Happy Friday everyone! In case you missed it, here is what I was up to this week outside of iLearn Technology. Have a perfectly wonderful weekend 🙂
Redefining Cheating– this post created a lot of discussion and controversy this week on my Dreams of Education Blog.
Why I Love Worksheets– this was a follow-up post I wrote to the Redefining Cheating post on Dreams of Education.
Flipboard– a review of how to use the Flipboard app in the classroom on my iPad Curriculum blog.
ARIS– a review of an Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling application…probably the best application I have seen for education to date! Check out the review on my iPad Curriculum blog.
This week I created an Edublogger Alliance social network. Join us if you are a blogging educator!
On Blogging– a blog post I wrote on the Edublogger Alliance social network about blogging.
Still no word on funding for my iPad project. I would still appreciate your votes in the Kohls Cares $500,000 give away. Click this link and vote for Cherry Hills Christian.
Thank you all for your comments, tweets, retweets, and support this week!
What it is: I don’t know about you, but printers can be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, if you have one, your students are able to print out their work and finished projects; on the other, printers also make for a lot of wasted pages and ink when students (or teachers) are printing from the Internet. Print What You Like solves this problem by letting you format any web page for printing. No more pages of ads, empty space, and the extras that you didn’t want. Print What You Like works in three easy steps: 1. Go to Print What You Like and paste the URL of the page you want to print, 2. Edit the page, 3. Print it! Very easy and a great way to cut down on paper waste! I like that there is nothing to download with Print What You Like, it runs directly from your browser. You can make the page you are printing more readable by changing font size and typeface and removing the background. Print What You Like gives you the ability to combine multiple web pages by editing them and printing them as one document. You can even save your modified page as a PDF or HTML document…so cool! If you sign up for the service, you can even save the changes you make to a page so that other pages from the same site are automatically formatted the same (I’m thinking this would be great for recipe sites!).
How to integrate Print What You Like into your curriculum: Introduce students and other teachers to Print What You Like for printing web pages. Post instructions for using Print What You Like next to classroom computers, printers, and in the computer lab (I have attached the instructions card that I created for Print What You Like below. Feel free to print it out and use it in your classroom or computer lab). Make it even easier to use Print What You Like and add it to the bookmark bar in your favorite browser or add the bookmarklet editor directly to your browser.
Tips: If you have a website that students are constantly printing from, consider adding a printer friendly button that creates a printer friendly version of your website with the click of a button.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Print What You Like in your classroom!
What it is:Kidopo is an online coloring application where kids can color online coloring books. The application simulates a real coloring experience (in other words you can color outside the lines and the more you color over a spot, the darker it gets.). There are a lot of coloring pages to choose from with categories like animals, cars and transportation, cartoons, food, toys, holidays, learning, circus, sports, music, nature, occupation, seasons, and more. Kidopo has fun printables for the classroom including coloring sheets, bookmarks, birthday printables, awards and certificates, mazes, writing paper, connect the dots, room decorations, and stickers. You will find a collection of flash games for kids including brain games, card/board games, math games, memory games, puzzle games, science games, and word games. In the craft section of the website are videos that walk students step by step through a craft.
How to integrate Kidopo into your curriculum: The online coloring book on Kidopo is a great way to help primary students practice mouse manipulation. I like that you can color inside or outside of the lines just like in a real coloring book. If you are in a computer lab setting, the Kidopo coloring book is a fun way for students to practice, and a good way for you to gauge where their fine motor skills are.
The printables on Kidopo are perfect for the classroom. Bookmarks are always fun classroom give aways and the awards and certificates are a good way to recognize your students.
The learning games on Kidopo make a good practice center activity on classroom computers. My favorite are the math games that help students with fact recall through fun arcade-type games. In the word games, you will find a fun game called Word Frenzy that will give your students a place to practice typing. Check out the games, some are better than others but they are definitely worth a look!
Tips: One of the downfalls of Kidopo are the advertisements in the sidebar and introducing the games. I use websites with this type of advertising to teach my students about how to spot ads and discuss with them why ads are placed on websites.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Kidopo in your classroom!
What it is:Critical Past is a website I learned about today from Tom Boito’s great blog EDge 21 in his Catch of the Day. The resource is too good not to share again here! Critical Past is a collection of more than 57,000 historical videos and more than 7 million historical photos. All of the photos and videos are royalty free, archival stock footage. Most of the footage comes from U.S. Government Agency sources. All of the videos and photos can be viewed for free online and shared with others via url, Twitter, or Facebook. The videos and photos are also available to purchase for download.
How to integrate Critical Past into your curriculum:Critical Past is an incredible collection of historical videos and pictures. The site is easy to search either by decade and topic or keyword. The clips and photos on Critical Past will bring historical events alive for your students. Use photos or videos on Critical Past to help illustrate what students are learning in history. Ask students to be “eyewitnesses” of history and watch a video before they have context for it. Students can write or blog about what they think they are witnessing, afterward they can research the event more in-depth and write a follow-up reflection on what was actually happening in the clip.
Tips: Along the right side bar of Critical Past, you will find “related videos.” Students can watch a clip and the related videos and reflect on how the clips are related. Sometimes it is a similar time period, sometimes a related event, other times it is a related location.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Critical Past in your classroom!
In the last year I started two edubloggers alliances (you can learn about them here and here).  I have had wonderful teachers from around the world join me on this journey of blogging, commenting, and supporting fellow educational bloggers. As it stands, there are nearly 200 educators who have committed to reading, commenting, and encouraging other bloggers. I am still truly amazed at the results of this “crazy” idea I had.  Many have asked me when I am going to start another alliance or when I will open it up for more to join. My answer, I have NO idea. You see, when I started the edublogger alliance, I committed to commenting on each and every post that members of the alliance posted. I did really well with this until the end of the school year hit. I am still commenting, but I can’t seem to get through the 400+ edublogger posts in my Google Reader. It made me re-think the reason I started the alliance in the first place.
My initial goal was to encourage others in their blogging. It can be hard for those new to blogging to break into the “club” and stick with it long enough to gain readers. My thought was, if we could encourage each other from the beginning of the blogging journey, more would stick with it. The problem? There are teachers who are new to blogging every day! I can’t keep up with it on my own and yet I still have a desire to help those who are new to blogging. My solution? Create an edublogger alliance social network on Wack Wall. I know what some of you are thinking: “is she out of her mind? I already belong to 15 social networks, subscribe to countless numbers of blogs, follow people on Twitter, how in the world am I going to keep track of one more thing?!” This isn’t my intent. For those of you who feel overwhelmed by the prospect of joining ANOTHER social network, don’t. It won’t hurt my feelings. I get it…I feel the same way every time a new social network pops up. It is too much, I can’t keep track of it all. But, I also know that there are thousands of educators out there who would like to try their hand at blogging but need a support system. You need someone to encourage you, answer your newbie (or not so newbie) blog questions, help you figure out how to blog with your students, help you navigate the blogging platform choices, etc.  You need a place to be plugged in with others who are working through all of this themselves. Don’t misunderstand, the Edublogger Alliance is for everyone; of course I would love to have all of you join! I just don’t want you to feel an obligation to sign up for one more thing if you are already overwhelmed.
Let me be clear, I am by NO means an expert of any sort on blogging, I just know that I wish that I had someone to guide me in my blogging journey. I wish I had someone to ask questions, and sort through WordPress and blogging etiquette with.  My hope is that this will be a place where blogging educators can come together, share what is working and what isn’t, ask questions, and get answers. I want it to be a place where those who have been blogging for a little while can help those who are just dipping their toes in. I want it to be a place of discussion and encouragement.
If this social network isn’t for you, if you are already stretched in a million directions, that is fine…I truly do understand.  I will ask you to keep your ears open and offer it as a suggestion for those new to blogging, or those looking for a place to connect with other educators.
Below are a few screen shots of the new iLearn Technology Edublogger Alliance with some explanations about how it works and what you can expect to find there.
The dashboard is your On the blog tab you can write, share, or read a blog post.Add the link to your blog on the link tab.Join a group to find others using your same blog platform, or to share blogging tips, tricks, and ideas.Start or add to a discussion on the forum page.
If you are interested in joining me on this journey, you can sign up here. Don’t forget to pass this on to all those teachers who are deciding to try blogging for the first time this year. They are going to need help!
What it is: Sharendipity is an excellent online tool that lets you easily create your own learning and educational game. You can do this by using one of the Sharendipity ready-made templates, or you can create a game from scratch. There just isn’t always a quality game for students to practice with when you need one. I know I have found myself wishing that I could find a game focusing on the exact phonic skill or a game that used the vocabulary that we were working on in class. Often those tailor-made games just don’t exist. Sharendipity is the answer, making it simple to create your own custom games. Games are a fun way for students to practice a new skill and they make a great quick center activity on classroom computers.
How to integrate Sharendipity into your curriculum: Create games that are tailored to your students learning needs. Sharendipity makes it easy enough to create fun games, you can create one in the time it would take you to make copies of worksheets.  Use one of the ready-made templates for the easiest game creation, or if you are feeling brave, start from scratch and make your own. You can upload all of your own images to Sharendipity making customization really easy. Consider using pictures of your class, school, or students as the background of a game. Your students are sure to love seeing familiar faces or landmarks as part of the game. These games are great for fact practice and recall in math, vocabulary, spelling, phonics, or geography where quick recall of the basics is key. Sharendipity will walk you through each step of the game making process and when you are finished, you can share the url or embed the game in a class website. If your students are a little older, they can make their own Sharendipity games to practice with. Students can create games for their classmates to play as a way to study. I have students who were constantly creating games and practice activities for my classroom; they got really good at it! If you are teaching in a computer lab, Sharendipity is a fun way for students to create “original” content for their wiki, blog, or website. At my school, we buddy up older grade level students with younger grade level students. It was fun for the older kids to create special games for their buddies after learning about their buddies favorite things. For example, one student found out that their buddy loved basketball and created a basketball themed spelling activity for them.
If you collaborate with another class or another school, it would be neat to swap customized games with them.
Tips: If you are braving creating your own game, be sure to check out Sherendipity’s learning center for a great guide on how to use the tools.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Sharendipity in your classroom!
What it is: DragON Tape is a web application that lets you create video “mix tapes” (mashups) of YouTube Videos. DragoON Tape is really simple to use, just search for a video by YouTube URL or subject and drag it down to the timeline. Add as many videos to the timeline as you want and save it. DragON Tape makes it easy to give your students access to several videos with just one url.
How to integrate DragON Tape into your curriculum:DragON Tape is a simple way for you to create a mix of videos for your students to watch, collected under one url. DragON Tape is very easy to use and share, you can create a video mashup in no time. This is a great way to send video collections to students and colleagues. If you have access to YouTube at school, students could create their own DragON Tape mixes on any subject. Students can mix the best of the best videos on a subject to share with classmates. This year, I had my students make video commercials advertising Free Rice that we uploaded to YouTube. DragON Tape would be a fantastic way to collect all of the student videos in one url so that students and parents could watch the student creations in one place. DragON Tape is easy to fast forward and rewind through making it perfect for this type of class video collection. Want to see DragON Tape in action? Check out this phonics mix I made in under 2 min! Another thing that I like about DragON Tape is the way that it isolates YouTube videos against a black screen when it replays them. There are no distracting comments, advertisements, or related videos suggested. DragON is perfect for the projector-connected computer, interactive whiteboard, or on computer lab or classroom computers as part of a guided learning activity.
Tips:DragON Tape requires an email for registration. If students are creating mixes, consider creating and using a class email address as the login credentials or used a @tempinbox or @mailinator temporary inbox address.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using DragON Tape in your classroom!
I wrote a post today over at my other blog, Dreams of Education, about cheating. I’m not sure that we define cheating appropriately in education. Here are my thoughts about it: Redefining Cheating
I am not a fan of canned curriculum. It has some benefits and is relatively easy to teach, but there is a lack of differentiation for different learners and the activities for practice are often shallow. Treasures has some fun stories and themes but they are really lacking in their activities to practice the essential learning. The activities are often shallow and don’t change from first grade to fifth grade. The same copy from the dictionary activity is suggested for learning vocabulary for every unit in every grade level. I created the Treasures supplement as a way to help teachers provide students with multiple ways of practicing the essential learnings. I just finished the supplement for unit 1. This is the supplement for first through fifth grade.
What it is: Storybook Web is “based on popular children’s stories by authors Scoular Anderson, Debi Gliori, Mairi Hedderwick and Frank Rodgers.” There are a number of fun activities on this site including the ability to listen to the author’s reading excerpts from their stories and answering questions about how they came up with ideas for writing. Students can choose from one of eight stories, each story has a related game, word bank activity, and videos/audio for reading the story and interacting with the author.
How to integrate Storybook Web into your curriculum:Storybook Web is a fun way for students to interact with stories, making connections to the authors of the stories and the themes that they are reading about. This site helps students think like an author. It gives them an inside look at how authors think about writing. Use this site as an introduction to a writing activity. Students can watch the author videos and get an inside look at the process that a writer goes through. This can be done using a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Storybook Web would also make a nice addition to a writing center on classroom computers. When I taught second grade, I set up an “editing and publishing” center on my classroom computers. Here I gave students access to an online dictionary, thesaurus, word processor/publishing program, and Read Write Think. Storybook Web would be an excellent addition to a writing center. Students can go to be inspired, encouraged in the writing process, and given a place to practice their own writing. I like the word bank on Storybook Web, word choice is hard for beginning writers. By interacting with the word bank activity on Storybook Web, students will begin to think about their own word choice. You may want students to go through their own writing and pick out words that they would add to their word bank. I have found that activities like this make students think about the words they are using. Often, students will self-edit and find richer vocabulary to use in their writing.
Tips: This is an easy website for emergent readers and writers to navigate. Students can choose to have the site narrated for them or they can turn the audio off and read on their own.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Storybook Web in your classroom!
