Quick Hits #2

Here are some things that have come across my mailbox that I wanted to share with all of you. Take a look and see how you might use these tools or take this ideas for your classroom.

Sister Act's School Challenge Initiative

The marketers of Sister Act have just launched Sister Act's School Challenge Initiative. They are asking teachers from grades 5 through 9 to share their class’ acts of kindness with us by submitting a photo of their class giving back to the community, along with the story behind it, for a chance to win a class field trip to Sister Act on Broadway! You can find all the details here.

Follow the link for more information on Sister Act.

I love the idea of having entire classes get behind good deeds and sharing them with the world.

Don't worry about curriculum for a couple of days and try to do something good as a class.


Acceptly

Acceptly is great tool for students trying to get into college. Their blog offers many great tips for preparing for college interviews and essays. Acceptly looks at the many different parts of a student's profile and gives them advice on how to improve different parts to increase their chances of getting into the school of their choice. As college admissions continues to get more competitive, it's nice to give a student help to improve their chances.

Classroom Makeover

Here is a fun contest where a class can make a music video and win a $75,000 Interactive Classroom Makeover!

Here are the contest rules for submissions.

• Be in the format of a music video that is either an original song or a parody of an original song that demonstrates or envisions the use of technology in the classroom such as:
  • Your vision of a classroom that is creatively and effectively using technology to enhance learning.
  • How your class uses technology every day to make the learning experience great.
  • How your class used technology to make a class project better.
  • How a class project could have been better with technology.
  • How you plan to use technology in a class project in the future.
• Feature the teacher submitting the video and at least one student. All students that are in the video must be in the grade or age category for which the video is being submitted.
• Include "eInstruction" at least once in the lyrics of the song and show the eInstruction^® logo.
• Show an image of one or more of the products below, or show them in use:

• End by directing viewers to the contest website www.2011classroommakeover.com to vote for the best video.
• Not exceed 2:30 minutes in length. Due to differences in rendering times for different video formats, entries that are one or two seconds longer than 2:30 may still be accepted.  Video must be in a format that can be uploaded to Shycast’s website, i.e. mpeg (recommended), mov (recommended), qt, avi, mp4, mpe, mpg, or wmv (least recommended) with a Maximum file size of 100 MB 

 The submission deadline is October 25th, but you might be able to put something together in time to with this great prize.