Educational Resource Services Newsletter - September, 2010
ERS Hours
Welcome back teachers! ERS is looking forward to serving you this school year. Our regular hours of operation are Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m.; Fridays from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.; and Saturdays from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. We are closed on all legal holidays. As always, our online resources are available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Schools - Please Update Your Teacher Lists
With each new school year, many staff changes occur. Schools are encouraged to send ERS a list of all new teachers so that they can be provided with a login to the ERS Portal. Please also tell us if you have lost teachers so we can remove them from our active lists.
Free Educational Resources Online
Math teachers: Create number lines, tesselations, pattern blocks, number grids and other activity sheets with Dynamic Paper, an online interactive tool recently launched by Illuminations. You can create homework sheets, sample pages, or instructional sheets. Just apply parameters to a figure of your choice, and Dynamic Paper will create it for you. Then size it, download it and use it in your classroom. To access Dynamic Paper, go to http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=205.
Science Teachers: Give your students a physics challenge and let them design their own roller coaster ride at http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/coaster.html. This simple interactive allows them to select hills of different heights, connect them to loops of different shapes and angles of descent. Then they check their design for safety and learn why certain combinations may create for a hazardous ride! At the same site, students can learn about the science behind carousel rides, pendulum rides, and bumper cars, where they can also try to predict how often the cars will collide.
Biology Teachers: Teachers' Domain has added a new collection of biotechnology resources for students in middle and high school. Some resources are streaming videos, and others are Flash interactives. Some of the titles include animal cloning, DNA sequencing, biofuel engineering, therapeutic uses of stem cells, and much more. You can find these resources at the following site: http://www.teachersdomain.org/special/biot/biot.concept/. Teacher's Domain is a free site, but users can register to receive newsletters and advice of new additions to the site.
Kids Portal and Teen Portal
Check out the new Kids and Teens Portal websites. These websites are designed to be useful for students to use at home or at school when they need to access our premium services such as World Book, Facts-on-File, TumbleBooks, United Streaming, and other learning tools. Click on the following graphics to access the sites. IF you don't know your schools kids or teens portal login information, contact Nariman Ajluni at narimana@ers.tcoe.org.
If you don't know your schools Kids Portal or Teens Portal login name and password, please contact us by either email: ersportal@tcoe.org or by phone: (559) 651-3077.