Category: Middle/High School

Crayon Physics

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Crayon Physics2553 views

What it is: Crayon Physics is a freeware puzzle game. The object of the game is to guide a ball to a star. Students do not have direct control of the ball, but interact with it by drawing shapes with the mouse to get the ball to roll from one platform to another. Any object that students draw reacts as it would if it were subject to gravity. There are some great physics lessons to be taught with this game! Crayon Physics is a Windows only download right now…(I know, bummer for those of us who are Mac users! Not to worry, I have found a Mac version that I will be posting tomorrow.)

How to integrate Crayon Physics into the classroom: Allow students to interact with Crayon Physics to learn about principles of gravity, energy, force, velocity, etc. The game is very entertaining and even mildly addictive. Your students will love learning physics with Crayon Physics. It will bring your class and all those formulas to life for your students.

Tips: Take a look at the video above for a good look at Crayon Physics in action.

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

iCue

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on iCue1720 views


What it is: iCue is NBC’s newest venture into the realm of education. The sites aim is to create a collaborative 2.0 learning community that “incorporates gaming, discussion, and video resources in a safe, student-friendly online environment.” This is an excellent resource for getting your students interested in the world they live in through relevant news, videos, and a place to discuss them. The iCue video player is very robust and has the ability to take notes, leave comments, and create links for the video. The “Cue cards” can be saved in a student area for future reference. This site is a truly inventive way to teach with current events!

How to integrate iCue into the classroom: iCue is a great way to keep your students interested and engaged with current events. The site will be excellent to use on a daily basis during this election year. Students can watch videos, start discussions and debates based on current events. This site has great potential for really making students use critical thinking and higher order thinking skills. The related games are entertaining and will help reinforce what students are learning.

Tips: This site will eat up bandwidth. Make sure that your network can handle it before assigning the whole class to be on iCue at once! Learn more about what NBC is offering for the classroom at www.hotchalk.com.

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

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Moneyopolis

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Moneyopolis17552 views


What it is: Moneyopolis is an awesome game for teaching kids money and math! Each math question in the game is correlated to specific standards for grades 6-8 (although I think the site can be used with 5th grade students very successfully as well). The Moneyopolis game tracks students progress via their “scorecard” for the game. There are some great additional site tools which include a budget gadget that helps students set financial goals complete with an online worksheet to help students keep track of spending habits, a library with articles and links to other sites focused on math and money, a glossary for students to look up unfamiliar words and phrases, and a calculator to help students calculate math problems.

How to integrate Moneyopolis into the classroom: Moneyopolis is the perfect way for teaching math and money skills in a way that will catch and hold your students attention. Students can go through the game during class at their own pace, play in groups to compete against one another during class, or as an extra-credit activity that can be completed outside of class. Students can go through the game section by section based on what lessons you are teaching, or all at once at the end of a unit. Since the game keeps track of each students progress, they will be able to exit the game and come back to work where they left off.

Tips: Work through this game in student mode before introducing to students…you will be entertained! The teacher section of this site has some great lesson plans to use with Moneyopolis. I learned about the site on Larry Ferlazzo’s blog and I have to say, it is a winner!

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

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Guest Post: Kid Vid

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Guest Post: Kid Vid2971 views

Kids’ Vid: Classroom Video Production

Creating videos in a classroom setting can be an exciting way to encourage children to learn and create. However, this form of technology can be intimidating to newcomers. Both teachers and students can learn how to create, edit and share videos with Kids’ Vid.

Although there are many video resources on the Web, few are available that cater to those in a K-12 environment. Video hosting sites are often a source of objectionable material and corporate software sites are often too technical for laypersons. Kids’ Vid, however, is created specifically with teachers and young students in mind.

The video tutorials on this site are offered in four stages:

1. Scripting – The Scripting area of Kids’ Vid offers advanced storyboarding tools and tips for writing a classroom-friendly screenplay.
2. Making – The Making section covers all aspects of capturing the video, from operating the camera to lighting the video shoot.
3. Editing – The Editing area offers tips on pulling all the elements together and adding special effects.
4. Showtime – The Showtime section explains the various ways to share a video once it is edited, which includes CD-Rom, DVD and broadcasting on the Web.

Both teachers and students can benefit from the four areas above, which explain detailed techniques in an easy-to-grasp format. There is also a special area for educators that offers tips on how to integrate video production with a curriculum. Furthermore, children will enjoy the Kid Advice section, where they will learn helpful hints from their peers.

Young adults are more acclimated to video technology than ever before. Indeed, this is the “YouTube generation” and many children are very curious about how to make their own videos. Not only can you appeal to your students in a cutting-edge fashion with Kids’ Vid, you will find this medium to be very conducive with education in general.

Heather Johnson is a regular commentator on the subject of top online university. She welcomes your feedback and potential job inquiries at heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

Read the Words

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Read the Words2635 views


What it is: Read the Words is a free website that offers an audio player that will read anything you want. The Reader on the audio player can be listened to online, downloaded to a mp3 player, broadcasted as a podcast, or posted on a website or blog. The first step to creating your reader is selecting what you want read, this can be uploaded from a PDF, MS Word, HTML file, or input manually, cut and pasted, through RSS or URL. Step 2 is selecting a reader for your purposes, there are 14 readers to choose from. The readers speak English, Spanish, and French. Each reader has unique voices and some have accents. You can control the reader’s speed and pitch. Best of all it takes approximately one minute to generate an hour long recording.

How to integrate Read the Words into the classroom: Read the Words would be an excellent way to guide a webquest for students, create a reader to steer students through each activity in the webquest. If you have mp3 players available for checkout, create a reader for guided reading. These can be used in class during silent reading time or checked out for home use so that the student learning day can be extended. The readers would be excellent for history or science reading where vocabulary can be challenging. Read the Words is perfect for your auditory learners and because you can have text that is already in your lesson read, the differentiation for these students is short and sweet. Read the Words would also be great for English language learners or for English speakers learning Spanish or French.

Tips:
Take some time initially to listen to each of the readers. Choose the one that is easiest for your students to understand and best fits your purposes.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Read the Words in your classroom.

Zoho Challenge

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Zoho Challenge1978 views


What it is: Zoho may look familiar to you if you have been with me for a while. Zoho has a great online suite of office productivity tools such as spreadsheets, word documents, and online presentations. If you haven’t ever tried out the Zoho tools, they are definitely worth a look! Zoho has a new fabulous tool for teachers, called Zoho Challenge. Zoho Challenge allows teachers to easily conduct tests online in 4 simple steps. Zoho Challenge allows for multiple choice questions and descriptive questions. Results are displayed immediately for you and your students (although this setting can be altered to fit your needs.) Time limits can be specified, difficulty levels calculated automatically, and online access to students details. Zoho Challenge also has the ability to send emails to your students with their scores. Zoho makes it simple to create multiple exams, add candidates, schedule tests for future dates, look at student performance, find out who passed the test in a quick glance, view a “report card”, and view a graphical representation of overall results.

How to integrate Zoho Challenge into the classroom: Zoho Challenge can be used for any classroom testing. It makes it extremely easy for you to grade tests and see the results graphically. Zoho Challenge will save you time and quickly show you who understood the tested material and who needs more practice. Zoho Challenge is best used in a computer lab or mobile lab setting.

Tips: Test results can be sent home to parents via email…cool!

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

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Bloust

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Bloust2668 views


What it is: Bloust is a free website builder for teachers. It is extremely simple to use and allows teachers to easily broadcast important class information, communicate and collaborate web 2.0 style with other teachers within the Bloust community, organize classroom documents, and much more! Bloust also offers a place for students to organize their school life, network with their school friends on Bloust’s private student community, and develop and join clubs.

How to integrate Bloust into the classroom: No matter what age level you teach, having a classroom website can greatly improve school to home communication and extend the student learning day. Bloust makes it very simple to create and maintain a website…truly! Even those who have never created a website before will be able to quickly create and update their site. Try it out, I think you will be impressed! When you have your website ready to go, think about adding content such as: the weekly spelling list, homework assignments, important upcoming dates, links to great sites that correlate with your curriculum, make the site dynamic, a place your students will want to come back to!

Tips: When signing up be sure to check your Spam email folder for the registration email.

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


Wiimote Whiteboard in action

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on Wiimote Whiteboard in action2541 views

So here it is…I finally got a few quiet min to get a video made. It isn’t the greatest but hopefully it will show you just how great the Wiimote Whiteboard is. My students are going nuts for it. As soon as they walk into my classroom I hear “Sweet a Wii, are we using a Wii today?” It immediately hooks them, not sure how long that benefit will be there but for this week I am loving it!

Kindle Lab

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Kindle Lab2949 views

What it is: Carrying on with the interactive whiteboard awesomeness, here is free interactive whiteboard software for your Wiimote Whiteboard. If you have a Mimio, e-beam, Smartboard, Active Board, or Promethean, this software will also work with them! Kindle Lab will run on both PC and Mac. Now, I could give you a long explanation of everything that Kindle Lab can do but I am of the mindset that a picture (or in this case video) is worth a thousand words and can do a much better job of it than I can….

 

 

How to integrate Kindle Lab into your curriculum: Kindle Lab is meant to be used to enhance all of your existing curriculum. No matter what subject you are teaching Kindle Lab, along with your Interactive Whiteboard, can bring the lesson to life for your students. The range and scope of what Kindle Lab can do for your classroom is so broad and all encompassing that for me to give you some ideas here would really be silly. Download Kindle Lab, the PDF of the Kindle Lab tools and start exploring. I promise it will be pretty apparent to you how seamlessly this could be used for any subject at any level. So cool!

Tips: At the end of the video clip above, you may have noticed another tool which is called Eduism. This is a 3-D interactive environment that was created for the classroom. It is also a free to use open source project that is meant to be used with the Interactive Whiteboards. Be sure to check it out!

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

Bookcasting

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Bookcasting5148 views


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What it is: Bookcasting is actually a term I made up. It is essentially a podcast about a book. My third grade students just finished their first round of Bookcast recordings that we uploaded to a Wetpaint Wiki. A Bookcast is a movie trailer-like review of a book that students create and share with one another. My students used GarageBand to record their podcasts (you could also use a free tool like Audacity) and add sound effects, then they published the Bookcast on our class G-cast account, and finally embedded the media player onto our WetPaint wiki.

How to integrate Bookcasting into your curriculum: Bookcasting is a fun alternative to the standard book report. It allows kids to be creative and gives them a great sense of audience. Bookcasting also has the added benefit of acting as a book review for other students to listen to. Bookcasting makes story retell a lot of fun! My plan is to have a link to our WetPaint wiki in the library so that students can listen to a peer review of a book before they check it out.

Tips: I had all of my students create a Bookcast on the same book before reviewing on their own. This gave them an easy starting place but still provided room for creativity. Click on the Easy Reader link on our wiki to hear the Bookcasts the students created.

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