iLearn Technology

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.

What it is: It’s that time again, FETC is on its way!  If you aren’t able to make it to the conference, you can still attend the conference virtually.  Best of all this online educational event is 100% free!  The conference is coming to you live Thursday, October 22, 2009.  Attend informative virtual sessions from the conference, visit the Virtual Expo Hall and chat with live exhibitors, and preview and evaluate the latest hardware and software available today.  Attend this online event to enjoy: “a dynamic exchange of best practices and tips for success, expert speakers sharing their views in an effective, interactive way, a virtual networking lounge to reconnect with colleagues and make new contacts, real-time access to other participants through instant messaging, technology product and service demonstration in the vitural exhibit hall, free content downloads and presentations to go, and much more!”  You can attend as many sessions as you like when it is convenient for you.  This means no travel expenses, no lines, no scheduling substitutes, no getting funding approved, no emptying your own pockets!

How to integrate Virtual FETC ‘09 into the classroom: While you can’t integrate this conference into your classroom, the virtual conference will provide you access to great speakers who will inspire you with best practices and tips for success.  You will come away from this conference with some great new ideas to implement in your classroom.

Tips: What are you waiting for?  Sign up for the FETC ‘09 Virtual conference today!  See you all there

Leave a comment and tell us if you are attending Virtual FETC ‘09.

What it is:   NASA Images is a website where you can find amazing images of the universe, solar system, earth, aeronautics and astronauts.  In addition to images, you will find video and audio collections in this easily searchable digital library.  The site has a picture timeline of spaceflight, collections of images, audio, and video, and presentations created by users.  The content on NASA images is not under copyright so it can be used without express permission.  This means that you and your students can use the high quality images, HD video, and audio in slideshows, movies, classroom websites, blogs, and interactive whiteboard notebooks.

How to integrate NASA Images into the classroom:  This is an incredible collection of resources.  Students and teachers can use them to enhance any space unit.  This site will excite students and build interest around space exploration, aeronautics, and astronomy.  Create your own planetarium or journey through space and share with an interactive whiteboard or in a slide show presentation with a projector.  Students could create a blog or wiki all about their ‘travels’ through space for other students and parents to view.  NASA Images even offers the tools to build a presentation right on the site.  Presentations can then be embedded on other websites, wikis, or blogs.

Tips:  NASA Images is updated regularly, check back for the newest additions.

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

What it is: School Tool is a collection of free administrative software for schools.  This is a student information system that includes demographics, gradebook, attendance, calendaring and reporting for primary and secondary schools.  It also provides a framework for building customized applications and configurations to meet the needs of your school.

How to integrate School Tool into the classroom:  School Tool is an excellent alternative to expensive information systems.  This open source solution is a great way to save some educational technology dollars to spend on additional hardware or infrastructure.  If your school is looking at implementing a new comprehensive information system, definitely take a look at School Tool.  

Tips:  School Tool has documentation to help with installation and setup, an administrators handbook, a developers handbook, and a glossary of usage.  These documents should have you up and running in no time!

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

What it is: This week (May 4-8) is teacher appreciation week.  To show their appreciation, Learning A-Z is holding an open house to their fantastic collection of learning resources.  This means that for one week you can access all online resources for free from Raz-Kids, Reading a-z, Science a-z, Writing a-z, Vocabulary a-z, and Reading Tutors.  Raz Kids is a student centered website where students can listen to and read books online independently.  Reading a-z is filled with thousands of printable and projectable resources including books, activity sheets, and assessments.  Science a-z includes multilevel books, activity sheets, process activities and more.  All are categorized by grade and topic.  Writing a-z is a collection of resources to help teach basic writing skills.  Vocabulary a-z is a website with a word bank of more than 8,000 words.  The words are categorized by content area, functional, and resource.  With this site teachers can build vocabulary lessons with activities for multiple exposures to words that leads to word mastery.   Reading Tutors provides online resource packets for those tutoring kids in reading.  It covers key reading areas from phonics to comprehension.

How to integrate Learning a-z into the classroom:    The collection of resources accessible in Learning a-z is incredible. Take advantage of this teacher appreciation week freebie and start using Learning a-z materials in your classroom.

Tips:  Sign up for a free pass during this open house week.  Enjoy!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Learning a-z  in your classroom.

What it is:   It is that time of year again, time for end of the year award ceremonies where we remind our students of how far they have come this year and celebrate their achievements.  My Award Maker is a site I learned about from Kevin Jarrett’s blog NCS Tech.  He found this site just in time for it to be useful for me so I thought I would pass it on so you could benefit as well!  My Award Maker is a free, very easy to use award/certificate creator.  Choose from one of hundreds of great awards, fill in the information that best fits your needs, and print.  It couldn’t be easier and the results are fantastic!  This is going to save me from going to Lakeshore or US Toy to hunt for awards for this year, they are as good if not better quality than those you can purchase.

How to integrate My Award Maker into the classroom:   At my school, we have a formal end of the year award assembly where students are recogized and celebrated for their hard work throughout the year.  This is the perfect place to find an award or certificate for any occasion.  Don’t wait for a formal award ceremony, tell your students how proud you are of their achievements and effort year long with class awards and certificates.  

Tips: My Award Maker has a special section of Tips and Tricks for making special occasions memorable.  Check it out!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using My Award Maker  in your classroom.

What it is:  DoInk is an outstanding free illustration and animation creator.  The site has tools that are similar in feel and function to Adobe’s flash.   DoInk creates custom animations right inside your Internet browser.  There is an explore section where you and your students can get some inspiration for animations.  DoInk provides tutorials for illustrating and animating making it easy to get started.

How to integrate DoInk into the classroom:   Adobe products not in the budget?  DoInk is a fantastic alternative to Flash.  DoInk would be a great way to familiarize students with the basics of animation that will lead nicely into using more robust programs like Flash.  Allow students to create mini animations to demonstrate science concepts (think life cycles, rock cycles, water cycle, etc.).  Students can also create short animations to display an understanding of verbs.  Since verbs are action words, an animation is a great way to show the action.

Tips: DoInk requires registration with a username and password.  For elementary students, I find it helpful to create one class account where students can create.  This keeps you from having to keep track of a class full of login information.  It also makes it simple to keep track of student work.

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

What it is:  Augmented Reality, how cool is that technology?  Dialing up the awesome factor a couple of notches is AR Sights.  AR Sights is a company who makes it possible to view Google Earth right in a web browser and then zoom into places of interest (Pyramids, Eiffel Tower, etc) and take a look at them augmented reality style.  The site brings landmarks to life in four easy steps.  Download the browser add-on, download some points of interest, print out the AR Sights marker, and zoom into Google Earth and take a look.  I am amazed at what this technology provides for students!  Students can zoom right in and manipulate the landmark by moving the paper around.  Now for the downfalls, AR Sights only works on PC’s right now, us Mac folks will have to hunt down a PC or wait until it is available for the Mac.  The other downfall is the downloads, they require administrative rights (some of you may have to convince your IT to let you download this goody).  After you print off the AR Sights marker, you hold it up to your camera and up pops the landmark you have chosen in Google Earth, as you twist, tilt, and move the paper the landmark moves accordingly.  This is SO outstanding!

How to integrate AR Sights into the classroom:  AR Sights makes virtual field trips so impressive!  As your students are studying geography, allow them to travel around Google Earth and take a look at the landmarks.  Use AR Sights with a projector or Interactive whiteboard to show your whole class landmarks at the same time.  Create a travel center on your computers where students can travel around and learn about the world.  AR Sights is a great way to bring geography alive!  AR Sights also has a download to use with Google Sketch-up 3-D drawing program (free from Google).  Older students can create their own 3-D augmented reality landmarks.  Students could draw places of interest, your school, etc. and view them with AR Sights as augmented reality.  Talented high-school and college age students (or ambitious teachers) could create Sketch-up models that can be used in education such as the skeletal system, a beating heart, the solar system, historical landmarks, etc. for students to interact with in 3-D augmented reality.  The possibilities with this could be endless!!

Tips:  I learned about AR Sights from a wonderful blog that my friend Raul writes from Spain called technoTIC, check it out!  Thanks Raul!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using AR Sights in your classroom.  If you or one of your students creates a Sketch Up model for AR Sights let us know about it!