VoiceThread

What it is: VoiceThread brings Web 2.0 communication to presentations. Slide show presentations are no longer static, VoiceThread makes them interactive collaborative learning experiences. Features include: the ability to create voice comments, voice recording within a browser allows for recording of multiple voices, doodling which captures drawing as an animation synced to voice or text commentary…listeners can watch the process, voice threads can be embedded in other sites, one account can have many identities so a classroom can switch identities on the fly without having to sign out, media importing so slide show presentations and pictures become collaborative conversations, comment moderation abilities, and the ability to zoom in and pan images.

How to integrate VoiceThread into the classroom: VoiceThread has hundreds of uses, the following are a few that I came up with. Use VoiceThread to create a time line of the students day. Students can record themselves describing different events of the day. Parents and out of town family can see what happens on a typical day in your classroom. Debates can be hosted and conducted using Voice Thread. VoiceThread can make history interactive, for example, host an art history artist critique and discussion. Create a book group using VoiceThread where students interact and discuss their reading together. Students can read their stories and record as a VoiceThread (this also makes a special keepsake!). Teachers can use VoiceThread for math problem demonstrations, step by step science “experiments”, staff training, or to teach a second language. Computer teachers, what about creating Voice Threads to teach your students when you can’t be there? This would make life easy for a substitute and ensure that your students are on track when you return.

Tips: Go to the “help” section of VoiceThread for some great interactive tutorials.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using VoiceThread in your
classroom.

Gabcast


What it is: Gabcast is a podcasting and audioblogging website that offers an easy way to create and distribute audio content. The most amazing part of this resource is that students can actually use a touch-tone cell (yes I said cell phone, put them to good use!) or land line telephone to make their recordings. Gabcast also provides worldwide access to the sevice through VoIP. Once a student has mad a recording and had it published, a newsfeed is automatically updated to alert subscribers (like other classrooms, students or parents) to your channel.

How to integrate Gabcast into the classroom: What makes Gabcast so ingenious to me is that there is no need for fancy equipment (i.e. immediate computer access or microphones) to record a quality podcast. If you don’t have a classroom computer, or want to be using the computer for other activities or centers, Gabcast is a perfect solution for creating podcasts. Gabcast is an outstanding alternative to more ‘traditional’ methods of podcasting. Students could also easily create podcasts from home since the only equipment needed is a telephone. Use Gabcast to create a weekly radio type broadcast for the rest of the school or learning buddies, create audio books for other students, or for interviewing others. Bring along a cell phone on field trips and record audio clips (like of animal sounds at the zoo). This tool would be wonderful for auditory learners. The possibilities with Gabcast are nearly endless.

Tips: Gabcast is a toll free call, visit the overview page for the toll free phone number for your country. You can embed Gabcast on your school, or classroom website or blog.

Kindersay

What it is: Kindersay is a website for emerging language learners. This is the new See and Say. Kindersay allows pre-school, kindergarten, and struggling language learners to learn new words through visual and auditory practice.

How to integrate Kindersay into the classroom: Kindersay makes an excellent listening and language development center in the preschool, kindergarten, or special education classroom. Set up the computer for student exploration of words. Learn adventure, alphabet, animals, arts, cities and people, food, home large, home small, movement, numbers, outdoors, parts of the body, colors, times, shapes, tools, and transport words.

Tips: For a $6 a month subscription, Kindersay allows you to upload your own images and sounds to Kindersay.

Professor Garfield: Transport to Reading

 

What it is: Professor Garfield: Transport to Reading has two interactive reading games. The first is called Fishing for Phonics. Students can choose to fish for beginning or ending consonants. In the game, Garfield fishes and discovers different objects like a book. Students find the consonant that matches the object. The second game is called Orson’s Farm. Students can choose to play a game on the farm practicing rhyming words, syllables, segmenting words, blending, and deleting and substituting.

How to integrate Professor Garfield: Transport to Reading into the classroom: Professor Garfield is a nice addition to the kindergarten, first grade, or remedial reading programs. Use Professor Garfield: Transport to Reading as a center to reinforce phonemic awareness and learning in class.
Orson and his friends on the farm offer engaging, academically-sound activities at each level that will give students the opportunity to practice phonemic awareness tasks.
The skills practiced while playing Fishing with Phonics can be used to reinforce ongoing classroom instruction directed at identifying sound-symbol correspondences and automatic phoneme blending. The students will love working on these interactive sites as an alternative to paper and pencil practice.

Tips: Be sure to visit the Teachers’ Lounge for really thorough instructional materials, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension, writing, printable materials, electronic field trips, and educational links.

Knowledge Box

 

What it is: Knowledge Box has math, science, language arts, and social studies games and videos for primary elementary students. These games are interactive and very impressive. The math section includes a video about finding numerals, a cute “ballet” and song about patterns, a shape game called Space Shapes, and a subtraction game called Math Maze. The language arts section includes a great little video called When Two Vowels Go Walking, a folk tale called The Wise Old Women, a picture pick game based on the short “a”, and a folktale. The science section includes a video about the basics of electricity, a health video about organs (catchy songs), a physical science game about force and motion, and a young scientist virtual experiment on growing plants. The social studies section includes a video about the balance of nature, a video about storms, a game about different viewpoints, and a game to teach map and globe vocabulary.

How to integrate Knowledge Box into the classroom: Use Knowledge box as an introduction to an activity or unit. Students can use some of the interactive science games with the scientific method. Have students experiment in the online environment and record their hypothesis, test and results of their experiments. Use the videos to support your curriculum. Students can watch the videos in a center setting or all at once with the projector. These are content rich games and videos and will support any curriculum well!

Tips: Knowledge Box is a media rich website and will require a fairly quick Internet connection. Make sure that your connection speed is adequate before assigning games on Knowledge Box.

Mindomo

 

What it is: Mindomo free web-based mind mapping tool that delivers the capabilities of desktop mind mapping software in a web browser with no software to install or maintain. Students can create, edit, and share mind maps with teachers and other students.

How to integrate Mindomo into your classroom: Students can use Mindomo to create mind maps for all subjects. Students can create character diagrams, comparison charts, story diagrams, vocabulary word diagrams, timelines, effect of events, experiment maps, food pyramids, scientific processes, life cycles, and more. This tool will be valuable for your visual learners!

Tips: Students have to sign up for a free account to use Mindomo they will need a email address to complete registration process.

 

 

Curious George

 

 

What it is: PBS Kids Curious George website features several games featuring the popular Curious George character for kindergarten students. All games encourage growth in math and science. Students will use counting skills, observation skills, listening skills, logic skills, basic engineering skills, measuring skills, basic addition and subtraction, color creation, mouse manipulation skills, categorizing skills, and recording skills.

How to integrate Curious George into your classroom: Use the Curious George website during math and science time as a center. Students can stop by the center individually if you have a classroom with several computers, or in small groups in the one to two computer classroom. The site has 13 wonderful games that can be used as extended learning activities in math and science class.

Tips: Visit the Teacher section for Extended learning activities, lesson plans, and related video clips. Be sure to bookmark this page for easy access. Because there are so many games, this may be a site you use often to reinforce skills learned in the classroom.

 

 

Inspired Learning

 

What it is: Inspired learning is a collection of lesson plans and ideas for using visual software such as Inspiration, and Kidspiration in the classroom.

How to integrate Inspired Learning into your curriculum: Use Inspired Learning for ideas and lessons to integrate visual software into the classroom. If you don’t already have visual, mind mapping software, you can download Free Mind open source (free) software to use with the lessons and ideas.

Tips: Click on the Educators Resource page on Inspired Learning for a free trial version of Inspiration and Kidspiration.

 

 

Podcast

 

What it is: A podcast is a digital media recording that can be saved on and distributed over the Internet.

How to use Podcasting in your classroom: Use a podcast to record students reading. This can be used for reading records, for pronunciation, and reading fluency. Students, teachers, and parents can listen to reading records recorded over the course of the school year for fluency and progress made. Podcasts can also be used to share news with students and families, guest speakers, student presentations, student produced podcasts, lessons, assessment, digital stories, motivation, auditory learners, celebrating student work, interactive media center, a tool to help struggling students, to provide a “window” to your classroom for parents, and to show student growth at parent teacher conferences.

Tips: Podcasts can be created using several programs such as Apple’s Garageband (this application comes standard on Macintosh computers), Audacity which is a free open source software for recording and editing sounds, and My Podcast where podcasts can be recorded and hosted for free.

Clifford Interactive Story Books

 

 

What it is: Clifford Interactive Story Books features Scholastic’s Clifford the Big Red Dog in four interactive books and four fun games. The games include concentration, make a word, letter match, and sound match.

How to integrate Clifford Interactive Story Books into your classroom: Use Clifford for beginning and emergent readers. Early readers can practice phonemic awareness and phonics skills as they actively listen to words read aloud and select which words to include in their book. Set up the Clifford site as a reading center.

Tips: Find lessons to use with Clifford on the Teacher’s Guide page. Lessons include beginning consonant sounds, letter recognition, short vowels, and long vowels.