"Be the Beat"

The American Heart Association’s new “Be the Beat” initiative is focused on fun ways to educate teens and tweens on the basics of CPR and build confidence by encouraging them to be ready to save a life. Your students can discover the BetheBeat.heart.org where they can join the nationwide movement of teens who are ready to save a life and become the next generation of lifesavers by learning CPR and how to use an AED. BetheBeat.heart.org is designed specifically for teens and tweens to provide a user- friendly, age appropriate site to help students learn how to save a life using CPR/AEDs. Users can find the following resources on the site:

• The Basics: Three instructional videos that demonstrate conventional CPR with breaths, Hands-Only_TM CPR and how to use an AED.
• The Heart Trek Experience: Virtual tour through a 3-D animated version of the heart in which participants earn points by playing video games and taking interactive quizzes.
• The World of Hearts: Users create unique avatars, track and compare their scores in the Heart Track Experience with other users and view profiles and testimonies of other participants.
• Music Playlist: A downloadable playlist of 100-beat-per-minute songs (100 beats per minute is the correct rate for chest compressions during CPR).
• Stuff: Free printable stickers, T-shirt decals and stationery, and free downloadable widgets and wallpapers.

There is also a specific website set up for teachers and educators that provides lesson plans, as well as expert advice, current legislation and programs that support CPR and AED education in schools.

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Guest Post: Top 10 Ways for New Teachers to Connect With Your Students

I love my job, but if anyone were to ask me what I would have wanted to do if I could not make it as a writer, my answer would have been teaching. It’s a profession that is both noble and fulfilling. It enables you to retain your youth even as the years pass you by because of your constant exposure to young minds; it keeps your brain sharp because you have to continuously update your knowledge; and it gives you a sense of purpose because you’re able to make a positive difference in the lives of so many young people.

I remember a handful of teachers from high school that made a great impact on me with the way they approached life and their job. It was because of them and the rapport they shared with all the students that I aspired to become a teacher myself. Teaching is one of the best jobs there is, and if you’re a teacher, here are the best ways to connect with your students.

1. Treat your work as more than just a job and interact with your students like you would with your kids.
2. Be more than just a teacher who teaches them the subject and more of a mentor who teaches them how to approach life.
3. Always make it a point to praise in public and reprimand in private.
4. Never play favorites, no matter how special some children may seem to you.
5. Make your classes more interesting and fun by going off the beaten track. One of my favorite Math teachers used her son as a tool to teach us the basics of algebra. To get us to understand that the positive and negative signs changed on crossing the equal sign, she would tell us how her son would become the daughter she always wanted by crossing the magic bridge, and how he would turn back to her son once he crossed back to the original side. Believe me, I loved algebra more than any other subject that year.
6. Allow them to broaden their general knowledge through extra-curricular pursuits instead of keeping their noses to the grindstone all day. A favorite teacher would allow us to read magazines that had some educational value for 10 minutes of her class. She would then ask us to share this knowledge with the class in the days that followed. This exercise not only broadened our knowledge but also improved our communication and public-speaking skills considerably.
7. Never read from the textbook in class. Be prepared with your lesson so that you explain it to your class instead of reciting from memory.
8. Make eye contact with all your students instead of staring at the far wall. It makes them feel you are talking personally to them.
9. Encourage your students to ask relevant questions and answer them to the best of your ability.
10. And finally, be magnanimous and humble enough to admit when you’ve made a mistake and are wrong. Students value teachers who are smart and who are not full of themselves.

This guest post is contributed by Nancy Simmons, who writes on the topic of online science degree . She welcomes your comments at her email address: nancy.simmons83@radiffmail.com

Interested in guest posting? Drop me an email with your ideas for a topic. I'm always looking to publish guest posts with excellent tips for teachers!

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Educational Videos: Collecting & Organizing the Best Classroom Videos

Educational Videos is a brand new site with the goal to find and organize the best short, educational videos on the web that would be helpful in a classroom setting. Although there are still relatively few videos there, the site is adding more every day.

I like the idea of finding educational videos (all the ones I checked out from the site were from YouTube) and putting them all in one place. With some time and a lot of work, EV could build an archive large enough to save us the time of searching around the net for quality educational videos. Bookmark this one and return from time to time to see what they have found.

Online college courses has a page with academic and non-academic educational videos. Another useful source of learning materials.

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