2012 Best of the Web Presentation Notes


Technology and RTI Conference Notes: January 2012by Linda Kapala

Session 1  Best of the Web for Education  Presentor:  George Sabato, Retired Teacher
This presentation was about a website with links to the best internet sites supporting social studies, language arts, math, science, the arts, research, homework help, news, museums, GATE, ELL, translation software and technology for teachers, students and parents.  This portal is recommended by the California Council for the Social Studies.  Handout was provided and during the hour, Mr. Sabato, drew attention to his favorites in many of the sections.
One of the items he drew attention to during his presentation is the lack of geographic knowledge students in America have.  He told us about Pearson publishing who has put $23 millino into a geography program that connects children around the world.  It is called:  myWorld Geography 
http://myworldpearson.com/experience.php    for further information.
With respect to geography Mr. Sabato feels you should use geography for every subject as our students are so undereducated in this area.  He hopes teachers will encourage Geocacheing to bring geography alive to their students in a local context which now extends to sites world wide.
Sites he highlighted during his presentation included:
            Webs.com – friendly template driven site where you can build a web site
            Slideshare.net (Free) – place where you can post your powerpoints and parents or students can reference these later.  This offers the ability to upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDF Portfolio
            In World History Mega sites, his favorites are:   Mr. Donn’s Ancient History, Mr. Dowling’s Ancient History (good quick reviews)
            When he spoke about the Wikipedia site he mentioned that there is Wikipedia site for Schools as opposed to regular Wikpedia.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School

            Likes the site BookRags  study guides for over 4,000 books and ideas for both students and teachers.  www.bookrags.com


Linda Kapala

Career/Media Specialist 
Foothill Technology High School
100 Day Rd.
Ventura, CA 93003
Linda.Kapala@venturausd.org
289-0023 x 1008