Social Studies – Page 5 – iLearn Technology

Oddizzi: where the world comes to life

October 17, 2011Kelly Tenkely5 Comments4903 views

What it is: I love those serendipitous moments in life where the stars seem to align and everything that comes your way is tailor made to meet your needs. This resource filled those needs for me this week! At Anastasis, our primary students are working on an inquiry unit about how transportation has changed over time and how transportation is used in different locations in the world. What should appear in my inbox than a little note from the people over at Oddizzi inviting me to take a look at their content. Serendipitous I tell you. Oddizzi is a paid-for service but they have sample content on their site to give you a taste of what you can expect. That sample content is free and has made my day. It may make yours too, you should head over and have a look! Oddizzi brings the world to life in a way I have seen few other resources pull off. Students have access to their very own interactive map where they can view places, physical features, global features, places of interest, my story and class pals. Students can click on each feature on the map to learn more in popup bubble. The content below the map is rich including student-friendly text, videos, “secret” facts, images and more. Oddizzi is a great way to teach about geography, global issues, math, citizenship and multicultural topics. One feature that I have found to be really useful is the “Sneak-a-Peak” option which condenses a page of content down to one page of easy to read sentences. Perfect for differentiating for your different reading levels while maintaining a topic thread for the whole class. Odd and Izzi are fun characters that lead students through the site revealing hidden secrets as they go.

How to integrate Oddizzi into the classroom: Oddizzi is a fantastic way for students to explore geography and culture. Use Oddizzi sample content to introduce a lesson or unit, as a place for students to gather research, or as a center activity on classroom computers. In the Sample Content you will find information on Egypt, transportation in India, Rivers and Games (flags from around the world and a game about Egypt).

Oddizzi is a great place to spur interest in geography and encourages students to learn more. We will use the Transport in India content to help students think about questions they can ask about how transportation is used in other countries.

Geography is a subject that is often overlooked in schools in the United States. Oddizzi helps bridge the gap between geography and other disciplines such as reading, writing, communicating, math, social studies, history, etc. No excuses!

Use Oddizzi as a starting point for students to gather facts, information and gain a general understanding of geography and culture. Students can use that information to create a poem about the country or location. At Anastasis, @leadingwlove did an incredible project with students where they each chose a country they wanted to learn more about. After learning about the country, they wrote a poem. Each made a large thumbprint on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and inside the thumbprint left a negative space of the outline of the country. They wrote their poems on the lines of the fingerprint. The result was incredible! Students learned a lot, practiced writing poetry and created a masterpiece to boot! Since our students are in a one-to-one iPad environment, they took this a step further and took pictures of their finished products and added special photo effects to make a one-of-a-kind digital masterpiece for their e-portfolios. SO awesome! You can see the beginning of one of these poems below…

Tips: In the subscription version of Oddizzi, you can connect with other classes around the globe in a secure learning environment. This allows your students to send online postcards to other students around the world so that they can learn first hand what life is like around the globe. Neat! A curriculum zone offers teachers resources for integrating Oddizzi across multiple disciplines for transdiciplinary learning. In addition, the subscription version has “Over to you” where students can contribute content to the site. If you are interested in testing out these additional features, request a free trial of Oddizzi for your class here.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Oddizzi in your classroom!

Ever wondered what 10,000 young people could do to solve some of the world’s greatest problems?

October 5, 2011Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3903 views

My Twitter friend Ewan McIntosh recently shared an incredible opportunity for involving students in solving real world problems. I love putting kids creative minds to problems that keep us all wondering. I’m always so impressed with the unique approach that children take to problems. Kids don’t have the same life filters that we do. Some assumptions we make about the way things have to be done don’t exist for kids. They are free of those.

Ewan explains how your students can be involved wonderfully so I won’t reinvent the wheel:

“At TEDxLondon, BLC, Naace and a few other events this summer I asked if people wanted to join me in trying to encourage more curricula that were based less on students solving the irrelevant, contrived pseudo problems given to them in textbooks, and based more on finding great, real world problems that need solved.

A superb opportunity for action has come along.

Ever wondered what 10,000 young people could do to solve some of the world’s greatest problems? We want to know for the world’s most important ICT event, ITU Telecom World 11, by gathering young people’s vision for the future on world2011.us.

The October 24-27 event is the flagship meeting of the world’s telecoms industries, brought together by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the specialised United Nations agency responsible for information and communication technologies. In the run up to the event, and during it, we’ll be showcasing the ideas of young people, aged 8-18, alongside the debates, panels and corridor discussions of these influential delegates.

I’ve been at so many events recently that have either totally lacked the student voice, or made third party reference to it through second-hand reportag from their teachers. This is a real chance for your students to make a global impact on problems that matter, wherever they are.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime real world project-based learning opportunity, that ties into most teachers’ curriculum at any given point in the year.

We’re providing some brief points of inspiration to get you started, over the seven key themes, and will open up a wiki space today where teachers can collaborate and add to each other’s resources on the areas.

By October 24, we hope to have videos, photos, blogs and examples or prototypes of what young people believe might help solve challenges on their own doorstep. Sign up your class, school or district to begin sharing the ideas of your students. We want you to tell us how technology could be harnessed to:

To take part, you just have to sign up your interest, and from there you’re able to submit posts to the project.” -via http://edu.blogs.com

Way cool! Thanks for sharing Ewan!

Visual.ly- Infographics Galore!

July 25, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3296 views

What it is: I am a geek for infographics. I love the way they convey ideas so clearly (especially for visual learners like me!). Visual.ly is infographic geek heaven. At Visual.ly you can search all the best infographics from the web in one convenient place. Do you (or your students) have infographics to share? Upload your infographics to Visual.ly and share them with others. Visual.ly even has a lab where you can create your own infographics! Way cool! Right now the create feature is limited to a Twitter infographic.

How to integrate Visual.ly into the classroom: Visual.ly is a great place to find infographics on any subject. Search infographics by subject or keyword. Use infographics to introduce new concepts, to begin a research project (is the infographic accurate?) or for review. Infographics are brilliant in the way that they help communicate complex ideas in a clear, compact and visually appealing way.

Visual.ly can help students better understand infographics so they can create their own. Right now Visual.ly only has the option for creating a Twitter related infographic (see mine below). This is great if your class has a Twitter account, students can see what their connections online look like (of course just part of the story!). You don’t have to wait on Visual.ly to finish their creation tool, use Excel, Numbers, Pages, PowerPoint, Keynote, etc. to create your own infographics! Any time data is involved (science, math, geography, economics, history, government) students can create an infographic to visualize the learning. It would be fun to create a class infographic bulletin board for the first weeks of school. Collect data about students and use picture, shapes, etc. to create a customized infographic. If you do this, come back and share pictures!!

Tips: Because infographics are user-created, some may not be appropriate for all classrooms. If your students are going to spend time on Visual.ly, make sure you preview first!

**By the way, Visual.ly if you are listening, it would be AWESOME if you had an education version!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Visual.ly in your classroom!

The Secret Annex

May 9, 2011Kelly Tenkely6 Comments3979 views

What it is: The Secret Annex lets students travel back in time to Anne Frank’s hiding place. Students can explore Anne’s house in a super cool 3D interactive environment. The Secret Annex gives students an authentic feel for the place where Anne wrote her diary while listening to stories of everyone who lived in the hiding place. In addition to the 3D hiding place, students can review historical archive material about the war and view unique TV broadcasts where memories are shared.

How to integrate The Secret Annex into the classroom: The Secret Annex is about the closest students can come to traveling through time and experiencing the hiding place. The site is incredible in its attention to detail. Each room can be explored with narration describing the room. The Secret Annex is an excellent addition to any classroom studying World War II, reading the Diary of Anne Frank or studying Nazi Germany.

Explore the Secret Annex as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer for a virtual field trip. After exploring as a class, allow students to dig deeper into the site learning about all of the guests of the hiding place on classroom computers or in a computer lab setting.

If you are reading the Diary of Anne Frank as a class, use the Secret Annex as a support tool and visual aid so students can picture where Anne composed her diary. The site does a fantastic job of capturing the feelings of fear, hope, anxiety and relief.

Ask students to imagine that they were hiding in the hideaway. Use The Secret Annex as a writing prompt for students to explore the feelings, attitudes and observations in diary or journal form.

Tips: Be sure to visit the “This Site” page where you will find more historical information about Anne Frank, a timeline of Anne’s life, student guides to help students who are learning about World War II and teaching materials from the Anne Frank House.

Thank you to Ryan for sending me to this site, I truly have the best readers!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Secret Annex in your classroom!

NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash Feature-best website ever!

April 19, 2011Kelly Tenkely3 Comments5660 views

Have I mentioned lately that I have the most AWESOME readers? No? Well it is true, you all are awesome and you keep me going even when I am running on low. Thank you for that! I’m currently working on starting a school (actually 3) in the next 2 years. This is proving to be an exciting and, oh yeah, exhausting task. Then I get encouraging emails and site suggestions from you all and it puts some major pep back in my step. Thank you! This website is one such recommendation. You know you are a true geek when getting a cool website in your inbox revives you 🙂 Thank you Ryan!

What it is: NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash feature is a website that is absolutely not to be missed. Seriously, it won’t even hurt my feelings if you skip reading my post and just head right on over to dig in and check it out yourselves! This interactive timeline highlights each decade in our space program from 1950 to 2000. Until we get time travel sorted out, this is a pretty good substitute! The site encourages exploration and discovery as students move decade by decade through the site. I love that this site goes so far beyond just space exploration. While students explore, they will hear music representing each decade, see animations, listen to virtual radio broadcasts of actual news headlines (including NASA news and other news from the decade), original video, listen to speeches of the decade and even launch rockets. I can’t tell you how happy it made me to hear Johnny Cash mixed in as I was playing on this site (in the upper left corner of the site you will be able to change songs on the jukebox, record, tape, CD or mp3 player). First thing I heard when I clicked on the 80’s “Tonight on Dallas find out who shot J.R.”. *LOVE THIS SITE!* This blog post took me about 2 hours because I got sucked right into exploring and playing. The site reminds me of Epcot’s Tomorrow Land, complete with robot guide. This is what online learning should look like, when I close my eyes and dream, this is the experience I imagine for kids. Can you imagine if there was a site like this for history? How cool would that be?!

How to integrate NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash Feature into the classroom: This is one of those sites that you could let kids loose on just for exploration. Without any guidance from you they will learn plenty! Ideally kids would explore this site in partners or on their own in a one to one computer lab setting. If each student has a computer, headphones will be a necessity. If individual exploration just isn’t in the cards, visit the site as a class with an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computers. Invite students up to the computer (whiteboard) to take turns guiding the class. The site has plenty of interactive content to give each student a chance at the computer (whiteboard). Unless you have a good chunk of time dedicated to the site, this is one that I would stretch out over a week. Each day students can explore a new decade.

The space exploration component of this site is amazing and could keep everyone plenty busy with learning. With older students, discuss what the music of the decade reveals about that time in history. What does the music tell them about people, community, values, events of the day? Take it one step further and ask students to dig into other historical events in each decade, discussing their impact on space exploration, culture and where we are today. One thing that I missed out on in history was all of the stories that make it so rich. For me, history was reduced to names, dates and places. Give your students the opportunity to put themselves into history and learn about how the events influenced each other.

NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash Feature would be a great one to use in connection with We Choose the Moon. If your students are like mine, they can’t get enough of this stuff! Obviously I can’t get enough of it either. Full disclosure, I have always loved space exploration. When I was a kid I spent many summers at Black Rock Desert at LDRS (Large Dangerous Rockets) with my dad. My dad built wooden model rockets- first wooden rocket on record to break sound barrier! In answer to your next question: yes, I have always been a complete and total nerd. 😛

Tips: What? Your still here? Go on, visit the site! (channeling my inner Ferris Bueller today).

Please leave a comment and share how you are using NASA’s 50th Anniversary Flash Feature thesauruses in your classroom!

Students Rebuild: Paper Cranes for Japan

March 30, 2011Kelly Tenkely7 Comments3536 views

What it is: As news of Japan’s tsunami and earthquake(s) continues to roll in, students may be feeling overwhelmed by the devastation of it all. Following natural disaster current events can give students (and adults) a real sense of helplessness. As adults, we often ease this by donating money or time. What do students do to make an impact? Today I learned of a truly wonderful site called Students Rebuild from a tweet from my friend @MZimmer557. Students Rebuild is a site that helps students around the world connect, learn, and take action on critical global issues. There are a few projects that students can get involved in currently:

1. Haiti- building stronger, permanent schools in Haiti. This is a call to action for middle and high school students to rebuild strong, permanent schools in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. Students and educators create a team to raise money. Any money raised is matched dollar-for-dollar up to $2,500 per team.

2. Japan-folding cranes to support rebuilding in Sendai. This is a way for young students to take action. “Through a simple, powerful gesture of making and mailing in a paper crane, students worldwide are promoting hope, healing, and triggering dollars for reconstruction ($2 for each crane received).”

Students Rebuild gives students the opportunity to connect to a global community, learn about the challenges of a natural disaster, and do something real to make a difference.

In addition to the Rebuild challenges, educators can use Student Rebuild to connect students with others around the world. The site helps build that global learning community Interactive video conferencing encourages two-way dialogue and emotional connections. Webcasts between Haiti and multiple schools around the world engage, and inspire. (Learn more on the “Educators” page)

How to integrate Students Rebuild into the classroom: Register your class to take part in one of the Students Rebuild activities. The newest way to take part is through the Paper Cranes for Japan project. Students Rebuild partnered with DoSomething.org to give students worldwide a way to support their Japanese peers. Start by watching the video of how to make paper cranes on the Students Rebuild website. Take a photo and upload it with a message to the Paper Cranes for Japan Facebook Page. Mail the finished paper cranes to Students Rebuild to turn those cranes into dollars for reconstruction and an art installation. This would be a great project to take on as a class. Don’t stop there, encourage your students to make more paper cranes. They can have a paper crane party, or encourage their families to join in on the paper crane creation. Download the one-page flier to send home with students.

Using Students Rebuild projects in your classroom is a great way to teach students about our global community, empathy, current events, and give students a way to make a difference.

Tips: Be sure to check out the comprehensive toolkit on the Students Rebuild site. In the toolkit you will find photos, videos, posters, fact sheets, logos, media coverage, and fundraising tips.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Students Rebuild in your classroom!

Sophia: learning made social

March 18, 2011March 18, 2011Kelly Tenkely3 Comments4411 views

What it is: Sophia is a site that I have been playing around with for the past few months in their invitation only, beta space. Now that the beta has been released to everyone, I’m excited to share it! Sophia is a platform that connects teachers, learners, experts, and parents. This is an academic community that supports and enriches the traditional classroom. Sophia is a social network of sorts that connects everyone in meaningful ways so that knowledge, help, instruction, standards-aligned content, and experts are available for learners everywhere. As an educator, Sophia will help you to share your knowledge and make it available to anyone, anywhere. Sophia can help students by offering them support in areas of weakness, opportunities for deeper learning, and the ability to follow areas of interest that aren’t being met in the classroom. Currently the Sophia subjects include the arts, business, English/language arts, learning strategies, mathematics, science, and social studies. Each of those subject contain several sub categories as well. Packets of learning can contain text documents, slide shows, videos, and useful links. In addition the packets are rated by users as to how academically sound the resource is. Individual users of Sophia get scores based on how well they contribute to the community.

How to integrate Sophia into the classroom: As a teacher, Sophia can be used to supplement instruction, for blended learning opportunities, for “flip” learning (remember that Fisch flip I mentioned earlier in the week?), and for private personal learning networks (PLN). Students can use Sophia for additional classroom support, homework help, to participate in study groups, and to help others in their learning. Use Sophia to facilitate study groups between students, to create an online learning community for your team to create and share resources, and to create groups that include other classrooms for collaborative learning opportunities.

Tips: Sophia is best for middle, high school, and college right now. I hope that they will scale this down for elementary students as well!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Sophia in your classroom!

Fakebook and Twister- Create custom social media pages for learning

March 14, 2011Kelly Tenkely8 Comments12019 views

What it is: I don’t know if you all noticed, but I have been on a serious social media kick lately. 🙂 There is just SO much for students to learn from the social media sphere. Last week (or was it the week before?) I shared that I had created a Facebook Template that could be used with students for creating a fake Facebook profile. Since then I have come across Fakebook created by teacher, @russeltarr. I have one word: Brilliant. Seriously this is the BEST Fakebook tool I have seen. It is simple to use. Just click and type. The profile pictures get pulled automatically based on the name that students type in. Especially good for literary and historical characters! The focus here really is on the learning that it enables, there are NO advertisements (unlike Myfakewall which I have deemed unusable because of all of the ads).

The other fake social networking tool I want to feature is called Twister. This is a fake Twitter wall that students can create just by filling in a few key bits of information like a username, the real name (this is what the photo pulls from), a status update, and a date. When students click submit, they have their very own fictional status update. Very cool!

These tools are fantastic for the classroom because they don’t rely on actual social network sites (which are often blocked by filters), they are not limited by age to use them, and they provide a fun way for students to reflect on learning. So neat!

How to integrate Fakebook and Twister into the classroom: These two teacher created tools are fantastic. They produce results that look like the real deal and were obviously created by teachers who understand that the focus should be learning and not the tool (or advertisements surrounding the tool). These fake profile/status creators are a wonderful way for students to learn about historical and literary figures in a manner that they can personally connect to. Students can create profiles or updates from the perspective of historical figures, literary characters, government, artists, composers, etc. Students can also use these tools to help them develop characters for their own writing.

Take a page out of the Grammaropolis book and have students personify things they are learning about like parts of speech. Students can create a profile for each part of speech. How about creating a profile page for math functions like Number Gossip does? Students could even practice dialogue in a foreign language using either tool.

Teaching your students netiquette? Let students create two versions of a Fakebook page, one with appropriate online interaction and another that “breaks the rules” to compare/contrast.

The Twister site only lets you create one status update at a time. This makes it really nice for memorializing famous or favorite quotes. These would be fun to print out and display on a bulletin board.

Tips: Students can save or print out their Fakebook page. To save, they will create a password and need to write down the unique URL for their page to access it at a later date.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Fakebook and Twister in your classroom!

Spent: Social Justice Simulation

March 2, 2011March 3, 2011Kelly Tenkely11 Comments3908 views

What it is: I learned about Spent from my friend @ianchia last week on Twitter. Spent is a collaboration between McKinney and Urban Ministries of Durham to show students how the decisions they make affect their lives. The Urban Ministries of Durham serves over 6,000 people every year. Students have the opportunity to accept the Spent simulation and challenge to see if they can make it through a month of living expenses. They have just lost their job, their savings are gone, they have lost their house, and they are down to their last thousand dollars. Students must find a job, make decisions about housing, food, emergencies, and more as they try to survive one month on minimum wage.

How to integrate Spent into the classroom: Spent is a social justice game simulation that helps students understand the tough circumstances that so many face that have caused them to be homeless and in need of outside assistance. The game uses scenarios that are true to life and shows students how each decision that they make has consequences. Spent would be a great game for students to play in an economics or social studies class. Students can play the game individually and come together at the end of the game to discuss how the decisions they made affected their ultimate outcome. Which students made it to the end of the month and which failed? What decision(s) led to that outcome? If you don’t have the ability for students to play the game individually, play as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. Make decisions together as a class weighing the pros and cons of each decision as you go.

Extend this online game by moving to a place of action. What can your students do to help those in need? Can they hold a school fundraiser to donate to the Urban Ministries of Durham? Can they create compelling call to action videos and post them to YouTube? Let your students be creative and come up with their own solutions for making an impact.

Tips: There are some great ethical scenarios in the simulation that should spark some interesting discussion and debate among students.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Spent in your classroom!

SPILL! Virtual Team Challenge

January 19, 2011Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment4562 views

What it is: Registration is now open for the Spring 2011 SPILL Virtual Team Challenge for North America. The Virtual Team Challenge is a real-time, multi-user business simulation that is played over the course of several weeks by high school students in North America. As a team, students will take on business tasks and challenges that simulate real-world experiences of professional services employees. Each student participant will fill one of the several roles offered on a simulated professional services team and compete against other high school teams to clean up an oil spill in the river of New York City. When the challenge is complete, Deloitte will make a real donation to the United Way on behalf of the winning team. Registration is open now and the competition takes place from February 14, 2011 to April 1, 2011.

How to integrate SPILL! Virtual Team Challenge into the classroom: The SPILL Virtual Team Challenge is an engaging, hands-on approach and competition to learn about business, math, and economics. Get your classroom involved in this great learning opportunity and challenge by registering your school, entering students’ names and assigning them roles and teams for the game, downloading the free game and installing it on the school computers, and playing through the tutorial. On February 14 the official competition and game launches. Students can play at their own pace to finish the three game tasks by April 1, 2011. This is one game that is packed full of learning, provides a realistic experience, acts as a team building exercise, and has the great outcome of providing a donation to the United Way.

Tips: You can learn more about the game platform and Deloitte by visiting the Virtual Team Challenge website.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using SPILL! Virtual Team Challenge in your classroom.