Category: Software

Planbook Software

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Planbook Software2335 views

What it is: Planbook Software is a Mac only software created for teachers (sorry PC users, yet another reason that you should be on a Mac!) You no longer have to do the old school paper and pencil lesson plan book. Now you can keep your lessons in digital form easily with Planbook. Planbook makes it simple to enter information about your lessons, attach files directly to the lesson, print great looking reports, publish lessons to the web, and search your lessons easily.

How to integrate Planbook Software into your curriculum: Make your life easier with Planbook Software…this will save you so much time and makes planning simple! The interface is very easy to use and intuitive. Planbook Software also allows you to easily keep other teachers, administrators, students and parents aware of your teaching. You can choose which parts, if any, of your Planbook are viewable to others.

Tips: Check out the fun themes that you can use to make your Planbook personal!

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

Skitch

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What it is: In a word…awesome! Skitch is an amazing new (beta) application created by Plasq. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I decided to let the Skitch creators SHOW you what Skitch is and does. Watch the video below for a quick run down of Skitch.

How to integrate Skitch into the classroom: Skitch is a great training tool. Skitch lets you capture any screen (or portion of a screen) and add your own notes, doodles, etc. Put together tutorials for your students on any computer related subject. Skitch is also a cool tool for students to use. Teach your students to use Skitch. They can use Skitch for research projects, to show another student how they solved a problem, or even as a place to take notes. All of your Skitch content can be saved as a picture file on the computer, saved on the web, or emailed. Students can embed Skitch onto their blogs. Once you start using Skitch, you will think of a million every day uses for it (BTW, share those with us as you come up with them!). It is so intuitive and easy to use!

Tips: I should mention that Skitch is only available right now for Mac’s. If you don’t have a Mac you should…this is yet another reason! 🙂

Update 1/31/2008:

When using Skitch in my computer lab, I used Remote Desktop to push the Skitch  application to all of the student computers.  I set up one Skitch account for each grade I teach.  This way, when students upload to the web, it goes to one page.  This was the best solution for my lab since I teach k-5 many of my students don’t have email addresses to set up their own Skitch account.  

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

New Features

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I have been working on some new features for iLearn Technology lately.  Now in the sidebar you will find a link to the new iLearn Technology store.  Here you can find computers, cameras, technology equipment, software, and more.  I am also working on two new pages.  The first will be posts about websites and tools just for educators.  The second will feature outstanding classroom websites.  I hope you enjoy these new features!  As always, iLearn Technology will continue to bring ideas that are easy to implement in your classroom.  Feed back is always welcome!

Tramline Virtual Field Trips

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What it is: Tramline is a site that has a variety of virtual field trips for all ages and multiple subjects. They also provide software that allows teachers to create their own virtual field trips. The trial version of the software is free but the full version needs to be purchased. All of the already made virtual field trips are free to use. Tramline Virtual Field Trips include Antarctica, Baking Bread, Deserts, Dinosaurs, Endangered Species, Fierce Creatures, Getting Green, Hurricanes, Insects and Minibeasts, Natural Wonders, Oceans, Rainforest, Salt Marshes, Sharks, Temperate Forest Biome, Tonadoes, Volcanoes, Wildfires, Author, Poet’s Pantry, Shakespeare, American Presidency, My America, Oregon Trail, Windows on the World, Women’s History, Flight, Photography, Pi, Filmmaking, Iditarod, and Leonardo da Vinci. The list of field trips is continually growing so check back often!

How to integrate Tramline Virtual Field Trips into the classroom: Tramline is an amazing tool for the classroom, it takes students beyond your walls without ever having to leave. The virtual field trips can be used on a projector for whole class instruction or students can take their own, individual, field trip in a computer lab situation. The field trips are well done and complement curriculum well. If you can’t find a field trip that fits your class needs, create your own. Encourage your students to help research the field trip subject and bring ideas for what the field trip could look like. They can be the “test subjects” for the finished product. Students will love having a hand in the creation of a virtual field trip!

Tips: Be sure to test out the software in the trial version. Get training online for free from Tapped in.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Tramline Virtual Field Trips in your
classroom.

Prezent It

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What it is: Prezent It is a free online resource for creating and sharing presentations online PowerPoint style. No special software is needed, Prezent It is an online application that allows teachers or students to create and present from a web browser. Presentations can be public or private and each has its own web address. Presentations can be downloaded and shown without any internet connection. There is no file size limit with Prezent It so create away!

How to integrate Prezent It into the classroom: Prezent It can be used in place of PowerPoint type applications. Because it is web-based, students could start a project at school and finish it at home without the necessity for expensive programs and saving to flash drives. Students can use Prezent It for any school presentation. I like starting out the year with a getting to know you presentation. Each of my students creates a presentation all about their favorite things (in fact we call it “A Few of My Favorite Things”). We have a special presentation day where we watch everyone’s Prezent It. Students can choose to narrate during the presentation or just sit and watch (this will save your shy students). You won’t believe how this project will bond your class, students will find out they have many similar interests and learn things about their fellow students they may not otherwise have known. This program is very intuative and easy for students to learn. Prezent It is a great tool for teachers as well…bring your lessons to life with Prezent It and a projector!

Tips: Prezent It requires a valid email address to activate your account. If you teach students who do not have an email address, you could use a teacher email for activation purposes.

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

Drupal

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What it is: Drupal is an open source (free) content management platform. This free software package (downloaded) allows teachers to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Teachers can use Drupal to create discussion areas for their class, as a content management system, for blogging, as a collaborative learning environment, for classroom social networking, a classroom forum, newsletters, podcasting, online picture albums, and file uploads and downloads.

How to integrate Drupal into the classroom: Make your classroom “classroom 2.0” with Drupal. Encourage student collaborative learning, discussion, and outside the classroom self-guided learning. Drupal helps teachers to teach 21st century skills by providing the platform to do so. Use Drupal to build an online classroom community where students and parents can interact with one another and you. Post assignments online. Students can download and upload assignments. This will bring a whole new aspect of parent involvement in your classroom!

Tips: Drupal handbooks (on the website) are a wealth of information for using Drupal.

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

Comapping

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What it is: Comapping is a mind mapping/concept mapping online application that offers a unique left to right mind mapping technique. While the application is not free, Comapping does offer a free trial version for schools and very competitive pricing. Students can collaborate on mind maps in real-time. Comapping has a feature that other mind mapping solutions don’t have, a presentation tool. Teachers and students can actually turn their mind map into a presentation quickly and easily in the same web-browser. Comapping also has an auto focus feature which makes it easy to collapse maps and “zoom in” to the portion of the map being worked on.

How to integrate Comapping into the classroom: Teachers can use Comapping to structure lessons, units and themes in the classroom. Comapping would be an excellent way to organize the structure of the lessons for each subject and to align standards with those lessons. Students can create character diagrams, comparison charts, story diagrams, vocabulary word diagrams, timelines, effect of events, experiment maps, food pyramids, scientific processes, life cycles, and more. This tool will be valuable for your visual learners! Comapping would also be a useful tool when teaching students how to note-take. Comappings left to right mapping technique makes note taking succinct and easy to refer back to and understand. The collaboration portion of Comapping is useful to students completing projects together as well as for teachers and staff for creating units and lessons together.

Tips: I encourage you to select “try Comapping without an account” to learn about how it works. This will take you to an interactive page where you can learn, step by step about how to use Comapping. Really neat! Once you are sold, you can sign up for a free trial account.

Comapping for Education PowerPoint


Knowledge Box

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What it is: Knowledge Box has math, science, language arts, and social studies games and videos for primary elementary students. These games are interactive and very impressive. The math section includes a video about finding numerals, a cute “ballet” and song about patterns, a shape game called Space Shapes, and a subtraction game called Math Maze. The language arts section includes a great little video called When Two Vowels Go Walking, a folk tale called The Wise Old Women, a picture pick game based on the short “a”, and a folktale. The science section includes a video about the basics of electricity, a health video about organs (catchy songs), a physical science game about force and motion, and a young scientist virtual experiment on growing plants. The social studies section includes a video about the balance of nature, a video about storms, a game about different viewpoints, and a game to teach map and globe vocabulary.

How to integrate Knowledge Box into the classroom: Use Knowledge box as an introduction to an activity or unit. Students can use some of the interactive science games with the scientific method. Have students experiment in the online environment and record their hypothesis, test and results of their experiments. Use the videos to support your curriculum. Students can watch the videos in a center setting or all at once with the projector. These are content rich games and videos and will support any curriculum well!

Tips: Knowledge Box is a media rich website and will require a fairly quick Internet connection. Make sure that your connection speed is adequate before assigning games on Knowledge Box.

mySchoolog

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What it is: mySchoolog is a free, online web-based application that helps students organize their school life easily. Students can organize everything about their school life with mySchoolog anytime, anywhere they have Internet access. Students can organize and share notes, to-do lists, appointments, store documents and files, and add lessons.

How to integrate mySchoolog into the classroom: Help your students organize themselves in a fun, easy way. Students can take control of their assignments, grades, and homework. This is a great way to teach your students responsibility and organizational skills. Teach students how to use mySchoolog in the computer lab or projector setting. Students can update their mySchoolog organizer in class, in a computer lab or library, or from home.

Tips: mySchoolog offers students some amazing extras including a calculator, periodic table, conversion tables, calendars, activity vs. calorie calculator, logarithms and more. Stay tuned for coming features including the ability to access mySchoolog from a cell phone, and email all mySchoolog features.

Google Lit Trips

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What it is: Google Lit trips is a new way to teach literature. Using Google Earth, students discover where in the world the greatest road trip stories of all time took place. This is interactive learning at its best! Google Lit Trips include books such as By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleishman, My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, Traveling with P.G. Wodehouse, The Aeneid by Virgil, Candide by Volatire, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Night by Elie Wiesel, The Odyssey by Homer, and Blood Meridian by Comac McCarthy.

How to integrate Google Lit Trips into your classroom: Use these virtual trips to make literature come alive for your students.

Tips: These Google Lit Trips are best used for upper elementary through high school.