Language Arts – Page 10 – iLearn Technology

eduperience

October 11, 2009October 12, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment1930 views

What it is: eduperience is an easy blogging tool for students and teachers based on the WordPress platform. “Start a blog in seconds with unlimited storage, bandwidth, premium themes and plugins. It is too easy to publish Your academic calendar, newsletter, video, podcast, and photo.” You can choose to use an eduperience sub domain or your own domain hosting. Automated weekly and monthly backup of your blogs ensures safety. You can choose to earn up to 90% revenue on advertisements shown on your blog. eduperience is a great blogging platform for both students and teachers.

How to integrate eduperience into the classroom: eduperience is an easy way for you to get a classroom blog up and running. Use a classroom blog to post current assignments, class discussions, calendars, links to other websites relevant to classroom learning, and notes to your students. Students can use blogs as writing journals, an online portfolio of written work, or to collaborate with other students. Students tend to write more and with higher quality in an online environment. This is due in part to a greater sense of audience. Students know that teachers, students, and parents may be reading their writing. Blogs are also a great addition to the science classroom where students can reflect on experiments and labs.

Tips: eduperience offers outstanding 24/7 support. This makes it simple to get started with blogging, even if you haven never done it before!

Related Resources: think.com, Live Binders, edWeb 2.0, Weebly, Word Press, Blogger,

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

Reading Logs

October 11, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2264 views

What it is: Reading Logs is a free website that makes reading, spelling, and vocabulary simplified. Reading Logs is a great way to organize student reading, spelling, and vocabulary practice. Learning material can be uploaded by teachers to be accessed by students online. Once the material is online, students can use the electronic reading log, vocabulary card creator, and and use the listen and spell practice system. Teachers can upload reading lists and reading goals for their class. These can be weekly or monthly goals and can be set up to track the number of minutes or the number of books read. Online competitions can be setup by the teacher (example: first student to read a certain number of minutes). Teachers can quickly post a vocabulary list where students can look up words with the online dictionary and add definitions to the cards. The cards can be studied online or downloaded as a pdf to print out. With the listen and spell system, teachers can upload spelling lists for students to practice. Students click on a button to listen to the spelling word and practice spelling it. They receive immediate feedback from the program. Reading Logs tracks students reading logs and updates teachers with progress.

How to integrate Reading Logs into the classroom: The Reading Logs website is a great place to organize your classroom. It eliminates the need for paper spelling lists, vocabulary cards, and reading logs. Parents and students will appreciate the one stop shop for these common weekly tasks. I am not normally a fan of reading logs, I think they can stress students out about reading unnecessarily (readicide!), but this online reading log works more as a motivator and goal setter for reading. I like that the focus is not on the number of pages read but on what books that a student is reading. This could encourage great conversation about reading between students who are reading similar books, or between the teacher and student. The focus is on encouraging the love of reading and not on the task of reading. The spelling practice center is great for vocabulary development, pronunciation, and self guided learning of spelling words. The vocabulary card creator allows students to easily create vocabulary cards, look up words in the online dictionary, and practice the words. I like this site for student and home connections and for the self guided learning and pacing. The spelling portion of this site could be great for English language learners because they will hear the pronunciation of words and can look up the definitions within the program.

Tips: When you register for this free website, you will get some great printouts explaining the site to parents and students.

Related Resources: Spelling City, Shelfari, Book Adventure

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

Story Cove

October 11, 2009October 11, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2352 views

What it is: Story Cove- A World of Stories is an excellent collection of stories from around the world. The folktales come from a variety of cultures and places sharing timeless lessons and universal values. The stories are shared in two ways, as an audio story only, or as a movie. The stories have been collected from countries around the world including: Africa, Asia, Americas, Australia, and Europe. Students can explore the world through the stories told there. Each story is accompanied by a variety of activities including coloring pages, mazes, printable masks, etc. There is a teacher page where you can find lesson plans for each story that extend the story elements to explore the original story with projects and activities that encourage interaction with other students, parents, and teachers. Each story has a lesson for students in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade.

How to integrate Story Cove- A World of Stories into the classroom: Story Cove- A World of Stories is a fun way for students to learn about other cultures and countries through the stories told there. It provides a great tie in between geography, language arts, and social studies. As you are teaching about other countries, use Story Cove as a way for students to understand more about the people who live there. Because the stories have universal values, students will be able to relate them to their own lives. Story Cove can be used with a projector or interactive whiteboard for whole class participation or set up as a story center on classroom computers. These stories are great for building reading strategies like making connections, summarizing, synthesizing, questioning, and evaluating. They are also helpful for language and vocabulary building.

Tips: If you can’t find a place to directly tie in Story Cove in your curriculum, consider introducing a new folktale to students each week of the school year. Use the Story Cove story as a writing prompt for journal writing.

Related Resources: Speakaboos

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

Rhyme Race

October 11, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment1964 views

What it is: Rhyme Race is a four player (or four team) interactive rhyming game that helps promote a better understanding of rhyming. Players roll a die to move around the game board. Along the way, students are asked to come up with rhyming words. If the player lands on a spot of the same color as their game piece, they are given an audio rhyming word. A sound recording of a word is played and the player has to come up with a rhyming word. If the player lands on a purple space they are given a picture rhyme clue. A picture of a word is shown and the player must come up with a rhyming word. The first player (or team) to land on an end space wins.

How to integrate Rhyme Race into the classroom: Rhyme Race is an excellent interactive game for an interactive whiteboard. Split students into 4 teams, students in each team will rotate rolling the die and answering with a rhyme. This is also a great way for students to practice rhyming in small groups at a classroom computer as a center activity. If you have students who are struggling with rhyming, they can play this game as a single player.

Tips: Rhyme Race is a Flash game. Make sure that your Flash player is up-to-date before playing with students.

Related Resources: Little Animals Activity Centre, Rhymer

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

Word Safari

October 11, 2009October 11, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2063 views

What it is: Word Safari is an entertaining little game where students can enter and practice their spelling words. Kids can practice seven spelling words at a time by entering any seven of their spelling words. Students can choose from three difficulty levels for their game (this just speeds up the letters). The game puts students in a jungle. Their character is holding onto balloons and floating through the air. The target spelling word is in the upper left hand corner of the screen. As the character floats through the air, letters pass by. The goal is to “run” into the letters needed to spell the spelling word by moving the character into the letters.

How to integrate Word Safari into the classroom: While I don’t think this game could be used as the sole method for learning spelling words, it does provide students with extra exposure to their spelling words and that is always a good thing! This little game would make a great spelling center in the classroom. Students could take turns at the center playing Word Safari once through. Send the Word Safari URL home with students so that they can play at home. Parents are always looking for fun ways to get in a little extra spelling practice.

Tips: Another great site from my PLN on Twitter, I don’t remember who originated the tweet because their were several re-tweets. So, thank you to all for this fun spelling practice site!

Related Resources: Spelling City, Spelling Wizard, Spellitis

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Word Safari Typing in your classroom.

My English Images

August 26, 2009August 30, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2989 views

What it is: My English images is a great site that I learned about from @larryferlazzo. This site was designed for English teachers and English teachers working with ESL and EFL students but it is a great site for any literacy classroom. The site has images and worksheets that are available for download that can be used to catch student’s attention, spice up lessons, and illustrate difficult language concepts. My English Images provides pictures that illustrate conversation, grammar, basic English, pronunciation, and vocabulary concepts. New content is added to the collection monthly.

How to integrate My English Images into the classroom: This site is ideal for the ESL/EFL classroom. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and that is definitely the case with this site. Students will be able to look at the pictures and understand the language concepts with the help of visuals. The pictures can be downloaded and used in PowerPoint presentations, interactive whiteboard lessons, and any lesson that you are teaching that would benefit from visuals. Visuals are the first thing that people associate with a concept. They help students recall more quickly, and the concepts get stored in permanent memory because students have an easier time making connections with things they already know. My English Images has some fantastic offline games that can be played with English language learners. You can download and print rules and a certificate of excellence as students complete the games. Grammar concepts are often difficult for any student learning them for the first time. My English Images makes it easier for students to understand how the English language works. This site should be used in any English speaking/learning literacy classroom!

Tips: Take a little time to explore My English images, it is a treasure trove of resources! My English Images was created by English language teacher F. Michael Kloran based on what he uses with his students.

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

Exploring the Secret Life of Trees

August 9, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1892 views

What it is: Exploring the Secret Life of Trees is a neat interactive site for 3rd through 5th grade students designed to help them gain an appreciation of trees, observe trees in every day life, and develop an interest in learning more about trees. Students will learn about the basic parts of a tree and their functions. They will also learn about conservation and renewable and non-renewable sources.

How to integrate Exploring the Secret Life of Trees into the classroom: There are several suggestions for using the Secret Life of Trees site in the classroom. These activities meet objectives in science, math, fine arts, language arts, and social sciences. Use the Secret Life of Trees as an introduction to a larger unit about trees. The site can be used with an interactive whiteboard or projector with the whole class or as a center activity in the classroom.

Tips: If you fill out the Secret Life of Trees request form on the teacher page, they will send you a free Secret Life of Trees poster.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Exploring the Secret Life of Trees in your classroom.

Nota

August 9, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3183 views

What it is: Nota is an incredible online collaboration tool that allows students and teachers to collaborate almost instantaneously on a shared whiteboard space. Instantly create and share any kind of document, presentations, notebooks, report, artwork, etc.. Nota makes any type of document and media work together seamlessly. The Nota interface is extremelly intuitive, it is quick to learn and use. Materials can be shared and edited simultaneously making it a truly incredible collaborative experience. Materials can be uploaded or added from sites like Flickr, YouTube, Google Maps, Wikipedia, and more. The Nota drawing tools work with any media or document in Nota. Public or private notebooks can be created. Collaborate with one or a hundred people on Nota and create as many pages as you want. Finished work can be stored, printed, or embeded. Best of all Nota is totally free!

How to integrate Nota into the classroom: Nota is the ultimate in online collaboration. It reminds me a little bit of a glog but Nota goes way beyond Glogster in so many ways. Nota can be used to complete group projects between students. The instant collaborative abilities mean that students can see each group members contribution instantaneously. Imagine using Nota to work on difficult math problems, create science diagrams, compare and contrast historical figures, create a character sketch of a character from a classroom novel, etc.. The possibilities are endless for collaborative learning. Work on a common notebook for whole class projects where each student is responsible for a contribution to the Nota. Make interactive whiteboards a truly interactive experience by combining with Nota. Throughout teaching, have students add their new learning to a common Nota notebook. At the end of teaching, use the interactive whiteboard to view the Nota and add any additional information and resources to it. Print out or send the Nota to students as a study guide that they helped create. Nota creates an impressive mashup of media and documents and allows users to collaborate and combine knowledge. When students work together to construct knowledge, they end up with a greater, more complete understanding of material.

Tips: Nota works with any web browser making it ideal for the classroom setting where students may not have the same computing platforms or Internet browsers at home.

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

Visuwords

June 18, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2450 views

What it is: Another fantastic visual dictionary, Visuwords shows a graphical representation of words and word relationships. Students can view word meanings and associations. Search for any word and immediately get word connections, find out which words are similar, an instance of, a substance of, a part of, a member of, a verb group, an opposite, a causes, entails, and offers suggestions for other words to see. Parts of speech are color coordinated so students can tell at a glance which part of speech the word is. When students hover the mouse over a word the definition pops up on the word.

How to integrate Visuwords into the classroom: Visuwords is a great way for students to learn vocabulary. Leave Visuwords projected on an interactive whiteboard or on a projector during any whole class reading session. As students come upon unfamiliar words, they can use Visiwords to look up the word. Discuss the word relationships and meanings as a class. Visuwords is a lot like Lexipedia, it may be more visually friendly for primary grades. Set up Visuwords on classroom computers as a writing center. During writing, students can visit the center and search for synonyms and antonyms that will enhance writing. Visuwords can be used as an introduction to any new learning, type in key vocabulary from new learning. Encourage students to guess what the new learning may be about based on the word connections.

Tips: Visuwords uses Prinston University’s WordNet, an opensource database.

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

Lexipedia

June 18, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3208 views

What it is: Lexipedia is an amazing site for learning about words and word relationships. Just type in a word to look it up on Lexipedia and in seconds you will have a web of words complete with definitions. Lexipedia gives all nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, fuzzynyms, synonyms, and antonyms for the word. Students can choose to see all of these words at once or choose to show only one type of result. When students hover their mouse over a word, the definition pops up over the word. Students get an immediate visual of word relationships.

How to integrate Lexipedia into the classroom: Lexipedia is the perfect site to use during any literacy lesson. This site is an excellent resource to stretch and build student vocabulary. Use Lexipedia with an interactive whiteboard or projector during reading. When the class comes upon an unfamiliar word, invite a student to type the word into the search. Read the definition as a class and look at the synonyms and word connections. Bookmark Lexipedia on classroom computers for easy access. During writing, students can use Lexipedia as a editing center where they enhance their writing with vivid verbs and adjectives. Lexipedia is also an excellent place to start when learning a new science concept. Type key vocabulary into Lexipedia and encourage students to guess what science concepts they will be learning based on the vocabulary and word connections. This visual dictionary and thesaurus goes above and beyond and will increase your student’s vocabulary and word understanding exponentially!

Tips: I learned about this outstanding site from rmbyrne on his fantastic blog. Such a great, useful find!

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