For Teachers – Page 37 – iLearn Technology

Word Girl Definition Competition: Live vocabulary game show!

March 17, 2011March 17, 2011Kelly Tenkely4 Comments4139 views

What it is: Mark your calendars now for the Word Girl Definition Competition on April 27, 2011; this is a live vocabulary event being hosted by Scholastic and is free to participate in! You must register by April 22 to recieve your webcast event kit, participate in the definition competition, and be entered for a chance to win books and Word Girl prizes. The Word Girl Definition Competition is a fun way to engage students with vocabulary words in a fun, interactive context. The competition includes a 30 minute live webcast where students will enrich their vocabulary and have fun. This will also be the kick off to the Scholastic summer challenge to get students excited about books and reading throughout the summer.

The competition is made up of 3 rounds plus a bonus round. The competition will be in game-show format, students will be challenged to work those vocabulary skills as they answer questions pertaining to word usage, definitions, using words in different contexts, and reading comprehension. Your students will play along with the game in real time by submitting answers online during the webcast and may be called out during the event. This event will help your students understand the meaning of words, use context clues for correct word usage, leverage visuals to define words, draw on existing vocabulary knowledge, and present vocabulary words in varied and interesting ways. Fun right?!

How to integrate Word Girl Definition Competition into the classroom: This one is a no brainer, if you teach elementary students this is an event that your class should participate in. Word Girl making vocabulary fun as it is, combine that with a fun LIVE game show format and you have got yourself a winner. This would be a great event to involve your students in and will have them flexing those vocabulary muscles. I love that this competition isn’t just focused on definitions but on helping students learn strategies for decoding words using visualization strategies and context clues…those are skills that can be easily transferred! Sign up your students today to participate in this fun, friendly competition!

Prior to the competition, build up some excitement and squeeze in some extra vocabulary practice by giving your students the opportunity to play on the Word Girl website. This could be done as a center in the classroom or in a one to one environment.

Tips: If you aren’t familiar with the Word Girl website, be sure to check it out here.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Word Girl in your classroom!

On Demand Learning: Classroom Optional (Khan Academy and Academic Earth)

March 16, 2011Kelly Tenkely9 Comments3271 views

What it is: Tonight I was talking education with a fun group that is helping me think through my school design. As we were talking one of the participants mentioned Khan Academy…some of the teachers in attendance had never heard of it. I sometimes forget that not everything is common knowledge and even if it is common knowledge to most, there are still those who can benefit from the mention! Khan Academy was started by Salman Khan quite by accident. He tutored his cousins in math and when he moved away from them, they still requested support. Sal began making algebra videos and uploading them to YouTube for his family, it has grown to over 2,100 videos and 100 self-paced math, science, and history exercises for students. The library is extensive and comprehensive including algebra, arithmetic, banking and money, biology, brain teasers, calculus, California standards algebra, geometry, chemistry, cosmology and astronomy, credit crisis, current economics, developmental math, differential equations, finance, history, linear algebra, organic chemistry, Paulson bailout, physics, pre-algebra, pre-calculus, probability, statistics, trigonometry, valuation and investing, venture capital, and capital markets. It is a pretty impressive collection! I really like these videos because they provide students with on-demand learning and present the learning in a way that appeals to the visual and auditory learner. The experience is so much richer than a textbook can offer. It is like having your own personal tutor.

Academic Earth is another extensive video library that lets students (and adults) take video courses from the worlds top scholars all in one place…for free! The mission of Academic Earth is to give everyone access to a world class education. Subjects covered by Academic Earth include art, architecture, astronomy, biology, business, chemistry, computer science, economics, education, electrical engineering, engineering, entrepreneurship, environmental studies, history, international relations, law, literature, mathematics, media studies, medicine and health care, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, religious studies, test prep, and writing. Students have access to the learning happening at Berkley, Columbia, Harvard, Khan Academy, Maryland, Michigan, MIT, Norwich, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, UNSW, USC, and Yale. Did I mention all of that learning is free? I know, amazing!

How to integrate Khan Academy and Academic Earth into the classroom: Both Khan Academy and Academic Earth provide students with opportunities for on-demand learning in their areas of interest or their areas of weakness. Students can use these resources to support the learning happening in the classroom and to fill any gaps that students may have in their learning. Video is a powerful medium because it appeals to a wide range of learners and makes it easy to pause, rewind, review, and share that learning.

Khan Academy would be a great tool to use for the “Fisch Flip” where the homework is to watch the lesson on video and class time is spent on working through the problems together. Let that sink in…makes more sense doesn’t it? Students get support where they need it most, in the follow through and practice of the learning.

Academic Earth provides students with the opportunity of pursuing their passions, getting a feel for what type of study they would like to pursue in a university, and support learning.

Do you have students that could use additional challenge and are constantly searching for more learning? Set up an extended learning center in your classroom where students who need that challenge can self direct and extend their learning by using Khan Academy or Academic Earth.

Tips: Khan Academy is a great resource to pass on to families, parents are often looking for ways to supplement and support the learning happening in the classroom. Math in particular is a challenge as many parents did not feel successful enough in higher math themselves to help their children.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Khan Academy and Academic Earth in your classroom!

Fakebook and Twister- Create custom social media pages for learning

March 14, 2011Kelly Tenkely8 Comments9830 views

What it is: I don’t know if you all noticed, but I have been on a serious social media kick lately. 🙂 There is just SO much for students to learn from the social media sphere. Last week (or was it the week before?) I shared that I had created a Facebook Template that could be used with students for creating a fake Facebook profile. Since then I have come across Fakebook created by teacher, @russeltarr. I have one word: Brilliant. Seriously this is the BEST Fakebook tool I have seen. It is simple to use. Just click and type. The profile pictures get pulled automatically based on the name that students type in. Especially good for literary and historical characters! The focus here really is on the learning that it enables, there are NO advertisements (unlike Myfakewall which I have deemed unusable because of all of the ads).

The other fake social networking tool I want to feature is called Twister. This is a fake Twitter wall that students can create just by filling in a few key bits of information like a username, the real name (this is what the photo pulls from), a status update, and a date. When students click submit, they have their very own fictional status update. Very cool!

These tools are fantastic for the classroom because they don’t rely on actual social network sites (which are often blocked by filters), they are not limited by age to use them, and they provide a fun way for students to reflect on learning. So neat!

How to integrate Fakebook and Twister into the classroom: These two teacher created tools are fantastic. They produce results that look like the real deal and were obviously created by teachers who understand that the focus should be learning and not the tool (or advertisements surrounding the tool). These fake profile/status creators are a wonderful way for students to learn about historical and literary figures in a manner that they can personally connect to. Students can create profiles or updates from the perspective of historical figures, literary characters, government, artists, composers, etc. Students can also use these tools to help them develop characters for their own writing.

Take a page out of the Grammaropolis book and have students personify things they are learning about like parts of speech. Students can create a profile for each part of speech. How about creating a profile page for math functions like Number Gossip does? Students could even practice dialogue in a foreign language using either tool.

Teaching your students netiquette? Let students create two versions of a Fakebook page, one with appropriate online interaction and another that “breaks the rules” to compare/contrast.

The Twister site only lets you create one status update at a time. This makes it really nice for memorializing famous or favorite quotes. These would be fun to print out and display on a bulletin board.

Tips: Students can save or print out their Fakebook page. To save, they will create a password and need to write down the unique URL for their page to access it at a later date.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Fakebook and Twister in your classroom!

Friday Recap

March 11, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments1984 views

Wow, I don’t know about you but it has been a week (and I mean that in the best way possible!) I missed posting yesterday because I just have SO much going on…I’ll have to make up for it next week 🙂

When I wasn’t blogging here, I was:

Creating a time line for starting a school in fall 2011. I am working toward starting my own school. Funding will determine if we open in 2011 or 2012, in the mean time there are exciting things happening! We will find out early next week if we have a space for the school (an important detail!).
Working on the Learning Genome
Working with a school on a social media plan.
Attending a Charlotte Mason internship, my reflections are in this post: Education is Life: A call for more fabulous failures

I hope that your week was filled with learning, fabulous failures, and passion. Happy weekend!

Twitter in the Classroom and Twitter Posters

March 9, 2011Kelly Tenkely32 Comments19064 views

I think it is fabulous when schools decide to intentionally use social media as part of the learning day. I am working with a school right now that has hired me to help them do just that.

A little background before I tell you how we are doing it: This is a kindergarten through eighth grade private school. There are three classes at every grade level up to fifth grade. Sixth through eighth grade looks like your typical middle school with a variety of subjects and teachers. Every classroom has a Promethean interactive whiteboard connected to a Mac Mini as well as two additional Mac Mini’s for students to use and a teacher MacBook. Full disclosure, this is the school that I taught technology at for 7 years so they know what they are getting when they pull me in on a project like this! When I was at the school, I used Twitter myself and created a school Twitter account and a school Facebook fan page. I used think.com with my students to teach and model proper use of social media tools. In September, the superintendent and communications manager for the school called me in to find out how social media could be used to tell others about the school. They wanted to build up the school community and tell the wider community about what makes the school special using social media tools. I worked to help them understand that social media does not make a good broadcasting platform. What makes Twitter and Facebook work are the connections it enables and the stories it allows to unfold. My recommendation to them was to bring the students in on telling that story, they have the most authentic voice, and a unique perspective within the school. Because we are working with kindergarten through eighth grade students, creating student accounts was not an option, the majority of students at CHC are under 13 years of age. My work around: create classroom accounts.

I created a classroom account for every staff member in the school, all 58 of them! Next I connected each classroom Twitter account with a classroom fan page on Facebook. I set up the Facebook fan pages so that commenting, photo, and video are turned off (this will be the case until teachers are comfortable enough and want to interact in both spaces). The idea here is that parents who use Twitter and the wider education and local community will follow the classroom and school Twitter accounts. Parents who are not on Twitter but have Facebook accounts won’t miss out on any updates because the Twitter account is feeding into the page.

Teachers will be using the classroom Twitter accounts with students to post updates throughout the day. Posting will be done as a class using the Mac Mini connected to the Promethean board. Classes will be using Twitter to reflect on learning, as a class they will share, reflect, engage, inquire, and report. This doubles nicely as a form of informal formative assessment. Classes will also use the Twitter accounts to connect with other classrooms and experts. Students will not be permitted to post to the accounts without teacher permission because of the Twitter age limit. I wanted students to be involved in the tweeting not only for the learning opportunities, but also for the opportunity for teachers to model proper use of social media.

The main school Twitter account will be used to retweet (RT) posts from the individual classrooms to the larger community, pass along school-wide messages and information, and as a point-point-of-contact for customer service. Administration and school leaders will be tweeting their unique perspectives about what is happening in the school. Together, CHC will be writing it’s stories of learning 140 characters at a time.

Participation by teachers is optional. I presented the idea to the teaching staff at their last staff meeting using this Prezi. I invited interested teachers to a Tweetup in a few weeks where we will meet up and learn about using Twitter. I really pushed to make this optional for teachers, I didn’t want it to feel like one more thing for them to fit into their schedule. 85% of the staff signed up for the tweetup! I am training teachers off site at a local coffee shop where it won’t feel so much like a typical tech training (hence the tweetup) :). I’ll fill you in on all the details of that tweetup training in a few weeks.

In the mean time, I have been creating posters for the classroom. The school asked me to create rules for teachers to follow and rules for students to follow when using social media. I also created posters with ideas for using Twitter in the classroom, authors using Twitter, a web of ed chats and hashtags on Twitter, and Twitter Lingo (Twingo). I’m sharing these posters below, you can check out the original version that I made for CHC (branding and school hashtags included) and a version for any of you who are interested. Feel free to download and print the 11×17 posters for your classroom.

IDroo: Online educational multi user whiteboard

March 7, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments4776 views

What it is: IDroo is an educational multi user whiteboard that lets students instantly collaborate online. Everything that is drawn or written on the whiteboard is visible to all participants in real-time. IDroo supports an unlimited number of meeting participants, the only limitations are computer power and internet connection speed. There is a professional math typing tool built-in making it easy to teach or work through math problems collaboratively. Best of all, IDroo can be used with Skype! IDroo is free for non-commercial use. Now for the downfall (and this is a HUGE downfall in my humble opinion), IDroo is currently only available for Windows. I know, disappointment for us Mac lovers. *sigh* If you are using a Windows computer this is a great way to collaborate online!

How to integrate IDroo into the classroom: IDroo would be a great app for collaborating with other classrooms around the world. Students can use the multi user whiteboard space to work together, share ideas, and brainstorm. IDroo would also be fantastic as a way for teachers to tutor students virtually. Set up an “open lab” time once a week online where students can drop in and get extra help. Virtual lab times are especially helpful for elementary students who can’t dictate their own schedules and often can’t stay after school for extra help.

Tips: Don’t forget to allow IDroo to access Skype API after you download!

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

Pilot Handwriting: Turn Handwriting into a Font

March 7, 2011Kelly Tenkely7 Comments4698 views

What it is: This is a fun site. Pilot Handwriting let’s students turn their handwriting into a font of their own. The site is easy to use: print the template for students to fill out, take a picture of the completed template with a webcam (scanner and digital camera options also available), click on individual letters to adjust the look, save the handwriting by creating an account, click “let’s write” to use the font. Writing completed on the Pilot Handwriting site can be emailed. Saving the handwriting does require students to create an account. The account has no age limit but asks for an email address. If you are teaching students who don’t have an email address, they can use a @tempinbox.com or @mailinator.com ending so they don’t have to create an email account.

How to integrate Pilot Handwriting into the classroom: I’ll be honest, I am not a big fan of handwriting worksheets- this is due to my own experience with them. I remember feeling like the practice page was endless and in the end didn’t give me a good feel for handwriting (especially in cursive) because I was writing letters individually; how often do you do that in real life? The Pilot Handwriting font creator would be a fun way for students to end those handwriting practice sessions. When they have a letter down, they can write it on the template. The template could be filled out over several weeks as they learn and practice new letters. At the end, they can turn all that practice into their very own computer font…as unique as their fingerprint! The finished font can be used for learning how to write a friendly letter. Students can compose a letter to a teacher, another student, or a parent using their font and send the finished letter via email.

Pilot Handwriting let’s students create multiple fonts within one account. Students could create a font at the beginning of the school year and again at the end of the school year (or in subsequent years) to compare their growth. Handwriting can tell us so much about how students are developing and thinking. This is a great way to record that development digitally.

My students love creating their own font, it makes all writing and practice more fun. I caught a fifth grader typing out her spelling and vocabulary words just so that she could use her font. In that one exercise she was practicing her handwriting, typing, and spelling/vocabulary. Not too shabby 🙂

Tips: This is a neat site for students to share with their families. I have great handwritten notes from my grandmothers, recipes from my mom, and birthday cards from aunts and uncles. There is something about a handwritten note that feels so personal and meaningful, it is capturing a piece of who that person is. Students may want to ask their family members to create a font with their handwriting. I had one student who was creating a family tree for class, he had each member of his family fill out the template and create a font. He then asked them to send an email to him with the information needed for his tree using the font. He cut and paste these onto poster board. It was honestly the coolest family tree I have seen, he had his family get involved and created a keepsake in the process.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Pilot Handwriting in your classroom!

“Facebook” profile pages for literary characters

March 4, 2011March 18, 2014Kelly Tenkely35 Comments13868 views

Today I worked with a mixed seventh and eighth grade class who is reading To Kill a Mockingbird. The teacher was looking for ways for the students to explore the characters more in-depth and think about how authors develop characters. I thought having the students create a fake “Facebook” profile page would be a great way to accomplish all of those learning goals. As one of the students said, “It is totally fun!”. The challenge with this particular classroom is that we are working within a mixed platform environment. There are PC’s and Macs of all different operating systems and ages. The one common we have going for us is an Internet connection.

Each student created an information page about one of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird that looked just like a Facebook information page. This gave them the opportunity to think about characteristics, interests, activities, quotes, and some creative license to flesh out the details. I knew about My Fake Wall, but because of the HEAVY advertising, and request for an email address I wasn’t convinced it was the best place for students to create a character profile. For the record I like the site a lot and the results are impressive but all of the advertisements are obnoxious and I wasn’t convinced it wouldn’t get hung up by a filter. I needed a plan B. I ended up creating a Facebook information page template using Pages. The problem: not all of the students had Pages to use the template (that mixed environment thing). So, I got creative and settled on exporting the Pages document as a PDF and uploading it to Crocodoc for students. I uploaded it once for each student (so each would have a unique URL to edit). It worked great! Students used Crocodoc to annotate over the template and then could download the finished pdf it to their computers. Some students chose to find an online picture that they could use for the profile picture, other students created their own avatar type pictures of the character using the drawing tools in Crocodoc (they turned out great…such little artists).

When the students were finished, they headed over to see if they could get My Fake Wall to work. Miracle of miracles it wasn’t blocked (I was surprised!). My Fake Wall has the students create the profile page of a character where they can create posts and discussions between characters. They used the information page they created as a starting place and created a conversation between several characters. It was a big hit except they were disappointed that it didn’t actually work like Facebook. They were wanting to each create their character and actually interact as the character. If they were older I would have considered letting them use Facebook this way.

The students really enjoyed thinking about characters this way and as we were wrapping up for the day they asked, “could we go on here and create some of these for historical characters?” One wanted to take on Hitler and another Columbus. I always consider a lesson successful when students aren’t ready to stop the learning…this one was a success!

If you are interested in using the template I created, you can do so by first downloading the original from Facebook Template. Next, upload the pdf template to your own Crocodoc page. You will need to do this for each student or they will all be collaboratively working on the same document. Give students their unique URL, and they are off. If you don’t have access to computers but would still like to use my template, feel free to print it out and have students work on it the old school way.

MinyanLand: A virtual world for economics and finance

March 3, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments4126 views

What it is: I love virtual worlds that go beyond just play and incorporate learning opportunities. MinyanLand is a virtual world where students get to play games and make friends while they learn about earning, saving, spending and giving. Best of all, it is free to use! Students begin their time in MinyanLand with $50,000 in MinyanMoney and a condo. They can visit the ATM in the MinyanLand bank to invest their money. Each time students visit, they can check to see if their balance has gone up or down. Students can earn more MinyanMoney by playing fun games, or doing real life chores or classroom jobs to collect a virtual allowance. Students can use their MinyanMoney to buy things for their home, add rooms, and move into a new neighborhood.

MinyanLand has it’s own newspaper called the MinyanLand Journal, it will keep students up-to-date with what is new every day. Students can play games where they practice their math skills and test their knowledge about money. Games include a Lemonade Stand, Guitar Mayhem, Paper Route, Concentration, Balloon Quiz, Fill in the Face, Fill in the Name, Catch the Money, Word Search, Money Sorter, Cluedoku, Boo Blvd., Where Did You Get That Money?, and Quiz Boxes. Students will need to keep their virtual character healthy by fueling up at Ollie’s Diner.

The characters in MinyanLand are fun and varied, there is Hoofy the Bull, president of the bank; Boo the Bear, a retired dot-com millionaire; Daisy the cow, executive producer of MinyanLand’s TV station; Cassidy the Bear, a school teacher; Sammy the Snake, an administrator in City Hall; and Snapper the Turtle, the go-to guy in town.

MinyanLand is a fun way for students to learn about and interact with economic and financial concepts. The economic system in MinyanLand can even take advantage of real-life pricing of general goods and services. Students are encouraged to charitably give within MinyanLand. The idea is to offer every child the opportunity and platform to be financially literate. MinyanLand is ideal for students in 3rd-5th grade but younger students would enjoy it as well.

How to integrate MinyanLand into the classroom: MinyanLand is such a fun way to work toward financial literacy in the classroom. It offers students a virtual economy where they can practice real-world skills of buying, earning, investing, and giving. I love the way that MinyanLand ties the real world to the virtual by allowing students to earn virtual MinyanMoney for real chores and jobs.

Registering is free and easy enough for young students to register themselves. A parent or teacher email address is optional for registration. If students include a parent or teacher email address, they can earn MinyanMoney for chores or jobs that you assign.

MinyanLand is one of those sites that would be great as a year-long project. Students can visit MinyanLand throughout the year in the classroom (and at home) to learn about money, investing, spending, earning, and the economy. It is a natural fit in the math classroom where students are already working with money and numbers. MinyanLand would be best in a lab setting where each student has access to a computer. If you don’t have a lab for students, use classroom computers as a learning center. Students can visit the center throughout the week to interact in MinyanLand.

Tips: Even if you don’t want to use the virtual money in class, consider letting parents know about the opportunity to tie household chores to learning. Students can play in class and earn virtual money at home.

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

Spent: Social Justice Simulation

March 2, 2011March 3, 2011Kelly Tenkely11 Comments3049 views

What it is: I learned about Spent from my friend @ianchia last week on Twitter. Spent is a collaboration between McKinney and Urban Ministries of Durham to show students how the decisions they make affect their lives. The Urban Ministries of Durham serves over 6,000 people every year. Students have the opportunity to accept the Spent simulation and challenge to see if they can make it through a month of living expenses. They have just lost their job, their savings are gone, they have lost their house, and they are down to their last thousand dollars. Students must find a job, make decisions about housing, food, emergencies, and more as they try to survive one month on minimum wage.

How to integrate Spent into the classroom: Spent is a social justice game simulation that helps students understand the tough circumstances that so many face that have caused them to be homeless and in need of outside assistance. The game uses scenarios that are true to life and shows students how each decision that they make has consequences. Spent would be a great game for students to play in an economics or social studies class. Students can play the game individually and come together at the end of the game to discuss how the decisions they made affected their ultimate outcome. Which students made it to the end of the month and which failed? What decision(s) led to that outcome? If you don’t have the ability for students to play the game individually, play as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. Make decisions together as a class weighing the pros and cons of each decision as you go.

Extend this online game by moving to a place of action. What can your students do to help those in need? Can they hold a school fundraiser to donate to the Urban Ministries of Durham? Can they create compelling call to action videos and post them to YouTube? Let your students be creative and come up with their own solutions for making an impact.

Tips: There are some great ethical scenarios in the simulation that should spark some interesting discussion and debate among students.

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