Science – Page 14 – iLearn Technology

Secret Builders Update

December 8, 2009December 8, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2737 views

What it is: I have reviewed Secret Builders virtual world before, but some new additions and features deserve another post. Secret Builders is a virtual world for kids (8-12) that introduces them to fictional characters from history and literature. Secret Builders has added a host of new historical characters that students can interact with including: Jane Austen, Bach, Alexander Bell, Emily Bronte, Confucius, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Hafez, Magellen, Omar Khxyam, Motzart, Issac Newton, Rumi, and Lao Tzu just to name a few. Students can actually visit the historical figures house, learn more about them, interact with them by asking questions in a virtual chat (answered as the character would answer), and take a quiz to find out how much they know about the historical figure. Secret Builders allows kids to get up close and personal with history in ways not previously possible. It allows them to gain a better understanding of historical figures than a textbook offers. Secret Builders has additional school friendly features like areas for students to write, collaboratively draw and share, and play educational puzzle games. Secret Builders also has a great Internet safety quiz that tests students on their knowledge of what online behavior should look like. Secret Builders has just added a Teacher’s Console where teachers can add and manage their students from one central location. Teachers can also set up an online reward system for students where they can unlock special Secret Builder features by completing “quests” that you assign. For example, you may be studying Thomas Edison in class. You could send students on a quest to find and learn about Thomas Edison and give the reward to those students that correctly complete the quiz.

How to integrate Secret Builders into the classroom: Secret Builders is an excellent way to bring history to life for your students. They will understand historical and literary figures better as they interact with them in this virtual world. Secret Builders is best in a lab setting where every student has access to a computer. Be sure to sign your class up under a teacher account where you can control and monitor what students are expected to do in Secret Builders. Encourage students to interact and “interview” the historical figures that they encounter. They can then write an article about the historical figure for the Secret Builders virtual newspaper. Secret Builders is a great first stop for learning about important figures in history. It will leave them wanting more and excited to learn more about these interesting people in history.

Tips: Secret Builders also has a program that is connected called “One for All” students can raise money for their school by answering math, logic, geography, and vocabulary questions.

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

Word Magnets

October 29, 2009October 29, 2009Kelly Tenkely6 Comments15213 views

What it is: Word Magnets is a fantastic little website that lets you type or copy and paste words into a field and create virtual word magnets out of them (think of the popular word magnets sold for refrigerators). After you have typed in the words to transform into magnets, you can choose a “magnetic” background for your words. There are several backgrounds to choose from including grids, venn diagrams, time lines, arrows, stair steps, targets, boxes, numbers, alphabet, circles, webs, flow sequences, tables, present/absent, and many more. After you choose your background, students can create sentences, sort, and interact with the virtual magnetic words. Words can be added to the board at any time and the color of the background and size of the magnets can be adjusted.

How to integrate Word Magnets into the classroom: The background options for your word magnets are really the highlight of this website. You can do everything from word sorts, to venn diagrams, to practicing alphabetic order. Create tables; sort words by their root, prefix, or suffix; link ideas; practice building sentences; create a time line of events, take attendance…the possibilities with this site are endless! If you are going to use this site for taking attendance, I would suggest creating a master list in a saved word document that you can copy and paste from (this will save you from re-typing names every morning). This is an excellent site for an interactive whiteboard or to use as a center activity. This is an easy way to create customized interactive lessons for your classroom. Because you enter the content, this site is appropriate for any grade level.

Tips: One thing I wish this site had: the ability to save. If you want to save words to interact with over and over, create a document that you can copy and paste from. If you want to save a copy of the word magnets after students have interacted with them, take a screen shot of it.

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

Virtual Dinosaur Dig

October 16, 2009Kelly Tenkely4 Comments12131 views

What it is: The Smithsonian site is full of amazing activities and interactives. A few weeks ago I stumbled on their Virtual Dinosaur Dig interactive and immediately sent it on to our second grade teachers who are teaching a dinosaur unit. During the Virtual Dinosaur Dig, students act as paleontologists who find a virtual fossil, learn how vertebrate paleontologists excavate the specimen, learn about the anatomy of the specimen and where it lived, view an illustration of what the specimen may have looked like, transport the speciman to a museum, and reconstruct the speciman (a stegosaurus) at the museum. Each step of the interactive gives students information about the tools used to excavate, and why the tool is used. Students get to virtually use each tool to excavate, transport, and reconstruct the dinosaur.

How to integrate Virtual Dinosaur Dig into the classroom: This Virtual Dig makes students virtual paleontologists. The activity is perfect for a interactive whiteboard or projector. Choose a student team of paleontologists who will help with the excavation. Each student can use one of the tools and explain their portion of the excavation to the class. While these students are at the board demonstrating the excavation, students at their seats can fill in their official “Paleontologist Field Guide” to record the steps and tools used in the excavation (I created the field guide for our second grade teachers and will post the pdf version below). The Virtual Dinosaur Dig could also be used as a center activity for teams of paleontologists to visit on classroom computers or in a computer lab setting. Students can fill out their Field Guides as they work. After the virtual dig, set up a hands on dig. Students can “excavate” chocolate chips out of a chocolate chip cookie by carefully digging with toothpicks.

Tips: I created this Paleontologist Field Guide journal to accompany the Virtual Dig. Included in the pdf is an answer guide. Print these pages back to back to create a book that is folded down the center. dino dig field guide The field guide asks students to match the tool picture with its name and order the sequence of events during the excavation.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Virtual Dinosaur Dig in your classroom.

Take a Video Tour of Planet Earth

October 14, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2439 views

What it is: Take a Video Tour of Planet Earth with the combination of Discovery channel “Planet Earth” and Google Earth. Witness animal behaviors, dive into the deepest cave on the planet, and come eye to eye with a 30-ton humpback whale in this interactive tour. Explore the earth through Discovery channel’s Planet Earth series embedded in Google Earth. Just zoom into a location in the Planet Earth tour and view video clips from the popular 11 part series. The tour is free to download and plays directly in Google Earth.

How to integrate Video Tour of Planet Earth into the classroom: Geography lessons come to life in Google Earth. The Video Tour of Planet Earth infuses even more life into your classroom with an up-close look at the incredible animals and vegetation around the world. This tour is an excellent resource for teaching students about habitats, ecosystems, geography, animals, animal kingdoms, and more. Your students will be able to virtually ‘fly’ to locations all over the world and get a real life look at each stop. This is an outstanding resource to view on the big screen with a projector or an interactive whiteboard. Allow your students to take turns acting as tour guide at each stop. Students can preview the video, do some additional research and present their findings as the class visits their stop along the tour. Set up the tour on classroom computers for a fun geography or science center. Use a stop on the video tour as a writing prompt for journaling.

Tips: Google Earth is a free download, if you don’t already have it, this is a MUST have for every classroom.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Take a Video Tour of Planet Earth in your classroom.

eduperience

October 11, 2009October 12, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2159 views

What it is: eduperience is an easy blogging tool for students and teachers based on the WordPress platform. “Start a blog in seconds with unlimited storage, bandwidth, premium themes and plugins. It is too easy to publish Your academic calendar, newsletter, video, podcast, and photo.” You can choose to use an eduperience sub domain or your own domain hosting. Automated weekly and monthly backup of your blogs ensures safety. You can choose to earn up to 90% revenue on advertisements shown on your blog. eduperience is a great blogging platform for both students and teachers.

How to integrate eduperience into the classroom: eduperience is an easy way for you to get a classroom blog up and running. Use a classroom blog to post current assignments, class discussions, calendars, links to other websites relevant to classroom learning, and notes to your students. Students can use blogs as writing journals, an online portfolio of written work, or to collaborate with other students. Students tend to write more and with higher quality in an online environment. This is due in part to a greater sense of audience. Students know that teachers, students, and parents may be reading their writing. Blogs are also a great addition to the science classroom where students can reflect on experiments and labs.

Tips: eduperience offers outstanding 24/7 support. This makes it simple to get started with blogging, even if you haven never done it before!

Related Resources: think.com, Live Binders, edWeb 2.0, Weebly, Word Press, Blogger,

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

Geo Mysteries

September 14, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2169 views

What it is: Geo-mysteries are fun interactive mysteries about rocks, fossils, and minerals from the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Students can choose one of three Geo-mysteries to solve: The Mystery of the Floating Rock, The Mystery of the Broken Necklace, and The Mystery of the Golden Cube. Students work to help Rex the dinosaur solve the geography mystery by watching a short video clip, and then going through simulated experiments to solve the mystery. These are great short activities that will help your students understand properties of rocks, fossils, and minerals. Kids will have fun working as a detective to solve the mysteries.

How to integrate Geo Mysteries into the classroom: Geo Mysteries is a fun twist to learning about rocks, minerals and fossils. What I love about the site, is the way it makes students problem solvers and guides them through using clues and critical thinking to solve a mystery. This is a good site to use as a center during science, two or three students could visit the center at a time working to solve a mystery. After each group of students has been through the center, the whole class can come together and share their findings. If you have access to a projector or an interactive whiteboard, you can complete the mystery as a whole class. Invite students up to the board to interact with the material. This is also a great site for students to work through individually in a computer lab setting. In the computer lab setting, students can work through the material at their own pace.

Tips: The Geo Timeline on the Geo Mysteries site is fantastic, make sure to check it out and point it out for your students to explore.

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

The Carbon Cycle Game

September 12, 2009September 12, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1915 views

What it is: The Carbon Cycle Game is a free online game that teaches students about how carbon cycles through the Earth system. It is appropriate for 4th-9th grade students learning about the carbon cycle. As students play the game, they will learn that carbon cycles naturally through living and non-living parts of the Earth system in a complex, non-linear way, that burning fossil fuels adds carbon to the cycle, the impact of additional carbon dioxide on global warming, and that carbon is essential for living things. Students will travel around the game as a little carbon atom. They will stop at key places on the game board and get a pop-up of information about the carbon cycle. At any point students can click on key words in the pop-up and will be directed to a page with additional information. Students will also land on question marks that pop-up questions testing students about what they have learned so far. When students answer questions correctly they earn game points.

How to integrate The Carbon Cycle Game into the classroom: The Carbon Cycle Game would be best played individually in the computer lab setting or on classroom computers in groups of two. The site says that this game is appropriate for grades 4th-9th but I found the vocabulary and reading to be a little advanced for fourth grade students. If using the site with younger students, I would recommend visiting it in pairs of students or as a whole class using an interactive whiteboard. If you play the Carbon Cycle Game as a whole class, split your students into two teams so that each team can take turns answering the questions in the game. The Carbon Cycle Game is a good way for students to learn about the Carbon Cycle and the questions ensure that students are understanding the reading.

Tips: Check out the teacher section for some great lesson plan ideas using the Carbon Cycle Game.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using The Carbon Cycle Game in your classroom.

Science Bob

September 9, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2721 views

What it is: Science Bob is a great resource library for the elementary science classroom. It is an excellent place for students to explore science concepts. Students can get some fun science fair ideas, experiments (that can be done offline), research helpers, science questions/answers, and science videos.

How to integrate Science Bob into the classroom: Science Bob is a great anticipatory site to use with students. Videos can be watched as a class to introduce a new science topic or just to build a little excitement in the science class. Let students explore the experiment section and choose an experiment to perform. Each student can choose a different experiment to test at home. Hold a class science day where students can share the experiment with the class. Let them be the science ‘expert’. As students conduct experiments, they can practice going through the scientific method. Science Bob is a great stop for parents and students looking for science fair projects. Start each science class with a fun science fact in the science question and answer section. This is a great site to get your students excited about science and ready to learn more.

Tips: The “research” section of Science Bob is packed full of other amazing science websites. They are organized by topic for simple searching.

I am often asked where I learn about all of these educational websites. I have a variety of sources (RSS feeds, searches, books) but my favorite source is my OUTSTANDING PLN on Twitter. If you aren’t on Twitter, I highly recommend it. I have created a page where you can see all of the wonderful people in my PLN on Twitter. This is a great place to start your own Twitter powerhouse.

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

WDCS Life Size Whale

August 9, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2656 views

What it is: WDCS Life Size Whale is a really neat concept for a website. The site displays a life size whale on the computer screen, bit-by-bit and helps students gain an understanding of just how BIG a whale is. In the upper right corner of the screen is the entire whale with a red box showing which portion of the whale students are looking at.

How to integrate WDCS Life Size Whale into the classroom: This site is really best on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Students can get an up close view of a whale. Use this site as an introduction to an ocean or whale unit. Allow students to move around the whale to view the different parts up close and personal.

Tips: Learn more about the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) by clicking on the link in the bottom right hand corner.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using WDC Life Size Whale in your classroom.

Dr. Arbor Talks Trees

August 9, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1777 views

What it is: Dr. Arbor Talks Trees focuses on tree anatomy and physiology. Students will learn some of the basic inner workings of trees, how trees grow and develop, the many uses of trees and their bi-products, and some basic chemical principles. The website is designed for 6th through 8th grade students (although I think it is appropriate for 4th grade).

How to integrate Dr. Arbor Talks Trees into the classroom: Dr. Arbor is the guide through this interactive website. Students learn all about trees and their inner workings through a series of activities. This is a great site to use for Arbor day, but the topic is appropriate year-round as part of the science curriculum. The website could be used with the whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector, or navigated by students individually in the computer lab setting.

Tips: There are great free resources on this site, be sure to check them out!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Dr. Arbor Talks Trees in your classroom.