Tag: teacher

Wix

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Wix9257 views

What it is: Okay, if you have shied away from creating your own classroom website in the past, today is the day to take a deep breath and plunge in.  Wix is the most amazing online website builder I have ever seen.  Why is it so amazing?  1)  It is simple to use and learn, you truly don’t have to know anything about website development. 2) It produces amazing results with a small amount of effort, I am really blown away by the possibilities here. 3) The sign up process is completely painless.  4) You have an unbelievable amount of control when you are feeling creative (still extremely easy!). 5) It is free, and what could be better than free for a teacher?! 6) It is web-based which means that you can update your website from anywhere.   I could go on and on about Wix.  I put it in my list of sites to visit this week when I ran across it and I am so glad I came back to it today while I was waiting for computers to clone…it made my day (maybe even my week!) 🙂

How to integrate Wix into the classroom: Well, if you haven’t already guessed by the description above, Wix is the perfect tool to use to create a classroom website for your students.  Post classroom rules, homework assignments, links for your students, units you are working on, school information, parent newsletters, etc.  Wix is also a great place for your students to create a website.  They will go nuts with this (trust me!), Wix is one of those assignments they will continue to work on at home without being asked!  Instead of having students display knowledge of a subject in traditional ways, invite them to create a website about it where they can be the classroom “expert” on the subject.  Be sure to ask your students what non-school websites they are creating too (I know from experience they will take off with this!) you will get to know your students more personally by viewing websites that they create both in and out of class.  You could also create Wix websites as a class if you have limited computer use.  Have your students prepare a website to teach other classes about a subject that they have been studying.

Tips: I created a website using Wix today from sign up to publish it took me a total of 5 min.  Seriously!  I have never used this program before, that is how easy it is to use.  Take a look at my site and see what you think: www.wix.com/ktenkely/ilearntechnology.

Leave a comment and share how amazed you are with Wix.

Novel Games-Flash

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Novel Games-Flash2624 views

What it is: Novel Games provides free Flash games that can be embedded on any website. There is a long list of games that you can embed from World capitals game, typing games, to Sudoku and other great math games. Search the list of games, you are sure to find many that fit your needs. Because you can embed the games on your website, students can easily access the games from school and home.

How to integrate Novel Games into your curriculum: There is such a variety of high quality, FUN, educational games that integrating them into your curriculum will be varied as well. An example of how I am using the Novel Games in my classroom can be found at www.typing.weebly.com. My students are learning how to keyboard. Because I don’t want to spend my year teaching only keyboarding I offered my students a challenge. Practice typing at home and come participate in a Typing Olympics (where only touch typing is allowed) and you won’t have to spend your computer time learning to touch type. I am at a private school so the best prize that can be offered is a break dress code day. The fastest touch typer’s in each class will get to break dress code on a day when no one else does. Students can practice typing using these practice games I have provided. The games are perfect as part of the Typing Olympics because they give a final score…easy to tell who the winners are! Most of the games are perfect for practicing a skill and will inevitability get kids doing homework voluntarily because they are so much fun to play.

Tips: Don’t have your own website to embed the flash games? Create a free one today using a site like www.weebly.com. To embed a player simply highlight and copy the code from Novel games and paste in an HTML editor in a site like Weebly. Make sure that your students have the latest Flash player installed or the games won’t work properly.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Novel Games in your classroom.

Diigo

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Diigo2051 views

What it is: Diigo is a site I learned about from David Warlick’s 2Cents blog. Essentially Diigo is a social bookmarking site like Delicious or Digg but it has some features that are great for educational uses! Diigo lets students and teachers actually highlight, sticky note, and share the web. You can access and search your findings from any computer or phone. This is an outstanding research tool for students and allows for collaboration on any website they may be using.

How to integrate Diigo into your curriculum: Do your students work on group research projects? If so introducing them to Diigo could be a great time saver and collaborative tool for them. Students can highlight important facts on the website and leave virtual sticky notes for each other about points of interest. Teachers, you can use Diigo to create a field trip around the Internet for your students. Just set up bookmarks on any subject you are studying and highlight pertinent information and leave sticky notes about tasks that should be completed on each website. Cool! You could also use Diigo personally as a way to share sites with family, friends, and colleagues.

Tips: Diigo is free to try so set up an account and take it for a test drive today!

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

Planbook Software

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Planbook Software2136 views

What it is: Planbook Software is a Mac only software created for teachers (sorry PC users, yet another reason that you should be on a Mac!) You no longer have to do the old school paper and pencil lesson plan book. Now you can keep your lessons in digital form easily with Planbook. Planbook makes it simple to enter information about your lessons, attach files directly to the lesson, print great looking reports, publish lessons to the web, and search your lessons easily.

How to integrate Planbook Software into your curriculum: Make your life easier with Planbook Software…this will save you so much time and makes planning simple! The interface is very easy to use and intuitive. Planbook Software also allows you to easily keep other teachers, administrators, students and parents aware of your teaching. You can choose which parts, if any, of your Planbook are viewable to others.

Tips: Check out the fun themes that you can use to make your Planbook personal!

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

Adrian Bruce

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Adrian Bruce2647 views

What it is: Adrian Bruce is an educator in Australia who has provided educators around the world with absolutely amazing FREE resources. I am floored that Adrian offers these downloads for free, they are truly incredible! On Adrian’s website you can find reading and phonics games to print and play, math games to print and play, printable puzzles to play, posters, art, science, readers theater scripts, writing ideas, and so much more. You will happily spend hours exploring this site. Put your checkbook away and get your printer fired up and ready for a workout!

How to integrate Adrian Bruce into your curriculum: Use Adrian Bruce games every day to make learning fun! Use these print out games as a center activity, as an activity that can be done when students finish work early, and for learning extensions or practice every day. Choose a game day where students can play games that reinforce skills learned throughout the week. I cannot sing the praises of this site enough! All games come complete with instructions and can be printed out from Word or Adobe Acrobat.

Tips: Send Adrian a big THANK YOU for this resource. Feel free to show Adrian your appreciation by buying him a beer 🙂 or donate a book through Amazon. 

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Adrian Bruce Games in your classroom.


Class Tools

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Class Tools1995 views

What it is: Class Tools is possibly the most impressive, easy to use tool that I have reviewed to date! This allows teachers (even those who aren’t incredibly tech savvy) to create interactive Flash diagrams and games for learning and revising material. It is FREE! All diagrams created can be saved as data files or web pages to host on your school website or intranet. Quiz creators allow you to input up to 25 questions and answers an then choose a game to test student knowledge. Games include Matching Pairs, Manic Miner, WordShoot, and Cannon Ball Fun. Learning templates that teach and support chronological awareness include Time Line and Living Graph. Categorization tools include Post it, and a Target diagram. Linkage tools include Venn diagrams, and The Learning Puzzle. Priortization tools include Diamond Nine and a Priority Chart. Sourcework Skills tools include Lights Out and Source Analyzer. Essay skills tools include Fishbone and Hamburger diagrams. WOW!!

How to integrate Class Tools into the classroom: Class Tools may be one of the most versatile tools you can use in the classroom. Teachers and students can create learning diagrams together and upload to the school website for later study. Teachers, you can create games for your students to play focused on any specific curriculum. The sky is the limit for Class Tools in the classroom.

Tips: Print out a copy of the Class Tools Flyer, having a description of the tools handy is a must!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Class Tools in your classroom.

Exploratree

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Exploratree2147 views

What it is: Exploratree is a free web resource where teachers and students can download, use and create interactive thinking guides (graphic organizers). Thinking guides can be used to support independent or group research projects, students can think and plan easily. Thinking guides can be used collaboratively and shared for group projects. Exploratree has several ready-made thinking guides. Students and teachers can add to these guides or create their own from scratch to meet a specific classroom need. Ready made thinking guides include: tracking an enquiry, futures wheel, lotus blossom, from a different angle, thinking boxes, plus- minus- interesting, scamper, thinking actively in a social context, reverse planning, is/is not, complete reversal, compass rose, facts or opinions, making meanings, compare and contrast, knowing trees, digging up roots, traffic lights, examine existing and new ideas, using the essence, question things, a day in the life, and possible/probable/ preferable futures.

How to integrate Exploratree into the classroom: Exploratree is a wonderful replacement for traditional paper/pencil graphic organizers. They are easy to use, navigate and include some amazing features that just aren’t possible with paper graphic organizers. As a teacher, you can set up the sequence that you want the thinking guide to be revealed, so that you can stage the thinking activity. Each portion of the organizer is revealed as students are working. Students can fill out the thinking guides online as they complete a project or teachers can create a thinking guide that fits a classroom activity and print them out for student use. Students can submit thinking guides so that they can be edited and reviewed by peers or a teacher with comments. Think about using Exploratree for ALL subjects. Students can use thinking guides to explore the scientific process, for KWL type charts, to predict what will happen in literature they are reading, to plan a story or report, to explore a historical figure, to organize thoughts before a writing assignment, in social studies as a current event organizer, to think about choices and possible outcomes, to show mathematical processes, to explore a topic using different senses or points of view, sort facts and opinions, and a day in the life of a notable figure just to name a few.

Tips: Exploratree is in its Beta form so they are open to input and suggestions from educators. If you don’t see a feature you could use in your classroom…go ahead and suggest it!

Engrade

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Engrade1883 views

What it is: Engrade is a free online gradebook that allows teachers to manage their classes online as well as post grades, assignments, attendance, and upcoming homework online for students and parents to see. Engrade makes it easy for parents, teachers, and students to communicate and stay in contact. The free Engrade suite offers a gradebook that automatically calculates grades and provides tools for custom grading scales and weighting assignments, an attendance book that automatically emails parents with absences, a homework calendar for students and parents, and online student reports where students can view their grades, homework and attendance in real time.

How to integrate Engrade into the classroom: Engrade makes it simple to quickly post homework assignments, edit students grades, and take attendance all in one easy to use online interface. Best of all, since Engrade is online based, teachers can update grades and homework assignments from anywhere. Engrade is a wonderful way to keep parents and students informed of grades, homework assignments, and absences in one place. Communication between school and home has never been easier! Engrade is a secure, password protected site so there are no concerns about privacy or security of grades.

Tips: Be sure to check out the Teacher page on Engrade and all of the features that are offered. This truly is an amazing product!

Comapping

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Comapping2792 views

What it is: Comapping is a mind mapping/concept mapping online application that offers a unique left to right mind mapping technique. While the application is not free, Comapping does offer a free trial version for schools and very competitive pricing. Students can collaborate on mind maps in real-time. Comapping has a feature that other mind mapping solutions don’t have, a presentation tool. Teachers and students can actually turn their mind map into a presentation quickly and easily in the same web-browser. Comapping also has an auto focus feature which makes it easy to collapse maps and “zoom in” to the portion of the map being worked on.

How to integrate Comapping into the classroom: Teachers can use Comapping to structure lessons, units and themes in the classroom. Comapping would be an excellent way to organize the structure of the lessons for each subject and to align standards with those lessons. Students can create character diagrams, comparison charts, story diagrams, vocabulary word diagrams, timelines, effect of events, experiment maps, food pyramids, scientific processes, life cycles, and more. This tool will be valuable for your visual learners! Comapping would also be a useful tool when teaching students how to note-take. Comappings left to right mapping technique makes note taking succinct and easy to refer back to and understand. The collaboration portion of Comapping is useful to students completing projects together as well as for teachers and staff for creating units and lessons together.

Tips: I encourage you to select “try Comapping without an account” to learn about how it works. This will take you to an interactive page where you can learn, step by step about how to use Comapping. Really neat! Once you are sold, you can sign up for a free trial account.

Comapping for Education PowerPoint