Blooms Taxonomy – Page 27 – iLearn Technology

Tiki-Toki: Create gorgeous multimedia timelines

April 26, 2011Kelly Tenkely8 Comments6547 views

What it is: Tiki-Toki is an absolutely GORGEOUS multimedia timeline creator. The results are truly a work of art-no joke! Tiki-Toki is very easy to use, after registering for an account, students are guided step-by-step through creating an interactive timeline. Students can add text, images (Flickr) and video (YouTube or Vimeo) to a timeline. Images can be uploaded from a student computer or found through a search on Flickr. Throughout the creation process, tool tips pop-up to guide students through creation. Students can share saved timelines with a unique URL.

How to integrate Tiki-Toki into the classroom: Tiki-Toki is a fabulous new way for your students to create and share online. Timelines are an obvious choice for history projects but can be used throughout the year for a variety of subjects and learning focuses. Students can reflect on and share learning using a Tiki-Toki timeline. Students can begin a timeline at the beginning of the year sharing videos, links, pictures and reflections each unit, week, month, or semester until the end of the school year. This is a nice way to encourage students to reflect on learning while providing them with a record of what has been accomplished throughout the year.

Students can create timelines based on books or literature they are reading. Young students can create a timeline with information about beginning, middle and end while older students can add supporting details, action, climax and concluding thoughts. A timeline book report is a welcome change for your logical/analytical thinkers- seriously, offer it as an option!

Timelines can also be used as KWL charts (Know, Want to Know, Learned). At the beginning of any learning, students can list the facts that they know about the topic. Next, they can brainstorm and write about what they want to know about a topic. At the end of the unit or semester, students can detail what they have learned including any relevant videos or images.

In science, students can use Tiki-Toki to detail an experiment or scientific method process they go through in a lab.

Tiki-Toki is probably too advanced a tool for primary elementary to use independently, but it can be used with an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer to create a timeline as a class. This is a good way to teach students about timelines while recording learning.

Create an account on Tiki-Toki and record a few pictures of your classroom along with a description of the learning that happened each day. At the end of the week the timeline can be sent to parents and administration to share what you are working on in your classroom. This is a fun change from the traditional newsletter and, because it is added to a little at a time, it will give you a break from the Thursday mad-dash-to-finish-Friday-newsletter thing you have going (oh, is that just me?). 😉

Tips: The basic Tiki-Toki account is completely free and contains enough features to keep kids creating with no problem. The paid accounts include features like shared timeline creation which would also be useful in the classroom. I’m hoping that Tiki-Toki catches on to the uses for education and comes up with an education version just for us!

A minimum age for use of Tiki-Toki is not specified in the terms of service. If you work with students who do not have an email address to share, consider using a tempinbox account or mailinator.

A BIG THANK YOU to @anderscj for mentioning Tiki-Toki on Twitter, I have a new favorite timeline creator!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Tiki-Toki in your classroom!

Storify: Turn social media into a story

April 25, 2011Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2674 views

What it is: Storify has just been released to the public! I have been playing with this site for a few months and am excited that I finally get to share it with all of you. 🙂 Storify lets you create stories based on Tweets, photos and videos. You can search multiple social networks from one place, and drag elements into your story. Re-order elements and add text as needed. Storify lets you take those little bits of information shared over time and turn them into a story.

How to integrate Storify into the classroom: If you are using social media in the classroom, Storify is a fantastic addition. Use Storify to create weekly stories of tweets, pictures and videos from your classroom that can be sent home to parents. Create a story of learning based on a collaboration between classrooms as a way to chronicle and reflect on the collaboration. Build a semester or year-long story as a sort of online scrapbook that can be shared with families. Invite other classrooms to take part in writing a collaborative story 140 characters at a time using Twitter. At the end of the project, each class can use Storify to create an original story from the tweets. Send out links, book recommendations, and other resources used throughout the week using Twitter. At the end of the week, create a resource Storify for students to access.

Storify makes it simple to create and share social media stories. Storify stories can be shared with a unique link, emailed or embedded in a blog or website. Very cool!

Unsure about how to use Twitter in the classroom? Check out my posts on it here, here and here.

Tips: Because Storify is based on social media, anyone can add to your stories!

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

Solar System Scope: See the solar system in 3D

April 20, 2011April 20, 2011Kelly Tenkely3 Comments4570 views

What it is: Well, yesterday set me off on a space kick. Today I spent time with the Solar System Scope site, talk about a COOL way to view the solar system! Solar System Scope (SSS) is a 3D real-time look at celestial positions with planets and constellations in the night sky. Students can adjust planet and moon settings, star and constellation settings, earth observatory settings and time settings. View the solar system from a heliocentric, geocentric or panoramic view.

How to integrate Solar System Scope into the classroom: Who would have guessed the day would come when we could take our students on a realistic field trip through space? That is exactly what the Solar System Scope makes possible. For young students, it would be fun to plan a class space mission. Prepare your students as astronauts, load into your classroom spaceship (which may just be chairs and desks specially configured for the day) and prepare for launch. “Fly” through the universe and solar system using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. This is almost like having a planetarium right in your classroom. Pretty cool!

Of course after traveling through space as a class, students will want to explore more on their own. They can do this at a classroom computer center or individually in a computer lab setting.

Older students can get more in-depth using the built-in distance meter to measure the distance between planets. Each star reveals information about how many light years away it is from earth. Students can adjust the settings to learn more about constellations. Time and date can be adjusted to view the solar system on a given day. When students click the play button, they will see a 3D animation of the solar system based on the view they chose. Very neat!

In addition to using Solar System Scope for science, use it as a launching point for a creative writing activity. Students can write a fictional story about their travels through space, or even pretend to colonize a planet using factual information about the struggles they would have to overcome.

This site is a great one to use in connection with the NASA 50th Anniversary site I shared yesterday!

Tips: Solar System Scope isn’t finished yet, they are still working on some cool features. Be sure to watch for a planetary journey for kids complete with an animated talking guide named Zyx, desktop clocks that show all planet positions at the moment, a space-flight simulator screen saver (perfect for the interactive whiteboard!) and a space forum.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Solar System Scope in your classroom!

NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash Feature-best website ever!

April 19, 2011Kelly Tenkely3 Comments4427 views

Have I mentioned lately that I have the most AWESOME readers? No? Well it is true, you all are awesome and you keep me going even when I am running on low. Thank you for that! I’m currently working on starting a school (actually 3) in the next 2 years. This is proving to be an exciting and, oh yeah, exhausting task. Then I get encouraging emails and site suggestions from you all and it puts some major pep back in my step. Thank you! This website is one such recommendation. You know you are a true geek when getting a cool website in your inbox revives you 🙂 Thank you Ryan!

What it is: NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash feature is a website that is absolutely not to be missed. Seriously, it won’t even hurt my feelings if you skip reading my post and just head right on over to dig in and check it out yourselves! This interactive timeline highlights each decade in our space program from 1950 to 2000. Until we get time travel sorted out, this is a pretty good substitute! The site encourages exploration and discovery as students move decade by decade through the site. I love that this site goes so far beyond just space exploration. While students explore, they will hear music representing each decade, see animations, listen to virtual radio broadcasts of actual news headlines (including NASA news and other news from the decade), original video, listen to speeches of the decade and even launch rockets. I can’t tell you how happy it made me to hear Johnny Cash mixed in as I was playing on this site (in the upper left corner of the site you will be able to change songs on the jukebox, record, tape, CD or mp3 player). First thing I heard when I clicked on the 80’s “Tonight on Dallas find out who shot J.R.”. *LOVE THIS SITE!* This blog post took me about 2 hours because I got sucked right into exploring and playing. The site reminds me of Epcot’s Tomorrow Land, complete with robot guide. This is what online learning should look like, when I close my eyes and dream, this is the experience I imagine for kids. Can you imagine if there was a site like this for history? How cool would that be?!

How to integrate NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash Feature into the classroom: This is one of those sites that you could let kids loose on just for exploration. Without any guidance from you they will learn plenty! Ideally kids would explore this site in partners or on their own in a one to one computer lab setting. If each student has a computer, headphones will be a necessity. If individual exploration just isn’t in the cards, visit the site as a class with an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computers. Invite students up to the computer (whiteboard) to take turns guiding the class. The site has plenty of interactive content to give each student a chance at the computer (whiteboard). Unless you have a good chunk of time dedicated to the site, this is one that I would stretch out over a week. Each day students can explore a new decade.

The space exploration component of this site is amazing and could keep everyone plenty busy with learning. With older students, discuss what the music of the decade reveals about that time in history. What does the music tell them about people, community, values, events of the day? Take it one step further and ask students to dig into other historical events in each decade, discussing their impact on space exploration, culture and where we are today. One thing that I missed out on in history was all of the stories that make it so rich. For me, history was reduced to names, dates and places. Give your students the opportunity to put themselves into history and learn about how the events influenced each other.

NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash Feature would be a great one to use in connection with We Choose the Moon. If your students are like mine, they can’t get enough of this stuff! Obviously I can’t get enough of it either. Full disclosure, I have always loved space exploration. When I was a kid I spent many summers at Black Rock Desert at LDRS (Large Dangerous Rockets) with my dad. My dad built wooden model rockets- first wooden rocket on record to break sound barrier! In answer to your next question: yes, I have always been a complete and total nerd. 😛

Tips: What? Your still here? Go on, visit the site! (channeling my inner Ferris Bueller today).

Please leave a comment and share how you are using NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash Feature thesauruses in your classroom!

The Bookshelf Muse: Emotion, Setting, Color/Shape/Texture, Symbolism Thesaurus

April 15, 2011Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3025 views

What it is: The Bookshelf Muse is a must add blog to any writing classroom toolbox. On The Bookshelf Muse, students will find several thesauruses: emotion, setting, color/shape/texture, weather, and symbolism. The emotion thesaurus offers alternatives for showing character emotion through physical action. The Setting Thesaurus offers sensory descriptions that can help paint the picture of a setting. The color/shape/texture thesaurus helps students include sensory information that helps convey images in specific ways. They symbolism thesaurus helps students utilize symbolism to leave a lasting impression on their readers. To use a thesaurus, scroll down and choose an emotion, setting, color/shape/texture, weather, or symbolism topic from the right side bar. Suggestions will appear as a blog post. Each thesaurus is regularly added to, there is something new each week!

How to integrate The Bookshelf Muse thesauruses into the classroom: The Bookshelf Muse thesauruses are a must add to a writer’s toolbox. All writers experience periods of writers block. The Bookshelf Muse thesauruses can help students break through that block. Bookmark the thesaurus on classroom computers for quick access during writing as a writing/publishing center. Students can access the center as needed to help fire up the creative writing process. This blog will have your students thinking carefully about word choice and how different parts of speech color writing.

Before students begin using the emotion or setting thesaurus, visit the blog as a class using an interactive whiteboard. Using the annotation feature, invite students to the board to highlight words based on the parts of speech. This will help students identify vivid verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that add life to writing.

Consider creating a writer’s toolbox for your students using a tool like symbaloo or weblist.me. Add writing tools like rhyming dictionaries, The Bookshelf Muse Thesauruses, writing prompt generators, a Flickr picture dictionary , Color in Motion, Tag Galaxy, Lightning Bug, What if Questions for Stories, The Story Starter Jr., PinBall-bounce ideas around, Poetry Idea Machine and other writing resources. Create another Symbaloo page or weblist.me for web tools that students can use for writing (Little Bird Tales, Kerpoof, Figment, Picture a Story, pic lits, Story Bird, Zooburst, Myths and Legends, Glogster, Graphic Novel Creator, My Story Maker and Picture Book Maker).

Use the Bookshelf Muse thesauruses as a launching point to create a class thesaurus. This can be done for setting, emotion, senses, weather, etc. Make the thesaurus easily accessible by creating it as a blog or wiki.

Tips: The Bookshelf Muse has just started adding to a weather thesaurus, so far the only entry is blizzard but it should get your students thinking about how they can describe weather.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Bookshelf Muse Emotion thesauruses in your classroom!

NOVA: Design a Parachute

April 14, 2011Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2941 views

What it is: NOVA from PBS has an excellent interactive called Design a Parachute. In this activity, students take on the role of head engineer in charge of designing the Mars Explorer Rover parachute. The goal is to design a chute that will get the Mars Explorer Rover to the surface of Mars safely. The interactive challenges students to consider trade-offs in parachute stability, strength and volume as they design the perfect chute. As students begin the activity, they are briefed on system requirements that must be met. Students are also asked to consider cost as they design their parachute. Finally students design and test their chute.

How to integrate the NOVA Design a Parachute interactive into the classroom: In this activity, students assume the role of engineer as they design a parachute that will slow the Mars Explorer Rover as it lands on the surface of Mars. I like the authentic feel of this activity, students are led through the thinking process of an engineer as they consider all of the requirements the chute must meet before they begin designing.

Approach this interactive as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. As a class, get “briefed” on the requirements for the parachute design. Discuss how these requirements may impact the parachute design. Treat this like an actual briefing and encourage discussion (all ages like to pretend!). Before students access the interactive, ask them to sketch their thoughts about parachute design. This lets them think through the design apart from the pre-determined categories presented in the interactive.

Students can design and test their parachutes individually in a one to one computer lab setting or take turns designing and testing in a computer center lab on classroom computers.

Debrief after the interactive to discuss the parameters that were the most successful and what students learned about volume, drag, strength and stability.

Extend this activity by creating a mock-up of the parachute they designed online. Find a high place on the playground or in the building where students can test these parachutes. What did they have to adjust for an Earth bound parachute?

Tips: The NOVA page has a great introduction paragraph about how engineers approach a problem. Be sure to read it with your students! Encourage students to learn more about the Mars Explorer Rover before designing the chute. It may adjust their thinking!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using NOVA Design a Parachute in your classroom!

Solar Car Racing: Try Engineering

April 13, 2011Kelly Tenkely6 Comments2886 views

What it is: Solar Car Racing is a great game and challenge from Try Engineering. On the Solar Car Racing games students will virtually design and race a solar car. Students begin by choosing the components for their car that will optimize the performance. Next they test out their car in a desert and on a racetrack environment to find out how it performs. Students can observe the performance and then modify their design based on feedback and race again.

How to integrate the Solar Car Racing game into the classroom: Try Engineering has some really fantastic interactive games for students. I like Solar Car Racing because it goes beyond just building and testing, and encourages students to learn from their mistakes to modify their design. Too often games created for students have a defined end point that doesn’t encourage students to continue tinkering and experimenting. Solar Car Racing would make a good “experiment” center on classroom computers. Students can stop by the “lab” area as they are learning about solar energy to test out the principles they are learning.

Ideally, students would each have access to the site. This would allow each student to create and test a solar car design. Let students discuss observations of what designs work best and why. Students can “sell” their solar car design to each other. Expand this activity by asking students to create a sales brochure for their solar car. Students can include researched information about solar cars, tout unique elements of their design and practice persuasive writing and design.

If students don’t have access to their own computers, make this a class activity using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Give each student the opportunity to tweak and test the design, discussing adjustments and possible outcomes as a class.

If you have the resources, perfect the solar car design using the Solar Car Racing game and follow-up by creating an actual working model size version.

Tips: Be sure to check out the fantastic list of related links at the bottom of the Try Engineering Solar Car Racing page.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Solar Car Racing in your classroom!

Story Time for Me: Digital Children’s Books

April 11, 2011April 11, 2011Kelly Tenkely5 Comments3930 views

What it is: Story Time for Me is a beautiful collection of digital children’s books for primary students in kindergarten through second grade. Each story includes charming illustrations, animation and professional narration with music and sound effects. Activities accompany every story that encourage imagination and creativity (these are coming soon!). The stories have been developed to teach important values through positive moral themes. Story Time for Me currently has a library of over 30 books and growing. Next Friday (April 22, 2011) Story Time for Me will be launching free personalized activity books where students can become the star of a book.

Students can choose to read each story with or without narration, with or without animation and choose to highlight the words as they are read.

I can’t tell you how impressed I am with this free digital story site. It expands your classroom library, encourages a focus on character development and invigorates children to read more.

How to integrate Story Time for Me into the classroom: Story Time for Me expands your classroom library with winsome digital stories that your students will love. Story Time for Me makes a great reading center on classroom computers. Because students have the option to read with narration or independently, it meets the needs of both strong and developing. Each story reinforces positive character education values often dealing with friendship. These stories are a wonderful way to begin class discussions about friendship and empathy with students. If you have an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer, the stories can be used as a whole-class “big book”.

When the personalized versions are available, give your students the opportunity to star in their own story. These personalized stories would make a fun beginning of the year activity as a way to welcome students to a new grade, or end the school year with a personalized story they can enjoy all summer.

Tips: I learned about Story Time for Me from @2sparkley’s blog, Bits and Pieces Place. If it isn’t a blog you subscribe to, it should be!

Story Time for Me is completely free, the more visitors they can attract the more stories they will be able to add to the library. You can help them by spreading the word to family and friends on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Story Time for Me in your classroom!

Zen.do: Efficient Learning

April 7, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2219 views

What it is: Zen.do is a site created by students with a mission to help make learning more efficient. Zen.do seeks to provide a solution for managing the overwhelming amount of information that students are asked to learn. It does so by helping students study what they need, when they need to. Students begin using Zen.do by taking notes. As they are taking notes, they add a hyphen between terms (concepts, names, important dates, etc.) and definition. Students can then study their notes as flashcards, indicating what they know and how important it the information is to them. Zen.do does the rest, it helps students spend less time studying by reviewing only what matters and what is likely to be forgotten. In the long-term, Zen.do helps students keep important information at the ready. The best part of Zen.do: students don’t really have to do anything differently than they are already doing it. They create notes as they always do and Zen.do takes care of the rest.

How to integrate the Zen.do into the classroom: If you are like me, you remember spending HOURS reading through class notes, creating flash cards, re-reading notes to make sure you hadn’t missed anything important, and then cramming as much as you could prior to a test. I like that Zen.do takes the focus off the cramming for the test bit and focuses on really learning the material. Zen.do helps students think about their learning process by making them call out what is important and how likely they are to forget it.

Zen.do is a great solution for students who struggle with studying and finding a way to manage the barrage of information they face. It breaks down notes into manageable, digestible pieces and keeps them moving forward in their learning.

Zen.do is ideal in a 1 to 1 classroom setting where each student has access to a computer. If you don’t have access to a computer for each student, consider using a classroom computer for note taking. Make record keeping a rotating classroom “job”. As the class recorder, a student would take notes for the class in a word processor (Google Docs would be ideal). These notes can be accessed by students at home and copy/pasted into each student’s Zen.do account for studying.

Tips: Students can sign in to Zen.do using an email address, Google connect, or Facebook.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Zen.do in your classroom!

WICKED Science Interactives

April 6, 2011Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2917 views

What it is: I found WICKED Science interactive through a tweet from my friend @kathleen_morris. WICKED Science interactives help students understand the earth- what it looks like, what it is made of, and how it works. Students can explore the earth’s surface, examine features of the earth’s crust, explore the rock cycle, discover what the earth is made of in a lab, learn about heat and pressure, and look at different descriptions of the earth.

How to integrate the WICKED Science Interactives into the classroom: I like that these interactives invite students to explore and question. They don’t offer all of the answers and lead students mindlessly through a predetermined solution, but instead give students just enough information to ask more questions. Students observe and interact with the activities and have opportunities to think and problem solve their way to learning. For this reason, WICKED interactives would make a great introductory learning activity. Students can begin inquiring about the earth during the interactive and follow-up by digging into the concepts deeper elsewhere. These interactives would be great for whole class use on a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard or for small-group/partner use on classroom computers. Each interactive gives students more information about the earth and invites further investigation.

Tips: WICKED Science Interactives requires the Shockwave plugin to view the interactives. The plugin can be downloaded from the site if needed.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using the WICKED Science Interactives in your classroom!