Middle/High School – Page 58 – iLearn Technology

Awesome Stories

February 11, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3605 views

What it is: Awesome Stories is a neat website that looks to me like it could be the future of text books. Awesome Stories has great primary source materials separated by categories such as biographies, disasters, trials, flicks, history, inspiration, religion and sports. Throughout the text there are hyperlinks to additional content. The links are separated by color so you know that when you see a certain color it will open a primary source image, video, narration, slide shows, artifact, manuscript, document, etc. You can become a member of Awesome Stories for free, when you do you will gain access to additional features like an extensive image data base, narrated stories, lesson plans, and a free newsletter from Awesome Stories. This is essentially an interactive textbook. I love that the site hits different learning styles in its presentation of information.

How to integrate Awesome Stories into the classroom: Awesome Stories would be a great supplement to traditional text books. It makes finding primary source materials easy! With the audio clips, narration, video, and slide shows linked right within the reading material, students are going to get a much richer understanding of a topic or material being studied. I love that struggling readers can have all the text narrated to read along with. Many of the videos, audio, and slide shows would be excellent to share with the whole class using a projector or interactive whiteboard.

Tips: Sign up for free to see the full scope of Awesome Stories, you will be amazed at the amount of content here! The lesson plans to use with the site are wonderful!

Leave a comment and share how you are using Awesome Stories in your classroom.

Learning 2.0 a Colorado Conversation

February 11, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2061 views

What it is: If you live in Colorado or will be passing through on February 21st, you should definitely be taking part in Learning 2.0 a Colorado Conversation! This is a free one day conference (yes I really said free!) that also includes a free lunch. All that you need to do is register and be ready to talk education. “The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek. We read. We reflect. We write. We share. We learn. Come join us for a day of conversation about learning and technology.” The conference is being held at Heritage High School from 9am to 3pm. To learn more visit the wiki and register! http://colearning.wikispaces.com/Home+2009

Leave a comment and let us know if you are going and what you thought of it!

Jeopardy Labs

February 10, 2009Kelly Tenkely3 Comments4080 views

What it is: Jeopardy Labs is an awesome website that lets you build a Jeopardy game board without the use of Power Point! All that you have to do to start is enter a password so that others can’t edit your game. Then it is as simple as titling it, typing in categories and then entering questions and answers. This is really SO easy to use! You can also search through Jeopardy games created by others. You won’t be able to edit these but you may find a ready made game that fits your needs perfectly. Jeopardy Labs was created by Matt Johnson, an undergraduate at WSUV. Impressive!

How to integrate Jeopardy Labs into the classroom: Jeopardy Labs is a great way to review and practice class material in a fun, engaging way. Use Jeopardy Labs to help your kids study for a test, to review a unit, or just as a fun learning activity on a Friday afternoon. In the computer lab, I have used Jeopardy as a way to teach students how to perform searches. Students can Google the questions and the first team to find the correct answer wins the points.

Tips: Before you reinvent the wheel, browse through other Jeopardy games…someone may have already done the work for you!

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

How Toons

February 9, 2009February 9, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2828 views

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.

Vista Zoo

February 6, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3105 views

What it is: Vista Zoo is a website where students can create incredible virtual tours of the world by combining pictures, video, audio, and objects in 3-D. The tours are uploaded and placed on a map. Tours can then be embeded into any website. Students can also sign up for their own Vista Zoo portal that they can customize and save their projects. Vista Zoo is also available on the iPhone and iPod touch (if you are so lucky to have a lab of them!)

How to integrate Vista Zoo into the classroom: Vista Zoo would be a neat way for students to display geography learning. Students could collect images in history or current images to embed in their maps to learn about a subject. Teachers can also create virtual tours for students to take individually or as a class with a projector or interactive whiteboard. This is a great way to teach geography and history, your visual students will love it! The ability to add audio and video makes these virtual field trips around the world pretty amazing. If your class has a pen pal class in another country, it would be fun for each group of students to create a virtual tour of their town for the pen pals to view.

Tips: Use Creative Commons images from Flickr or open stock images from a site like stock.xchng for images to embed.

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

The Tale of Despereaux Adventure

February 4, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2860 views

What it is: I learned about this awesome interactive site from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. It is just too good to pass up blogging about it! This interactive story book lets students create their own tale in the Kingdom of Dor. The students become a part of the story as they create a character version of themselves that takes part in the story adventure. Students can choose to have interactive games and puzzles included in their story. The story is a virtual pop-up book, it is read to students and they can read along with subtitles. Along the way, students have to help solve problems in the story by playing an interactive game.

How to integrate The Tale of Despereaux Adventure into the classroom: The Tale of Despereaux Adventure is a really impressive site. This would be a great introduction to the book by Kate DiCamillo. The site would act as a teaser for the book that would have students eager to read. Even if you aren’t reading The Tale of Despereaux, this is a fun way to get students interested in reading (most of them won’t even realize that they are reading!) Set up a Tale of Despereaux center on your classroom computer during reading time for a month. Each day two new students can visit the center and take part in their own adventure. This site could also be used with an interactive whiteboard or projector for the students to create a whole class story. If students choose to read the story with the interactive games, they will be stopped along the way to complete puzzle and logic games throughout the story. These type of games are great to get kids thinking creatively and outside of the box. The story can be viewed in different languages, this would be a fun site for foreign language classes to visit in the language they are studying!

Tips: One thing I don’t love about this site is that it asks students to enter their first and last name to be part of the story. I teach my students never to put their last name online. I ask my students to make up a last name when creating their story.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using The Tale of Despereaux Adventure in your classroom.

New Blog: Confident Teacher

February 2, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2648 views

I have embarked on a new adventure with two other educators and bloggers in the form of a collaborative blog. The blog is called the Confident Teacher and will be updated and maintained by myself, Mr. Bibo (Cal Teacher Blog), and Mr. Harmless (Harmless Thoughts). This blog will be more of a discussion of education, teaching, learning, and life. I encourage you to join us on this new adventure and jump into the conversation! See you all there! (My first post is called The Greatest Teacher)

World Math Day 2009

February 2, 2009Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3678 views

What it is: World Math Day is March 4, 2009! If you participated in World Math Day last year with the World Math Day website, you know how motivating and fun it was. If not, this is your year to join in the fun! Students play against other students in countries around the world in real time mental arithmetic games. Each game lasts for 60 seconds. Students can play as many games as they want to. When you sign up your class, you will choose the level of difficulty based on age and ability. World Math Day is best for students who are 5 to 18 years old (k-12!). There are even prizes awarded including student prizes, and school prizes for highest achievers. Registration for World Math Day is open (and free), your students can start practicing right now!

How to integrate World Math Day into the classroom: World Math Day was one of the highlights of math class last year. The students who participated had a great time competing against other students from around the world. I have never seen students so excited to practice math facts and many asked, “can we do this at home too?” How often do you get students asking for more math practice at home?! Get your students excited about competing on March 4 and start practicing now. If you have one or two computers in the classroom you can set up a training center. Reserve a computer lab during math class to practice as a class. You can also split your class into teams of 3 to complete the 60 second games using a projector or interactive whiteboard. You will not believe how motivating this site is for students!

Tips: This is an amazing development, World Math Day 2009 is available on the iPhone and iPod Touch!!! Woot, woot! Students can join in the fun of the practice period and work on their skills against other students before the big day.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using World Math Day in your classroom.

Password Bird

January 30, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment15233 views

What it is: Password Bird is an extremelly simple website, but one that I love to use with my elementary students. Password Bird helps students create a password using a few easy to answer questions. Students enter a name that is special to them, a word that is special to them, and date that is special to them. Password Bird takes these and turns it into a randomly generated password. The ideas is that the password generated will be something easy for students to remember but hard for others to guess.

How to integrate Password Bird into the classroom: In my computer classroom I hear the words “I don’t know what my password should be” a lot. Password Bird is the perfect place to send these kids. It helps them create a password quickly that should be fairly easy for them to remember. Sometimes Password Bird generates great passwords, and sometimes the passwords are not as strong. I have used Password Bird to generate passwords that we then dissect and decide if it is a strong password or not.

Tips: Not every password generated on Password Bird will be a strong password, usually this is due to the words that the students chose that make it a weak password. Use the opportunity to discuss what makes it a particularly strong or weak password.

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

FontStruct

January 30, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1962 views

What it is: FontStruct is a free website that lets students build, share, and download fonts that they create in a simple font editor. First students name their font, then they use the font editor to draw each character of the alphabet using font bricks and a grid system. After each character has been created, the font can be downloaded and added to the fonts folder to be used in any word processing program or desktop presentation program.

How to integrate FontStruct into the classroom: It would be fun to come up with a class font where each student is responsible for a letter in the font. The font could be used for typing practice, or as a header for newsletters that go home each week. FontStruct is a motivating environment for students to practice forming their letters. They love knowing that they created a font of their very own. The fonts can be used for anything, I have found that my students love creating a font and using it for typing practice or as titles for projects or slide shows. If you are creating a class font, this can be done on an interactive whiteboard or on a classroom computer. If each student will be creating their own font, individual computers are needed.

Tips: FontStruct does require registration with an email address. In my class, I created a school username and password so that each student didn’t have to register for an account individually.

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