In past years, the students in Mrs. Ruhmel’s 8th grade English classes worked on a Social Studies integration project that resulted in the production of World War II newspapers. The project allowed students to use their research and writing skills, as well as their creativity to produce a written document. To move the project to new heights last spring, Mrs. Sue Ruhmel (pictured below working in the computer lab with some of her students) along with Mr. Richard Jayne, 8th grade Social Studies teacher at Perry Jr. High, took that same project and added a technological twist - GarageBand. In its updated format, students were asked to create a World War II broadcast in the form of an enhanced podcast, reporting important events from that time period in a radio show style format that was complemented by historically accurate photos. To bring the project to life, the students first spent several days in the library researching their assigned events and, using the most important information, they created a script for their broadcast. They also had to find pictures on the Web that they could incorporate into their broadcast. Once students had their scripts and their pictures, they were ready to record. With the help of Mr. Mike Amante, District Technology Integration Specialist, and Mrs. Mary Pat Connors, Perry Junior High Librarian, the students recorded their pieces in the Library Media Lab. After the students were satisfied with their recordings, they worked in their groups to add sound effects and pictures to complete the project. Their final broadcasts were submitted to the teacher’s Dropbox and shared with the classes for peer review. The results were fantastic! Not only were the finished projects very creative media projects, they also served as teaching aids for fellow students! "Since students are often called upon to research a topic, to do an oral report, and to incorporate visual aids, this project allowed the students to do all of these things, as well as utilize new technology that kept them engaged", says Ruhmel. GarageBand was the perfect choice for the project because it allowed the students to record individually and then manipulate the recordings within the broadcast, not to mention that there are plenty of prerecorded sound effects that are available in the program, Ruhmel continued to state. In addition to GarageBand, the project also gave students experience using iPhoto, making it easier to organize, edit, and access the photo for use in their broadcasts. Overall, the students not only learned a great deal, they enjoyed working on the project. Mrs. Ruhmel was very happy with the way the project turned out and looks forward to using the new format of the assignment in the future. If you would like to see an example of student work from this project, check out a few on Mrs. Ruhmel's website. Also if you want to learn about the project or have a project idea of your own, just ask the tech staff to help out. They would be glad to help and very soon, your students could be podcasting their next assignment as well!

Starting this school year, teachers have found themselves using Firefox a lot more as part of their computer use. This is because Firefox is the required web browser teachers need to use with Infinite Campus, the school district's web-based new Student Information and Grading System. In an effort to help you get more comfortable with Firefox, here are some useful shortcut tips that you may not know about managing tabs in Firefox. Tabbed browsing is an essential skill when using web browsing these days so hopefully these tips will come in handy when using Infinite Campus in the coming weeks and months!

Tabbed browsing in Firefox lets you load Web pages in separate tabs of a single browser window, so you can jump between them quickly and easily.

• To make a new tab, just choose Commmand+T.
• To open a hyperlink in a new tab, click on the link while holding down the Command key.
• To close the current tab using the keyboard, choose Command+W.
• Tabs have a context menu with all sorts of options. Just Control-click on any of them and you’ll see some of the options available like reloading all tabs, bookmark a tab or closing all tabs except the one you’re visiting. These tips can be very handy in saving you a little time if you think to use them.

• To jump to a tab quickly, use Command plus a number to open the tab that occupies that position.
• In Firefox 3, tabs can be rearranged in the tabbar. Simply grab a tab with the mouse, drag it to the desired position and drop it there. A blue line with circle appears where you are going to drop the tab, (see below.)

• Just closed a tab by mistake? No worries: reopen it with Command+Shift+T.

Once you learn to use them, you will soon come to realize that tabs are a powerful and useful tools since many of the web based systems we now use in school such as Infinite Campus and SchoolCenter require us to use Firefox. Hopefully, these tab management tricks will make you a little more comfortable the next time you find yourself doing some web surfing in Firefox!

EduHound.com is a wonderful education portal of free content. Developed and conceived in the spring of 1999 by a team of educators, teachers, and parents, Eduhound was created by a group who felt a great need for an educational resource to help them cut through the clutter that was currently available on the Internet. In their effort to create a great Internet resource, they have dedicated themselves to giving the best of the best for all K-12 Educational purposes. EduHound.com's President, Judith B. Rajala, M.A. is an independent educational technology instructor (and former K-12 educator) who works as a consultant to several Connecticut-based state technology organizations. She developed this site over a ten-month period based on her experience teaching K-12 educators since the Web first became widely accessible by schools as an information resource. Since that time, Eduhound has grown in a vast collection of resources that are most useful in the K-12 classroom. EduHound.com is a highly specialized educational directory with built-in resource links offered free to educators, students and parents. EduHound.com seeks to harness the vast information resources of the Web, while enabling educators to use the Internet as a classroom tool. Since its launch in January 2000, the site boasts thousands of visitors per week and an ever-growing list of subscribers to their weekly newsletter, EduHound Weekly.

One of the most popular areas of the site is the EduHound Lesson Plans which features thousands of free lessons that meet state and national standards. EduHound Site Sets is another section of site which features unique collections of topic-based online resources. Awesome Clipart for Educators is a hugely successful site of EduHound that provides teacher, student & family-friendly FREE clipart, coloring pages, backgrounds, banners, fonts, icons, and more. Finally, EduHound features their Schools on the Web and Classrooms on the Web sections. These free directories contain and highlight key US K-12 districts, schools & classrooms other resources currently online. All in all, Eduhound features a wealth of resources that are sure to be useful in your classrooom. Check out the site today to see how you can use it in your classroom! For quick access to some of the key areas of this site, simply use some of the QuickLinks above!

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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!

Thursday, September 11
Starting the School Year Digitally Organized

Monday, September 15
Mac OS X "Tech Talk, Tips, and Tricks" - September 2008

Thursday, September 25
Digital Lesson Planning with iCal & Google Calendar

Tuesday, September 30
Using Google Docs & iChat for Teacher Colloboration & Communication

iCal Users
Download September Events