Interactive book – Page 3 – iLearn Technology

An inquiry into sharing the planet: embodied energy awesomeness

March 18, 2013Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2603 views

You may think that when I’m not posting here regularly, it is because I’ve run out of cool new technology to share…or maybe I’m just being lazy…or tired of blogging. While I’ve had moments of the latter two, it really boils down to the 24 hours I have in a day. Sometimes I choose sleep!

This week, I’ve been pulling together our last inquiry block of the year at Anastasis. I can’t believe that we are down to counting weeks before we say goodbye for the summer.

Our last inquiry block is an inquiry into sharing the planet. For our 6th through 8th graders the focus is: “People can choose to take specific actions to help conserve Earth’s resources.” Each time I put together an inquiry guide for teachers, I am sure to offer plenty of more detailed questions that they can use to help guide the inquiry. Below are some of the questions I included.

What can people do to help conserve Earth’s resources?
What are other countries doing to help/hurt conservation?
How does United States demand impact Earth’s resources?
What country has the most impact on Earth’s resources/the least? Why do you think this is?
Is conservation a political issue?
What is ecological overshoot?
What is embodied energy?

I love helping teachers craft the opportunities for students to be curious, to dig into learning. During this planning, I found the following resources that are too good not to share!

What it is: Embodied Energy free ebook download. Created by a design firm, this ebook does a nice job explaining embodied energy.

How to use the Embodied Energy ebook in the classroom: This ebook is a well designed book that will introduce students to the energy that we don’t see in the objects around us. This pdf can be projected for a whole class, downloaded on individual student devices or, if you must, printed out. Use this ebook along with the Sustainability by Design TED talk playlist to spark student interest into embodied energy and how it can impact the decisions we make every day.

These introductory activities led me to the Energy Trumps project. This is a design project by the Agency of Design that looked at using design to help people better understand, and take-in-to-account, the way that we build, design and consume. I absolutely love the idea of students working together as a class to study a variety of materials. Each student could create one (or several) of their own embodied energy trading cards to help others understand the environmental impacts of materials. Students can research key environmental properties of materials including embodied energy, embodied carbon, embodied water, recycled content, extraction intensity and years of reserves. These can be used to compare materials at a glance. (If you purchase the cards created by Agency of Design, you get the added bonus of an augmented reality feature that brings the material properties to life to explore in 3D. Students can test out the different amounts of material they can get for one megajoule of energy.)

Take this a step further and ask students how they can use that information to help design a more sustainable future. How can they hack every day objects? How can they change the way that society builds, consumes, etc.?

How can the idea of embodied energy be communicated to a larger audience so that more of the picture is taken into account by the average consumer?

Any time I create a new inquiry block, I work to remember that we are in the business of apprenticing change makers. These students matter and WILL change the world. I love reminding students that age does not have to act as a restriction for world change.

Felix Finkbeiner is a student in Germany (similar in age to these Anastasis students) who is changing the world in HUGE ways. Felix’s Plant for the Planet initiative has started a movement of planting trees…millions of them! Read the an article about Felix here.

Felix has also addressed the United Nations with a speech to open the International Year of Forests which can be viewed here.

Students can use this embodied energy calculator to explore their own curiosities.

The Happy Planet Index is a fantastic way to discover the extent to which 151 countries across the globe live happy and sustainable lives based on their efficiency, how many long and happy lives each produces per unit of environmental input. Data can be viewed in map or table format.

I love the potential that a new inquiry block holds. We offer guidance and some starting places to spark interest, but where students find passion is always exciting to watch unfold. We truly are in the midst of genius in our students!

The other reason to love inquiry? The brilliant way that it allows room for transdisciplinary exploration, and touches each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I mean really, how can you beat learning that looks like life?

Fluency Finder: App

March 4, 2013Kelly Tenkely1 Comment5276 views

Normally I post all of my app posts at my other blog, iPad Curriculum. Because iDevices are becoming SO common place as a technology in the classroom, I’m going to start posting them here as well. If you just want apps, head over to iPad Curriculum and you can search apps only! Just like iLearn Technology, you can search any app by Bloom’s Taxonomy level. All of the websites I share on iLearn Technology are completely FREE, the apps I review tend to be a mix of free and paid apps. At the bottom of each post, I share the cost of the app.

Fluency Finder

What it is: Fluency Finder is a fantastically handy app that I learned about from my friend @dkapuler. David was kind enough to offer Team Anastasis some download codes so that we could try the app out with our students. Any teacher who has ever done fluency tests knows that they can be a little bit of a pain. Folders and folders of passages to store, stop watch, scribbled notes on the page as they read, calculator, and keeping track of it all in an orderly fashion to refer back to later. I’m a huge fan of anything that can help minimize the paper I have to store and keep track of in my life. Fluency Finder takes care of all of this! Not only can you record results, you can also maintain records on a class full of students and share information. You can easily find and track fluency rates so that you have more time to help students strengthen reading skills and find books that are confidence-building and enjoyable.

How to integrate Fluency Finder app into the classroom:

Fluency Finder makes it simple to assess reading fluency in 1st-8th grade reading levels. To get started:

Add students to the app
Select an appropriate grade level passage for the student to read
Print the passage from the www.fluencyfinder.com website (students could also read from their own iDevice or computer if you want to save paper)
Begin assessment, start the app timer as the student begins reading
Student will read from printed passage as you follow on your iDevice marking any mistakes
Tap the (+) button when student makes a reading mistake
Tap the (-) button if the student self-corrects a mistake
End the timer when the student finishes
Tap the “finish assessment” button to instantly see results

Now instead of focusing so much on keeping track of the fluency and score, you can focus on what actually matters: listening for fluency, comprehension and expression.

Being a paperless school, we are LOVING this option for helping students choose books that are at a level that is “just right.” It gives us the opportunity to help students hunt down the perfect amount of challenge and really focus on a story they can love. We are all about encouraging an absolute love of reading!

Tips: Target Fluency Rates

First Grade: 60-70 wpm

Second Grade: 80-95 wpm

Third Grade: 100-120 wpm

Fourth Grade: 120-135 wpm

Fifth Grade: 130-145 wpm

Sixth Grade: 140-150 wpm

Seventh Grade: 150-160 wpm

Eighth Grade 160-175 wpm

Cost: $6.99 (iTunes link)

Compatible with: iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later

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

Inklewriter: interactive story designer

February 5, 2013Kelly Tenkely2 Comments12164 views

What it is: Inklewriter is a great digital tool that lets students (and teachers if you are so inclined) write and publish interactive stories. Inklewriter lets students create choose-your-own-adventure type stories, story lines can come with choices and then be linked back together. Inklewriter makes this process easier by keeping track of which story paths have been finished and which still need work. There is no set-up required, no programming language to learn and no diagrams. Inklewriter is free to use and easy to share with the world when it is published. When a story is finished, it can even be converted to Kindle format!

I found the Inklewriter format to be pretty intuitive and easy to use. I think intermediate elementary and older will have no trouble using this tool for creative and informative writing.

How to integrate Inklewriter into the classroom: Inklewriter is a great digital tool for creative writing. Students can explore multiple plot lines and what-if scenarios in their fictional writing. I also like the idea of using Inklewriter to ask kids to explore the “what-ifs” in history. What if we lost/won this war/battle? What if the other guy (or girl) had been elected president? What if the Berlin wall hadn’t come down? These types of stories are fantastic opportunities for students to explore their curiosities and, in the process, learn more about the event they are exploring. After all, you have to know something about how an event actually went in order to write alternate endings.

Inklewriter would be a fun way for students to come up with alternate endings to a novel they are reading. Our students wrote a variety of endings for The Giver. Each student wrote a different ending that picked up from the last chapter of the book. Inklewriter would have been a great tool to use for all of these endings to be available in one place. Students could copy/paste the last paragraph of the actual book and then offer their alternative endings as options.

In science, students could use Inklewriter as a tool to record their hypothesis. Students can write out the objective and steps in their experiment and make a new “alternate ending” for their various hypothesis.

In math, students could create story problems where they lead others down the path to discover the correct answer.

Tips: These interactive stories are MADE for your tablet devices…if you have some in your classroom, take advantage of them!

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

Physics Central: Nikola Tesla and the Electric Fair

January 9, 2013Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2551 views

What it is: Physics Central is a fantastic website full of…you guessed it, physics! There are fantastic sections for students to explore science, activity books, experiments and activities. Students can learn more about physics in action (physics as found in the world around us), meet physicists, and learn about physics research. Physics Central will ignite a students curiosity in: sound, electricity and magnetism, force and motion, light and optics, material science, quantum mechanics, space and the universe, and thermodynamics and heat. My favorite find on Physics Central so far (I’m sure there will be many more favorites the longer I explore) is the Nikola Tesla and the Electric Fair section. Here, students will find a downloadable kit that includes a manual, comic book, and four related activities.

How to integrate Physics Central into the classroom: Physics has always been among my favorite sciences. There is something about it that is fascinating to me. Physics Central is packed full of great resources to enrich your classroom. The comics are a fun way to learn about famous scientists, inventors and events in science history. The complementing activities bring the comics to life and invite students along on the journey of discovery.

Work with your students on a “PhysicsQuest” like Nikola Tesla and the Electric Fair and see what they come up with. Compare their results with the actual solutions (posted on the site). Join the current PhysicsQuest with your students to help students recognize the fun and relevance of science. You can register now for the Spectra: Turbulent Times quest.

Tips: Start a PhysicsQuest with your students, as an after school club, or as a home extension investigation.

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

Playfic: create, play and remix text-based games

January 8, 2013Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment7766 views

What it is: Playfic is a site that let’s users create, play and remix online text-based games. I may have lost some of you already…but don’t leave yet! A text-based game is a genre of game that uses no graphics or sound, but instead, uses text to tell a story in an interactive world. Think of a choose your own adventure tech-style. Students can create a story that others can interact with by directing the story using words and phrases. As an example, the story might be about a forest, describing what you can see East, West, North and South. The player would type in a direction “East”, hit the return key, and the story progresses. You can try out a sample text-based game here.

How to integrate Playfic into the classroom: Playfic has all kinds of good stuff for classrooms. To create a story, students must first learn a little bit of coding. Tutorials are included on the Playfic site, and are easy enough to get your students up and running in no time. There is even a link to an Inform 7 (coding language) recipe book that will have your students dreaming up new scenarios and actively researching how to make them come to life. Students can create games for each other while strengthening their writing and grammar skills. This is wonderful for fictitious writing, but could also be used for students to explore “what ifs” in history and science. Students can take a moment in time and dream up what might have been different about the world if the event hadn’t happened the way that it had. As they are researching and learning about the actual event, they will also be analyzing why the event is important and critically thinking about it’s impact on the world we live in. Similarly, students could explore a science experiment, hypothesizing what will happen and the different outcomes that might occur.

Teachers could create these choose your own adventure stories for students for new learning or review of a topic. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a story using sight word vocabulary that prompted practice with the sight words?

I know a handful of students who really struggle with writing…it is PAINFUL. These students are brilliant. They have great ideas to share. One of the students I have in mind came up to me today and said, “over break I taught myself Lua (programming language).” Students like these will be all over this type of writing. What a cool way to engage them and excite them about the writing process in a new way.

One of the things that I really like about Playfic is that it takes a lot of planning, organizing, and thought to create this type of story. For some students the planning/organizing portion of writing is a real struggle. This site would be so useful in teaching students the importance of those steps. I also love that it will have them researching and looking up solutions for how to make their ideas come to life. Just like we do every day in the “real world.”

Tips: The Inform 7 Recipe book can be found here.

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

The Physics Classroom

July 23, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2490 views

What it is: Today I learned about this impressive resource from @ccscoachadams on Twitter. The Physics Classroom is a really great place where you can access physics tutorials, Mind on Physics Internet Modules (more than 1300 questions designed to improve understanding of common physics topics), problem sets for practice, multimedia (illustrated physics concepts), animations and activity sheets, curriculum corner (pdf downloads to complement the website), laboratories, photos, and more. The site is like a better version of the text books that I had when I was in physics. What I like about The Physics Classroom is the variety of resources that teachers can use to help their students discover and explore physics concepts. The student extras that take you to Flickr collections of “physics” photos is fantastic!

How to integrate The Physics Classroom into your curriculum: I’m not sure I would have my students spend a lot of time on this site on their own (it is very text heavy and they may feel overwhelmed at the scope). I would send my students to very specific places on The Physics Classroom to help them dig deeper into their learning and make connections. As I said above, the Flickr sets are fabulous. These are worth some time exploring!

The animations and information can be used to help students understand specific concepts that they are struggling to grasp. These could be shared on an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer.

The Physics Classroom could be used to help students extend their learning and understanding outside of the classroom. Students can use the site as a study aid or to dig deeper for additional understandings.

At the end of the day, this site is a treasure trove of resources for physics classrooms.

Tips: Spend some time exploring this site before recommending it to students so that you can help them navigate it. It is SO information heavy that it could be a turn-off for students who are just dropping in looking for something specific.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Physics Classroom in your classroom!

Scholastic’s Listen and Read: Free non-fiction ebooks for primary students

July 17, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4394 views

What it is: Scholastic is constantly sneaking new great resources for the classroom onto their site. The other day I learned about one that I haven’t seen before from @rmbyrne on his great blog Free Tech for Teachers. Listen and Read has fantastic online reading activities for early learners. There are 54 nonfiction read-along books that include words, images and sound. You can sort books by subject including: Community, American History, Animals, Civics and Government, Environmental Studies, Plants and Flowers, Science and Social Studies. You can also sort books by level (A or B).

How to integrate Listen and Read into your curriculum: Non-fiction can be hard to read in the early years. It often includes unfamiliar words and vocabulary and concepts that students don’t have a lot of prior knowledge of. Scholastic’s Listen and Read is fantastic because it helps students navigate their way through non-fiction with the support of a read-aloud, sounds and images. These interactive books help students better comprehend content because they aren’t focused on the words they are stumbling through. At the end of the book students can click on the unfamiliar new vocabulary to hear the word said again. This follow-up exposure reinforces word recognition, vocabulary and ideas.

Scholastic Listen and Read can be set up on classroom computers as a reading center. Students can read and listen independently with headphones. After reading through the story, students can discuss with a partner (or as a whole class) what they remember about each of the “sound it out” words from the story.

If you don’t have the ability for students to read these non-fiction books independently, use a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard to read as a whole class.

Tips: Some of the titles are offered in both A and B level. This is great for a little differentiation within the classroom (while gaining the same concepts).

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Scholastic’s Listen and Read in your classroom!

Widbook: Online Collaborative ebook Creation

June 15, 2012June 15, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3445 views

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!

Tips: Older students who have Facebook accounts can choose to link their Facebook account for easy login (make sure you know your school’s policy on social networking sites being accessed at school, even if it is just to login with).

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

BoomWriter: Collaborative story writing

June 12, 2012June 12, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment12729 views

What it is: I just learned about this fantastic site from fellow edublogger @dkapuler, thanks David! Boom Writer is a fun site that gives you a new way to engage your students in creative writing, and will have them assessing themselves in a new way. Using Boom Writer, you (the teacher) choose or produce your own story starter. Each student follows this prompt letting their imagination take over. One chapter at a time, student write, read and vote on the submissions they like the most. The winning chapter gets added to the story and the process continues. You can determine how many chapters will be completed. When the collaborative story is finished, the book can be read online or published and turned into a published print copy.

How to integrate BoomWriter into the classroom: BoomWriter is a great tool for creating collaborative stories as a class. I like that BoomWriter has students not only creating, but critically evaluating each other’s work. Students work on their own creative writing while building each other up as writers. Begin by creating a prompt. Give it to your students to think about. They can write their “what happens next” chapter of the book and submit it for approval. This is your chance to edit or return to a student to continue development of the story or idea. After student writing has been approved, students can read each other’s addition to the story and vote on their favorite (they won’t see who the author was and they won’t be able to vote on their own). The chapter with the highest votes gets added to the story and the process repeats. You can choose as many chapters as you would like the finished story to have.

This would be a fun whole-class project, but if you have a large class, you might split your class into smaller groups so that each student has the opportunity to get “published” in the book. Groups could start with the same prompt or each have a different prompt. Rather than the group voting on their own story, they could vote on another groups story.

BoomWriter isn’t only for creative story writing, students could share what they know about a specific topic or unit of study. Each student can add a chapter about what has been learned. Students can essentially create their own collaborative textbook.

BoomWriter is a great tool to help students understand writing with purpose and audience in mind. It is also a helpful way to get students to think critically about their own writing and evaluating other’s writing.

Tips: Books can be read online or purchased and added to your classroom library.

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

Mixbook: Yearbook/Storybook/Calendar/Card creator

June 7, 2012Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3108 views

What it is: Mixbook saved us this year in a BIG way. Being our first year as a school, we didn’t want to use a big yearbook publishing company to create our first yearbook. We wanted to be able to get as much of the year in as possible (most yearbook companies have mid-year deadlines), we were only having 60 made (small potatoes for big yearbook companies), and we wanted to be able to print one-offs if we needed to. We started creating in Shutterfly, it was a familiar program, most of our helpers had used it for personal books so the learning curve was small. And then the world came crashing down. It was the day before the deadline to get our order in so that it would make it before the school year ended. Two of us logged in at the same time and apparently properly confused the system and lost the whole thing. All 30 pages of it. After throwing a pity party, trying to get in touch with Shutterfly (unsuccessfully), and declaring that there would be no yearbook, I did what anyone would do- I took my pity party to Twitter.

I never did hear from Shutterfly. You know who did come to the rescue? Mixbook. They saw my pity party tweet, apologized for our bad fortune, offered their assistance and let us know that they would be happy to help in any way they could. I was familiar with Mixbook but hadn’t used it before. I hopped onto the Mixbook site and immediately liked what I saw:

The interface is incredibly easy to use.
It allows collaborative working and tells you when someone else is editing the book so you don’t override each other.
It has great templates.
It has great customization options.
The customer service is unmatched. Honestly, any time we had a question/comment/problem they helped within minutes. During business hours they have a dynamite online chat support system. When it wasn’t normal business hours their Twitter genius would get back to me. Emails were answered within hours.
Finished books can be viewed and shared for free online.
They were incredibly helpful in keeping the price of each book reasonable for us. They extended coupon codes, gave us bulk purchase discounts, and rushed our order so that it would get to us with plenty of time to spare.

The books are GORGEOUS. They look better than they do on screen (this hasn’t been my experience with other book companies).

Mixbook is a free online scrapbook/calendar/card creator. With Mixbook, you aren’t limited to pre made templates, everything is fully customizable. The online design software is extremely easy to use and works the way you would expect it to (no unwelcome surprises). Mixbook is integrated with many popular photo sites including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, etc. You can also easily batch upload from your computer.

How to integrate Mixbook into the classroom: As we experienced, Mixbook is a fantastic place to make school or classroom yearbooks. Despite the short timeline, we enjoyed creating our yearbooks and are glad to have our first year commemorated so beautifully. At the bottom of each page, we created a running timeline of everything that happened in our first year as a school.

Because it is so easy to customize each page, students could use Mixbook to create “published” portfolios or writing. Take pictures of student work throughout the year, keep a folder for each student. At the end of the year, students can create a Mixbook of their work. They can include the pictures of their work and add text boxes where they reflect on their learning or explain the project. For original writing, students can create digital or hand drawn illustrations that get scanned and uploaded to the Mixbook pages. Students can type the story directly in Mixbook. The finished book can be shared for free online, parents will have the option to purchase the book if they would like to.

A photo calendar would be a great way to commemorate a school year and would make an awesome end of the year gift to your students. Each month can include projects and snapshots of what you did throughout the year.

Create specialized cards and thank you stationary for your classroom. Any time you need it, it will be ready to go and more special for your students.

Group projects are easy to create with Mixbook. The collaboration ability is wonderful! You could use Mixbook with colleagues to create custom learning guides that you can get printed.

Tips: As an educator, you get an extra discount for any order of 10 items or more. OUTSTANDING!

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