Online Map Maker

Also, when I was comleting my International Agriculture Unit I came across a website that will color code different states according to a key that you make. I made one that showed what states produced what commodities.

http://monarch.tamu.edu/~maps2/us.htm

Enjoy!
Stacy

Commodities by state

When I did my unit on International Agriculture, Jeremy and I found a very helpful website. On the home page where each state is clickable. It pulls up information on the state like the top commodities, population, income, poverty rate, and other census statistics.

www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/

Stacy

USB chains

This is for the girls more than the guys.
I was searching for oprahs favorite things summer show and I found these usb chains. Attached is the link to the webpage to buy them. They are not very expensive and will take one usb port and make it multiple usb ports!!!]

iTunes-U coming soon

Apple is pairing up with universities from across the country to try to create a new iTunes, known as iTunes-U. This program will be a free educational posting service for educators. With this service instructors can upload videotaped or audio recorded lectures to iTunes and students can download them to their iPods or watch it at their computers. This way information is available to students 24/7.
The only real problem being looked at right now is attendance. The launch of this new product may decrease the amount of students attending classes in order to stay at home or watch it from their ipod screen.
I think it would be great to act as a type of carmen for highschools. Students who miss classes would be allowed access to try to catch up on missed work, etc.

E-go drive helps store information

This great little portable harddrive has just come out. Not only is its option of colors appealing, but so is it's cost! At around $200 the 3.5" E-go Storage can hold up to 1 ter-abyte of information!!!

"The eGo Portable is currently available in 160GB, 250GB and 320GB capacities, and in several different colors, including new camouflage and leather-wrapped models. The new eGo Desktop model houses a 1TB, 3.5-inch hard drive with USB 2.0 connectivity that holds up to 4,000,000 photos, over 18,500 hours of music or 1,500 hours of video.**"

Lindsey Regula

BUG helps connect teachers and students

This small device helps set up and run a virtual world for students and teachers to interact rhgouh. How neat would it be to interact with students and teachers across the country!!!

Lindsey Regula

Teaching conservation through Dr. Seuss!

I found this article on the Michigan Dept. of Ag. website. It explains how Dr. Seuss was an advocate of environmental protection. It also describes how his book titled, The Lorax, focuses on the importance of environmental conservation. Maybe The Lorax could be used as an interest approach into this topic?! Here is the link for the article:

http://www.michigan.gov/mda/0,1607,7-125-1566_1733_22582-62261--,00.html

Jamie Zimmer

Conservation Education

This summer I will be working part time in the education department at the Columbus Zoo. The Columbus Zoo has a lot of great resources about all aspects of conservation education which would be very useful for high school students or ag. literacy programs for younger students. To learn more visit the Columbus Zoo (and stop by to say Hi at the Habitat Hollow exhibit!) or visit the website:

http://www.columbuszoo.org/default.aspx

Jamie Zimmer

Classroom projects using resources

This summer I have an internship with the USDA Statistics department in WV. I know and found some cool things on their website that we as ag teachers could implement into our classrooms. On the website http://www.nass.usda.gov/ they have a pretty cool interactive map that you can do some neat things with, but there is also a ton of info that you could have your students use to report on agriculture and weather around the country. There are also some pages on wages, you could have students compare themselves to others around the country!!

Hannah

Virtual Field Trip

Nathan, Krysteena, Jenn, Sarah and I uploaded our video to youtube.com. Feel free to share it with anyone! http://youtube.com/watch?v=oCTSDYU9V5w

Hannah

Webpages

Hey guys, I don't know about you all but I'm pretty fascinated with this whole webpage making thing. So I was doing a little searching and found this website with step-by-step tips when making a website! Check it out!
http://www.smplanet.com/webpage/webpage.html

Hannah

virtual classroom

we have had a lot of discussion this quarter about technology advancement in our classroom....I do believe this is our future! So it's important that we learn and keep updated now with our rapid growth of technology. Here is a video of a virtual classroom...I am concerned with our bad economy that we will be losing education jobs because our technology can replace us! Scary I know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUdfE19s4wU&feature=related

Can this video be our future of educating our youth?? We will just have to wait and see! This is it for me Im finally done with completing 10 Posts! YAY! Good luck to you all student teaching! I hope we can keep in touch!

Jenna Meeks

Almendinger Sawmill

Well---Jamie, Kurt and I all worked very hard on this video...so please please please take the time and look over this video! It would be a great resource when you are teaching a forestry lesson......I hope you like it...and like everyone else we couldn't get to teacher tube so its on youtube instead!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2wkuaXDMCY

Jenna Meeks

Podcasting

As we move into a new world of agriculture, technology, I found a blog post about Podcasting in the classroom. They offered some of these suggestions including one with an e-moment:

- My teaching partner does a mini-summary of each chapter or unit where he outlines the major concepts to help students prepare for his tests. (He was not sure if they would be used or not, and was surprised when he found a student with all of them saved on a video iPod reviewing for the semester final).

- Record instructions for the class on a day you have a sub. (Sometimes it helps for the kids to hear you give the instructions).

- Have students record presentations for practice: Creed, Speeches, Sales Presentations, Job Interview, Reasons, etc.

- Have your FFA Officers record a "This Week in FFA" mini spot or updates to podcast out to your membership

- For e-moment users - you could have a tech version of the "eye-witness moment" or "bob the weather guy".

- Using a program called "profcast" www.profcast.com (makes a podcast
that records your voice over a powerpoint presentation), I have made
some review podcasts for an upcoming biology test. Students could
download them or watch them on my website made with iWeb.


http://naae.ca.uky.edu:8080/clearspacex/thread/1077

- Nathan Arnold

State Convention Video

We posted our video onto YouTube as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCTSDYU9V5w

- Nathan Arnold

Forestry Virtual Field Trip Video

Our group (Jenna, Kurt, and I) also uploaded our virtual field trip video to YouTube. For our video, we visited the Almendinger Sawmill in Johnstown,Ohio. We think this video would be very useful in a forestry unit! You can watch our video at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2wkuaXDMCY

Enjoy!

Jamie Zimmer

Virtual Field Trip

Well, I didn't have much luck posting our virtual field trip to Teacher Tube, but I did get it posted to YouTube! Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSOknc4NYJA

~Rose Dudgeon

U.S.- India Agricultural Initiative

I came across some great information tonight as I was browsing the web. Basically, in 2005, President Bush and the Indian Prime Minister announced a program to help India gain more knowledge in the areas of agriculture and natural resources. The partnership Ohio State has is just one way this is done. As the world becomes "flat", this is just one example to share with your students about global synergy. Find out more information at: http://www.fas.usda.gov/icd/india_knowl_init/india_knowl_init.asp

~Rose Dudgeon

MSDS Sheets

I know we all loved the MSDS assignment, but like it or not, I guess we're going to have to kill a few forests to have those on hand. I found a really good site when I was collecting mine. It's subscription-free, and you don't even need a free trial. Here's the URL: http://siri.org/msds/

Good luck!

~Rose Dudgeon

Webinars

I was checking my email the other day and got My usual Monday morning mentor from NAAE...which some of you may already get so you might have already saw this one...but i thought wow! what a great thing to put on the blog about technology and how our teaching era is changing...They are coming out with professional development through webinars! How cool...and its a cheaper way then having to drive somewhere with gas $4 a gallon! yuck...thats a story for another day! I just found this very interesting and more convienent on us ag teachers who have a busy busy schedule...the website is....www.naae.org/webinars/schedule

Jenna Meeks

WikiEducator

I am sure that many of us have cited sources from Wikipedia before. Now, there is something even more awesome...WikiEducator. It is similar to Wikipedia because people can add to and edit the information on it, but its more relevant to educational use.

Here's the link:

http://www.wikieducator.org/Main_Page

Jamie Zimmer

Digital Cameras

We've been discussing heavily the importance of technology in classrooms. Ag teachers are well known for taking pictures of every FFA event and student. Some new cameras from Nikon use a WIFI connection to upload your picturers to a website for you to retrieve.
http://www.macworld.com/article/132930/2008/04/nikon.html

FireWire

"FireWire is one of the fastest peripheral standards ever developed, which makes it great for use with multimedia peripherals such as digital video cameras and other high-speed devices like the latest hard disk drives and printers." From Apple.com. FireWire is being integrated into new components that make the connection between the computer and the component. I use FireWire when I used external hard drives to make the connection faster. It will definitely help teaching when saving/transferring students' proficiencies, SAE books, videos, pictures, etc.


- Nathan

OSU Second Life

In an alumni magazine my fiance recieves there is article this month that relates to Ohio State and Second Life. Even university's are getting in on the action.

OSU Second Life

Amy

ipods used for national chapter award presentations!

Many of the block students were surprised as the Ridgemont FFA members entered the room to be judged on their National Chapter Award presentation equipped with only four ipods, rather than a laptop and projector like most of the presenters. These students created a video podcast prior to the presentation day highlighting their FFA chapter's activities in each division. Each judge was given an ipod and a set of headphones so that they could watch the podcast during the presentation.

This was a very innovative way to present the information and it definitely minimized the amount of supplies/equipment they needed.

Jamie Zimmer

IPOD's in the Classroom

I was acutally looking for a lesson on apples...and today being big on technology I ended up finding a website on apple ipods! I thought it was a great resource and made a good blog for our technology course! The following website, http://www.apple.com/au/education/ipod/lessons/ is a great resource for how ipods can be used within the classroom! It is very interesting to see, and hopefully ipods in the classroom will be the next big thing!!


Jenna Meeks

Free Parli Pro Materials

Well--I have no experience with parli-pro, so I am a bit worried about this when I will have to teach about it in the fall. I had recieved an email awhile back about free information for teachers teaching parli-pro. They sent me the following info:

The FREE Parliamentary Procedure Spell Check Teaching Package you recently requested is ready for you to download.

Click on www.northwest.net/parli-pro and then "Free Materials" on the Main Menu on left side of the first page.

So I hope this material is usefull to all of you sometime in your careers!

Jenna Meeks

Agricultural Research Magazine

The USDA and the Agricultural Research Service publish a monthly magazine called the Agricultural Research Magazine. This magazine is an awesome way to keep you, and your students up to date with the latest agricultural research in a variety of subjects. My EFE teacher would purchase a subscription for every student and they would pick one article every month, summarize the article, and give a short presentation to the class. The monthly issues can also be viewed online at:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/

Jamie Zimmer