iLearn Technology

In case you missed what I was up to on my other blogs this week, here is a recap.

I wrote a new post today over at Dreams of Education called Teachers as Expendables

Over at iPad Curriculum I wrote a post about Kaplan Publishing offering 87 FREE ebooks (hurry this offer ends soon) and a post about turning any text into a spoken track.

New blogging educators are joining us every day at the Edublogger Alliance Wackwall, come join us!

I officially opened my iLearn Technology eStore this week where you can find lesson plans, ebooks, and Promethean Flipcharts.  Right now there are two price points $.99 and free (I’m publishing my content iTunes style).

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, thanks for all of the comments, tweets, and support this week!

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!

I am so excited!  The Reform Symposium Virtual Conference is just around the corner.  The line up of Keynote speakers and presenters couldn’t be better and we are putting the finishing touches on making sure the conference goes without a hitch.  If you are planning to attend the conference, we would love to have you join the Reform Symposium social media site.  By registering on the site, you will also be entered in raffles to win some incredible prizes, check them out here.

As we are getting ready for the big days (July 30, 31 and August 1), would you consider volunteering some of your time to help moderate the sessions?  You would be co-moderating the Elluminate session with either Shelly, Chris, or me.  I am happy to train anyone who needs to be trained on how to moderate using Elluminate.  As a moderator, your job would be to help the presenter check their audio prior to the session, record the session, introduce the presenter, and help field questions from the audience.  Not to mention that you get a backstage pass to some of the BEST presenters in education.  If you can help out, please contact me via Twitter by reply or DM or you can leave a comment below offering your help.

I hope to see you all there, can’t wait for the opportunity to get such amazing professional development without leaving home!

Over the past few months I have been working with Shelly Terrell, Jason Bedell, and Chris Rogers on a secret project.   I am happy to say that I don’t have to keep the secret any longer but can share the project with all of you!  In two weeks (July 31st and August 1st, 2010), we will be holding a worldwide virtual e-conference for free!  The conference is called Reform Symposium and it is a conference for teachers, administrators, students, and parents.  This year the conference is focused on innovative practices in education and what role these practices can play in educational reform.

We have an incredible lineup of presenters and keynote speakers that you can see here.   We hope that no matter where you are in the world, you will join us for parts or all of the conference on these days.

What you can do:

1. Mark your calendars for July 31st and August 1st 2010
2. Tweet about the conference using the #rscon10 hashtag so we can follow everyone’s tweets.
3. Invite your friends, both those you know online and off.
4. Blog about the conference and then tell us about your blog post on Twitter using the #rscon10 hash tag.
5. Join the conversations and fun on the Reform Symposium website. You can add friends, start conversations, and chat about the sessions.
6. Add me as your friend on the website.
7. Add the Reform Symposium badge to your blog or website to let others know you will be attending.

This conference is for you!  We hope that you will join us for fun, learning, collaboration, and maybe even a few prizes.  See you there!

What it is: ePub Bud is the YouTube of Children’s eBooks.  The site is YouTube-like in that anyone can create and share their own children’s ebooks.  The goal of this not-for-profit website is to provide an easy way to find, share, and self-publish children’s ebooks.  ePub Bud lets you create an ebook for a small audience, or for the whole world, digitize a real book by mailing in a physical children’s book and having it “digitized” for the iPad, upload an ebook file that you can read on the iPad, or download an eBook (classics and books others have shared).  Best of all, everything you do on ePub Bud is completely free!

How to integrate ePub Bud into the classroom: ePublishing is quickly becoming popular and more eReader devices are showing up in the classroom.  While there is nothing like holding a paper back book in your hand, their is also nothing like holding a good ebook in your hands.  Whatever we can do as teachers to get students reading, I say use it!  Use ePub Bud in your classroom to “publish” student stories.  The books can be shared with other students, parents, and schools.  Publishing an eBook of their own is highly motivating, and will have your students eager to write.  With ePub Bud, your students could construct their own text books.  Have them create ebooks about what they are learning to share with others.

If you have access to the iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, consider sending in some of the books from your classroom libary to be digitized.  Many sites have free ebooks for kids, make them iPad, iPod, or iPhone friendly by uploading them to ePub Bud.  You can also search the extensive collection of classic children’s eBooks that are on ePub Bud and download those for students to read.  You will find children’s favorites from Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carrol, A.A. Milne, Frances Margaret Fox, Milton Goldsmith, and many, many more.

This is such a neat website and it is really and truly free.  You won’t even find advertisements on this site!

Tips: If you send in a book to be digitized, ePub Bud cannot send the original back for copyright purposes.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using ePub Bud in your classroom.

What it is: Online Audio Stories is an impressive collection of free audio stories online.  The audio books are all free and downloadable.  The online version of the story includes accompanying text for students to follow along with.  The short stories will transport students on a fun adventure of listening to fairy tales and classics.  The extensive collection includes stories by Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Brothers Grimm, Tales of Time, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Bronte, Aesop, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Joseph Jacobs, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Louisa May Alcott, Hans Christian Andersen, William Shakespeare, and many more.  The stories are read with excellent voice, inflection, and timing, making them a joy to listen to.  

How to integrate Online Audio Stories into the classroom: These Online Audio Stories will transport your students to new magical worlds and adventures, they will allow struggling readers to enjoy stories that may be just out of reach otherwise.  Online Audio Stories will help increase student vocabulary and improve listening comprehension skills.  Students may not choose to pick up these classics in the library, but they will enjoy listening to the stories online.  This is great exposure to the classics!   If you have computers in your classroom, set them up as a reading/listening center that students can visit during silent reading time.  Because the Online Audio Stories are free to download, these are also perfect for downloading to an iPod or MP3 player.

Tips: Let parents know about these free online stories, they make great bedtime stories, listening enjoyment for long car rides, or for a fun listening experience any time.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Online Audio Stories in your classroom.

What it is: Wiglington and Wenks is a rich virtual world for kids that I wrote about a few weeks ago here.   This virtual world brings together literature, history, and geography into one amazing learning experience for kids.  Wiglington and Wenks is a place for students to explore, think, discover, and grow.  I can’t say enough about this virtual world as a learning space, I wish every textbook company on the planet would move toward this type of model of presenting content and learning!  While Wiglington and Wenks is free for everyone, they do offer memberships that give students access to extra features, special areas, and extra privileges.  Wiglington and Wenks has provided 10 one month memberships for iLearn Technology readers! If you would like a free membership for your class or as a give-away to one of your students or children please leave a comment below.  In your comment, tell us your favorite feature of Wiglington and Wenks.  I will choose 10 winners randomly and send an email with instructions for redeeming your free membership.

How to integrate Wiglington and Wenks into the classroom: Wiglington and Wenks is based on a story book.  Read these stories with your students or include them in your classroom library for reading.  In this virtual world, students have the opportunity to travel to and explore real places.  Students can learn about the Amazon, Madagascar, Singapore, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Pyramid, Chchen Itza, the Bermuda Triangle, the Great Wall of China, Big Ben, and more.  As students travel through the worlds, they are presented with various quests and meet with famous historical figures.  Right now students can interact with Gandhi, Charles Darwin, Genghis Khan, Beethoven, Buffalo Bill, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Neptune, and Chief Joseph.  Many new characters are being released including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Cleopatra, Issac Newton John, Albert Einstein, Pocahontas, and Wilber and Orville Wright.   Send your students on quests to learn more about each of these characters and places.  Find more ideas for using Wiglington and Wenks in your classroom on my original post here.

Tips: Make sure that you use a valid email address in your comment so that I can contact you!

Leave a comment and share how you are using Wiglington and Wenks  in your classroom.

What it is: Story Nory is a collection of FREE audio books for kids.  There is a mixture of new stories, fairy tales, and specially adapted myths and histories.  A new audio story comes out each week (this has been true since November of 2005!).  Search stories by newest additions, original stories, fairy tales, classic authors, educational, or junior stories.  The stories can be subscribed to as a podcast in iTunes, through their iPhone/iPod touch app, via email, or RSS feed.  Story Nory offers the text to accompany the audio so that kids can read along.

How to integrate Story Nory into the classroom: Story Nory would make an excellent addition to your reading/listening library.  Listening to audio books can be a great way to help students improve comprehension skills, and to listen for different literary features (such a voice, timing, rhythm, annunciation, etc.).   Set up a listening center on your classroom computers, an iPod or MP3 lab, or in a lab setting.  Students can access stories that are of high interest to them at their level.  Students can create book talks, or reviews of the stories to share with their peers.  Set up a wiki where students can share their thoughts about the stories they listen to.

Tips: Encourage parents to sign up for the Story Nory emails so that they can share the story of the week with their kids.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Story Nory in your classroom.

What it is: I love online activities that students can take part in, but because most of us don’t have the luxury of a 1 to 1 school setting, good old paper manipulatives are winners in the classroom.  Fantastic Flexible Foldables is a collection of mini math books and games that you can print out and create with your students.  You and your students can create a fraction mini-book, a factors and multiples mini-book, a fortune teller fractor game, a geometry tetraflexagon, an integer infinity square, Flippers (fraction, decimal, music), and lines trihexaflexagon.  These foldables help your students to interact with and practice math concepts that can be difficult to grasp apart from manipulatives where they can see the problems worked out.  The Flexible Foldables by Carol DeFreese are well thought out and have step by step picture instructions for folding and using these with your students.  Carol has also generously provided blank foldable templates that you can download and use to create your own foldables.

How to integrate Fantastic Flexible Foldables into the classroom: These foldable templates really are fantastic.  They are a wonderful addition to the math classroom.   Even if you don’t focus on any of the skills that Carol has created foldables for, download her blank templates and create foldables that will help your students learn difficult math concepts.  These foldables will help your students visulaize and interact with math in new ways.  This is an incredible resource and even more incredible that it is free!  Sometimes the best part of technology is the way it allows for the sharing of ideas and teaching methods… this site is proof of that!

Tips: Files on the Fantastic Foldables site are in pdf or .doc formats.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Fantastic Flexible Foldables in your classroom.

What it is: I first blogged about Smilebox September of 2008.  Smilebox is offering a free 1 year subscription to educators!  Smilebox is a fun, easy way to send photos, videos, and information to students and parents securely.  Smilebox lets you create very impressive looking multimedia presentations quickly and easily.  The free subscription (a $39.99 value) gives you unlimited access to more than 900 Smilebox designs and lets you choose from thousands of music options (or upload your own).  Finished Smilebox creations can be emailed, blogged, printed, burned to a DVD, or saved as jpeg images.

How to integrate Smilebox (Teacher Box) into the classroom: Smilebox is a great way for you to communicate with parents.  Smilebox is perfect for newsletters, overviews of teaching units, performance and field trip recaps, classroom activities, school memory books, and more.  Smilebox will make you look like a superstar, the results are SO impressive!

Tips: Be sure to sign up for Smile Box (Teacher Box) today, space in this program is limited!

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