SlideShare

This past year, I was faced with the challenge of teaching 4th and 5th graders how to use computers. A great majority of them had never really used one, and even the few who did were unfamiliar with the terms and use - we spent a long time talking about how to select choices with radio buttons, how to use the trackpad, and how to save files. But there were never complaints, and anytime I asked my kids to do any task that would have usually been met with groans, I told them we would do it on the computers and they did everything I asked so as to get on the laptops ASAP. They were so excited to use Power Point, and were really positive on their feedback of other student's presentations. They asked if I could share the presentations on my Science Class blog, but I soon tired of embedding.

SlideShare is a great alternative. You can create an account, add tags, and even mark if you don't want others to download the presentations. It works for documents as well, and you can search other people's documents to see if there is anything you need! I shared my jeopardy power points, so that I can just email other teachers a link and they can use it directly from the site, or download to their computer. Also, I feel like I always email attachments and then the next day improve the file somehow. This way, I can improve the file and the changes will keep updating the original file. Click the link above to see what I mean, and you can leave a link to your page in the comments as well!

TinyURL is a website where you can enter a long nasty web address and it will spit out a nice short one. This is great when you want to show students an article or website, but you want to send them to the direct page and its a million characters long. For instance, instead of asking each student to type in:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/09/11/national/a023751D20.DTL&tsp=1

to see an article in the SF Chronicle about how 9/11 is being remembered around the country, you could go to www.tinyurl.com, put that link in the box, and get out

http://tinyurl.com/4ulfde

So much easier!

Also, you can pick the ending! I chose http://tinyurl.com/green1 for my last name, but to make it easy you could also put Remember911 or something of your choosing at the end.

Enjoy!