Social Science Links

Hi,

A new week brings new challenges. Right?

Therefore this week we will talk about the Social science links on the Tutor/Mentor Connection Link Library..

Ask Asia. The first site is AskAsia.org. This is an educational website for students and teachers covering some thirty countries that comprise Asia today. The site features material that ranges from early civilization to current events.

Find more at: www.AskAsia.org.

History Learning Site. www.historylearningsite.co.uk is the address of History Learning Site. This is a commercial British site that provides numerous historic facts about selected periods of history. However, since it is a commercial site, it is full of ads, which can be quite distracting.

Topics covered on this site include: Ancient Rome, Medieval England, Tudor England, Stuart England, Britain 1700 to 1900, World War One, World War Two, The role of British women in the Twentieth Century, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, Inventions and Discoveries of the Twentieth Century.

Find more at: www.historylearningsite.co.uk

Mr. Woodside's Virtual Classroom is hosted at http://mrwoodside.com. On this site Mr. Woodside combines the principles of video game design with a mastery model of education. Therefore the result is, as Mr Woodside says: World History Adventure, a year-long exploration, educational game.

Although this site is designed primary for Mr. Woodside’s students, it is a worthwhile resource for everybody.

Furthermore, this site is a good example how multimedia presentations, interactive history simulations, socratic discussions, and other history activities can make learning fun. We call it edutainment. Right?

Find more at http://mrwoodside.com.

Mr. Roughton's site is quite similar to Mr. Woodside's Virtual Classroom. You'll find history lesson plans, assignment ideas and more. It is nice to see how much effort some teachers invest into the quality of education they provide. Find more at http://mrroughton.com.

The History Place, hosted at historyplace.com, provides lots of data about selected chapters of world history. However, the same way as www.historylearningsite.co.uk the historyplace.com site is full of commercials (covering 30% of used screen surfaces).

Find more at www.historyplace.com.

What do you think about these links?

Please send us your comments: SVHATS >> Cool Links and Cool Cash >> Social Science Links.

National African American History Month

A few days ago (February 2nd), President Obama made a beautiful Proclamation of National African American History Month.

He ended with this paragraph:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim February 2009 as National African American History Month.

I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs that raise awareness and appreciation of African American history.

You probably knew that the whole Proclamation is available at www.whitehouse.gov (I encourage you to read it).

So, how will we celebrate the Black History Month? What activities we will do?

What. This week we will do collaborative e-learning activity Black History Links.

How. Our goal is to prepare a list of the 10 best websites about Black History. When we finalize the list, we will publish the links in the Tutor/Mentor Connection Link Library.

Action. So, what are your favorites?

Proposal. This is a list of sites I consider to be excellent sites about Black History (full list is available at Links Library >> Homework help, tutoring resources >> Black History Studies):

1. National African American History Month, 2009 A Proclamation by the President
2. African American History Month Website
3. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
4. African American History @ about.com
5. Wikipedia about African American History
6. Wikipedia about African Americans
7. African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
8. Black History Hotlist by pacbell.com
9. www.blackpast.org - this site is dedicated to providing reference materials to the general public on African American history
10. Africans in America
    PBS overview of African American history includes excerpts from primary sources.
11. Civil Rights Documentation Project
    Project emphasizing civil rights legislation from 1963-1965 includes primary sources and a timeline.

Collaboration. Would you add any site to that list? Do you think that some of the aforementioned sites are not good enough? Or....?

That is a challenge for today. There are a few more interesting links in Black History Studies .

Why I did not mentioned them here? Well… some things you have research on your own. Just go to Black History Studies and browse.

And send us your comments: SVHATS >> Cool Links and Cool Cash >> National African American History Month.

I’m very enthusiastic about your comments.

Homework Help >> Written skills

Starting to write an article or to speak a new language can be a challenge. Right?

Everything seems to be so easy, understandable, but when you have to put it on a paper (type in a computer?) or say it in an another language … well…

That’s why on the TutorMentor Connection web site we have the link category Homework Help >> Written skills.

So, let’s check the websites mentioned there.

NoodleTools is one of the leading bibliography software on the Internet, transforming bibliographic instruction methodologies. NoodleTools software supports the entire research process by.

• Searching intelligently
• Assessing the quality of results
• Recording, organizing and synthesizing information using online notecards
• Formatting your bibliography in MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian style

Full NoodleTools service is for members only (you have to pay), but there is lots of free stuff.

www.theeasyessay.com provides an automated information organization program. You know the dilemma I mentioned at the beginning of this article: Everything seems to be so easy to understand, but when you have to put it on paper ( or computer) … well… it is hard to find a way to start and it can be even harder to present those thoughts clearly. That is where the www.theeasyessay.com website can help. Try it. And send us your comments.

WorldChamp.com is a site that provides numerous language learning tools for almost any language in the world – for free. Of course, if you are ambitious, you can hire a tutor…

If you want to check BBC language learning tools, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/. There you can find well illustrated, very interactive tutorials for all world languages. Some of the tutorials are in the format of a game. For example ‘Japanese Challenge - Can you avoid social embarrassment?’ is a game that puts you in the center of Tokyo and challenges you to find a way how to communicate properly.

eSpindle Learning, a nonprofit parent initiative, helps students gain a rich vocabulary, creating confident readers, writers and spellers. It provides numerous interactive spelling & vocabulary building activities. Try it. A 10 day trial is free, otherwise it is $9.50 per month.

The last website mentioned in this category is www.wordcount.org. Word Cont site visualize the way we use language. It presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonness. I am not certain how we can use it, but it is interesting to see that word ‘Tutor’ is on 6584^th place and word ‘Mentor’ is on 16931^st place. Right?

What are your thoughts about it?

Science, Math, and Engineering

Hi,
Today’s featured links are grouped as Science, Math, and Engineering in the Tutor/Mentor Connections Links Database.

So, let’s start.

Volunteering Produces Health Benefits. Read the article A New Benefit for Future City Mentors: Volunteering Produces Health Benefits and find how Mentoring can increase your health.

Find more at: http://www.eweek.org/site/News/Eweek/2007_FC_mentor_benefits.shtml.

The Sloan Career Cornerstone Center is an ever-expanding resource for anyone interested in exploring career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, computing, and healthcare. Explore over 170 degree fields and find out about education requirements, salaries, networking, precollege ideas, and career planning resources

Find more at http://www.careercornerstone.org/

Consumers Guide to Afterschool Science Resources. On link http://www.sedl.org/afterschool/guide/science/ you can find the Consumer’s Guide to Afterschool Science Resources. Those pages contains reviews of high-quality, hands-on science content for afterschool programs.

Reviewed materials include semester and year long curricula, activity kits, instructor guides consisting of many related activities, and Web sites that offer content appropriate for afterschool programs. Users of this guide are able to search and sort entries by title, subject, grade level, audience, and cost.

Find more at http://www.sedl.org/afterschool/guide/science/

The Chicago 1st Black Inventors/ Entrepreneurs Organization's (CFBIEO) provide resources that will help members (you?) to convert invention into a successful product.

Find more at: http://www.cfbieo.org/about.htm

Edutopa.org. Kids today are the digital generation. Right? They use computers and superfunctional mobile phones better than we used a knife and fork when we were 12. Yet, our schools are still in the middle of industrial revolution. Big classes, uniform industrial educational approach – one model for everybody… Looks the same as it was 80 or 800 years ago.

It seems that there is a huge gap between the current state of our educational system and the needs of our students (the time we live in, the technology we use). Edutopica.org is a website created by The George Lucas Educational Foundation to address that issue. Check it, and you will find very interesting, multimedia reach, articles/videos about Project Learning, Technology Integration, Teacher/Mentor Development, Assessment and bunch of other things we can do in order to increase the quality of education/mentoring we provide.

Find more at: www.edutopia.org

Discover Egypt’s Pyramids by www.nationalgeographic.com. This well-illustrated tutorial about Egypt’s Pyramids is available at www.nationalgeographic.com/pyramids. You as a visitor can scroll across the different pyramids, revealing their interior organization and a number of facts about their construction and so on. Let the research begin…

Fermilab is committed to enhancing mathematics and science education and stimulating science literacy. Laboratory education programs serve students from prekindergarten to graduate research scientists in training.

Find more at: http://ed.fnal.gov/

Project Exploration is a nonprofit science education organization that makes science accessible to the public—especially minority youth and girls—through personalized experiences with scientists and science. It serves as inspiration and tool to transform their lives by offering opportunities to interact with scientists and hands-on experiences with the wonders of science.

Check how we can use the project exploration method to help your mentee.

Find more: www.projectexploration.org

That is it for today. There are a few more interesting links in Science, Math, and Engineering .
Why I did not mentioned them here? Well… some things you have research on your own. Just go to Science, Math, and Engineering and browse.

And send us your comments.

Interesting; right?

BBC - Cool Site

BBC Education. BBC or the British Broadcasting Corporation is the world's largest broadcaster (28,500 employees). It is incorporated in the European Union (UK) by government charter; with a mission "to inform, educate and entertain”. The BBC reaches more than 200 countries and is available to more than 274 million households (its nearest competitor CNN – is available in 200 million households).

As you can notice – everything is big with the BBC.
Big, maybe even too big. For example, two years ago BBC started an online educational service called BBC Jam (BBC Digital Curriculum) with annual budget of $200 million. However, since the BBC Jam, as an high quality, interactive, and free(!) service, outshone most of competitors from commercial sector, the European Commission suspended BBC Jam programming on 20 March 2007.

It’s regrettable, yes…… but,the allegations are true. Even now, after suspension of the Jam BBC, online materials and activities overwhelm most of the competition. Just check http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ or http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/ and you will find bunch of educational highly interactive (and entertaining) games, interesting content and interactive tutorials.

How do you like it?

Tutor/Mentor Connection Links Library

Hi,

Have you checked the Tutor/Mentor Connection Links Library recently? It contains 1500 entries. Which ones are your favorites? Or which group of links? We share these links with people from around the world. We want to encourage you to get to know them, and learn to use them yourself.

There are 24 links groups; if you are interested in public schools you have group designated just for that, if you are interested in content to enhance your or your child/mentee’s Arts, Science or Math skills – there are groups dedicated solely to those subjects as well. Therefore, if you have not checked it out yet – I encourage you to do so now.

You can probably guess that my favorite links group is educational technology. But… which linked website is the best; none of them – or all of them; it is hard to say. Therefore, let’s check some of them.

Starting this week, we're launching a new educational activity in SVHATS called Cool Links & Cool Cash. The goal is for students and volunteers to get to know the links in Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) site and, to learn to use these for school work, volunteer service, and college and career planning.

As an encouragement to spend time learning about these links, we're offering the opportunity to earn Cool Cash.

The rules are simple:

1. Each week I will describe a few websites in specific sections of the Links Library in my blog (blog.mentorforme.org). This week, I'm focusing on the section titled Science, Math, and Engineering.

2. Go to the Tutor/Mentor Connection Links Library that I've pointed to; Skim the links, and post a comment in SVHATS about the described web site. Why do you like it; why not. Would you recommend it to your friend… or not? Do you know about a better website?3. Earn Cool Cash. For each properly formatted post – you will get $2 (up to 2 posts per week).

4. Every Friday I will post a new blog article, describing a different section of the links library. You can review these from home, school or when you are at Cabrini Connections.

PS: If you are not part of Cabrini Connections, but a visitor from a different tutor/mentor program in Chicago, or a different city, we hope you will browse the links too, and use them in your own efforts to help kids through school and into careers.

www.tutormentorexchange.net

The New Tutor Mentor Exchange site is online. Have you checked it? New design, updated content, a bunch of new features…how do you like it?

Joomla? Yes, yes, it is build on the Joomla! CMS engine. Joomla! is the most popular and one of the best Content Management Systems around.

Easier & better content management. Joomla! provide numerous features that ease content management. Therefore it will be easier to keep the content updated. Also, it will be easier to collaborate on content development. Joomla! allows 7 different group of users; three from the back (administrator) end and four from the front end. That means – it will be easy to share tasks and responsibilities.

And…

Enough about Joomla (you can find more about Joomla! at www.joomla.org). Let’s say a few words about the TutorMentorExchange.net site. That is the focus of this article.

How to! As you can notice, www.tutormentorexchange.net is full of interesting articles that will guide you how to start a program, how to plan a strategy, how to lead a program, how to network, how to find if there is a program in your neighborhood… and many other things.

T/M Management Handbook. It is something like a Tutor/mentor program management handbook. Everything you need to know about how to start/support a good tutor/mentor program. Actually… almost everything; your contribution is essential to utilize that knowledge. You are the one who will convert that knowledge into real action. Or you can share that knowledge to somebody who will utilize it.

Right?