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.

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

If you are a math teacher who needs to provide instruction on fractions, then conceptua math may have some tools that would help improve that instruction. There are tools for Concepts to Procedures and well as Higher Order Thinking. Each tool includes a video tutorial, a list of NCTM standards covered, Common Core Standards covered, vocabulary, and some possible IEP Goals. Take a look at the video embedded below to learn more about conceptua math.

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.

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.

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.

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!

A Vision of Students Today

Today I put the results of a technology integration self-evaluation into a NoteShare document. I will spend much time going over the results so that I know where to begin helping my colleagues develop the 21st Century Skills of their students. As I started looking, I thought about how much has changed about teaching, information, media, and literacy since I was a kid. Kids today are an entirely different type of animal when it comes to school, information, media, and communication. Teachers who are just entering the profession may be better able to empathize with today's students. But, for the many educators who were not raised using technology, integrating technology into their teaching pedagogy is not as natural. For those of us who are not digital natives, the video embedded below can be a real eye-opener. While this is not my usual type of post (having no tool for you to use) it could be a good discussion starter with students, between teachers on a team, or during collaboration between teachers of the same content area.

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: