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Typing Practice

What it is: This blogging alliance has been expanding my knowledge of great tools for the classroom faster than I can keep up with!  Recently, I found two more excellent ways for students to practice typing from @2sparkley‘s blog.  The first is reminiscent of the popular Rock Band, called UpBeat.  Students can choose a song and level of difficulty.  They must type the letters as they appear to keep the song going smoothly.  This had my students absolutely SILENT while they practiced typing.  They were so involved and having a great time trying to keep up.  The way the game is set up, really challenges kids to touch type.  They can’t very easily keep up without touch typing!  Students stopped by my lab the morning after I introduced the site to tell me how many combos they were able to get.  The second typing site is called Typing Chef. In this game students try to type words as they float past on bubbles.  The goal is to type the word on the bubble before it pops. It gets increasingly harder as more bubbles float up and speed up. How to integrate UpBeat and Typing Chef into the classroom: Typing can be a subject that elicits groans.  Adding these games in the mix as additional opportunities for practice is sure to make students happy to practice.  I try to keep typing to a minimal in my classroom.  With only 35 minutes once a week with students, I don’t want to spend all of our time practicing typing. I have the kids do the majority of typing practice at home.  Once a year (sometimes twice) I hold a big typing Olympics competition.  Students can earn a free break dress code day (we have uniforms), this is great incentive…like gold to them!  The fastest boy and girl touch typist in each class get the break dress code certificate.  I make a huge deal about how athletes who participate in the Olympics have to train hard.  Practice doesn’t always make perfect but we are aiming for practice makes permanant (good habits).  I created the following website for my students to use in their training www.typing.weebly.com.  Upbeat and Typing Chef have both been added to the games page of my Typing website. Tips: UpBeat is a Mini-clip game. This site is often blocked at schools, make sure it is unblocked at your school before you plan on using it in class. Please leave a comment and share how you are using UpBeat and Typing Chef in your classroom.

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Critical Past

Posted by admin | Posted in Analyze, Evaluate, Geography, Government, History, Interactive Whiteboard, Knowledge (remember), Middle/High School, Primary Elementary, Secondary Elementary, Social Studies, Teacher Resources, Understand (describe, explain), video, Websites | Posted on 10-08-2010

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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What it is: Critical Past is a website I learned about today from Tom Boito’s great blog EDge 21 in his Catch of the Day.  The resource is too good not to share again here!  Critical Past is a collection of more than 57,000 historical videos and more than 7 million historical photos.  All of the photos and videos are royalty free, archival stock footage.  Most of the footage comes from U.S. Government Agency sources.  All of the videos and photos can be viewed for free online and shared with others via url, Twitter, or Facebook.  The videos and photos are also available to purchase for download.

How to integrate Critical Past into your curriculum: Critical Past is an incredible collection of historical videos and pictures.  The site is easy to search either by decade and topic or keyword.  The clips and photos on Critical Past will bring historical events alive for your students.  Use photos or videos on Critical Past to help illustrate what students are learning in history.  Ask students to be “eyewitnesses” of history and watch a video before they have context for it.  Students can write or blog about what they think they are witnessing, afterward they can research the event more in-depth and write a follow-up reflection on what was actually happening in the clip.

** Check out this awesome lesson that @pharesr created based on this post. So cool!

Tips: Along the right side bar of Critical Past, you will find “related videos.”  Students can watch a clip and the related videos and reflect on how the clips are related.  Sometimes it is a similar time period, sometimes a related event, other times it is a related location.

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

Comments (12)

Ginger said on 10-08-2010

I love this website! Thank you so much for sharing!
Tweets that mention iLearn Technology » Blog Archive » Critical Past -- Topsy.com said on 10-08-2010

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Shelly S Terrell, ktenkely, Maryna Badenhorst, njbrand, Rita Simons Santiago and others. Rita Simons Santiago said: RT @ShellTerrell Critical Past http://bit.ly/cDR8S4 by @ktenkely #edtech [...]
Meryl van der Merwe said on 10-08-2010

Wow – what an amazing resource. I will use this to help my kids find primary sources for the projects they do for the National History Day contest. It will be especially useful for those making documentaries or websites as for a small fee they can get video footage and photos.
Robin said on 10-08-2010

http://emscomputer10.wikispaces.com/Critical+Past

VERY COOL!!!!
Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Critical Past said on 11-08-2010

[...] Past Critical Past is a great site that I just learned about from iLearn Technology. This is a site that is dedicated to showing excellent historic photos and videos. It works very [...]
Paula Montrie said on 11-08-2010

This is a tremendous resource! I will definitely use it for our U.S. History Documentary film project. There are lots of newsreels here, and it’s the best source of Bob Hope/USO footage from WWII I’ve seen in one place. Thanks for posting!
Thomas Boito said on 11-08-2010

Thanks for the mention!
Ruth Ferris said on 13-08-2010

Great Primary Source for showing what the world looked like at various years. Lots of background information for Social Studies and some chapter books.
admin said on 16-08-2010

I agree, this would be a great way to enrich text and chapter books!
admin said on 16-08-2010

You bet!
admin said on 16-08-2010

Great idea Meryl! I hope you will share the projects with the rest of us, I know I would love to see them!
Nick Provenzano said on 31-08-2010

This site is amazing! I’m passing this along ASAP to all of the teachers in my district. Thanks Kelly!

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