iLearn Technology

What it is: National Geographic Kids is a constant source of excellent activities but their new Animal Jam virtual world is above and beyond my favorite.  My students love virtual worlds, they enjoy being immersed in a story, sent on a mission, and interacting with each other to complete adventures and learn.  Animal Jam lets them do all of these things while providing a virtual world where they can discover real-world plant and animal information and follow a rich storyline that has National Geographic’s multi-media content built in.  Cool huh?!  Animal Jam does something else, it excites students to learn more about the real world around them, so when they aren’t playing in the virtual world, they will be excited to learn more about the world they live in.  The virtual world is an easy one for students to pick up on and learn, it is perfect for young students and caters to their specific levels of play and developmental stages.  Animal Jams will be one of those environments that is as appealing to fourth grade students as it is to first grade students.  The online environment is safe and monitored so you can feel comfortable introducing it in your classroom.  Each portion of the sign up process is narrated so it is easy for even young students to sign up.  The site requires a parent’s email address to sign up, the email is required but does not have to be verified before play can begin.  In a classroom setting, a teacher or classroom email address could be used for sign-up. The email address allows an adult to monitor and adjust settings in a child’s game.

How to integrate National Geographic Kids Animal Jam into the classroom: After students sign up, they are entered into the magical world of Jamma where they are introduced to the world.  Each portion of the game is narrated making it accessible to early readers, struggling readers, and English language learners.  As students explore the world of Jamma, they will find embedded learning about different kinds of plants and animals along with incredible National Geographic images.  Animal Jam is a nice environment to let your young students practice what they are learning about online safety and netiquette.  As students explore Jamma, they will learn about links, navigation with mouse and arrow keys, and learn fun facts in the process.

Every primary curriculum that I have seen carves out time for students to learn about plants and animals.  Animal Jam is a fun place for them to discover this learning within the virtual world.  Send your students on expeditions and adventures to find these learning opportunities.  As they play in Animal Jam, students can keep an observation journal where they record the plants and animals they are discovering like a scientist would.  Ask your students how many of the plants and animals they can find in real life around their homes.    If you are learning about ecosystems and environments, ask students to count and name the different ecosystems they can spot in Animal Jam.  This site is ideal for the computer lab setting, make sure to at least begin the game in the computer lab where each student has a computer.  After the kids are signed up and familiar with the world, it could become a center activity for your classroom computers throughout the year.

Tips: Right now Animal Jam is in Beta.  The world is free to join and play in but premium accounts are also available to students.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Animal Jam in your classroom.

What it is: There are several url shortening tools out there that let you shrink down a cumbersome url into something more manageable for sharing.  Trick.ly is a url shortener with an added feature: it can be password protected.  When you share the url, you can add a clue and a password that has to be used in order for the shared website to be accessed.  You may be wondering why you would want to password protect a url in the classroom, I’m glad you asked… 

How to integrate Trick.ly into the classroom: I am constantly sharing shortened url’s with my students, it makes it easy to get all my students to the same website quickly.  Trick.ly adds the ability to password protect the url.  This could add a layer of learning and fun to accessing websites in the classroom.  Give your students a Trick.ly shortened url with a secret clue that helps students “unlock” the website. For example, if you are using National Geographic Maps website with your students, don’t just send them to the website, give them a clue that is related to the website such as “Capital of Colorado”.  Students have to correctly solve the puzzle to unlock access to the game.  The password “Denver” would provide students with access to the website.  Create Trick.ly shortened url’s with math, geography, history, spelling, vocabulary, science, or foreign language problems built in.  Make the clue to solve related to the end website that students will access.  Kids enjoy solving problems, adding a puzzle to a website gives students a sense of anticipation for the activity they will be completing.  Trick.ly urls take just seconds to create, they are a fast, easy way to direct your students to a website.

Tips: Trick.ly would be a great way to share websites and web pages that you create for your classroom.  We have a school Facebook and Twitter account.  If I wanted to share pictures I took of our school carnival, I could share them with Trick.ly, adding a layer of protection.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Trick.ly in your classroom.

What it is:  RCampus is a collaborative environment that is a one-stop shop for everything school related.  RCampus utilizes Open Education Management system that makes it easy to build personal and group websites, manage courses, eportfolios, academic communities, build rubrics, connect students with tutors, and a book exchange.  All of these tools are FREE for students and faculty.  This would be a great place to organize your classroom life and keep your students organized.  Everything is integrated making management very simple.  Students stay well informed and communication opportunities grow with RCampus.

How to integrate RCampus into the classroom:  This is an outstanding place to keep your classroom organized and easily managed.  Eportfolios are a great way for students to showcase learning, RCampus makes it easy to communicate, assess, and assist througout the year as students build their portfolios.  Set up courses where you can manage everything from one central location.  Grade, communicate, and keep yourself organized with the RCampus integrated learning and course management.  Rubrics are fast and easy to create and can be printed out or used with the RCampus click to grade system that lets you grade students from the gradebook with just a few clicks.  Students  can use RCampus to find an online tutor and teachers can sign up to be tutors on RCampus.  Trade books with no fees using the RCampus book exchange.  This is a great place to swap books with other teachers and students.  RCampus has excellent tools for communicating with parents, students, grading, and organizing your classroom, check it out!

Tips: RCampus is free and open access, easy and quick, highly secure, collaborative, life long, cross campus, comprehensive, and user centric.  It is the total package for classrooms and schools!

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

What it is:  Wizlite is a handy little web tool that lets you highlight text (just like you would on paper) on any page on the Internet and then share it with others.  Wizlite uses a a Firefox extension or a bookmarklet to show and store selections.  It is free and easy to use!

How to integrate Wizlite into the classroom:  Wizlite is a handy tool for directing your students to specific information while they are learning on the web.  Use Wizlite to teach your students to find the main idea on a webpage.  Students can create groups on Wizlite and share pages with their highlights with other students.  Wizlite is also very useful for sharing portions of webpages with  your colleagues quickly and easily.  

Tips:  Wizlite does require you to install an extension.  This is easy to do and the Wizlite site walks you through the steps. 

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

What it is:   Share Tabs is a simple, but very neat, website that allows you to share several links with one web address.  Teachers can enter a list of websites they want students to visit into Share Tabs.   After entering the links, you create one Share Tabs URL that will open all of the links as separate tabs in a web browser.   So cool!

How to integrate Share Tabs into the classroom:  Share Tabs is an awesome way to save time in the classroom when using multiple websites.  Instead of waiting for kids to type in several URL’s to get to the days activities, they type in one URL and share tabs does all the work.  I know in my classroom, I don’t want to spend 15 min typing in web addresses.  I would rather that students have that time to spend on the web activities.  Share Tabs is perfect in the computer lab setting or any time that you want students to visit multiple websites for a lesson.  Use Share Tabs for virtual field trips through cyber space without spending time creating a webquest.  Share Tabs also makes sharing sites with colleauges a snap.  As you are finding resources for a lesson, put them into Share Tabs and send one link.  Your colleagues will thank you!

Tips:  Use Share Tabs on Twitter instead of updating 5 times with each separate URL you are exploring, update once with a Share Tabs link!

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

What it is: The Animalia website is based on the popular book and television series written and illustrated by Graeme Base. The website is just as impressive as the book with amazing illustrations and activities for students.  On the Animalia website, students are introduced to the characters of Animalia, the goal of the Animalia site, Animalia news, and games and activities.  The Animalia site brings students on a wonderful adventure where their goal is to collect all of the “core spores” to restore the Core of Animalia.  Students collect the core spores by going on several adventures where they will play learning games, discover, and follow directions.  Games and activities include logic puzzles, memory skills, code cracking, map reading, and listening skills.  The listening game is called Toucan Talk (which I learned about on Larry Ferrazlo’s blog) and  asks students to listen to a message in the wrong order, and change the order of words or sounds so that the message makes sense.  The site is extremely interactive.  Students will love becoming part of the adventure.

How to integrate Animalia into the classroom:   Animalia is like a giant online scavenger hunt where students solve problems to advance in the game.  This site would be a great one to use to teach following written and oral directions, logical thinking, and problem solving skills.  These aren’t skills that we generally focus on in isolation but the Animalia site does a wonderful job of weaving a story around a problem and inviting students along on an adventure to solve the problem.  Because students are problem solving, this would be an excellent site for students to work on collaboratively as a team.  Students can be split into teams to see who can collect all of the “core spores” first through problem solving.  What I love about watching my students interact with each other on this site, is the way that one team would solve a problem and then teach another team how they did it.  Nothing better than kids teaching kids!  For younger students, the game could be completed as a whole class with a projector or interactive whiteboard.  The clues and games will have to be more teacher directed but your students will quickly catch on and be ready to play!

Tips:   This site is highly interactive including video clips, highly interactive games, and sounds.  You will need a high speed connection for this site.  Bring on the bandwidth!

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

What it is: I heard about this wonderful website from Larry Ferlazzo on his blog last week and have been exploring it ever since.  Mrs. P’s Magic Library is a free website for kids that celebrates reading and books.  Mrs. P is the librarian at the Magic Library, she brings story time to life with video stories and read-alongs.  Her library also features fun animated games and lots of crazy characters that students will love.   When students enter this virtual library they will have access to Mrs. P reading them a story, fun interactive games, and videos (lots more to explore!!).  The whole idea behind the library is to introduce students to great literature read to them in classic story-time style (not just listening to an audio book).  This virtual library is about as close as you can get to the real thing!  Your students will love Mrs. P.

How to integrate Mrs. P’s Magic Library into the classroom:    Mrs. P’s Magic Library is an outstanding addition to any classroom.  Use Mrs. P.com as a place to begin silent reading one day a week.  Use a projector and speakers so that Mrs. P can read to your class before they begin their silent reading time.  Mrs. P’s excellent storytelling abilities will have even your reluctant readers eager to read.  Tell parents about Mrs. P so that students can enjoy the virtual library from school or home.  Mrs. P’s Magic Library makes a great reading/ listening center and the options to read along or listen make it ideal for any students ability level.

Tips:   Mrs. P’s Magic Library requires high speed Internet access because of all the video and interactive games on the site.  This one may eat up some serious bandwidth in a computer lab setting!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Mrs. P’s Magic Library in your classroom.

What it is:  Lunarpages is a web hosting web service that offers free hosting to k-12 educators and schools!  The free web hosting is intended to be used by teachers only (individual student web hosting is not available).  Lunarpages will provide a free web builder, free unlimited phone and email support, unlimited email addresses and FTP accounts, 500MB of storage, 20GB data transfer, and one free domain name registration for each account.   The only stipulation?  You must have a banner ad somewhere on the site that says that Lunarpages donated the site…thats it!  

How to integrate Lunarpages into the classroom:  Lunarpages hosting is an excellent option for those of you who enjoy building your websites with software like iWeb.  It is also an excellent option for a class website built with the web builder Lunarpages provides.  Classroom websites are an outstanding way to communicate with parents and students about the goings on in your classroom.

Tips:   The free web hosting is only available for k-12 public schools. Learn about how to get your free web hosting with Lunarpages here.

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

What it is:   I found Daft Doggy several months ago and put it in my “explore more” folder.  The Daft Doggy site is in beta version and it isn’t obvious upon first visit what exactly it does.  Today I had a little bit of time to go and explore the site more and I am glad I did!  Daft Doggy is a free service that lets you record web browsing sessions, play them back, and share recorded sessions with others.  It is very simple to use (only 2 clicks to start recording!)  You type in the starting point URL and Daft Doggy keeps track of all subsequent URL’s along the way.  Daft Doggy doesn’t record everything you do, it only remembers each separate URL you visit in a sequence, it does this both within the site or a separate external site.  When students or teachers view the session, a blue bar at the top of the page shows the URL along with reverse and next navigation.  Each recorded session is assigned a unique link making it easy to share with students or other staff.  After you have recorded the sequence of sites, you have the option of labeling each site and even adding a voice recording that will play when that site is being viewed.  

How to integrate Daft Doggy into the classroom:   Daft Doggy is a great way to lead students through a series of activities on the web.  Younger students especially who would have trouble keeping track of and typing mulitiple URL’s would benefit from a lesson recorded with Daft Doggy.  Daft Doggy is also perfect for whole class instruction with a projector when mulitiple sites will be visited.  The recorded session will keep you on track and keep you from having to type in multiple URL’s while teaching.  As a computer teacher and technology integration specialist, I like Daft Doggy for the ability to make quick guides for students and teachers as well as tutorials.  The Daft Doggy recordings are quick and easy to create making them ideal for quickly answering web questions or leading colleagues/students through websites.  Make your own online virtual field trips or webquests for students using Daft Doggy.  Student projects can also be enhanced with Daft Doggy.  Students can create web presentations with site to share with peers.  This would also be a great site to use as students are researching.  Instead of trying to remember the exact search words and links they used to find a site, they can record their research so that they can re-trace their steps at a later time if needed.  So cool!

Tips:   This beta site definitely doesn’t have any frills, it is very basic but it gets the job done easily and quickly.  To get started just create a login and you are ready to go! 

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

What it is:  I wrote a post last week about a site called Glogster, since that post Glogster has introduced Glogster EDU!  Glogster for Education is a site that lets students combine graphics, photos, videos, music, and text into a great web 2.0 online poster.  Glogs are an outstanding way to enhance learning, wikis, and blogs.  Glogster EDU offers support and help with creating school accounts and keeping Glogs private.  

How to integrate Glogster EDU into the classroom:    As I mentioned last week, Glogster is a creative way for your students to display knowledge.  Students can create Glogs for absolutely any subject.  Glogster is wonderful for book reports, history, math concepts, science, and literature.  The ability to embed Glogs into wikis and blogs is outstanding and makes Glogs even more versatile.

Tips: Send Glogster EDU feedback about features you would like to see specifically for education…they have committed to updates based on your feedback!

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