ABE: Adult Basic Education

For student success in school, learning how to organize time is critical. This begins with a calendar to write assignments, projects, deadlines, and tests. In this activity students learn how to use Microsoft Office to create a personal calendar.

Students can introduce themselves to classmates with an "About Me" slideshow created using Animoto, and they may learn some technology skills in the process. Animoto is usually a paid account but you can get a free account (must be renewed yearly) for yourself and 50 students.

In this activity, students create a PicLit (a combination of words placed on an image to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture) that identifies one SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) goal for the school year.

Pixlr is a powerful photo editor that is online and completely free. Edited images can be posted to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, or simply saved to your computer or online with its own Web address (URL). If students are adding images to an essay or flyer, they can have fun editing and enhancing the image with Pixlr.

There are three levels of Pixlr.

• Pixlr Editor is a powerful image editing tool similar to Photoshop
• Pixlr Express provides many borders, overlays, and effects that require no experience to use
• Pixlr-o-matic offers easy borders and effects.

This lesson will focus on Pixlr-o-matic, but once your students master it, you will likely find them experimenting with Pixlr Express and Pixlr Editor.

This acitivity titled "Songs My Teacher Taught Me" is a series of three lesson plans intended to guide students through approximately one month of poetry study. This unit involves minimal technology requirements, but extends across a wide range of poetry. Of the eighteen poets included; eight are women, six are African-American; two are nineteenth-century poets and the three lesson plans are thematically broken into "What is Poetry?", "Poems of Childhood," and "Self and Society." Each of the three lesson plans includes a short reading list, a brief introduction setting tone and theme, a series of analytical questions, two creative activities, and at least one writing assignment.

Also at the site you will find all you will need to teach poetry including curriculum, essays on poetry, biographies of more than 200 poets, text of nearly 600 poems, and RealAudio of 80 poems read by their authors. Poets.org also allows visitors to create their own anthologies of content from the site.