Integrating technology in the classroom
Tonight I am hosting an Internet safety night for parents. I often get safety questions from parents and built a wiki where I can point them for answers. Maybe the wiki will give you some good resources and places to send parents who are asking about keeping their kids safe online. Let me know if you know of a great resource I have left out!
What it is: ARKive is an incredible website that I learned about from a tweet on Twitter (forgive me I was in the middle of class and didn’t keep track of who- thank you whoever you are!) ARKive tag line is “images of life on Earth”, but ARKive is so much more than just a collection of images, it has thousands of videos, images and facts about the world’s species. This is the digital version of Noah’s Ark! This is the most impressive animal and life website I have seen! I truly can’t say enough about this site, students of all ages will enjoy this one (I’m talking k-12 here!) ARKive has an education section of the site that is a free multi-media educational resources complete with downloadable, ready to use audio/visual modules on a wide range of science, geography, citizenship, and environmental based topics. ARKive also has some great games for students to play that are directly related to the lessons they learn while on the ARKive site. Games range from building a habitat to word searches and digital fridge poetry.
How to integrate ARKive into the classroom: ARKive’s ready made educational resources make it simple to integrate into your science, geography, or general classes. The resources are ready made PowerPoint presentations (which incidentally also open nicely in Keynote which we use). The resources bring learning to life with images, videos, facts, and some interactive pieces. This is what textbooks should be! ARKive’s ready made resources can be downloaded on classroom computers for use by small learning groups as a center, downloaded to a lab of computers for individual student exploration, or used with a projector and an interactive whiteboard for whole class learning and exploration. The ARKive site itself is a wonderful place for students to explore and learn more about animal species and life on Earth. This would be a great place for students to collect information, images, and video to create their own presentations. The games provided on the ARKive site are fun for students and teach them as they play. For example, students who are studying habitat can play the Design a Habitat game and gain an additional opportunity to interact with the concepts they are learning. Older students can dig into the facts provided on ARKive and learn about animal classification and species of the world. ARKive images could be used in the language arts classroom as a story starter or creative writing prompt.
Tips: This is truly an incredible site, I encourage you to take a look at it and use it with your class! (Click on the education link at the bottom of the site for the Resources and Games.)
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using ARKive in your classroom.
I came across this video recently on YouTube. As I understand it, a 15 year old wrote this poem as part of a school assignment. Amazing! This video would be wonderful to use as inspiration for a teaching staff or with students. It would be a great opener for a creative writing class! The video speaks for itself, I’m sure you’ll come up with great ideas for using this video with your students (share those great ideas with the rest of us). 🙂
What it is: Math Doodles is a set of math games created by Daren Carstens that help students learn the most important aspect of math…it can be fun! Daren created Math Doodles as a place where students can “discover the joy, wonder, and fun of mathematics.” I have to admit that I would not have classified math as a “fun” subject. However, I think that math can and should be a fun time of exploration and learning for students. Math Doodles provides this place. Kids can interact with math by playing games like Connect the Sums, Number Jump, Polyomino Shift, Double Traits, Sums Stacker, Hydro Maze, Time Shuffle, and Angel Fish (coming soon). These games encourage students to interact with math and learning….and they are a lot of fun too!
How to integrate Math Doodles into the classroom: Math Doodles is a collection of amazing games for elementary school students. Students will learn through play (the best way!) Math Doodles would be an excellent math center in the one or two computer classroom. Students could play the games in teams or individually. In the lab setting students could work on skills specific to their individual learning needs in the math classroom. Math Doodles could also be used with an interactive whiteboard for whole class participation. Split your class into teams and take turns solving the games. Math Doodles games would be a fun way to start math class as a pre-thinking activity.
Tips: Right now Math Doodles games are only available in Demo version (since this version is free to use that suits me well!), but it looks like eventually the full version of each game will be available for purchase.
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Math Doodles in your classroom.
What it is: Lure of the Labyrinth is a interactive math game created by Fable Vision, MPT, and MIT. In the game underground monsters come to life as students plunge into a shadowy factory on a mission to rescue a missing pet. Students take on a monster persona and disguise themselves as monster insiders to maneuver through math problems. As students work through the game, they will work with proportions, fractions, ratios, variables, equations, numbers, and operations.
How to integrate Lure of the Labyrinth into the classroom: Lure of the Labyrinth can be played individually or in team play. This game is excellent for students who may not otherwise feel successful in math. The game encourages critical thinking and problem solving and is aligned to math standards. This would be a great way for students to work through problems and show what they know.
Tips: Be sure to stop off in the educator section on Lure of the Labyrinth for an explanation of the game, lesson plans, standards, and the math behind each puzzle that needs to be solved. With all of the resources and guidance, this is a fail proof game to introduce in your math class!
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Lure of the Labryinth in your classroom.
Today I finally finished a project I have been working on with my students. I borrowed this concept from a video that I saw on Teacher Tube and thought it would be a fun way to get our teachers, admin, and tech staff thinking about technology. I had one of my first grade classes record the audio for me. The kids were thrilled to see something they had a part in on You Tube 🙂
What it is: Pinky Dinky Doo is a site I was destined to review, I saw the show advertising the website while channel surfing one day, and on the very same day, Kevin Jarrett Tweeted about it. Needless to say, I checked it out and was immediately hooked. This is a great website for pre-k through first grade students. The site is based on a PBS show of the same name. The website has fun activities for kids to take part in including word games, story podcasts, videos, and a place for students to create their own story podcast. Pinky Dinky Doo loves making up stories and teaches students that every story has a beginning, middle, and end. The stories are often full of metaphores and similes and often have a great message for kids too. Every story also has one giant fancy word like “collaborate” or “gracious” teaching students rich vocabulary as well. I love the way that this site expands student vocabulary!
How to integrate Pinky Dinky Doo into the classroom: Put your students listening skills to work, listen as a class to a podcast story and discuss parts of a story together afterward. Every story has a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Students can draw and visualize the story while they listen to it. The podcast stories would also make an excellent listening center in the classroom. Pinky Dinky Doo is a great way to teach students new vocabulary, each story has a ‘fancy word’ that will expand your student vocabulary. It would be fun to use the ‘fancy word’ from the story as the classroom word of the day. See how many times your students can use the ‘fancy word’ correctly during the day. I love the section where students can create their own story podcasts. Set up a story station in the one or two computer classroom where partners can create a story and listen to a classmates story. Students in a computer lab setting could create story podcasts of their own and play the word games independently. The site is easy enough for students to work independently.
Tips: Check out the grownups section on Pinky Dinky Doo for some great offline activities. They even have directions for creating a Fancy Word box of your own and directions for playing the circle story game.
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Pinky Dinky Doo in your classroom.
What it is: Digital Vaults reminds me of Museum Box that I wrote about a few weeks ago. The National Archives has put together an amazing site where students can create digital content with primary resources. Students can search photographs, documents, and other records and collect them. Students can use collected items to create their own digital poster or to make a movie. Students can also create a Pathway Challenge. In a challenge, students create a series of clues that show relationships between photographs, documents and other records. Others can take part in these Pathways Challenges. There are also ready made challenges that students can take part in, I just took the Lincoln challenge. Clues are given and students have to find a record that matches the clue. Very cool!
How to integrate Digital Vaults into the classroom: This is a truly incredible way for students to interact with history. While the site may be too hard for primary elementary students to use on their own, the Lincoln Pathway Challenge could be used with an interactive whiteboard with the teacher guiding the challenge. Teachers could also create a unique challenge that directly matches your curriculum for students to complete. The poster, movie, and create your own Pathway Challenge are an engaging way for students to learn about history in a hands on approach. Give students a direction to go and then give them time to collect resources, and create their digital history vault. This is not history as I remember it…in fact, I’m sure I would know much, much more about history if I were involved in my learning this way! This is so much better than learning history from an outdated text book, the Pathway Challenges are like virtual field trips through history.
Tips: I learned about this awesome website from Free Technology for Teachers, a great blog!
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Digital Vaults in your classroom.
What it is: Wizlite is a handy little web tool that lets you highlight text (just like you would on paper) on any page on the Internet and then share it with others. Wizlite uses a a Firefox extension or a bookmarklet to show and store selections. It is free and easy to use!
How to integrate Wizlite into the classroom: Wizlite is a handy tool for directing your students to specific information while they are learning on the web. Use Wizlite to teach your students to find the main idea on a webpage. Students can create groups on Wizlite and share pages with their highlights with other students. Wizlite is also very useful for sharing portions of webpages with your colleagues quickly and easily.
Tips: Wizlite does require you to install an extension. This is easy to do and the Wizlite site walks you through the steps.
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Wizlite in your classroom.
We had a renewal inservice today that was OUTSTANDING!!! Professor Sid Buzzel was our teacher today, I have written about and linked to his teaching in the past. His topic today was: the most important qualification for a teacher. I wrote a blog post about it over at my other blog, Confident Teacher.