Social Studies – Page 15 – iLearn Technology

Watch Know

November 24, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1750 views

What it is: Watch Know is a new educational video collection site. The site has not been officially launched and is still in beta version but already has a number of outstanding educational videos all offered for free! Watch Know brings together the best educational videos online into one convenient-to-search, safe site. Teachers, parents, and kids come together to find the videos, the videos are then approved for appropriateness by a media review panel made up mostly by school teachers and librarians. The site is very easy to search by category, topic, or keywords. Every video that I viewed was outstanding!

How to integrate Watch Know into the classroom: Watch Know is a great place to find educational videos to introduce any topic to students. The videos are wonderful to use as the anticipatory portion of a lesson to capture students interest in new topics, themes, or subjects. The videos are also well used as discussion starters for classroom debates/discussions. Because the videos are collected from all around the Internet but hosted on the Watch Know website, you can bring educational You Tube videos into the classroom even if your school blocks You Tube. Encourage students to interact and think critically about the video by rating the videos and leaving comments.

Tips: Videos are collected from all over the Internet from sites like SlideBoom to sites like You Tube. Some videos are interactive. I particularly liked the Logic puzzle interactive video where a logic puzzle is presented, kids can work out the puzzle and then click the video for the correct answer.

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

Picturing America Bookshelf

November 19, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2282 views

What it is: I have written a few posts about Picturing America but I have to do another one! Picturing America is now offering a free Bookshelf to k-12 libraries. The Picturing America Bookshelf is a set of classic books for readers in kindergarten through twelfth grade. Applications for the Picturing America Bookshelf are being accepted online now through Jan. 30, 2009. All that is required of your school is that you would encourage young readers to explore the Picturing America books. The great literature included in the Bookshelf can provide students with a window into our nation’s character, ideals, and goals. The books will give students the chance to experience some of the most iconic times, people, places, and stories in American history. The Bookshelf comes with the following titles:

Kindergarten to Grade 3: Walt Whitman: Words for America by Barbara Kerley; Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull; Cosechando esperenza: La historia de César Chávaz by Kathleen Krull (translated by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy); The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Sweet Music in Harlem by Debbie Taylor.

Grades 4 to 6: The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich; American Tall Tales by Mary Pope Osborne; On the Wings of Heroes by Richard Peck; Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule by Harriette Gillem Robinet; The Captain’s Dog: My Journey with the Lewis and Clark Tribe by Roland Smith.

Grades 7 to 8: The Life and Death of Crazy Horse by Russell Freedman; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving; La leyanda de Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (translated by Manual Broncano); Across America on an Emigrant Train by Jim Murphy; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Grades 9 to 12: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis; Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange by Elizabeth Partridge; Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck; Viajes Con Charley – En Busca de América by John Steinbeck (translated by José Manuel Alvarez Flórez); Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.
Bonus: Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out by The National Children’s Book and Literary Alliance; 1776: The Illustrated Edition by David McCullough.

These books would be excellent companions to the Picturing America art and curriculum! Be sure to apply today, if the Picturing America art is any indication of the quality of the bookshelf, it will be amazing!

Tips: Be sure to visit National Endowment for the Humanities site EDSITEment for sample lesson plans and resources to enhance the use of the Bookshelf in your classroom or library.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Picturing America Bookshelf in your school.

Group Table

November 18, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment10777 views

What it is: “GroupTable is a web-based software and success network developed specifically to help student groups improve document management, project planning and communication.” Group Table helps students stay organized with all of their group projects and study groups in one place. Students can see all of their groups in one place including any file uploads, posts, tasks, upcoming events and more. Each student and group has their own binder on Group Table that allows them to organize, store and share word documents, presentations, and spreadsheets in one easy-to-use location. Group Table has the ability to create to do lists and assign tasks or remind others about upcoming events. Each group gets a dedicated chat room and discussion board with Group Table making collaboration and communication simple and efficient. This site was created by college students for students. Although the target audience is high school and college age students, Group Table could be effectively used in the secondary elementary classroom and the middle school classroom.

How to integrate Group Table into the classroom: For high school and college students, Group Table is a great site to introduce students to for their own group creation. Secondary elementary and middle school students would benefit from a teacher led group on Group Table. This is a great way to introduce your students to effective collaboration, communication, and 21st century literacy skills. It is essential that students learn how to collaborate on projects using web 2.0 technologies and Group Table provides the perfect space to practice.

Tips: Teachers, create a study group for your classroom that your students can join.

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

Education Diigo

November 17, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2167 views

What it is: Education Diigo offers k-12 and higher ed educators premium Diigo accounts! The premium accounts provide the ability to create student accounts for whole classes, students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can easily share bookmarks, annotations, and group forums, privacy settings so that only classmates and teachers can communicate with students, and any advertisments on Education Diigo are education related. If you aren’t familiar with Diigo, it is a social bookmarking website where students can collaborate on the web. Diigo works in to a project based learning environment nicely and allows for exploratory learning and collaboration.

How to integrate Education Diigo into the classroom: Education Diigo is an outstanding place for students to solve problems together. Provide students with a problem and send them on a web scavenger hunt to find the answer, students can post their findings and notes about their findings on Diigo. Students can collaborate online to solve the problem. Education Diigo is also a great place for “teachers to highlight critical information within text and images and write comments directly on the web pages, to collect and organize series of web pages and web sites into coherent and thematic sets, and to facilitate online conversations within the context of the materials themselves.” This feature makes Education Diigo a great place to create webquest type lessons and virtual field trips around the web. Diigo also allows teachers to collaborate and share resources among themselve. Education Diigo is a must for students who are learning to complete web-based research!

Tips: Your Education Diigo account must be approved so sign up today!

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

Middle Spot

November 11, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3119 views

What it is: Middle Spot is a spectacular new search engine for teachers, librarians, and students performing research. Middle Spot lets you see your results, you can pan and zoom individual website results. Workpads allow you to save and annotate results and sort by collections. Workpads can also be shared with others (colleagues, students, or professional learning communities). What I love about Middle Spot is the blending of the traditional search results (listed along the left side of the screen) with the snapshot results where you can see the results. When your cursor scrolls over a screen shot, the related traditional result and information is highlighted on the left making it very quick and easy to find exactly the results you are looking for. Middle Spot allows you to search the web or search images, very handy!

How to integrate Middle Spot into the classroom: Middle Spot is a great place for students to do research because of the ability to organize their finds and ideas right in the search engine with workpads. If students are working on group projects, they can share their findings and workpads with others in their group. Middle Spot is also ideal for teachers, collect your search results in one place based on topic or curriculum objectives and share with colleagues. Create your own “webquest” with Middle Spot by creating and sharing a workspace with your students. Make workpads for whole class lessons with an interactive whiteboard or projector to save yourself from typing in each url for the activity individually.

Tips: Middle Spot is truly my new favorite search engine. Your students will love the ability to take notes about websites and cite their sources as they go in the workpads. It really is well designed for the classroom setting!

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

Daft Doggy

November 7, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2705 views

What it is: I found Daft Doggy several months ago and put it in my “explore more” folder. The Daft Doggy site is in beta version and it isn’t obvious upon first visit what exactly it does. Today I had a little bit of time to go and explore the site more and I am glad I did! Daft Doggy is a free service that lets you record web browsing sessions, play them back, and share recorded sessions with others. It is very simple to use (only 2 clicks to start recording!) You type in the starting point URL and Daft Doggy keeps track of all subsequent URL’s along the way. Daft Doggy doesn’t record everything you do, it only remembers each separate URL you visit in a sequence, it does this both within the site or a separate external site. When students or teachers view the session, a blue bar at the top of the page shows the URL along with reverse and next navigation. Each recorded session is assigned a unique link making it easy to share with students or other staff. After you have recorded the sequence of sites, you have the option of labeling each site and even adding a voice recording that will play when that site is being viewed.

How to integrate Daft Doggy into the classroom: Daft Doggy is a great way to lead students through a series of activities on the web. Younger students especially who would have trouble keeping track of and typing mulitiple URL’s would benefit from a lesson recorded with Daft Doggy. Daft Doggy is also perfect for whole class instruction with a projector when mulitiple sites will be visited. The recorded session will keep you on track and keep you from having to type in multiple URL’s while teaching. As a computer teacher and technology integration specialist, I like Daft Doggy for the ability to make quick guides for students and teachers as well as tutorials. The Daft Doggy recordings are quick and easy to create making them ideal for quickly answering web questions or leading colleagues/students through websites. Make your own online virtual field trips or webquests for students using Daft Doggy. Student projects can also be enhanced with Daft Doggy. Students can create web presentations with site to share with peers. This would also be a great site to use as students are researching. Instead of trying to remember the exact search words and links they used to find a site, they can record their research so that they can re-trace their steps at a later time if needed. So cool!

Tips: This beta site definitely doesn’t have any frills, it is very basic but it gets the job done easily and quickly. To get started just create a login and you are ready to go!

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

Glogster EDU!

October 27, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3770 views

What it is: I wrote a post last week about a site called Glogster, since that post Glogster has introduced Glogster EDU! Glogster for Education is a site that lets students combine graphics, photos, videos, music, and text into a great web 2.0 online poster. Glogs are an outstanding way to enhance learning, wikis, and blogs. Glogster EDU offers support and help with creating school accounts and keeping Glogs private.

How to integrate Glogster EDU into the classroom: As I mentioned last week, Glogster is a creative way for your students to display knowledge. Students can create Glogs for absolutely any subject. Glogster is wonderful for book reports, history, math concepts, science, and literature. The ability to embed Glogs into wikis and blogs is outstanding and makes Glogs even more versatile.

Tips: Send Glogster EDU feedback about features you would like to see specifically for education…they have committed to updates based on your feedback!

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

Apple Field Trips

October 21, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1792 views

What it is: The Apple Store is offering field trips to k-12 students and schools! Students can create something amazing on their field trip to the Apple store, or bring in a finished project that they have created and turn the store into a theater to share their work. Parents, teachers, and friends can attend the event to celebrate student achievement. Each event can accommodate up to 25 students. A field trip lasts one hour but more time can be scheduled on an individual basis. Right now, schools can request up to 3 date options for a field trip at a time. When you schedule a field trip, Apple takes care of invitations to send home with students, and assigns a contact person to plan the field trip for your school. Additionally, the teacher who sets up the event receives one year of complementary One to One membership. Every participating student receives a special Apple t-shirt.

How to integrate an Apple Field Trip into the classroom: If you have access to Apple computers at your school the create and share field trip option is for you. Students can work on a project (multimedia is probably best) and use the Apple Field Trip as a place to showcase and share their accomplishments. If you don’t have access to an Apple lab or don’t have regular access to computers at all, use the field trip as a time for your students to learn and create using the computer. This is a really amazing FREE opportunity, be sure to take advantage of this offer from Apple!

Tips: Right now field trips are only being offered through November 21st. Even if you can’t fit in a field trip before the deadline, be sure to let Apple know what a fabulous idea these field trips are and encourage them to offer future field trip options.

Leave a comment and tell us how your Apple Field Trip went.

Glogster

October 16, 2008Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3546 views

What it is: Glogster is a great creativity site who’s tag line is “poster yourself”. A ‘glog’ is basically an online poster web page. Students can combine text, pictures, graphics, video, and audio to create an interactive online poster. Glogster has a very simple to use interface. The final glog can be hosted by Glogster or you can embed it into a wiki, blog, or class web site.

How to integrate Glogster into the classroom: Glogster is an awesome way for your students to display knowledge. Instead of creating a poster for a presentation, students can create an interactive glog to display information. Glogster can be used for history, math, language arts, book reports, science, social studies, and for public service announcements. In fact, I am having a hard time coming up with a subject that couldn’t use Glogster in some capacity. Students can create these online posters to display any knowledge or learning. You really have to see this site, the creativity that it allows for will get your wheels spinning. Once you start using Glogster with your students, you are going to think of all kinds of new applications. Because Glogster has the ability to handle audio, students can create podcasts (using Audacity, Garageband, G-Cast or Gabcast) and upload the content into their glog. So cool! I really love that students can share their school work and accomplishments online with classmates, family, and friends. Give your students an authentic audience and their work will dazzle you!

Tips: You can check out a quick sample glog that I created here about Internet Safety.

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

Piki Kids Comic Creator

October 6, 2008Kelly Tenkely2 Comments5735 views

What it is: Piki Kids Comic Creator is an online comic creator for students. Students can upload pictures from their computers, or search Flickr for images to use in their comic strip. The comics are very flexible so students can make them uniquely their own. Students can choose the number of panels, the look of the panels, color choices, and much more. When students are finished creating their online Piki Kids comic, they can save them to a gallery, or print out.

How to integrate Piki Kids Comic Creator into the classroom: Students love reading comics, there is something about the interaction with a comic that makes even struggling readers willing to try. I find that the same is true with writing. Many kids who struggle to write would dread writing out a story or series of events after reading a book. But, introduce a comic and suddenly those kids who don’t like writing are writing full stories. Piki Kids Comic Creator is the perfect way to get your students writing about anything. Studying dinosaurs? Have the kids find some clip art of dinosaurs that they can upload to Piki Kids and have them write about what they are learning comic book style. Learning about the Civil War? Have the students retell the story as a comic strip. You will see creativity that you didn’t know your students possessed! Comic strips are also an excellent place for students to “write” a book report after finishing a book. Comics can be used in science to show processes (like plant cycle…give those plants a voice!) Comics can be used in math for students to create word problems for fellow classmates to solve. Use comics in character education, after teaching a lesson, students can illustrate, comic-style, what that might look like. From the technology side of things, Piki Kids Comic Creator is a great place to teach kids skills like uploading to a website, searching flickr for pictures, changing font, size, and color.

Tips: Piki Kids Comic Creator is an excellent tool. Be aware that there are adwords on the website. I use these as an opportunity to help my student spot advertisements and talk about why sites include ads on websites. Everything can be a learning experience!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Piki Kids Comic Creator in your classroom.