I am absolutely giddy. I recently discovered a cool new project developed by Google that essentially allows anybody to instantly translate text from one language to another. It’s called Google Translate and it has the potential to revolutionize teaching resources.
As an experiment, I copied the lyrics from the most popular song on this site, 50 States, and pasted them into Google Translate. Then I hit “translate” and the entire lyric popped up in Spanish (the language I chose) so quickly that I didn’t realize at first that it was already finished. No kidding, I hadn’t even taken my finger off the mouse before my Spanish translation was complete.
As cool as that is there is one feature that will be life-changing for a substantial number of students and teachers. Instead of simply pasting text into the translator, you can also paste the URL of any webpage. When you use the translator this way it will interpret entire webpages at a time.
What’s so powerful about this feature is that you can start surfing the net and every page will automatically continue to be translated into your language of choice.
Imagine this scenario: you discover that a particular newspaper in India does superb reporting. Simply enter their URL, select the language in which you’d prefer to read and start reading your translated version instantly.
What do you think; is this the coolest thing since sliced chleba or what? (Chleba means bread in Czechoslovakian. Go try it!)
Busy Teacher’s Cafe offers a free collection of themes, strategies and printables for reading, writing, language arts and math.
I was most impressed with the reading and writing resources. For some reason these subjects don’t normally translate to worksheets very well, but Busy Teacher’s Cafe has done a fine job of creating and collecting really useful goods.
Since the site serves K-6, it’s also a good place to go if you have kids who are younger, on IEPs or who have fallen behind for any reason.
It’s not quite as polished as Super Teacher Worksheets, but there is so much good stuff on the site that it’s definitely worth checking out.
Super Teacher Worksheets is one of the most complete, high quality collections of well thought-out worksheets that I’ve come across in a long time. If that wasn’t enough, they’re also free!
Math, reading, writing, grammar, phonics, spelling, science and social studies worksheets are well organized, which means you won’t be wasting time trying to find what you want. Each also comes with its own answer key.
Since there are numerous variations for each subject, it should be easy to find the perfect way to present material to your students.
I saw this on CBS’s Sunday Morning and was very impressed with the concept. In short, Move Your Money is a grassroots movement that punishes large banks for their bad behavior by making it easy for consumers to locate and move their money to smaller, local banks who are more likely to serve them better.
I’m currently in the process of removing my money from Bank of America. The service they deliver sucks, their fees are criminal and it seems to be getting worse. I’m tired of standing in long lines only to receive mediocre to unacceptable service while some bigshot banking executive spends my money getting a pedicure for his dog. Since they clearly don’t give a damn about regular guys like me, I think it’s time to pull the plug on our (bad) relationship.
If you’re interested in getting a peek at what options are available in your area, just plug your zip code into the form below.
Move Your Money
Join the Sea Change
If you want to find out more about this well-organized and powerful movement, visit MoveYourMoney.info.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Amzanig huh?
Mbaye ttha’s why it’s pbsosile to raed and garde sdetunt peaprs depiste atciroous selpling mtaiskes!
Seriously though, this example creates the illusion that Dolch sight words are more important than spelling or phonetics and that’s not quite right.
