iCue

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on iCue1717 views


What it is: iCue is NBC’s newest venture into the realm of education. The sites aim is to create a collaborative 2.0 learning community that “incorporates gaming, discussion, and video resources in a safe, student-friendly online environment.” This is an excellent resource for getting your students interested in the world they live in through relevant news, videos, and a place to discuss them. The iCue video player is very robust and has the ability to take notes, leave comments, and create links for the video. The “Cue cards” can be saved in a student area for future reference. This site is a truly inventive way to teach with current events!

How to integrate iCue into the classroom: iCue is a great way to keep your students interested and engaged with current events. The site will be excellent to use on a daily basis during this election year. Students can watch videos, start discussions and debates based on current events. This site has great potential for really making students use critical thinking and higher order thinking skills. The related games are entertaining and will help reinforce what students are learning.

Tips: This site will eat up bandwidth. Make sure that your network can handle it before assigning the whole class to be on iCue at once! Learn more about what NBC is offering for the classroom at www.hotchalk.com.

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

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Moneyopolis

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Moneyopolis17549 views


What it is: Moneyopolis is an awesome game for teaching kids money and math! Each math question in the game is correlated to specific standards for grades 6-8 (although I think the site can be used with 5th grade students very successfully as well). The Moneyopolis game tracks students progress via their “scorecard” for the game. There are some great additional site tools which include a budget gadget that helps students set financial goals complete with an online worksheet to help students keep track of spending habits, a library with articles and links to other sites focused on math and money, a glossary for students to look up unfamiliar words and phrases, and a calculator to help students calculate math problems.

How to integrate Moneyopolis into the classroom: Moneyopolis is the perfect way for teaching math and money skills in a way that will catch and hold your students attention. Students can go through the game during class at their own pace, play in groups to compete against one another during class, or as an extra-credit activity that can be completed outside of class. Students can go through the game section by section based on what lessons you are teaching, or all at once at the end of a unit. Since the game keeps track of each students progress, they will be able to exit the game and come back to work where they left off.

Tips: Work through this game in student mode before introducing to students…you will be entertained! The teacher section of this site has some great lesson plans to use with Moneyopolis. I learned about the site on Larry Ferlazzo’s blog and I have to say, it is a winner!

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

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Guest Post: Kid Vid

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Guest Post: Kid Vid2966 views

Kids’ Vid: Classroom Video Production

Creating videos in a classroom setting can be an exciting way to encourage children to learn and create. However, this form of technology can be intimidating to newcomers. Both teachers and students can learn how to create, edit and share videos with Kids’ Vid.

Although there are many video resources on the Web, few are available that cater to those in a K-12 environment. Video hosting sites are often a source of objectionable material and corporate software sites are often too technical for laypersons. Kids’ Vid, however, is created specifically with teachers and young students in mind.

The video tutorials on this site are offered in four stages:

1. Scripting – The Scripting area of Kids’ Vid offers advanced storyboarding tools and tips for writing a classroom-friendly screenplay.
2. Making – The Making section covers all aspects of capturing the video, from operating the camera to lighting the video shoot.
3. Editing – The Editing area offers tips on pulling all the elements together and adding special effects.
4. Showtime – The Showtime section explains the various ways to share a video once it is edited, which includes CD-Rom, DVD and broadcasting on the Web.

Both teachers and students can benefit from the four areas above, which explain detailed techniques in an easy-to-grasp format. There is also a special area for educators that offers tips on how to integrate video production with a curriculum. Furthermore, children will enjoy the Kid Advice section, where they will learn helpful hints from their peers.

Young adults are more acclimated to video technology than ever before. Indeed, this is the “YouTube generation” and many children are very curious about how to make their own videos. Not only can you appeal to your students in a cutting-edge fashion with Kids’ Vid, you will find this medium to be very conducive with education in general.

Heather Johnson is a regular commentator on the subject of top online university. She welcomes your feedback and potential job inquiries at heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

Read the Words

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Read the Words2633 views


What it is: Read the Words is a free website that offers an audio player that will read anything you want. The Reader on the audio player can be listened to online, downloaded to a mp3 player, broadcasted as a podcast, or posted on a website or blog. The first step to creating your reader is selecting what you want read, this can be uploaded from a PDF, MS Word, HTML file, or input manually, cut and pasted, through RSS or URL. Step 2 is selecting a reader for your purposes, there are 14 readers to choose from. The readers speak English, Spanish, and French. Each reader has unique voices and some have accents. You can control the reader’s speed and pitch. Best of all it takes approximately one minute to generate an hour long recording.

How to integrate Read the Words into the classroom: Read the Words would be an excellent way to guide a webquest for students, create a reader to steer students through each activity in the webquest. If you have mp3 players available for checkout, create a reader for guided reading. These can be used in class during silent reading time or checked out for home use so that the student learning day can be extended. The readers would be excellent for history or science reading where vocabulary can be challenging. Read the Words is perfect for your auditory learners and because you can have text that is already in your lesson read, the differentiation for these students is short and sweet. Read the Words would also be great for English language learners or for English speakers learning Spanish or French.

Tips:
Take some time initially to listen to each of the readers. Choose the one that is easiest for your students to understand and best fits your purposes.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Read the Words in your classroom.

Leon Math Movies

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Leon Math Movies3925 views


What it is: Leon Math Movies is a part of the I Know That website that I have posted about in the past. After introducing this to a new set of second graders today I knew I needed to write about this specific part of I Know That. The kids absolutely love Leon Math Movies and it helps them practice their math skills (truly they will play this one at home without being asked). It is a great way to reinforce math facts and give some great math fact practice. Best of all it can be adapted to whatever math skill they are learning. They can practice counting, skip counting, all levels of addition, all levels of subtraction, multiplication, division, and a mix of addition and subtraction. Leon is a chameleon that goes on adventures (think Indiana Jones), as the cartoon plays, students have to solve math problems on the on screen PDA to help Leon during his adventures. The storylines and graphics are really well done and fun. Students can choose from 3 math adventure movies and any combination of practice they need. When they finish an adventure they can print out a certificate showing their math fact progress. So much fun!!

How to integrate Leon Math Movies into the classroom: Leon Math Movies are perfect for any classroom or lab configuration. The movies are fun for whole class participation on an interactive whiteboard or with a projector, call students up one at a time to help Leon by solving math problems. This is also a good one to set up on the classroom computers as a math center that students can visit throughout the week. Or, you can use it in the computer lab setting with each student playing individually. If you live in an area where you can assign this one for homework, I guarantee you will have full class participation!

Tips: There are banner ads on the I Know That website, I use these as an opportunity to talk to my class about what an ad is and what the advertisers want us to do. There is also an option to register before playing a game. I always tell my students to choose the “Maybe Later” option so that we don’t have to worry about keeping track of usernames and passwords.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Leon Math Movies in your classroom.

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Zoho Challenge

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What it is: Zoho may look familiar to you if you have been with me for a while. Zoho has a great online suite of office productivity tools such as spreadsheets, word documents, and online presentations. If you haven’t ever tried out the Zoho tools, they are definitely worth a look! Zoho has a new fabulous tool for teachers, called Zoho Challenge. Zoho Challenge allows teachers to easily conduct tests online in 4 simple steps. Zoho Challenge allows for multiple choice questions and descriptive questions. Results are displayed immediately for you and your students (although this setting can be altered to fit your needs.) Time limits can be specified, difficulty levels calculated automatically, and online access to students details. Zoho Challenge also has the ability to send emails to your students with their scores. Zoho makes it simple to create multiple exams, add candidates, schedule tests for future dates, look at student performance, find out who passed the test in a quick glance, view a “report card”, and view a graphical representation of overall results.

How to integrate Zoho Challenge into the classroom: Zoho Challenge can be used for any classroom testing. It makes it extremely easy for you to grade tests and see the results graphically. Zoho Challenge will save you time and quickly show you who understood the tested material and who needs more practice. Zoho Challenge is best used in a computer lab or mobile lab setting.

Tips: Test results can be sent home to parents via email…cool!

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

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Bloust

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Bloust2665 views


What it is: Bloust is a free website builder for teachers. It is extremely simple to use and allows teachers to easily broadcast important class information, communicate and collaborate web 2.0 style with other teachers within the Bloust community, organize classroom documents, and much more! Bloust also offers a place for students to organize their school life, network with their school friends on Bloust’s private student community, and develop and join clubs.

How to integrate Bloust into the classroom: No matter what age level you teach, having a classroom website can greatly improve school to home communication and extend the student learning day. Bloust makes it very simple to create and maintain a website…truly! Even those who have never created a website before will be able to quickly create and update their site. Try it out, I think you will be impressed! When you have your website ready to go, think about adding content such as: the weekly spelling list, homework assignments, important upcoming dates, links to great sites that correlate with your curriculum, make the site dynamic, a place your students will want to come back to!

Tips: When signing up be sure to check your Spam email folder for the registration email.

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


Reading Rockets

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Reading Rockets1753 views


What it is: In honor of No TV week, I am posting about a great resource for teachers called Reading Rockets. Reading Rockets offers free reading guides created for teachers who want to improve the reading achievement of children. These guides can be downloaded, printed and distributed with permission. The site also features strategies to help kids who struggle with reading, techniques for teaching reading, great books and authors for kids, podcasts and videos, webcasts, blogs about reading, and some spectacular reading resources. It is a free one stop shop!

How to integrate Reading Rockets into the classroom: Reading Rockets is a wonderful resource for you to utilize in your reading classroom. The strategies and freebies offered here are valuable and worth taking a look at!

Tips: The Reading Rockets site also has links to free guides from other organizations about reading. Turn off that TV and improve your reading curriculum! 🙂

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


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Writing Repeater with Loopy

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What it is: Writing Repeater with Loopy is a virtual piece of paper that lets you write letters or words and plays them back with looping.

How to integrate Writing Repeater with Loopy into the classroom: The Writing Repeater is ideally used with an interactive whiteboard. Teachers or students can demonstrate handwriting and the Writing Repeater will play back the correct letter formation in a loop. This is perfect for teaching handwriting, you can show the technique with your infared pen and the Writing Repeater plays the formation of the letters over and over while students practice on their own. It is also ideal for students who are struggling with handwriting, they can use the Writing Repeater and you can replay their formation to see where the disconnect is.

Tips: The online site will save your handwriting sample (even if you close your web browser) until you create a new sample.

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

Help a Hedgehog

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Help a Hedgehog4840 views

What it is: Help a Hegehog is a phonics game where students read a set of words as fast as they can to beat a timer. The online game saves the last score so students can work to beat their score. You can choose from a set list of words, or enter your own words based on what your class is working on.

How to integrate Help a Hedgehog into the classroom: Help a Hedgehog can be used on your interactive whiteboard with the whole class, individually, or in a remedial reading classroom. If you play as a class, each day students can work to beat the previous days score. Individually and students can try to beat their own score. This is a great way to start phonics instruction each morning and as practice for new vocabulary. Enter your own vocabulary for students to practice spelling words, science or math vocabulary, etc. Extend the game by adding the rule that students have to define the vocabulary word before they can move onto the next word.

Tips: This site is intended for phonics instruction but would be appropriate for secondary elementary as well with the addition of your own vocabulary. You could even use this tool for math practice, type in problems instead of words and request that the students give the answer before moving onto the next problem. This would be a great way to start your math class with some mental math!

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