What it is:Alien Adventures is another site from Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. The premise of the site is that an alien king has sent two aliens, Borg and Zunk, on a mission to find out about Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Students join the aliens to discover information and activities about the collections there. Students will learn how to create a masterpiece, find hidden messages in portraits, learn about landscapes, and learn about signs and symbols. Students can also play history games like the curator collection game or the extraordinary Earth game.
How to integrate Alien Adventures into your curriculum: Alien Adventures is a fun way for students to explore a museum and learn more about art and history as they interact with fun activities and games. I love how museums are creating such wonderful websites for students to explore and enjoy learning more about art and history.
Can’t swing a visit to an art gallery or museum this year? Don’t let your students be deprived of the experience, visit the online offerings for the next best thing. Allow your students to explore the Birmingham collection online with the help of some aliens and then, come back as a class to talk about what they saw and learned on their “trip” to the museum. If you don’t have enough computers for each student, use a projector or interactive whiteboard to explore with the aliens as a class.
Tips:Alien Adventures was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Alien Adventures in your classroom!
What it is:The Pre-Raph Pack (don’t you love that name?) is a brilliant site about artists, the techniques they used, a timeline that spans 100 years, and a collection of images from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. First students discover the Pre-Raphites (that is artists who were before Raphael). Students will learn about the influences, the different styles that emerged, the early and late style and the lasting influence that these artists have. Students can learn more about the individual artists which are easily categorized and searched by last name. Next, students can learn about the different painting techniques that were used from the wet-white technique to the use of bright and vivid colors. The timeline lets students explore each time period of the almost 100 year Pre-Raphaelite movement. Finally, students can see the collection of paintings themselves. The collection is easily searchable by category.
How to integrate The Pre-Raph Pack into your curriculum:The Pre-Raph Pack is a comprehensive look at the Pre-Raphael art movement and the collection at Birmingham. Students not only get a peek at the artists themselves, they learn the history, technique, and what the movement meant to art.
This is a well put together site for use in any art class, but the in-depth look at the artists and the history makes it a great site for any classroom. Art is a medium that can absolutely hook a child on history. They begin to see that art has gone through evolutions and that it is deeply reflective of the times. If you have a student who is struggling with history, introduce them to a little art history and see if you can’t help them make different connections with the stories. I have said this many times before, but history was a hard subject for me. I saw it only as a collection of dates, facts, places, and names that I couldn’t get to relate to each other. It wasn’t until I met my husband and he started talking history, that I realized that history is all about story. The Pre-Raph Pack is a site that can help your students begin to connect the pieces in history.
Use the paintings on this site as writing prompts, ask students to write about the story they think is happening in the painting. The collection includes everything from history and medieval, to religion and myth, to portraits, literature, and landscapes. Each of your students will be able to find a painting that speaks to them.
Tips:The Pre-Raph Pack was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Pre-Raph Pack in your classroom!
What it is: Yesterday as I was scanning through my Twitter stream when I came across this tweet from my friend @jasonshmidt123: “Holy buckets of love, this is cool! RT @plugusin: Checking out Wiggio: http://wiggio.com/ for collaborating.” Now, any time buckets of love are involved I am intrigued- I had to check it out. I must say, Wiggio is a way cool tool for collaboration. Wiggio is a completely free online toolkit that makes it easy to work and coordinate with groups. Wiggio is SO very simple to use and has a very straight forward interface that makes it easy for even those who are low-tech. Wiggio lets you share and manage files, manage a group calendar, poll your group, post links, set up conference calls (including voice, webcam, shared whiteboard space, and screen sharing), chat online, send out mass text messages, and send voice or email messages to the entire group. Wiggio has a lot of features that remind me of Google Groups but some additional features that truly make it a “holy buckets of love” experience. Everything is in one place, handy and easy to use!
How to integrate Wiggio into your curriculum: I can see a lot of possibilities of Wiggio in the classroom. Use it to create a class group with student families each year. Keep families up to date with the latest happenings in your classroom, volunteer opportunities, and class projects that will need some parent support. Share all important documents, videos, and resources that you use in your classroom for easy access from home. (I can’t tell you how many, “I’ve lost the permission slip could you please send a new one?” I get in a year!). Keep all those documents in your Wiggio group file and parents will never have to worry about lost paperwork again. Live meeting opportunities mean that you can hold a virtual parent university where you catch parents up on the new math/reading/science/writing curriculum. Teach your parents everything from reading strategies to use at home to working through math problems together. Parents would love a little support in this area! Offer virtual conference opportunities for parents who are unable to make it for a live conference due to long-term illness, job travel, or in multiple parent homes.
Use Wiggio to create student groups where you keep students up to date with classroom happenings and resources. Offer your students a study hour where they can meet with you virtually for a little extra support or mentoring. Remind your students of upcoming assignments by creating to-do’s. Collect digital assignments using Wiggio files.
Students can create study groups of their own for collaborative projects. As they work together they can meet virtually, share resources and links, and create a schedule to keep themselves on task.
Working with a class outside of your school? Maybe in another state or country? Wiggio is the perfect platform for connecting them, they can work together with shared space and chat live from your classroom.
Wiggio can be used with teaching staff to keep teaching teams organized and give them a place to share resources, ideas, and share a common calendar of events.
Have ambitious parents? They can use Wiggio to collaborate and work with other parents for fundraiser events, coordinating volunteers, and special days.
I am currently using Vyew as my virtual classroom meeting space but Wiggio offers so much more functionality all in one place, I think for the next round of virtual class I will be making the switch! To quote Jason again, “Holy buckets of love, this is cool!”
Tips: Wiggio has a demo area where you can play with all of the features yourself without registering or creating an account. Note to all web 2.0 companies…this is a really nice feature, I wish you all would do it 🙂
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Wiggio in your classroom!
Yesterday, Silvia Tolisano of Langwitches Blog (The Magic of Learning) shared an incredible story of learning. After reading through her post I asked if I could share the story here and she graciously agreed. Siliva and the fifth grade teacher she worked with did an incredible job of letting her students take charge of their learning. It has been so successful that her students want to continue learning and connecting their knowledge about Christopher Columbus. I love that Silvia’s story of learning begins with a glimpse of what the planning for the learning looked like. Silvia lets us peek inside the intentional planning and organizing of the learning. Using an iPad and the iThoughtsHD app, Silvia and the fifth grade teacher planned a unit on Christopher Columbus that went beyond the textbook and exposed them to authentic research, multiple perspectives, and the opportunity to come up with their own conclusions about the “hero” status of Christopher Columbus in the United States. The results are truly incredible. You can read this awesome story of learning at my blog Stories of Learning or directly from Silvia’s blog.
What it is: Sharing the web with students can be a challenge. Websites can often have urls that feel unending, students can copy down a url incorrectly, students type with different speeds, or characters show up in the address that they are unfamiliar with. Complicated urls can single-handedly convince teachers to ditch a wonderful web resource for something easier to manage…like a worksheet. Sharing websites with your students doesn’t have to be a challenge. Symbaloo EDU and Weblist are two of my favorite ways to quickly and easily share websites with students.
Symbaloo EDU is fabulous because it was created with educators in mind. Symbaloo lets you gather all of your favorite online tools and sites into a webmix about the topics you teach. Symbaloo web mixes can be published and shared with colleagues, students, and parents. Symbaloo can be used by students or teachers to create a personal learning environment. With Symbaloo folders can be created that contain sites and resources that are related. Symbaloo can be used year-long, just continue adding sites and resources for your students throughout the year. Everything that you have used all year-long will be in one easy place for students to access.
Weblist lets you pull together and organize content on the web. Create a list of urls centered on a theme and it is combined into one easy to navigate url. The list can be saved as a bookmark or a homepage. What I like about Weblist is the visual aspect. Each website is saved as a snapshot of that website with the website name and a description below. The visual organization is perfect for younger students who may not be able to navigate links designated by text.
How to integrate Symbaloo EDU and Weblist into your curriculum: Symbaloo can be used by students to create their own “textbooks”. As students search the web for resources based on subjects or inquiry questions, they can save what they find and create a virtual e-book of sorts. Symbaloo can also be used by students to organize all of their online work in one place. Students can add links to the slide shows, documents, videos, images, etc. that they create online. Symbaloo becomes an e-portfolio. Teachers can also use Symbaloo to create a customized “textbook” for their students complete with articles, maps, video, images, and interactive content.
Weblist is great for quickly sharing a collection of sites with students. Weblists are fast and easy to create (you don’t even have to login or register first!). Weblists are perfect for sharing a collection of sites in a computer lab setting or with colleagues. The visual interface of Weblist is perfect for students. Students can easily travel from one site to another because the web page is embedded in the Weblist, the url never changes.
Want to get really crazy? Combine Symbaloo and Weblist. Create folders for your students on Symbaloo so that there is one central url to go to. Have Symbaloo link to your various Weblists. This combines the great organization and collaboration aspect of Symbaloo with the awesome visual interface of Weblist. It is a powerhouse of learning for your students created by you. Cool!
Tips: Don’t forget that both Symbaloo and Weblist make for a great way to share online resources with your colleagues!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Symbaloo EDU and Weblist in your classroom!
What it is: Juxio is a new visual way to create and communicate. The web application lets students take their own images (or images from Flickr, FaceBook, or Picasa) and add them to an image stream or panel. Text descriptions can be added to the stream to describe the images. Streams are where text and images get placed. Streams expand in width as elements are added. A Jux (Juxio creation) can be expanded vertically by adding additional streams. This is useful for organizing content into categories or for comparison. Each stream can have its own header to add meaning or depth to a Jux creation. Events are used to visually segment streams. For example, students might have an animal stream of pictures that is segmented into the events “mammals” and “reptiles”. After students create a Jux, they can save it as a PDF file, print it, or share it online via email, Facebook, Twitter, or url.
How to integrate Juxio into your curriculum:Juxio is a fantastic online tool to use for online visual creation. Students can mash-up text and photos to create their own Jux that can be used to organize information or display understanding. Use Juxio for animal classification, vocabulary, historical time lines, changes over time, to tell a linear story, or display any information in an organized fashion. Take pictures of a science experiment for students to turn into a Jux, they can start at the beginning of the experiment adding captions to each picture. Text boxes can be added for students to type in their hypothesis at the beginning of the experiment and to add a concluding statement at the end. Take pictures of a school field trip and create a Juxio to tell the story of what happened on the field trip. A Jux can be created individually by students in a computer lab setting, or by a whole class using an interactive whiteboard. Class Juxio’s can be created to display new learning, each student contributing to one Jux. The finished product can be printed and saved in the classroom with the URL sent home so students can access the learning from anywhere. Use Juxio in place of a traditional Friday newsletter. Take pictures of students throughout the week, add captions explaining what learning happened during the week and add a stream for upcoming events and reminders. Anytime you add student pictures to a newsletter, the chance that a parent takes the time to read it goes way up!
Tips: Juxio requires an email address for sign up. In addition, students must be 13 or older to obtain their own account. If you teach younger students, create a class account where you are the owner. Students can create a Jux using the class account and save it with their name in the title.
Juxio offers the option to purchase the finished Jux as a poster. Prices are very reasonable and can be used for customized classroom decoration. Cool!
If your school has access to an iPod Touch or iPad lab, Juxio can be downloaded directly to the device as an application.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Juxio in your classroom!
What it is:Animation Chefs is a fun website/blog that teaches kids how to create their own animations using stop motion video techniques. The Animation Chefs teach how to create animations using a “secret” recipe. To create animations you need two things: a camera and a computer. Animation Chefs aim to help young producers of stories and animation learn about the latest and greatest ways to get their content created. The blog will continually be adding tips, tricks, and tutorials for creating online animated videos.
How to integrate Animation Chefs into your curriculum:Animation Chefs is a great place for students (and teachers) to learn the tricks of stop motion animation. Students can use this site to learn new techniques and get advice for creating their own videos. My students loved creating their own videos. Any time I mentioned a video project, the students would ask daily when we would start with it. Our students have grown up in the video generation and this is one of the languages they want to learn to speak in. Visit Animation Chefs as a class to learn about stop motion animation, for inspiration, and to learn new tricks. If you have students that are particularly intrigued by using video to tell a story, this is a great place for them to learn the tricks of the trade. Often we as teachers shy away from lessons that we aren’t familiar with. With Animation Chefs, even if you aren’t familiar with creating stop motion animation, you can provide a fun learning experience for your students. How can your students use stop motion videos for learning? Students can tell any story, illustrate their learning, explain a difficult concept, reflect on learning, or create videos for younger students/grade levels. In my computer classroom, I had students take a picture of themselves every single time they logged into the computers during the school year. We put all of the pictures in a “me” folder on their desktop, labeling each picture with the date. The last week of school, we created a stop motion video with all of the pictures by putting them into iMovie and setting the picture clip to 1 second. Students added music that they created in Garageband and a title page. The end result: each had videos of their school year where they could watch themselves “grow” up. This works especially well in second through fifth grade where the changes in a years time are marked.
Tips:Animation Chefs has a Twitter page, if your class is on Twitter, they may be a good tweep to follow as a class.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Animation Chefs in your classroom!
What it is:NetSmartz Kids is an incredible Internet safety site for kids. I have reviewed this site in the past here, and use it every year with my students to teach and reinforce Internet safety. Router’s Birthday Surprise is a new feature of NetSmartz. It is an interactive video where students are drawn into the story, playing a contestant on a game show to learn online safety rules. Clicky, the robot star of NetSmartz, is planning a surprise birthday party for his robo dog Router. As they follow Clicky through his hectic day, students play games, help Clicky put the Webville Outlaws back in jail, and decide who is a trusted adult. When students complete the video and games, they become certified NetSmartz Kids complete with an official certificate. Students have to complete all sections correctly before they can be certified. The complete video and game play runs for about 45 min, but NetSmartz has broken the video and game into manageable pieces so that it can fit in any schedule. Students can watch a portion of the video and play the associated game and save their progress for the next time they are able to login. Games include Make-a-Match where students think about the fun things they do online (history, music, jokes); What Rule is it Anyway where students play a contestant on a game show to learn about the rules of online safety; Get Clicky to Webville where students choose an Internet tube to get Clicky to his destination, Outlaw Roundup where Clicky captures the Webville outlaws and students match the outlaw to their crime; Who Can You Trust where students define a trusted adult; Router’s Gift Grab where students choose a gift for Router; and a NetSmartz song about the four rules of real-world safety where students drag words to complete the lyrics of the song.
How to integrate NetSmartz Kids: Router’s Birthday Surprise into your curriculum: I truly didn’t think that NetSmartz Kids could get any better. They have outstanding videos and songs about Internet safety that my students love year after year, they have fantastic educational resources (lesson ideas and downloads), and the games get requested by my students frequently. Router’s Birthday Surprise manages to make it even better! This interactive video is an excellent way for students to learn about Internet Safety and has the added bonus of tracking their understanding of the concepts being learned. Regardless of what subject you teach, Internet Safety is something that we all need to teach and reinforce in our classrooms. In the past, I have used NetSmartz in addition to the sites listed here to help my students learn proper use of the Internet. The rule that I love that NetSmartz includes is the “Tell a trusted parent or adult if there is anything online that makes you scared, uncomfortable, or confused.” I cannot tell you how many students see inappropriate content but fail to tell an adult about it because they think they will be in trouble. This is a rule I make sure that my students know and a rule that I pass on to parents so that they can handle inappropriate web content appropriately (without banning use).
Router’s Birthday Surprise is such a nice addition because it invites students to be part of a story. It breaks the learning down into manageable pieces so that it can be used in any class situation. In the computer lab setting, students can each create an account and save their progress as they go. In a classroom setting, the video can be played for the whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. Poll students to find out how they would respond to each question and invite students to take turns coming to the whiteboard or the computer to interact with a game. If you have a student response system (clickers) students can respond to the game show questions using them. In the one or two computer classroom, Router’s Birthday Surprise can be played as a center activity over several weeks. Each week students can complete another video portion and game.
In my class, after students had learned the Internet safety rules (which we came up with as a class), we would have an Internet safety quiz. This was similar to a drivers permit test. I made a big deal about how using the Internet is a privilege just like driving a car. Just like driving there are rules to learn and follow that will keep them and others safe. Just like driving they would have to prove that they knew the rules in order to get their license. And just like driving, they could lose their license if they weren’t following the rules. When students passed the test, I handed out Internet Licenses. Most years I used their previous yearbook picture and created the license myself, but a few years before I had the pictures, I used the NetSmartz UYN club cards, these are great because they list the UYN rules on the back.
Tips:Mike Hill, a creative producer with NetSmartz, generously sent me some DVD copies of Router’s Birthday Surprise to share with my readers. If you don’t have Internet access in your classroom, or don’t have reliable Internet access, let me know in the comment section and I will be happy to send you a DVD version-free! If you need a DVD let me know why, and be sure to leave your correct email address when filling out the comment form.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using NetSmartz Kids in your classroom!
What it is:Death in Rome is an interactive history experience from the BBC. The game takes place in the year 80AD where Tiberius Claudius Eutychus is found dead in his apartment. Students must put their sleuth skills to work as they investigate clues scattered around the room to solve the mystery. They have until dawn to crack the case. In addition to clues in the room, students can “talk” to modern-day experts for additional information, and interrogate witnesses.
How to integrate Death in Rome into your curriculum:Death in Rome is a fantastic exercise in critical thinking, reasoning, and deduction. Students will learn about ancient Rome, using clues to solve a mystery, and find out how engaging and interesting history can be. Death in Rome would make a great partner activity. Students can work together in teams to solve the crime. When each team has cracked the case, they can share the strategy they used and the clues that tipped them off to the solution. If you don’t have access to a lab setting, solve the case as a class using a projector or interactive whiteboard. Students can take turns at the board acting as investigators and leading the investigation. As the game progresses, those students at their seats can make note of the clues and offer conjectures as to what the clues reveal about the death.
Tips: Because of the subject matter, this game probably isn’t appropriate for students under the age of 10. I recommend playing through the game yourself to decide if it is appropriate for your age group. Older students will enjoy playing investigator!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Death in Rome in your classroom!
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!
