Netsmartz Kids: Router’s Birthday Surprise (Internet Safety)

October 21, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments7554 views

What it is: NetSmartz Kids is an incredible Internet safety site for kids. I have reviewed this site in the past here, and use it every year with my students to teach and reinforce Internet safety. Router’s Birthday Surprise is a new feature of NetSmartz. It is an interactive video where students are drawn into the story, playing a contestant on a game show to learn online safety rules. Clicky, the robot star of NetSmartz, is planning a surprise birthday party for his robo dog Router. As they follow Clicky through his hectic day, students play games, help Clicky put the Webville Outlaws back in jail, and decide who is a trusted adult. When students complete the video and games, they become certified NetSmartz Kids complete with an official certificate. Students have to complete all sections correctly before they can be certified. The complete video and game play runs for about 45 min, but NetSmartz has broken the video and game into manageable pieces so that it can fit in any schedule. Students can watch a portion of the video and play the associated game and save their progress for the next time they are able to login. Games include Make-a-Match where students think about the fun things they do online (history, music, jokes); What Rule is it Anyway where students play a contestant on a game show to learn about the rules of online safety; Get Clicky to Webville where students choose an Internet tube to get Clicky to his destination, Outlaw Roundup where Clicky captures the Webville outlaws and students match the outlaw to their crime; Who Can You Trust where students define a trusted adult; Router’s Gift Grab where students choose a gift for Router; and a NetSmartz song about the four rules of real-world safety where students drag words to complete the lyrics of the song.

How to integrate NetSmartz Kids: Router’s Birthday Surprise into your curriculum: I truly didn’t think that NetSmartz Kids could get any better. They have outstanding videos and songs about Internet safety that my students love year after year, they have fantastic educational resources (lesson ideas and downloads), and the games get requested by my students frequently. Router’s Birthday Surprise manages to make it even better! This interactive video is an excellent way for students to learn about Internet Safety and has the added bonus of tracking their understanding of the concepts being learned. Regardless of what subject you teach, Internet Safety is something that we all need to teach and reinforce in our classrooms. In the past, I have used NetSmartz in addition to the sites listed here to help my students learn proper use of the Internet. The rule that I love that NetSmartz includes is the “Tell a trusted parent or adult if there is anything online that makes you scared, uncomfortable, or confused.” I cannot tell you how many students see inappropriate content but fail to tell an adult about it because they think they will be in trouble. This is a rule I make sure that my students know and a rule that I pass on to parents so that they can handle inappropriate web content appropriately (without banning use).

Router’s Birthday Surprise is such a nice addition because it invites students to be part of a story. It breaks the learning down into manageable pieces so that it can be used in any class situation. In the computer lab setting, students can each create an account and save their progress as they go. In a classroom setting, the video can be played for the whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. Poll students to find out how they would respond to each question and invite students to take turns coming to the whiteboard or the computer to interact with a game. If you have a student response system (clickers) students can respond to the game show questions using them. In the one or two computer classroom, Router’s Birthday Surprise can be played as a center activity over several weeks. Each week students can complete another video portion and game.

In my class, after students had learned the Internet safety rules (which we came up with as a class), we would have an Internet safety quiz. This was similar to a drivers permit test. I made a big deal about how using the Internet is a privilege just like driving a car. Just like driving there are rules to learn and follow that will keep them and others safe. Just like driving they would have to prove that they knew the rules in order to get their license. And just like driving, they could lose their license if they weren’t following the rules. When students passed the test, I handed out Internet Licenses. Most years I used their previous yearbook picture and created the license myself, but a few years before I had the pictures, I used the NetSmartz UYN club cards, these are great because they list the UYN rules on the back.

Tips: Mike Hill, a creative producer with NetSmartz, generously sent me some DVD copies of Router’s Birthday Surprise to share with my readers. If you don’t have Internet access in your classroom, or don’t have reliable Internet access, let me know in the comment section and I will be happy to send you a DVD version-free! If you need a DVD let me know why, and be sure to leave your correct email address when filling out the comment form.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using NetSmartz Kids in your classroom!

Death in Rome

October 20, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments5185 views

What it is: Death in Rome is an interactive history experience from the BBC. The game takes place in the year 80AD where Tiberius Claudius Eutychus is found dead in his apartment. Students must put their sleuth skills to work as they investigate clues scattered around the room to solve the mystery. They have until dawn to crack the case. In addition to clues in the room, students can “talk” to modern-day experts for additional information, and interrogate witnesses.

How to integrate Death in Rome into your curriculum: Death in Rome is a fantastic exercise in critical thinking, reasoning, and deduction. Students will learn about ancient Rome, using clues to solve a mystery, and find out how engaging and interesting history can be. Death in Rome would make a great partner activity. Students can work together in teams to solve the crime. When each team has cracked the case, they can share the strategy they used and the clues that tipped them off to the solution. If you don’t have access to a lab setting, solve the case as a class using a projector or interactive whiteboard. Students can take turns at the board acting as investigators and leading the investigation. As the game progresses, those students at their seats can make note of the clues and offer conjectures as to what the clues reveal about the death.

Tips: Because of the subject matter, this game probably isn’t appropriate for students under the age of 10. I recommend playing through the game yourself to decide if it is appropriate for your age group. Older students will enjoy playing investigator!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Death in Rome in your classroom!

Flixtime: Video slideshow creator

October 19, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2966 views

What it is: Flixtime is an online tool that lets students create 60 second video slideshows. Slideshows can contain videos, pictures, text and music. The interface of Flixtime is easy to use; it looks a lot like the timelines used in iMovie and would be a great way to introduce students to the idea of video timelines and a separate sound track. With Flixtime, students can adjust the screen resolution of their video and choose a speed for their slideshow to play. As I used Flixtime, I couldn’t get over how much like Animoto it is. If you need an alternative to Animoto, this is your tool!

How to integrate Flixtime into your curriculum: Flixtime is a great tool for telling a story. Students can use Flixtime to tell a story about their learning, to illustrate a science experiment, to create a video timeline of a historical event, to illustrate vocabulary, to create an auto-bio poem, or to create a custom public service announcement. Flixtime is an easy way for students to create something new and demonstrate understanding on any topic. My students have used video slideshows to create math story problems for a buddy to solve, they turn out great and sure beat the dry story problems from math textbooks! Flixtime videos can be saved on the student Flixtime account, embedded in a class blog/wiki/website, emailed, and even downloaded!

Tips: Flixtime requires an email account for sign up. The email account doesn’t need to be verified which means that students can sign up with a temporary email account from tempinbox or mailinator. If you teach elementary students, create a class Flixtime account where students can create and save videos. This ensures that you know what is being posted and puts the videos all in one place for easy viewing.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Flixtime in your classroom!

Create your own virtual classroom: Edu 2.0 and Vyew

October 18, 2010Kelly Tenkely15 Comments13495 views

&

What it is: Tomorrow I launch my virtual classroom and honestly, I am a little nervous! It is like the first day of school; everything is carefully planned, all the resources are ready to go, and the students are enrolled and have received their welcome packet. But, there is still that anticipation and sense of dread that all that careful planning won’t be enough…that something unexpected will happen that will force me to think on my feet. Really, isn’t that what teaching (and learning) ends up being every day? 🙂 I am using two tools to host my virtual classroom that I wanted to share here. Even if you teach in a traditional classroom, these tools offer the ability to expand your school day and provide your students more of a hybrid learning model.

Edu 2.0 is the first tool. I first wrote about and started using Edu 2.0 in 2007. The tool has only gotten better with time! Edu 2.0 is an outstanding alternative to Moodle or Blackboard as an online Learning Management System (LMS). It is completely free to use, multilingual (it auto translates messages!), allows you to teach public or private classes, gives each student an online portfolio, includes a full gradebook, allows you to create curricula and track proficiencies, transcripts of all student grades, tracks attendance, includes forums and wikis, online quizzes, create and track to-do lists, completely web-based, mobile with a free iPhone app, tracks analytics, teach multiple sessions of the same class, upload and access over 15,000+ online resources, parent involvement, define and measure proficiencies, integration with popular web widgets, real-time chat, custom RSS feeds for your class, Calendars, private (designed with students in mind), create and share lessons, provide conditional pathways in lessons (you have to pass one assignment or class before moving onto the next), rubrics, groups, debates, messaging, public and private blogs, surveys, multimedia, and pdf integration. That is a long list but it really doesn’t even scratch the surface of what Edu 2.0 can do. This is your one stop shop for a LMS whether you are in need of one for a district, a school, or for your individual classroom. It is relatively easy to learn and has fantastic tutorials, guides, and support. The biggest challenge that I have with Edu 2.0 is navigation, not because it is difficult, but because it is so comprehensive!

Vyew is the second tool I am using for my virtual classroom. Vyew is an online meeting room that is simple to use. The free version is the one I am using, premium versions are well priced and offer increased options and capacity. Vyew allows up to 10 students to participate in a room at a time. Teachers can create and upload course content for real-time and anytime collaborative learning. Vyew is a lot like Elluminate but doesn’t require any downloads, it runs completely inside the web browser. This makes it a really easy virtual meeting option for students as they aren’t required to do a lot of extra prep. The authoring area of Vyew is easy to use, it is a lot like creating a PowerPoint presentation with slides. Vyew allows for external publishing which means that you can embed the finished presentation on your Edu 2.0 site for those who couldn’t attend the live Vyew session. Vyew supports a HUGE amount of files including video, pdf, PowerPoint, swf, and many more. It also allows for real-time desktop sharing which means that all of your students can see what you are doing on your computer as if you were sitting side by side! There is a built-in screen capture tool for making step by step tutorials. Both students and teacher have whiteboard drawing tools for on-screen collaboration. Embedded comments let you include information on the page to be expanded. Vyew lets you communicate with VOIP (voice over IP), webcam (all 10 can use the webcam!), free tele-conferencing with a unique phone number provided, and voice notes (voice recording embedded in on-screen sticky notes). This is such a simple to use virtual meeting room and it’s features are among the best.

I am using both edu 2.0 and Vyew together for my virtual classroom. I felt I needed an online meeting room where I could create meetings on the fly because this class is being held completely online. I am working with students in third through eighth grade and teaching a 5 week digital storytelling class. We will be working together to discover the power of story, and how to use different digital mediums to tell a great story. I am offering this class to everyone but advertised specifically to the students I used to teach for the first virtual classroom. I did this for a few reasons: parent requests, as a way to stay connected to my students, and I knew what technology skills they had already learned.

How to integrate Edu 2.0 and Vyew Virtual Classrooms into your classroom: Creating a hybrid classroom is an incredible gift to your students. It offers them the ability to connect with you outside the hours of the school day, and on their own terms. It gives students time to review content, interact with other students, and learn at their own pace. Virtual options provide a whole new dimension to learning. Use a virtual classroom to: extend your classroom and teaching, tutor students individually, offer courses to home school families, connect your students with other classrooms, record in-class learning for students who are absent or have a long-term illness. There are hundreds of ways that taking your classroom online can benefit your students. Taking your classroom online gives parents an additional way to be involved in their child’s education and goes one step better, allows them to learn along side their child. Have a tough new math curriculum that parents are lamenting? Offer a virtual parent university where parents can learn more about how to help their child with the new learning. Have teachers that need professional development but can’t find the time? Use Edu 2.0 for learning on demand. Edu 2.0 can be utilized as a classroom online learning solution, or as a school or district wide learning management system. Use Vyew for live meetings with your students. Make yourself available in a Vyew room at the same time every day for additional academic help.

Tips: You can offer your virtual classes for free or charge depending on their purpose. I wouldn’t charge for a virtual classroom that was an extension to my regular classroom, but you might charge for tutoring or specialized classes. I am charging for my class and treating it as an after school club. Edu 2.0 allows you to charge for a class with checkout support using Paypal or credit cards.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Edu 2.0 and Vyew Virtual Classrooms in your classroom!

Picture a Story: Digital Storytelling

October 13, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments3564 views

What it is: As I mentioned a few days ago, I am starting a virtual classroom/club for digital storytelling. I have been on the lookout for great resources, I listed my favorites here, and now I am remembering a lot of tools I left off of my original list (like Toon Doo!). Today as I was going through my Google Reader, I learned about this gem from Richard Byrne’s Free Tech for Teachers. The Delaware Art Museum has provided a great website dedicated to storytelling. The tagline is “bringing visual art to life through stories”. On the site, students can picture a story, experience a story, or tell a story. The Picture a Story was the most intriguing portion for me, as it provides a great tool for telling a digital story. First, students choose a genre of story that they want to tell, next they choose a famous painting background for their story, students add characters (also from famous works of art), props, and then tell the story. In the tell the story section, students type out the story. If a microphone is available, students can even record the story in their own voice. When students have completed their story, it can be shared via email.

How to integrate Picture a Story into your curriculum: Stories are powerful. I love the way that Picture a Story weaves together famous works of art with story. It teaches students to reflect on the art that they encounter and think about the stories that it represents. Picture a Story is a great way to discuss genre, characters, and parts of a story. It is also a fantastic way to bring a little art history into your classroom. It would be a neat class experiment to have students choose all the same genre, background, characters, and props and, without talking to others, write their story. After students are finished they can share their stories with the class. Students will learn about perspective, creativity, and voice as they listen to all the different stories that originated from the same picture. If you don’t have access to a computer lab, this activity could be done with an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer and students writing on paper. Let your students experiment with story and share their finished pieces with each other. Picture a story is ideal in a lab setting where each student has access to their own computer. If that isn’t a possibility, you could also have students visit Picture a Story on classroom computers as a storytelling center. The site is quick to navigate through and students can tell a story in a sentence or a few paragraphs making it a good center. If students don’t have access to email or can’t email the finished product to you, have them take a screenshot of the story to save in a digital portfolio or to print out.

Tips: The teacher section of this site has some great lesson ideas for every grade level.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Picture a Story in your classroom!

Lucky Star Game Show for SMART boards

October 8, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3255 views

What it is: Cyberchase is an animated math series on PBS Kids. Now, Cyberchase is making math even more fun with an interactive game show called Lucky Star. The game show is a free download for the SMART Notebook software. Lucky Star was designed for kids in 3rd-5th grade. The game show has kids competing for top scores while building important math skills. Lucky Star has 150 questions that focus on problem solving, algebraic thinking, number and operations, geometry, measurement, and more. The game show includes an on-screen think pad (a drop down area where students can work the problems with the pen. The game show also includes some great virtual manipulatives that students can interact with on the interactive whiteboard. Want more? Create your own questions tailored to your curriculum using the Cyberchase characters and props. You can customize the game for your students needs.

How to integrate Lucky Star into your curriculum: Lucky Star is a fun way for your students to practice math. The ability to create your own questions that are tailored to your math curriculum means that this is game can be used all year. The game show makes for a great math warm up to get those brains thinking math. Use Lucky Star as a fun class competition, split your students into teams for a little friendly math competition. Your students will love the game show feel that Lucky Star has. Any time I play games with my whole class, I really play it up. Act the part of Game Show host and get into the game with your students. Hold weekly competitions or semester long competitions to see who can get the top score. Hold a fun math themed party for all of the “contestants” at the end of the competition. When I taught second grade this meant bringing out all of the kids favorite math games and calling them by their class number all day instead of their names. To mix it up, I might call on student number 10 by saying “I need 5+5 to line up third in line”. It was a fun way to have fun with math and celebrate the hard work of all of my students.

Tips: I couldn’t get the Lucky Star Game Show download to open in ActivInspire (for Promethean) even using the Smart Notebook option. I also couldn’t get the download to open in SMART Notebook’s interactive viewer. If anyone has a trick or luck with either of these let me know and I’ll update the post accordingly!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Lucky Star in your classroom!

Pinball: Bounce Ideas Around

October 6, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3669 views

What it is: Pinball is a neat site from the BBC that helps students kick-start new ideas to get thoughts flowing and develop creative talents. There are four tools that will help students brainstorm and bounce ideas around. Dot Dash is for firing out ideas, start with a main idea and branch out with connected ideas in a web. Drop Zone is for making quick decisions, add ideas, name the zones, click “go”. As ideas speed by, quickly make a decision and select a zone; analyze the results. Snap Shot lets kids play with images; here they can upload an image or select a random image or word in “Lucky Dip” and then use the tools to play with the idea. Students can reflect, rotate, scale, bend, erase or cut an image or word to get different effects. Wild Reels is for mixing up ideas. Students can create reels of images and words, then they can label the reels. When the ideas are all in, the ideas can be “spun” to see what combination comes up. In each of the tools, the results can be “flipped” to another Pinball tool. Each tool allows students to think about a subject and explore ideas they may have about the subject.

How to integrate Pinball into your curriculum: Pinball is a fantastic tool to help kids think through their ideas for writing, research, science hypothesis, making connections in their learning, brainstorming, and fleshing out ideas. Each tool is designed to let students think visually in a way that lets their ideas flow freely. The integration of one tool with another is really helpful for transferring loosely related thoughts into a more cohesive thought process. Pinball can be used for whole class thinking with an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. For example, as students read about a time period in history, and related events, they can use Dot Dash to show how the events and people are related. Students can each add to the class understanding of the time period. Drop Zone would be a great way for students to generate ideas for a creative writing, or journal project. Students can enter the ideas they have and let Drop Zone help them decide which to write about. Bookmark Pinball on classroom computers so that students can use them as an inspiration station center. Any time your students need to bounce ideas around or think through their learning visually they can visit Pinball and work through their ideas. Pinball would also be helpful for structuring thinking prior to a research report, or science experiment. If you have access to a computer lab or 1-to-1 setting, allow your students time to think about their learning and connect new learning to knowledge frameworks they have already built. The possibilities with these tools are endless.

Tips: Pinball offers links to additional thinking tools that are available on the web including Exploratree, Mind Tools, bubbl.us, Aviary, Mind 42, and Wisemapping. Each of these tools is fantastic for mind mapping, creative thinking, brainstorming, and visualizing ideas.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Pinball in your classroom!

Today’s Document: History through cartoons

October 1, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments2544 views

What it is: Today’s Document is an awesome daily history site that I learned about from the Instructify blog written by Bill Ferris. Today’s Document is based on the RSS feed from the National Archives. Jon White takes these daily documents from history and turns them into cartoons that illustrate the history. Cartoons and drawings offer such an incredible and striking visual to accompany history. They help flesh out what was happening and give students a way to connect to and characterize history.

How to integrate Today’s Document into your curriculum: This is, simply stated, an AWESOME site. I have mentioned before that history was not my strength in school. I struggled with finding the story in history. For me it was a lot of facts, dates, names, and places that I couldn’t seem to get a handle on. A site like Today’s Document would have done wonders for my understanding of history. The visuals clearly connect the facts with a larger story. Even better, White publishes the story behind each cartoon along side it. Today’s Document makes an incredible e-textbook complete with daily updates, links to videos, articles, primary sources, and additional opportunities to learn more about each topic. Today’s Document would make a fantastic discussion starter in any classroom. It’s natural fit would be in the history or civics class but could really be used in many disciplines including literature, writing, and even science. Because Today’s Document uses cartoons to tell history, the site can be used with a wide range of age groups. Even young students can look at the cartoons and follow the story each day. Each drawing is linked to the original primary source document on National Archives with an invitation to dig deeper. Within the preamble describing the cartoon, White often includes links to outside videos and articles that reinforce the daily document.

Tips: I encourage you to take a look at White’s previous cartoons, you can do so by using the “previous” button or searching the archives by date. He started this project in January 2010.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Today’s Document in your classroom!

Technology & Character Education: A Lesson in Empathy

September 30, 2010September 30, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments16431 views

Empathy is an important cornerstone in character education; developing empathy can help prevent negative social behaviors such as bullying, spitefulness, and alienation. It is a key social emotion and when developed brings an awareness of ones own emotions as well as those of others. Using Apple’s Photo Booth and Pages (or Seenly and Microsoft Word), students can make a “How are you feeling?” poster of emotions. These posters teach students to recognize what their own emotions look like and help them to recognize them in others. If you don’t have access to built in cameras or web cams, digital cameras can be used in their place. The completed posters can be used for various character education lessons throughout the year and make for a nice year-long bulletin board in the classroom. The posters are also useful when discussing literary characters and their feelings/emotions, as well as an aid in conflict resolution for younger students. The Feelings posters are a helpful tool for autistic children as they help them recognize facial expressions and emotions in themselves and others.

The lessons in empathy is perfect for kindergarten through sixth grade. Three templates are included in the lesson k-1 grade, 2-3 grade, and 4-6 grade. As a computer teacher, I completed this lesson with my students every year from kindergarten-fifth grade. By the fifth grade, students had a collection of 6 feelings posters that showcased each year of school. Parents saved these posters as a keepsake.

This collection includes a lesson plan, templates, an emotions card game, and suggestions for sharing the template with student computers. There are two options for download, one for use with Apple’s Pages and PhotoBooth (or digital camera) and one for use with Microsoft Word and Seenly (or digital camera). The Pages option is for use with Macintosh only. The Microsoft Word option is for use with Mac or PC. In this lesson students will practice using text boxes, drag and drop, mouse manipulation, inserting images, and resizing. Click here to find the Feelings Poster Lesson in Empathy in the iLearn Technology store.

[wp_eStore_fancy2 id=13] [wp_eStore_cart_fancy1_when_not_empty]

EduTecher’s Change the World

September 29, 2010September 29, 2010Kelly Tenkely12 Comments3757 views

What it is: EduTecher’s Change the World is a campaign started by @adambellow at EduTecher to transform the world one penny at a time. Between October 1 and November 25 every new user that enters EduTecher.net will allow @adambellow to donate 1 penny on their behalf to a charity that his audience votes on. The charity that gets the most votes will get a check. The idea is that we can change the world together, one person at a time. Want to make an even bigger impact? If you have a blog, website, or Facebook page you can post the Change the World badge or link and every time one of your readers or friends clicks on it another penny will be donated. I am taking @adambellow’s idea the step further and will offer the same. For each new user that comes to iLearn Technology between October 1 and November 25 (2010), I will donate a penny to a charity that we will vote on here. So, if you would like to double your difference, you can add the EduTecher’s Change the World logo and link along with the iLearn Technology Change the World logo and link. This is a great idea of a little way that we can start making a difference in a bigger way.

You can view the video explanation below:

How to integrate EduTecher’s Change the World into your curriculum: Why not create a similar school wide campaign to change the world one penny at a time? You can collect pennies as a class or if you have a class blog or student blogs, issue a similar Change the World Challenge. As an added bonus, map out where your “pennies” are coming from and have your students write an introductory letter to the charity and include a map of where the money came from! If you aren’t familiar with the EduTecher website, it is definitely worth checking out. EdTecher reviews web 2.0 tools for the classroom, they have a great collection of web 2.0 for students and teachers all in one place.

Tips: Add the EduTecher’s Change the World badge to your website, blog or Facebook page and then double the change by adding the iLearn Technology badge. Together we can (and will) change the world. If you are extending the change please let me know in the comments below, I would love to see how far reaching this is!

iLearn Technology badge:

Code to place badge on your site:

Please leave a comment and share how you are using EduTecher’s Change the World in your classroom!