Learning Express

It took me a while to find logins and passwords that I had created some time ago, but then I was off and running. I took a vocab practice test. I liked the immediate, specific feedback. This would be good for students and helpful to teachers with ease of grading.

For the ACT and SAT practice tests, I've given the teachers a step by step guide to getting to the right spot to take a test, which they use in test prep courses.

I looked through the job skills and career sections. I downloaded and skimmed an e-book about green careers. It was well-written, easy reading, and actually fascinating. The beginning sections included historical background, important terms to know such as a carbon footprint, and definitions of what makes a career considered green.

World Book 2

I liked the uncluttered look of World Book Discover. At the bottom, students can click on WB Student or Advanced if they want more information. Also the read-aloud features and dictionary would be helpful.

I also played around with the foreign language features. These would be great for our ELL students. It also helped me brush up on my French, so they would be great for foreign language teachers also. As I work, I get ideas for "instant lesson plans" or activities that would be good for teachers to have ready for a sub.

World Book 1

Here's my photo of an aardvark. There wasn't much about habitat in the Kids WB, other than it being a nocturnal African animal that builds holes to hide from enemies. I'm enjoying playing around on the site; it's been a while. I have two ideas/goals for this class. I thought I'd share them since most of my comments about World Book are similar to other bloggers. 1) I'm going to save some links in a Word document for each lesson for things that I find that I may want to use later to use or share with someone. (I could use something more elaborate or save things on my website, but this seems like an easy way to organize my progress). Anyone have better ideas? 2) I'm going to e-mail one co-worker a week with something that I think they would like or use.

The student WB had similar information, not a lot more, but it looked like a higher reading level.

The Advanced WB was quite in depth. I looked up France and checked out the internet links. I liked the photos--it seems like it would catch students' attention; then they could click on the pictures and read more about the topic.