WatchKnowLearn . . . free educational videos

Some of you may already know about this resource, but I just learned about it today!  WatchKnowLearn has indexed over 20,000 educational videos in over 3,000 categories.  The videos are available without any registration or fees to teachers in the classroom adn to students at home 24/7.  WatchKnowLearn believes everyone should have the same opportunity to learn.  They will even accept suggestions for videos to be added to their directory.  The videos on their site are guaranteed kid safe!  WatchKnowLearn is a non-profit program and was the idea of the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi and a Memphis-area philanthropist.  Dr. Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, was tapped to help plan the educational video service.

Very quickly I was able to find some videos on Ferdinand Magellan, using the History > History of Exploration > Magellan, Ferdinand path.  The first video listed was a cute song about Magellan's journey performed  by the Animaniacs.  The second was a beautiful video with music and images, plus different facts about Magellan.  It was so quick to find something I could use if I was teaching about the exploration period of human history.

I also noticed you can filter by age, so that would help if you were looking specifically for primary school or high school videos.  There are even some informational videos which adults would find helpful - such as "Using an Asterisk in Google Search" which explains how the * is used in a Google search as a placeholder.

Check it out and see if there is something you can use in your classroom!  Simply click the title of this post and it will link you to their Web site automatically. 

New Teacher Tools in Infinite Campus

With one week to go before students enter Caldwell County Schools on August 23rd, it is important teachers are aware of the new teacher tools now available in Infinite Campus.  They have streamlined the method of entering assignments and scores and it is much more user-friendly.  I'm going to outline some of the enhancements below, but I will be sending out some instructions by e-mail as well. 

The first change you will notice is the old Lesson Planner link is gone!  In its place is a link called Assignments.  Clicking on the Assignments link will bring up a screen with several options - Edit Teacher Preferences, Edit Grade Calc Options, Edit Categories, Create Assignment, Copy Assignments, View Tree and Validate.

Edit Teacher Preferences - basically the same as the old preferences; here you can set to hide dropped students, set the default grading task, whether to show student pictures, etc. 

Edit Grade Calc Options - this is where you will set how your grades are calculated; using the Fill All button will save time if all your grading tasks will use the same calculations and grading scale

Edit Categories - on this screen you can set your categories, i.e. homework, exams, classwork, etc.; the point to note here is if you use points only to calculate your grades, you will want to leave the weight as zero

Create Assignment - this is where you will create your assignments; the same information is there as previous editions of IC, but the look is a little different; you will enter your assignment names, whether the assignment is active or not, when it was assigned, when it is due, etc.

Copy Assignments - from one screen you can now copy assignments from one course to another course easily; just select which course to copy from and where you want the assignments to go; you can also do multiple assignments at one time

Entering grades is just as easy.  You can still go back and enter grades through the Grade Book just as you did with previous IC editions.  However, you can utilize the new Assignments link to add assignments and enter grades at the same time.  Also, there are different checkboxes to help you quickly signify whether an assignment is turned in, missing, late, incomplete, exempt, or if the student cheated on the assignment.

The last change is to the Daily Planner.  I'm not sure how many teachers actually used the planner in previous editions, but the new Daily Planner is a great way to keep up with activities and events for your classes, quickly checking attendance for a previous date, etc.  You can view the planner by month, week, or day.

Hopefully these changes will be good changes for everyone.  Infinite Campus worked with teachers across the United States to find out exactly what they wanted and made changes accordingly.  I believe the changes make the program much more user friendly and hopefully, you will, too! 

If you are a teacher in the Caldwell County School system, be looking for an e-mail which contains the pdf file of instructions on the new teacher tools.  I hope to set up some training sessions after school starts for anyone who needs one-on-one or small group help.  However, I think you will find the instructions are easy to follow and most of you will be able to set everything up and start working right away.

Have a great week!