Art – Page 12 – iLearn Technology

Kid Thing

November 20, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2442 views

What it is: I could have sworn that I had written a post about Kid Thing in the past, but after running several searches on my posts, I came up empty. Kid Thing is a secure digital media player for kids in grades k-4. Kid Thing accesses the Internet but is not a web browser. It is more like an iTunes type environment designed specifically for kids. There are no advertisements on Kid Thing and because it is not a web browser, there is no place to type a web address where students could inadvertently stumble on inappropriate content. The Kid Thing player is free to download and they often have free downloads of learning and interactive activities for students. There is also a Kid Thing store where additional books, videos, games, and creative arts can be downloaded to the Kid Thing player. Everything in the store is very reasonably priced. Right now Kid Thing is offering a free download in addition to the player, a 25 day Countdown to Christmas. Each day students will get to open a new kid thing Surprise with a game to play. After the game has been opened, it will stay on the Kid Thing player to be played over and over again.

How to integrate Kid Thing into the classroom: The Kid Thing player would make an excellent reading center, or learning center for phonics, language arts, and math. The player is very user friendly for students. Start each morning with the free Countdown for Christmas, let each student have a turn to be the one to open the Countdown for Christmas surprise. Throughout the day, let students visit the Kid Thing center to complete the new activity for the day. Kid Thing is great for the one or two classroom computers, a computer lab, a projector or interactive whiteboard, and for home use. Encourage parents to download Kid Thing at home and add books and games that are appropriate for their child.

Tips: At the moment Kid Thing only runs on PC’s running Window’s XP and Vista. There is a Mac version in the works (hooray!!) and if you visit the download page you can sign up to be the first to know when the Mac version is available.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Kid Thing in your classroom.

Glogster

October 16, 2008Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3561 views

What it is: Glogster is a great creativity site who’s tag line is “poster yourself”. A ‘glog’ is basically an online poster web page. Students can combine text, pictures, graphics, video, and audio to create an interactive online poster. Glogster has a very simple to use interface. The final glog can be hosted by Glogster or you can embed it into a wiki, blog, or class web site.

How to integrate Glogster into the classroom: Glogster is an awesome way for your students to display knowledge. Instead of creating a poster for a presentation, students can create an interactive glog to display information. Glogster can be used for history, math, language arts, book reports, science, social studies, and for public service announcements. In fact, I am having a hard time coming up with a subject that couldn’t use Glogster in some capacity. Students can create these online posters to display any knowledge or learning. You really have to see this site, the creativity that it allows for will get your wheels spinning. Once you start using Glogster with your students, you are going to think of all kinds of new applications. Because Glogster has the ability to handle audio, students can create podcasts (using Audacity, Garageband, G-Cast or Gabcast) and upload the content into their glog. So cool! I really love that students can share their school work and accomplishments online with classmates, family, and friends. Give your students an authentic audience and their work will dazzle you!

Tips: You can check out a quick sample glog that I created here about Internet Safety.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Glogster in your classroom.

Piki Kids Comic Creator

October 6, 2008Kelly Tenkely2 Comments5756 views

What it is: Piki Kids Comic Creator is an online comic creator for students. Students can upload pictures from their computers, or search Flickr for images to use in their comic strip. The comics are very flexible so students can make them uniquely their own. Students can choose the number of panels, the look of the panels, color choices, and much more. When students are finished creating their online Piki Kids comic, they can save them to a gallery, or print out.

How to integrate Piki Kids Comic Creator into the classroom: Students love reading comics, there is something about the interaction with a comic that makes even struggling readers willing to try. I find that the same is true with writing. Many kids who struggle to write would dread writing out a story or series of events after reading a book. But, introduce a comic and suddenly those kids who don’t like writing are writing full stories. Piki Kids Comic Creator is the perfect way to get your students writing about anything. Studying dinosaurs? Have the kids find some clip art of dinosaurs that they can upload to Piki Kids and have them write about what they are learning comic book style. Learning about the Civil War? Have the students retell the story as a comic strip. You will see creativity that you didn’t know your students possessed! Comic strips are also an excellent place for students to “write” a book report after finishing a book. Comics can be used in science to show processes (like plant cycle…give those plants a voice!) Comics can be used in math for students to create word problems for fellow classmates to solve. Use comics in character education, after teaching a lesson, students can illustrate, comic-style, what that might look like. From the technology side of things, Piki Kids Comic Creator is a great place to teach kids skills like uploading to a website, searching flickr for pictures, changing font, size, and color.

Tips: Piki Kids Comic Creator is an excellent tool. Be aware that there are adwords on the website. I use these as an opportunity to help my student spot advertisements and talk about why sites include ads on websites. Everything can be a learning experience!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Piki Kids Comic Creator in your classroom.

Free Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

September 24, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2546 views

What it is: Free Federal Resource for Educational Excellence (that is a mouthful, hence forth shall be known as FREE) is a excellent resource for finding teaching and learning resources from federal agencies. Resources are broken down in to subjects arts and music, health and physical education, history and social studies, language arts, math, and science. Subjects are further broken down in to sub categories making it simple to find exactly what you are looking for quickly. There is also a great section called U.S. Time periods where you can search US history resources by time period. New sites are added to FREE regularly, you can get the new resources delivered to you by subscribing to the FREE RSS feed. The teaching and learning resources linked to from the FREE site are valuable to your classroom and will save you loads of time in searching for quality resources.

How to integrate Free Federal Resources for Educational Excellence into the classroom: Use FREE to find quality online resource for any subject that you are teaching. Some of the linked websites are specifically for teachers and some are activities and sites for students. Use this as a first stop when you are creating new lessons or enhancing the good old standby lessons. The FREEresources will enhance your lessons with rich content for your students.

Tips: Sign up for the FREE RSS feed for new resources delivered to you several times a week.

Leave a comment and share how you are using FREE in your classroom.

Shidonni

September 23, 2008September 23, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment6770 views

What it is: Shidonni is a really intriguing new web application for kids. Shidonni is an imaginary world that kids create. It provides a virtual universe where kids can create their own imaginary world, play, and share games and interact with each other in a safe environment online. Kids can create their own animals or characters online and make them interactive. Their characters actually move and interact with the kids (no programming required!). They can create a world for their character, feed their character, and play games using their character. Watch the video on the Shidonni website for a good idea of how the program works.

How to integrate Shidonni into the classroom: Shidonni is an amazing way for kids to express themselves creatively. They will LOVE the interaction that this site provides. I am really in awe of this site and its capabilities. The site is simple enough for kindergarten students to use but will keep even 5th grade students intrigued. For classroom use the site is a great way to let younger students practice interaction with the computer and mouse manipulation. It is also a great introduction to drawing programs. Students can use Shidonni as a place to start digital storytelling. They can use the site to illustrate stories that they are creating in writing class. Shidonni can also be used to create “living” dioramas for the classroom. This is a great place for students to learn by trial and error. I like to introduce programs like this and then let students teach themselves how to use new technology through exploration.

Tips: Shidonni requires that you download a plugin for your Internet browser. Be sure to do this on all computers before you roll it out for the first time in class. 🙂

Leave a comment and share how you are using Shidonni in your classroom.

The Great Plant Escape

September 16, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4184 views

What it is: The Great Plant Escape is a wonderful interactive website created by the University of Illinois Extension for fourth and fifth grade students. Every school that I know of teaches a plants unit at some point in the curriculum. This is a great way for your students to interact with their learning in science class. Each lesson in The Great Plant Escape introduces students to plant science. Activities engage students in math, science, language arts, social studies, music and even art. The Great Plant Escapeincludes six mystery cases that students must help solve. They do this in a variety of ways depending on the activity. This site can be played in English or Spanish making it great for your ESL or ELL students as well as those kiddos learning Spanish as a second language!

How to integrate The Great Plant Escape into the classroom: The Great Plant Escape offers a lot of flexibility depending on your classroom setup and student abilities. Students can work individually in a lab setting or in groups as a center in the one or two computer classroom. This site would also be appropriate for whole class instruction with a projector or interactive whiteboard. Each activity has an accompanying teacher section that will familiarize you with the material covered in that “case”. Be sure to check out the Links page for some excellent resources for additional lessons and websites dedicated to teaching kids about Plants and life cycles. This site is sure to add a lot of interest to your plant unit in science. My students have really enjoyed it!

Tips: Visit the Teacher’s Guide for a free poster for The Great Plant Escape for your classroom.

Leave a comment and share how you are using The Great Plant Escape in your classroom.

Free Rice…New and Improved!

September 15, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3813 views

What it is: Free Rice is an amazing website that I have posted about two or three times in the past. It has been a site where students can play a vocabulary game and earn 20 grains of rice for each correct answer. The grains of rice are distributed to hungry people all over the world through the UN World Food Program. Two of my students came in this morning with a printout of how many grains of rice they had earned over the weekend on the Free Rice website (we have a contest going each year to see which class and grade can earn the most grains of rice). They were unusually excited about this bunch of earned rice because they discovered some new features on Free Rice. Free Rice is now much more than a vocabulary game! Students can choose the subject they would like to play. As they increase in all types of knowledge, there is the added bonus of helping people in need. Free Rice subjects now include art (famous paintings), chemistry (chemical symbols), English grammar, geography (world capitals), language learning (French, German, Italian, Spanish), math (multiplication), and of course…vocabulary! Free rice is an incredible place for students to practice facts for a wide range of subject areas. Some additional new features: now students can click on a speaker next to a word to hear it read to them and can change the level of difficulty manually! I am so impressed with the site and impressed with my students for finding and sharing these new treasures!

How to integrate Free Rice into the classroom: With all of the new subjects on Free Rice, it is the perfect place to send your students for fact practice. Whether they are learning a new language, or need some practice with their multiplication facts Free Rice is a great place to practice. What I love about Free Rice is the added bonus of character education. Free Rice teaches students compassion and empathy. My students truly play the game not for the learning taking place, but because it makes them feel good to do something for others. Kids often feel like there is nothing they can personally do to help a cause…Free Rice gives them a voice and the ability to make a change. It empowers them.

Tips: Set up Free Rice on your classroom computers as a place for students to go when they are finished early and need a little something extra. Free Rice is also excellent in a computer lab setting and for home play.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Free Rice in your classroom.

Studio4Learning

September 12, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment10125 views

What it is: Studio4Learning is a great site for students in fifth through twelfth grades. It provides students and teachers with free, high-quality videos that can be watched online. There are ten categories of videos to choose from Math, Sciences, English, Languages, Social Sciences, Business, Arts, Test Prep, Find a Job, and Tutor Corps. Each category is broken down into several sub categories. Videos are engaging and teach key skills and concepts in a fun way. Students can also use the sites search feature to search for a specific topic.

How to integrate Studio4Learning into the classroom: Students can use Studio4Learning as a place to stop for homework help and to learn or review concepts learned in class. Teachers can use Studio4Learning as a center, with a projector, or on individual student computers to illustrate new teaching or as a place where students can review information. Studio4Learning is free to use, if students register (also free) they can bookmark videos. Teachers can upload class topic videos to Studio4Learning, again free. (Are you seeing a theme here? It is all free!) As an added bonus, if you have a class website or blog, you can embed videos directly into your site for students to watch on any subject you are studying in class.

Tips: Browse through a couple of videos on the site, I know you will be hooked!

Leave a comment and share how you are using Studio4Learning in your classroom.

Picturing America Part 2

September 10, 2008September 10, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1686 views

What it is: I have posted about Picturing America before (March 18th) but I just received my Picturing America kit yesterday and had to post again and make sure everyone was taking advantage of this amazing resource. I knew that the kit was going to be good but I truly had no idea how AMAZED I would be. The quality of materials is amazing (there really isn’t another word for it!) I’ll post pictures of my actual kit so you can get an idea for just what you get in this kit. Did I mention it was FREE?! The Picturing America program is completely free for schools and libraries and provides them with 40 high-quality masterpieces, a teacher resources book, and the program website. The National Endowment for the Humanities gives a grant making this all possible. As the recipient your only task is to write up a one page report about your experience. They give almost a calendar year for you to do this.

How to integrate Picturing America into your curriculum: What better way to teach your students American history than actually bringing history into the classroom and providing students with real ties to the past? I wish that I had the opportunity to learn history this way!Picturing America is going to bring authentic conversation into your classroom about American history. It would be the perfect use of web 2.0 collaborative tools where students can discuss the history and the art in Picturing America. Picturing America masterpieces would also be easily integrated into the art classroom or in literacy as writing inspiration. The teacher resource book is going to provide you with wonderful tie ins to your current curriculum. This is an amazing program, I encourage you to take part in it! These masterpieces will beautify your walls and provide teaching opportunities year round regardless of the age of students you teach.

Tips: Apply for the Picturing America program today. I can’t tell you how completely blown away I am by this program!!!

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

Creative Park

September 4, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2566 views

What it is: Creative Park is a great free creative resource library for teachers and students. Creativity is such an important part of child development but also an important aspect of 21st century learning and thinking. Creative Park offers teachers and students awesome resources for putting that creativity to use. The website offers ideas and templates that can be coupled with your lesson plans. Projects range from 3-D paper crafts (like airplanes, the Great Pyramids, a globe, dinosaurs, and the Leaning Tower of Piza, etc.) There are great special collections including an Architecture museum, circus land, and science museum. Creative Park also features calendars, art crafts, a digital photo gallery, and scrapbook area.

How to integrate Creative Park into the classroom: Lets face it, teachers don’t have the largest budgets in the world to buy manipulatives and learning displays. Creative Park can help ease some of this burden by giving you free high quality paper crafts that your students can assemble. I love that this taps into following directions and creativity for students. Students can use these materials to make class dioramas or displays. This is also a great stop for those indoor recess days. Keep your kids busy creating when they have to be cooped up inside. Use the scrapbook pages to create custom class memory books. Each student can create their own as a keepsake for the end of the year (my students LOVE their memory books each year). The greeting section is wonderful for elementary teachers who are in charge of covering every holiday and making sure that mom and dad get a card from their child. Many of the materials available on this site would be perfect for bulletin boards. The creative activities would also liven up classroom parties. This is a fun site to sit and explore!

Tips: Stock your printer up with paper and ink for these projects.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Creative Park for your classroom.