After facing the same repetitive task every Monday and Friday of giving her fourth grade students their spelling pre and post tests where inevitably, one or more students were absent or elsewhere during that time, Mrs. Amber Wagner (pictured below with two of her students) thought there had to be a better way. Her inspiration for a better way came after learning about Sound Studio in a technology inservice class. Using what she learned, she recorded herself giving the spelling test directions each week for when a student missed them. This way when they returned, she could just play the directions back and student would hear them exactly as every other student who was present in class had. This worked well but after learning about SchoolCenter and creating her classroom website, Mrs. Wagner found that if she saved her Sound Studio files as MP3s, she could put them on her website for students to access themselves! With this revelation and in an ongoing effort to differentiate her spelling instruction, she began to record every spelling list, challenge list, and dictation assignment using Sound Studio and saving them to her website as MP3s for student use. (The best part of this effort is that she can reuse the files from year to year as well!) Now Mrs. Wagner has her students taking their spelling pre-tests on a section of her website known as the Listening Center every Monday morning as bell work. Wagner says it does take some time, but the students have learned quickly to better self-manage their time. Students are asked to have their pre-tests turned in before lunch. This allows Wagner to look at the pre-test and then assign personalized lists according to the students’ understanding of that week’s spelling rule. Some get the full list, a shortened list, or even a list of challenging words. For the post-test on Friday, students again return to the website to take the spelling test that has been assigned to them. They are also asked to listen to and write down a few dictation sentences to review spelling and vocabulary from previous weeks. Students seem to really enjoy taking the tests this way. They are able to listen to the words and sentences as often as they need to and can even pause the list if it is going too fast for them. When asked what she thought about taking her spelling tests on the computer, one student responded, “I learn a lot from doing it this way! When I do it the regular way, you have to do it in a certain amount of time and on the Listening Center, I can take my time.” Best of all, it should be noted that since the tests are web-based, all students have the opportunity to test themselves at home to help them study, beforehand! Wager states that one of the best effects she has seen is that students are more prone to use her website for other resources and communication now that they have become comfortable with the technology. They continue to use her site to respond to literature and even some journaling by responding to her Question of the Week.She feels that students assume more responsibility for their learning and getting their work done has increased, as they learn to self-manage in this way as well. If you would like to learn more about setting up an online listening center, visit Mrs. Wagner's Listening Center today to see how she has done it. Also, be certain to check out My Learning Plan for future workshops this spring at Hughes Elementary led by Mrs. Wagner and/or Mrs. Arcuri on SchoolCenter Web Publishing Basics.

If you’ve used Mac OS X for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with the Color Picker, the small floating window you use in many Mac OS X programs through which you can choose colors for text, objects, lines, and other objects (depending on which application you’re using). For example, you can call up the Color Picker from any Cocoa application (such as Keynote, Pages, etc.) by simply hitting the keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-C. Other programs, such as Word and Excel, don’t use Apple’s Color Picker at all, so the following tips won’t apply to those programs. However, when you use it, here are just a few ways to get more out of the Color Picker that you may not have even been aware of!

KNOWING YOUR CURRENT COLOR
In the Color Picker window, the Color Bar, (see circled area in diagram below) at the top of the window below the toolbar button shows your current color. Sliding the cursor around the Color Wheel will change you the hue you are applying. As you do that, you will see the color you have selected will always be displayed in the Color Bar across the top as well as the selected text or object in your project.

MAKING THE CURRENT COLOR LIGHTER OR DARKER
If the Color Wheel is showing a color you want to make darker or lighter, just move the Shade Slider, (see diagram below) on the right of the Color Wheel up and down to increase or decrease the lightness, thus getting a darker or lighter shade of the color.

GETTING MORE "MIX" OPTIONS
You’re probably most familiar with the Picker’s default look, which is the Color Wheel interface. But using the small toolbar at the top of the window, you can choose from four additional styles: Color Sliders, Color Palettes, Image Palettes, and (the most fun) Crayons. All of these other styles will let you "mix" colors in a variety of ways, presenting with you with more options for finding just that perfect color for a project!

"PICK UP" COLORS USING THE MAGNIFYING GLASS
Whichever Color Model you choose, there is a magnifying glass at the left end of the Color Bar, (see circled area in diagram below). Click on that and then move the cursor around your screen.The magnifying glass zooms in on the tiny area beneath it. If you click at any point the magnifying glass picks up that color and transfers it to the Color Bar. That means you can ‘pick up’ any color from anywhere on your screen for a perfect match.

SAVING COLORS AS SWATCHES
There may be times when you may want to use a color again elsewhere in a project or at another time. If this is the case, you can save colors by adding them to the Swatch Panel, (see diagram below) at the bottom of the Color Picker window. Simply drag the color down from the Color Bar at the top to an empty space in the swatch area at the bottom. In future, you can choose that color simply by selecting it from its swatch!

FREE is the acronym for the U.S. Department of Education's Federal Resources for Educational Excellence, an excellent website that has been designed to supply free teaching materials for educators. Resources at the site include lesson plans, activities, data, primary sources of information, photos, and maps on a variety of subject areas. FREE is among the most popular K-12 websites maintained by the U.S. Department of Education because of the excellent content it offers from many contributing federal agencies. Teachers will find this site to be a welcome "one-stop shop" of educational resources from more than thirty-five key federal organizations including the Library of Congress, NASA, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and others. Resources are available on thousands of topics in a wide variety of formats including teaching ideas, learning activities, photographs, maps, primary documents and much, much more. The site is well organized with resources categorized by subject. There is also a handy sitemap and a search feature which make finding information very quick and easy.

Among the most notable of its features is the New Resources section which lists the newest additions to the site by date. Each day a new resource is featured on the homepage. The best part of this site is that everything is free and useful! Simply find your subject area of interest in the navigation area on the left side of the site and begin exploring. Check out the site to see some of the great information it has to offer you and your students today. You can also use the QuickLinks above to connect immediately to some key areas of this excellent website right now!

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Eager to learn about new ways to use Mac OS X even better? Come to our monthly OS X "Talk, Tips & Tricks" session. Find out more.

Below are select technology courses to be offered by the Teacher Center this month. To learn more, log onto My Learning Plan then click the links below for more details about each class and/or to sign up right now online!

Tuesday, March 4
Introduction to GarageBand

Wednesday, March 5
Introduction to Numbers

Tuesday, March 11
Classroom Webpage Construction Zone

Thursday, March 13
The Art & Magic of Digital Presentations - March

Monday, March 17
Mac OS X "Tech Talk Tips and Tricks" - March

Tuesday, March 18
Basic Podcasting with GarageBand

Tuesday, March 25
SchoolCenter School: Exploring the New Features of Your School Website - March

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