For the past few years, the students of AP Physics students of Anthony Surace at the Senior High School (pictured below delivering a lecture using PowerPoint) have seen a radical replacement from the traditional board notes in his classroom. Instead of a whiteboard covered with equations and sketches, students now learn through an elaborate use of custom-designed PowerPoint presentations that make exceptional use of the PowerPoint drawing tools to illustrate concepts with animation rather than just share them with words or photographs. In preparing his lessons, Surace often makes detailed diagrams and accompanies them with charts to explain their meaning. Mr. Surace says he likes using the drawing tools to create his presentation graphics because it allows him to introduce pieces as he talks about them. For example, he can discuss a process that occurs with an step-by-step animation and then show a curve on a chart that is developing, usually as a function of time. Surace also says that PowerPoint can be key for presenting complex equation derivation. This is what initiated his interest in using PowerPoint for instruction. A few years ago, when he had to prepare a difficult lecture on fluid dynamics for his AP Physics students, he needed to show the students the rationale behind Bernoulli’s Equation. This was a massive undertaking in doing it on the whiteboard because he had to show both the diagram of the situation and the mathematics that goes with the diagram. It really wasn’t enough to just hand the students a paper with it already done because it had to be developed with the students watching to fully understand the derivation. “In showing the work for this lesson, it was really easy to make a mistake and have to start over again, and the worst part….I would have to erase it and do it all over again for the next class that shows up later in the day. It seemed like it would take the use of one or two dry-erase markers a day just to finish the whole thing.” After this time consuming lesson, Surace thought there had to be a better way, and that’s where his training from New Hartford Teacher Center Technology workshops entered the picture. The workshops are where he really got introduced to PowerPoint. He had seen it used before in presentations and such over the years but never saw a need to apply it. Therefore, he sought to tackle the task of Bernoulli’s Equation derivation with PowerPoint.  Eventually, when he finished it, he showed the presentation to his students later in the course where he originally taught the lesson by hand on the whiteboard. After the lesson with PowerPoint, their response was why he didn’t use the presentation with them before! When using presentations in his instruction, Surace gives his students hard copies of the material on an 8 ½ x 11-inch papers with 2 slides per page.  For detailed slides that lose resolution with small size, he uses one full sheet. He delivers his presentations using an overhead projector that is custom mounted near the ceiling in his classroom. When teaching, students can then jot down notes when prudent. However, the presentation that they have on the paper doesn’t replace the experience of watching the presentation.  This is especially true since the students need to watch the presentation for the animations to make sense as they flow with time and his verbal explanation. Students in Suraces’ classes absolutely love his presentations. He says “I’m not sure if it's just they are into the technology, less note taking & sketching diagrams, or if they don’t have to listen to my meandering droll. But, a huge benefit to the absent student and myself is that making up a lecture is much easier. Running through a presentation isn’t a big deal; it’s just a function of a meeting time with the student.  It’s so hard to recreate a whole lecture, especially when you have one that’s just magical.  Using PowerPoint introduces a consistency to my lectures that I have grown to appreciate.  I feel this is important because it allows me to be able to quantify what I’ve done and add to it or change it later.”  Surace feels that there is never a lecture that is completely finished. However, he recognizes that PowerPoint makes it easy to improve upon year after year. If teachers want to learn how they can use PowerPoint in their classroom, Surace recommends that teachers take one of the Teacher Center workshops on PowerPoint to pick up the basics, sign out a projector from the Teacher Center, and give it a try. Come learn how you can make use of PowerPoint in your classroom and see you see what he means! Check out the Teacher Center workshops on Introduction to PowerPoint and Intermediate PowerPoint on MLP to learn more today!

Do you sometimes save a file only to forgot where it went later on? Do you have so many files you have a hard time finding the exact one you want quickly? If this sounds familiar to you, learning to use the Spotlight searching features of Mac OS X will be helpful. To perform a Spotlight search for a file, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Spotlight icon in the upper right hand corner of your screen. The Spotlight menu will appear and you can simply type the name the file so Mac OS X can start searching for it. The Spotlight menu immediately starts to display a list of results, up to the top 20 hits define by category, (see diagram below).

   
   
   
   
2. Spotlight uses a combination of relevance and timeliness to determine which of these items is the most likely one that you are looking for and shows that item as the “Top Hit”. The top hit is listed before any of the other results and you can open the top hit directly using by pressing typing Command-return.
3. To open any item, select it from the menu.
4. To refine your search and view all the results with more detail, select Show All to display a Spotlight window. You can now refine your search using the commands in the sidebar on the right side of the window to sort and group the items.

SOME HELPFUL SEARCH TIPS

If you want to limit your search to specific locations and attributes, open Finder and choose File > Find.

If you found the file you were looking for and want to know where it is on your hard disk without opening it, simply perform a search and then move your cursor over the result in the Spotlight menu, and in just a second or two, a tiny dialog will pop up showing the path to that file!

To organize your files so you can find them more easily, use the Spotlight Comments field in the File > Get Info dialog of a file. For example, you could mark all the files for the same project with the project name, tag all your urgent files with the word "urgent," or enter a description that will help you find the file later.

SOME SPOTLIGHT KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
Press Command + Space to activate a Spotlight window
Press Command + Enter to open Spotlight’s Top Hit
Press Command + Up Arrow or Down Arrow to move to each Spotlight category in a Spotlight search

A few years ago, Horace Mann, an Springfield, Illinois-based auto insurance and financial products company for teachers, teamed up with a nationally known educator named Alan Haskvitz to create the Reach Every Child web site. For years, Alan collected educational resources for teachers and students and used them in his own classroom. With Horace Mann's help, he now shares them via this Web site. The resources on the site are organized by subject that allow you to a subject, view an introduction and list of subsections, then click on a subsection and find a table listing each resource, how to get it, and Alan's comments about it.
Reach Every Child offers a wide variety of web links to teachers in almost all grade levels and subject, new and veteran teachers alike. On the homepage of the site is a section listing new resources, timely stories and subjects with resources to help teach about them, sample lesson plans using the site's resources, a place to submit your own lesson or a resource you've found helpful, and a short bio about Alan, the site's author. The resources on this site include everything from complete lesson plans and teaching kits to primary source materials for student research. There is always new content being added so make sure to bookmark the site and come back often for updates. One of the most notable features of the site is Alan's features archive of suggestions and stories that can make teaching enjoyable and exciting. Check out the site today for some great ideas and materials for use in your classroom! The Quick Links above in this newsletter connect directly to some of the key features of this excellent website.

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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 next 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!

Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Intermediate Groupwise: Working With Attachments, Address Book, & Options

Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Creating Charts, Tables, & Graphic Organizers Using Microsoft Excel

Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Introduction to GarageBand

Thursday, October 12, 2006
Introduction to PowerPoint

Monday, October 16, 2006
Intermediate PowerPoint

Thursday, October 19, 2006
• Elementary Spreadsheet - Using Spreadsheets To Record & Average Your Grades
• Introduction to Pages

Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Introduction to Microsoft Word

Wednesday, October 25, 2006
SchoolCenter School: Exploring the New Features of Your School Website

Monday, October 30, 2006
• Kid Pix for Primary Elementary Teachers
• Exploring & Using MyLearningPlan.com

October 17, 24, & 31 2006
Audio Processing with iTunes Sound Studio and GarageBand

October 12, 23, & 31 2006
iLife Cereal - Technology for Breakfast

October 13, 20, & 27 2006
Podcasting for the Classroom Teacher

October 18 & 25 2006
Introduction to Classroom Web Publishing

iCal Users
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Pages is a powerful page layout program we now have in the district that is part of the iWork 06 suite of design programs by Apple. If you want to learn more about it, go to the developer's website about this software program or simply sign up for an upcoming class later this month about using the program that will be offered through the Teacher Center!