Learning: Tips for the Wired Classroom
News You Can Use

You and your students will love this site! CNN Student News, at http://fyi.cnn.com/fyi/, offers students more than just news stories.

You'll find video clips, youth-specific topics, and homework help. At this site, you can also find the CNN Student Bureau, CNN's official student news-gathering and reporting program.

If you need a writing topic for an English class, look to this site first. You'll find lots of lesson plans and activities correlated to the daily news, plus weekly discussion guides, curriculum-specific learning units, and even professional development activities. Best of all, it's all free!

Betsy Norris
Middle School English Teacher
Shelbyville, Tennessee

Standards-Based Technology
During my six years of teaching I have been gathering useful Web sites. As part of my master's project, I put them all into one handy dandy Web site. I teach fifth grade in California and wanted to match the Web sites with the standards. The final product is a tool that helps fifth grade teachers implement technology into their standards-based curriculum. Here is the site: http://205.187.108.9/web/schuh/bookmarks/schuhbk.html.

Eric Schuh
Fifth grade teacher
Livermore, California

Online Gradebook
I have been using an excellent and inexpensive gradebook program called Gradepal.com. In addition to having my grades online, I can generate a weekly newsletter to E-mail or print and send home to parents. Because the main Web page is very attractive (and Gradepal allows me to select colors and fonts), I also print out my main page once or twice a month to send to parents who do not have Internet access and also to provide a paper record.

Each week, students submit brief articles that describe what we've been studying or projects that we are working on. With the "upload documents" feature, I can load virtually any document made at school or home onto the site, and I can access them from home or school. The customer support is fantastic and they are very willing to work with teachers to make this gradebook one of the best tools that I've ever used.

Margaret Byrne
Fifth grade teacher
Portland, Oregon

Wild Horse Winter
Retelling is a familiar way for students to demonstrate story comprehension. One effective and highly motivating retelling activity is to write a class poem together. My students enjoyed sharing a beautiful winter book, Wild Horse Winter, by Tetsuya Honda. Together they created an acrostic poem as I wrote their words on the chalkboard. We shared many ideas, and I worked with the students to revise their work. Later, the first-graders illustrated their project. You can read their poem and see their illustrations on the class Web page at www.mrsmcgowan.com/winter/acrostic.htm.

Marci McGowan
First grade teacher
Spring Lake, New Jersey

Shortcut to Success
I make folders to put on the students' computer desktops so they get right to a Web site without any surfing. I cut and paste the URL from the specific page I want them to view and place it in a Microsoft Word document. Then I save the file onto our school's network. Then I create a "read only" folder and place it on their desktops. (They also must have Word on their desktops.) All they have to do is open that folder and they can go to the exact place where the information is located.

Mary Seitz
Third grade teacher
Rockport, Indiana

My favorite Web site
My favorite Web site is www.book adventure.org. This is a free online reading incentive program developed by the Sylvan Foundation.

The site provides quizzes for a variety of books students can read. Students gain points by answering questions correctly and they receive prizes from sponsors. After completing each book, we have a discussion. Then students take the quiz on the Web site. They look forward to using the computer and receiving prizes from the program's sponsors.

Victoria King
Title I teacher
Warrensville Heights, Ohio

Bytes for Beginners

I want to post student artwork on our school Web site, but I want to protect the students and their work. What are the correct procedures to get permission from the students and their parents and copyrights for the artwork?
You've noted two important issues in your question: student safety and intellectual property rights.

Student Safety
There are many opinions about how much information schools should share about students on a Web site.

Some schools have a policy that prohibits posting any information about students. Other schools leave the decision up to the practitioner and/or the school's Webmaster.

Assuming you've already checked to see if your school or district has an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) or other document that addresses these issues, I encourage you to review any traditional policies your school may have on student privacy and the use of student work.

The best school AUPs we've reviewed incorporate existing school policy found in a student code of conduct. This practice reduces any confusion about which policy takes precedence in a given situation, on- or offline.

That said, the most common approach is to avoid posting a student's last name, E-mail address, picture without a signed release from a parent or guardian, and any other pictures that identify a student by his or her first and last name.

Intellectual Property Rights
How to protect the intellectual property rights of student work on the Web also should be outlined in a school's/district's AUP and on the Web site.

Many commercial and higher education Web sites include a "Rights Management" page and link pages that contain copyrighted works, such as papers, art, or photography, to this page. A "Rights Management" page outlines use limits placed on the content and often includes a copyright statement and relevant contact information.

In general, you should get parent or guardian permission before posting any student's work to the Web.