Fun & Games – Page 10 – iLearn Technology

Jackson Pollock Whiteboard

February 10, 2010February 10, 2010Kelly Tenkely12 Comments14694 views

What it is: Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter and a big name in the abstract expressionist movement. Recently, I was reminded about the Jackson Pollock Whiteboard interactive from the wonderful Techie Classroom blog. This website allows students to create Jackson Pollock-esque virtual paintings. Students click anywhere on the screen for splatters of paint, drops, and dribbles. As they are “painting”, students can press any key on the keyboard for a different background color, erase using the space bar, press alt+ any key to change the color of the drip, or use numbers 1-0 or left, right, up, or down arrow to change the color of the drip or background. Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas is also an iPhone and iPod Touch application.

How to integrate Jackson Pollock Whiteboard into the classroom: This site is just plain fun! Students will enjoy creating abstract works of art by clicking and moving around the virtual page. Obviously this would be a great way to introduce students to abstract art and to Jackson Pollock, students could start by creating here, and then study Jackson Pollock and his famous paintings. Put the Jackson Pollock website up on your interactive whiteboard and let your class create a Pollock masterpiece throughout the day. Take a screen shot of the finished painting at the end of the day/class period. This could be done every day over a week or month. At the end of the week/month collect all of your classroom virtual paintings into a slide show. Do the finished paintings convey the emotions of the days? The slide show of paintings could also be used as a backdrop for information that students learned on their Jackson Pollock study.

Students Pollock masterpieces can be used for adding some color to the classroom walls, as a desktop picture or screen saver, or as thank you notes for classroom helpers.

Tips: In the iPod/iPhone version of the Jackson Pollock Whiteboard, multi-touch capabilities are built in for even more fun!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Jackson Pollock Whiteboard in your classroom.

Win a month subscription to Wiglington and Wenks contest!

February 9, 2010February 25, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments5997 views

What it is: Wiglington and Wenks is a rich virtual world for kids that I wrote about a few weeks ago here. This virtual world brings together literature, history, and geography into one amazing learning experience for kids. Wiglington and Wenks is a place for students to explore, think, discover, and grow. I can’t say enough about this virtual world as a learning space, I wish every textbook company on the planet would move toward this type of model of presenting content and learning! While Wiglington and Wenks is free for everyone, they do offer memberships that give students access to extra features, special areas, and extra privileges. Wiglington and Wenks has provided 10 one month memberships for iLearn Technology readers! If you would like a free membership for your class or as a give-away to one of your students or children please leave a comment below. In your comment, tell us your favorite feature of Wiglington and Wenks. I will choose 10 winners randomly and send an email with instructions for redeeming your free membership.

How to integrate Wiglington and Wenks into the classroom: Wiglington and Wenks is based on a story book. Read these stories with your students or include them in your classroom library for reading. In this virtual world, students have the opportunity to travel to and explore real places. Students can learn about the Amazon, Madagascar, Singapore, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Pyramid, Chchen Itza, the Bermuda Triangle, the Great Wall of China, Big Ben, and more. As students travel through the worlds, they are presented with various quests and meet with famous historical figures. Right now students can interact with Gandhi, Charles Darwin, Genghis Khan, Beethoven, Buffalo Bill, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Neptune, and Chief Joseph. Many new characters are being released including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Cleopatra, Issac Newton John, Albert Einstein, Pocahontas, and Wilber and Orville Wright. Send your students on quests to learn more about each of these characters and places. Find more ideas for using Wiglington and Wenks in your classroom on my original post here.

Tips: Make sure that you use a valid email address in your comment so that I can contact you!

Leave a comment and share how you are using Wiglington and Wenks in your classroom.

World Math Day 2010

February 3, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments2707 views

What it is: Hooray!! It is World Math Day time! This year World Math Day will be held on March 3, 2010. For those of you who are unfamiliar with World Math Day, it is a day when students from around the world compete in an online environment in live games of mental arithmetic. Each game lasts for 60 seconds and students can play as many as 500 games, earning points for every correct answer. The students who answer the most questions show up in the Hall of Fame. This is an absolutely free event to take part in. Students can train for World Math Day every day leading up to March 3rd by participating in arithmetic competition. For those of you home school readers, World Math Day is also open and free to you! The competition is designed for students 5-18 years old. This year has a little bit of a new format (the change is fantastic!) with multi-levels for all groups. Teachers, parents and media are also invited to participate for the first time. Last year 2 million students from 204 countries participated and correctly answered more than 4 million questions!!

How to integrate World Math Day into the classroom: World Math Day is a fun competition to involve your students in. It helps build mental arithmetic and numeracy. Students from around the world compete in this competition to find out which country has the top mathematicians. Students have a great time working to get their country to the top (nothing like a little National pride!). My students beg to be involved in World Math Day each year. We spend extra time in the computer lab and on classroom computers preparing for the day. Students answer mental math questions appropriate to their age level. This is a phenomenal way to get some fact practice in!

We make a big deal out of World Math Day and let students have an extended math period to compete on March 3rd. You could use World Math Day as a Math Olympics for your class and have and opening and closing ceremony for your class, school, or representing your country.

Tie World Math Day into your social studies curriculum. As students compete against other students from around the world, the other student is represented by a flag. My students are always very curious to learn more about the other countries and cultures represented. It would also be fun to start a map in Google Earth where you put place markers on the countries that students have competed with.

The platform is open, register your students and start training today!

Tips: If you would like to find out more about past World Math Day competitions check out my posts 2009 here and 2008 here. There are rumors of a World Math Day iPod App coming soon, check back with the official site for more information.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using World Math Day in your classroom.

Typing Practice

February 2, 2010February 2, 2010Kelly Tenkely13 Comments2876 views

What it is: This blogging alliance has been expanding my knowledge of great tools for the classroom faster than I can keep up with! Recently, I found two more excellent ways for students to practice typing from @2sparkley‘s blog. The first is reminiscent of the popular Rock Band, called UpBeat. Students can choose a song and level of difficulty. They must type the letters as they appear to keep the song going smoothly. This had my students absolutely SILENT while they practiced typing. They were so involved and having a great time trying to keep up. The way the game is set up, really challenges kids to touch type. They can’t very easily keep up without touch typing! Students stopped by my lab the morning after I introduced the site to tell me how many combos they were able to get. The second typing site is called Typing Chef. In this game students try to type words as they float past on bubbles. The goal is to type the word on the bubble before it pops. It gets increasingly harder as more bubbles float up and speed up.

How to integrate UpBeat and Typing Chef into the classroom: Typing can be a subject that elicits groans. Adding these games in the mix as additional opportunities for practice is sure to make students happy to practice. I try to keep typing to a minimal in my classroom. With only 35 minutes once a week with students, I don’t want to spend all of our time practicing typing. I have the kids do the majority of typing practice at home. Once a year (sometimes twice) I hold a big typing Olympics competition. Students can earn a free break dress code day (we have uniforms), this is great incentive…like gold to them! The fastest boy and girl touch typist in each class get the break dress code certificate. I make a huge deal about how athletes who participate in the Olympics have to train hard. Practice doesn’t always make perfect but we are aiming for practice makes permanant (good habits). I created the following website for my students to use in their training www.typing.weebly.com. Upbeat and Typing Chef have both been added to the games page of my Typing website.

Tips: UpBeat is a Mini-clip game. This site is often blocked at schools, make sure it is unblocked at your school before you plan on using it in class.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using UpBeat and Typing Chef in your classroom.

Blogging Alliance-Essential Educational Blogs

February 1, 2010February 1, 2010Kelly Tenkely42 Comments4023 views

Just about a month ago, I proposed the idea of a blogging alliance between educational bloggers. The response has been incredible. To date there are 73 educators involved from around the world. In this month of reading and commenting I have learned a great deal from these amazing men and women, I have built new friendships, and started new conversations. It has truly been an incredible experience to have educators, passionate about learning, coming together to support each other. If you are looking for some excellent educational blogs, may I recommend those in our alliance? By clicking this link, you will be offered the opportunity to subscribe to the “bundle” of blogs in Google Reader. All of the work has been done, all you have to do is subscribe! Join us in this journey of learning, exploring, and sharing. The blogs range in topics and focus from k-12 and higher ed. Even though I teach in the elementary school, I have found the blogs geared toward middle, high school and higher ed to be fantastic. I learn something new every day.

A few of the blogs are in Spanish or Portuguese, don’t let this stop you from reading them. Google Reader makes it simple to translate a blog to your language with the click of a button. As you are reading the blog, simply click on the “Feed Settings” button above the post and choose “translate to my language”. That is it! Even if you view the original blog to add a comment, Google Translate keeps the blog translated for you. How cool is that?! There really are no boundaries to learning any more.

Kerpoof: Update

January 29, 2010February 8, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments3461 views

What it is: Kerpoof is one of my favorite creation tools for elementary students, it allows them to draw, create pictures, cards, books, and even movies. My original post about Kerpoof can be found here. Kerpoof has added some new features that make it worthy of another post. Students can now save their pictures, cards, stories and drawings locally (on their computers). On each canvas is a JPEG icon that will allow any picture to be saved to the computer locally. They are working on making it possible to download the movies locally soon. Kerpoof also introduced info bubbles. In the Make a Picture object library, students can drag out a picture onto the canvas. Now there is a new question mark button that shows up on an object. When students click on the question mark, a little bubble of information pops up. Students will gain all kinds of information from these little fact bubbles. They can learn everything from: who wrote Treasure Island, to learning the national animal of Australia.

How to integrate Kerpoof into the classroom: Kerpoof is an outstanding creativity program for the classroom. With there education accounts and these new features, it is even more useful in the classroom setting. Now that students can save their pictures created on Kerpoof locally, they can use their Kerpoof creations in new ways. Upload the saved JPEG to the class website, blog, or wiki, or add illustrations to a word processing program.

Use the new information bubbles to start a Kerpoof scavenger hunt. Ask students specific questions ahead of time or instruct students to research broader topics like “dinosaurs” or “Mexico”. After students have found answers to their assigned questions, they can do more in-depth research using library or Internet resources. After research is completed, students can come back to Kerpoof to create a picture, story, essay, or movie including information that they learned.

Tips: Be sure to check out Kerpoof’s lesson plans, they have just added a new lesson called “Programming Wizards” designed to teach students about how computers work and how to build, design, and test a program. Very cool.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Kerpoof in your classroom.

I have, Who has Contraction Game

January 28, 2010January 28, 2010Kelly Tenkely8 Comments2763 views

What it is: Today I was looking for fun interactive games for students to play to practice “not” contractions. I have used iKnow That: Alien Word Mine to practice the not contraction, but was looking for another opportunity for students to practice. I searched for some fun activities and came up blank. I decided to make an offline game that students could play as a class called “I have, who has?”. In this card game, each student chooses a game card. Each game card starts with the separate words (for example: can not) and has a contraction (for example: aren’t). Students stand in a circle holding there game card. Choose one student to begin by reading their card: “I have can not, who has aren’t?” The student holding the card with “are not” responds: “I have are not, who has don’t?”. Play continues until all matches have been made.

How to integrate I Have, Who Has Contraction Game into the classroom: There are several ways to play the I have, Who has Contraction Game. The first way is to play as a class, with students reading the cards aloud and creating matches. The game could also be played more like a dominoes game where students match up all the cards end to end with the correct contraction match. I have, Who has can be played for multiple subjects. For math facts the cards could read “I have 5+5 who has 12?” The student holding “5+7” would respond “I have 5+7, Who has 9?” and so on. This game can be adapted for matching states and capitals, math facts, parts of speech, vocabulary practice, etc. Students have a great time playing “I have, Who has?” as a class. It is a fabulous listening game and helps practice a variety of learning.

Tips: I have attached my Contraction Game here. Download and play with your students!

Leave a comment if you have found other contraction games that your students enjoy or your adaptations of “I have, Who has?”

Learn English Kids

January 19, 2010Kelly Tenkely6 Comments3877 views

What it is: Learn English Kids is a website especially for students who are learning English or need some remedial help in language development. Created by the British Council, Learn English Kids has fun games, songs, stories, and offline activities to help students learn English. All of the activities are created so that they can be done independently or with family members or friends. In the listen and watch section of the site are animated stories and songs, many have accompanying activities to use in the classroom. There are also videos and online activities designed to build listening skills and comprehension. In the read write section are downloadable materials designed to help develop reading and writing skills. The make section features online activities in which students can create something. There are also arts and crafts directions to download and videos of children creating things. In the explore section are additional resources and websites for English language learners. The game section features several games broken down into language games, fun with English, little Kids games, and games to play with friends. Students learn basic English vocabulary, alphabetical order, phoneme matching (matching phoneme to its sound), hieroglyphics, months in a year, famous landmarks, seasons, recycling, ancient Egypt, animal habitats, around the world, bugs, Chinese New Year, Christmas, cities, colors, computers, countries, currency, daily routines, days of the week, dinosaurs, directions, environment, fairy tales, food, Great Barrier Reef, health, holidays, human body, maps, money, nature, numbers, Olympic games, pets, planets, plants, school, solar system, space, sports, technology, weather, just to name a few.

How to integrate Learn English Kids into the classroom: Learn English Kids is a comprehensive resource that can be used in your classroom in a variety of ways. The site was designed specifically for English Language Learners (or ESL students) but is appropriate for primary students or students who need some remedial language building. The site has been created to be navigated and used independently and many of the activities would be perfect as a center that students can visit. The games are outstanding for vocabulary and language building. Listen and Watch has an impressive collection of songs that are traditional children tunes like Hickory, dickory dock, teaching songs that help students remember things like months in a year, and themed songs. Each song is accompanied by a pdf of the lyrics and a print activity. There are several well made short stories for your students to read along with. The animated stories can be read with or without audio. Each story comes with the ability to print and includes accompanying activity suggestions. Kids Talk features videos of kids answering a variety of questions. The Listen and Watch section also has a place for students to practice their listening skills. Students watch an animated video and listen to what the characters say. Then they are asked to interact with the activity according to what they heard. These activities are great for ELL, but would also be excellent for students with sensory integration problems. In the Read and Write section, students read a passage and are given follow up questions that they can write about themselves. These would make an excellent writing center for students who need some prompting to write. In the Create section students can create online stories, characters, etc. There are also some offline printable activities and suggestions of things to create. This site features so many great resources, it will keep you ready with activities for your students. Every one of the activities/songs/read alongs are high quality and engaging. Students will love this site! I cannot stress enough that this site has something for every student, not just English Language Learners. My kindergarten and first grade students really enjoy using this site.

Tips: This site could take you hours to explore to find all of it’s hidden treasures. If you are looking for a specific game, story, or topic, you may want to click on “Site Map” at the very bottom of the webpage. Here you can sort through all of the resources by topic, finding exactly what you need quickly. What a great website!! Be sure to check out the Teacher page where you will find lesson plans, resources, and guidance for teaching your ELL students.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Learn English Kids in your classroom.

Olympic Winter Games Vancouver 2010

January 15, 2010Kelly Tenkely7 Comments2853 views

What it is: The Winter Olympics are just around the corner and Vancouver has created a website to track all things Olympics. Vancouver 2010 has excellent information and links for your students to explore. On the website, students can learn about each of the winter games sports, the medals, the athletes involved, current news relating to the Olympics, photos, videos, and more. My favorite features is in More 2010 information. Here you will find the 2010 Olympic torch relay route. The torch is tracked on an interactive map. Students can follow its journey from October 30 to February 12.

How to integrate Olympic Winter Games Vancouver 2010 into the classroom: Vancouver 2010 is a well made site where your students can learn more about the winter Olympics that will be taking place in February. There are some great little videos that will teach students about each event, photos of the Olympic events, historical medals of the different countries, schedules of events, and much more. The Olympic games is a fun time for each country, students can learn more about geography, other cultures, the Olympic games, and the history of the Olympics. Track the torch as it makes its way to the games each day. Talk about the places it has been and about this history of the torch. Create a Google Earth Map where your students can keep track of the medals won by different countries throughout the games. Assign groups of students to learn about the different competitions in the winter Olympics. Each group can be assigned to learn more about the competition using the Vancouver 2010 website and use the photographs and pictures to help them present the event to the class.

Tips: The Olympic games is a great time of year to teach about teamwork, doing your best, and supporting your country. Great tie ins for character education! Check out the education programs (More information for 2010) there are great lesson plans and ideas.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Vancouver 2010 in your classroom.

NASA Space Place

January 14, 2010January 14, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2841 views

What it is: NASA has hundreds of excellent educational resources online. NASA Space Place is another awesome site for elementary kids to explore science and space. The Space Place has fun online games, animations, projects, and fun facts about Earth, space and technology. Space Place Live is an animated talk show where all the guests are real scientists and engineers who work on space and Earth missions. Students can find out what it is like to work for NASA, how the scientist or engineer got started, and what they like to do for fun. There are currently 7 episodes that students can enjoy topics include: solar wind, satellites, weather, space missions, telescopes, engineering, the birth of stars, Mars, robots, and black holes. Even though the show is animated, the experts involved are the actual experts. NASA Space Place has a variety of on and offline games with everything from scrambled pictures, to world puzzles, crazy quizzes and board games. Students can learn more about weather, space, satellites, the environment, (and much more) through game play. There are a variety of projects and experiments on the site with step by step directions for students. These are great for the classroom, science fair, or at home on a rainy day. Space Place makes finding games, animations, and projects related to your curriculum easy arranging the site by subjects. Use Space Place when you are learning about planets and the solar system, stars, galaxies, and black holes, laws of the universe (light, motion, gravity), the Earth, and space technology. Space Place has several storybooks that can be viewed on or offline.

How to integrate NASA Space Place into the classroom: Because of the wealth of resources on this site, there are a variety of ways to use it in your classroom. The animations are a neat way to bring expert scientists and engineers into your classroom. Share an animated video a week as your students explore the solar system and universe. The games reinforce learning, use them as a center activity on the classroom computers as they relate to your curriculum. Many of the games encourage exploration and trial and error (these are my favorite kind of learning games for students). Students can explore the Amazing Facts section of the site and then complete the trivia game to test out their understanding. In the project section, you will find experiments and science crafts. Choose some of these to complete as a class or assign each student a different project to test and share with the class. Projects would also make an excellent stop during science fair time. Use the Space Place Storybooks as animated flipbooks online as a class with a projector/interactive whiteboard, or print them out for your classroom library. The books could be used as an online reading center on your classroom computers as well. These stories are sure to capture your students imagination!

Tips: Be sure to check out the educator page on NASA Space Place, it is packed full of good ideas, newsletters, printable images of space for bulletin boards, space related articles, math related articles, printable posters, and podcasts to download. With the renewed push for STEM education, there has never been a better time to include sites like NASA Space Place to excite and engage your students.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Nasa Interactive Timeline in your classroom.