Science – Page 14 – iLearn Technology

14 Online Interactive Advent Calendars

November 30, 2010November 30, 2010Kelly Tenkely11 Comments18394 views

It is December again, which means the beginning of Advent. Advent calendars are a fun way to reveal information and “surprises” for your students to look forward to each day in December leading up to Christmas. This year I thought I would make an advent calendar of my own using Wix. I created a Web 2.0 advent calendar by choosing 25 of my favorite web 2.0 tools for the classroom. Each day you can check out a new one. (I’ll let you in on a secret, you can cheat and look at them all by clicking on the bird to get back to the calendar page…shh don’t tell anyone!) You and your students can create your own custom advent calendar like I did using Wix. Students can create an advent calendar of pictures of their school work, trivia for their parents, special audio notes, or anything they are learning. To create your own Wix advent calendar, choose a template, add shapes to the template to create your calendar pieces, add 25 pages to the site, add links to those pages. You could also create an advent calendar of your own using Glogster. Create a customized advent calendar for your students with fun surprises, quotes, video clips, sound bites, etc. It can be related to the learning they are doing in your classroom, suggestions of books to read, or reveal special rewards like extra computer time, time playing a favorite game, time for reading, etc. Be creative!

Woodlands Jr has a great online advent calendar every year that tests students knowledge about Christmas around the world. The Woodlands Jr. 2010 advent calendar is now up and ready for viewing! This is a fun way for students to test their knowledge and learn about the ways that Christmas is celebrated all around the world. As an extension, plot the places around the world that they are learning about on a world map.

BBC Radio has a fabulous Bach advent calendar. Each day your students can listen to a story about Bach or music.

The National Museum of Liverpool has an advent calendar that reveals a piece of art from the museum each day.

The Dirt Dirt advent calendar is purely fun, each day click on a number and an animation will be added to the tree.

For those of us who are app inclined, you can download a free app for your iDevice every day from Appvent Calendar.

Below you will find my interactive advent calendar finds from last year. You are bound to find one that is a perfect fit for your class!

What it is: It is December! This means the beginning of Advent along with the anticipation and excitement that it brings. The Internet is full of interactive advent calendars that you can use in your classroom to teach about how the Christmas season is celebrated all around the world. These advent calendars reveal fun facts, interactive activities, and stories.

Santa’s House Advent Calendar– This advent calendar tells a fun story. Each day reveals another secret about what goes on inside Santa’s home on the 24 days leading up to Christmas. In each picture, there is a little mouse hiding. When students click on his ears, he jumps out.

Christmas Around the World Advent Calendar– Each day students click on the date to reveal a fun fact about how countries around the world celebrate Christmas. The facts are accompanied by great illustrations and pictures. This site shows up very small inside my Internet browser (Firefox). To remedy this problem, click on “view” in your menu bar and choose “zoom”. You may need to zoom in several times.

Christmas Mice Advent Calendar– This calendar tells the story about a mouse family who celebrates Christmas. Each day a little more of the story is revealed. Each picture includes some animation.

Santa’s Advent Calendar– On this advent calendar, each day reveals a new song or activity for students to complete. There are some fun Christmas themed mysteries to solve, stories to read, and activities to work through.

French Carols Advent Calendar– This is a French advent calendar. Each day contains a new French Christmas carol sung by children. This advent calendar would be a fun one to include in a study of Christmas around the world.

Christmas Around the World Advent Calendar Quiz– This advent calendar tests students knowledge about how other cultures celebrate Christmas. Each day students are asked a question and given hints to help them answer. When the answer is revealed, students can click on links to learn more about the Christmas celebrations in that country. This site also includes great activities and teaching resources for Christmas.

Christmas Advent Calendar– Follow the adventures of Zac the elf as he tries to find a Christmas present for Santa. Each day a little more of the story is revealed.

Christmas Activity Advent Calendar– This advent calendar has fun little games and activities to play each day. The games and activities are quick and easy to complete, building mouse and keyboard skills. This advent calendar would be a good one for the classroom computers as a center activity.

How to integrate Interactive Advent Calendars into the classroom: The season of Advent is always filled with eagerness and expectancy. Build some of that anticipation into your school day by allowing students to unlock a new secret on the advent calendar each day. Use these advent calendars with the whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector, or set them up as a quick center activity that students can visit. Use the advent calendars that reveal a story to practice looking for foreshadowing clues, using context clues to guess what will happen next, or as story starters for students own stories. The Christmas around the world advent calendars are wonderful for teaching students some of the history of Christmas and the way that other cultures celebrate the familiar holiday.

Tips: Each of these advent calendars has some fun goodies and hidden surprises, find the one that best fits your classroom needs.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Interactive Advent Calendars in your classroom.

Collaborize Classroom-free for the 2010/2011 school year if you sign up before November 15!

November 8, 2010November 8, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3172 views

What it is: Collaborize Classroom is an online learning platform developed for classroom discussion and engagement. Collaborize lets students and teacher collaborate in online discussions. It can be used for meaningful conversations related to classroom curriculum, to ask and answer questions, to collaborate on projects, to vote on ideas/issues, and more. Teachers can continue valuable discussions, facilitate online learning groups, encourage the sharing of resources, and provide students with space to engage in collaborative learning. Collaborize is easy to set up and navigate for both teachers and students. Questions can be posted easily including multiple choices, yes/no, vote or suggest, and forum. After the questions have been answered, the results of the discussion can be published on a results page. Collaborize has great teacher features. Add attachments to any question including photos, videos, and documents. Send a message to students using the built-in messaging system. Participation reports track each student’s activity on the site including number of logins, votes, comments, and replies. Activity reports can be sent to your email daily for review. Set up a watch list to follow a discussion more closely. Collaborize has fantastic supporting materials including lesson plans, helpful tutorials, and research articles. If you sign up for Collaborize before November 15, 2010, the product is being offered at no-cost (read FREE) for the 2010-2011 school year! In partnership with Democrasoft, The Kids in Need Foundation made this free year possible…take advantage of it before the 15th!

How to integrate Collaborize into your curriculum: Collaboraize is an awesome tool to facilitate discussions in (and out of) the classroom. The format of Collaborize makes it flexible enough to use in any classroom and in a way that works for you. Use Collaborize to facilitate discussions and literature circles, plan a science lab or experiment to be conducted in class, practice second languages with online dialog, post current events for students to reflect on, work with classrooms around the world to discuss and debate any topic, pose a math word problem and ask students to discuss the different ways the problem could be approached. Collaborize is a wonderful tool for student discussion and collaboration, but the teacher tools are what make it such a perfect fit for the classroom setting. It is easy to sign up, get your free year today!

Tips: Collaborize has really helpful resources for teachers. Learn about the do’s and don’ts of student forums, the art of asking questions, lesson and activity ideas, rethinking your role in the classroom and much more. Even if you don’t sign up for Collaborize, I recommend spending some time checking out these free documents, they have great tips that can be applied to a variety of web collaboration tools.

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

Study Jams!

November 3, 2010November 3, 2010Kelly Tenkely15 Comments7052 views

What it is: Scholastic Study Jams is a fantastic collection of over 200 learning resource collections. Study Jams are videos, slide shows, and step by step explanations for science and math that will have your students discovering everything from invertebrates to the water cycle and the rule of divisibility. Each Jam includes a teaching video/step-by-step/slide show, key vocabulary, and a test yourself section where they can practice what they have just learned. Each Jam also suggests related jams where students can expand their learning and dig deeper on a subject. To be honest, this is more like the textbook of the future that I envisioned. I love that each concept is introduced in the context of a story. Students learn the concept from fun Study Jam characters and can pause and rewind the learning as needed. In the test yourself section, students can check for understanding and receive immediate feedback on their learning.

How to integrate Study Jams into your curriculum: Study Jams is a truly incredible collection of learning opportunities for students. Use Jams to introduce your students to a new concept, or reinforce learning. In Math students can learn about numbers, multiplication and division, addition and subtraction, fractions, decimals and percents, algebra, geometry, measurement, data analysis, probability, and problem solving. Each topic has several sub-topics for students to explore. In science topics include: plants, animals, the human body, ecosystems, landforms, rocks and minerals, weather and climate, solar system, matter, force and motion, energy, light, and sound, and scientific inquiry. Again, each science topic has several sub-topics.

Study Jams can be used with your whole class as an anticipatory set for learning using an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. After viewing the step-by-step, video, or slide-show check for understanding by having your students complete the “test yourself” as a class. This can be done with personal whiteboards where students write down their answer and hold it up, a raise of hands, or student response systems (clickers). Use this as formative assessment to guide your lesson. Study Jams can also be used as a center activity in the math or science classroom. Students can visit the Study Jam as part of a larger group of related activities. In a center, students can visit individually or in small groups and self direct their learning. For those students who have already mastered the concept, they can view related Study Jams to extend their learning.

Study Jams is ideal for students in a 1 to 1 or lab setting. Here students can explore at their own pace, pausing and rewinding as necessary. They can also extend their learning based on their personal interests by choosing a related Study Jam.

Can’t find a Study Jam that fits what your students are learning? Ask students to create their own Study Jam video, slide show or step by step. Students can use tools like Animoto, Voice Thread, or Domo Animate to create their own. Students can create their own “test yourself” using a Google Form or survey tool.

Tips: I learned about Study Jams from someone in my blogging alliance (sorry I didn’t make note of who!) If you aren’t already following these amazing blogs, I highly recommend them (alliance #1, alliance #2). I learn SO much every day from each one of them. If I learned about Study Jams from your blog, leave me a comment so I can thank you here!

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

Juxio: Online Visual Creation Tool

October 25, 2010October 25, 2010Kelly Tenkely10 Comments5221 views

What it is: Juxio is a new visual way to create and communicate. The web application lets students take their own images (or images from Flickr, FaceBook, or Picasa) and add them to an image stream or panel. Text descriptions can be added to the stream to describe the images. Streams are where text and images get placed. Streams expand in width as elements are added. A Jux (Juxio creation) can be expanded vertically by adding additional streams. This is useful for organizing content into categories or for comparison. Each stream can have its own header to add meaning or depth to a Jux creation. Events are used to visually segment streams. For example, students might have an animal stream of pictures that is segmented into the events “mammals” and “reptiles”. After students create a Jux, they can save it as a PDF file, print it, or share it online via email, Facebook, Twitter, or url.

How to integrate Juxio into your curriculum: Juxio is a fantastic online tool to use for online visual creation. Students can mash-up text and photos to create their own Jux that can be used to organize information or display understanding. Use Juxio for animal classification, vocabulary, historical time lines, changes over time, to tell a linear story, or display any information in an organized fashion. Take pictures of a science experiment for students to turn into a Jux, they can start at the beginning of the experiment adding captions to each picture. Text boxes can be added for students to type in their hypothesis at the beginning of the experiment and to add a concluding statement at the end. Take pictures of a school field trip and create a Juxio to tell the story of what happened on the field trip. A Jux can be created individually by students in a computer lab setting, or by a whole class using an interactive whiteboard. Class Juxio’s can be created to display new learning, each student contributing to one Jux. The finished product can be printed and saved in the classroom with the URL sent home so students can access the learning from anywhere. Use Juxio in place of a traditional Friday newsletter. Take pictures of students throughout the week, add captions explaining what learning happened during the week and add a stream for upcoming events and reminders. Anytime you add student pictures to a newsletter, the chance that a parent takes the time to read it goes way up!

Tips: Juxio requires an email address for sign up. In addition, students must be 13 or older to obtain their own account. If you teach younger students, create a class account where you are the owner. Students can create a Jux using the class account and save it with their name in the title.

Juxio offers the option to purchase the finished Jux as a poster. Prices are very reasonable and can be used for customized classroom decoration. Cool!

If your school has access to an iPod Touch or iPad lab, Juxio can be downloaded directly to the device as an application.

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

Animation Chefs: Kids learn animation

October 22, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments2707 views

What it is: Animation Chefs is a fun website/blog that teaches kids how to create their own animations using stop motion video techniques. The Animation Chefs teach how to create animations using a “secret” recipe. To create animations you need two things: a camera and a computer. Animation Chefs aim to help young producers of stories and animation learn about the latest and greatest ways to get their content created. The blog will continually be adding tips, tricks, and tutorials for creating online animated videos.

How to integrate Animation Chefs into your curriculum: Animation Chefs is a great place for students (and teachers) to learn the tricks of stop motion animation. Students can use this site to learn new techniques and get advice for creating their own videos. My students loved creating their own videos. Any time I mentioned a video project, the students would ask daily when we would start with it. Our students have grown up in the video generation and this is one of the languages they want to learn to speak in. Visit Animation Chefs as a class to learn about stop motion animation, for inspiration, and to learn new tricks. If you have students that are particularly intrigued by using video to tell a story, this is a great place for them to learn the tricks of the trade. Often we as teachers shy away from lessons that we aren’t familiar with. With Animation Chefs, even if you aren’t familiar with creating stop motion animation, you can provide a fun learning experience for your students. How can your students use stop motion videos for learning? Students can tell any story, illustrate their learning, explain a difficult concept, reflect on learning, or create videos for younger students/grade levels. In my computer classroom, I had students take a picture of themselves every single time they logged into the computers during the school year. We put all of the pictures in a “me” folder on their desktop, labeling each picture with the date. The last week of school, we created a stop motion video with all of the pictures by putting them into iMovie and setting the picture clip to 1 second. Students added music that they created in Garageband and a title page. The end result: each had videos of their school year where they could watch themselves “grow” up. This works especially well in second through fifth grade where the changes in a years time are marked.

Tips: Animation Chefs has a Twitter page, if your class is on Twitter, they may be a good tweep to follow as a class.

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

Flixtime: Video slideshow creator

October 19, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3245 views

What it is: Flixtime is an online tool that lets students create 60 second video slideshows. Slideshows can contain videos, pictures, text and music. The interface of Flixtime is easy to use; it looks a lot like the timelines used in iMovie and would be a great way to introduce students to the idea of video timelines and a separate sound track. With Flixtime, students can adjust the screen resolution of their video and choose a speed for their slideshow to play. As I used Flixtime, I couldn’t get over how much like Animoto it is. If you need an alternative to Animoto, this is your tool!

How to integrate Flixtime into your curriculum: Flixtime is a great tool for telling a story. Students can use Flixtime to tell a story about their learning, to illustrate a science experiment, to create a video timeline of a historical event, to illustrate vocabulary, to create an auto-bio poem, or to create a custom public service announcement. Flixtime is an easy way for students to create something new and demonstrate understanding on any topic. My students have used video slideshows to create math story problems for a buddy to solve, they turn out great and sure beat the dry story problems from math textbooks! Flixtime videos can be saved on the student Flixtime account, embedded in a class blog/wiki/website, emailed, and even downloaded!

Tips: Flixtime requires an email account for sign up. The email account doesn’t need to be verified which means that students can sign up with a temporary email account from tempinbox or mailinator. If you teach elementary students, create a class Flixtime account where students can create and save videos. This ensures that you know what is being posted and puts the videos all in one place for easy viewing.

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

Pinball: Bounce Ideas Around

October 6, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3995 views

What it is: Pinball is a neat site from the BBC that helps students kick-start new ideas to get thoughts flowing and develop creative talents. There are four tools that will help students brainstorm and bounce ideas around. Dot Dash is for firing out ideas, start with a main idea and branch out with connected ideas in a web. Drop Zone is for making quick decisions, add ideas, name the zones, click “go”. As ideas speed by, quickly make a decision and select a zone; analyze the results. Snap Shot lets kids play with images; here they can upload an image or select a random image or word in “Lucky Dip” and then use the tools to play with the idea. Students can reflect, rotate, scale, bend, erase or cut an image or word to get different effects. Wild Reels is for mixing up ideas. Students can create reels of images and words, then they can label the reels. When the ideas are all in, the ideas can be “spun” to see what combination comes up. In each of the tools, the results can be “flipped” to another Pinball tool. Each tool allows students to think about a subject and explore ideas they may have about the subject.

How to integrate Pinball into your curriculum: Pinball is a fantastic tool to help kids think through their ideas for writing, research, science hypothesis, making connections in their learning, brainstorming, and fleshing out ideas. Each tool is designed to let students think visually in a way that lets their ideas flow freely. The integration of one tool with another is really helpful for transferring loosely related thoughts into a more cohesive thought process. Pinball can be used for whole class thinking with an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. For example, as students read about a time period in history, and related events, they can use Dot Dash to show how the events and people are related. Students can each add to the class understanding of the time period. Drop Zone would be a great way for students to generate ideas for a creative writing, or journal project. Students can enter the ideas they have and let Drop Zone help them decide which to write about. Bookmark Pinball on classroom computers so that students can use them as an inspiration station center. Any time your students need to bounce ideas around or think through their learning visually they can visit Pinball and work through their ideas. Pinball would also be helpful for structuring thinking prior to a research report, or science experiment. If you have access to a computer lab or 1-to-1 setting, allow your students time to think about their learning and connect new learning to knowledge frameworks they have already built. The possibilities with these tools are endless.

Tips: Pinball offers links to additional thinking tools that are available on the web including Exploratree, Mind Tools, bubbl.us, Aviary, Mind 42, and Wisemapping. Each of these tools is fantastic for mind mapping, creative thinking, brainstorming, and visualizing ideas.

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

Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master

September 27, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments6020 views

What it is: The Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master is a portion of the Read Me program (learn about it here). This is a really cool online comic creator, the interface is fun to use and very intuitive. It is obviously geared toward students with a great look and even an embedded music player. I love the details on this site, including the headline “Reading isn’t only in books, it’s everywhere!”. Using the Graphic Novel Creator, students can create their own multi-page graphic novels with interesting backgrounds, characters, props, and customized text. The graphic novels can be saved and printed out.

How to integrate Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master into your curriculum: Graphic novels are becoming increasingly popular reading material, particularly for boys. They have even the most reluctant readers excited to pull out a book. Now those kids who love reading graphic novels, can create their own. A graphic novel is a great way for students to show what they know. They can create a graphic novel re-tell of a story as a book report, describe a science experiment, re-tell a portion of history with a superhero twist, practice another language by telling a story, even define and demonstrate understanding of vocabulary words.

Tips: Be sure to check out the read me site for great teachers notes, ideas, and additional resources for teaching with the Graphic Novel Creator. A special thank you to @thebookchook for introducing me to this tool!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master in your classroom!

Life Is from BBC Earth

September 9, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments4290 views

What it is: Life is is an incredible site from BBC Earth. The beautifully interactive site is full of images, video, and stories from BBC Earth’s most captivating documentaries. Each month features a different theme with September’s theme, Life is…Colorful. The astonishing images and video capture life’s most colorful displays in nature. The search page is equally stunning, offering an on-screen widget that lets students adjust the pictures in the grid by filtering by hot/cold, slow/fast, sea/sky, or color.

How to integrate Life Is from BBC Earth into your curriculum: Life is would make for an incredible discussion starter or creative writing prompt. This month’s theme is Life is Colorful. Ask students to come up with descriptive words for the pictures and images they are seeing. Students can use the descriptive words they came up with to write a Life is… poem. The poem could start with the line Life is… include descriptions of what they observed in the video and end with …Colorful.

Students can make their own Life is… type videos with a theme of their choosing using a tool like the National Geographic Wildlife Filmmaker.

This site can be used on classroom computers or in a lab setting, but I think it would be absolutely stunning on an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer!

Tips: The left and right arrows on the site let you view each picture in the theme series separately. Each picture has an overlay with additional information about the image.

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

The Augmented Reality Library

September 9, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments4361 views

What it is: Okay, so the augmented reality library doesn’t exactly exist, but I ran across a few items today that had me dreaming about what augmented reality could do for a library. First a definition for those of you unfamiliar with augmented reality. Wikipedia has this definition for augmented reality (AR): “a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery.” If that is a little cumbersome for you, let me give you my definition. Augmented Reality generally uses a camera to let you overlay virtual data on top of the physical world you are seeing through your camera lens. The virtual data could be a map, information, multimedia, or even look like a holograph that you can manipulate. For a really simple explanation you can check out this AR Common Craft Video. Augmented reality apps are available for many devices, the iPhone, Android and now the iPod Touch. Layar is a cross-platform app that is a reality browser that contains a large catalog of data layers. The AR apps use geolocation data from the GPS to layer data over the physical view. Junaio is another app that uses markers to help the device determine it’s location. When GPS isn’t available, AR markers can be used. These are square black and white barcodes that store data. You may have seen the AR markers begin to pop-up on advertising, grocery items, and books. The markers allow a device to gather data about the product and overlay that data on top of your physical view.

How to integrate Augmented Reality into your library: You may be wondering how augmented reality could be used in a library. I recently read an article in the School Library Journal that got my wheels spinning about the ways augmented reality could transform the library experience. In the article they suggest putting AR markers on a book cover so that when a device is used, a librarian could walk across the book jacket and deliver a quick review of the title. Markers inside books could cause 2D diagrams or images to come alive as 3D interactive simulations. Another idea I loved was to create a literary tour using an AR program, which would describe locations that appear in a book. When you actually travel to that place, the text that took place there could pop up along with additional information or content. Each of these ideas is amazing in itself but thinking of transforming a school library, here are the ideas I came up with:

Connecting your card catalog with augmented reality so that students could search for a book or topic from their mobile device and instantly get a layer that directs them to books that may be of interest.
Connecting a tool like Shelfari, where students keep a virtual bookshelf and rate the books they have read ,with augmented reality. Students could instantly ask for books that are recommended based on their ratings of other books and recommendations could pop up in a layer directing students to those recommendations.
Turning booktrailers (professionally created or student created) into an augmented reality layer. Students could use an AR marker on the book cover and instantly watch a booktrailer about the book.
A this day in history layer where a fact pops up each day describing an event in history, the layer could then direct students to additional information, include a video or challenge of some kind.
Connect AR to a search engine so that when students are researching a topic, book recommendations pop up in a layer with directions on where to find them.
Our library is often a showcase of student work, what if each diorama, piece of artwork, or project had an AR marker on it? Students could record themselves (either audio or video) describing their work. This could be attached to an AR marker so that as students viewed other’s work, they could get an introduction to it by the creator. (This would be awesome for parent teacher conference time as well!)
AR Markers next to the computers could remind students of important Internet safety rules, the school acceptable use policy, and what to do if they have been bullied.
The school librarian could have a special selection of books each month that contain an AR marker linked to the librarian reading the story.
Does your school have author visits or use the Skype an Author network? If so record the author (audio or video) and connect it to AR markers on their books.
Label the areas of the library using AR so that ESL and ELL students can get a vocabulary lesson as they walk through the library.

AR could bring libraries to life in new and exciting ways. What ideas do you have for the use of AR in the library?

Tips: Currently this technology isn’t as easy as download and go for the library. Content needs to be created, and background building has to be done. For now you can download Layar to get a feel for how augmented reality works. You can also visit the “Create” section to create your own layers of AR (this is how you could make some of these ideas happen). Junaio also allows you to create a channel that offers information. Junaio makes it very easy to add information by tagging directly within the application. You can tag your library with comments, pictures, audio, or 3D objects. If you are using AR in your library please let us know more about it!

Want to see more AR tools? Here are some that I’ve reviewed.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Augmented Reality in your library.