Alan November

Today's inservice was spent reviewing what we read this summer (our TC Nation book "Who Owns the Learning" by Alan November) with teachers in The Colony Cluster.  The afternoon was spent listening to two and a half hour speaker:  Alan November.  So it was definitely a November day!

Key notes I took away from the learning today:

A.  IMPORTANCE
Two important items this year:
1.  Finding the right information at the right time
2.  How to get the right people

B.  GOOGLE OPERATORS
What are Google operators?  They help narrow your search in google to the real items that you are actually trying to find.  Amazing!!

Examples:
If you type in site:gov after a topic you want to find, it brings up government sites that will give you information on it.  Ex:  economics site:gov

If you type in site:ac, google will search for sites associated with colleges overseas.

If you want information on a certain country or want to find out certain sites from that country, first look up country codes in google.  Then use the abbreviation for that country like this:  site:uk  (will bring up information from United Kingdom
Or like this:  site:uk flowers

C. JAMIE MCKENZIE
Questions?!  This is an awesome site for helping kids ask different kinds of questions.
http://fno.org/nov97/toolkit.html

D.WOLFRAMALPHA
Oohhh... wow.  What can't this site do?

E.  POLL EVERYWHERE
Great resource for having the class take a short poll about what you have been teaching.  Great way to start or end class!

F. POWERPOINTS
Don't spend time making your own!  Google it this way:
filetype:ppt (then search what you want the powerpoint to be about)
For example: Filetype:ppt The Civil War

G. TASA
iTunes store
find iTunes U
k-12
TASA
Lots of tutorials!

Check them out!