Science – Page 29 – iLearn Technology

Scholastic Listen & Read

September 8, 2008Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2958 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.

Creative Park

September 4, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2403 views

What it is: Creative Park is a great free creative resource library for teachers and students. Creativity is such an important part of child development but also an important aspect of 21st century learning and thinking. Creative Park offers teachers and students awesome resources for putting that creativity to use. The website offers ideas and templates that can be coupled with your lesson plans. Projects range from 3-D paper crafts (like airplanes, the Great Pyramids, a globe, dinosaurs, and the Leaning Tower of Piza, etc.) There are great special collections including an Architecture museum, circus land, and science museum. Creative Park also features calendars, art crafts, a digital photo gallery, and scrapbook area.

How to integrate Creative Park into the classroom: Lets face it, teachers don’t have the largest budgets in the world to buy manipulatives and learning displays. Creative Park can help ease some of this burden by giving you free high quality paper crafts that your students can assemble. I love that this taps into following directions and creativity for students. Students can use these materials to make class dioramas or displays. This is also a great stop for those indoor recess days. Keep your kids busy creating when they have to be cooped up inside. Use the scrapbook pages to create custom class memory books. Each student can create their own as a keepsake for the end of the year (my students LOVE their memory books each year). The greeting section is wonderful for elementary teachers who are in charge of covering every holiday and making sure that mom and dad get a card from their child. Many of the materials available on this site would be perfect for bulletin boards. The creative activities would also liven up classroom parties. This is a fun site to sit and explore!

Tips: Stock your printer up with paper and ink for these projects.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Creative Park for your classroom.

WizIQ

August 26, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1918 views

What it is: WizIQ is a virtual classroom platform where you can teach and learn. You can teach for free or earn money teaching. The WizIQ is free to use, has no downloads (it runs in your web browser), and works on Macs, Windows, and Linux. WizIQ provides a place to find, share, or upload PowerPoints on educational subjects and topics. The sessions are intuitive to use and can be scheduled for individal students or a group. The virtual classroom provides a place to teach and learn live online. Everything launches in a few clicks with…NO downloads! With WizIQ you can network with students or teachers, send a personalized invite to your contacts right from WizIQ. Share educational content in the form of slideshows, pdf, and online. When you start a session with students, you have access to a shared whiteboard space, live audio, video, or both, flash file sharing, and text messaging. Sessions can be recorded and saved for students to view again and again.

How to integrate WizIQ into the classroom: WizIQ is a great place to start experimenting with virtual classrooms. It has a simple to use interface, requires no downloads, and is free. Record lessons that you are doing with your class so that they can go back and review the lesson online at their lesiure. This puts students in control of their own learing. Interact with students during live virtual sessions. WizIQ is also perfect for students who were absent, have a long term illness that prevents them from being at school, or students who know they will be attending your school for half of the year.

Tips: You can make money by setting up and teaching in a virtual classroom (and lets face it, we could all use a little more of that!) Your classroom will be visable by search engines and open to students from accross the world. Don’t let the technology scare you, this is simple to use (even my fellow elementary teachers can get in on this one!)

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

Jigsaw Planet

August 20, 2008August 21, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment15481 views

What it is: Well, it is the first week of school which for me means that it is rules week. Every teacher has to go over the rules at some point and it is usually met by major groans from students. This year I approached rules week differently. I used an awesome site called Jigsaw Planet to turn my rules into jigsaw puzzles. Jigsaw Planet is a site that makes it simple to create custom jigsaw puzzles. Just upload a jpeg image to the site, choose how many pieces you want, what shape you want the pieces to be and Jigsaw Planet does the rest. You instantly have a custom interactive puzzle for your students to play! The puzzles can be saved for your own account, shared with students via a url, or embedded into your classroom website for easy access.

How to integrate Jigsaw Planet into the classroom: Jigsaw Planet puzzles are AMAZING to use with an interactive whiteboard! Each puzzle is timed as you put it together, split students into teams to see which team can complete the puzzle the fastest. Instead of the typical PowerPoint type presentation to teach students facts, create a puzzle for them to put together and have them read the fact once the puzzle has been completed. Turn your classroom rules into a series of jigsaw puzzles for students to put together. Honor your star student of the week by creating a puzzle of that student, just take a picture of the student and upload to Jigsaw Planet. Put the puzzle of the student on your classroom website to honor them. Students can use Jigsaw Planet to create their own puzzles. This is a great place for them to study, they can upload spelling words, math facts, maps, etc. Students will love creating their own jigsaw puzzles, if they have their own blog or website they can embed the puzzles right into their online space. If you have a projector or an interactive whiteboard, have students create a puzzle all about them. They can create a collage of things they like in a presentation program, take a screen shot of it, and upload the puzzle to Jigsaw Planet. Students can put together each other’s puzzles and guess who the student is based on the pictures. This would be a great getting to know you activity!

Tips: I split students into two teams. Each team would complete a puzzle using our new Mimio interactive whiteboard, the fastest time was the winner of that round. When the puzzle was completed, students would read the rule and we would discuss in depth. This made rule day fun for the kids and much more enjoyable for me!

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

Maggie’s Earth Adventures

August 19, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2755 views

What it is: Maggie’s Earth Adventures is an incredible site for teachers and students. First the amazing tools for you… Every teacher has wished for a lesson that takes little time for teacher preparation or explanation, can be used as a center activity, is a filler for students who finish their work early, serves as extra credit, is a ready made homework assignment, or can be an emergency plan for a substitute teacher. Maggie’s Earth Adventures Teachers Lounge is the place to go! Sign up for free weekly activity packets in subjects such as math, reading, science, and social studies. Weekly activity packets are sent based on age levels (emergent reader, primary, and intermediate) and a different subject area is sent each week. These are high quality teaching materials!In addition to the free weekly activities, Maggie’s Earth Adventures also features an excellent lesson plan resource, you can get an entire theme unit or a few lessons. Some lessons even have free PowerPoint presentations to accompany the lesson. The site is available in English or in Spanish making it perfect for the ESL classroom. Maggie is not just for teachers, you will find outstanding interactive games for your students too! Kids can watch cartoons that tie in directly with the lesson plans. The cartoons are packed with teaching and are interactive. In the postcard section students can choose a picture and then choose an activity to accompany the picture. Students can create a story clock, news article, description web, or postcard. In the games section students can choose from games to improve math, spelling, reading, geography skills, language skills, proofreading skills, and science. Students can also download free books (these download as a printable pdf).
How to integrate Maggie’s Earth Adventures into the classroom: These high quality lessons and activities are ideal for having on hand for students who finish work early and are looking for extension activities. They are also ideal for extra credit, homework practice, or emergency substitute plans. Use the games as practice for important skills students are working on in language arts (spelling and punctuation) and math. This is a great place for students to hone a newly learned skill. The postcard maker (which actually makes much more than postcards) is a great place to send students for story starters and creative writing assignments. This is one of those sites you will want bookmarked on your classroom computers!

Tips: Sign up to receive weekly activities and lessons from Maggie. I know you sign up for a million things throughout the year, this is one that you will really use!

Leave a comment and share how you are using Maggie’s Earth Adventures in your classroom.

Thinkfinity

August 18, 2008August 18, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2825 views

What it is: This is a one stop shop for the beginning of your school year but will keep you coming back all year long. Thinkfinity is “the cornerstone of Verizon Foundation’s literacy, education, and technology initiatives.” The site is completely free to use and has outstanding content for educators, students, and parents. Find amazing lesson plans, interactive activities, and other quality online resources. Thinkfinity has over 55,000 standards-based k-12 lesson plans, student materials, interactive tools, and reference materials that are reviewed by the nation’s leading education organizations to ensure the highest quality content. You will find great primary source material, interactive student resources, and even grade specific research lists to tailor materials and searches to meet your needs. Thinkfinity also provides free training and professional development. Some professional development options are online, you can search for Thinkfinity professional development opportunities near you.

How to integrate Thinkfinity into the classroom: Thinkfinity is a one stop shop for standards based lesson plans, interactive games and resources for students, maps, activities, book lists, and much more. Use Thinkfinity to support any of your lessons, themes, or current curriculum. Search for materials by subject (arts, social studies, literacy, mathematics, reading and language arts, science, and geography), by theme, by grade, or resource type. There is also a wonderful keyword search. Start out your year with lessons based on the Olympics in Beijing. Students can learn about the history of the games, sports, athletes, and even the history of Asia. This is a great site for students to complete research on. The sources are accurate and reliable and it is organized well for searching.

Tips: Content partners for Thinkfinity inlcude other top educational sites including Arts Edge, Econ Edlink, Edsitement, Illuminations, Literacy Network, Read Write Think, Science Net Links, Simithsonian National Museum of American History, and National Geographic Xpeditions.

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

Animoto for Education

August 7, 2008August 7, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4903 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

August 5, 2008August 5, 2008Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3520 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

July 24, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2240 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.

ipopetz.tv

July 17, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3763 views

What it is: ipopetz.tv is a fun web 2.0 site that your students will love to use. Students can create their own 3-D mini cartoon show by selecting a puppet, creating and recording their show (with their own voice) and then sharing their show. The puppets that students have to choose from are a lot of fun. The shows are easy to create, students make their 3-D puppet move by using their mouse and keyboard and record their voice using the microphone. The puppets lip sync to the words your students say!

How to integrate ipopetz.tv into the classroom: The ipopetz.tv puppets would be the perfect way for students to display knowledge. They can use their ipopetz character to give a book report. Instead of standing up in front of the class and reading off of their book report, students can “advertise” a book using an ipopetz puppet. Because they can record their own voice and manipulate their puppet, they display their knowledge in a new and fun way as well as become the directors for their own 3-D cartoon. So much fun! Have students create shows about any subject. For example, students could create a show about a current science topic. Instead of studying from a text book before a test, students can watch eachother’s informational cartoon shows. If your students are like mine, they can’t recall facts from a textbook at the drop of the hat but they can all quote Kung Foo Panda. Let them create and learn in a way that they love. I garuntee this will be a huge hit with your students! It is easy enough for as young as first grade but will hold the attention of students through middle school (maybe even through adults…I am throuroughly entertained!) Create your own cartoon to teach a subject for a change of pace, it will give you a break and the students will enjoy something new. You can create your show, save it, and use a projector to teach the whole class. If you are lucky enough to have a projector in your classroom you could even start out each day with a message or brain teaser for your students.

Tips: ipopetz.tv does require a download plugin for Quick Time. It is a quick and small download. Make sure to download the plugin for every computer that you will be using ipopetz.tv on. Also be aware that this site has advertisements, be sure to use this opportunity to teach your students about online ads and set up the rule that they not click on them before you start a project.

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