These are my links for April 21st through April 28th:
emTech Consulting - Over 15,000 resources organized by topics for teachers, students, and parents
Playing Fraction Pies by David Tulga - The Fraction Pie Rhythms activity connects your knowledge of fractions and equivalency to musical notes and rhythms.
Home | PBS Video - More PBS Video Explore more video from PBS including video directly from PBS producers. * PBS KIDS GO! PBS KIDS GO! Watch full-length shows and play games with your favorite characters Arthur Maya
Fuel the Brain | Educational Resources and Games - Educators put in a great deal of time and money finding classroom resources. We hope to make things easier by providing a variety of quality resources organized in one place! Please visit often as we are continually adding new materials.
Tim Davies | Scribd - Check out guides for using popular Web 2.0 sites, such as Blogging with Wordpress, setting up a Domain name, using Flickr, setting up RSS feeds
Posted on April 28, 2009 in Bookmarks by Steve Dembo
Passing along this e-mail I received from Tikatok.com -
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Hi there,
Thank you so much for covering Tikatok on your blog in the past. We have an upcoming event that I’m very excited about, and I thought you and your readers might be interested to hear about it. We’re going to be at the MIT Museum on Sunday as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. Kids who come by will be able to write books with help from a group of MIT students who are volunteering to act as “science advisors.” There will also be writing activities inspired by the cool exhibits at the museum, such as the “Robots and Beyond” exhibit and the recent exhibit of the futuristic architecture of Felix Candela. We’re getting the word out by all of the relevant local channels, but we are also planning on opening the event as much as we can to online participants - we’ll be posting updates on our blog all day, inviting people to submit questions to the MIT scholars by email or Twitter, and generally showcasing as many drawings and cool science stories by kids as we possibly can. Not a bad way to pass a Sunday afternoon, if you ask me.
So, I am looking at what is left to cover in Media/Tech class for Kindgergarten thru Second grades. I come to the following skills, Super 3 research. First graders are currently learning about animals. So I began with my first class by having students answer the following 4 questions using the website Enchanted Learning and writing them down on paper.
Animal name
Where does it live
What does it eat
What it looks like
Problem
Now, I only see students once every 6 days for 50 minutes. I kept the question short so students could finish, or so I thought. Class was over and students were not finished. I spoke to their classroom teacher about the problems they had (copying from the screen to paper, being able to read the words). She polled her class later and came back to me with the top three reasons
There was not enough room to write on the paper
Too much to read
The words on the screen were too small to read.
Ideas
I have looked on the web for other examples to teach this skill and found sample lessons on the Big 6 site. I have looked for tools on the web to assist with reading aloud text on the screen and found the addon FireVox/ClickRead. Today, I came across the subsciption based website, PebbleGo in the recent issue of LMC.
PebbleGo looks like a better way to assist K-2 students with research. Features include -
more than 200 animal articles correlated to life science standards,
animal audio and video,
carefully leveled text,
educational games,
innovative read-aloud capabilities
Subscription price per year is $395 /building.
I am wondering though, if there are free sites that offer similar features. Any thoughts?
Posted on April 22, 2009 in Advice by James Stewart
These are my links for April 19th through April 20th:
USGS Education - This Web site contains selected USGS educational resources that may be useful to educators in primary school grades (Kindergarten to Grade 6). Many of these resources can be used directly in the classroom (see Resource Symbols below) or will be useful in classroom lessons or demonstration activities preparation, or as resources for teacher education and curriculum development.
ZOOM . activities . sci | PBS Kids - The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) hosts a very popular kids show called Zoom science. Not only does the associated web site include fun experiments seen on the show, but you can even send in the results from your own wacky science experiment and they may feature it on the show.
Joey Green’s Mad Scientist - These fun and easy experiments involve common materials you will find around the house. Joey Green presents hundreds of little-known uses for well-known products
Edible/Inedible Experiments Archive - Try your hand at experimental science! Some experiments may be eaten before, during or after the experiment, and some should not be eaten at all!
Each file lists an expected age-level to carry out the experiment, as well as safety precautions. Many of the experiments will require nothing more than a quick rummage through the kitchen cabinets. Have fun, and remember, safety first.
Free Map Tools - find free tools to allow you to measure, save and send maps to other people. Examples include: KML File Creator, How far is it Between, Measure Distance, Save Route, Area Calculator, Radius Around Point, Calculate Carbon Emissions, Trip Calculator, Calorie Burner Map, Map Tunneling Tool, How Far Does Santa Have To Travel, Meeting Center of Gravity for ZIP codes
Posted on April 20, 2009 in Bookmarks by Steve Dembo
These are my links for April 17th through April 18th:
GuidesandTutorials: Free Tutorials - Every month you’ll find a growing library of free tutorials and new online resources that will teach you how to use the most popular technology tools and software applications.
:: e-Learning for Kids :: - Children from 5-12 build and improve basic skills with the best quality e-learning courseware.
Main Page - FreeReading - FreeReading is an open-source instructional program that helps educators teach early literacy. FreeReading contains a 40-week scope and sequence that can supplement an early literacy core or basal program.
Posted on April 18, 2009 in Bookmarks by Steve Dembo
These are my links for April 14th through April 16th:
Learning Clip - Free IWB Resources Renewed Framework Y3, Y4 and Y5 Maths - a collection of interactive whiteboard resources for primary math. Resources and activities include topics such as: using and applying math, understanding numbers, number facts, calculating, understanding shape, measuring, and handling data.
EBOOK Engaging the Whole Child: Reflections on Best Practices in Learning, Teaching, and Leadership - Do students really want to learn? Can schools and classrooms become joyful? Are there natural links between standard curriculum and what motivates students to learn? Explore these and other questions in this e-book collection of articles from Educational Leadership by renowned authors such as Carol Ann Tomlinson, Richard Sagor, Nell Noddings, Thomas R. Guskey, and Allison Zmuda.
And I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For… - At The Problem Site, you can play educational games and daily puzzles, find interesting reference pages, and engage in fun problem solving activities. There are word games, math games, math problems, mystery quests, and many other free educational resources.
Planet Earth - Earth compared to other objects in space
CK-12 - Next Generation Textbooks - CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the “FlexBook,” CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning.
Posted on April 16, 2009 in Bookmarks by Steve Dembo
These are my links for April 4th through April 13th:
Your Fitness Music - create perfect workout playlists, where all the songs are in sync with the tempo you prefer, from music that you already have or will own any time in the future.
Sites 4 Students - a list of sites that are great for students. It is created by a teacher, for teachers.
Successful Deployments for Educational Institutions - Google Apps Help - The Education Edition is engineered to help you organize the wealth of knowledge that lives inside your academic institution. We understand that the flow of information is paramount in an academic environment and we’ve created a package to assist a full-scale deployment of Google Apps.
How schools fail students on technology - Computerworld Blogs - The education crisis is bad and getting worse. The US spends more on education than any other nation, so the problem is not (as commonly portrayed) a funding crisis. The causes for this sorry state of affairs are many, but one major failure is that too many teachers, schools, and districts reject powerful, free technology solutions that are handed to them on a silver platter.
Taskbarn - Free Web-Based Project Management Tools - Quite simply, Taskbarn’s easy-to-use project management tools will make your life easier. Communication, sharing, and planning are important elements of every project and Taskbarn helps you with all three
Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher | Best Colleges Online - Twitter has become a powerful tool for community organizers, marketers, and others who want to share and receive information in a fast, friendly environment. It?s no wonder, then, that teachers have also found success on Twitter, using the tool to connect with students, share information with parents, and find useful resources. Here, we?ll take a look at 100 tools that can help twittering teachers make the most out of this helpful microblogging tool.
Shortcovers - Find Your Next Great Read - Discover thousands of bestselling books, chapters, news and magazine articles, short stories, blog posts and more, anywhere, anytime online and on your mobile device.
Login : meeting24.tv - meeting24.tv is a web conference system for up to 24 users for 24/7. (If you use a meeting room for more than 24 hours, you need a pro account option menu.) Only a meeting host user needs to create a user account. Other members can join the meeting by web browser without registration or login. It’s so easy.
Posted on April 13, 2009 in Bookmarks by Steve Dembo
I just set up my Google Voice account after transferring over from Grand Central. I would like to test this call button to see how it could be used with students in the class to connect with other classes across the country. So if you would like to help out, all you have to do is enter in your phone number (click the check box if you do not want to share your phone number) and click Connect. Google will call your phone and connect you to my voicemail. Leave a message on how you would use this in your classroom. It would make a great way to keep in touch with parents, too. I just may make this a permanent part of my blog.
These are my links for April 2nd through April 3rd:
Lexipedia - Where words have meaning - Definition of welcome in the online dictionary, Lexipedia. The meaning of welcome. What does welcome mean? welcome synonyms, welcome antonyms. Information about welcome in the free online dictionary and thesaurus.
WGBH American Experience - Watch Online - Browse the entire American Experience series featuring over 200 films. Watch full films online, download teacher?s guides, go behind the scenes, and learn more about your favorite films.
ReadWriteThink: Student Materials - ReadWriteThink offers a collection of online Student Materials to support literacy learning in the K-12 classroom. These interactive tools can be used to supplement a variety of lessons and provide an opportunity for students to use technology while developing their literacy skills. Click on the name of each interactive for a brief description of the tool and a list of the ReadWriteThink lessons that use the tool. From there you’ll also be able to directly access the tool and use it in your classroom.
50 Fabulous Web Tools for Group Projects | Rated Colleges - Freelancers, small business owners, college students and family members have found that the Internet has made it easier to work from home, collaborate on group projects, and share important files and links. This list of web tools is ideal for anyone working on a group project, whether you?re looking for task management support, scheduling and calendar organization, or just a place to collect all your materials and brainstorms.
Posted on April 3, 2009 in Bookmarks by Steve Dembo
