iLearn Technology

What it is: I have long been a TED talk fan, so much so that I started a lunch group at my previous school called TED Talk Tuesdays where teachers could gather over lunch, watch TED Talks and discuss it’s implication on education.  TED has a brand new education site that I am excited about.  TED-ed is a collection of educational video lessons that have been animated.  These lessons can be used as a supplement in any classroom.  Each video on the TED-ed site has an associated lesson, a Quick Quiz with multiple choice comprehension questions, Think which asks questions to help students think more critically about what they have watched, and Dig Deeper which helps students to explore the topic further.  In addition to the videos, TED-ed gives educators the ability to “flip” videos.  You can use, tweak, or completely re-do any lesson that is featured on TED-Ed, or even create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube.  You can re-title a lesson to fit your classroom, add context, questions and follow-up suggestions, and create a custom URL for your video lesson.  You can even track your student’s progress to see who has viewed the assigned video, the number of questions they attempted, the answers they provided, and the answers they got correct.

How to integrate TED-Ed into the classroom:  TED-Ed is a fantastic new resource for the classroom.  The videos can be used for flip teaching.  Flip teaching changes up the classroom model.  Normally students come to school to get instruction and do their practice work at home as homework.  In a flipped teaching model, the instruction is watched at home as “homework” and the practice happens in the classroom where students can receive teacher support.  This means that the focus in the classroom is on higher-order thinking and learning skills instead of on instruction.  How novel. Student can come to class ready for deeper inquiry, critical thinking, discussion with classmates, collaboration and get more personalized attention from the teacher.  You maximize classroom time by “going home” with the students.

Video is a great medium for learning because it allows students to learn at their own pace and gives them the ability to replay as many times as they need to.  Visuals are always useful when learning something new, video is a great medium because of the way that it helps enhance understanding through the use of visuals. 

Videos are searchable by those that have been featured, those that are part of a series or by subject.  Students can learn about the arts, business/economics, design/engineering/technology, health, literature/language, math, psychology, science/technology, and social studies.  The library will continue to grow as teachers flip the videos and TED-ed adds content from educators around the world.

The videos are great in a flipped classroom model but can also be used within the classroom.  Videos can be watched and discussed as a whole-class or put on classroom computers as a learning center.  When I taught second grade, I made sure that I had time individually with my students each week.  In the mornings, my students worked on groups with “tub work” to make this time possible with individual students.  These videos would make a great “second teacher” in a blended learning classroom where students could continue their learning while you work with students individually. 

Tips: Remember, if you don’t find a video that meets your classroom needs, you can always flip any video you find on YouTube!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using TED-ed in  your classroom!

What it is:  The Scale of Life is a neat website that I learned about from a parent in @michellek107‘s class today.  The Scale of Life is flash based, and shows the size of objects relative to other objects.  Along the bottom of the site is a slider that lets students zoom in or out in size to see things relative to each other. Students can get as small as 0.0000000001 yoctometers to as large as size of the known universe.

How to integrate The Scale of Life into the classroom:  The Scale of Life is a neat way for students to explore size, science and math.  Students can examine the scale of objects compared to other objects and make observations about size and purpose of the object in the universe.  This would be a fun site to explore as a class using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard.  As a class, students could adjust the scale and discuss size and purpose of the objects.  Split students into teams to choose a different scale to learn about. Students can learn more about the items that are in the size range to share back with the class.

The Scale of Life could be a fantastic site for students learning about exponents and scientific notation.  Visual students will appreciate that they can see what these big (and small) numbers are representing.

Tips: @michellek107 is digging the music on the site…she has it going in the background of her classroom right now .  If you aren’t loving it, there is a music note in the upper right corner where you can turn it off.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Scale of Life in  your classroom!

What it is:  The American Heart Association has a new set of heart interactives on their site, Be the Beat.  On Be the Beat, students can explore the heart, view a healthy vs unhealthy heart and perform virtual CPR during a cardiac arrest.  The interactives have extremely life-like graphics and can be manipulated to view the heart under a variety of circumstances.  Students can speed up heart rate or adjust layers of the heart.  The CPR simulation is excellent.  It leads students through a scenario where a friend collapses.  It is up to students to decide how to administer CPR and use an AED to help the friend.

How to integrate Be the Beat into the classroom: Be the Beat is very well done.  I’m impressed with the level of information, the interactive graphics and the ability to manipulate how the heart is reacting.  Be the Beat would be a great site for students to visit when learning about the heart.  This could be as part of a science class, health or PE class.

On the interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer, students can take turns adjusting and manipulating what is happening to the heart.  As they take their turn, they can play “scientist” and describe what is happening to the rest of the class with the help of the captions on Be the Beat.  The CPR interactive would be a great whole-class activity.  As a class, students can make decisions about what to do to help their friend who has gone into cardiac arrest.  They can take turns calling for help, administering CPR and using the AED.

Be the Beat would make a fantastic hands-on center on classroom computers as students are learning about the heart.  Students can stop by the center and explore the different areas of the heart.  Assign each student to study a different area of the heart so that they can take turns explaining the functions to each other.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Be the Beat in  your classroom!

What it is:   3D Toad is a site I learned about from @rmbyrne‘s fantastic blog, Free Tech for Teachers.  This is like hitting the lottery of educational image libraries.  It goes beyond your typical image library and has 3D images that students can spin all around and explore from every angle.  Stinking awesome!  Even better? (Yes, it gets better.)  It works on mobile iDevice browsers! There are great images to explore on a variety of educational topics including: dissections, animal skeletons, human skeletons, music, geology, dental hygiene, coral, yoga, ballet positions, fossils, history, chemistry, emergency preparedness and computer networking.

Our students are learning all about earth systems right now so the fossils, geology and coral are especially exciting!

How to integrate 3D Toad into the Classroom:  They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  If a regular picture is worth a thousand, these 3D images are worth at least 360 times more.  The 3D images on 3D Toad let students examine all 360* of an image.  Students can examine, discover, and analyze images from various angles.  3D Toad helps students really visualize learning in new ways.

Use 3D Toad as a visual glossary on classroom computers.  Students can visit this “visual glossary” center to explore objects and new vocabulary that they are learning.  It would also be great on an interactive whiteboard or classroom computer where students can examine objects together.  3D Toad has a video on their site that shows a teacher using 3D Toad with students.  I don’t love their example because the teacher is at the center of a review time before a test.  The best use of this site would be to let students loose on it so that they can explore the images on their own.

3D Toad would be a great place for students to practice their observation skills.  Each student could choose an object to explore in depth, write a detailed description and observation of the object.  Working with a partner, they can describe their object and see if their partner can identify the image from the description alone.

These 360* images can be used for introducing new concepts, as a visual aid for students who are presenting learning, and as a place for further exploration of a topic or object.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using 3D Toad in your classroom!

What it is:  Web Adventures-Explore Science is a site by Rice University.  Web Adventures lets students explore science-one game at a time.  Each adventure has a section dedicated to students and a section dedicated to teachers who are using the adventures in the classroom.  In the Cool Science Careers section, students can experience what it means to take on science as a career.  They can go through Profession Pathfinder to see which science careers best match their personality based on their answers to career interest questions.  Students can select from five different science career fields to virtually try out activities that are typical for the career.  With Zoom In, students can learn about different science jobs and read interviews with real scientists.  In the CSI: Experience, students learn all about what it takes to be a forensic scientist.  There are four cases that students can work to solve.  As they solve the crimes, they will learn about forensic biology, ballistics, toxicology, medical examination, fingerprint analysis, digital forensics, fire investigation, and facial reconstruction.  In the MedMyst section, students will use the scientific method and scientific process to investigate infectious disease outbreaks.  Students can work with the N-Squad forensic scientists to solve an alcohol related crime.  Throughout the game, students learn what alcohol does to the digestive, circulatory and nervous systems.  In the Reconstructors series of games, students can learn about the health effects of drug abuse while learning neuroscience.

These games are really entertaining while giving students information and understanding of science in body systems, drugs, environmental science, forensic science, infectious diseases, science careers, and the scientific method.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Web Adventures: Explore Science in  your classroom!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Doodle and Science Fair in  your classroom!

This post is going to be formatted a little differently than most are-so fair warning.   I do a lot of digging for resources and tools for our inquiry block at Anastasis Academy.  I thought it might be about time I shared the love here!  If you find it useful, I may include some more of these kinds of posts periodically.

Right now our students are learning about how the world works.  They are inquiring into animal habitats and needs.

Websites:

1. Draw a habitat- my favorite from PBS!
2. Plant and Animal Habitats from BBC has students working with the Sarah Jane Adventures team to complete a habitat interactive activity where students match aliens with the best habitat based on clues about both creature and habitat.
3. Learn about habitats with this virtual text from BBC.
4. Create a butterfly habitat by adding and removing plants.
5. Explore the Deep Sea habitat with this interactive from National Geographic.
6. Explore the Antarctica habitat with National Geographic’s Critter Cam.
7. Build an online habitat with Switch Zoo.
8. Design a Habitat with ARKive education.
9. The Great Habitat Match with the Magic School Bus Gang.
10. Walk in the Forest helps students learn about layers of habitats in the forest.
11. Animal Homes (this is a good one for kindergarten or younger).
12. Frog habitats- students help a frog find a new home.
13. e-Learning for kids habitat interactive.

Activities:

• Remember cootie catchers? Or fortune tellers?  They are easily folded out of a regular 8.5×11″ piece of paper.  Students can use cootie catchers to show their knowledge, and quiz each other, about habitats.  Ask students to each choose a different habitat to create their cootie catcher about.  Each flap can have a different word that describes the habitat (for example: desert might say “dry”, “barren”, “extreme temperatures”, “low vegetation”).  The next flap can have a type of animal that lives in that type of habitat.  The last flap can include a fact about why that habitat is perfect for the animal.  To play with the cootie catcher, one student chooses a word and the other spells the word out while opening and closing the cootie catcher.  The first student chooses a new word and the second student spells the word out while manipulating the cootie catcher.  On the final turn, the student chooses a flap to be opened to reveal the fact.
• Create a complete ecosystem: photosynthesis, rain, decomposition, life cycles  http://cranberrycorner.blogspot.com/2010/07/summer-fun-ecosystem-edition.html 

There are SO many fun ways to explore habitats and animals…if you have outdoor space at your school, send students outside to explore the habitats they walk right by every day.