free – Page 6 – iLearn Technology

DoInk

April 22, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments4812 views

What it is: DoInk is an outstanding free illustration and animation creator. The site has tools that are similar in feel and function to Adobe’s flash. DoInk creates custom animations right inside your Internet browser. There is an explore section where you and your students can get some inspiration for animations. DoInk provides tutorials for illustrating and animating making it easy to get started.

How to integrate DoInk into the classroom: Adobe products not in the budget? DoInk is a fantastic alternative to Flash. DoInk would be a great way to familiarize students with the basics of animation that will lead nicely into using more robust programs like Flash. Allow students to create mini animations to demonstrate science concepts (think life cycles, rock cycles, water cycle, etc.). Students can also create short animations to display an understanding of verbs. Since verbs are action words, an animation is a great way to show the action.

Tips: DoInk requires registration with a username and password. For elementary students, I find it helpful to create one class account where students can create. This keeps you from having to keep track of a class full of login information. It also makes it simple to keep track of student work.

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

AR Sights

March 16, 2009Kelly Tenkely6 Comments3788 views

What it is: Augmented Reality, how cool is that technology? Dialing up the awesome factor a couple of notches is AR Sights. AR Sights is a company who makes it possible to view Google Earth right in a web browser and then zoom into places of interest (Pyramids, Eiffel Tower, etc) and take a look at them augmented reality style. The site brings landmarks to life in four easy steps. Download the browser add-on, download some points of interest, print out the AR Sights marker, and zoom into Google Earth and take a look. I am amazed at what this technology provides for students! Students can zoom right in and manipulate the landmark by moving the paper around. Now for the downfalls, AR Sights only works on PC’s right now, us Mac folks will have to hunt down a PC or wait until it is available for the Mac. The other downfall is the downloads, they require administrative rights (some of you may have to convince your IT to let you download this goody). After you print off the AR Sights marker, you hold it up to your camera and up pops the landmark you have chosen in Google Earth, as you twist, tilt, and move the paper the landmark moves accordingly. This is SO outstanding!

How to integrate AR Sights into the classroom: AR Sights makes virtual field trips so impressive! As your students are studying geography, allow them to travel around Google Earth and take a look at the landmarks. Use AR Sights with a projector or Interactive whiteboard to show your whole class landmarks at the same time. Create a travel center on your computers where students can travel around and learn about the world. AR Sights is a great way to bring geography alive! AR Sights also has a download to use with Google Sketch-up 3-D drawing program (free from Google). Older students can create their own 3-D augmented reality landmarks. Students could draw places of interest, your school, etc. and view them with AR Sights as augmented reality. Talented high-school and college age students (or ambitious teachers) could create Sketch-up models that can be used in education such as the skeletal system, a beating heart, the solar system, historical landmarks, etc. for students to interact with in 3-D augmented reality. The possibilities with this could be endless!!

Tips: I learned about AR Sights from a wonderful blog that my friend Raul writes from Spain called technoTIC, check it out! Thanks Raul!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using AR Sights in your classroom. If you or one of your students creates a Sketch Up model for AR Sights let us know about it!

Fliggo

March 2, 2009Kelly Tenkely4 Comments2445 views

What it is: Ever wish you could create your own video sharing site? Fliggo is your answer. Create a video sharing site in under 5 minutes easily! Sharing student created videos on YouTube is not always an option in the school system. YouTube may be blocked, you may have concerns about other video content, or the related videos that are presented to your students may be inappropriate. Fliggo is the answer. You can create a video sharing site for your school complete with school logo. Fliggo gives you control over who can post videos, who can comment, and how videos are approved. Fliggo is simple enough to use with elementary students!

How to integrate Fliggo into the classroom: Fliggo is the perfect place to upload student created video. I have students turn every Keynote presentation into a video so that we can share it online. Students love sharing their work with the world. I get emails from parents, grandparents, and other family members about how excited they are to see what their kids are working on in school. This is an awesome way to showcase student work. Students can comment on other student work encouraging an authentic classroom community. Fliggo is easy enough for elementary students to upload their own videos if you choose to allow member uploaded video. In my classroom, students create commercials on a variety of topics. I like using commercials because students understand their purpose (to advertise), they are short, and they quickly get the point across. Students have created commercials in my classroom for a multiude of subjects and topics.

Tips: I love the idea of creating a school “YouTube” type site, your students and parents will love it too!

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

ARKive

February 25, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3242 views

What it is: ARKive is an incredible website that I learned about from a tweet on Twitter (forgive me I was in the middle of class and didn’t keep track of who- thank you whoever you are!) ARKive tag line is “images of life on Earth”, but ARKive is so much more than just a collection of images, it has thousands of videos, images and facts about the world’s species. This is the digital version of Noah’s Ark! This is the most impressive animal and life website I have seen! I truly can’t say enough about this site, students of all ages will enjoy this one (I’m talking k-12 here!) ARKive has an education section of the site that is a free multi-media educational resources complete with downloadable, ready to use audio/visual modules on a wide range of science, geography, citizenship, and environmental based topics. ARKive also has some great games for students to play that are directly related to the lessons they learn while on the ARKive site. Games range from building a habitat to word searches and digital fridge poetry.

How to integrate ARKive into the classroom: ARKive’s ready made educational resources make it simple to integrate into your science, geography, or general classes. The resources are ready made PowerPoint presentations (which incidentally also open nicely in Keynote which we use). The resources bring learning to life with images, videos, facts, and some interactive pieces. This is what textbooks should be! ARKive’s ready made resources can be downloaded on classroom computers for use by small learning groups as a center, downloaded to a lab of computers for individual student exploration, or used with a projector and an interactive whiteboard for whole class learning and exploration. The ARKive site itself is a wonderful place for students to explore and learn more about animal species and life on Earth. This would be a great place for students to collect information, images, and video to create their own presentations. The games provided on the ARKive site are fun for students and teach them as they play. For example, students who are studying habitat can play the Design a Habitat game and gain an additional opportunity to interact with the concepts they are learning. Older students can dig into the facts provided on ARKive and learn about animal classification and species of the world. ARKive images could be used in the language arts classroom as a story starter or creative writing prompt.

Tips: This is truly an incredible site, I encourage you to take a look at it and use it with your class! (Click on the education link at the bottom of the site for the Resources and Games.)

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

Math Doodles

February 23, 2009Kelly Tenkely5 Comments2649 views

What it is: Math Doodles is a set of math games created by Daren Carstens that help students learn the most important aspect of math…it can be fun! Daren created Math Doodles as a place where students can “discover the joy, wonder, and fun of mathematics.” I have to admit that I would not have classified math as a “fun” subject. However, I think that math can and should be a fun time of exploration and learning for students. Math Doodles provides this place. Kids can interact with math by playing games like Connect the Sums, Number Jump, Polyomino Shift, Double Traits, Sums Stacker, Hydro Maze, Time Shuffle, and Angel Fish (coming soon). These games encourage students to interact with math and learning….and they are a lot of fun too!

How to integrate Math Doodles into the classroom: Math Doodles is a collection of amazing games for elementary school students. Students will learn through play (the best way!) Math Doodles would be an excellent math center in the one or two computer classroom. Students could play the games in teams or individually. In the lab setting students could work on skills specific to their individual learning needs in the math classroom. Math Doodles could also be used with an interactive whiteboard for whole class participation. Split your class into teams and take turns solving the games. Math Doodles games would be a fun way to start math class as a pre-thinking activity.

Tips: Right now Math Doodles games are only available in Demo version (since this version is free to use that suits me well!), but it looks like eventually the full version of each game will be available for purchase.

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

Awesome Stories

February 11, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3598 views

What it is: Awesome Stories is a neat website that looks to me like it could be the future of text books. Awesome Stories has great primary source materials separated by categories such as biographies, disasters, trials, flicks, history, inspiration, religion and sports. Throughout the text there are hyperlinks to additional content. The links are separated by color so you know that when you see a certain color it will open a primary source image, video, narration, slide shows, artifact, manuscript, document, etc. You can become a member of Awesome Stories for free, when you do you will gain access to additional features like an extensive image data base, narrated stories, lesson plans, and a free newsletter from Awesome Stories. This is essentially an interactive textbook. I love that the site hits different learning styles in its presentation of information.

How to integrate Awesome Stories into the classroom: Awesome Stories would be a great supplement to traditional text books. It makes finding primary source materials easy! With the audio clips, narration, video, and slide shows linked right within the reading material, students are going to get a much richer understanding of a topic or material being studied. I love that struggling readers can have all the text narrated to read along with. Many of the videos, audio, and slide shows would be excellent to share with the whole class using a projector or interactive whiteboard.

Tips: Sign up for free to see the full scope of Awesome Stories, you will be amazed at the amount of content here! The lesson plans to use with the site are wonderful!

Leave a comment and share how you are using Awesome Stories in your classroom.

FontStruct

January 30, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1956 views

What it is: FontStruct is a free website that lets students build, share, and download fonts that they create in a simple font editor. First students name their font, then they use the font editor to draw each character of the alphabet using font bricks and a grid system. After each character has been created, the font can be downloaded and added to the fonts folder to be used in any word processing program or desktop presentation program.

How to integrate FontStruct into the classroom: It would be fun to come up with a class font where each student is responsible for a letter in the font. The font could be used for typing practice, or as a header for newsletters that go home each week. FontStruct is a motivating environment for students to practice forming their letters. They love knowing that they created a font of their very own. The fonts can be used for anything, I have found that my students love creating a font and using it for typing practice or as titles for projects or slide shows. If you are creating a class font, this can be done on an interactive whiteboard or on a classroom computer. If each student will be creating their own font, individual computers are needed.

Tips: FontStruct does require registration with an email address. In my class, I created a school username and password so that each student didn’t have to register for an account individually.

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

The Periodic Table of Videos

January 27, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2784 views

So today is going to be another whirl wind of posts day. I am cleaning out my Google Notebook saved sites, hopefully you will find one of these awesome resources helpful for your classroom!

What it is: If I had access to the Periodic Table of Videos when I was going through chemistry, my understanding would have exponentially increased! This site literally looks like a periodic table, when a student clicks on one of the elements, a video opens up that explains the element. So neat! The site was created by the University of Nottingham, who is continually updating the videos with the latest and greatest experiments and explanations. There is a section with extra videos, a collection of science bloopers that are entertaining.

How to integrate The Periodic Table of Videos into the classroom: The Periodic Table of Videos is a great way to introduce the elements to students. I remember spending hours memorizing the Periodic Table but never really understood the properties of the elements. This site will help your students get a grasp on exactly what the different elements do. This is also a great way to bring those elements into your room that aren’t practical or readily available. Use this with your chemistry classes in the computer lab setting or with a projector.

Tips: The Features section has some extra videos on topics such as experiments and noble gases.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using The Periodic Table of Videos in your classroom.

Interactives Geometry 3D Shapes

January 23, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment10041 views

What it is: I ran across this site yesterday as I was searching for a Geometry site for a teacher. Interactives Geometry 3D Shapes is a great website for students to learn about 3D shapes, surface area and volume, Euler’s theorem, and platonic solids. Each section gives students an interactive environment where they can manipulate 3D objects as they learn. In the surface and area section, students can learn how to calculate area of a 3D object and then have an interactive space to practice calculating the area of 3D objects. At the end of the site there is a place where students can put their knowledge to the test and apply what they have learned. This is an outstanding alternative to learning from a text book. The Interactives site gives students what a text book can’t, interaction with 3D shapes and the ability to rotate and manipulate the shapes. Throughout the site, math words are highlighted in red, students can click on these words and are taken to a glossary that defines the word for them.

How to integrate Interactives Geometry 3D Shapes into the classroom: Use the Interactives Geometry 3D Shape site to introduce 3D shapes, area, Euler’s Theorem, and platonic solids to your students. This is a great way for your students to learn geometry, especially 3D geometry, in an environment where they can interact with and manipulate 3D shapes. This site could be used with a projector, interactive whiteboard, as a math center in the one computer classroom, or individually in a lab setting. Use the interactive portions with an interactive whiteboard to manipulate shapes for students to see as you are teaching new concepts about 3D shapes. This would be a wonderful site to point your students to for geometry homwork help, students can use it to model and define concepts they may find difficult as they work.

Tips: The Test Your Skills section gives students 15 problems to complete that are accompanied by photos, illustrations, or animations. I wish my geometry tests looked like this! I am such a visual person, I think I would have been so much more successful.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Interactives Geometry 3D Shapes in your classroom.

Lit2Go

January 22, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3877 views

What it is: Lit2Go is a FREE online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format from Florida’s Educational Technology Clearinghouse. With Lit2Go teachers and students can download files to an iPod or Mp3 player, listen to the Mp3 files on the computer, view the text on a webpage and read along with the audio, and print out the stories and poems to create a customized book. Lit2Go can be searched by author, tiltle, or searched via the database (by authro, keywords, title, or reading level). Each reading passage can be downloaded as a PDF and printed for use as a read-along or supplemental reading material for your classroom. Many of the selections can be downloaded directly to your iTuens library making it a simple transfer to one or many iPods.

How to integrate Lit2Go into the classroom: Lit2Go is a fabulous resource for all readers, but is especially valuable for struggling readers. Set up a Lit2Go listening center in your classroom. You can either download the audio to a Mp3 player or let the students listen from the computer. Each audio file has a PDF text version that can be downloaded and printed out as a read along. If students are listening from the computer they can also view the text online. Lit2Go would be a great help for a reading buddy program. Send your struggling readers home with a Mp3 player loaded with level appropriate stories or poems and the PDF print out. Students can practice reading anywhere, even if a parent or sibling isn’t available to read with them. Reading levels range from .10 to 53. You are sure to find something for every student! This is an easy way to help differentiate instruction.

Tips: Search Lit2Go in the iTunes store or visit the Lit2Go website to get started.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Lit2Go in your classroom.