I heart Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales!

In doing work to complement the New York State Social Studies framework, I've recently discovered this series: hilarious and approved of by my history colleague. It's hard to believe someone could make the Donner Party funny, but it's a must read! I recommend checking out the Correction Baby and the youtube videos!! (If you like this, also check out the Horrible Histories!)

Weebly for easy web site creation

My colleagues have introduced me to Weebly: what a great platform for creating a web site! In the old days, we used to give participants a paper copy of a list of web resources. Then we moved to listing them on a power point. At a recent workshop, I tried giving out my diigo link of fluency resources, but some of the participants were a bit overwhelmed when they saw all of my tags. Some people still want paper copies or binders, but I really want to move away from that. With Weebly, we've been creating simple web site with lists of resources for a specific workshop. It takes no time to set up and there are lots of attractive options for backgrounds, buttons, etc. (much better graphics than what many school web sites have to offer.) A colleague of mine who is working with a group of students used it as a central place for students to go to for a project they were working on. Here's an example of one we used for a technology tools workshop.