Question:
I am a member of AEA and receive the Alabama School Journal. I would love to access The Gateway site for my second graders and fourth graders that I tutor. I do not know that I have a password. Could you please help me?

Answer:
You may join the Gateway by clicking the on the word, Join, in the top right corner below the GEM logo. You then fill out the profile application. Please remember to select your State as your jurisdiction and check that you are an NEA member. Part of the profile will ask you to set a password for yourself. Once your profile is completed, click on the Register button at the bottom of the profile page. Your application will be approved within a day or two. If you have checked the box that specifies that the password is to be sent to you, you will receive the password, which you set, in a welcoming email message.

There are tutorials on the home page of the Gateway addressing how to join and how to use our search engine effectively.

Thanks so much for you interest in the Gateway. We are glad to have you on board. BTW, we have been cataloging resources from various sources all across the web including your states ALEX collection so don’t be surprised to see some about your home state of Alabama!

Many people have asked me through the years, “Why do you want us to become members of the Gateway? After all, anyone can use the great selection of learning resources and the powerful search engine of the Gateway without joining. What’s in it for me and why should I bother? Are you going to sell my information or give my profile to some marketing company? Am I going to get more spam?”

Please be assured that we do not, never have and will not ever sell or give away your personal information. We do not spam. We do not sell you anything. By becoming a member, you have access to more tools to use during your visit than non-members do. These tools include the ability to Digg a resource, rate a resource and make comments about a resource that can be shared with other members. NEA is the financial sponsor of the site, which means that they cover the site’s costs, enabling you to enjoy this large digital library without being bombarded with ads, pop-ups, banners and the other annoying little things that financially support many of the other sites you visit. NEA knows how valuable your time is and wants to make sure that the time you spend finding learning resource is well spent.

Giving us the information about where you teach helps us to know where we should be looking for good materials to catalog into our collection. Identifying your interests provides the information we need to zero in on your needs and telling us a little about your self allows other to know something about the person that you are and what perspective and experience is behind the comments or ratings that you wish to share on the site.

Providing a valid email address gives us the mechanism to verify that you are a real person and not just a machine plus a means to send you the welcome message with your password verification.

And as for what’s in it for you personally, an account on the Gateway allows you to make notes and comments about the resources you find. You have the option of either keeping the comments personal or to share them with other members as you deem fit.

So please, join with us, share with us. Let us know your needs, how to better serve you and give us the statistics that we can use to underscore our value to our sponsor, the National Education Association. Thanks for your support and we look forward to seeing you soon. Click that join button and make yourself part of a great educational community!

What’s New?
NEA has partnered with the GEM Exchange, Gateway to Educational Materials, and JES & Co to support Gateway to 21st Century Skills, a website that combines state-of the art search technologies and a complete database of state academic standards for core subjects. The Gateway is your link to the resources you need to make learning meaningful and fun for your students.

New information about 21st century learning resources is being added every week to the Gateway. Don’t miss out on these great new additions. Here are just a few more recent examples of new items that you can find on the Gateway for you and your students. With fall in the air and Halloween not too far away, here is a frightening selection of new learning resources for some (not too) scary classroom fun. Don’t be afraid to try them!

Pump Up the Curriculum With Pumpkins!

Discusses how pumpkins can be incorporated in curriculums during Halloween time. For example, pumpkin science, pumpkin math, pumpkin writing. Also includes facts about pumpkins and pumpkin lore.

Pumpkins and Witches Tag

The purpose of this activity is to get the students moving, running, dodging, fleeing, and using personal and general space.

Bones: Framework of the Body

In this lesson students will do a hands-on study of the bones using a laboratory skeleton and use media center and online resources to enhance their knowledge of the bones of the body and diseases and injuries to the skeletal system. The students will present information gained from research in a slideshow presentation as well as a newsletter.

Batty Facts

Go batty! Students use a KWL chart as a prereading strategy to organize and display their knowledge of bats.

The Skeleton Within

We know that dancing skeletons aren't real, but are our bones alive? Through an article and various activities, students learn about the bones, joints, and other attributes of the skeletal system. Students create outlines and graphic organizers.

Monster Descriptions

The class will participate in an Internet project called Monster Exchange. They will partner with another class to exchange directions on drawing a monster. They will then share the monsters drawn from the directions by posting them on the Monster Exchange website.

Scientific American Frontiers - Calls of the Wild: Bats and Echolocation

Bats navigate using reflected sound waves. This process, known as echolocation, allows these animals to "see" in the dark. To uncover objects, bats must first emit a series of sound pulses. These pulses travel outward and strike objects. The pulses are then reflected off the objects and return back to the bats. Detected by their large ears, the sounds are quickly analyzed by the brain's echolocation center. In this activity, you'll have the opportunity to approximate an object's distance by analyzing reflected sound waves. As you clap your hands, you'll send out a sound pulse. When the pulse impacts a hard surface, the sound is reflected and returns back to the sender. By analyzing the echo return time, you can calculate the distance to the reflecting surface.

Zombies in the Graveyard

For this activity, designate 3-5 students (the taggers) to be "it". Have all other students spread out in the playing area and have them extend their arms out like Zombies (or mummies). Tell the taggers and Zombies that they must walk during the activity. On the teacher's "GO" signal, the taggers try to tag the Zombies. When a Zombie is tagged, he/she must stand still (freeze) with both arms extended out. To get unfrozen, another Zombie (who has not been tagged) must gently push down both arms of the frozen Zombie.

Quickly learn to search the huge collection of free learning resource. (Click this link to view our video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYqho-SN-m4) Our brief, seven minute, instructional video is now available on the home page of the Gateway. It’s never been easier to boost your professional skills, add more fun and individualized instruction to your repertoire of competencies. Join our cadre of 21st century educators today.

Make your search for resources from the Gateway or great benefit from your NEA membership easier and faster. Simply visit: http://www.thegateway.org and download the National Education Association Toolbar from the link in the middle of the page. The toolbar is ready for you! It easy and it’s FREE!

Did You Know?
Tuesday and Wednesday, in that order, were the busiest days for the Gateway in the month of September. In fact, the Gateway is such a valuable and powerful tool that most of the visitors added the Gateway to their browser Favorites or Bookmarks! In the last month, over 56% of traffic came from people who have already bookmarked the Gateway to 21st Century Skills.

Gateway to 21st Century Skills Statistics for September 2008
Lots and lots of educators are finding and utilizing the Gateway as in each month since we became sponsored by the NEA, we have experienced double digit percentage increases over the previous year’s figures. The Gateway Community keeps getting bigger and we keep breaking records! September 2008 traffic to the Gateway hit approximately 50,435 visits. In the month of September 2008, adjusted measures of traffic showed visitors viewed 151,305 pages and created 1,316,026 hits.

The Gateway to 21st Century Skills receives thousands of visits a month from dedicated educators all over the world. The community is developing into a diverse and interesting group with tremendous talent to share! Come and join us as we pioneer the way to the vision of a 21st century education. Become a member and network with other educators. Use the information from the Gateway learning resources in other Web 2.0 friendly applications, your portfolio, store it on your calendar for easy planning or share it with your student, parents and administrator. The Gateway is here to help you easily meet your needs and make your teaching day easier!

Spread the word, invite a friend and help your fellow educators to participate in this special community that NEA has provided for its members.

If your NEA state affiliate website doesn’t link to the Gateway to 21st Century Skills as a resource on your state website, they are surely missing the 21st Century boat. Tell them you need resources and a link to the Gateway! In terms of a teaching tool, it is one of the greatest benefits that NEA has ever made available to its members.

Are Your Members Using the Gateway?
Connecticut Retired Education Association, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Wyoming, Wyoming Student Education Association, Hawaii, Maryland, Colorado, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Washington, North Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, South Dakota and Tennessee and have all created versions of the Gateway that displays the state affiliate logos.

And now, not only will your affiliate members be greeted with a view of your logo but anyone who declares that they hail from your branded state will also see that affiliate’s logo. This will underscore your local commitment to provide the members of the profession with the tools and resources they need to succeed in driving improvements to student achievement.

We want to hear from you. What would you like to see added to the Gateway? What improvements would you like to see? Send your suggestions, thoughts and observations on how we can make the Gateway to 21st Century Skills a more valuable tool for you, your students and your fellow teachers. Email Bruce Walker.

Who’s Joining the Gateway?

From students and pre-service teachers to experienced educators in all parts of educational enterprise, everyone finds value in the Gateway collection of learning resources. What a tremendously diverse and interesting group of people find their way to the Gateway! The community is growing in size and harnessing the awesome power that comes from a huge set of life skills. To show you what we at the Gateway have noticed we did some research on the diversity of members in the biographies written by new members applying for Gateway membership.

Here are some excerpts from the biographies of recent Gateway applications for membership. Members show their support for the Gateway by joining and it is Free! Membership allows you to make notes and comment about the resources you find on the Gateway. You can share those observations with your peers or make comments that are only for your use. It’s like your own personal Gateway to over 50,000 quality learning resources.

P.D. – N.M.
I am a special education teacher who is currently teaching 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students. The class is called the "Developmental Learning Class" and the program was launched this year to meet the needs of elementary students who need more support than our inclusion program offers. My class is often referred to as a "self-contained" class; however we are hardly "self-contained". My students mainstream with their general ed. classmates (by grade) for all their specials (art, PE, music, Library, technology, health), and for science and social studies. I have two teacher assistants who travel with the students during their specials. During science and social studies we rotate as to whom "pushes-in".

C.W. – AL.
I am kindergarten teacher at …I am an active member of NEA. I have served two terms on the NEA Board of Directors. I enjoy lobbying for NEA and public schools.

A.C. - PA
I am a Technology Coach. I regularly assist teachers in all content areas with the development of lessons that promote 21st Century Skills.

J. L. – AK.
Librarian K-6 in Anchorage, Alaska. Technology Teacher Leader 2007 Co-Director Anchorage Area Elementary Battle of the Books

K.M. – N.M.
I am a special education resource teacher for a large public school system. I work in the transition services unit providing technical support to teachers K-12 with transition issues. I am primarily responsible for implementing self determination curriculums/ideas and self directed IEPs at different grade levels and schools.

C.R. – PA
I am a literacy coach at an elementary school with a Master's in ESL, working on her doctorate.

F.S. - GUAM
I am the program specialist for the College Access Challenge Grant Program at Guam Community College. Our focus is middle school students.

K.R. - TN
I attend Dyersburg State Community College in Covington TN. I am an education major and am looking for lesson plans to use in my Education Portfolio. I would love to teach pre-k or kindergarten.

R.P. – TX
I am a certified secondary math teacher and have been teaching for 34 years. In this span of time, I have taught 6th thru 12th grade anything from 6th grade math to Calculus. I have been married to the same man for 33 years and have one son, who by the way is the love of my life and he is in the 10th grade. I have also worked as a TAAS Coordinator for one of the middle schools in TX, as well as been a Technology Coordinator for that school. Over my tenure, I have worn many hats as well as taught mathematics. I feel that this is my calling and I love what I do.