Month: December 2008

Animalia

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Animalia4787 views

 

What it is: The Animalia website is based on the popular book and television series written and illustrated by Graeme Base. The website is just as impressive as the book with amazing illustrations and activities for students.  On the Animalia website, students are introduced to the characters of Animalia, the goal of the Animalia site, Animalia news, and games and activities.  The Animalia site brings students on a wonderful adventure where their goal is to collect all of the “core spores” to restore the Core of Animalia.  Students collect the core spores by going on several adventures where they will play learning games, discover, and follow directions.  Games and activities include logic puzzles, memory skills, code cracking, map reading, and listening skills.  The listening game is called Toucan Talk (which I learned about on Larry Ferrazlo’s blog) and  asks students to listen to a message in the wrong order, and change the order of words or sounds so that the message makes sense.  The site is extremely interactive.  Students will love becoming part of the adventure.

 

How to integrate Animalia into the classroom:   Animalia is like a giant online scavenger hunt where students solve problems to advance in the game.  This site would be a great one to use to teach following written and oral directions, logical thinking, and problem solving skills.  These aren’t skills that we generally focus on in isolation but the Animalia site does a wonderful job of weaving a story around a problem and inviting students along on an adventure to solve the problem.  Because students are problem solving, this would be an excellent site for students to work on collaboratively as a team.  Students can be split into teams to see who can collect all of the “core spores” first through problem solving.  What I love about watching my students interact with each other on this site, is the way that one team would solve a problem and then teach another team how they did it.  Nothing better than kids teaching kids!  For younger students, the game could be completed as a whole class with a projector or interactive whiteboard.  The clues and games will have to be more teacher directed but your students will quickly catch on and be ready to play!

 

Tips:   This site is highly interactive including video clips, highly interactive games, and sounds.  You will need a high speed connection for this site.  Bring on the bandwidth!

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

Pocket Manila

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Pocket Manila3561 views

 

What it is: Pocket Manila is a site that provides online notebooks that can be used as a journal, blog, idea bank, photo album, portfolio, group blog, ezine, story book, and more.  Pocket Manila is unique because it feels like a canvas-bound, manila paper journal.  Pocket Manila makes it feel like you are writing in a real notebook.  The pages turn, writing and pictures automatically flow to the next page and are sized correctly for the page.  Students can easily change the look of their notebooks with colors and themes.  The control panel is simple, streamlined and easy to use.  

 

How to integrate Pocket Manila into the classroom:    Use Pocket Manila in a creative writing classroom as a creative writing journal.  Students can work on their writing wherever they have an Internet connection without having to remember to tote their journals everywhere they go.  Pocket Manila’s sharing ability makes it wonderful for collaboration in writing classes.  Students can read and comment on each others writing, leaving constructive criticism right in their journals.  Pocket Manila is also great used in the science classroom as a place to take lab notes, record observations and the scientific method.  Teachers can use Pocket Manila as a place to collect and organize lesson plans, class notes, etc.  Younger students can use Pocket Manila to record thoughts about books they are reading, practice their writing.  Teachers can comment right in the student notebook.

 

Tips:   I love Pocket Manila because there is something special about having a notebook or writing journal of your own to record thoughts.  Those of us who didn’t grow up with the Internet appreciate simple pleasures like notebooks that feel like notebooks and day runners full of sticky notes and scribbled reminders!  Pocket Manila provides the nostalgia of a notebook and the convenience and cool factor of digital. 

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