What is Storyline Online?

Greetings

Storyline online is a great web site that has Hollywood stars read to you. You will find the following stars reading to you: Betty White, James Earl James, Tia & Tamera Mowry, Amanda Bynes, Sean Astin, Al Gore, Esai Morales, Hector Elizondo, Lou Diamond Phillips, Elijah Wood, Jason Alexander, Haylie Duff, Amber Rose Tamblyn and Camryn Manheim. This web site keeps growing. As of today, they have 23 stories all read by the Hollywood stars above. Storyline online is funded through The Screen Actors Guild Foundation.

The books that are read by the stars have related activity questions, ideas and concepts to help your child learn even more. You can also download activities guide that have the story and ideas in a pdf format. They also have a newsletter you can subscribe to where you can get updated information on their web site. You can also purchase the book for a nominal fee. All stories read, last between 5 – 10 minutes. You and your child will enjoy this free web site to improve your child’s reading skills.

When you decide to let the video play, it will stream the video at speeds of 56K for dial up, small; 150K for broadband, medium; 300K broadband, large and 512K broadband, best quality. When the video plays, you can also choose the option to show the captions. The captions allow you to see the words and sentences being read to you. You can also pause it, rewind, fast forward it to your favorite part of the story.

You will also notice as the person reads it to you via video you will see pictures that zoom in and out from the book. This unique video concept will make it a memorable experience. Try it out today at http://www.storylineonline.net/ Hope you enjoy the site. I will see you next week about another exciting topic in technology.

How to Access Free Movies, Music, Books and Audiobooks!

Greetings,

Hope you are doing well. This week I will be discussing a place where you can access free resources within your community. You can get popular DVDs, Cd's, books, and audiobooks at your own local library. It's amazing of the statistics of how many people actually have a library card, it is about 2 - 5% of the population. That's maybe one one out of twenty individuals who have in possession a free library card.

All you have to do is visit your local public library, and search for the resource you are looking for. Once you find your resource then you will need to sign up for a free library card. You can even do a search online in some cases. If they do not have the resource you are looking for, then you can place a request for them to get it through interlibrary loan. They search hundreds of libraries for you throughout the country.

I have received resources from as far as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to name a few. You may have to wait a few days or weeks. Some of the movies I borrowed recently include the following: Avatar, Julia and Julia, Wall-E, The Power of One from the 1990's, The Karate Kid part 2 and 3 back from the 1980's. A few books and audiobooks I have checked out include books by John Maxwell, John Wooden, Stephen Covey and Eric Jensen to name a few.

Hope this helps you out as you look for the resources you want or need in the future. As summer comes to a close, millions of children will be returning to a new school year within the next month. Over the next two weeks I will be blogging about how to be an effective classroom manager. I will also be sharing with you a few slides of my First Day of School PowerPoint. This is the same PowerPoint that was recently featured in a Presentation by Dr. Harry K. Wong. Hope to see you soon.

Valuable Writing and Brain Based Resources!

Hello,

Today I will be sharing valuable writing and brain based research resources. My first web site has numerous writing resources you can use with your elementary writing class. The web site is located at: http://tinyurl.com/Writing201 I attended three full days of training in which most of the ideas came from Colleagues/Teachers who attended the New Jersey Writing Project and shared their wonderful ideas with us. Here is a list of the recommended books that were given to us at the NJ Writing Workshop.





The next web site has many brain based research resources that Eric Jensen shared with us at a Workshop in San Diego, California. Eric Jensen is a major leader in the brain based research area and speaks at numerous engagements every year. Also there are resources and ideas from another work shop I recently attended in Dallas, Texas. Most of the ideas can be used as topics for discussion with teachers to facilitate collaborative discussions in Professional Development settings. The web site is located at: http://tinyurl.com/ErikJensen Hope you enjoy these two resources. Here are a few of the resources that were mentioned in his workshop and I have already added these resources to my library.