Tag: free

Big Huge Labs: Magazine

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What it is: Big Huge Labs: Magazine is an online magazine cover creator. Students can create custom magazine covers from photos on Flickr or photos uploaded from the computer.

How to integrate Big Huge Labs: Magazine into the classroom: This would be a great tie-in to a persuasive writing unit. Discuss with students why magazine covers need to be persuasive. Students can create a custom cover for a multitude of projects. This might be a fun Mother’s day/Father’s day gift as well!

Tips: Set up a class Flickr account and link to Big Huge Labs for easy access for your students.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Big Huge Labs: Magazines in your classroom.


Free Rice

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What it is: Free Rice has two goals: to provide English vocabulary to everyone for free and help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free (this is made possible by the sponsors on the site). Free Rice is a sister company of www.poverty.com. Free Rice began in October 2007 and to date has donated over a billion grains of rice. Students play a vocabulary game online. For each word they get correct, 10 grains of rice are donated. If a student gets a word wrong, the words get easier. If the student gets the word right, the words get harder.

How to integrate Free Rice into the classroom: Free Rice is a wonderful vocabulary game for the classroom. I love the added lesson about helping those who are less fortunate. Free Rice would be the perfect game to play during the holiday season…particularly around Thanksgiving. As our students give thanks for plentiful food and nutrition, they can play a game to help others get much needed food and nutrition. Visit the FAQ page to find out more about how the Free Rice program works and how rice is donated. This vocabulary game could also be a great way to teach students how to use the dictionary. As students get an unfamiliar vocabulary word, encourage them to look the word up (online or “old school”).

Tips: Use Free Rice as a math lesson, students can document the number of grains of rice donated each month. Use these figures to introduce graphing and charting skills (among others!).

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

Drupal

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Drupal1861 views

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.

School Notes

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What it is: Teachers can use School Notes to create notes for homework and class information and post them on the web in seconds using this free service.

How to integrate School Notes into your classroom: Use School Notes as a quick easy way to stay in touch with your families. Parents and students can view your notes by entering the school zip code. This is an easy to use interface!

Tips: School Notes is part of Education World, be sure to visit Education World for great teacher resources.

 

 

Student Treasures

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What it is: Student Treasures is a free publisher that will publish student work into bound books. This program is highly motivating for students because they see their work result in a 4-color, hard bound, professionally published book.

How to integrate Student Treasures into the classroom: Use Student Treasures as a motivational tool. Students can write individual or class stories to be published. Use a word processor for the final copy that will be published. This is a great tool for teaching writing as students will have to go through each step of the writing process and learn how to use a word processor proficiently.

Tips: If you do not have a word processor, see the Archives for free tools.

 

 

e-learning for Kids

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What it is: e-learning for Kids offers schools free and unlimited use of their courseware and access up-to-date content on children and learning. e-Learning for Kids provides a fun place to help your students build and strengthen skills in math, science, reading, computers and keyboarding. The programs are designed for kindergarten through sixth graders.

How to integrate e-learning for Kids into your curriculum: You can easily incorporate the e-learning for Kids courses into your current curriculums. Match up the e-learning for Kids courses with your current curriculum. Students can work on specific skills and access the self-paced programs independently. Students will be engaged and work at a level where they can perform successfully.

Tips: e-learning for Kids offers a free CD version of the courses. This is the perfect solution for computers that are not connected to the Internet or have an unreliable connection.

Think Free

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What it is: A FREE online alternative to Microsoft Office with 1GB of online storage for each user, online document collaboration, document viewer, and Think Free docs.

How to integrate Think Free into your curriculum: Think Free is not only a great way to get a complete word processor into your classroom, it also allows you to assign homework to students, and know that they students have the proper tools to get the job done. Students can easily collaborate on projects using Think Free. The best part? Students can access their files and the applications they need from any connected computer. Students can also create spreadsheets and presentations (like PowerPoint) for free.

Tips: Think Free is a great tool for you too! Instead of transferring files back and forth on a flash drive or CD, use Think Free for your word processing needs (lesson plans, class materials, homework) and access on your connected home computer. Easy!