iLearn Technology – Integrating technology in the classroom

57 Ways to Celebrate National Literacy Day

September 8, 2010Kelly Tenkely8 Comments9283 views

Did you know that today is National Literacy Day? It is! I think that literacy is something to celebrate, being literate is a gift I enjoy every day but don’t stop to appreciate nearly enough. In honor of National Literacy Day, I thought I would share my favorite technology enhanced literacy tools. In no particular order, here are my favorite ways to celebrate literacy. What are your favorites?

1. Save the Words– an excellent site that values language, vocabulary, and words.

2. Grammaropolis– an enchanting site that teaches students parts of speech through character and story.

3. Signed Stories– an online story collection accompanied by British Sign Language, pictures, and sound.

4. Learn Direct– where students can be the star in their own online storybook.

5. Inkless Tales– a literacy website with a beautiful mission statement “You can do anything. Try, try again. Don’t give up. Experiment. Write, draw, explore and more.”

6. Storybird- a beautiful collaborative storytelling website.

7. My English Images– images that illustrate difficult vocabulary and language concepts.

8. Lexipedia– a visual dictionary and thesaurus.

9. Tikatok– Students become published authors with Tikatok

10. Free Reading– an open source instructional program to help you teach early literacy.

11. Word World– a great site for kindergarten and first grade letter and word recognition.

12. Reading Rockets– free reading guides for teachers to improve reading achievement of kids.

13. Super Why! – a site that helps kids gain important foundational reading skills such as alphabet, word families, spelling, comprehension, and vocabulary.

14. Get Ready to Read!– a great site that helps teachers equip children with the basic skills necessary for learning to read.

15. Roy the Zebra– Excellent site for emerging readers.

16. Fable Vision– the beautiful virtual town filled with stories and games.

17. Kidoons– brings time honored tales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Thorton Burgess, and more to life.

18. GameGoo– fun educational games that help students develop reading and language skills.

19. Read Write Think– a collection of online student resources that support literacy learning k-12.

20. Seussville– the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss brought to life.

21. Digital Booktalk– book trailers that will whet your students appetite for a good book.

22. Storybook Web– a website based on popular children’s stories where students can listen to author’s reading excerpts.

23. Mee Genius– where students can read books, personalize them, and share them with a friend.

24. Stage’d- a tool that helps students tell stories digitally.

25. Kerpoof– where students can create their own storybooks, comics, and movies.

26. Lightning Bug– “your writing partner, helping you write a story from beginning to THE END.”

27. ePubBud– for publishing your very own ebooks.

28. Magic Treehouse- a wonderful website where students can engage in the popular book series.

29. The Stacks– a wonderful creation by Scholastic that excites students about reading.

30. The World of Peter Rabbit– an absolutely captivating site based on the work of Beatrix Potter.

31. My Hippo Has the Hiccups– a free poetry ebook by Kenn Nesbitt.

32. Weboword– a visual vocabulary site.

33. N ational Geographic Young Explorer– non-fiction for the primary classroom from National Geographic.

34. Online Audio Stories- an impressive collection of free audio stories.

35. Story Nory– another collection of free audio books for kids.

36. Skratch Track– a virtual bookshelf for primary students.

37. Picture Book Maker– a place for students to create picture books.

38. Story Cove– a collection of stories from around the world.

39. Skype an Author Network– connects teachers, students, and authors over Skype.

40. Word Ahead Vocabulary Videos– animated vocabulary videos.

41. My Story Maker– a website where students are in charge of the interactive story.

42. Book Wink– an incredible site that motivates students to read through podcasts and web video.

43. Scholastic Story Starters– a tool that generates writing ideas.

44. Telescopic Text– a site that expands a sentence to demonstrate descriptive writing.

45. The Tale of Despereaux Adventure- a beautiful interactive story book.

46. Literactive- leveled guided readers, comprehensive phonics activities, and supplemental reading material.

47. Pic Lits- a creative writing site based on pictures.

48. Speakaboos– a collection of online stories and ebooks.

49. Animailia– a site based on the popular book by Graeme Base.

50. Mrs. P’s Magic Library– an absolutely enchanting site that celebrates books and reading.

51. Free Rice– practice vocabulary while helping others fight hunger.

52. Shelfari– a virtual bookshelf.

53. Read to Feed- Heifer International reading project for kids.

54. Into the Book– an outstanding site that teaches reading strategies for comprehension.

55. Google Lit Trips– exploring literature using Google Earth.

56. Starfall– a must see website for phonics.

57. Book Adventure– a free reading motivation program.

But the very best way to celebrate National Literacy Day…read a book!

ABC Mouse: math, reading, geography, and science curriculum (interactives/games/books)

October 27, 2011Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2670 views

What it is: ABC Mouse is a complete online curriculum for pre-k and kindergarten students that provides a step-by-step learning path. There are six academic levels that include curriculum that includes over 350 interactive lessons and more than 2000 learning activities. As a student completes one activity successfully, they are guided to the next. The interactive lessons include online picture books, puzzles, games, songs, art, activities and printable activities that relate to different topics and disciplines. Each lesson offers different ways to learn to meet the needs of a variety of students. The reading curriculum in ABC Mouse helps students recognize letters and sounds of the alphabet and sight words. There are hundreds of books build in including fables, fairy tales and non-fiction. In addition to sight words, students can learn phonics, sound recognition and rhyming words/word families. The math curriculum teaches students numbers, shapes, patterns and measurement. Students will play games and activities that help them to recognize and count numbers 1-100, identify and draw shapes, and the meaning of addition and subtraction. ABC Mouse’s World Around Us is an introduction to science, social studies and health curriculum. In the World Around Us, students will learn about the body and health, sports, plants and animals, weather and seasons, and earth/moon/sun/stars.

The lesson builder, lets you choose the content and activities for students to interact with based on their needs and interests. Progress tracking makes it easy to see the number of learning activities that have been completed. There are a lot of fun goodies tucked away including a virtual zoo, farm, aquarium and the ability to record a book in your own voice.

This is a comprehensive, well put together site that is FREE to public schools in the United States and Canada. It is a wonderful addition to the kindergarten classroom!

How to integrate ABC Mouse into the classroom: ABC Mouse is a fun website. Activities in ABC Mouse are fantastic for center use in a one-two computer classroom (or more). The activities and games are short enough for a center activity that students can cycle through.

For kindergarten students in a computer lab, this is a great site to get their feet wet with the technology at the beginning of the year. I often started my students on fun academic sites like Starfall.com where students could practice clicking, navigating, dragging/dropping, etc. These type of sites build students computer confidence, improve their fine motor skills and provide them with content area learning at the same time. I wish this site had existed when I was teaching kindergarten computer!

If you don’t have access to computers for the students but have an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer, students can take turns interacting with the ABC mouse activities. The books make great class read along stories on the big screen!

ABC Mouse is a fun way to introduce new concepts/skills, as a place for students to practice concepts/skills, or for review.

Tips: If you aren’t at a public school, sign up for the sample content…the private school dollar amount is reasonable!

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

ActivInspire

March 5, 2009Kelly Tenkely3 Comments19758 views

What it is: ActivInspire is a new software from Promethean that is free! The free edition is a ‘personal’ license that can be used by anyone. The ActivInspire software works with ANY interactive whiteboard (SMART, Mimio, Wiimote Whiteboard, eBeam, etc.) and even for those of you who do not have an interactive whiteboard, use the software with just a computer and projector! The Promethean Planet website has thousands of lessons and resources that are free to access and can be used with ActivInspire to engage your students. ActivInspire has two launch options, the first is to launch in Primary function. In Primary, ActivInspire is very user friendly for primary elementary students. The second option is to launch in Studio with tools that are perfect for older students. ActivInspire works on Windows, Mac, and Linux based machines. Some of the goodies in ActivInspire include interactive protractors, rulers, clocks, grids, and more. New power tools include intelligent shapes and handwriting recognition. There are themed templates for fast and easy lesson building. ActivInspire supports flash files that can be embeded in Flipchart lessons. ActivInspire can open SMART and PowerPoint files, making it quick and easy to pick up any lesson and improve it.

How to integrate ActivInspire into the classroom: ActivInspire is software that can keep students engaged in any lesson in your curriculum. The software is incredibly intuitive and makes it easy to create amazing interactive lessons. The lessons (flipcharts) can be saved and shared among colleagues. Begin building a library of interactive lessons for your students. Be sure to visit Promethean Planet for thousands of ready made (FREE) flipcharts and activities to use with the ActivInspire software.

Tips: To see the possiblities of the ActivInspire software, take a look at Flipcharts created by the developers of ActivInspire. Promethean also has a great set of support tutorials that will have you up and running in no time!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using ActivInspire in your classroom.

Adrian Bruce

March 6, 2008March 6, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2647 views

What it is: Adrian Bruce is an educator in Australia who has provided educators around the world with absolutely amazing FREE resources. I am floored that Adrian offers these downloads for free, they are truly incredible! On Adrian’s website you can find reading and phonics games to print and play, math games to print and play, printable puzzles to play, posters, art, science, readers theater scripts, writing ideas, and so much more. You will happily spend hours exploring this site. Put your checkbook away and get your printer fired up and ready for a workout!

How to integrate Adrian Bruce into your curriculum: Use Adrian Bruce games every day to make learning fun! Use these print out games as a center activity, as an activity that can be done when students finish work early, and for learning extensions or practice every day. Choose a game day where students can play games that reinforce skills learned throughout the week. I cannot sing the praises of this site enough! All games come complete with instructions and can be printed out from Word or Adobe Acrobat.

Tips: Send Adrian a big THANK YOU for this resource. Feel free to show Adrian your appreciation by buying him a beer 🙂 or donate a book through Amazon.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Adrian Bruce Games in your classroom.

Animation Chefs: Kids learn animation

October 22, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments2458 views

What it is: Animation Chefs is a fun website/blog that teaches kids how to create their own animations using stop motion video techniques. The Animation Chefs teach how to create animations using a “secret” recipe. To create animations you need two things: a camera and a computer. Animation Chefs aim to help young producers of stories and animation learn about the latest and greatest ways to get their content created. The blog will continually be adding tips, tricks, and tutorials for creating online animated videos.

How to integrate Animation Chefs into your curriculum: Animation Chefs is a great place for students (and teachers) to learn the tricks of stop motion animation. Students can use this site to learn new techniques and get advice for creating their own videos. My students loved creating their own videos. Any time I mentioned a video project, the students would ask daily when we would start with it. Our students have grown up in the video generation and this is one of the languages they want to learn to speak in. Visit Animation Chefs as a class to learn about stop motion animation, for inspiration, and to learn new tricks. If you have students that are particularly intrigued by using video to tell a story, this is a great place for them to learn the tricks of the trade. Often we as teachers shy away from lessons that we aren’t familiar with. With Animation Chefs, even if you aren’t familiar with creating stop motion animation, you can provide a fun learning experience for your students. How can your students use stop motion videos for learning? Students can tell any story, illustrate their learning, explain a difficult concept, reflect on learning, or create videos for younger students/grade levels. In my computer classroom, I had students take a picture of themselves every single time they logged into the computers during the school year. We put all of the pictures in a “me” folder on their desktop, labeling each picture with the date. The last week of school, we created a stop motion video with all of the pictures by putting them into iMovie and setting the picture clip to 1 second. Students added music that they created in Garageband and a title page. The end result: each had videos of their school year where they could watch themselves “grow” up. This works especially well in second through fifth grade where the changes in a years time are marked.

Tips: Animation Chefs has a Twitter page, if your class is on Twitter, they may be a good tweep to follow as a class.

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

Animoto for Education

August 7, 2008August 7, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4889 views

What it is: There are some really neat online tools that I find that live in my Google Notebook for a long time (I have upward of 800 links for educational websites yet to post to iLearn Technology…and growing daily!) Some get pushed aside for my newest cool find, and some move to the bottom of the list because, while they may have educational value, they are not intended JUST for education and may have some questionable user created content that I wouldn’t want my students to stumble on. Animoto was one of these sites for me. It is an amazing and COOL tool but wasn’t necessarily geared just toward education. I got a fun email today that Animoto now has an education only site! Animoto for education is a site where students can create compelling and impressive digital content quickly and easily. It is the perfect addition to your classroom’s digital storytelling kit. It is very intuative and easy to use, in no time students have digital videos that they created! This is also an amazing place for you, the teacher, to create a video that will bring your lessons to life. You can post or embed videos on your class site or even, are you ready for this?, download for in class presentations. Animoto for Education makes it simple to mix audio and visual for a dynamic, unique presentation in no time. It is so easy to use that students could create a complete animoto presentation in one computer class.

How to integrate Animoto for Education into the classroom: Animoto for education is a great place for you to teach from. Make any lesson come to life with audio and visual, use at the beginning of the day as a ‘teaser’ for what your students can look forward to learning each day or use to teach complex concepts in history, math, science, or character education. Students will respond to new media in the classroom. Allow your students to display knowledge of a concept using Animoto. Use Animoto for Education for a beginning of the year get to know you activity. Students can each create an Animoto showcasing who they are through pictures and music. Animoto presentations are quicker to create than traditional PowerPoint type presentations making them ideal for digital storytelling in the classroom setting. Because Animoto is completely web-based, students can create videos from school and continue working on them at home. The ability to download videos is outstanding…students could save their work for offline viewing too!

Tips: Children under 13 can’t sign up for their own account. To use Animoto for Education with your students you can register your students with dummy accounts using dummy email addresses. Animoto is private to your school. This means that other people can’t come accross student videos or contact students through the site.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Animoto for Education in your classroom.

Announcing: Voki Education!

January 26, 2011Kelly Tenkely11 Comments2955 views

What it is: Voki is a free web tool that let’s students create personalized speaking avatars that can be used in a variety of online formats (blogs, email, direct link, social network profiles, etc.). Now, Voki has released an exclusive education edition of their service. Voki Education has some additional features that make it even more useful for the classroom. Sharing is now easier than ever. Students and teachers can embed their finished Voki in webpages, email, and social network profiling, they can also share using a “Voki link” which will allow students to share a simple URL to a Voki page. Students no longer need access to a website or blog to share their Voki scene! Voki also provides custom links for educational partners like SymbalooEdu, very handy. A new lesson plan database provides teachers with a searchable database of lesson plans that utilize Voki for learning. Teachers are encouraged to share their Voki enhanced lesson plans. In the new Teacher’s Corner, teachers and “expert” users can discuss anything related to Voki. There is even a Newbies corner with a series of discussions in Q&A format. Voki is now ad-free, this makes it an even sweeter deal for the classroom!

How to integrate Voki Education into the classroom: Voki lets students create custom characters that they can personalize and make speak. These speaking avatars can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom, now that Voki Education includes the ability to “Voki Link” it is easier than ever for students to create and share. Students can make their characters speak by recording a voice via phone, text to speech, record by microphone, or upload a sound clip. Students can use Voki to create characters modeled after historical or literary characters. Students can bring those characters to life-a virtual wax museum of sorts! Those finished Voki’s can be embedded in a class website or blog, or shared by a Voki Link. In math, students can create Voki’s that speak a riddle or word problem. The Voki’s can be shared with other students in the class with a challenge to solve the problem. At the beginning of the school year, students can create Voki’s to introduce themselves to you (the teacher) and classmates. Are your students learning how to speak a second language? Voki’s are a fun way for your students to practice that second language. They can record by classroom phone or built-in microphone. Throughout the year students can add characters to their new language and hear the progress they have made. Voki’s make a great accompaniment for the beginning reader. Students can create a virtual character and record themselves reading. They can play back their Voki to listen to their fluency, pronunciation, and annunciation. Once again, these recordings can be collected throughout the year as a way for students to track and hear their progress. Students can use Voki characters to summarize any learning (how about a summary of the State of the Union Address?). Have a science fair coming up that needs a little tech infusion? Have students create a virtual scientist that describes their experiment or the science behind it.

In my last post, I talked about how I integrated technology in my 2 computer classroom with a tub system. Voki’s would be an outstanding way to record instructions for students that can be played back. Because they can be saved with a Voki Link, the speaking character can be open along side other activities. It will be like having a virtual teacher there next to them! Voki recordings are perfect for transitional instructions. These can be put up on a projector-connected computer or an interactive whiteboard to be played back for students.

Tips: When students publish a Voki they can choose to login or register to save it, or click “No Thanks” to go directly to the published Voki with embed codes and links.

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

Answer Garden

July 26, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments5177 views

What it is: I learned about Answer Garden from an interactive post on Suzanne Whitlow’s excellent blog, Suzanne’s Blog. Answer Garden is a “new minimalistic feedback tool.” It can be used as an online answer collection tool or embedded on a website or blog. An Answer Garden is created as easily as entering a question and clicking create, no registration needed. Embed the Answer Garden on any blog, website, or social network page using the embed code provided. You can also give students a direct link to the Answer Garden. Students can post answers to your questions by entering their own answers or by clicking on and submitting existing answers. All of the answers are represented in the form of a word cloud. 25 answers are visible per garden but as students submit the same answer, that word will grow bigger. Creating an Answer Garden is SO simple. Just type in your question or brainstorm statement and click create.

How to integrate Answer Garden into the classroom: Answer Garden is a fun way for students to brainstorm, plan, and work together. Pose open-ended thinking questions on your classroom blog or website for students to answers. Use Answer Garden to host a classroom poll. Create a geography Answer Garden that gives students a place that they can describe a state or country they are learning about. Use Answer Garden during reading as a place for students to reflect on different characters, plots, settings, and themes. In history, give students a date range, event, or historical figure and let them add words to the Answer Garden that describe. In the primary classroom, type in a phoneme combination and have students submit words that fit the phoneme rule. Create an answer garden to recognize VIP students in your classroom where each child can answer with a character quality that they appreciate about that student. The possibilities are endless! This tool is SO easy to use, try it out in the Answer Garden below.

Where will use Answer Garden?… at AnswerGarden.ch .

Tips: The default settings on Answer Garden only allows students to submit one answer. You can check the optional “Unlimited Answering” to give students multiple opportunities to submit answers.

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

Apple Field Trips

October 21, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1654 views

What it is: The Apple Store is offering field trips to k-12 students and schools! Students can create something amazing on their field trip to the Apple store, or bring in a finished project that they have created and turn the store into a theater to share their work. Parents, teachers, and friends can attend the event to celebrate student achievement. Each event can accommodate up to 25 students. A field trip lasts one hour but more time can be scheduled on an individual basis. Right now, schools can request up to 3 date options for a field trip at a time. When you schedule a field trip, Apple takes care of invitations to send home with students, and assigns a contact person to plan the field trip for your school. Additionally, the teacher who sets up the event receives one year of complementary One to One membership. Every participating student receives a special Apple t-shirt.

How to integrate an Apple Field Trip into the classroom: If you have access to Apple computers at your school the create and share field trip option is for you. Students can work on a project (multimedia is probably best) and use the Apple Field Trip as a place to showcase and share their accomplishments. If you don’t have access to an Apple lab or don’t have regular access to computers at all, use the field trip as a time for your students to learn and create using the computer. This is a really amazing FREE opportunity, be sure to take advantage of this offer from Apple!

Tips: Right now field trips are only being offered through November 21st. Even if you can’t fit in a field trip before the deadline, be sure to let Apple know what a fabulous idea these field trips are and encourage them to offer future field trip options.

Leave a comment and tell us how your Apple Field Trip went.

BBC: Magic Key

July 9, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments2821 views

What it is: The BBC is a constant source of excellent classroom interactives and games. Today I ran across Magic Key while working on supplementing MacMillan Mcgraw Hill’s Treasures curriculum for first grade. Magic Key is based on a cartoon in the UK, even if your students aren’t familiar with the cartoon, they are sure to enjoy the website adventures. Magic Key has fun literacy games for kindergarten and first grade students. The games help students practice full stops (sentence endings), sentence order, questions, character characteristics, capital letters, seeing patterns, figuring out new words, descriptions, and words that make sounds. The games are age appropriate, include fun characters, and help students practice and understand important literacy skills. In each game, students enter an adventure where the goal is to collect the Magic Key.

How to integrate BBC: Magic Key into the classroom: The Magic Key games are short and sweet, they give students the opportunity to practice new skills independently. I like to use games like these as a center activity. These types of short games make a great center because they provide students with immediate feedback and are self leveling. Set Magic Key up on your classroom computers as a literacy center for students to visit independently or in small groups. Don’t forget that the interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer can also be a center station! These games are a great alternative to the worksheet (you didn’t really want to grade one of those anyway) and will provide your students with an opportunity to practice what they are learning.

Tips: Check out the teacher section of Magic Key for a description of each game, the curriculum tie in, and (I hesitate to mention) worksheets.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using BBC: Magic Key in your classroom.