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ESA Kids

April 2, 2010Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3596 views

What it is: The European Space Agency (ESA) has a great website for kids. ESA Kids has fabulous, kid friendly information about the Universe (the story of the Universe, the sun, the planets and moons, the galaxies, comets and meteors), Life in Space (astronauts, space stations, life in space, exploration, are we alone?), Lift Off (launchers, orbits, mission control, spacecraft, new ways to space), Useful Space (TV and phone, know where you are, space spin-offs, weather, health), and Earth (climate change, natural disasters, protecting nature, water world). This site is absolutely packed full of information and awesome images. Students can “work in a lab” where they can build papercraft globes and spacecraft, try reading space maps, and learn fun space facts. Students will also enjoy the space themed games and puzzles, online coloring book, quizzes, and downloads. Each month, a new story about space is added to the News section, keeping students up to date about what is happening in space exploration.

How to integrate ESA Kids into the classroom: When I am hunting for space related websites, I usually begin with NASA. ESA Kids is being added to my must visit places for all things space. The site is organized well, very kid friendly, and has fun activities that students can take part in. Use ESA Kids for space research, when learning about the weather, climate change, and natural disasters. After students have some background knowledge about space and space exploration, have them visit the Lab and choose a papercraft spacecraft to print and build. Students can write a story about their spacecraft, including facts that they learned on the ESA Kids website. They may even write a fictional story about their visit to space that includes factual elements that they learned in the Life in Space section. Be sure to visit the Useful Space tab, I think students will be surprised at how many common items are linked to space and space exploration.

Tips: Be sure to visit this site often, the news is updated every month with current space events.

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

Neo K12

March 1, 2010March 1, 2010Kelly Tenkely13 Comments4759 views

What it is: Neo K12 is an outstanding online collection of educational videos, lessons and games for students in grades k-12. Neo K12 believes that “kids learn best by ‘seeing’ the real world.” They have created this site with that belief in mind. Neo K12 has cataloged the best free online educational videos from the Internet in one place. Each video is watched and reviewed by k-12 educators to ensure their accuracy and appropriateness for students. Subjects include physical science, life science, human body, earth and space, social studies, math, English (including phonics, stories, and grammar), and fun videos such as time lapse, slow motion, arts and crafts, learn magic, music lessons, and sports lessons. In addition to videos, Neo K12 has Web 2.0 tools. The School Presentation tool is a mashup of Flickr and Wikipedia, and allows users to create and share presentations online. To create a presentation, students choose pictures for their presentation from Flickr, read and article about the subject from Wikipedia, and then add text to their presentation. When the presentation is finished, it can be printed or viewed online as a slideshow. Quizzes, games, and puzzles on Neo K12 are an interactive way to improve learning. Teachers can create and share videos playlists complete with notes and instructions for their students.

How to integrate Neo K12 into the classroom: Videos provide excellent opportunities for learning, they make it possible for kids to visualize and build a model in their minds. This helps them to better understand key concepts and can stimulate curiosity in a subject. When students or teachers search a subject, they are given a list of related videos, quizzes, games, and puzzles. When a teacher creates an account, they can create a complete assignment within Neo K12 that includes instructions and notes for the students. Students can complete the assignment by watching videos, playing related games and creating a School Presentation that shows understanding. The presentations are easy enough for even young students to create. Primary students can skip reading the Wikipedia article and just choose pictures and add some captions about facts they learned from a video they viewed. These videos are a great way to introduce new learning, expand on previous learning, or to spark curiosity in a topic.

Many of the educational games and puzzles would be great for an interactive whiteboard as whole class activities. They could, of course, also be used as classroom center activities, or completed individually in the computer lab. The jigsaw puzzles can be used as teasers to introduce a new topic. The jigsaw puzzles use incredible images from Flickr. Have students take turns coming up to the interactive whiteboard to put puzzle pieces together. Students waiting at their seats can take guesses about what new learning you will be doing in class.

Tips: Create a free Neo K12 account, you will receive a dashboard where you can store videos, games, presentations, quizzes, and add notes and instructions. You get a unique URL for your dashboard to share.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Neo K12 in your classroom.

NASA’s Be a Martian

February 22, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments4026 views

What it is: I have always been intrigued by space exploration. NASA’s Be a Martian feeds this intrigue by giving an up close view of Mars exploration. Here students can virtually explore and learn about the human-robotic partnership that makes virtual exploration possible. Students can become citizens (this requires them to create an account) or explore with an “Anonymous Tourist Visa”, which is how I explored. Students can send virtual postcard messages to the Spirit Rover in her new home. After composing their own message, students are taken to a virtual Mars where postcards with messages rain down. Students can click on a postcard to read what others around the world have written. In the map room, students can watch a video detailing the history of mapping and learn how NASA scientists map today. Students can become virtual map makers by matching up map image fragments, and counting craters. In Two Moons Theater, students can watch videos starring NASA scientists, explorers, and Mars. Students can ask and vote on questions that they would like to see answered in the Polling Place. In Tourist Mars Atlas, students can explore the surface of Mars and learn that there is more to Mars than a giant expanse of tan.

How to integrate NASA’s Be a Martian into the classroom: Feed your students curiosity about space exploration and Mars with this great interactive environment. Students have the opportunity to learn about the work that NASA scientists do, practice their observation skills in map making, and learn some great history about space exploration, and map making. I really like that NASA has included a place for students to ask and vote on questions that they would like answered. What a neat way to help students understand that we don’t have all the answers and that scientists ask questions, explore, and experiment to learn more. I think that younger students (primary elementary) would really enjoy the crater counting activity. Do this activity as a class using an interactive whiteboard/projector or individually as a center. This will help students to look for detail and practice counting together. Older students will enjoy trying their hand at mapping Mars and learning more about the history. Have students learn about the Spirit Rover and her job on Mars before sending a message. Some of the postcards include location information, it might be fun to track the locations of the postcards in Google Earth with placemarkers. Then, explore Mars using Google Earth or Google Space. The Google tools complement this site nicely.

Tips: There is an impressive contest section on NASA’s Be a Martian site, the deadline for entries is April 16, 2010. The contest challenges us to come up with videos about Mars, interactive software or games, or write an efficient image processing application. NASA is including us all in the exploration of Mars. These challenges would be outstanding for older students to take part in…talk about authentic learning!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using NASA’s Be a Martian in your classroom.

Reading Street Supplement

February 21, 2010Kelly Tenkely15 Comments4197 views

http://web.me.com/jtenkely/Reading/Home.html

What it is: Over the summer I worked with a teacher at Marquette Elementary school in Gary, Indiana to supplement their reading curriculum. They used Pearson’s Scott Foresman Reading Street, but were struggling with the program. Students weren’t understanding concepts and were really struggling with even the basics. Marquette held a summer remedial reading program where they aimed to supplement the curriculum and help students to become more successful in their reading. I took a look at the Reading Street curriculum for third grade and noticed right away that a huge number of concepts are presented, but there is no depth or opportunity for students to really learn and understand the concepts. My goal was to take the curriculum (in this case Unit 6 for third grade) and supplement it with technology. My goal was to add some richness to what was presented. I aimed to give students the chance to learn, practice, and create with the material presented. Because we were working in a summer program, we were able to spend more time with the material and work with fewer students. Below you will find my curriculum guide for 3rd Grade Reading Street Unit 6. Even if you don’t use Reading Street, or teach at a different grade level, I encourage you to take a look at what I did with the curriculum. I hope that you will find some ideas that you could use to supplement the curriculum you are using in your classroom. I created a website for Unit 6, called Reaching for Our Goals, so that students had one place to access all of the websites and resource they needed. (If you study suffixes, parts of speech, commas, compound words, punctuation, MLK, Space, the Wright Brothers, or Jim Thorpe there are some great links.) I also created a wiki (this is an example) where they could collaborate and show off their finished projects. On the wiki, you will find example thinking pages, VoiceThread projects, and Animoto projects.

NASA Space Place

January 14, 2010January 14, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3253 views

What it is: NASA has hundreds of excellent educational resources online. NASA Space Place is another awesome site for elementary kids to explore science and space. The Space Place has fun online games, animations, projects, and fun facts about Earth, space and technology. Space Place Live is an animated talk show where all the guests are real scientists and engineers who work on space and Earth missions. Students can find out what it is like to work for NASA, how the scientist or engineer got started, and what they like to do for fun. There are currently 7 episodes that students can enjoy topics include: solar wind, satellites, weather, space missions, telescopes, engineering, the birth of stars, Mars, robots, and black holes. Even though the show is animated, the experts involved are the actual experts. NASA Space Place has a variety of on and offline games with everything from scrambled pictures, to world puzzles, crazy quizzes and board games. Students can learn more about weather, space, satellites, the environment, (and much more) through game play. There are a variety of projects and experiments on the site with step by step directions for students. These are great for the classroom, science fair, or at home on a rainy day. Space Place makes finding games, animations, and projects related to your curriculum easy arranging the site by subjects. Use Space Place when you are learning about planets and the solar system, stars, galaxies, and black holes, laws of the universe (light, motion, gravity), the Earth, and space technology. Space Place has several storybooks that can be viewed on or offline.

How to integrate NASA Space Place into the classroom: Because of the wealth of resources on this site, there are a variety of ways to use it in your classroom. The animations are a neat way to bring expert scientists and engineers into your classroom. Share an animated video a week as your students explore the solar system and universe. The games reinforce learning, use them as a center activity on the classroom computers as they relate to your curriculum. Many of the games encourage exploration and trial and error (these are my favorite kind of learning games for students). Students can explore the Amazing Facts section of the site and then complete the trivia game to test out their understanding. In the project section, you will find experiments and science crafts. Choose some of these to complete as a class or assign each student a different project to test and share with the class. Projects would also make an excellent stop during science fair time. Use the Space Place Storybooks as animated flipbooks online as a class with a projector/interactive whiteboard, or print them out for your classroom library. The books could be used as an online reading center on your classroom computers as well. These stories are sure to capture your students imagination!

Tips: Be sure to check out the educator page on NASA Space Place, it is packed full of good ideas, newsletters, printable images of space for bulletin boards, space related articles, math related articles, printable posters, and podcasts to download. With the renewed push for STEM education, there has never been a better time to include sites like NASA Space Place to excite and engage your students.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Nasa Interactive Timeline in your classroom.

Nasa Interactive Timeline

January 11, 2010January 14, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments11377 views

What it is: Nasa has hundreds of great online tools for the classroom, their Interactive Timeline is the one of the most impressive. The multimedia timeline begins in 500BC and follows the search for extrasolar planets to modern discoveries. Students can “autoplay” the timeline for a journey through the history of space discovery or explore at their own pace. Students can search the timeline by key milestones, technology, discoveries, or by thought and culture.

How to integrate Nasa Interactive Timeline into the classroom: The Nasa Interactive Timeline is a great way to teach students about the history of space discovery and thought. Students can gain an understanding about historical figures, key events, and key discoveries. At any point, the timeline can be paused for discussion. Nasa’s Interactive Timeline would be well used as an introduction or anticipatory set for further exploration. View the timeline on autoplay as a class using a projector or interactive whiteboard, or allow students to explore the timeline on their own during center time on classroom computers or individually during lab time. Assign students a key historical figure or time period to learn more about. Students can present their findings to the class when their time period or figure comes up on the timeline.

Tips: The Interactive Timeline gives basic information. Encourage your students to find additional resources and information about each event, historical figure, or time period.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Nasa Interactive Timeline in your classroom.

Moon in Google Earth

July 20, 2009July 20, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2810 views

What it is: Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission. I have been following the moon landing on We Choose the Moon. This is an incredible site that has allowed me to re-live (for the first time) the Apollo 11 mission as if it were happening today. In honor of this historic day, Google released Google Earth 5.0 complete with Moon view. With Moon in Google Earth you and your students can take tours of landing sites narrated by Apollo astronauts, view 3-D models of landed spacecraft, zoom into 360* photos of astronauts footprints, and watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions.

How to integrate Moon in Google Earth into the classroom: Now that the moon has made an appearance in Google Earth, your students can experience the moon and Apollo missions up close and personal. Space, astronauts, Apollo missions, and the moon were the stuff of legends before the space race took off. Moon in Google Earth brings back the excitement of the space race allowing students to explore and discover. This is an excellent virtual field trip to take your students on during any space or moon unit. Use an interactive whiteboard to discover as a class. Students can take turns being moon tour guides. Students could also explore independently keeping their discoveries in a space journal and reporting back to others what they discovered on their journey to the moon.

Tips: Google Earth is a download. If you need IT to perform downloads for you, be sure that Google Earth makes it on your list of must haves for the school year.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Moon in Google Earth in your classroom.Moon in Google Earth

NASA Images

June 17, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3351 views

What it is: NASA Images is a website where you can find amazing images of the universe, solar system, earth, aeronautics and astronauts. In addition to images, you will find video and audio collections in this easily searchable digital library. The site has a picture timeline of spaceflight, collections of images, audio, and video, and presentations created by users. The content on NASA images is not under copyright so it can be used without express permission. This means that you and your students can use the high quality images, HD video, and audio in slideshows, movies, classroom websites, blogs, and interactive whiteboard notebooks.

How to integrate NASA Images into the classroom: This is an incredible collection of resources. Students and teachers can use them to enhance any space unit. This site will excite students and build interest around space exploration, aeronautics, and astronomy. Create your own planetarium or journey through space and share with an interactive whiteboard or in a slide show presentation with a projector. Students could create a blog or wiki all about their ‘travels’ through space for other students and parents to view. NASA Images even offers the tools to build a presentation right on the site. Presentations can then be embedded on other websites, wikis, or blogs.

Tips: NASA Images is updated regularly, check back for the newest additions.

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

Send Your Name to Mars

March 30, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3080 views

What it is: This is your chance to send your students to Mars! Okay, maybe not literally but you can send their names to Mars. NASA has done this before, you may have sent your names to the moon in the past. Now you and your students have the opportunity to send their names to Mars by way of a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011.

How to integrate Send Your Name to Mars into the classroom: This is a great way to get your students excited about a space unit! Students can start the space unit by sending their name in to be put on the microchip going to Mars and print out the “official” certificate. Follow up this activity by exploring the NASA website or NASA Kids to learn more about the Mars Science Laboratory rover and the mission. If you don’t have access to a computer for each student, you could send your class name to Mars and explore the NASA site as a class using a projector. As an extension activity, you can have students write about what they think it would be like to go to Mars.

Tips: Take a look at the participation map, it is interesting to see who is going to Mars!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Send Your Name to Mars in your classroom.

How Toons

February 9, 2009February 9, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2817 views

What it is: How Toons is like an Instructables site for kids. Kids learn through cartoons and videos how things work and how to make things. This is kind of a How It’s Made website for kids. Topics include science, space, nature, events, and a how to section. The cartoons illustrate a concept and accompanying videos expand on the concept.

How to integrate How Toons into the classroom: How Toons is an excellent site to excite your students about science. Share a How Toons with your students and then explore the science behind it together. Use a How Toons as inspiration, after viewing How Toons, students can create their own cartoon on any topic being studied in class. How Toons are great for teaching kids how to follow step by step instructions and would also be useful for teaching them how to create their own instructions.

Tips: How Toons would be a fun RSS feed to subscribe to as a class!

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