Website Resources for the Interactive ActivClassroom

This session was all about interactive resources to use in your classroom. Even though it was presented by a Promethean consultant, you can use it with any whiteboard, computer, etc.

1. PBS Interactive

• This site has educational, flash-based game with rollover capability.

2. KeepVid

• Save YouTube videos to your computer and use to embed in flipcharts. 
• When I went on this site it tried to get me to sign up for it with a credit card so I'm not sure about using that. I use SaveYouTube all the time which also downloads videos to your computer. It's very easy to embed these mp4 files into a flipchart so your students don't see YouTube comments and inappropriate content

3. MorgueFile 

• This site has nice photos that are copyright free.

4. Starfall

• Starfall is a reading site where students can go through interactive lessons to learn to read. Starfall also has a "more" option including math, which you have to pay for.

5. ABCYa!

• Built for K-5 students divided into sections like letters, numbers, and more. Some interactive activities they have include fraction tiles, coins, time, etc.

6. JigZone

• Upload pictures/slides and it will transform it into a jigsaw puzzle. Students will move the puzzle pieces around to figure out the picture. 
• You can use it for a map of the united states, to introduce a new unit, and more. You can also use jigsaw puzzles created by other people.

7. Study Jams

• Free interactive games, karaoke songs, and quizzes all about math and science.

8. Fav 7

• This site lets you organize websites for kids to use during research by creating a short page listing seven links. It creates one short url for students to go to with live pictures of each site. 

9. Wordle

• Use Wordle to explore character traits, project covers, to introduce a new topic, embed in a flipchart, and more. (I always have my kids go to www.wordle.net/create so they don't come across any inappropriate Wordle examples that could have recently been created.)

10. Google Advanced Search

• You can do an advanced google search to look for information on a specific topic by file type. For example, search Fractions on Google. At the bottom of the page, click on Advanced Search. Then, under file type, select Flash and it will show you only flash pages with fractions. 

Promethean Presenter

Hello TCEA!

I'm so excited to have the opportunity to attend TCEA again this year. I always learn so many new things and have a chance to introduce my students to new technology tools. We flew in last night and we are starting in our very first workshop bright and early!

The first workshop I'm attending is 'Give Kids the World'. In the first five minutes, I've gathered that it's all about collaboration, which is something my kids and I love! Dr. Howie started out by discussing how important it is for kids to collaborate with others around the world. Some of the skills he believes are required for students to be successful in the 21st century are leadership, information literacy, communication skills, critical/inventive thinking, use of 21st century tools, and personal attributes such as ambition and time management.

Here are some different things we discussed throughout the three hour session:
Read Around the Planet

• Read Around the Planet matches teachers up for video-conferences between schools for students to share projects.

Web Conferencing

• We discussed a variety of web conferencing resources on Caisefiles wiki. Check out a list of web conferencing tools here.

Global Education Conference Ning

• This ning is centered around the Global Education Conference and has a lot of resources available.

iEARN (International Education & Resource Network) - "Learning with the world not just about it."

• This site is all about collaboration! It provides links to several collaborative projects spread out over 130 countries, 30 languages, 40,000 educators, and 2 million children.

ePals

• This global community can be used as a free tool or can be purchased. For no cost, you can create a teacher profile and get 30 free student email addresses to use in the collaborative projects. There are several collaborative projects including global weather, digital storytelling, maps, national disasters, and more.
• I really like how detailed the projects are. They include lesson plans, detailed instructions, along with standards they are linked to.
• This site is financially funded by IBM, National Geographic, and Microsoft which allows ePals to help teachers connect with others around the world for free.

7 Tools Students Can Use to Manage Group Projects

• This blog entry comes from the 'Free Technology for Teachers' blog.
• It includes links and information for the following tools:
• Pegby
• A board you can set up task cards under three columns: pending, in process, done. You can invite friends to join your board.
• Teambox
• You can use team calendars to add dates, upload files, and collaborate about team projects with your team.
• Enter the Group
• You can enter a project in, add details, and add people to your group.
• Todoist
• Helps you manage tasks and set up deadlines. You can create projects and assignments and prioritize projects. You can also integrate Todoist into your gemail account, in iGoogle gadgets, and as an extension on Google Chrome. It is a sister service for Wedoist.
• Trello
• This site is for individuals and groups to manage tasks. It is set up as a virtual corkboard where group members can pin task cards. Group members can be assigned tasks and you can arrange task cards into columns like 'to do', 'in progress', and 'completed'.
• Wiggio
• This collaborative tool is used to schedule virtual meetings, manage events with a shared calendar, create to-do lists, assign tasks, poll your group, and send emails/texts/voice messages.
• Ta-da List
• This is a to-do list that can be shared. It's very similar to Remember the Milk.

Skype

• Skype Premium (7 day free trial) is a paid Skype service which allows you to videoconference with more than one person at a time. It includes group screen sharing and group video calling.
• Skype can be used to connect with classrooms around the world and go on virtual fieldtrips.

Global Nomads Group

• This is a paid service that helps you connect with schools internationally.

Flat Classroom Projects

• This site helps you connect with other classes around the world through collaborative projects. It is designed mostly for middle and high school classes.

Sites Like Etherpad (Realtime Collaborative Text Editing)

• TypeWith.me
• PrimaryPad
• TitanPad
• PiratePad
• Sync.in
• Today's Meet
• We've used some of these tools in my classroom to have collaborative discussions about a read aloud without disrupting the read aloud itself. With 25 students on it at one time, it became a bit frustrating to them to have their text accidentally deleted, or even to know what color was their text. I can see using it for group projects though. While students are working on their netbooks, researching for their group project, they can have collaborative discussions on TypeWithMe to keep in contact throughout the research process. If you set up the rooms to be available for over a week or so, students could also collaborate at home. I will be trying that out next week!

Google Docs Project

• You can share Google Docs, allow other users to collaborate and work together on your document, or even share documents through email or via a link.

Here are some collaborative projects we discussed:

This I Believe

• Students get into deep discussion and thought about what they believe. Possibile Idea for Elementary Classrooms (via my friend Lynn): What about using this at the beginning of the year? Instead of writing a classroom constitution, what about writing believe statements for our room, what do we believe as a group?
• This site includes lessons to lead kids, step by step, to understand their beliefs.
• We listened to the neatest podcast with a kindergartner who came up with a list of 100 of his beliefs for the 100th day of school. His story is available here.

My Hero Project

• Students can share stories, essays, art, and short films about their hero. This site includes an educator guide to help guide you through this project in your classroom.
• We actually do a biography project where we end up having a wax museum for parents and students to attend...thinking maybe we might switch it up to a Hero Museum so we can integrate this project...

VoiceThread

• Use photos to tell a story, collaborate with others through comments, and more. The educational version does cost money. However, the free version allows you to post three voicethreads at a time.

Wikis: - Some examples of great Wikis

• Going West Wiki
• English Story Time

Page99Test "One Moment to Grab You"

• Belief: If I read page 99 of any book, and I am compelled to read the next page, it's a book I should buy.
• Check out privacy policy and district privacy policy before using..

Creative Commons

Glogster EDU

Collaborative Writing

• Storybird - Students can write a story and print it.
• ZooBurst - Pop Up 3D book...used in many ESL classes

Here are some great online magazines involving education and/or technology. Take a moment to check them out!
Edutopia
Wired
Fast Company


Dr. Howie has all of his materials on his website, including the presentation for this workshop. All of his files are licensed under Creative Commons. As long as you keep his name on them, you are free to use them in your own classroom! Have fun exploring!

www.drhowie.com
Twitter: hdiblasi

Until next time...

National Geographic Explorer

Many of us have a magazine subscription for our classrooms, whether it be Scholastic News, National Geographic, or Time For Kids. My favorite new discovery has been all about these magazines in digital format. We receive Time For Kids for our third graders and I absolutely love it!  This year, I was able to sign up for Time For Kids in digital format as well. It's been great to be able to read TFK in digital format on our interactive white board. However, I've been looking for something my kids could use on their netbooks and TFK only gave me one log in.

Coming across National Geographic Explorer a few weeks ago has been the best thing I've seen when it comes to digital magazines!  We do not subscribe to National Geographic so we cannot get all of the digital editions in the archive. However, at any point time, they have 3-4 of their digital editions online for free! I'm hoping they don't discover this and start charging!  We've been studying nonfiction informational texts and how to make inferences, determine the main idea, and identify cause/effect relationships with these types of texts.

Not only is National Geographic Explorer accessible without a log in, but it is also interactive! As students read the articles within the magazine, they can highlight text and type on digital post-its which they can insert anywhere in the text. This serves as a great tool when they get together with their reading partner to discuss the text and the thinking they did while reading. Take a moment to check out this great digital learning tool!

National Geographic Explorer

News Articles for Kids

With our state assessment changing, the need for more and more nonfiction resources is on the rise. Being in a 1:1 classroom, I'd love to find some great nonfiction resources available online for my kids to read on their netbooks. In the past couple of weeks, my students have enjoyed reading ebooks on their netbooks during their Read to Self time. Some of my students are so in love with ebooks that they go home and read ebooks on their home computer far past the required nightly reading time. I think it's great they're so engaged in reading!

Tonight, I went on a hunt for news articles with current news, yet appropriate for kids. I was suprised at home many resources are out there!

DOGO News 
DOGO News was one of the first resources I came across and it's a fabulous resource. DOGO sorts all of their news articles into six categories: current events, science, sports, social studies, did you know, and green. I love how they sort their articles into categories! They have a plethora of news articles, sometimes even posting more than one article per day. I know my students are all going to want to read about the new 'Making of Harry Potter' studio in Watford, England. Who doesn't want to know all about  the magical world of Harry Potter?

Science News for Kids
The next resource I came across was the Science News website which has specifically designed a Science News site just for kids. They've also organized their articles in to categories similar to DOGO. Their categories include: atoms & forces, earth & sky, humans & health, life, tech & math, and extra. They have amazing, detailed photos to intrigue students to click on 'Read more'. Within each main category, they have subcategories for students to browse through. This looks like a great resource to support our science curriculum. I've already tagged a few articles about our upcoming unit on Earth! This is a great resource to integrate math into reading and vice-versa!

National Geographic Explorer
I absolutely love this resource! While it isn't organized into categories (it posts articles by month published), it has nonfiction articles on more than one reading level. It offers articles in the Pioneer Edition which is geared towards 2nd and 3rd graders. It also has a Pathfinder Edition geared towards 4th and 5th graders. It publishes the same articles, yet they are on different reading levels. I think this is great to differentiate for those lower and higher kids in the classroom. There are some great science and social studies topics covered in the past few months that could easily fit within our district curriculum.

National Geographic for Kids
National Geographic for Kids is more about stories than news articles. It has short informative paragraphs that aren't really linked together in an article format. However, I included it in here because it's a great resource to get students engaged in nonfiction topics. Most topics include a little bit of reading along with a video and a map of where the animals are located. I do like it as a research site for animals and my kids absolutely love National Geographic!

This is just the beginning of my list of resources to use with my kids. If you know of any other resources, feel free to comment on this post and let me know! Happy reading!

1:1 Classroom

Hey everyone. Wow, it's been a while since my last post! It's been an extremely busy first month of school. Now that the school year is in full swing, I'm determined to start back on my blog and to update it on a consistent basis. At the end of the school year last year, I was lucky enough to receive a full class set of netbooks in my room. Having a netbook for each student in my classroom was amazing. I could do things on a daily basis that was impossible before. This year, I started off the year with my netbooks and I am changing the way I teach and learning new ways to use them that I never imagined. My goal is to share different ways that I using netbooks in my room throughout this year. 


We started off the year by using Moodle as our go-to site. Moodle has provided me with a way to hold online forums for class discussions, reading response homework, and sharing our opinions about the way we do things in the classroom. It is also a great tool for posting websites that we use in the classroom and at home for math skills practice, ebooks, learning videos for science/social studies, and much more!  This month, I will be showing students how to take a quiz and complete surveys on Moodle. 


Another Web 2.0 tool we've been using in our classroom is Survey Monkey. We learned about inherited traits last week and integrated the use of Survey Monkey to gain information about inherited traits within our classroom. The students enjoyed completing the survey and viewing the class results in as little as 10 minutes! We analyzed our data by creating a bar graph on our Promethean Board and seeing which inherited traits were most common within our room. The students really enjoyed using this tool and I'm thinking of letting them create surveys on Survey Monkey in groups later this year. 


Overall, this year is off to a great start with our netbooks!  I'll continue to post new ways to integrate netbooks in the classroom as I learn new ways for implementation. Until next time...

Google Earth With a Purpose

Today is the last day of TCEA 2011: No Limits.  This session was presented by Susan Anderson.  It focused on going beyond viewing locations in Google Earth.  The presenter discussed how to integrate curriculum into Google Earth by adding placemarks full of multimedia including images, links, and videos.

This will be a short post because unfortunately we were in a different session earlier that was labeled as technology TEKS field trips but happened to be something a bit different than we were hoping. You tend to get some different sessions than you expect sometimes!

There are many resources available at their website below including tutorials and lessons.  Definitely take time to check it out!

Resources: http://digitalgoonies.com/?page_id=411

Connect with the Connected - iPods, Video, and Interactivity in Schools

This session focused on integrating podcasts, video, and interactive whiteboard content to democratize and invigorate the learning process in the classroom. The presenter was Robert Pronovost, a previous middle school teacher who now teaches 2nd grade.

This second grade teacher uses a variety of tools in his classroom throughout the school day.  For example, one of the things he does is use iCalendar and the remote app to play sounds for transitions in his room throughout the day.  His students know exactly what to do when they hear each song.

ical/itunes/remote

• Set up playlist of transitions in iTunes
• set alarms in iCal to off at transition times
• keep remote handy to stop or start songs at different times

Another app he uses is Teacherpal on the iPad to keep track of grades.

Some teacher tools he uses in whole group instruction are:

eBeam Scrapbook: 

eBeam Scrapbook doesn't require an interactive whiteboard.  You can use any wall as long as you have a computer. Check out an example of eBeam Scrapbook an action below...

Document Camera: Can be used to show student examples when an interactive whiteboard can't be used.

iChat/Skype

Connect with classes next door, around the world, relatives, and experts.

Rock Our World is an example of a large collaboration project that was put together by another group of teachers who use Skype to connect with classrooms all over the world.

GarageBand/iMovie

Teachers and students can use Garage Band and iMovie to create movies and music about concepts learned in the classroom.

Daily Notes

Use Daily Notes to keep track of notes on students or notes about parent conferences.  It is an app on the iPad.

RAZ-Kids 

RAZ kids is an online guided reading program. Students can record their reading, take quizzes to check their comprehension, and read for practice. 

Puppet Pals (iPad)

Puppet Pals is a way for students to create their own stories on the iPad.  It can be a story they want to create into a Reader's Theatre.   

iTalk Lite

iTalk Lite is a recording app and allows the teacher to download recordings more easily onto a computer than voice memos.  It provides fluency practice, Readers' Theater rehearsal, and presentation practice. 

DropBox

DropBox allows students to share stories, music, and other files.

flipVideo 

flipVideo cameras are used as tools to create student videos.

Garageband/Animationish

Students create videos with both these programs.

DonorsChoose.org

This teacher posts things he would like for his classroom on DonorsChoose and that is how he gets funded for technology items in his classroom.

One of the things he did in his classroom is that he painted his back reading table with IdeaPaint

http://www.ideapaint.com/

Twitter: teach24_7

robert.pronovost@gmail.com

Slides@ http://tiny.cc/cwtc