Social Studies – Page 13 – iLearn Technology

World Digital Library

April 28, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2505 views

What it is: The World Digital Library is a collection of free primary materials from around the world. Students can search the World Digital Library for materials that will help them understand other cultures. Students can search for materials by place, topic, time period, or institution.

How to integrate World Digital Library into the classroom: This is an amazing collection of primary materials from around the world. This is truly like bringing museums from around the world into your classroom. Use the World Digital Library to illustrate lessons using an interactive whiteboard or projector. Students can use World Digital Library for research and to support projects they are working on. I love the look of World Digital Library, primary sources embeded in a map of the world. It helps students visualize where in the world the materials they are looking at came from.

Tips: Bookmark World Digital Library on the classroom computers for quick access. World Digital Library is multilingual, just choose your language before you begin searching!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using World Digital Library in your classroom.

Virtual Forest Challenge

April 28, 2009April 28, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2479 views

What it is: Scholastic and Nature’s Source have teamed up to create the Virtual Forest Challenge game to help students understand how their actions have real implications in local and global ecosystems. The game leads students through a variety of virtual environments and along the way asks them to make decisions about how they would act in the ecosystem they are in. If students answer correctly (make the correct decision) they continue in the game. If they answer incorrectly, they are offered the correct answer accompanied by an explanation.

How to integrate Virtual Forest Challenge into the classroom: Virtual Forest Challenge would be a good site to use in conjunction with Earth Day. However, since the principals of Earth Day are valid year round, it can be used any time throughout the year. This would be a great challenge to take on as a class with an interactive whiteboard or projector. As students make decisions in the virtual world, discuss why one option is better for the ecosystem than another. Virtual Forest Challenge would also be a good challenge for students to take on solo in the computer lab setting.

Tips: Visit the Teacher Resource section for some great accompanying lesson plans and resources. Here you will find a Community Planting guide, a Community Planting poster, a lesson plan about the delicate balance between people and the ecosystems we are a part of, and a lesson about Our Community Past Present and Future.

APTE Curious Minds Click

April 23, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1981 views

What it is: The APTE Curious Minds Click website lets students and teachers create e-puzzles that can be sent and played online. You can create your own online Crosswords, Word Scrambles, Anagrams, and Secret Codes. These puzzles can then be played online and sent as an email.

How to integrate APTE Curious Minds Click into the classroom: Create your own online puzzles for students to play based on any curriculum or subject you are studying. Puzzles are a fun way for students to practice new vocabulary, spelling words, and new content. Students can create their own puzzles based on curriculum for classmates to solve. Students will love creating puzzles for their classmates and solving puzzles that have been created for them.

Tips: In addition to creating your own puzzles, you can solve puzzles that others have created.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using APTE Curious Minds Click in your classroom.

The Greens

April 21, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment8968 views

What it is: Earth Day is tomorrow! The Greens is a great site to get your students thinking about the earth and going green. The Greens is a collection of 10 short flash movies that teach students important concepts for taking care of our planet. Episodes touch on topics such as: paper use, recycling, composting, conservation, consumption, pollution, and energy. The goal of The Greens is to instill environmental ethic in students. Teachers can download a Greens activity guide (pdf form). Students can use the carbon calculator to calculate their carbon footprint.

How to integrate The Greens into the classroom: This is an awesome site to generate conversation on Earth Day (or any day!). The Greens episodes are short enough to use several in class and can be used as discussion and idea starters for students. Watch the videos in class and discuss ways that students can be greener at school and home. Download the activity guide for some great extension activities. Set up a “green” center in your classroom where students can watch an episode and write down ideas of implementation in their own lives. Share these ideas at the end of the day.

Tips: The video episodes require a Flash Player (this is a free download if you don’t already have one).

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

Emerald Island

April 20, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2193 views

What it is: Emerald Island is a great place for kids to play and learn more about the earth and ways that they can help the earth, perfect for Earth Day! Emerald Island is a virtual world created specifically for kids (6-12). Students can pioneer, prevail over, and protect the Island. Emerald Island is more than just a game, it is a story that students take part in. The students job is to help Tamino (the hero) to save Emerald Island (a green island) from Pirats (pirate rats). Each player plants seeds and cultivates gardens to replenish Emerald Island. Emerald Island helps students to learn about and experience important contributions that are part of an interconnected world. It provides young students with a sense of community and a beginning understanding of a global society. Students begin to build knowledge, empathy, and appreciation for an environment that emulates earth. While playing, students are empowered to make a difference and become true eco-heroes as they take on challenges to save the world. Along the way students meet other citizens of Emerald Island, many of whom give students tips about how they can save energy and be more responsible citizens.

How to integrate Emerald Island into the classroom: Emerald Island is a great game for students to play throughout the month of April as they learn about Earth Day and how to become more earth-conscious citizens. I love how Emerald Island involves students in a story and a quest to save a planet. On the way they learn about how they can be better citizens of our planet with helpful tips from the Emerald Island citizens. The games and activities help students to develop problem solving, reasoning, social, and computer skills. Emerald Island can be played as a whole class exploring and reading clues together with an interactive whiteboard or individually in a computer lab setting. You can expand on what students are learning in Emerald Island by keeping a class notebook of green tips that students learn in Emerald Island.

Tips: Emerald Island provides an outstanding introduction to registering for a website, it is easy enough to use with young students and reinforces Internet safety rules before the game begins.

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

eyePlorer

March 31, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2700 views

What it is: eyePlorer is a really cool site that allows students “explore and process knowledge.” Student type in a word or words to research. eyePlorer pulls information from Wikipedia and puts it into a color wheel of information. When students hover over the different areas of the color wheel, they get a sentence or two about their subject. There is a notebook where students can drag and drop facts that they want to remember. Students can drag facts to the notebook and rearrange them as they need to. Students can click the “i” button under the search box to get a quick summary of their topic, click on the “+” button to add search parameters, and click on the paper button to go to a Google search. The idea behind eyePlorer is to improve the way “users interact with knowledge and information online.” The goal is to provide innovative, interactive, visual methods for working with and discovering facts and information. I think the result is pretty amazing and perfect for the educational setting!

How to integrate eyePlorer into the classroom: This is a truly unique way for students to research and explore new information. Students quickly get a visual guide to their inquiry and can drag and drop what they are learning into a notebook. This is a fantastic tool for research projects but would also be amazing for use with an interactive whiteboard. As students are learning about a new concept, they can type the subject into the search and as a class decide which information they want to save in the notebook for later. What a great introduction to any new material. This site will definitely help wet students appetite for learning! Make sure to bookmark this site on the classroom computers as a classroom research center.

Tips: eyePlorer was created in Germany so the home page information is all in German, once you start a search you can choose to search in German or English. When I searched “shiba inu” it automatically searched in English for me.

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

ActivInspire

March 5, 2009Kelly Tenkely3 Comments20160 views

What it is: ActivInspire is a new software from Promethean that is free! The free edition is a ‘personal’ license that can be used by anyone. The ActivInspire software works with ANY interactive whiteboard (SMART, Mimio, Wiimote Whiteboard, eBeam, etc.) and even for those of you who do not have an interactive whiteboard, use the software with just a computer and projector! The Promethean Planet website has thousands of lessons and resources that are free to access and can be used with ActivInspire to engage your students. ActivInspire has two launch options, the first is to launch in Primary function. In Primary, ActivInspire is very user friendly for primary elementary students. The second option is to launch in Studio with tools that are perfect for older students. ActivInspire works on Windows, Mac, and Linux based machines. Some of the goodies in ActivInspire include interactive protractors, rulers, clocks, grids, and more. New power tools include intelligent shapes and handwriting recognition. There are themed templates for fast and easy lesson building. ActivInspire supports flash files that can be embeded in Flipchart lessons. ActivInspire can open SMART and PowerPoint files, making it quick and easy to pick up any lesson and improve it.

How to integrate ActivInspire into the classroom: ActivInspire is software that can keep students engaged in any lesson in your curriculum. The software is incredibly intuitive and makes it easy to create amazing interactive lessons. The lessons (flipcharts) can be saved and shared among colleagues. Begin building a library of interactive lessons for your students. Be sure to visit Promethean Planet for thousands of ready made (FREE) flipcharts and activities to use with the ActivInspire software.

Tips: To see the possiblities of the ActivInspire software, take a look at Flipcharts created by the developers of ActivInspire. Promethean also has a great set of support tutorials that will have you up and running in no time!

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

ARKive

February 25, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3232 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.

Awesome Stories

February 11, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3592 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.

Jeopardy Labs

February 10, 2009Kelly Tenkely3 Comments4052 views

What it is: Jeopardy Labs is an awesome website that lets you build a Jeopardy game board without the use of Power Point! All that you have to do to start is enter a password so that others can’t edit your game. Then it is as simple as titling it, typing in categories and then entering questions and answers. This is really SO easy to use! You can also search through Jeopardy games created by others. You won’t be able to edit these but you may find a ready made game that fits your needs perfectly. Jeopardy Labs was created by Matt Johnson, an undergraduate at WSUV. Impressive!

How to integrate Jeopardy Labs into the classroom: Jeopardy Labs is a great way to review and practice class material in a fun, engaging way. Use Jeopardy Labs to help your kids study for a test, to review a unit, or just as a fun learning activity on a Friday afternoon. In the computer lab, I have used Jeopardy as a way to teach students how to perform searches. Students can Google the questions and the first team to find the correct answer wins the points.

Tips: Before you reinvent the wheel, browse through other Jeopardy games…someone may have already done the work for you!

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