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Blogging Alliance-Essential Educational Blogs

Photo via websuccessdiva Flickr Just about a month ago, I proposed the idea of a blogging alliance between educational bloggers.  The response has been incredible.  To date there are 73 educators involved from around the world.  In this month of reading and commenting I have learned a great deal from these amazing men and women, I have built new friendships, and started new conversations.  It has truly been an incredible experience to have educators, passionate about learning, coming together to support each other.  If you are looking for some excellent educational blogs, may I recommend those in our alliance?  By clicking this link, you will be offered the opportunity to subscribe to the “bundle” of blogs in Google Reader.  All of the work has been done, all you have to do is subscribe!  Join us in this journey of learning, exploring, and sharing. The blogs range in topics and focus from k-12 and higher ed.  Even though I teach in the elementary school, I have found the blogs geared toward middle, high school and higher ed to be fantastic. I learn something new every day. A few of the blogs are in Spanish or Portuguese, don’t let this stop you from reading them.  Google Reader makes it simple to translate a blog to your language with the click of a button.  As you are reading the blog, simply click on the “Feed Settings” button above the post and choose “translate to my language”.  That is it!  Even if you view the original blog to add a comment, Google Translate keeps the blog translated for you. How cool is that?!  There really are no boundaries to learning any more.

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Build Your Wild Self

Posted by admin | Posted in Fun & Games, Language Arts, Primary Elementary, Secondary Elementary, Websites | Posted on 13-11-2008

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What it is:  Build Your Wild Self is a website I heard about on A Geeky Momma’s blog (which I thoroughly enjoy!).  The site fits perfectly into my classroom this week as our Book Fair theme this year is “Safari”.   The site, created by the New York Zoos and Aquarium, lets students create a character called their “Wild Self”.  Students can choose a character and then add crazy hair, arms, legs, etc. to make them wild. There are even fun sound effects for the different backgrounds they add! 

 

How to integrate Build Your Wild Self into the classroom:   This would be a great site to use with students after reading a book like “Where the Wild Things Are”.  Students could create their own Wild Things and write themselves a Wild Things story featuring themselves.  This is also a great site to use with kindergarten and first grade students who are learning about different animals.  As they build their Wild Self they can name what animal the crazy part belongs to.  Older elementary students also enjoy working on this website, my students created a wild self for their safari passports for our book fair this week and really enjoyed it from kindergarten through fifth grade.

 

Tips:   The Wild Self can be printed out, sent to a friend, or saved as a desktop.  

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Build Your Wild Self in your classroom.

Comments (1)

Angela said on 30-12-2008

I used this site while incorporating a research project on animals for Kindergarten students. They were required to obtain a fact about a animal of their choice. This site was highly engaging, and worked off things that the children loved. Children are so animated these days, and lessons need to be just as animated as them. The students obtained their fact by picking an animal part to add to their wild self, and at then end of their design the program described their animal part in detail and told exactly why the animal needed the part. For example if they added giraffe hoofs to their animal, the program told the students that a giraffe hoof gets as big as a dinner plate so they can get rid of a lion with one kick! Afterwards the students could pick a zoo website from a list of 5 and explore some more. What a great website! THANKS!!!!

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