Study Boost: Study with IM or SMS

What it is: Study Boost is a really useful application for studying.  Study Boost makes studying easy and convenient by delivering study content using instant messaging, text messaging, and more.  Study Boost helps students study using their mobile device or a social site using instant messaging.  The web-based application gives users the ability to post, share, and study material with friends.  Students can then take pop quizzes using web-based study cards.  Students can set up timing specifications for pop quizzes to prompt them with a question every hour or numerous questions throughout the day.  Notes can be uploaded to create a batch of study questions.  Students can create a group to share or discuss questions with and even modify and improve batches created by other students to best fit your study needs.  Best of all- it is free.

How to integrate Study Boost into the classroom: Study Boost is one of those tools that would have made my school life more manageable.  Students will appreciate this study platform that helps them learn material on their own terms.  The delivery and quizzing of content can be customized to fit a students needs and schedule.  Let your students create study batches as a class.  Students can work together to create study guides that they can access through IM and SMS.  Invite students to create and share batches with classmates.

Tips: Study Boost requires an email address for sign-up.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Study Boost in your classroom.

Skype Classroom Directory- Global Collaboration #glolab

What it is: Skype is an incredible tool.  It is a free download that allows you to video chat with anyone in the world (who also has Skype downloaded) for free.  Teachers have been using Skype in the classroom for years now to connect to other classrooms, to connect with experts, and even to introduce their students to favorite authors (Skype an author).  There is a new tool coming for education, a Skype classroom directory.  This directory will connect teachers and help them to use Skype to enrich students’ educational experiences.  The directory will be launching in December (English only) but you can pre-register for it now.  Once you sign up with your Skype account, you will be able to search for other teachers and classes by searching by subject or region.

How to integrate Skype Classroom Directory into your curriculum: Skype Classroom Directory will be a leap forward in connecting teachers and classrooms around the world.  Use Skype to connect your students to others around the world who are learning similar content, for a debate, for an inquiry unit, to teach and learn from each other, to connect with experts, for a global virtual book club, or just to bring some cultural richness into your classroom.

Tips: Yesterday the topic of the first #edchat (a chat on Twitter) was global collaboration.  Skype is an excellent way to collaborate globally.  The Skype directory will be an enormous help in connecting teachers on global projects, right now there isn’t a great way for teachers to connect purposefully for global projects.  As it stands, you send out a tweet request for help and wait for someone to answer.  Yesterday on #edchat I proposed that we come up with a Twitter hash tag to use when we are talking about global collaboration tools or opportunities.  Anyone looking for someone to connect with can just search the hash tag #glolab.  If you are looking for teachers to collaborate use and search the #glolab hash tag to connect.

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

Thanksgiving: Plimoth Plantation Virtual Field Trip

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!

Photovisi- Make a free online photo collage

What it is: Photovisi is an online photo collage creation tool.  Students can use saved photos or a webcam to add pictures to their collage.  The finished result can be downloaded and printed out.  Photovisi is exceptionally easy to use and requires absolutely NO sign in or registration!  This makes it the ideal online tool in my book. Students can get right in and quickly create a photo collage, add text, and download it.  There are several collage templates to choose from, and each template is highly customizable.

How to integrate Photovisi into your curriculum: Photvisi is a great online creation tool.  It doesn’t require any sign up or registration making it ideal for using in any classroom.  Students can make collages to document learning, a science experiment, field trip, or special project.  Students can upload pictures from their computer to add to the Photovisi.  Students can add text labels and titles to document learning.  Collages can be used for getting to know you activities. Students can create a collage of pictures that represent themselves and their interests.  Use text to create an auto bio poem over the collage of pictures.  Students could also create collages as a place to visually document their learning.  Students could create “time capsule” collages that represent a period in history.  Students can add pictures, key dates, people, and places to their time capsule collage.  Collages are a great way to visually group items, younger students could create their own class alphabet display.  Each student could create a collage of a different letter, all finished collages could be printed to create a class created bulletin board.  The same could be done for phonics or word study.  In math class, collages could be used to create a visual representation of shapes found in buildings or nature, angles, or scale.  In art, students could create a collage of artists, a style of art, or of their own art.

Photovisi would be ideal in a computer lab setting where each student has their own computer.  Photovisi could also be set up as a creative center on classroom computers.  Students can rotate through the center for a specific project, or visit any time as a creative center.

You can see an example of a Photovisi collage above, I created this World War 2 collage in honor of Veteran’s Day.

Tips: Photovisi does have Google Adwords on the site.  These are not obtrusive at all and are all related to photos and collage creation.  You may want to teach younger students how to spot these advertisements so that they don’t inadvertently click on them.

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

The Write-n-ator

What it is: New Hampshire Public Television has created a great site based on the PBS Word Girl show. I learned about the site from a blog that I look forward to in my Google Reader every day, The Book Chook. The Write-n-ator site features video clips about words and vocabulary for students to watch; after completing the clip, students are offered a related writing challenge.  The clips and challenges are all related to writing, word recognition, and vocabulary development.

How to integrate The Write-n-ator into your curriculum: The Write-n-ator highlights words and vocabulary through fun videos and writing challenges starring the PBS character Word Girl.  Offer these challenges to your students as a class using a projector or interactive whiteboard.  Watch the video clip and create a class response to add to the challenge.  Alternately, each student can take the challenge in a writing journal.  These videos and challenges make for a fun introductory activity to use as a writing warm up.  They have the added benefit of introducing new words and vocabulary.  There are 20 videos and challenges total, so these could be a regular feature in your class.  If you have access to a computer for every student, students can complete the writing challenges online and view other students responses to the challenge.

Tips: Click on the “For Teacher” tab next to each mission for the correlated standards that each challenge meets.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using the The Write-n-ator in your classroom!

57 Ways to Celebrate National Literacy Day

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!

How Toons

What it is:  How Toons is like an Instructables site for kids.  Kids learn through cartoons and videos how things work and how to make things.  This is kind of a How It’s Made website for kids.  Topics include science, space, nature, events, and a how to section.  The cartoons illustrate a concept and accompanying videos expand on the concept. 

How to integrate How Toons into the classroom:   How Toons is an excellent site to excite your students about science.  Share a How Toons with your students and then explore the science behind it together.  Use a How Toons as inspiration, after viewing How Toons, students can create their own cartoon on any topic being studied in class.  How Toons are great for teaching kids how to follow step by step instructions and would also be useful for teaching them how to create their own instructions.

 

Tips:  How Toons would be a fun RSS feed to subscribe to as a class!

 

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

Apple Field Trips

 

What it is:  The Apple Store is offering field trips to k-12 students and schools!  Students can create something amazing on their field trip to the Apple store, or bring in a finished project that they have created and turn the store into a theater to share their work.  Parents, teachers, and friends can attend the event to celebrate student achievement.  Each event can accommodate up to 25 students.  A field trip lasts one hour but more time can be scheduled on an individual basis.  Right now, schools can request up to 3 date options for a field trip at a time.  When you schedule a field trip, Apple takes care of invitations to send home with students, and assigns a contact person to plan the field trip for your school.  Additionally, the teacher who sets up the event receives one year of complementary One to One membership.  Every participating student receives a special Apple t-shirt.  

 

How to integrate an Apple Field Trip into the classroom:   If you have access to Apple computers at your school the create and share field trip option is for you.  Students can work on a project (multimedia is probably best) and use the Apple Field Trip as a place to showcase and share their accomplishments.  If you don’t have access to an Apple lab or don’t have regular access to computers at all, use the field trip as a time for your students to learn and create using the computer.  This is a really amazing FREE opportunity, be sure to take advantage of this offer from Apple!

 

Tips: Right now field trips are only being offered through November 21st. Even if you can’t fit in a field trip before the deadline, be sure to let Apple know what a fabulous idea these field trips are and encourage them to offer future field trip options.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how your Apple Field Trip went.