Music – Page 3 – iLearn Technology

Just Doodling: Making Math Relevant for Students

January 11, 2011Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3844 views

What it is: This has got to be one of my new favorite videos on YouTube. I ran across this video and tweeted about it a few weeks ago, but felt that it deserved a blog post. Doodling Stars (above) is a stream of conscious video about doodling in math class instead of learning about factoring. As the video unfolds, you quickly realize that she has learned all about factoring through her doodles. I would have connected in some major ways to this video when I was in school (maybe that is why I like it so much now), it would have given me that “wait that was math?” moment. Doodling Stars is a video by Vi Hart who has a blog where she has other great math videos. Her other videos include: Binary Trees, Snakes + Graphs, Infinity Elephants, and sick number games. Explore the blog a little further and you learn that ViHart is serious about her math. In addition to videos she has mathematical foods, ways to play with balloons as mathematical models, paper instruments (relating music to math), music boxes, bead work, and a variety of other math/music resources. Vi describes herself as a mathemusician, dig into her blog and you will know why!

How to integrate Doodling Videos into the classroom: Math shouldn’t be a subject confined to a textbook, seen only in terms of equations and functions. I think I was in college before I figured out that math was all around me. I had truly never made the connection to the formulas I was learning and their applications in real life. Oh sure, there were the “If you left Denver at 1:05 pm driving an average speed of 63.2 miles per hour and arrived at another point 12 hours later how many miles have you traveled?” But really? That is not real world…I have NEVER calculated any sort of trip that way, and anyway, now there is an app that will give me all of that information if I really want to know. If someone had told me that math was in my doodles, in the music I listened to, in patterns of nature? Now that is something I want to explore more. I’m sure you have students who have never made the connections between the formulas they are learning and the applications that are all around them. These videos will have them visualizing math in a whole new way. Dig a little deeper into Vi’s blog and share her math foods, balloons, and paper instruments. See if your students don’t start viewing math differently! Use Vi’s blog as inspiration for your next math lesson. Use the videos to help introduce or reinforce concepts, or have students complete balloon math models.

Tips: If you can’t access YouTube at school, use a tool like Kick YouTube or Keepvid to download the video for offline viewing.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Doodling in Math Class Videos in your classroom.

Rock Our World: Using music to collaborate and change the world

January 3, 2011Kelly Tenkely7 Comments3487 views

What it is: Rock Our World has one goal, to give students authentic global collaboration opportunities by connecting them with music. Rock Our World has been doing just that since 2004. Students and teachers collaborate in composing original music, making movies, and meeting each other in live video chats. Using GarageBand (Apple), each country creates a 30 second drum beat. Every Friday, the drum created rotates to another country, where the bass guitar is added. It gets passed from country to country with another instrument added at each stop. When it gets back to the original country, it is an original piece of music that has been created with the help of kids around the world.

While the music is being passed from country to country, students have opportunities to meet and discuss various topics of curriculum in live video chats. Incredible companies have been involved in this project including Apple, Fablevision, Discovery, American Film Institute, Smart Technologies, NASA, Visual Learning Company, Lintor Publishing, Mariner Software, actor Will Smith and more. Pretty impressive!

Applications for Rock Our World will be accepted for pre-kindergarten through university in January. You can sign up for membership by providing your email address to be alerted to the exact date you can begin applying.

How to integrate Rock Our World into the classroom: This is an incredible opportunity for your students to work and collaborate with other students around the world. Not only will your students be learning and interacting with new cultures, they will also be learning more about music. Your students will be a part of creating a unique song by adding their piece to it. At the end, each country will have a song touched by students around the world. How cool is that?!

It would be really neat at the end of the project to create an iMovie of the final song that includes the globe animation zooming into each country as their bit of the song is played and including a slideshow of students from each country.

Tips: Take a look at previous projects by clicking on the “Media” tab.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Rock Our World in your classroom.

14 Online Interactive Advent Calendars

November 30, 2010November 30, 2010Kelly Tenkely11 Comments18610 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.

Flixtime: Video slideshow creator

October 19, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3260 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!

Read Me

September 27, 2010Kelly Tenkely6 Comments3617 views

What it is: Do you want your students to become deep thinkers? Read Me is an incredible set of engaging resources that will have your students thinking deeply about who they are and how learning and thinking is vital to their life. The resources have been designed to reach 11 to 14-year-old boys, to excite them about reading in and out of the classroom. I can tell you that as a girl, I am enjoying these resources just as much, I think that would be true of girls in the 11 to 14 age range as well. Read Me (by the National Schools Partnership) has created six modules that connect with students at their interest level and teach them how to be reflective, deep thinkers and learners.

This is me- covers an understanding of autobiographical texts in traditional (diary) and modern (blog) contexts. This is me includes teachers notes and presentations that will help students to explore autobiographical texts and self-expression through blogging.

Sport & me- asks students to explore sports websites and media texts by analyzing their structure and presentation. Students take on the role of a persuasive sports person and ultimately create their own report or website.

Love 4 me- helps students explore different types of love by using texts from a variety of time periods and genres (including images, short extracts, music, lyrics) as well as in Romeo and Juliet. Students engage with a range of texts that are thematically linked by love. The culminating activity here is for students to create their own chat show and to create a collage based on love. (I’m not sure if 11-14 year old boys would be into this topic…but this one will hook the girls for sure!)

Film + me- students use film trailers and titles to develop an understanding of how meaning is created through a combination of words, images, and sounds. After students have analyzed film trailers and titles, they are asked to present a novel as a trailer.

Graphics 4 me- this one is my favorite because it comes with an awesome graphic novel tool (learn about it here) Here students explore how graphic novels work and become familiar with the medium and its complexity. Students can create their own graphic novel online using this tool.

Music in me- students explore songs, their lyrics, and the impact they have on their audience. As a result, students understand how society is presented through music and the media and stereotypes and attitudes it can help to perpetuate.

How to integrate Read Me into your curriculum: There is so much learning that will happen as a result of these six modules, but at the heart of Read Me is a goal to excite kids about reading. Read Me has incredible ideas and resources for the language arts/literature/literacy classroom. Use these resources to connect your students with story, passion, and understanding of how language is used. There is something for every kid to connect with here. Each module contains teachers notes, resources, links, and tips. This is a truly incredible resource and collection for this age group. Read Me encourages students to understand, analyze, evaluate, apply, and create.

Tips: This site includes a graphic novel creator. I am writing about it separately because it deserves its own post. You can find it here.

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

Neo K12

March 1, 2010March 1, 2010Kelly Tenkely13 Comments4776 views

What it is: Neo K12 is an outstanding online collection of educational videos, lessons and games for students in grades k-12. Neo K12 believes that “kids learn best by ‘seeing’ the real world.” They have created this site with that belief in mind. Neo K12 has cataloged the best free online educational videos from the Internet in one place. Each video is watched and reviewed by k-12 educators to ensure their accuracy and appropriateness for students. Subjects include physical science, life science, human body, earth and space, social studies, math, English (including phonics, stories, and grammar), and fun videos such as time lapse, slow motion, arts and crafts, learn magic, music lessons, and sports lessons. In addition to videos, Neo K12 has Web 2.0 tools. The School Presentation tool is a mashup of Flickr and Wikipedia, and allows users to create and share presentations online. To create a presentation, students choose pictures for their presentation from Flickr, read and article about the subject from Wikipedia, and then add text to their presentation. When the presentation is finished, it can be printed or viewed online as a slideshow. Quizzes, games, and puzzles on Neo K12 are an interactive way to improve learning. Teachers can create and share videos playlists complete with notes and instructions for their students.

How to integrate Neo K12 into the classroom: Videos provide excellent opportunities for learning, they make it possible for kids to visualize and build a model in their minds. This helps them to better understand key concepts and can stimulate curiosity in a subject. When students or teachers search a subject, they are given a list of related videos, quizzes, games, and puzzles. When a teacher creates an account, they can create a complete assignment within Neo K12 that includes instructions and notes for the students. Students can complete the assignment by watching videos, playing related games and creating a School Presentation that shows understanding. The presentations are easy enough for even young students to create. Primary students can skip reading the Wikipedia article and just choose pictures and add some captions about facts they learned from a video they viewed. These videos are a great way to introduce new learning, expand on previous learning, or to spark curiosity in a topic.

Many of the educational games and puzzles would be great for an interactive whiteboard as whole class activities. They could, of course, also be used as classroom center activities, or completed individually in the computer lab. The jigsaw puzzles can be used as teasers to introduce a new topic. The jigsaw puzzles use incredible images from Flickr. Have students take turns coming up to the interactive whiteboard to put puzzle pieces together. Students waiting at their seats can take guesses about what new learning you will be doing in class.

Tips: Create a free Neo K12 account, you will receive a dashboard where you can store videos, games, presentations, quizzes, and add notes and instructions. You get a unique URL for your dashboard to share.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Neo K12 in your classroom.

Toy Theater

March 19, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3393 views

What it is: Toy Theater is a fun place for students to practice math, reading, art, and music through puzzle type games. Toy Theater encourages students in k-4 to get their problem solving brain cells working as they explore and discover the games in Toy Theater. In the art section, students can animate their own cartoon character, put on a puppet show, or make a Matisse. In the music section, students can make music with the Composer, interact with notes with The Music Maker, or go on a pounding mission with the Drum Beats, you will have miniature maestros in no time. In Math students can practice math facts with flippy flashcards, or feeding Freddy, and take a math practice test to put those math skills to the test. In the reading section students can enjoy a good joke, play with words with a sliding crossword puzzle (highly entertaining for teachers too), write their own road sign, or practice their typing skills. In the puzzle section students brains gt put to the limit with tic tac toe and memory games. In the playset section, students can create their very own virtual diorama about cars, sea creatures, plant, insects, ships, characters, aircraft, blocks, dinosaurs, and buildings.

How to integrate Toy Theater into the classroom: Toy Theater is a great website to use as a learning center in your classroom. The short, easy to play games are perfect for short center activities. I love the puzzle type environment that encourages problem solving and bends the brain a little. The playset universe would be a great section to use with an interactive whiteboard, students could take turns creating a ‘universe’ to showcase learning on a topic such as ocean, plants, insects, dinosaurs, geometry, etc. Students can work together to show what they know together. After students create a playset, have them pull out a writing journal and journal about the playset the class created. Being a computer teacher I am constantly looking for fun ways to let students practice typing skills. In the read section you will find a game called letter fall, letter blocks fall from the sky, students have to type the letter before 5 blocks can stack up. There are multiple speeds to make the game a challenge for your different typing levels. In the computer lab setting, see who can last the longest before 5 letter blocks stack up (there is a timer at the bottom of the screen).

Tips: This is a great site to send your students to when they finish work early and are asking “what can I do now?”

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

ActivInspire

March 5, 2009Kelly Tenkely3 Comments20186 views

What it is: ActivInspire is a new software from Promethean that is free! The free edition is a ‘personal’ license that can be used by anyone. The ActivInspire software works with ANY interactive whiteboard (SMART, Mimio, Wiimote Whiteboard, eBeam, etc.) and even for those of you who do not have an interactive whiteboard, use the software with just a computer and projector! The Promethean Planet website has thousands of lessons and resources that are free to access and can be used with ActivInspire to engage your students. ActivInspire has two launch options, the first is to launch in Primary function. In Primary, ActivInspire is very user friendly for primary elementary students. The second option is to launch in Studio with tools that are perfect for older students. ActivInspire works on Windows, Mac, and Linux based machines. Some of the goodies in ActivInspire include interactive protractors, rulers, clocks, grids, and more. New power tools include intelligent shapes and handwriting recognition. There are themed templates for fast and easy lesson building. ActivInspire supports flash files that can be embeded in Flipchart lessons. ActivInspire can open SMART and PowerPoint files, making it quick and easy to pick up any lesson and improve it.

How to integrate ActivInspire into the classroom: ActivInspire is software that can keep students engaged in any lesson in your curriculum. The software is incredibly intuitive and makes it easy to create amazing interactive lessons. The lessons (flipcharts) can be saved and shared among colleagues. Begin building a library of interactive lessons for your students. Be sure to visit Promethean Planet for thousands of ready made (FREE) flipcharts and activities to use with the ActivInspire software.

Tips: To see the possiblities of the ActivInspire software, take a look at Flipcharts created by the developers of ActivInspire. Promethean also has a great set of support tutorials that will have you up and running in no time!

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

Share Tabs

January 5, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2502 views

What it is: Share Tabs is a simple, but very neat, website that allows you to share several links with one web address. Teachers can enter a list of websites they want students to visit into Share Tabs. After entering the links, you create one Share Tabs URL that will open all of the links as separate tabs in a web browser. So cool!

How to integrate Share Tabs into the classroom: Share Tabs is an awesome way to save time in the classroom when using multiple websites. Instead of waiting for kids to type in several URL’s to get to the days activities, they type in one URL and share tabs does all the work. I know in my classroom, I don’t want to spend 15 min typing in web addresses. I would rather that students have that time to spend on the web activities. Share Tabs is perfect in the computer lab setting or any time that you want students to visit multiple websites for a lesson. Use Share Tabs for virtual field trips through cyber space without spending time creating a webquest. Share Tabs also makes sharing sites with colleauges a snap. As you are finding resources for a lesson, put them into Share Tabs and send one link. Your colleagues will thank you!

Tips: Use Share Tabs on Twitter instead of updating 5 times with each separate URL you are exploring, update once with a Share Tabs link!

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

Wikipedia School

December 11, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment13438 views

What it is: Wikipedia is often the first place students head when faced with a research project. While Wikipedia can be an excellent resource, content can be vandalized and is not always student appropriate. Wikipedia School is a free, hand checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia. It has about 5500 articles and is the volume of a twenty volume encyclopedia. It will fit on a DVD and can be downloaded for free thanks to the SOS Children’s Villages website. Topics were chosen that would be of interest to students and in accordance with the UK National Curriculum (but are appropriate for any English speaking country).

How to integrate Wikipedia School into the classroom: Wikipedia School is a nice alternative to using the Wikipedia website in a school environment. The ability to download Wikipedia School to DVD means that it can be used on computers that don’t have Internet access. Students can search freely and you will have the peace of mind knowing that with Wikipedia School, students won’t stumble on inappropriate content. Subjects for search include: art, business studies, citizenship, countries, design and technology, every day life, geography, history, information technology, language and literature, mathematics, music, people, portals, religion, and science. There is an outstanding selection of articles and pictures for each subject!

Tips: Wikipedia School can be accessed online or offline when downloaded.

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