Science – Page 26 – iLearn Technology

Prezi

January 12, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3904 views

What it is: Prezi is a unique online presentation builder that seems to be popping up a lot lately all over the web. It is getting so much attention because of its new approach to online slide shows. Prezi has some unique features like zooming presentations that grab and hold viewers attention. Prezi lets you create a sort of walking path through your presentation. The finished product is engaging and impressive looking. The tools in Prezi are different from other online presentation builders but are easy to use and figure out. The tutorial will have you and your students creating in minutes.

How to integrate Prezi into the classroom: Because of Prezi’s unique zooming feature, it would be a good tool for students to use for vocabulary. Students can type in the word to be defined and then zoom in on the definition. Building vocabulary presentations would be good for review and study. Prezi would also be a neat way to explore and display information from history (display a date, place, or person in history and then zoom into facts and details that are related), timeline information (create paths from different dates in Prezi), literature (create a sort of interactive character map of any literary character), science projects (use Prezi’s path to lead through the scientific method), foreign language (type a word in another language and zoom to translate), geography (zoom into details around a map), math, and much more.

Tips: Be sure to check out the tutorial on Prezi, it will have you up and creating in no time! Check out the inspiration to see the amazing things that others have used Prezi to create.

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

Ology

January 9, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2603 views

What it is: Ology is an outstanding free website from the American Museum of Natural History where students can learn about archaeology, astronomy, biodiversity, earth, Einstein, genetics, marine biology, water, and paleontology. The site is user friendly for kids and has an attractive interface that students will enjoy. Each subject has polls, inside stories on the subject, experiments, book lists of related books, interactive games and activities, “make it” ideas, interviews, a snapshot of scientists at work, and more.

How to integrate Ology into the classroom: I like to uses sites like Ology for scavenger hunts. I give students a list of facts that I want them to find while exploring the website and have them take part in a virtual scavenger hunt following the clues. Activities like this build research skills. This is a great site for using in any science class. The online reading is wonderful and the suggestion for books related to the subject is a nice addition. Students can explore the site during science and share what they learn with the class. The experiments and make it ideas would be fun to learn about and create as a class. Ology is an excellent addition to any science class!

Tips: Does your school hold an annual science fair? Share this site with parents for suggestion of science experiments and as a launching point.

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

Picasa

January 7, 2009Kelly Tenkely6 Comments3036 views

What it is: Picasa is a free download from Google that helps you organize, edit, share, and create using photos. The edit feature allows you to fix red-eye, crop, and fix any blemishes or scratches. Picasa lets students create turning photos into movies, collages, and slideshows. Picasa also makes it easy to upload albums to the web to share. Picasa has been around for a while as a Google tool but the big news this week is the release of the beta version of Picasa for Macs. The neat thing about the Mac Picasa release is its integration with iPhoto. The features are pretty neat and definitely worth a look for either platform but with the announcement of iPhoto ’09 yesterday, they aren’t as impressive. HOWEVER, Picasa is completely free while iPhoto ’09 is not.

How to integrate Picasa into the classroom: Picasa is a great way to organize photos you are taking of your classroom in action. Create a web album, parents always like to see the great things their kids are learning. Students can use Picasa to organize images they find online or pictures they take on a field trip. These pictures can then be used to create a movie, collage, or slideshow directly in the Picasa software. Students could create a class story in pictures, create a movie out of it and share it with other grades. Students can also collect historical images, scientific images, etc and easily create a movie or slideshow displaying their knowledge.

Tips: Picasa is available for Macs in beta version and Windows and Linux based in alpha.

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

Share Tabs

January 5, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3180 views

What it is: Share Tabs is a simple, but very neat, website that allows you to share several links with one web address. Teachers can enter a list of websites they want students to visit into Share Tabs. After entering the links, you create one Share Tabs URL that will open all of the links as separate tabs in a web browser. So cool!

How to integrate Share Tabs into the classroom: Share Tabs is an awesome way to save time in the classroom when using multiple websites. Instead of waiting for kids to type in several URL’s to get to the days activities, they type in one URL and share tabs does all the work. I know in my classroom, I don’t want to spend 15 min typing in web addresses. I would rather that students have that time to spend on the web activities. Share Tabs is perfect in the computer lab setting or any time that you want students to visit multiple websites for a lesson. Use Share Tabs for virtual field trips through cyber space without spending time creating a webquest. Share Tabs also makes sharing sites with colleauges a snap. As you are finding resources for a lesson, put them into Share Tabs and send one link. Your colleagues will thank you!

Tips: Use Share Tabs on Twitter instead of updating 5 times with each separate URL you are exploring, update once with a Share Tabs link!

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

Kido’z

January 2, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2163 views

What it is: Kido’z is a web browser specifically designed just for kids. The Kido’z browser is a completely protected environment where kids can surf web sites, watch kid appropriate videos and play games. Kido’z has an incredibly simple interface that is even appropriate for non readers and writers. The browser blocks links, scripts and other opportunities for kids to be lead to websites that have not been approved. Kido’z allows kids to safely explore “an endless amount of games, videos and other content and can enter with one click to the best kids’ sites that can be found.” Kido’z is a great addition to any pre-k through second grade classroom.

How to integrate Kido’z into the classroom: Kido’z is a great way to bring the Internet to the classroom computers in the pre-k through second grade classroom. Students can access the Internet in a completely safe, controlled environment. The interface of Kido’z is so user friendly that even your non-reader students can use the browser sucessfuly without help. Many of the video clips, games, and websites that students have access to through Kido’z are educational and offer great learning opportunities. Kido’z has provided several ways to follow developments through Twitter, their blog, or RSS feed. You are sure to be introduced to great kids learning sites that you may not have seen before.

Tips: Before you can download the Kido’z browser, you will have to download Adobe Air. Be sure to share Kido’z with parents. The web browser is a great way to keep your students learning at home in a safe environment.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Kido’z in your classroom.

Aviary Toucan

December 26, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2859 views

What it is: Aviary is a website on a mission to make creativity more accessible. They do this by making powerful image software available online (no download required) and with free versions of the online software. Aviary has four different offerings: Peacock, Phoenix, Toucan, and Raven. Because each tool does something different, I am going to break it down into four posts.

Toucan is the third application in the Aviary suite. Toucan is a color palette chooser. It is a simple tool but combined with the other Aviary applications is pretty powerful for the creativity process. Choose colors for your palette and then adjust hue, saturation, hue, light, CMYK, and RGB. The color palette helps students learn about relationships between colors on the color wheel. As students manipulate and choose colors from the color wheel, they can save to the clip board. When color palettes are in the clipboard, students can filter out colors in their palette or expand colors. There is also an image chooser where students can choose an image and then pick colors directly from the image. The last cool tool in Toucan is a color deficiency tool where you can see what people who are color blind might see when they are viewing your color palette (especially helpful for website creation!). After you create a color palette, it can be imported into Pheonix or Peacock. In the color chooser in Pheonix, you can click a special button to import your swatches from Toucan. Neat!

How to integrate Toucan into the classroom: Aviary Toucan is a wonderful addition to any art or science class studying color. The color wheel and adjustment options make it easy to see and understand color relationships as well as concepts like hue, tint, and saturation. This would be a great tool for students to explore individually, recording observations about hue, tint, saturation, etc. as they discover how each affects color. Toucan would also be useful for whole class instruction on color with a projector. The ability to create color palettes is a great tie in for the other Aviary applications as well as for website design. I love the color deficiency tool that allows you to see what the colors in your color palette look like to someone with color blindness. This is a nice way to teach students about color blindness and useful when creating websites, advertisements, etc.

Tips: Aviary Phoenix, Peacock, and Toucan are both in beta right now. Be sure to check out the Toucan overview video to learn more about how Toucan works. The video breaks down the application nicely.

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

App Shopper

December 17, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2651 views

What it is: The iPod Touch has opened up a whole world of portable education to schools. Several of the Applications in the iTunes Application store are free! App Shopper is a website that makes it simple to find free education applications for the iPod Touch (or iPhone). Select your category, free, and enjoy browsing through great, free applications for your students!

How to integrate App Shopper into the classroom: Use App shopper to easily find free applications for your classroom iPod Touch(es). I like the way that App Shopper shows an icon of the program and gives a description of the application. Applications can be downloaded right from App Shopper or from iTunes…these are free to use, who doesn’t appreciate free classroom tools?!

Tips: The second edition of the iLearn Ezine is coming soon with a great section on iPods in education and a review of the best free education apps.

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

Secret Builders

December 15, 2008Kelly Tenkely6 Comments4353 views

What it is: You have undoubtedly heard of virtual world Second Life and its growing popularity in the education realm. Second life has some amazing educational opportunities for older students (students must be 13 years or older to have an account) but nothing for the elementary age student. Enter Secret Builders, an enchanting virtual world designed specifically for elementary age children. Virtual worlds like this are highly engaging for all ages and allow students to interact with each other in new ways. Secret Builders can be used to supplement different topics including literature, arts, science, and humanities. One of my favorite features, is the ability for students to interact with historical figures like Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland, Galileo, and more! Students can visit these historical figures homes and ask them questions. There is a magazine in Secret Builders called The Crooked Pencil where students can submit writing to be published. There are learning games to play that, like Free Rice, donate to a charitable cause for correct answers. Students build up points by completing quests and can use the points to purchase things in Secret Builders.

How to integrate Secret Builders into the classroom: Secret Builders is a really neat site, students will love the online world and ability to connect with other students online. Secret Builders is more than just a ‘game’ sort of site though, there is a lot of learning to be done here! Students can build netiquette skills, computer skills, and learn about humanities, arts and literature all in Secret Builders. Students can write stories in Writers Block, go on a quest which requires logic skills and weaves in arts and humanities, perform a play in the Theater, solve puzzles, and interact with others. This is a really neat alternative to worksheets and traditional story writing. I think that the opportunity for students to interact with historical figures and tour their virtual home is fantastic! I hope that they continue to add historical figures, I would have loved this sort of history environment! The ability for students to play games and earn real money for charities is a wonderful motivator for students and great for building character education.

Tips: Secret Builders encourages student and teacher suggestions, if you have an idea, let them know…you may just add the next cool feature to the Secret Builders world! Take a look at the Teacher page for some great classroom tie-ins and features.

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

Wikipedia School

December 11, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment13903 views

What it is: Wikipedia is often the first place students head when faced with a research project. While Wikipedia can be an excellent resource, content can be vandalized and is not always student appropriate. Wikipedia School is a free, hand checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia. It has about 5500 articles and is the volume of a twenty volume encyclopedia. It will fit on a DVD and can be downloaded for free thanks to the SOS Children’s Villages website. Topics were chosen that would be of interest to students and in accordance with the UK National Curriculum (but are appropriate for any English speaking country).

How to integrate Wikipedia School into the classroom: Wikipedia School is a nice alternative to using the Wikipedia website in a school environment. The ability to download Wikipedia School to DVD means that it can be used on computers that don’t have Internet access. Students can search freely and you will have the peace of mind knowing that with Wikipedia School, students won’t stumble on inappropriate content. Subjects for search include: art, business studies, citizenship, countries, design and technology, every day life, geography, history, information technology, language and literature, mathematics, music, people, portals, religion, and science. There is an outstanding selection of articles and pictures for each subject!

Tips: Wikipedia School can be accessed online or offline when downloaded.

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

Kids’ Science Challenge

December 8, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3447 views

What it is: Kids’ Science Challenge is a nationwide competition for 3rd- 6th graders to submit experiment ideas and problems for real scientists and engineers to solve. Teachers or after school science programs can enter their classes for this contest that will inspire students to find the fun in science. The deadline for entry is January 31st, 2009 so get this one in before the holiday break! The grand prize winner will win a visit with the scientist or engineer to work with them to solve the question or problem proposed, along with possible appearances in Kids’ Science Challenge videos and Pulse of the Planet radio programs. Other prizes include: a tour of the flavor lab, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream party, science kits, Kids’ Science Encyclopedia and Science books, visit to the SETI institute, telescope, personal planetariums, celestial seeker, a visit to a skateboard engineering workshop, a visit to your school from a pro-skater, a week at camp Woodyard, a skateboard, a physics workshop, a research cruise, kayak, handheld digital microscope, and more! If that isn’t incentive to give it a try, I don’t know what is! The first 1000 entrants get a free science activity kit. The Kids’ Science Challenge website is a great place to explore even if you won’t be able to participate in the challenge. Students are introduced to real scientists through video, can play science games, and find additional activities including downloadable science projects.

How to integrate Kids’ Science Challenge into the classroom: Invite your students to explore the Kids’ Science Challenge website and then journal some original questions, problems, or experiment ideas that are related to one of the four fields of science including flavor science, water quality, skateboard engineering, and the search for life in outer space. This is a great opportunity to use technology creatively to present the questions and problems that students have and want solved. Think blogs, websites, video, or podcast.

Tips: Be sure to check out the great lesson plans for the k-12 classroom to use for each of the scientific fields explored on this site. The lesson plans are aligned to National Science Education Standards.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Kids’ Science Challenge in your classroom.