas

Below are some science fair project sites. While these are not inclusive, you can still use them to get some ideas. When you have picked out your project make sure you fill out the form below. You will not be allowed to duplicate other ideas so act fast or you may not get to do the project you want.

All Science Fair Projects

Science Buddies

Science Bob

Science Club

Science Fair Central

Check out the spreadsheet to make sure your idea hasn't already been taken.

BeFunky: Keyboarding App of the Week

BeFunky.com is a picture editor that allows you to put "filters" on your picture. It is a pretty basic editing site for your pictures. Go to the site, upload your picture and try out the different filters. When you have decided on a picture or two, click save and choose download to the desktop. Then you will upload the picture to the class Ning.

You Are the Historian: Investigating the First Thanksgiving from Plimoth.org

Plimoth.org is an excellent website filled with great information about the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth Massachusetts. Since we are a week away from celebrating Thanksgiving in the United States I thought this would be a good time to share the site. One part of the site I would like to share is the You Are a Historian investigation. Here you can learn about both the pilgrim and the Wampanoag.

I would suggest you download the web based program to use in class or at home. I am sure that this site will be extremely hard to access for the next week. You can click here to download it. After you unzip it (double click on it) drag out the folder onto your desktop. Go into the folder and open up the webpage that says Start_Here. The page will open up in your default web browser and it will run off your computer. No need to install or to fight slow internet access!

Year Two Blog Wants You to Comment!

Mr. Sloan from Year Two Blog would like some comments quickly! I made a mistake and forgot to add him to my list for Comments4Kids Wednesday. Please help me fix my mistake and leave a comment on one of the posts!

Comments4Kids for November 18

Our first stop today is Sarah's Blog, the Digital Media student of the week. You can check out the cool things she has made in class. (Make sure you watch the Battle of the politicians!!!!)

Next is the Lytton Street Jump Jammers from New Zealand. Check out their creative dancing. and leave a comment. This is like a dancing version of the PS22 blog from two weeks ago!

Mrs. Blystone's 3rd Grade Blog has a daily recorder that explains what happened in school every day. This is a great idea for a blog! Pick a post and leave a comment.

Mrs. Goerend's Students blog has contributed some descriptive essays. Their assignment was:

Students will be posting their descriptive essays on the blog soon. The goal of this assignment was to use word choice that "spices up" their writing and makes you understand the place, thing, or person they're describing with all five senses. Are you able to paint a picture in your mind of what they've described?

Read a few of the stories and leave a comment or two.

On the M9 Daily Diary is a post about a product a couple students created to sell at their school fair. Apparently it is not unusual for students to create and sell products in New Zealand! Leave a comment and tell answer the questions they have asked about the product.

The Ball

This is a quick animation I did to mirror the flip-book my students created yesterday. Since we have been looking at animations I decided they need to make both hand drawn and digital animations. To create the animation we are using Paint on the Windows machine and Tux Paint on the Linux machines. We then insert the individual pictures into Windows Movie Maker to create the "movie". I am not sure what program we will use with our Linux machines. If you have a recommendation it would be much appreciated. I will try to create a how-to video for what we are doing.

Noel Lady Tigers Versus Southwest City Lady Indians

5-6 Game

7-8 Game

What to Learn How to Animate? Try Cartoonster

Cartoonster is a site that teaches you how to animate. It isn't another play with our animations site, it actually shows you how to create your own animations. It is just the place for you to learn how to draw (on paper or using software) your own animations.

Your first assignment is to create a flip book of a bouncing ball. After you read through the section explaining how to do it, get it done!

Colonial Williamsburg Kid's Zone

Colonial Williamsburg is an incredible living history project. Here is a link to the history of present day Williamsburg. This city holds an incredibly important space in our country's history. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and James Madison spent considerable amounts of time there.
The Kids Zone has a lot of games and activities related to the city and the Colonial Revolution time period. I want you to explore the site and be prepared tomorrow to talk about which of these games and activities would be most beneficial to do in a history class that was teaching this time period. Which ones give you a "feel" for the time period? Which ones could be skipped?

Samorost 1: A Point and Click, Critical Thinking, Trial and Error Adventure Game!

Samorost 1 is a crazy cool game. The idea is to get the character, Samorost, to explore the space ship that he finds flying towards his planet. To play this game you simply point and click until you find out how to progress. You will have to collaborate on this one, don't be selfish we you figure out the puzzles!

Now for your assignment: I want you to write Samorost's story. Why is scared when he sees the spaceship? Why does he decide to explore it? What does he find along the way? You will need to take notes as you travel with Samorost. You will be posting Samorost's story to the class ning.

I will leave you this picture as a clue for the first puzzle. Can you see what has changed?

Missouri School Improvement Program Advance Questionnaire

Please note there are different links for students and staff!

Here are the links to the questionnaire:

Staff Site

Student Site

Make sure you put in the access code correctly.

BigHugeLabs: Make a Movie Poster

Today we are going to look at BigHugeLabs. Make sure you get your user name and password for me. I want you to make a movie poster for me first. After you create it you need to post it on your blog and the ning. Make sure it is school appropriate.

After you have finished, you can check out some of the other

Voki: Keyboarding App of the Week

Get a Voki now!



Today you are going to create your own talking avatar at voki dot com. Choose a character, check out the accessories and then type in the text. Don't forget you can change your background as well.

Post your Voki to the class Ning. To do that you will need to log in and go to the blog button and create a new post. If you need help ask around.

Live Stream of Noel Lady Tigers Playing Anderson Lady Redbirds

Comments4Kids for November 4

Today you have an unusual opportunity. Public School 22 (PS22) has a very famous student chorus that performs regularly at big events and has been recognized by many famous musicians for their work. The blog has an incredible amount of content showing the students preparing and performing. I want you to spend time exploring the blog and checking out all the content. Then I want you to leave a comment.

Next we are going to Mr. McClung's class blog to leave him another message. This post is on how his students have showed him how much they care.

Next we will be visiting New Zealand again and commenting on two blogs from one school, the Yendarra school. The first post will be by the Yendarra School Pukekos. They have just started blogging and will love your encouragement. The second post has two parts. The first part is to read this post on teachers from the school visiting Samoa. Make sure you read my comment. The second part is to read my blog post on the reply I received from Miss Venturi. Incidentally, this is where I first found out about the Pukekos! I want you to leave a comment on their blog. Feel free to ask questions.

PS22 Chorus Blog
Mr. McClung's Blog
Yendarra School Pukekos
Yendara School Kiwis

Yendarra School Kiwis

While doing my usual snooping around for new blogs to read and comment on I came upon this wonderful site, the Yendarra School Kiwis.

What caught my eye was a post on several of the teachers of the school visiting Samoa to learn about the island. I also learned from the post that a tsunami had recently hit Samoa.

I left a comment asking about the Samoan schools compared to the schools in New Zealand. Soon I received this email.

Hi Mr C

Just thought I would answer the questions you left on our blog about Samoa. First of all, thank you for leaving the comment. My name is Vanessa Venturi and I am the classroom teacher here in Room 14. Yendarra School is in Auckland, New Zealand. The ethnic make up of our school is 70% Pacific Island (mainly Samoan, but also Tongan, Cook Island and Niuean) and 30% Maori (native New Zealanders). Earlier in the year, some of the staff went to Samoa to gain a better understanding of where our Samoan children come from and to better enable ourselves to transition children who move from Samoa to Auckland. What an eye opener! The schools there have little in the way of resources, no equipment, very little paper, some classes had no desks or chairs. Some of the classrooms had up to 45 students and some teachers taught two classes at the same time, just running between two rooms. Because of the heat, the classrooms have no windows. Because of the huge number of children in each class, we didn't see any group work happening. The teachers teach in both Samoan and English. It was amazing to see what they can do with so little, the children were incredibly happy and very proud of their schools. The Samoan people are incredibly musically talented and their performances were stunning.

Schools in Auckland are very similar to yours, I would imagine. We have lots in the way of resources, computers, books, internet access, interactive whiteboards, playgrounds etc. We work very hard to be at the cutting edge of education in New Zealand. Visiting Samoa has really helped me to understand where my students and their families come from and relate to them more effectively. We were very lucky that we didn't lose any of our students in the tsunami because we were on school holiday when it hit and many students were at home in Samoa. Families at our school lost a lot of extended family members, auntys, uncles and cousins etc. The other question you had was about karakia, karakia is the Maori word for prayer. At the end of each day, one child stands up and leads the class in a karakia. This isn't something we have to do, but one of my boys asked at the beginning of the year if we could do it and its become a really special way to end each day together.

Thanks so much for commenting on our blog, I hope I've answered your questions for you. Please let me know if you have any others!

Have a great week :)
Vanessa Venturi and Room 14

What a wonderful surprise for me. I suspect most people think that most of the learning in school (and especially in my lab) happens with the students. This is obviously not the case today! Again, our ability to communicate and learn from people all over the world is amazing. Thank you Vanessa!

GoAnimate Animation Creation Software

GoAnimate is an animation site. After you sign up you will need to verify your email address. Go to your Gmail account and click on the verification link, then sign in. You will need to click on the create button on the top of the page.

First you need to read this FAQ (frequently asked questions) , it will explain go points and acceptable use for the site. Of course you won't be creating any offensive animations! I want you to explore the Animation Studio first to check out all the options you have. You will also need to see how you can embed your animation on your blog.

Here is a quick demo I created using my favorite fighting character Chun-Li.

GoAnimate.com: Demo by wmchamberlain

Fear Factor 2009

On Friday we held our annual Fear Factor challenge for the fifth grade. I started this six years when I found I had some extra beef stick and cheese packages that I found to be pretty nasty. As I am wont to do, I solved my problem by having students compete in a contest. It originally was something I did in my homeroom, but the response was so good I expanded to the whole fifth grade the next year.

Fear Factor consists of three "tasks" which students have to complete. First we draw three student names from each classroom. (Students are asked first if they would like to participate.) Then I assign them the first task. This year it was a repeat of a task introduced four years ago, wearing their shoes around the neck. Some shoes smell so bad that it can be a difficult task to complete.

The second task this year was a variation on something we did last year. During the junior high dance the students had to sing karaoke to Michael Jackson's song "Thriller".

Students love to watch the final task, the eating and/or drinking of whatever nasty food we come up with.

Finally at the end of the day the remaining contestants had to eat something nasty, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean. These particular beans came in such wonderful flavors as vomit, soap, and booger.
At the end of the bean eating, the students had to drink buttermilk. Treyton won the competition and was crowned this years Fear Factor Champion!

Pictures of Halloween at Noel School

Here are some pictures of costumes worn by faculty and students today.

A Little Throwback from Last Year: Talent Show

Way to go Jeffrey!

Halloween Fun

Here are a couple sites you might enjoying visiting for Halloween. The first site is online pumpkin carving. What kind of face does your pumpkin need? The second site is Zap-A-Ghost. How many ghosts can you click on? The last site is Hidden Spirits. Can you lead a scientific investigation to debunk a haunted hotel?

Online Pumpkin Carving

Zap-a-Ghost

Hidden Spirits

Comments4Kids for October 28

Natosha's post Every 15 Minutes Assignment about the effects of drinking.

All Things Preteen Six Word Memoirs Six words to sum up your life. Leave a six word summary of your life in the comments.

Tread Lightly Read the posts, choose a post to leave a comment on.

TiffanyD's Whimsical Watercolor leave a nice comment on one of my favorite SAS student's blog.

Tiffany's Blog Science Another one of my favorite SAS students.

Little Voices, Little Scholars Our Fairy Tales Listen to the Voicethread and leave a comment.

Technology and Second Graders Oreo Stacking What do you think of this experiment?

NO HOMEWORK!

I am on a quest! Mr. Miller has informed his class that class homework ends when his cluster map hits 2500 visits. Since I am a firm believer in 1) Too much homework is way bad and 2) Helping out students with their projects, I decided to make a post. To help out these students simply click here, here, here, or here.

Mr. Miller's class would especially like to have visits from Africa because they are difficult to get. So if you have any friends in Africa, have them click on the link as well.

Red Ribbon Week Drug Awareness

Here are some things we are doing for Red Ribbon Week. What activities does your school do?

Noel History Club Trip to Eureka Springs

The History Club took a trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas last Friday. On the itinerary was the ES&NA Railroad. We ate lunch in the dining car and enjoyed a ride on the tracks. Here is a picture of the Lett's waiting for their lunch.

Here is a video of the train pulling in to the station.Although I don't know much about trains, I grew up in Noel which has a train run through the middle of town. Although the train can be a nuisance, it is still really fun to ride in one just like my mother used to do when she would ride from Noel to Kansas City to visit her grandmother.

After the train ride we wandered through the shops in town and enjoyed looking at some of the artwork and architecture of the city.

At night we visited the Crescent Hotel and took the ghost tour. I had taken the tour before so I spent the time watching the students (and some teachers) run around the hallways trying to spook up some ghosts.

Since Eureka Springs is only an hour and a half away from town, it seems a natural place to spend time learning about history and culture. I will definitely make sure to visit more often in the future.

#Comments4Kids Wednesday 10/21

Today we will be visiting some interesting new sites:

Room 25 Online's post on Substitute Teachers is great. Here some of the students left reflections of a substitute's visit to their classroom. Leave a comment giving an experience you had with a sub. Be honest, but don't use the substitute's name if it is a negative comment.

On the blog Fellow Shadow Spider Incy Wincy Theatre there is a video to watch. "This project aims to introduce traditional "Turkish Shadow Puppet Theatre" and teach traditional nursery rhyme "Incy Wincy Spider" to five and six-year-old students at kindergarten." This is a very interesting way to create a movie. You might want to keep this in mind if you are planning on creating a movie for our movie festival this Spring! As usual, leave a positive comment.

You may want to check out At the Fireplace's Do You Know Russian Folk Tales? as well. They used puppets to make a movie. Another good idea for you future movie makers!

On Valley Wood Tech's Welcome to Technology 2.0 post, leave a comment on about one of your favorite on line tools such as a blog, photo site, or even Google documents.

Moturoa's Blog has lots of great posts. Pick one and leave a comment.

Mr. Lamshed's boys finally performed their Haka. Check out how big the stage is and leave a comment.

After you have finished commenting on the posts, go to the class Ning and write a post of your own. Tell us which post you liked best and why. Include a link to that post.

Fourth Grade PowerPoints

Fourth grade students were introduced to creating PowerPoint presentations last Friday. They learned how to log in to our network with their own user name and password. They learned how to make new slides in the program and how to save their PowerPoint's to their desktop.
Mr. Howerton, the social studies teacher in fourth grade, had the students create the PowerPoint on the three branches of government.

More Pictures from the Chili Pepper CC Festival

Graph the Probability Coin Toss

Read the instructions carefully.

1) Go to Ken White's Coin Flipping Page and flip a penny 100 times. Record the number of heads and number of tails on a paper.

2) Flip the dime 100 times. Record the number of heads and number of tails on a paper.

3) Go to Create a Graph. Create an appropriate graph showing the number of heads and number of tails for both the penny and the dime.

4) Leave a comment on this post explaining how many heads and how many tails for each coin.

5) When the graph is finished email it to me at wmchamberlain@gmail.com

6) Here are more links to explore when finished.
A> National Library of Virtual Manipulatives Data Analysis and Probability.
B> Interactive: Activities on probability.
C> JC Schools Probability Links

4) Leave a comment

Yessy Was Red Hot at the Chile Pepper Festival

Yessy Dominguez medalled at the Chile Pepper Cross Country Festival on Saturday. She came in 15! This was the first time a McDonald County junior high student has medalled there. Also impressive was the girls team sixth place finish! Here is Yessy talking about running.

Also impressive was the junior high boys team finish of ninth!