iLearn Technology – Page 73 – Integrating technology in the classroom

Stixy

February 8, 2010Kelly Tenkely13 Comments4257 views

What it is: Stixy is a fun and easy way for students and educators to collaborate online. Stixy reminds me of Wallwisher, but has many more options for sharing. Start out with a blank virtual bulletin board. Use the Stixy widgets to add content or functionality to your board, positioning them anywhere. Users can add notes, photos, documents, or to-do items. After content has been added to a board, it can be shared with others of your choosing. Those that have been invited to the Stixy board can be given permission to add content, upload, or edit.

How to integrate Stixy into the classroom: Stixy is an excellent tool for the classroom. Use it as a communication tool for your students. Create a classroom board where you post homework, resources, to-do items, etc. for your students. Students can, in turn, submit assignments via the document upload, add notes asking questions of the class, and participate in online discussions. When working on group projects, students can create a Stixy board where they can collaborate virtually. Here they can post ideas, research findings, and deadlines for the group.

Stixy can also be used as a virtual portfolio for students. Ask each student to create a Stixy board for the year (or per semester, trimester, or quarter). Throughout the year, students can add their content and learning to the board. Teachers, other students, parents, and family members can be invited to view the board throughout the year. Students can view their learning and progress in one place and parents, teachers, and other students can leave feedback and encouragement on the Stixy board. This virtual portfolio can “travel” with students as a body of evidence. I would prefer getting a virtual portfolio of learning over a report card of grades any day!

Tips: Stixy does require that users have email addresses. If you are working with students that have not been assigned a school email account, you can use a service like tempinbox.com or mailinator.com to set up an account. Stixy does not specify a minimum age requirement for use and does not require any personal information for use.

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

Signed Stories

February 4, 2010February 4, 2010Kelly Tenkely6 Comments3949 views

What it is: Signed Stories is an excellent online story site that I learned about from The Techie Classroom blog. Signed Stories makes hundreds of children’s stories available online accessible in British Sign Language and in text, pictures and sound. This site has it all. Students can read the story, watch it signed, and listen to the story. This enriches literacy on a variety of levels. Deaf and hearing alike can benefit from this excellent free website. These are published stories and include a variety of popular titles. Books are sorted into categories including adventure, baby and toddler, fairytales and folktales, families and friendships, funny, open house, slimy scary, or students can browse all books alphabetically.

How to integrate Signed Stories into the classroom: Signed Stories is a fantastic add to any literacy classroom. Students can read, listen to, or watch a book signed. The site is accessible to all language learners and has engaging popular stories that students will love. Expand your classroom library by pulling up Signed Stories during reading and allowing students to read online. Signed Stories also adds great discussion to the classroom about different ways that people learn. Students can expand their sign language vocabulary by listening to familiar stories and watching them being signed. This is also a great site to send home. Kids can practice their reading even when their isn’t an adult available to read with them.

Tips: Check out the Resources page for links to other interactive story sites.

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

Why Drill and Skill are Necessary in Education

February 3, 2010February 3, 2010Kelly Tenkely35 Comments13918 views

I am a very creative person. I love discovering, thinking, designing, and having a finished product to show. I learn this way. Before I can create to demonstrate knowledge, I need to build a good foundational understanding. Lately I have notice that “drill and skill” are getting a bad reputation in the education community. Drill and skill games are sometimes seen as a waste of time, a memorization of unnecessary facts, or a lesser use of computer time. I believe that drill and skill has an important place in education, particularly in the primary years where basics of learning are built. These activities give students an opportunity to practice a skill and become familiar with it before creating with it. Drill and skill games and activities give students room to find patterns and build understanding. Consider a lesson on homophones, we could just ask students to create illustrations of each word using a program like Tux Paint and upload them to a presentation or class wiki. But without some drill and skill practice, students may not have solidified their understanding of the concept. They will most likely complete the assignment, but because they haven’t practiced the skill first, they haven’t had adequate time or interaction with the concept to recognize patterns and make connections. If we begin with some drill and skill, students create with a more solid base of understanding that can then be built upon. We offer the student the light-bulb moment when they start to recognize patterns or connections in content. The mistake that is often made in education is the belaboring of drill and skill. We burn students out with the constant fact practice, never giving the chance to actually do something meaningful with those patterns they have discovered in learning. I am finding that, as in everything in life, learning requires a balance. Don’t completely cut drill and skill from your classroom and don’t go overboard with it. Give students an opportunity to practice the skills that they are learning, and then allow them to do something with them.

World Math Day 2010

February 3, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3073 views

What it is: Hooray!! It is World Math Day time! This year World Math Day will be held on March 3, 2010. For those of you who are unfamiliar with World Math Day, it is a day when students from around the world compete in an online environment in live games of mental arithmetic. Each game lasts for 60 seconds and students can play as many as 500 games, earning points for every correct answer. The students who answer the most questions show up in the Hall of Fame. This is an absolutely free event to take part in. Students can train for World Math Day every day leading up to March 3rd by participating in arithmetic competition. For those of you home school readers, World Math Day is also open and free to you! The competition is designed for students 5-18 years old. This year has a little bit of a new format (the change is fantastic!) with multi-levels for all groups. Teachers, parents and media are also invited to participate for the first time. Last year 2 million students from 204 countries participated and correctly answered more than 4 million questions!!

How to integrate World Math Day into the classroom: World Math Day is a fun competition to involve your students in. It helps build mental arithmetic and numeracy. Students from around the world compete in this competition to find out which country has the top mathematicians. Students have a great time working to get their country to the top (nothing like a little National pride!). My students beg to be involved in World Math Day each year. We spend extra time in the computer lab and on classroom computers preparing for the day. Students answer mental math questions appropriate to their age level. This is a phenomenal way to get some fact practice in!

We make a big deal out of World Math Day and let students have an extended math period to compete on March 3rd. You could use World Math Day as a Math Olympics for your class and have and opening and closing ceremony for your class, school, or representing your country.

Tie World Math Day into your social studies curriculum. As students compete against other students from around the world, the other student is represented by a flag. My students are always very curious to learn more about the other countries and cultures represented. It would also be fun to start a map in Google Earth where you put place markers on the countries that students have competed with.

The platform is open, register your students and start training today!

Tips: If you would like to find out more about past World Math Day competitions check out my posts 2009 here and 2008 here. There are rumors of a World Math Day iPod App coming soon, check back with the official site for more information.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using World Math Day in your classroom.

Typing Practice

February 2, 2010February 2, 2010Kelly Tenkely13 Comments3231 views

What it is: This blogging alliance has been expanding my knowledge of great tools for the classroom faster than I can keep up with! Recently, I found two more excellent ways for students to practice typing from @2sparkley‘s blog. The first is reminiscent of the popular Rock Band, called UpBeat. Students can choose a song and level of difficulty. They must type the letters as they appear to keep the song going smoothly. This had my students absolutely SILENT while they practiced typing. They were so involved and having a great time trying to keep up. The way the game is set up, really challenges kids to touch type. They can’t very easily keep up without touch typing! Students stopped by my lab the morning after I introduced the site to tell me how many combos they were able to get. The second typing site is called Typing Chef. In this game students try to type words as they float past on bubbles. The goal is to type the word on the bubble before it pops. It gets increasingly harder as more bubbles float up and speed up.

How to integrate UpBeat and Typing Chef into the classroom: Typing can be a subject that elicits groans. Adding these games in the mix as additional opportunities for practice is sure to make students happy to practice. I try to keep typing to a minimal in my classroom. With only 35 minutes once a week with students, I don’t want to spend all of our time practicing typing. I have the kids do the majority of typing practice at home. Once a year (sometimes twice) I hold a big typing Olympics competition. Students can earn a free break dress code day (we have uniforms), this is great incentive…like gold to them! The fastest boy and girl touch typist in each class get the break dress code certificate. I make a huge deal about how athletes who participate in the Olympics have to train hard. Practice doesn’t always make perfect but we are aiming for practice makes permanant (good habits). I created the following website for my students to use in their training www.typing.weebly.com. Upbeat and Typing Chef have both been added to the games page of my Typing website.

Tips: UpBeat is a Mini-clip game. This site is often blocked at schools, make sure it is unblocked at your school before you plan on using it in class.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using UpBeat and Typing Chef in your classroom.

Blogging Alliance-Essential Educational Blogs

February 1, 2010February 1, 2010Kelly Tenkely42 Comments4859 views

Just about a month ago, I proposed the idea of a blogging alliance between educational bloggers. The response has been incredible. To date there are 73 educators involved from around the world. In this month of reading and commenting I have learned a great deal from these amazing men and women, I have built new friendships, and started new conversations. It has truly been an incredible experience to have educators, passionate about learning, coming together to support each other. If you are looking for some excellent educational blogs, may I recommend those in our alliance? By clicking this link, you will be offered the opportunity to subscribe to the “bundle” of blogs in Google Reader. All of the work has been done, all you have to do is subscribe! Join us in this journey of learning, exploring, and sharing. The blogs range in topics and focus from k-12 and higher ed. Even though I teach in the elementary school, I have found the blogs geared toward middle, high school and higher ed to be fantastic. I learn something new every day.

A few of the blogs are in Spanish or Portuguese, don’t let this stop you from reading them. Google Reader makes it simple to translate a blog to your language with the click of a button. As you are reading the blog, simply click on the “Feed Settings” button above the post and choose “translate to my language”. That is it! Even if you view the original blog to add a comment, Google Translate keeps the blog translated for you. How cool is that?! There really are no boundaries to learning any more.

Number Gossip

January 31, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments2542 views

What it is: Number Gossip is an outstanding math tool that I learned about from the excellent blog ZarcoEnglish-Tool of the Day. Number Gossip is a search engine for numbers only. Type in any number and you will learn “everything you wanted to know about it but were afraid to ask”. For example, when I search for the number 2 I learn: 2 is the smallest prime number, 2 is the only even prime number, the smallest field has 2 elements, for any polyhedron, 2 is the number of vertices plus the number of faces minus the number of edges. I can also learn the rare properties of two, and the common properties of two. Now that is pretty cool!

How to integrate Number Gossip into the classroom: Number Gossip makes an excellent introduction to math class. Call on a student to choose a new number each day and learn all about the number. New math vocabulary and concepts will be introduced every day. Number Gossip helps students understand numbers, their properties, and their relationship to one another. When students are studying new properties, they can search numbers that fulfill those properties and find out why.

Students could create a baseball type card for a favorite or lucky number, listing all of it’s stats on the back.

Tips: I just love the name of this site, Number Gossip, doesn’t it just make you want to know more? I think students will feel the same. When you search for a number, input the actual number (2) it doesn’t recognize (two).

P lease leave a comment and share how you are using Number Gossip in your classroom.

Kerpoof: Update

January 29, 2010February 8, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments3916 views

What it is: Kerpoof is one of my favorite creation tools for elementary students, it allows them to draw, create pictures, cards, books, and even movies. My original post about Kerpoof can be found here. Kerpoof has added some new features that make it worthy of another post. Students can now save their pictures, cards, stories and drawings locally (on their computers). On each canvas is a JPEG icon that will allow any picture to be saved to the computer locally. They are working on making it possible to download the movies locally soon. Kerpoof also introduced info bubbles. In the Make a Picture object library, students can drag out a picture onto the canvas. Now there is a new question mark button that shows up on an object. When students click on the question mark, a little bubble of information pops up. Students will gain all kinds of information from these little fact bubbles. They can learn everything from: who wrote Treasure Island, to learning the national animal of Australia.

How to integrate Kerpoof into the classroom: Kerpoof is an outstanding creativity program for the classroom. With there education accounts and these new features, it is even more useful in the classroom setting. Now that students can save their pictures created on Kerpoof locally, they can use their Kerpoof creations in new ways. Upload the saved JPEG to the class website, blog, or wiki, or add illustrations to a word processing program.

Use the new information bubbles to start a Kerpoof scavenger hunt. Ask students specific questions ahead of time or instruct students to research broader topics like “dinosaurs” or “Mexico”. After students have found answers to their assigned questions, they can do more in-depth research using library or Internet resources. After research is completed, students can come back to Kerpoof to create a picture, story, essay, or movie including information that they learned.

Tips: Be sure to check out Kerpoof’s lesson plans, they have just added a new lesson called “Programming Wizards” designed to teach students about how computers work and how to build, design, and test a program. Very cool.

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

Spelling City: Update

January 29, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments4106 views

What it is: Spelling City is a fabulous site for practicing spelling, I have written about its uses in the classroom before (here and here). Spelling City has just added a new feature that teachers are going to love, the ability to add your own sentences on Spelling City! Now you can customize your spelling lists to fit your needs. For example, if you are studying fish and one of your spelling words is “scales”, the default sentence that Spelling City might offer is “The scales were not giving the weights accurately.” Now as you create a list, you can click on “add” and type a new sentence to fit your classroom needs. The feature is also extremely useful for homonyms (our fifth graders are using this feature this week!). For the teacher created sentences, the audio read of the sentence will be done by a sophisticated voice synthesis.

How to integrate Spelling City into the classroom: Now that Spelling City allows teacher generated sentences, you can customize your lists for students even more. Have students generate sentences for the weeks spelling words and vote on which sentence should be included on Spelling City. This is a great way to involve your students in thinking about word meanings and uses.

Tips: Spelling City has a premium membership that has been approved for funding by Adopt-a-Classroom.org. You can use the Adopt-A-Classroom service to ask for donations to cover premium membership.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Spelling City in your classroom.

I have, Who has Contraction Game

January 28, 2010January 28, 2010Kelly Tenkely8 Comments3077 views

What it is: Today I was looking for fun interactive games for students to play to practice “not” contractions. I have used iKnow That: Alien Word Mine to practice the not contraction, but was looking for another opportunity for students to practice. I searched for some fun activities and came up blank. I decided to make an offline game that students could play as a class called “I have, who has?”. In this card game, each student chooses a game card. Each game card starts with the separate words (for example: can not) and has a contraction (for example: aren’t). Students stand in a circle holding there game card. Choose one student to begin by reading their card: “I have can not, who has aren’t?” The student holding the card with “are not” responds: “I have are not, who has don’t?”. Play continues until all matches have been made.

How to integrate I Have, Who Has Contraction Game into the classroom: There are several ways to play the I have, Who has Contraction Game. The first way is to play as a class, with students reading the cards aloud and creating matches. The game could also be played more like a dominoes game where students match up all the cards end to end with the correct contraction match. I have, Who has can be played for multiple subjects. For math facts the cards could read “I have 5+5 who has 12?” The student holding “5+7” would respond “I have 5+7, Who has 9?” and so on. This game can be adapted for matching states and capitals, math facts, parts of speech, vocabulary practice, etc. Students have a great time playing “I have, Who has?” as a class. It is a fabulous listening game and helps practice a variety of learning.

Tips: I have attached my Contraction Game here. Download and play with your students!

Leave a comment if you have found other contraction games that your students enjoy or your adaptations of “I have, Who has?”