Art – Page 3 – iLearn Technology

Unitag: Custom QR Code Generator

December 6, 2012Kelly Tenkely4 Comments9498 views

What it is: QR codes are becoming more and more prevalent in education and everywhere else (advertisements, TV, your bag of chips, soda, etc.). These codes are easy to make and can lead to some fun learning opportunities. Unitag is a QR code generator that lets you customize the look of the QR code. First, choose a type of QR code to generate. This can be a weblink, text, a business card, an email, a geolocation, a text message, a phone number, a calendar date, a wifi network, or a mobile page. Next, you can customize the QR code with pre-made templates, personalized color palette, a special look, a logo or picture, “eye” colors, and more. When you are finished, the QR code can be downloaded or shared on Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest. This process could take seconds (it is SO fast to create) or several minutes depending on how fancy you like to get with your customizations.

How to integrate Unitag into the classroom: So, what in the heck can you use those codes for? A lot! Use Unitag to create customized codes for back to school night; instead of sending parents with stacks of papers, offer a QR code by the door where they can snap a picture that takes them to your expectations/important dates/syllabus/special projects. Include QR codes next to parent teacher conference signups so that parents can instantly upload the date to the calendar on their phone. A QR code linked to your business card helps parents and students know what office hours you keep and how to keep in touch.

For older students (who have a phone) offer QR codes to help them remember important dates, homework, special projects, etc. This could be posted next to the door so that on their way in or out they can instantly snap a picture and have all of the upcoming assignments in their calendar.

QR codes can be used by students to create choose your own adventure type stories. The codes can link to different twists and turns within the story. This would be fantastic for student created fiction but could also make a really cool book report. Students could write one version summarizing the story as it was, a QR code could lead to an alternate ending that they created themselves.

When studying history, QR codes could be used to show different angles of the same event, different outcomes depending on population…and how cool would it be if those QR codes were included on a map where the events took place?! Students can link the QR codes to different views of the same event. For example, one from the viewpoint of explorer Christopher Columbus and another from the point of view of Native Americans. A QR code classroom timeline would also be very neat. Students can create reports/content that is linked to a QR code that gets placed on a giant timeline. Customize the code with images that are related to the event or colors that represent the event in some way.

Create a bulletin board with a map of the world. Place QR codes over different places for an interactive board. Students can use the QR codes to reveal the name/capital/key features of the place.

Have a secret clue or math problem each day that students can reveal using a QR code. It sounds so simple, but honestly, students love the mystery and hidden challenge!

In science, QR codes can be used at different stations to reveal the steps that students should follow for an experiment. How about a periodic table of QR codes that reveal what each element does or a video that shows the element in action?

At the beginning of last year, we created a school wide school scavenger hunt that used QR codes to help students learn where different classrooms/resources could be found. It was great fun!

Anytime you have a center activity, include a QR code that links to instructions, supplementary videos or websites. This saves students from having to spend learning time typing in URLs or looking for directions that the last group wrote on or piled things on (or does that only happen to us?).

Do your students create a LOT of digital work like ours do? One of the challenges we face at Anastasis is the lack of worksheets going home. I know…it doesn’t seem like that would be a challenge, but it is. Parents aren’t quite sure where to look for their child’s work since it is all digital. QR codes could go home in lieu of a Friday folder that link to student work.

This time of year, it would be really neat to create a QR code advent calendar where students reveal some new piece of learning every day.

Tips: I hope that your mind is racing with the possibilities these little codes offer. There is something to the mystery of them that appeals to students, they are like unveiling a surprise. Don’t keep all the fun of creating them to yourself, students can easily create these and use them within their work. I honestly can’t think of a subject or discipline that these wouldn’t be useful in.

Art: Share some art history or steps to an art project through a QR code.

Foreign Language: Create a word bank wall that has QR codes that reveal the translation of the word.

Geography: Create a map with QR codes that reveals additional information about the place.

Government: QR codes that lead students to political cartoons and related learning.

History: Exploring multiple points of view within a historical event.

Language Arts: Choose your own adventure story creation.

Math: Problem of the day. Multiple methods for solving a problem. Instructions for a math center activity.

Music: An exploration of world music through QR code link/videos.

PE: Links to examples of different exercises/warm ups.

Phonics: Video library of phonemes through QR code.

Science: Periodic table of QR codes with links to element information or videos.

Apps for scanning QR Codes: QR Reader, Qrafter, QR Scanner, Scan, Red Laser, Quick Scan Pro, Quick Scan, ATT code scanner. There are hundreds of these, search your app store for “QR code” and find the one that best fits your needs and device.

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

Dance, Factors Dance: Animated Factorization Diagrams #mathchat

November 15, 2012November 15, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3321 views

What it is: Dance, Factors Dance is a fantastic site to visualize factorization diagrams. The first “tango” is inspired by the digital clock, with a separate diagram for each of the hours, minutes and seconds. The Factor Conga is a “promenade of primes, composites, and their constituents, arranged with an aesthetically-tuned variation of Yorgey’s rules, one per second.” I love the way these math factorization dances help students visualize numbers and Prime numbers. Brilliant!

How to integrate Dance, Factors Dance into the classroom: Dance, Factor Dance is a stupendous way for students to visualize and think about numbers. I Love the way that the prime numbers are depicted…so easy to see why it is a prime number! Ask your students to explore this site and identify the patterns they notice in the dance of numbers. What happens when a number is prime? When a number is odd? Even?

Dance, Factors Dance is a fun way to learn more about numbers, it is also a wonderful inspiration for finding the art in math. How can students use the site as inspiration to create their own math dance? Could they use stop motion animation and manipulatives to do something similar? What patterns in math do they notice? How can they use color and design to help them better understand math?

This site is a great one to explore as a class, as a center on classroom computers, or individually on student devices. Students can pause the dance, rewind, and fast forward as they explore.

Tips: Be sure to watch (or fast forward) to the three digit numbers…this is where things get really impressive! As a side note, I learned something today from a fellow teacher. When looking at numbers in grid form, you know if a number is prime if it can only make one rectangle. This understanding would have been helpful in math class! Better late than never 🙂

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Dance, Factors Dance in your classroom.

myHistro: timeline/story/map/picture mashups created by you!

October 23, 2012Kelly Tenkely2 Comments8629 views

What it is: myHistro is a really great site (and app!) that lets students combine maps and timelines seamlessly into one great presentation of information and understanding. myHistro is more than just data collection, it is a way to share stories. With myHistro, students can create a rich timeline/map mashup complete with additional text, pictures and video. The result is truly incredible! It is easy to get started, just create an event and associate it with a time and place. Events can be gathered together and turned into stories. Stories, in turn, can be used together to create a collection. Stories can be viewed in multiple ways, by events on a timeline, in chronological order with a page flip feature like an album, or as a story summary of chronological events. Create as many events as you would like and add as many photos as you like, all for free! The finished product can even be downloaded into Google Earth format for offline storage. Completed Histros can be embedded in other blogs and websites for maximum usability.

How to integrate myHistro into the classroom: myHistro has SO many uses! At Anastasis, we just completed an inquiry unit on who we are. myHistro was a perfect tie in for students exploring family histories, heritage and tradition. Students could add pictures, and stories along with the interactive map of where events were taking place and a timeline where they could see it all unfold chronologically. This is like a family tree on steroids. Pretty outstanding. Even better? It ties directly into Geni (blogged about here).

myHistro isn’t just for family trees. It could be used for students mapping out history chronologically, mapping out a fictional story, creating a story map for their own writing, mapping how ideas and invention spread, looking at explorers, migration, etc. As I said, the options are endless!

myHistro is collaborative, students can create projects together and even invite parents to join in the learning. Pretty cool!

As a teacher, you can ditch the text book and help students really visualize that history in new ways. A completed myHistro can be embedded in your class blog or website for students to access without having to visit multiple sites or login.

There are a number of fabulous myHistro stories that you can borrow to share with your students. They can view these to learn more about events in history, or they can go on a fact checking mission to double check the validity of the stories created by others. Definitely worth doing!

Tips: myHistro also happens to be an app. Find it in the iTunes store. This can be your first download on your new iPad mini 😉

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

Help me personalize education for EVERY child! Donate (even just your coffee money!) and spread the word about the Learning Genome Project.

Yummy Math! Best Math Blog EVER

October 18, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment4979 views

What it is: Yummy Math is an absolutely fabulous blog/site dedicated to helping students and teachers understand how math is relevant to the world. What a great mission! The blog was started 2 years ago…bummed that I am only JUST discovering it. Brian Marks and Leslie Lewis are the creators of Yummy Math. They have worked together to make an easy way for teachers to bring real-world math into the classroom. Math (like everything else) should be taught within a context. I believe this is key! When understood in context, students can make connections to their learning and, as a result, really learn it. The goal here is to engage students in math so that they yearn to reason, think critically, problem solve, question and communicate…in short: DO math! Each week, multiple activities and ideas are added to the Yummy Math site. This means that you are in constant supply of real-world math problems for your students to engage in.

Categories include:

Algebra
Data and Probability
Geometry
Number Sense
Sports
Holidays/annual events
Math and Science
Math and Food
Math and Social Studies
Math and Art
Movies and Entertainment

How to integrate Yummy Math into the classroom: You know that dry math curriculum that you feel TRAPPED by? Yummy Math exists to free you (and your students) from the endless memorization and unconnected practice. This is the perfect supplement to any math program. Use these activities a few times a week to really get your students thinking outside of the (math) box. These will stretch your students, and help them grow exponentially in their understanding of math and all of the cool things it makes possible.

These are not your typical “real” world word problems. None of that, if train a is traveling north at x, and train b is traveling south at y what time will they meet? Garbage. This is…what is the real cost of owning an iPhone 5? or The House of Representatives passed a law in 2007 to increase the efficiency of light bulbs, what is the real energy savings that can be realized with CFL and LED. Not only relevant, but really interesting!

Tips: You know what is EXTRA helpful? That Yummy Math has already done all the leg work to tell you which Common Core Standards these project are meeting. Yes. They are awesome!

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

Help me personalize education for EVERY child! Donate and spread the word about the Learning Genome Project.

Piktochart: Create your own infographics

October 9, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment11205 views

What it is: Piktochart is a great web app that makes it easy to create your own infographics. Piktochart has free and premium options. With the free version, there are a handful of themes to choose from. Premium themes are also available, if you are so inclined. After you choose a theme, the next job is to change the mood and edit the information on the chart. Students can add shapes, graphics (uploaded), theme graphics, and text to the infographic. Students can add a chart where they manually input data or upload a cvc file. This is especially helpful if they have been data collecting in another program. There are some features that are only available to pro users. Not to worry, there are enough available for free that you can make a pretty rockin’ infographic that gets the point (or data) across.

How to integrate Piktochart into the classroom: Piktochart is a superb way for students to work on those statistics/probability standards. Being a visual learner myself, I love the way that infographics seem to make data easier to digest. Piktochart can be used to display any type of statistical or mathematical data in new ways. Students can show what they are learning in history, about the world population (miniature earth), science, in the book they are reading, geography statistics, etc.

The way that infographics allow students to blend learning across the subject areas is fantastic. It isn’t just math; it is math, and art, and science/social studies/history/geography/technology. Any time we can help students recognize the overlaps that exist in learning and subject area, it is a win!

A few weeks ago, students at Anastasis discovered that America’s biggest export is trash. They started digging and found statistics about the amount of trash Americans throw away each day (7lbs/person) and how much was recycled vs. what ended up in a landfill. They also looked at statistics of what receiving countries like China and India did with the waste being imported. It was fascinating! Students created infographics showing what they had discovered in their research. It was eye-opening when they translated that trash per person into a year’s worth of trash and figured out how many football stadiums that it would fill. When they could see it graphically, it had an impact on their thinking. The result was: “it is up to us to change this…”

Pretty amazing when the conclusion to learning is transformation…change.

Tips: In the free version: Basic themes, 5 image uploads, Piktochart’s watermark. Pro version ($29.00/mo): 80 themes (and growing), additional customization, more image uploads, no watermark.

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

Help me personalize education for EVERY child! Donate and spread the word about the Learning Genome Project.

The Literacy Shed: a treasure trove of ideas

June 25, 2012Kelly Tenkely2 Comments11888 views

What it is: The Literacy Shed is a fantastic blog/site I learned about on Twitter from @missmac100, thanks Carol! The Literacy Shed is maintained by primary teacher Rob Smith and is packed full of teaching ideas all related to literacy. The site is separated into “sheds,” each with a different genre. There are short films images and book suggestions that are each accompanied by a teaching idea that includes discussion questions and writing prompts. The Literacy Shed has plenty of ideas to keep you going all year long! This truly is a treasure trove that will keep you coming back again and again. You will find the following “sheds” on the Literacy Shed:

Fantasy
Ghostly
Other Cultures
Inspiration
Moral
Picture Book
Great Animation
Love
Inventors
Fairytales
Reading
Poetry
Adventure
Mystery
Film Trailer
Fun
Lighthouse
Flying Books
Resource
Non-literacy
Weblinks

How to integrate The Literacy Shed into the classroom: The Literacy Shed is a great one-stop-shop for inspiration and ideas to improve literacy and critical thinking in your classroom. The ideas can be used with a variety of age groups, different ages will pick up on different themes and discussions using the same videos/images/books. Students will become familiar with a variety of genres and become comfortable with the characteristics of each.

There is something here for every classroom and unit. As I said, it is a treasure trove of resources! Use the ideas in the Literacy Shed to spark meaningful discussions and writing direction for your students. I always like to start with discussion and end with a written reflection because it gives students the opportunity to listen to other ideas, and then solidify their own ideas and reflections in writing.

Tips: You can follow the Literacy Shed on Twitter: @redgierob

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Literacy Shed in your classroom!

Widbook: Online Collaborative ebook Creation

June 15, 2012June 15, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3737 views

Widbook – Write, read and share! from Widbook on Vimeo.

What it is: Widbook is a new publishing platform for ebooks. What makes this publishing platform so neat is the social aspect, it allows authors to collaborate and make suggestions. Each user also gets their own bookshelf where they can subscribe to other author’s work.

When students start a new ebook, they can choose who can see the book when it is published, choose whether they will accept collaboration for the book, and choose if they want to accept comments for the book. Actually writing the book is fabulously simple. All of the onscreen tools are easy to use and intuitive as to their function. The book can have a table of contents, multiple chapters, and pictures and video embedded right into the book. When students are finished, they simply save the book and publish it. The finished book gets a unique url that can be shared.

How to integrate Widbook into the classroom: Widbook is a fantastic, simple tool for secondary students to use to create ebooks. Students can create individual published works that can be commented on by other students and the teacher. Students can receive relevant-real time feedback not only from their teacher, but also from other students. Students not only get practice writing their own works, they also get practice evaluating writing of their peers.

Students can use Widbook to write final drafts of any piece of writing be it an essay or creative writing assignment. The ability to add video and images easily is wonderful.

Widbook would also be a great place for students to collaboratively create books about their learning. Each student can add a chapter, or groups of students can create chapters together. Instead of assigning students a textbook to read for the semester, include them in the creation of a collaborative textbook. Provide students with a table of contents and put them to work creating a chapter for each topic/unit throughout the year. At the end of the year, each student will have a book of their learning that they helped to create. Much more useful than a textbook that one of the Big Six wrote that gets opened only before tests!

Are you having trouble finding a book that matches your classroom learning needs? Create an ebook that perfectly meets your students right where they are. Include videos and images relevant to learning.

***For younger students be sure to check out BoomWriter!

Tips: Older students who have Facebook accounts can choose to link their Facebook account for easy login (make sure you know your school’s policy on social networking sites being accessed at school, even if it is just to login with).

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

Mixbook: Yearbook/Storybook/Calendar/Card creator

June 7, 2012Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3348 views

What it is: Mixbook saved us this year in a BIG way. Being our first year as a school, we didn’t want to use a big yearbook publishing company to create our first yearbook. We wanted to be able to get as much of the year in as possible (most yearbook companies have mid-year deadlines), we were only having 60 made (small potatoes for big yearbook companies), and we wanted to be able to print one-offs if we needed to. We started creating in Shutterfly, it was a familiar program, most of our helpers had used it for personal books so the learning curve was small. And then the world came crashing down. It was the day before the deadline to get our order in so that it would make it before the school year ended. Two of us logged in at the same time and apparently properly confused the system and lost the whole thing. All 30 pages of it. After throwing a pity party, trying to get in touch with Shutterfly (unsuccessfully), and declaring that there would be no yearbook, I did what anyone would do- I took my pity party to Twitter.

I never did hear from Shutterfly. You know who did come to the rescue? Mixbook. They saw my pity party tweet, apologized for our bad fortune, offered their assistance and let us know that they would be happy to help in any way they could. I was familiar with Mixbook but hadn’t used it before. I hopped onto the Mixbook site and immediately liked what I saw:

The interface is incredibly easy to use.
It allows collaborative working and tells you when someone else is editing the book so you don’t override each other.
It has great templates.
It has great customization options.
The customer service is unmatched. Honestly, any time we had a question/comment/problem they helped within minutes. During business hours they have a dynamite online chat support system. When it wasn’t normal business hours their Twitter genius would get back to me. Emails were answered within hours.
Finished books can be viewed and shared for free online.
They were incredibly helpful in keeping the price of each book reasonable for us. They extended coupon codes, gave us bulk purchase discounts, and rushed our order so that it would get to us with plenty of time to spare.

The books are GORGEOUS. They look better than they do on screen (this hasn’t been my experience with other book companies).

Mixbook is a free online scrapbook/calendar/card creator. With Mixbook, you aren’t limited to pre made templates, everything is fully customizable. The online design software is extremely easy to use and works the way you would expect it to (no unwelcome surprises). Mixbook is integrated with many popular photo sites including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, etc. You can also easily batch upload from your computer.

How to integrate Mixbook into the classroom: As we experienced, Mixbook is a fantastic place to make school or classroom yearbooks. Despite the short timeline, we enjoyed creating our yearbooks and are glad to have our first year commemorated so beautifully. At the bottom of each page, we created a running timeline of everything that happened in our first year as a school.

Because it is so easy to customize each page, students could use Mixbook to create “published” portfolios or writing. Take pictures of student work throughout the year, keep a folder for each student. At the end of the year, students can create a Mixbook of their work. They can include the pictures of their work and add text boxes where they reflect on their learning or explain the project. For original writing, students can create digital or hand drawn illustrations that get scanned and uploaded to the Mixbook pages. Students can type the story directly in Mixbook. The finished book can be shared for free online, parents will have the option to purchase the book if they would like to.

A photo calendar would be a great way to commemorate a school year and would make an awesome end of the year gift to your students. Each month can include projects and snapshots of what you did throughout the year.

Create specialized cards and thank you stationary for your classroom. Any time you need it, it will be ready to go and more special for your students.

Group projects are easy to create with Mixbook. The collaboration ability is wonderful! You could use Mixbook with colleagues to create custom learning guides that you can get printed.

Tips: As an educator, you get an extra discount for any order of 10 items or more. OUTSTANDING!

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

Pinterest Classroom Inspiration Roundup

May 21, 2012Kelly Tenkely4 Comments22082 views

Holy Smokes. It has been a CRAZY couple of weeks. Don’t let anyone tell you that starting a school is an insane amount of work; that is a piece of cake compared to ending your first school year! Blogging has obviously taken a back seat. It feels strange not to blog every day after making that a habit over the last 4 years.

Today is dedicated to Pinterest. I find so many fantastic things that spark ideas for must-dos at Anastasis. I’m sharing a few of them here. I hope they spark some ideas for your classrooms!

This year we did some composting, this was followed by planting seedlings in newspaper just like this. Each student made a newspaper “pot” for their seeds. We love that it is biodegradable!

We are ending the year at Anastasis with a Storyline Expo. This is a showcase of student work throughout the year. We wanted to show a progression of learning and a timeline seemed like a great way to do it.

We are making preparations for our first field day. Water noodle target practice looked like a great activity. What are we most excited about? A food truck for lunch. We are cool like that.

We have spent a good majority of the year sharing wishes and dreams. For our storyline expo, we are creating silhouettes of students sharing what they love about our school.

We have done SO many hands on experiments throughout the year. This one was particularly neat to visualize weather in a cup.

We took pictures of all the kids “holding-on” to rope like this. They made great bookmarks for our first ever read-in!

Every student created a poster with this quote on it. It so perfectly summarizes what we believe about students and learning.

This is SUCH a great way to practice equations and algebra. Each number on the clock is represented by an equation. Our students made some unique “geeky” clocks this year.

We really wanted students to find freedom in their learning this year. Creating unique thumbprints with information and thoughts from each student was a great way to kick this thought process off. They turned out great!

Words we live by daily!

To see the originals of these images (and many more), visit my Pinterest Classroom Inspiration page. Pinterest is my guilty pleasure, I add to it even when I don’t have time to blog! If you haven’t joined Pinterest yet, I highly recommend it. Fair warning: it is addicting!

TED-Ed: Lessons (videos) worth sharing

April 26, 2012Kelly Tenkely2 Comments5889 views

What it is: I have long been a TED talk fan, so much so that I started a lunch group at my previous school called TED Talk Tuesdays where teachers could gather over lunch, watch TED Talks and discuss it’s implication on education. TED has a brand new education site that I am excited about. TED-ed is a collection of educational video lessons that have been animated. These lessons can be used as a supplement in any classroom. Each video on the TED-ed site has an associated lesson, a Quick Quiz with multiple choice comprehension questions, Think which asks questions to help students think more critically about what they have watched, and Dig Deeper which helps students to explore the topic further. In addition to the videos, TED-ed gives educators the ability to “flip” videos. You can use, tweak, or completely re-do any lesson that is featured on TED-Ed, or even create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube. You can re-title a lesson to fit your classroom, add context, questions and follow-up suggestions, and create a custom URL for your video lesson. You can even track your student’s progress to see who has viewed the assigned video, the number of questions they attempted, the answers they provided, and the answers they got correct.

How to integrate TED-Ed into the classroom: TED-Ed is a fantastic new resource for the classroom. The videos can be used for flip teaching. Flip teaching changes up the classroom model. Normally students come to school to get instruction and do their practice work at home as homework. In a flipped teaching model, the instruction is watched at home as “homework” and the practice happens in the classroom where students can receive teacher support. This means that the focus in the classroom is on higher-order thinking and learning skills instead of on instruction. How novel. 🙂 Student can come to class ready for deeper inquiry, critical thinking, discussion with classmates, collaboration and get more personalized attention from the teacher. You maximize classroom time by “going home” with the students.

Video is a great medium for learning because it allows students to learn at their own pace and gives them the ability to replay as many times as they need to. Visuals are always useful when learning something new, video is a great medium because of the way that it helps enhance understanding through the use of visuals.

Videos are searchable by those that have been featured, those that are part of a series or by subject. Students can learn about the arts, business/economics, design/engineering/technology, health, literature/language, math, psychology, science/technology, and social studies. The library will continue to grow as teachers flip the videos and TED-ed adds content from educators around the world.

The videos are great in a flipped classroom model but can also be used within the classroom. Videos can be watched and discussed as a whole-class or put on classroom computers as a learning center. When I taught second grade, I made sure that I had time individually with my students each week. In the mornings, my students worked on groups with “tub work” to make this time possible with individual students. These videos would make a great “second teacher” in a blended learning classroom where students could continue their learning while you work with students individually.

Tips: Remember, if you don’t find a video that meets your classroom needs, you can always flip any video you find on YouTube!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using TED-ed in your classroom!