Tuesday, December 14, 2010
QuizSnack
QuizSnack is a quick and easy to use Web 2.0 tool for creating online polls and quizzes that can be viewed online or embedded into your blog, webpage, or wiki. I made a sample that your see below. What took the longest to do in making it was thinking of the names of the movies. Enjoy!
Monday, December 13, 2010
Super Book of Web Tools for Educators
There are many teachers who want to start using technology in their classrooms, but just aren't sure where to start. That's why I got together ten prominent ed tech bloggers, teachers, and school administrators to create The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators. In this book there introductions to more than six dozen web tools for K-12 teachers. Additionally, you will find sections devoted to using Skype with students, ESL/ELL, blogging in elementary schools, social media for educators, teaching online, and using technology in alternative education settings.
The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators -
MathTrain.com
This site is part of the Mathtrain.com Project and was created to host student-created math video lessons all in one place. It was created by Mr. Marcos and his students at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, CA. Videos are searchable by topic or by most viewed, most recent, or most discussed. The site is highly interactive and has an option to subscribe to their free podcast through ITunes. In addition to the student-created videos, there are also teacher-created videos with explanations on different math topics. Most videos are under 2 minutes in length making them perfect to use for introduction or review with different math topics. This site runs in conjunction with mathtrain.com. Below is an example on Prime Factorization.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Holiday Advisory Activity
Monday, December 6, 2010
Vocaroo
If you find yourself or your students recording audio for use in the classroom, then you should take a look at Vocaroo. This is a handy Web 2.0 tool that allows users with a built-in microphone to record audio very quickly that can be used for podcasts, narration, and presenting information to webpages, blogs, and or wikis. Like most Web 2.0 tools it is free, does not require an install, does not require a specific browser, or computer operating system.
For those very reasons, Vocaroo is different than say, Audacity. Simply click the record button, speak into the microphone, click the stop button. Vocarro automatically creates a link (or an embed code) you can quickly add to your web page. Unfortunately, it does not have an option to edit the audio, but that is part of what makes this tool so quick and easy to use. Have a microphone connected to your computer?… give it a try today.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Write Comics
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Guess the Google
Friday, November 19, 2010
Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web
From iLearn Technology: This interactive e-book is your guide to how browsers and the web work, how the World Wide Web has evolved, cloud computing, and what we need to know to navigate the web safely. The book has an enchanting quality with its humorous approach to the web (love the titles) and fun illustrations. This guide-book is one you will want to share with all of your colleagues, relatives, friends, students…you will want to dive into it yourself.
This handy little online book is a great one to share with students. Share an individual chapter (called a thing) or the whole book. Here your students can learn all about the web, how to keep themselves safe, and will know the difference between cloud computing and a web app. 20 Things I Learned is also a must share with your co-workers, neighbors, mom, grandpa, and the rest of the crew that is constantly calling you for your tech expertise.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Khan Academy
It has been a few hours since I found Khan Academy and I am still shocked and awed by its complete awesomeness. This site is the very reason why schools should keep YouTube open to its teachers and students. Khan Academy contains over 1800 video lessons on the topics of Math, Science, Humanities, and Interviews. What makes these videos different, it that the instructor is not only showing how to say, solve a problem in physics, but he is also talking about what he is thinking. Basically, thinking out loud while visually displaying the problem and the thought process. This is just so absolutely cool. Not only can viewers watch and learn from these videos, but they can also download them or get the embed code to embed them into their own web page, blog, wiki, or Moodle course. But wait, there's more. There are also practice exercises for some of the lessons as well that viewers can do simply by logging in with their Google Account. I am so happy that I stumbled upon this site. It is like the greatest thing since sliced bread. Oh yeah, the another great thing about this is: IT'S FREE!!.
Below, I have embedded a video on slope. Take a moment to view it to see how cool these videos are.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
A Fair(y) Use Tale
You S*%K at PowerPoint
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Information is Beautiful
TestMoz
Want to save the time it takes of correct quizzes and test? Try creating an online quiz with TestMoz. Online test creation really couldn't get any easier than it is with Testmoz. Once your test is created and students start taking it, results are found in the Reports tab. Students are listed along with their scores. This site works really well providing your remember or bookmark the url for the quiz or test and that you remember the admin password you gave it and students know the password they need in order to take the quiz or test. You can also use Google Forms for creating quizzes and tests just like Testmoz, but the plus here is that Testmoz will correct it for you.
Monday, November 8, 2010
iCivics
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
WebList
Writing and Vocabulary Weblist |
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Pasting a Google Book into a Blog
Monday, October 25, 2010
Glickr.com "Create Your Own Animated Gifs"
Ever wish that you or your students could create their own animated .gifs? Well, Glickr.com let's you do just that, for free, with no registration required. Users can upload their own images or those found on Flickr, Picassa, YouTube, or their own gallery. Once your animated .gif is created, you can download it for later use, get the url for its location on the Internet, or get the embed code you need for just about any Web 2.0 host you can imagine.
One Word: Writing Prompts
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
5 Card Flickr
Are you familiar with the 5 Card Nancy game? Scott McLoud invented the game based on the premise that any 5 panels from any of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy comic strips can be combined to tell a story. Alan Levine then extended this concept to create the 5 Card Flickr game.
The idea has evolved into something more than a parlor game. It has become an exercise in storytelling that teachers use to engage students and get their creative juices flowing. Check out the links at the bottom of this page to learn more about 5 Card Nancy, 5 Card Flickr, and what this kind of storytelling looks like in the classroom.
5 Card Nancy - http://www.7415comics.com/nancy/index.html
5 Card Flickr - http://web.nmc.org/5cardstory/play.php?suit=5card
We used this activity after lunch at a MLTI Leadership meeting. We wrote the stories, put the photos into iPhoto, then used Garage Band to make an enhanced podcast with audio of the story being read and the five pictures. This same activity could be done with KeyNote as well. I thought it was a really neat way to get the juices flowing.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Online Timeline Tools
Read*Write*Think Timeline From site: Creating timelines with this tool becomes an engaging activity for students as they choose from five different units of measure (date, time, event, entry, or other) and add specific descriptions of each entry. Once the entries have been added, students may navigate through any part of the timeline by simply clicking on the appropriate entry. Students may view and edit their draft timeline, then print the finished timeline for reference. This is a handy tool for classroom use that guides students through the process of organizing information in timeline form and results in a polished finished product.
XTimeline is a collaborative time line creation tool. XTimeline gives users the option to include photos, videos, text, and web links within each entry of the timeline. After creating a timeline the creators can invite people to comment on and discuss the timeline. Think of it as Youtube for timelines. Timelines created with XTimeline can be easily embedded into another website like a blog or a wiki for example.
Time Toast is a simple timeline builder. To add events to a timeline simply click on the inconspicuous "add an event" button and a simple event box pops up in which you can enter enter text, place a link, or add a picture. Time Toast does not have the more advanced editing options that X Timeline offers. What it offers instead is ease of use which makes it a suitable choice for students in elementary school or middle school.
Dipity is my favorite online timeline creation tool. It allows users to include not only text for entries, but also images, and videos in their timeline. Dipity also has a mapping feature which allows users to place a Google Maps bookmark that relates to the topic of the event, on to an entry in their timeline Like most Web2.0 tools, Dipity has multiple ways for users to Each entry to a Dipity timeline can include multiple types of media which allows users to add more detail and information than can be included in a traditional timeline.
PicLits.com
Many people, especially those with children, have those little magnetic words that they place on their refrigerator to make phrases. Imagine a website that provides that type of writing experience but also provides a picture to write about. PicLits is a great site to use whether you want students to write a sentence, paragraph, a poem, or even list descriptive words in order to capture the essence or meaning of the picture. Once users select a picture, they have a choice of using the word bank that is provided to create their writing or they can simply go "freestyle" and write what they wish on their own. If the user wants to save a copy of the PicLit they created, they will need to create an account for themselves (its free) or possibly they could sign in under their teacher's account.
See the full PicLit at PicLits.com
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Poem Flow
Poem Flow is an App created for the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad that displays a daily poem line by line to viewers. Everyone can see the same poem on the same day creating an instant, invisible community of simultaneous readers. The poems are from a mix of the greatest poems in English. But, even if you do not have those devices, you can still utilize this poetry resource online. After viewing Poem Flow, I immediately thought about, after students became familiar with it, how cool it would be to have them create their own Poem Flows by using KeyNote. Students could use a photo of of an iPod, iPad, TV, or just about anything, and then create slides or builds with text boxes. Students could export their Flow as a movie file and then share with an audience of their class by using an LCD projector, or with the world, using a Web 2.0 tool that would allow them to embed their video on to a website, blog or wiki.
NBC Learn
NBC Learn provides many of the video resources of NBC to K-12 learners and educators. I found out about these resources when I read a blog post about "Science of NFL Football". I clicked on the link provided to find out more about these videos and lessons centered around football and discovered that NBC Learn, which produces the videos and lessons, has created several video lesson series for K-12 learning. Not all of the videos and lessons are about science. There is a series titled "Finishing the Dream" which contains over one hundred video clips from the civil rights era. NBC Learn also has produced hundreds of mini-documentaries (each two to six minutes in length) that focus on Early American history. These mini documentaries are a part of NBC News Archives on Demand, a subscription service that provides full access to all of their content and lesson materials. You can however register for a 30-day trial, during which you could download content that you want to use. If there is not enough science for you in "Science of NFL Football", then check out "Science of the Winter Olympic Games" which explores the physics, biology, chemistry, and math behind the winter games.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Sumanas Science Animation Gallery
Sumanas Science Animation Gallery provides users with a nice collection of animated tutorials for various science disciplines. Some use Flash, while others are QuickTime movies. Some include audio with captions of what is being said while other contain no audio with explanations of what is being shown to the viewer. While you may not have access to every scientific concept, process, or phase, it is a good collection that will hopefully increase over time.
Conceptua Tools for Teaching Fractions
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
President Obama's "Back to School" Speech for 2010
Yesterday afternoon, at about 2:30, I discovered that President Obama had made his second annual "Back to School" speech at 1:00 PM. I was very disappointed because, even though his speech last year was considered controversial because the White House put out a list of discussion questions teachers could use with their students, I found his speech to be uplifting and inspiring last year. I wish I could have let teachers know ahead of time that it was occurring and even arrange to have it broadcast on our television system in the school. But regardless of my disappointment, I missed the boat. Luckily, the White House Website has the video available to those who wish to embed it into their Blog, Wiki, or Webpage. I have embedded it below. Have a look at it. Hopefully, you will want to share it with your students.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
AnswerGarden
AnswerGarden is a great way to get feedback from others. It allows you to post a question on to your webpage, blog, wiki, social network, etc., and viewers to post a response. The more people who visit or see the question, the more responses you'll get. This could be used with just your students as a quick survey tool, or as a means for finding out what they know about a topic. For example: have students list adjectives that describe something. Like, Apples are.... Here is an actual example. Have students estimate how old something is. Like, How long ago was the Great Depression? The possibilities are endless. Take a look at the example below:
How might you use AnswerGarden in your classroom?... at AnswerGarden.ch.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Grammarly
Grammarly is a great tool for students to use prior to passing in writing or research papers. It can act as their own personal proofreader. It is also a great tool for teachers to use to check quickly for writing errors and plagarism. By uploading text to Grammarly, text is checked for grammar, punctuation, and plagarism. The text is checked for over 150 different grammar rules, provides easily understood explanations about the errors found. Grammarly also spots errors in spelling and finds words and phrases inconsistent with context or style of your document. Grammarly also looks for text borrowed from other online sources and provides links to those sources. Grammarly also helps you to write more eloquently by providing context-optimized synonyms that make more of an impact. Grammarly also is a time saver by allowing you to see all your mistakes at a glance without having to scroll through the entire document.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Print What You Like
Times are tough, as well all know, when it comes to school budgets. But did you know that toner and ink for printers is at the top of the list when it comes to cost per ounce.? Something to think about when students do research on the internet is all of the ink and paper that is wasted. They often print unwanted or unnecessary pages, pages cluttered with ads, and other "junk." Print What You Like allows you to select a part of a page and print it easily. You can even install a bookmarklet in your browser to make the process easy. If plan on having students do research involving internet resources, I recommend experimenting with this tool. It might save lots of precious trees and ink!
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
A Vision of Students Today
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
10 Incredibly Inspirational Videos on YouTube
YouTube can be a powerful tool to use in the classroom regardless of what subject area you teach. If you teach Social Studies, then this resource may be of particular interest to you. The newssite Mashable has collected ten videos of some of man's most inspirational moments caught on film ranging from the late 1800's to 2008. These videos could make for some interesting and inspirational lessons. It would be interesting to create a video timeline using these videos possibly using an online timeline maker like Dipity. You may even want to turn all ten videos into one long film using the tool Dragontape.
I have embedded one of the videos below:
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Readability
This morning, Kim Cowperthwaite and Paula Eppich did a Language Arts presentation for the staff. One tool that Kim shared with her colleagues was Readability. Readability is a tool that allows you to read and print articles online more easily by removing the clutter of graphics, adds, and other distracting items found on a website. The Readability website provides instructions for setting up your browser to make use of this tool. There is also a FireFox Readability Add-on that can be installed. This tool can make it a little easier to keep students focused on the text at hand.
Another staff member asked me to share the tool QuietTube which can be used to display a YouTube video without all of the other distracting clutter on the page. Click here to read my post about QuietTube.
Wall Wisher: Online Sticky Board
Monday, August 30, 2010
Back to School
If you are returning to teachers technology toolbox, welcome back! If this is your first time visiting my blog welcome. Throughout the course of the school year I hope to post several times a week to this blog, some of the dynamic online tools that are available to educators that will help students develop some of their 21st century skills. I would love for those who read/subscribe to my blog to provide feedback about these tools after they have used them, or if they have used them before, so that we can all benefit from your experiences with using them in a classroom. As I write this, realize that some of you may not know how to "subscribe" to this blog. If this is you, take a look at the video below:
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Trying Out DocStoc.com
The document I chose to make available is Richard Byrne's "Google For Teachers" document
Google+for+Teachers -
PollEverywhere
During the summer technology Institute, I learned about a cool tool for getting data from students. We used a polling tool called Polleverywhere.com which had us use a cell phone to text our response to a question that was on a presentation. When we finished texting, the presenter hit refresh and suddenly all of our results appeared in a bar graph on his presentation. Very Cool!
Dragontape - Education Today
This is my first time using Dragontape, which allows you to take several YouTube videos and combine them into one. You are then given a link to the now larger video and you can (as you can see) blog the To try this out, I took a couple of videos that I have seen this summer which illustrate how education has changed since the time that most teachers were in school themselves. You could use this tool yourself by putting together a series of videos for students to watch on a topic you are teaching. You could have students create a DragOnTape video of "Greatest Hits" for videos they found about their research topic.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Trying Out Twitterfeed
Since creating this blog, I have been tweeting each new post by logging into Twitter, or starting up TweetDeck and then manually writing each new post so that those who follow me on Twitter get informed about the new post. Tim Hart shared with me the use of TwitterFeed.com which will look for any new posts I make and then automatically tweet any new posts I write on my blog. Hopefully, it will do so once I post this. Let's find out.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Enjoying My Summer Vacation
Just in case you were wondering whether I have been slacking off during the last several weeks, the answer is, "Yes." I have been enjoying my summer vacation immensely. It has not been ALL play though. I attended ISTE 2010 at the end of June and then attended FOSSed at Gould Academy just after the 4th of July. I am now preparing for the Summer Technology Institute that will take place next week. While I haven't posted anything at this site in recent weeks (OK, about a month and a half) I haven't given up on it. I want the readers of my blog to enjoy their summer vacation too and not have to think about all of the tools out there that can be used in their classrooms. So, at the end of August, I'll be rested and ready to continue posting my technology tool finds. I have some great ones lined up.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Veezzel: Free Stock Photo Search
I try not to make a habit of re-posting from other technology integrator blogs, but I just couldn't resist when I read the post by Richard Byrne from Free Technology for Teachers about Veezzel. Recently I did a post about the tool Behold which was a search engine for Flickr where users could check off that they only wanted it to search for copyright-friendly pics to be used for education. With Veezzel, all of the pics are free stock photos. I did a search for ice cream (must have had a craving) and all of the result were of high quality. This could be a good place to send students when they are working on their digital projects.
issuu.com Online Publishing Tool
Now you can publish your writing or the writing done by your students online by using Issuu. By uploading a PDF, PowerPoint, Word Document, or anything with a PDF, DOC, PPT, ODT, WPD, SXW, RTF, ODP, or SXI extension. Those of us using iWork apps (Pages & KeyNote) need to Export to one of the above type of files. There are several display formats that you can select such as; book, presentation, magazine, newspaper, report, journal, portfolio, essay and manual. Issuu can be embedded as a small presentation, as seen below. To be seen full screen, click on a page. Or you can also embed your presentation, book, magazine, etc., as a larger document if you select Customize. Viewers can also zoom in and zoom out when reading the your publications, as well as download or print it. Another option is that viewers can embed your publications into their blog, wikis, or webpages.
How could this be used in the classroom? There are some obvious uses of this online publishing site where children can publish their own work such as;
- ebooks of student stories, poetry, or other writings
- the class or school newspaper
- presentations of their research
- Student created textbooks
- online digital portfolios
- class literary magazine
- class book reviews
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Branches of Government Game
If you want to help students prepare for a quiz or check for their understanding about the Branches of the U.S. Government, then this game could be helpful. At this site users are shown a bare tree with branches labeled as the branches of government. At the bottom of the tree is a cluster of leaves that describes a branch of government. The player needs to drag the cluster of leaves to the correct branch. If they drag it to the wrong branch, it goes to the bottom of the tree for them to try again. If they are correct, it stays on the branch and a new cluster appears at the bottom of the tree. When complete, the player is told how many cluster were correct, and how many attempts they made. Could be a fun way to study with students competing to see if they can have no incorrect attempts.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Math Remediation Sites
Over the course of a school year, when I find a good online resource that I think teachers would like to use, I tend to send out an email with the link to teachers of that specific content area. Recently, a teacher approached me and asked if I would make a page with links to sites that would help with math remediation and then send him the link so that he could bookmark it. He said it would save him the time of going through all of his emails. So, here is a link to just such a web page. You will also see a link at the top of this page. Math teachers, make sure you bookmark it. I won't name any names, but Larry, if you need help with this, let me know.