Each October, Ms. Martin’s sixth grade begins preparing for the Fall Harvest Food Drive at Hughes Elementary School to benefit the Food Bank of Central New York. Included in this preparation is creating posters to hang around the school advertising the event.  This year, however, the students got a chance to put their creative ideas to work using the computer instead of construction paper and markers.  In an effort to have her class to use technology she learned though inservice training, Ms. Cheryl Martin (pictured below working with one of her students) introduced Pages to her class.  If you are not familar with this program, Pages is a wonderful application that is part of the iWork series of programs by Apple for Mac OS X. Pages is an amazingly simple yet powerful applicaiton that enables the user to create impressive professional looking documents.  The program includes many templates, with placeholders for text and graphics, that the user simply replaces to create a new document!  Pages makes creating posters, flyers, resumes, brochures, reports, and even business cards and invitations trouble-free.  Before taking her class to the computer lab, Ms. Martin placed pictures of recent food drives and a short write up describing the details of the food drive on her website for the students to download.  The students then chose the photo they wanted and downloaded it along with the written description of the food drive.  Next,  students opened Pages and then chose one of the small gallery poster templates as a starting point for their poster. The students then simply had to click and drag the picture and description over the placeholders on the poster and change the title and dates.  Voila!  Professional quality posters with just a few clicks of the mouse.  When asked what he thought about using Pages to create the posters, one student replied, “This program is so easy to use, and the posters look awesome!”  To learn more about Pages and the bevy of opportunities it offers you and your students, check out My Learning Plan.  Workshops will be coming in the near future!

As one of the most commonly used but often overlooked parts of Mac OS X, it is worth while for any Mac OS X users to master a few techniques for working with the Finder. Like most applications, the Finder has a wealth of little known features and ways to carry out tasks more quickly and efficiently. The tips below reveal a few of the lesser known time-savers of working with Finder windows. Hopefully there are some tips that you find useful the next time you are working in Mac OS X!

• Normally you just double-click to open a Finder window and leave the remaining window open behind it. However, if you hold Option while doing it the current Finder window will close as the new one opens.
  
  
• Spring loaded folders allow you to easily drag a file wherever you want. If you drag the file onto a folder icon and hold it there for a while, the folder will spring open, allowing you to drag the file onto a folder within a folder. You can do this as many times in a row you want, and when you let go of the file all the windows that have sprung open will close again. Hold the Space bar while doing this to get rid of the delay before a folder springs open.
  
  
• Look in the Finder Preferences (located in the Finder Menu) for more window options. For example, in the General section, (see diagram below) determine what appears appear on your Desktop, change the delay for spring loaded folders, set the default location that appears when a new finder window opens (Command-N) and set folders to always open in a new window.
  
  

  

• To close every single Finder window, hold Option down while clicking the red close button of just one Finder window. Alternatively press Command-Option-W.
  
  
• Command-1, 2 or 3 will change you to icon, list or column view. Command-[ and Command-] will take you back and forward.
  

• When navigating in a Finder window, using Command-[ and Command-] will take you back and forward just like the forward and back arrows on the Finder window toolbar do.
  
  
• In List view (choose from the View menu or icons in the window toolbar) you can peek into folders using the expansion triangles. Option clicking one of these triangles will expand the folder along with any folders it contains. Option clicking again will collapse all these folders again.
  
  
• In Column view, it is sometimes easier to navigate through the file structure using the arrow keys. In the other views this is still possible, but to go inside the selected folder press Command-Down. In List view, Command-Right will expand the currently selected folder. This can be used with multiple folders selected to look inside them all at the same time.

BrainPOP is an amazing website of engaging, animated content that motivates and inspires children to learn. Originally developed in 1999 by Avraham Kadar, a pediatrician and immunologist who sought a new way to explain complex medical topics and conditions to his young patients, BrainPOP has now grown to an educational portal that welcomes more than 1,000,000 visitors a month to its websites, reaching roughly 13,000,000 students in homes, classrooms and computer labs worldwide. Hosted by the irresistible duo of an expressive orange robot named Moby and his teen companion Tim, BrainPOP offer exciting Flash-based movies that cover everything from the Underground Railroad to the atomic model to Shakespeare. Enrichment materials like interactive quizzes, experiments and creative activities supplement each one. Topics, which are all aligned with national education standards and searchable by state standards, are grouped within the subjects of Science, Math, English, Social Studies, Health, Technology and Arts & Music. BrainPOP's ever-expanding library currently consists of more than 650 movies for grades 3-12. Designed to spark children’s inherent curiosity, the movies are visually appealing, cleverly written and speak to kids in a voice they can relate to, but without talking down to them. All movies are also closed-captioned and many of them are also available in Spanish at es.brainpop.com. In 2006, BrainPOP launched BrainPOP Jr. for students in grades K-3. Co-starring Moby and his pleasantly precocious friend Annie. BrainPOP Jr. movies explain topics in a grade-appropriate manner. Each is bolstered by features such as educational games, quizzes, reading recommendations and interactive writing prompts. All text is read aloud, enabling even early learners to explore and navigate the site. BrainPOP Jr. gently introduces young students to test-taking skills and comprehension strategies while fostering creativity and an inquisitive nature.

Today, BrainPOP is loved by kids and trusted by educators and parents around the globe because of the quality of their content and the impact it has on students. BrainPOP actively partners with a variety of international brands, including Promethean, 3M, McGraw-Hill and National Geographic. They have also earned a host of education, animation and media distinctions from such diverse organizations as the American Library Association, Highlights, the Flashforward Film Festival and the Association of Educational Publishers. If you want to explore what BrainPOP can offer your students, you will need a username and password to access the site. Since the school district has a subscription to this wonderful teaching resource, see your Building Technology Coordinator for log on info and then check out BrainPOP today! The QuickLinks above connect you to some of the main areas of this outstanding resource that you can explore and put to use in your classroom immediately!

Do you have a tech story or tip you want to share?
Send us your info.

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!

Friday, November 2
How to Download Recording and Reporting Summary Sheets

Monday, November 5 OR
Tuesday, November 13
WebMAX Training

Thursday, November 8
Classroom Webpage Construction Zone

Wednesday, November 14
Introduction to Google Earth

Thursday, November 15
The Art & Magic of Digital Presentations - November

Monday, November 26
OS X "Tech Talk Tips and Tricks" - November

Wednesday, November 28
SchoolCenter School: Exploring the New Features of Your School Website - November

iCal Users
Download November Events