Khan Academy- Math, Science, History, Finance & Test Prep

A better YouTube meets math... and science...and history...and economics... and more- all for free!

I happened across Khan Academy what seems like forever ago (really it was about 2 years ago) and liked what I saw. It was basically math and science at the time I first checked it out. You could watch video tutorials for concepts that you were wanting to learn, needed to learn, were struggling with, or just curious about (oh, I know there are some people out there like that!). We were using a different math program at the time though and I kept forgetting about Khan Academy.

Well, I 'happened' on Khan Academy again this year. Wow, what a difference! And an amazing one at that!

It is totally revamped! It looks awesome. And there are MORE subjects with MORE videos. Oh, and one of the coolest thing so far that my kids and I like is the Practice:

You can sign into KA with either your Google account or Facebook account

In that screenshot above you can see the Algebra VIDEOS that are available. Above the list is a dropdown menu bar so that you can navigate around the site to the exact subject you wish to learn more about.

    

And take a look at all the Physics videos!:

Here is a part of the video on Jamestown to the Civil War (I’m big on history )

Personally, I love the blackboard that is used as opposed to a ‘white’ board (that is tougher on my eyes it seems). It is a very condensed history lesson but it is well done.

How about …. Chemistry? (which I know next to nothing about…)

Introduction to the Atom:

The videos are interesting because Sal actually imparts personality to his videos. They aren’t simply information. He makes them more interesting

So what do you want to learn about?? And one of the absolutely best things about Khan Academy is that it is FREE.

We will be using KA in our school next year for a few different subjects. Perhaps there is something there for you!

Free Pyramath Giveaway...Limited Time!

We are giving out free decks of Pyramath to teachers.
Really! Read why. We will send you a free deck of Pyramath or Fractazmic or Prime Bomb

What we are asking  (hopefully not too much to ask)
We BELIEVE all students can succeed in math. We have heard from schools where teachers tell us the students look forward to math, where students skip recess to do math. We will send you a free deck of your selected game. What we want you to do is tell us what you think. We don't care how, we've had over 100 people blog about how much they love the games, some post to our Facebook Page , some just email us. Others have made up games and sent us new games for our cards.

But the real reason is we understand the importance of math and we KNOW PYRAMATH WORKS! You can try it now free, no obligation. If you like it - tell us, if you don't like it tell then tell us!

To get your cards send some information to linda.eaglin@gmail.com (she's doing all the mailings) - We want to know your mailing address (we do need to actually mail them to you), what grade you teach and where.

Yes - you can forward this mail to your friends, too! *I added the bold/italics :)*

www.pyramath.com  - this is the link to our web site, that is where you can
learn more about Pyramath and our other games.

Copyright © 2011 I See Cards, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this mail because we met you at one of the many conferences like NCTM and you requested more information on Pyrmath, I See Cards, and Fractazmic.

Our mailing address is:

I See Cards
1155 Elm St.Oviedo, FL 32765
Add us to your address book

MightyBookJr FREE... Grades K-6

From Freely Educate to me to you :) If you don't follow Freely Educate yet, I highly recommend it!

Mightybookjr.com is giving away a yearly membership for free! This normally costs $99... what a deal!

mightybookjr

Click on Subscribe and put in learntoread in the coupon box. Put in your information also of course, but you shouldn't need to enter payment information. 

It's awesome to have so many resources! Don't forget that there are still a few days left for the free Funnix download also (a two-year course that retails at $249)!

Friday Freebie..from Cynce's Place

Hello all. Here's a quick freebie that some may know about already :)


Cynce's Place has freebie's every Friday and the latest is for Thanksgiving.  It is only available until Monday! Check out her wonderful download. The rest of her site is great also. She offers a wide variety of notebooking resources.

FREE 1 year HLA Membership- Homeschoolers

Thanks to Freely Educate for bringing this to our attention!
You can get a 1 year free membership with the Homeschool Legal Advantage. No catch...no gimmick! Check out Freely Educate for the details. Or click here to go directly to Homeschool Legal Advantage. Use promotion code CLA.

FREE Legos!! For Educators

Have I mentioned how much I like Freely Educate?? This blog is like no other! Seriously. She has brought to our attention free DVDs, free timelines, free websites with great resources and now this: FREE LEGOs!

See all the details at Lego Education . From their site:

Now through July 2010, LEGO^® Education is inviting K-12 teachers and home educators from across the United States to register as contestants for the 2010 LEGO^® Smart™ Creativity Contest, challenging classrooms coast to coast to become LEGO Smart!

The 2010 contest, including prize information and contest rules, will be emailed to all pre-registered contestants on Monday, August 2, 2010, starting at 8am CST.

The deadline to order the kit is July 31, 2010. Emails will be sent out August 2, 2010, letting registrants know that the contest has begun.

I just love it!

Check out both Freely Educate and LEGO Education. Great!

Here's some cool posts from Freely Educate:

Practical Skill: A Unique Geography Idea

Free Math & Science Simulations for All Grades

Free Assessment Tests

Free Genetics Curriculum from the University of Utah

Downloading Books onto the Kindle for PC...From Places Other than Amazon...Using Mozilla Firefox

If you are looking for how to download with Internet Explorer, look here. For Google Chrome downloads, look here. If you need to find the original post about downloading from somewhere other than Amazon, look here. Still not the right one? Try the search on the left sidebar.

On this post, I will be working with Mozilla Firefox downloading a book from Manybooks to the Kindle for PC.

This is assuming you have chosen your book from Manybooks and are choosing the format for download. Choose .azw or .mobi for use with Kindle for PC. Click download. A dialogue box will pop up asking if you would like to Open or Save the file.


You can either have it open directly with Kindle for PC, which might be the easiest way, or Save the file manually. For the purposes of downloading the book to Kindle for PC I will choose to have it directly opened/downloaded right now.

This next screenshot is of Google Chrome opening Kindle for PC but it will look the same with Mozilla Firefox, mine was just too fast for me to capture a screenshot.


Kindle for PC opens and begins the book. Check here for an how-to on using the Kindle for PC.

Downloading Books onto the Kindle for PC...From Places Other than Amazon...Using Google Chrome

If you are looking for how to download with Internet Explorer, look here. If you need to find the original post about downloading from somewhere other than Amazon, look here. Still not the right one? Try the search on the left sidebar.

On this post, I will be working with Google Chrome downloading a book from Manybooks to the Kindle for PC.

This is assuming that you have chosen your book from Manybooks and are choosing the format for download. Choose .azw or .mobi for use with Kindle. Click download.

After it downloads completely, click on the file downloaded. Kindle for PC will automatically start to open.


From here you can enjoy your book!
Check out my posts on how to use the Kindle for PC here, but you probably already know :)

Downloading Books onto the Kindle for PC...From Places Other than Amazon...Using Internet Explorer

My last post on downloading books to Kindle for PC..from places other than Amazon...showed how to search for a book on Manybooks.net and which format to choose for Kindle. This time I will go through the steps of actually downloading and putting it onto the Kindle for PC from Internet Explorer. I intend to go through these steps with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox as well.

This is assuming that you have chosen your book from Manybooks and are choosing the format for download.

After choosing to download (I chose .azw format), a dialogue box will pop up asking if you would like to Open, Save or Cancel. Click Save.



Make sure of where the file is going to be saved to. In order to easily find it later, put it in My Kindle Content (located in Documents unless you put it somewhere else...).


And now would be the best time to rename the file if you would like to something easier to remember.


Now to make sure the book downloaded correctly. Do this by either finding the file "An Island Story" in My Kindle Content and double-clicking or by opening the Kindle for PC and then browsing by author or title for the book on the Kindle. It doesn't always alphabetize the books like it's supposed to.


I think that is it, don't think I have forgotten anything... If I have, let me know :)

Downloading Books onto the Kindle for PC...From Places Other than Amazon

In another post I made a somewhat useful tutorial on how to use the Kindle for PC but it was for books coming directly from Amazon.com, where the Kindle for PC is downloaded from. What about using Project Gutenberg, or Manybooks.net?? How do we get them on the Kindle for PC?

It's much the same process but without the 'buying' from amazon. I say it that way because, well, you don't buy the books because they are free.

Anyway, shall we get started? First go to the site you wish to download books from. In this case I will use Manybooks.net

Enter the author, title, subject or genre you are looking for in the search box.



At first I tried Our Island Story but with no results so instead I chose An Island Story by H. E. Marshall. Press enter (or if you would like to try the Advanced Search click that).



Click the title listed if it is correct. If it isn't, try another search or the Google search. When you find the book you want, you see an excerpt, which is nice. On the right you see the download pull-down box.





From here the process of opening and reading the book is the same as if it were downloaded from Amazon.com

Depending on your browser, you may need to choose the file to put the book in. Usually I use Google Chrome and it downloads it automatically. I will post a tutorial on that another time.

I hope it has been somewhat helpful. Leave some feedback if you were helped...or if you weren't help me figure out where I went wrong ;)

eReaders for the PC (and MAC)...Part 1, continued

Disclaimer: I am not paid or reimbursed for these 'reviews' and how-to's. I do them because I think they may be useful. I do not have a MAC computer, therefore I cannot vouch for the compatibility of these eReaders on MAC. The statement that they are compatible is based on the software claims. Enjoy!


So last post my Kindle for PC was downloading the book that I had just ordered (for free!) from amazon.com

I left it for a bit and did some other things. When I came back, here is what my Kindle looked like:



It automatically opens at the 'beginning' of the book, not necessarily where you want it to. You can find a different location of the book by clicking on Go To. A drop down menu will appear with your options. Some books will allow you to go to the Table of Contents, but this one unfortunately does not have that feature. If you click on Cover, that is exactly where it takes you.





You can turn the pages using your arrow keys, or placing the mouse cursor on the right or left of the page and clicking. For this book, a few 'pages' into it, there is a Table of Contents which are linked to the particular chapter in the book. Click on a chapter, and you're taken to the beginning of that chapter.





You probably can see that I have a larger screen on my computer and it spreads out the eReader quite a bit. I personally like to have the books I'm reading look more like, well, books. To do that, click on the Aa icon at the top of the eReader. From here you have the option of changing the size of font, the number of words per page, the color of the background (and if you choose black, then the font turns white), and the brightness of the page.





If you are not happy with your settings you can choose to reset it to the default setting. Also if you accidentally go to the wrong place in the book, click Back and it takes you to your last viewed page. One of the good things about the Back feature is that even if you scroll over a page or a few and then realize you are in the wrong spot, clicking Back takes you to the place you were before you turned any pages.

The Kindle for PC is a great eReader, in my opinion. It has some 'faults', such as the format the books are in to download them needs to be in one that it reads. If you go to Project Gutenberg and want to download an etext book to read on your Kindle for PC, as far as I know and have tried, you cannot read it on your Kindle for PC. In this case, you need to download it as a Mobi or MobiPocket format. The Kindle for PC will not read EPUB format.

New Links on Links Page

I have added a few links on my Links by Subject for Schooling page. All free :)

Some are:

Curriculum

Free Homeschooling 101 (blog)

Sites of Interest for Learning/Teaching

AtoZ Homes Cool

SAT Practice

World of Discovery (blog) with many links and resources on the sidebar

Art/Music

Grooveshark listen to free music online

Bible

Blue Letter Bible

Language Arts

Write Shop (blog)

Teachers Corner, Writing Lesson Plans, Poetry

Grammar Practice Park grades 3-5

Azar Grammar

Math

A Kid's Math for younger kids
Touch Math for younger kids
Math Cafe free worksheets and flashcards- also for lower grades (up to 4th I believe)
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives all grades and ages
Math Games addition, subtraction, multiplication, division- grades K-6
Home School Math resource list listed by grades
Math Gen worksheets for K-6
Sheppards Software free games- more than just math

Science

Science Bob's Blog (this may not be 'new' but I can't remember how long it's been there!)

Some links...

I was going through the comments that have been posted on my blog and decided to visit others' blogs as well. I don't remember exactly what blog I found the link for the other blog (it's a big circle anyway :) but I found Free Homeschooling 101 which took me to HippoCampus. I have come across a lot of freebie sites (Khan Academy, CIMT math, AO, AOE, SAS, etc) but I thought I would share these two 'new-to-me' sites because I think they are really great. On Free Homeschooling 101 there are tons of links and resources for homeschooling 'free'. I love the way that they describe 'free' homeschooling as well; free- as in, relaxed and in monetary terms.

Anyway, Fox wants to use the computer to do his Spanish lessons (Byki) so I will get off of here and let him have it... :)