iLearn Technology

What it is: Numberphile is a series of “numberly” videos by Brady Haran.  This is the same guy behind some other great projects including periodicvideos and sixtysymbols.  These videos reveal some of the mystery behind numbers and math in fun, short snippets!  I could give a long, drawn out explanation about the site…but really, you should go have a look and play a few videos. Or, try out the video below:

How to integrate Numberphile into the classroom: Numberphile can make a math geek out of anyone, myself included!  I don’t tend to geek out very much about numbers or math, but show me pattern and reveal some of the mystery that numbers hold and I am in.  This is what Numberphile does beautifully!  Numberphile would make a fantastic opening for math class.  Start each math class with these short videos to get your brain’s math muscles working.  I’ve watched 3 videos in a row and I am seriously geeking.

Ask students to each choose a different video to watch.  Students can learn a new math “trick” or pattern in math to teach their classmates.  The goal: creatively teach the concept!  They could create their own video, stop motion animation, infographic, story, illustration, etc.  Hold a math day  (3/14 would be fun…pi day) where students get to spend the day teaching one another.

You may assume that these videos are best for older students, not so!  At Anastasis, our 2nd and 3rd graders had a ball learning about Fibonacci and will happily explain it to any who enter their classroom.  Find an area of interest and share the passion!

Tips: All of the videos on Numberphile are YouTube videos.  If you don’t have access to YouTube in your building, try one of these methods for accessing the videos:

• YouTube for Schools- This is a YouTube that has been created just for schools.  Network administrators must be involved so that they can add this option for YouTube into your filtering system.  This is a completely customizable option that lets teachers and administrators add videos to a playlist that you have predetermined you want students to watch.  Teachers can find videos by Common Core Standard, subject or grade.  Students can watch videos that teachers and administrators have approved or any YouTube Edu video (think Kahn Academy, PBS, TED, Stanford, etc.).
• SafeShare TV- This site lets students watch YouTube videos without ads, links, comments and related videos.  You also have the option to crop videos and share videos with a unique URL.
• YouTubeXL- This is a service that YouTube provides that lets you watch videos on large screens without the ads and comments. Neat tip: if you time “quiet” before the YouTube url, it takes you to a safe page where you can watch a YouTube video.  WAY cool and easy to do on the fly!
• Clean VideoSearch- This site lets students search through YouTube videos without the comments, ads and busy sidebar.  It has additional features like the ability to choose how many videos you want to see on each page in your search.
• Clea.nr- This service (a browser plugin) deletes all of the obnoxious extras that hang around videos (ads, comments, related videos). You can also search YouTube without all of the extras showing up.
• ViewPure- This site cleans out all the clutter and gives you just a video.  Bonus: There is a quick button that you can add to your browser so that you can go to a video, click on “Pure” in your bookmark bar and instantly have a clean video.
• Dragontape- This service lets you drag videos into a timeline and share them easily with students.  This is great for mashing up several videos, or cropping multiple videos into one.
• Movavi- This is a video conversion service. Wonderful for teachers who can’t or don’t want to access a video directly from YouTube.  Copy/paste the url you want to convert, choose a file type, done!
• Zamzar- This is another great video conversion service.  Works quickly and easily!
• SaveYouTube- This site used to be called KickYouTube.  Here you can enter the url and download it to your computer to play offline.

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

Widbook – Write, read and share! from Widbook on Vimeo.

What it is:  Widbook is a new publishing platform for ebooks.  What makes this publishing platform so neat is the social aspect, it allows authors to collaborate and make suggestions.  Each user also gets their own bookshelf where they can subscribe to other author’s work.

When students start a new ebook, they can choose who can see the book when it is published, choose whether they will accept collaboration for the book, and choose if they want to accept comments for the book.  Actually writing the book is fabulously simple.  All of the onscreen tools are easy to use and intuitive as to their function.  The book can have a table of contents, multiple chapters, and pictures and video embedded right into the book.  When students are finished, they simply save the book and publish it.  The finished book gets a unique url that can be shared.

How to integrate Widbook into the classroom:  Widbook is a fantastic, simple tool for secondary students to use to create ebooks. Students can create individual published works that can be commented on by other students and the teacher.  Students can receive relevant-real time feedback not only from their teacher, but also from other students.  Students not only get practice writing their own works, they also get practice evaluating writing of their peers.

Students can use Widbook to write final drafts of any piece of writing be it an essay or creative writing assignment.  The ability to add video and images easily is wonderful.

Widbook would also be a great place for students to collaboratively create books about their learning.  Each student can add a chapter, or groups of students can create chapters together.  Instead of assigning students a textbook to read for the semester, include them in the creation of a collaborative textbook.  Provide students with a table of contents and put them to work creating a chapter for each topic/unit throughout the year.  At the end of the year, each student will have a book of their learning that they helped to create.  Much more useful than a textbook that one of the Big Six wrote that gets opened only before tests!

Are you having trouble finding a book that matches your classroom learning needs?  Create an ebook that perfectly meets your students right where they are.  Include videos and images relevant to learning.

***For younger students be sure to check out BoomWriter!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Widbook in  your classroom!

What it is: Scholastic has a wonderful site and interactive for students to investigate the first Thanksgiving.  Tomorrow, November 16th (2010), your class can participate in a Plimoth Plantation Virtual Field Trip.  In this 30 minute online field trip your students will get to meet a Pilgrim and a Wampanoag—straight from Plimoth Plantation.  This Virtual Field Trip brings the Plimoth Plantation Museum to your students. This is sure to be a fun trip where your students can experience the first Thanksgiving in a new way.  In addition to the field trip, your students will receive “letters” (emails) from the Pilgrims and Wampanoags making the experience even more memorable.   The site has the original interactive activities for your students to explore before or after the field trip.  Download the free classroom guide and sign up today!

How to integrate Thanksgiving: Plimoth Plantation Virtual Filed Trip to your curriculum: This virtual field trip is a fun way for your students to “experience” the first Thanksgiving.  Students will begin to understand what life was like for the Pilgrims and Wampanoags that first Thanksgiving and hear first hand what struggles they faced.   The virtual field trip brings the actors from the Plimoth Museum into your classroom.  Watch the field trip from your classroom using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer or bring several classes together in a larger space like the library.  After the field trip, set up classroom computers with the rest of the Scholastic Thanksgiving activities. Here students can explore the Mayflower, learn about daily life of the pilgrims and the Wampanoags, and check out the first Thanksgiving feast.  Scholastic provides a wonderful teaching guide that will help you use this site to its fullest.

Tips: Here are some of my other tried and true favorite sites for Thanksgiving:

Black Dog’s Thanksgiving fun and games

Scholastic’s First Thanksgiving

Investigating the First Thanksgiving

Free Rice and see how we used it as a Thanksgiving activity here

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Thanksgiving: Plimoth Plantation Virtual Field Trip in your classroom!

Did you know that today is National Literacy Day?  It is!  I think that literacy is something to celebrate, being literate is a gift I enjoy every day but don’t stop to appreciate nearly enough.  In honor of National Literacy Day, I thought I would share my favorite technology enhanced literacy tools.  In no particular order, here are my favorite ways to celebrate literacy.  What are your favorites?

1.  Save the Words- an excellent site that values language, vocabulary, and words.

2. Grammaropolis- an enchanting site that teaches students parts of speech through character and story.

3. Signed Stories- an online story collection accompanied by British Sign Language, pictures, and sound.

4. Learn Direct- where students can be the star in their own online storybook.

5. Inkless Tales- a literacy website with a beautiful mission statement “You can do anything. Try, try again. Don’t give up. Experiment. Write, draw, explore and more.”

6. Storybird- a beautiful collaborative storytelling website.

7. My English Images- images that illustrate difficult vocabulary and language concepts.

8.  Lexipedia- a visual dictionary and thesaurus.

9.  Tikatok- Students become published authors with Tikatok

10. Free Reading- an open source instructional program to help you teach early literacy.

11. Word World- a great site for kindergarten and first grade letter and word recognition.

12. Reading Rockets- free reading guides for teachers to improve reading achievement of kids.

13. Super Why! - a site that helps kids gain important foundational reading skills such as alphabet, word families, spelling, comprehension, and vocabulary.

14.  Get Ready to Read!- a great site that helps teachers equip children with the basic skills necessary for learning to read.

15. Roy the Zebra- Excellent site for emerging readers.

16. Fable Vision- the beautiful virtual town filled with stories and games.

17. Kidoons- brings time honored tales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Thorton Burgess, and more to life.

18.  GameGoo- fun educational games that help students develop reading and language skills.

19. Read Write Think- a collection of online student resources that support literacy learning k-12.

20. Seussville- the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss brought to life.

21. Digital Booktalk- book trailers that will whet your students appetite for a good book.

22. Storybook Web- a website based on popular children’s stories where students can listen to author’s reading excerpts.

23.  Mee Genius- where students can read books, personalize them, and share them with a friend.

24. Stage’d- a tool that helps students tell stories digitally.

25. Kerpoof- where students can create their own storybooks, comics, and movies.

26.  Lightning Bug- “your writing partner, helping you write a story from beginning to THE END.”

27. ePubBud- for publishing your very own ebooks.

28. Magic Treehouse- a wonderful website where students can engage in the popular book series.

29. The Stacks- a wonderful creation by Scholastic that excites students about reading.

30. The World of Peter Rabbit- an absolutely captivating site based on the work of Beatrix Potter.

31.  My Hippo Has the Hiccups- a free poetry ebook by Kenn Nesbitt.

32. Weboword- a visual vocabulary site.

33. National Geographic Young Explorer- non-fiction for the primary classroom from National Geographic.

34.  Online Audio Stories- an impressive collection of free audio stories.

35. Story Nory- another collection of free audio books for kids.

36.  Skratch Track- a virtual bookshelf for primary students.

37.  Picture Book Maker- a place for students to create picture books.

38. Story Cove- a collection of stories from around the world.

39.  Skype an Author Network- connects teachers, students, and authors over Skype.

40.  Word Ahead Vocabulary Videos- animated vocabulary videos.

41.  My Story Maker- a website where students are in charge of the interactive story.

42. Book Wink- an incredible site that motivates students to read through podcasts and web video.

43. Scholastic Story Starters- a tool that generates writing ideas.

44. Telescopic Text- a site that expands a sentence to demonstrate descriptive writing.

45.  The Tale of Despereaux Adventure- a beautiful interactive story book.

46. Literactive- leveled guided readers, comprehensive phonics activities, and supplemental reading material.

47. Pic Lits- a creative writing site based on pictures.

48.  Speakaboos- a collection of online stories and ebooks.

49. Animailia- a site based on the popular book by Graeme Base.

50. Mrs. P’s Magic Library- an absolutely enchanting site that celebrates books and reading.

51.  Free Rice- practice vocabulary while helping others fight hunger.

52. Shelfari- a virtual bookshelf.

53. Read to Feed- Heifer International reading project for kids.

54. Into the Book- an outstanding site that teaches reading strategies for comprehension.

55. Google Lit Trips- exploring literature using Google Earth.

56. Starfall- a must see website for phonics.

57. Book Adventure- a free reading motivation program.

But the very best way to celebrate National Literacy Day…read a book!