Category: Middle/High School

Fliggo

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on Fliggo2454 views

 

What it is:  Ever wish you could create your own video sharing site?  Fliggo is your answer.  Create a video sharing site in under 5 minutes easily!  Sharing student created videos on YouTube is not always an option in the school system.  YouTube may be blocked, you may have concerns about other video content, or the related videos that are presented to your students may be inappropriate.  Fliggo is the answer.  You can create a video sharing site for your school complete with school logo.  Fliggo gives you control over who can post videos, who can comment, and how videos are approved.  Fliggo is simple enough to use with elementary students!

How to integrate Fliggo into the classroom:  Fliggo is the perfect place to upload student created video.  I have students turn every Keynote presentation into a video so that we can share it online.  Students love sharing their work with the world.  I get emails from parents, grandparents, and other family members about how excited they are to see what their kids are working on in school.  This is an awesome way to showcase student work.  Students can comment on other student work encouraging an authentic classroom community.  Fliggo is easy enough for elementary students to upload their own videos if you choose to allow member uploaded video.  In my classroom, students create commercials on a variety of topics.  I like using commercials because students understand their purpose (to advertise), they are short, and they quickly get the point across.  Students have created commercials in my classroom for a multiude of subjects and topics.  

 

Tips:  I love the idea of creating a school “YouTube” type site, your students and parents will love it too!

 

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

ARKive

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on ARKive3252 views

 

What it is:  ARKive is an incredible website that I learned about from a tweet on Twitter (forgive me I was in the middle of class and didn’t keep track of who- thank you whoever you are!)  ARKive tag line is “images of life on Earth”, but ARKive is so much more than just a collection of images, it has thousands of videos, images and facts about the world’s species.  This is the digital version of Noah’s Ark!  This is the most impressive animal and life website I have seen!  I truly can’t say enough about this site, students of all ages will enjoy this one (I’m talking k-12 here!)  ARKive has an education section of the site that is a free multi-media educational resources complete with downloadable, ready to use audio/visual modules on a wide range of science, geography, citizenship, and environmental based topics.  ARKive also has some great games for students to play that are directly related to the lessons they learn while on the ARKive site.  Games range from building a habitat to word searches and digital fridge poetry.

How to integrate ARKive into the classroom:    ARKive’s ready made educational resources make it simple to integrate into your science, geography, or general classes.  The resources are ready made PowerPoint presentations (which incidentally also open nicely in Keynote which we use).  The resources bring learning to life with images, videos, facts, and some interactive pieces.  This is what textbooks should be!  ARKive’s ready made resources can be downloaded on classroom computers for use by small learning groups as a center, downloaded to a lab of computers for individual student exploration, or used with a projector and an interactive whiteboard for whole class learning and exploration.  The ARKive site itself is a wonderful place for students to explore and learn more about animal species and life on Earth.  This would be a great place for students to collect information, images, and video to create their own presentations.  The games provided on the ARKive site are fun for students and teach them as they play.  For example, students who are studying habitat can play the Design a Habitat game and gain an additional opportunity to interact with the concepts they are learning.  Older students can dig into the facts provided on ARKive and learn about animal classification and species of the world.  ARKive images could be used in the language arts classroom as a story starter or creative writing prompt.  

 

Tips:  This is truly an incredible site, I encourage you to take a look at it and use it with your class!  (Click on the education link at the bottom of the site for the Resources and Games.) 

 

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

Lost Generation

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on Lost Generation2403 views

I came across this video recently on YouTube.  As I understand it, a 15 year old wrote this poem as part of a school assignment.  Amazing!  This video would be wonderful to use as inspiration for a teaching staff or with students.  It would be a great opener for a creative writing class! The video speaks for itself, I’m sure you’ll come up with great ideas for using this video with your students (share those great ideas with the rest of us). 🙂

Lure of the Labyrinth

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on Lure of the Labyrinth2485 views

What it is:   Lure of the Labyrinth is a interactive math game created by Fable Vision, MPT, and MIT.  In the game underground monsters come to life as students plunge into a shadowy factory on a mission to rescue a missing pet.  Students take on a monster persona and disguise themselves as monster insiders to maneuver through math problems.  As students work through the game, they will work with proportions, fractions, ratios, variables, equations, numbers, and operations. 

How to integrate Lure of the Labyrinth into the classroom:  Lure of the Labyrinth can be played individually or in team play.  This game is excellent for students who may not otherwise feel successful in math.  The game encourages critical thinking and problem solving and is aligned to math standards.  This would be a great way for students to work through problems and show what they know.

 

Tips:  Be sure to stop off in the educator section on Lure of the Labyrinth for an explanation of the game, lesson plans, standards, and the math behind each puzzle that needs to be solved.  With all of the resources and guidance, this is a fail proof game to introduce in your math class!

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Lure of the Labryinth  in your classroom.

If You Give a Teacher a Mouse

Kelly Tenkely12 Comments on If You Give a Teacher a Mouse4010 views

Today I finally finished a project I have been working on with my students.  I borrowed this concept from a video that I saw on Teacher Tube and thought it would be a fun way to get our teachers, admin, and tech staff thinking about technology.  I had one of my first grade classes record the audio for me.  The kids were thrilled to see something they had a part in on You Tube 🙂

The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults3831 views

What it is:   Digital Vaults reminds me of Museum Box that I wrote about a few weeks ago.  The National Archives has put together an amazing site where students can create digital content with primary resources.  Students can search photographs, documents, and other records and collect them.  Students can use collected items to create their own digital poster or to make a movie.  Students can also create a Pathway Challenge.  In a challenge, students create a series of clues that show relationships between photographs, documents and other records.  Others can take part in these Pathways Challenges.  There are also ready made challenges that students can take part in, I just took the Lincoln challenge.  Clues are given and students have to find a record that matches the clue.  Very cool!

How to integrate Digital Vaults into the classroom:  This is a truly incredible way for students to interact with history.    While the site may be too hard for primary elementary students to use on their own, the Lincoln Pathway Challenge could be used with an interactive whiteboard with the teacher guiding the challenge.  Teachers could also create a unique challenge that directly matches your curriculum for students to complete.  The poster, movie, and create your own Pathway Challenge are an engaging way for students to learn about history in a hands on approach.  Give students a direction to go and then give them time to collect resources, and create their digital history vault.  This is not history as I remember it…in fact, I’m sure I would know much, much more about history if I were involved in my learning this way!  This is so much better than learning history from an outdated text book, the Pathway Challenges are like virtual field trips through history.

 

Tips:  I learned about this awesome website from Free Technology for Teachers, a great blog!

 

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

Wizlite

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Wizlite2413 views

What it is:  Wizlite is a handy little web tool that lets you highlight text (just like you would on paper) on any page on the Internet and then share it with others.  Wizlite uses a a Firefox extension or a bookmarklet to show and store selections.  It is free and easy to use!

How to integrate Wizlite into the classroom:  Wizlite is a handy tool for directing your students to specific information while they are learning on the web.  Use Wizlite to teach your students to find the main idea on a webpage.  Students can create groups on Wizlite and share pages with their highlights with other students.  Wizlite is also very useful for sharing portions of webpages with  your colleagues quickly and easily.  

 

Tips:  Wizlite does require you to install an extension.  This is easy to do and the Wizlite site walks you through the steps. 

 

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

Bestest PE Teacher

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Bestest PE Teacher1498 views

 What it is:  Our PE teacher just started a blog of her own!  The blog is called Bestest PE Teacher, her hope is that it will be a place to start a conversation with teachers, students, and parents about physical education in schools, reminisce about PE memories, and advice for parents and students. 

How to integrate Bestest PE into the classroom:   This blog will be a great place to converse about physical education in schools.  Pass this blog on to the PE teacher at your school and join in the conversation to encourage this new edublogger!  

 

Tips:  If you are wondering where the name Bestest PE came from, the kids call our PE teacher “Bestest PE Teacher in the Whole Wide World”… I tend to agree she is the bestest!  

Do you follow any other PE blogs?  Share them here so I can pass them along!