Featured Post

Pinball: Bounce Ideas Around

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!

Read More

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery for Kids

Posted by admin | Posted in Analyze, Apply, Art, Evaluate, History, Knowledge (remember), Primary Elementary, Secondary Elementary, Teacher Resources, Understand (describe, explain), Websites | Posted on 02-11-2010

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

4

What it is: This is the last of the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery sites, it is just as great as the others!  BM&AG for Kids is a fun site where students can learn more about Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Victorians, World War 2, and the Art Gallery and Museum.  The site aims to give students a chronological understanding of these historical events, knowledge of the events, people, and changes in the past, organization and communication, and historical inquiry.  Each section has a collection of online related activities and printable activities.

Ancient Egypt- students can learn about ancient Egypt, explore a virtual Egyptian tomb, and explore real mummies.

Ancient Greece- students can learn about ancient Greece and design their own Greek pottery.

Roman Empire- students can learn about the Romans in Britain and dress a Roman soldier for battle.

Victorians- students can learn about the Victorians and explore a Victorian painting.

World War 2- students can learn about the war, assess a bomb damage report, and view pictures of Birmingham from World War 2.

Art Gallery- students can view paintings and learn about landscapes.

Museums- students can explore 6 museum activity zones where students can explore each museum.

How to integrate BM&AG for Kids into your curriculum: The BM&AG for Kids is a good site to incorporate into history lessons.  The site does an excellent job of helping students relate the different time periods above chronologically through an interactive timeline.  The online activities help students understand each time period, giving them activities that will help them make connections in their learning.  The BM&AG for Kids site is a good place to begin a study on a time period.  The site provides students with just enough information to whet their appetite for more.  Many of the activities offer basic information that could then be connected to primary sources.  For example, in the tomb exploration, students are asked to find items in a tomb.  In the activity, there is a basic explanation of each item.  A great extension would be to find primary sources and photographs of the actual items to share with students (or better yet, let them find the primary source!).  Students could then create their own “tomb” either online using online pictures and a creation platform like VoiceThread or Glogster, or an offline tomb with printed primary sources.

Tips: BM&AG for Kids was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection.  They have several excellent websites that I will have reviewed.  To view all the Birmingham Museum sites, search “Museum” or “Birmingham Museum” in my search box above.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using BM&AG for Kids in your classroom!



Comments (4)

Tweets that mention iLearn Technology » Blog Archive » Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery for Kids -- Topsy.com said on 02-11-2010

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Shelly S Terrell and David Rosenzweig, Robert P Reibold. Robert P Reibold said: iLearn Technology » Blog Archive » Birmingham Museums and Art …: BM&AG for Kids is a fun site where students can… http://bit.ly/afYCVs [...]
Susan Stephenson, the book Chook said on 03-11-2010

Great series, Kelly!
Melissa said on 03-11-2010

What a great site! I can’t wait to go read more about the Birmingham Museum sites. I think I will share this with the new teacher group I am presenting for tomorrow! Thanks for finding and sharing so many great things!!
admin said on 05-11-2010

@Melissa- thank you!

Write a comment

CAPTCHA Image
*