Category: Interactive book

Kid Thing

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Kid Thing3413 views

 

What it is:   I could have sworn that I had written a post about Kid Thing in the past, but after running several searches on my posts, I came up empty.  Kid Thing is a secure digital media player for kids in grades k-4.  Kid Thing accesses the Internet but is not a web browser.  It is more like an iTunes type environment designed specifically for kids.  There are no advertisements on Kid Thing and because it is not a web browser, there is no place to type a web address where students could inadvertently stumble on inappropriate content.  The Kid Thing player is free to download and they often have free downloads of learning and interactive activities for students.  There is also a Kid Thing store where additional books, videos, games, and creative arts can be downloaded to the Kid Thing player.  Everything in the store is very reasonably priced.  Right now Kid Thing is offering a free download in addition to the player, a 25 day Countdown to Christmas.  Each day students will get to open a new kid thing Surprise with a game to play.  After the game has been opened, it will stay on the Kid Thing player to be played over and over again.  

 

How to integrate Kid Thing into the classroom:   The Kid Thing player would make an excellent reading center, or learning center for phonics, language arts, and math.  The player is very user friendly for students.  Start each morning with the free Countdown for Christmas, let each student have a turn to be the one to open the Countdown for Christmas surprise.  Throughout the day, let students visit the Kid Thing center to complete the new activity for the day.  Kid Thing is great for the one or two classroom computers, a computer lab, a projector or interactive whiteboard, and for home use.  Encourage parents to download Kid Thing at home and add books and games that are appropriate for their child.

 

Tips:   At the moment Kid Thing only runs on PC’s running Window’s XP and Vista.  There is a Mac version in the works (hooray!!) and if you visit the download page you can sign up to be the first to know when the Mac version is available.  

 

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

Primary Access

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Primary Access2671 views

What it is:   Primary Access is a tool I learned about today while attending one of the K12 Online conference sessions.  This incredible site has a web-based tool that offers students and teachers simple access to digital images and materials that provides them the opportunity to create personal narratives.  The idea behind the site is that if students are offered primary source documents, they develop better historical thinking skills.  I highly recommend you watch the presentation on k12 Online, to see just how accurate this belief was in a case study of the site.  Students use Primary Access to create digital movies (historical narratives) that help add to meaningful learning experiences.  The site is very simple to use, intuitive enough that even a student (or teacher) who has never created a digital movie would be successful.  

 

How to integrate Primary Access into the classroom:   Use Primary Access as a tool to bring history to life for your students.  Using the site, students can create a short digital movie that explores some event in history.  The digital movie will only be 1-3 minutes in length and can contain images, text, movies, and narration recorded in the students own voice.  Students have a place to write, research, narrate, view, and search a time line and idea map right in Primary Access.  The finished product is educational and entertaining for the creator and viewers.  The results with this site are truly amazing!  It really does bring history to life.

 

Tips: It isn’t obvious how to create a teacher account on Primary Access, to create an account go to http://primaryaccess.org/teacher.

 

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

Flowgram

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Flowgram4634 views

 

What it is: Flowgram is a website that makes it easier to teach your students online.  Flowgram has a simple platform that makes is easy for anyone to package and share anything on the web.  Flowgram can combine slideshows, documents, pictures, screencasts, websites, audio, video etc. with your voice narration.  This makes it simple to teach any concept using the web.  Flowgram requires no download, it runs directly from your Internet browser.  Recipients of the Flowgram can fully interact with anything that is on the Flowgram (webpage links, video, etc.).  Flowgrams can be sent via email, linked to, or embedded in a blog or website for viewing.   

 

How to integrate Flowgram into the classroom:  Flowgram is a wonderful way to create interactive tutorials for students learning any technology concept.  Beyond that, Flowgram makes it easy for you to take your students on virtual field trips on any subject.  What I love about Flowgram, is that it meets individual student needs.  Students can work at their own pace and interact with any part of the Flowgram as many times as they need.  It would also be a great place to create reviews for tests, and perfect for students who have missed school.  Teach your students to make Flowgrams and start your own library of student created tutorials on any subject.  Students teaching students is powerful!  Because you can narrate Flowgrams, they are wonderful to use with students who struggle with reading and navigating the Internet on their own…it is like having you sit right next to them, leading with your undivided attention.  

 

Tips:  I have started creating a weekly Flowgram for teachers at my school called Tenkely’s Tips.  I will be creating a new page with a collection of the weekly Flowgrams.  Feel free to check them out! :)

 

Leave a comment and share how you are using Flowgram in your classroom.

 

 

Scholastic Listen & Read

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Scholastic Listen & Read4627 views

 

What it is: The Scholastic website is full of truly amazing resources.  Today I ran across one that I hadn’t used before called Scholastic Listen & Read, I heard about it on Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day.  Scholastics Listen and Read is for students in first and second grade.   The site does exactly what it’s name implies, it lets students listen to non-fiction stories and read along.  There are 11 non-fiction stories for first grade social studies including The Path of the President, What Does the President Do, and a Celebration of Earth Day.  There are 15 non-fiction stories focused on animals and food for first grade students.  Second grade students have access to 10 non-fiction stories focused on social studies including Constitution Day and Welcome to a Pilgrim Village.  There are also 11 short non-fiction stories for second grade students focused on animals and food.  Social Studies is a hard subject to teach first and second grade students from a text book because the vocabulary and reading can be especially challenging.  Scholastic Listen and Read solves this problem wonderfully with short, easy to read non-fiction stories that are read aloud to your students.  As an added bonus, each story includes the Scholastic Word Wizard.  This tool floats right on top of the web page.  At any point, students can click on a word in the story and the Scholastic Word Wizard will give them an easy to read definition of the word.  Students can also type a word into the Word Wizard to look it up.  

 

How to integrate Scholastic Listen & Read into the classroom:  Scholastic Listen & Read is ideal for any classroom or computer setting.  The non-fiction stories could be read together as a class with a projector and speaker setup, individually in a computer lab setting, or in small groups as a center in the one or two computer classroom.  The stories are easy to understand and the ability to look up words right from the story makes it a great place for students to learn key social studies and animals and food concepts.  

 

Tips:  Scholastic Listen & Read is a great place for ESL and ELL kids to go for English practice and vocabulary!

 

Leave a comment and share how you are using Scholastic Listen & Read in your classroom.

 

iKeep Safe

Kelly Tenkely3 Comments on iKeep Safe7803 views

What it is:   iKeep Safe is a website and program I have used every year since I started teaching technology.  As I was writing up lesson plans for the upcoming week, I realized that I haven’t ever posted about this outstanding resource.  iKeep Safe is a kid friendly Internet safety program.  It features a cat named Faux Paw who has adventures on the Internet.  There are videos, downloadable and printable books, and games for kids.  All are centered on teaching kids to be safe online.  There are free guided discussion sheets for you to go through with your students, quizzes, coloring pages, etc.  This program is the perfect way to introduce Internet safety in your elementary classroom without worrying that the content is too mature for your audience.  The online books and videos teach kids Internet safety basics, how to handle cyber bullying, balancing real life with screen time, and the risks and dangers of downloading.   Students learn about these concepts with fun cartoon characters and engaging stories.

How to integrate iKeep Safe into the classroom:  iKeep Safe is a great place to start Internet safety.  I would recommend making Internet safety a top priority the first month of school before kids are online for class.  In my classroom, students are introduced to Faux Paw at the beginning of the school year.  We watch and discuss the Faux Paw cartoon, read and discuss the books, and finish by taking the free downloadable quiz.  Students must pass this quiz with an eighty percent or better in order to get their “Internet Drivers Licenses”.  I talk a lot about how using the Internet is a privilege, not a right.  This is just like driving a car.  So in order to be online for other subjects, students have to demonstrate that they know the rules of the Internet by passing the quiz.  They can lose their Internet drivers licenses at any time by mis-using the Internet or not following the rules.  I also have the kids create a rules poster for them to hang next to their home computers.  Students also get an assignment to go home and tell their parents the Internet rules.  This has to be signed off on in order to use the Internet.  I find that we can do a pretty good job of keeping kids safe at school, but at home parents aren’t doing enough to make sure that their kids are safe.  Whether or not you are the computer teacher, make sure that your kids know how to keep themselves safe online.  Be an adult they trust who they can come to with any cyberbullying problems, if they see inappropriate content, or if someone is trying to contact them inappropriately.  

Tips:  Never been trained in Internet safety?  Be sure to visit the educator page of iKeepSafe, the training materials are wonderful!

 

Please leave a comment and share how you are using iKeep Safe in your classroom.

Animoto for Education

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Animoto for Education6934 views


What it is: There are some really neat online tools that I find that live in my Google Notebook for a long time (I have upward of 800 links for educational websites yet to post to iLearn Technology…and growing daily!) Some get pushed aside for my newest cool find, and some move to the bottom of the list because, while they may have educational value, they are not intended JUST for education and may have some questionable user created content that I wouldn’t want my students to stumble on. Animoto was one of these sites for me. It is an amazing and COOL tool but wasn’t necessarily geared just toward education. I got a fun email today that Animoto now has an education only site! Animoto for education is a site where students can create compelling and impressive digital content quickly and easily. It is the perfect addition to your classroom’s digital storytelling kit. It is very intuative and easy to use, in no time students have digital videos that they created! This is also an amazing place for you, the teacher, to create a video that will bring your lessons to life. You can post or embed videos on your class site or even, are you ready for this?, download for in class presentations. Animoto for Education makes it simple to mix audio and visual for a dynamic, unique presentation in no time. It is so easy to use that students could create a complete animoto presentation in one computer class.

How to integrate Animoto for Education into the classroom: Animoto for education is a great place for you to teach from. Make any lesson come to life with audio and visual, use at the beginning of the day as a ‘teaser’ for what your students can look forward to learning each day or use to teach complex concepts in history, math, science, or character education. Students will respond to new media in the classroom. Allow your students to display knowledge of a concept using Animoto. Use Animoto for Education for a beginning of the year get to know you activity. Students can each create an Animoto showcasing who they are through pictures and music. Animoto presentations are quicker to create than traditional PowerPoint type presentations making them ideal for digital storytelling in the classroom setting. Because Animoto is completely web-based, students can create videos from school and continue working on them at home. The ability to download videos is outstanding…students could save their work for offline viewing too!

Tips: Children under 13 can’t sign up for their own account. To use Animoto for Education with your students you can register your students with dummy accounts using dummy email addresses. Animoto is private to your school. This means that other people can’t come accross student videos or contact students through the site.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Animoto for Education in your classroom.

Ed.VoiceThread

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Ed.VoiceThread5131 views


What it is: I have posted about Voice Thread in the past, but Voice Thread has added a new education community that has some pretty incredible features. Ed.VoiceThread is a secure collaborative network designed specifically for the k-12 school environment. Teachers and students can collaborate around almost any type of media including voice, text, webcam, and drawing commentary in a secure environment. Access is restricted to k-12 educators, students, and administrators to ensure safe classroom collaboration. Ed.VoiceThread is an accountable environment, which means that all users are responsible for their content and behavior. Some added features that you will find on Ed.VoiceThread are, students have individual accounts that are easily viewable to educators, students can create, edit, and manage their own portfolio, students cannot add contacts or send invitations to any users outside of the Ed.Voice Thread community, and they cannot view any content that is not created by an Ed.Voice Thread member. Teachers can quickly view and access all students’ Voice Threads. Voice Threads can be made private or public depending on the assignment and requirements. Ed.VoiceThread comes in two packages one free and the other, called Pro, for $60/year. Free users can only create 3 VoiceThreads, have 75 MB of storage, no uploading of MP3 comments, 30 min of webcam commenting, advertising will be present, single file size limit of 25 MB, and no downloads of the media. In the Pro version, students can create an unlimited number of Voice Threads, get 10GB of storage, can upload MP3 comments, have unlimited webcam commenting, 30 archival movie exports, no advertising, single file size limit of 100MB and allows downloads of media.

How to integrate Ed.VoiceThread into the classroom: Ed.VoiceThread is the ideal place for students and teachers to collaborate and interact with digital media. The added functionality for schools with Ed.VoiceThread is very useful. Students can use Ed.VoiceThread to create digital stories, documentaries, practice and document language skills, explore geography and culture, solve math problems, and much more. As a teacher, I like VoiceThread as a place to teach. Because everything is web-based, you can upload a days lessons to Ed.VoiceThread for students to refer to and collaborate with while doing homework. I well remember the days when I would sit in math class learning the days equations. Everything made perfect sense to me while I was sitting in the classroom watching problems being worked. But at home, with no guide homework seemed impossible. Ed.VoiceThread makes you your students personal tutor. The self paced learning is amazing! I love giving students tools that allow them to be in charge of their own learning. Is there any better lesson in life than knowing how to learn?

Tips: Try out the free Ed.VoiceThread account and see how it could work for your classroom. If you are like me, it becomes addicting and 3 VoiceThreads won’t be enough!

Leave a comment and share how you are using Ed.VoiceThread in your classroom.

Updated Websites

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Updated Websites3229 views

Over the past week I have been re-vamping my websites.  Tenkely.org is a site that I created for my students to use.  I have pages for first through fifth grade with links to all of the sites that we use in class throughout the year.  I also have a page for parents about how my classroom runs and tips for keeping kids safe online.   The teacher site for tenkely.org  has also been completely re-done.  I added TONS of new goodies for teachers.  Obviously, I created these sites with my students and colleagues in mind but I hope that they are a source of inspiration for you too!  I am already keeping tally of links that aren’t working right so if you run across any, leave a comment so I can get them fixed up.

Lookybook

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Lookybook5919 views

What it is: Lookybook is amazing me today. This site, still in Beta version, is a place where kids can go to read and view picture book in their entirety. These are quality picture books such as “Alphabeasts” by Wallace Edwards and Franklin books by Paulette Bougeois. After a book has been read, it can be reviewed, rated, shared and put on a virtual bookshelf (Shelfari style), you can also purchase the book directly from this site. The site is simple to use and navigate and registration is completely free. I am so impressed, before I could write this post I spammed all of my teacher friends with this website! 🙂 Seriously, you should go take a look right now and then come back and finish reading my post..it’s okay, I won’t hold it against you!

How to integrate Lookybook into the classroom: I can think of about a million applications of a site like Lookybook in the classroom. It is truly like having a virtual library of picture books right in your classroom, but best of all, your students have the same library when they go home!! Lookybook can become part of your classroom library of books, books can be read by the whole class using a projector (no more “I can’t see the pictures!”). The ability to review and rate the book right within Lookybook is wonderful because students learn to share their reactions to a book and discuss with others. Invite students to create their own virtual bookshelves where they can share their very favorite picture books. This is a great site for struggling readers to visit at home with a parent. The possibilities of this site are exciting and I can’t wait to see how the kids end up using it! An added bonus? You bet! Lookybook allows you to embed picture books right into your own blog or webpage. You read right, you can add full versions of the picture books right to your class webpage! I ask you, does it get any better than this?!

Tips: This would be a great site to use with Book Adventure, all of the books I have searched have had quizzes on the reading motivation website.

Leave a comment and share how you are being amazed by and using Lookybook.