literacy – Page 6 – iLearn Technology

ePub Bud: ePublish Yourself

April 22, 2010April 26, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments30839 views

What it is: ePub Bud is the YouTube of Children’s eBooks. The site is YouTube-like in that anyone can create and share their own children’s ebooks. The goal of this not-for-profit website is to provide an easy way to find, share, and self-publish children’s ebooks. ePub Bud lets you create an ebook for a small audience, or for the whole world, digitize a real book by mailing in a physical children’s book and having it “digitized” for the iPad, upload an ebook file that you can read on the iPad, or download an eBook (classics and books others have shared). Best of all, everything you do on ePub Bud is completely free!

How to integrate ePub Bud into the classroom: ePublishing is quickly becoming popular and more eReader devices are showing up in the classroom. While there is nothing like holding a paper back book in your hand, their is also nothing like holding a good ebook in your hands. Whatever we can do as teachers to get students reading, I say use it! Use ePub Bud in your classroom to “publish” student stories. The books can be shared with other students, parents, and schools. Publishing an eBook of their own is highly motivating, and will have your students eager to write. With ePub Bud, your students could construct their own text books. Have them create ebooks about what they are learning to share with others.

If you have access to the iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, consider sending in some of the books from your classroom libary to be digitized. Many sites have free ebooks for kids, make them iPad, iPod, or iPhone friendly by uploading them to ePub Bud. You can also search the extensive collection of classic children’s eBooks that are on ePub Bud and download those for students to read. You will find children’s favorites from Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carrol, A.A. Milne, Frances Margaret Fox, Milton Goldsmith, and many, many more.

This is such a neat website and it is really and truly free. You won’t even find advertisements on this site!

Tips: If you send in a book to be digitized, ePub Bud cannot send the original back for copyright purposes.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using ePub Bud in your classroom.

The Adjective Detective

April 16, 2010Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment5261 views

What it is: The Adjective Detective is a fun way for your students to learn more about adjectives, superlative adjectives, and comparative adjectives. This interactive learning module, game, and quiz comes from the Children’s University of Manchester site (I have written about it before here). Last week I was searching high and low for some good adjective interactives for my students and was pleasantly surprised to rediscover this one. I knew if the activity had fallen off of my radar, chances were that others had forgotten it, too. The Adjective Detecive offers students a in-depth, interactive mini lesson on adjectives, superlative adjectives, and comparative adjectives. After students work their way through the lessons, they can play an adjective game as a detective. They must hunt down adjectives in the sentence by clicking on it with their magnifying glass. Students recieve immediate feedback on their answer. When they are finished playing the game, students can answer multiple choice questions about adjectives in an online quiz.

How to integrate Adjective Detective into the classroom: Use the Adjective Detective mini-lessons to teach your whole class about adjectives. Put the site up on your interactive whiteboard or projector and discuss the different kinds of adjectives with your students. The site could also be used for self guided learning (I am personally a big advocate of this!) as a computer center in the classroom or individually in the lab setting. After students complete the mini lessons, encourage them to play the adjective detective game. In my classroom I want students to enter the spirit of play and have a few detective hats, magnifying glasses, and mini notebooks. Students can play “detective”, hunting down adjectives in sentences. On the interactive whiteboard, the student at the board can find an adjective that the rest of the class writes down as an adjective clue in their notebooks. Then we pass the detective job onto the next student, until all of the adjectives in the game have been discovered. You could alternatively send students to the classroom computers as a grammar center where the students become “detectives” and jot down their adjective clues while they are at the center. The multiple choice quiz lends itself nicely to assessing understanding with clickers (student response systems). The quiz can also be taken individually on the classroom computers. I like learning sites, like this, that allow students to work through learning at their own pace and offer immediate feedback so that students can monitor their own understanding.

Tips: Check out the rest of the Children’s University of Manchester website for other good interative lessons.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Adjective Detective in your classroom.

Magic Tree House

April 13, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3809 views

What it is: The Magic Tree House is a popular book series for kids that teaches them about history through fun adventures that take place with the help of a time traveling Tree House. Now students can take their love of the Magic Tree House Books online with the Magic Tree House Website. Here, students can enter the Tree House and collect stamps for their passport by answering questions about each of the books. Students can learn more about the Magic Tree House books, even reading excerpts from the books. There are fun online games and printable activities for students to play and screen savers and wallpapers to download.

How to integrate Magic Tree House into the classroom: This is a great site for those students who are reading the Magic Tree House books. The quizzes are a fun way for students to check comprehension and reflect on what they have read. I love the passport that gets stamped each time they finish a book. If you are reading the Magic Tree House books to your students, create a class passport for the year, your whole class can help answer the questions to earn the stamps. The site is geared toward encouraging reading and a love of reading. It just doesn’t get better than that!

Tips: Be sure to take a look at the Teacher Tree for some great reading suggestions and lesson plan ideas.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Magic Tree House in your classroom.

Google Search Stories Video Creator

April 12, 2010Kelly Tenkely11 Comments12113 views

What it is: Do you remember Google’s advertisement at the 2010 Superbowl? It was called Google Search Stories and showed a story of Parsian Love through a series of Google searches. Brilliant. Now you and your students can create your very own Google Search story with Google Search Stories Video Creator. There are three steps to creating your own Google Story: 1. Write the story, 2. Add Music, 3. Preview and Upload. As you write your story, you can choose to search by web, blog, images, maps, news, product search, and books.

How to integrate Google Search Stories Video Creator into the classroom: Google Search story is an innovative way for students to display understanding or tell a story. This tool teaches students to get to the heart of the story and tell it in a new, creative way. Students can demonstrate their understanding of history, current events, a book that they have read, or a math sequence.

First, students come up with 7 events to search, paying close attention to story structure. They should consider mixing web, images, maps, and blogs. This will make the story more interesting. Next, students choose music to fit the theme of their story. It can be comedic, dramatic, romantic, country, horror, family, or sci-fi. Finally, students can preview their story and share it with the world.

Think about sharing the life of a historical figure, or the story of Romeo and Juliet, or the scientific method in an experiment, or the story of their digital footprint, or a fictional story that the student created. Instead of writing out a traditional outline for a story, why not turn it into a Google Story? The possibilities of this tool are nearly endless! If you are introducing new information or learning to your class, consider doing it through a Google Story. Watch the story as a class and find out what your students already know, what they need to learn, and what they want to know. You could also create a Google Story as a class after new learning. As you teach, ask students to jot down thoughts about what they could add to their search story to sum up the learning. This will keep students engaged and thinking critically about the new material. After the video has been completed, students can access it from home as an outline of what they learned in class.

Tips: Check out the Tips offered for starting a story, these tips will give you, and your students, a great jumping off point.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Search Stories in your classroom.

My Hippo Has the Hiccups

March 27, 2010March 27, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment5097 views

What it is: In honor of national poetry month (April), Kenn Nesbitt is offering his book “My Hippo Has the Hiccups” as a free ebook. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I just opened a “happy spring” present! If you aren’t familiar with Kenn Nesbitt, he writes poetry that hooks kids and makes them instant fans of poetry. It is funny and engaging for readers of all ages. The ebook is available to view online or to download (can you believe it?!).

How to integrate My Hippo Has the Hiccups into the classroom: This ebook is a winner no matter what age group you teach. You can read the poems as a class using an interactive whiteboard or a projector connected computer. Because you can download the ebook, it would also be a wonderful addition to your classroom library on the classroom computers. Students can visit classroom computers with My Hippo Has the Hiccups as a poetry inspiration station. Invite your students to create their own silly Kenn Nesbitt inspired poetry. Make a class book of the silly poems and post them as a class ebook on Issuu.

Tips: You have to have the Zino Reader installed to view this ebook, it is a simple click and download.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using My Hippo Has the Hiccups in your classroom.

The Zimmer Twins

March 25, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment6904 views

What it is: Who are the Zimmer Twins, you might ask? Edgar and Eva Zimmer are 12 year old twins who appear normal but have developed psychic powers. Strange things began to happen when the twins adopted a black cat named 13. On the Zimmer Twins website, students can create their own cartoon movie endings to a story starter or create their own animated movie from scratch. Students can create and edit movies solo or “Collab-o-write” and work together creating a collaborative movie. Zimmer Twins runs well in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari making it easy to get to and use in any classroom setting. You will need Flash 8 (or higher) installed for the Zimmer Twins to work properly.

How to integrate Zimmer Twins into the classroom: Your students are going to love this site! They can direct and produce their very own animated movies. The easiest way to start using Zimmer Twins in the classroom, is to use it as a story starter. Students can watch a “starter” video and finish the story however they would like. The first time you introduce the site, it might be fun to complete a video as a class. Then students can take over and create their own ending to a Zimmer Twins movie. These video clips make excellent story starters for journal writing even if you can’t take the time to make it into an actual video. To use as a story starter, show the beginning of the short animation to your students on an interactive whiteboard or projector, then let students take over on classroom computers, working together, or writing a journal entry. After your students are familiar with the Zimmer Twins website, they can start a story from scratch. Students could direct “screen plays” of their writing, as a way to publish their finished work. Zimmer Twins would make an excellent alternative to the traditional book report. Students could create a movie where the main character is being interviewed, the story is being summarized, or retold. Students could also create movies about historical events, describing a science experiment or concept, in math as a story problem, to demonstrate understanding of character education or for vocabulary practice. My students have really enjoyed creating movies to show what they have learned on any topic, it is always a sure winner! Are you looking for new ways to engage your students? Why not create a Zimmer Twins original yourself to introduce a new topic. If you are looking for more great ideas for using Zimmer Twins in your classroom, be sure to check out the lesson plans on the teacher page, there are some good ones.

Tips: Students can create a movie on Zimmer Twins without registering; however, they will not be able to save their creation. Creating an account requires an email address. If this presents a problem in your classroom you can do a few things: 1. create a classroom account that every student logs into and saves their videos on. Students will need to include their first name or a class number in the title of their video to differentiate it from others in the class. 2. Set up an account for each student using your email account. You will have to check this email account to provide your students with their passwords. 3. Ask parents to set up accounts for their kids to use at school.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Zimmer Twins in your classroom.

Fotobabble

March 23, 2010Kelly Tenkely10 Comments7679 views

What it is: Fotobabble seems to be everywhere I am lately, and now that I have had a minute to play with it, I can see why. Just upload a photo, record your voice, and send or embed away. It is very simple to use and has really fun results! The only downside for use in education are: 1. on the home page of Fotobabble you can see other members creations, at the time of writing they are all clean but I would hate to send my kids here without knowing exactly what content they would run into; 2. To use Fotobabble as a student, you must first sign up. This requires an email address 🙁 Which means that under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, that children under the age of 13 cannot sign up for an account on the site for their own creations. I would love to see Fotobabble create an education version that can be used by students under 13 if monitored and signed up by an adult, and without the other user generated content on the home page. That being said, Fotobabble is a fantastic tool for the classroom.

How to integrate Fotobabble into the classroom: Fotobabble can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom. For students over 13, it is a great creation tool. Students could take pictures, or find creative commons images that illustrate vocabulary that they are learning and record themselves saying the definition and using the word in a sentence. Students could collect and trade Fotobabble vocabulary with other students in the class and embed them in a blog or wiki to create their own visual talking dictionary. If you teach students younger than 13, have teachers or parent helpers build audio visual dictionaries that can be added to throughout the year. How neat would it be to have a talking, visual word wall?! This would be helpful for math, science, social studies, history, and regular vocabulary words that students learn. The format will be so valuable to your audio and visual learners. Did you take pictures of that field trip? Upload them to Fotobabble and students can record thoughts, observations, and lessons they learned on the field trip. Consider creating a class Fotobabble account that you (the teacher) are in charge of. Upload student illustrations and record a story that they have written using their own voice. This is the perfect type of project to share at parent teacher conference time. Parents can get a good idea of their child’s writing, reading, and fine motor skills all in one spot. If you complete a similar project several times through the year, both students and parents can see the growth and progress that has been made during the school year. Fotobabbles are an outstanding way to send your young students on an Internet scavenger hunt. Along the way, record directions with Fotobabble and embed on your class website, wiki, or blog. Non-readers will be able to listen to, and follow directions for any assignment. Upload a picture of a landmark or map and have students record fun facts that they have learned about the place. Send special messages from your class home to parents in the weekly newsletter. Take a picture of a project that the class has done, or of a fun activity from the week. Students can record a message about upcoming events, fun highlights of the week in learning, and a list of helpers who have signed up for the week. Parents will love hearing their kids give the news updates for the week! Are you wracking your brain for a fun Mother’s/Father’s day activity? Why not record the kids leaving a special message to their parent with a special picture made just for them? Now that is a keepsake!

Tips: Because younger students can’t sign up for their own Fotobabble account, consider creating a class account that you can be in control of. For younger students, having a Fotobabble recording center set up on one of the classroom computers might be appropriate. Since you will control the account, you will be in charge of what content is added by students.

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

National Geographic Young Explorer

March 4, 2010March 4, 2010Kelly Tenkely10 Comments5704 views

What it is: National Geographic has fantastic resources for the classroom. Their Young Explorer online content is not to be missed in the primary classroom. This is an online magazine specifically for kindergarten and first grade student (I think second grade students would also benefit). The site lets students listen and read the latest stories from National Geographic Young Explorer. The photographs are breath taking and the reading is very accessible to beginning readers and English language learners. Each portion of the text has a speaker next to it that allows students to listen to the text. Click on the “More Issues” button to access past issues. In the “For Teachers” section, you will find print versions of the teacher’s guides complete with lesson plans, discussion questions, accompanying worksheets, and more. There is a very helpful story planner that gives you upcoming themes. These may be helpful when planning upcoming lessons.

How to integrate National Geographic Young Explorer into the classroom: It can be hard to find quality, accessible informational reading for primary students. National Geographic has solved this problem with Young Explorer. I am amazed that National Geographic is offering these online for free! Struggling readers can listen to the text read to them and read along. English language learners receive support for their reading of the text. The photographs and images are nothing less than excellent. The teacher materials that are included will help you to utilize the magazines and stories effectively.

Read and discuss Young Explorer stories as a class using a projector or interactive whiteboard. Teach your students how to read informational text, and the comprehension strategies that will help them to understand what they are reading. Set up Young Explorer on the classroom computers as a reading center for students to visit during reading time. Take a look at the Young Explorer archives to see if any of the past issues will support the learning you are doing in the classroom.

Tips: In the “For Teachers” section, you will find a link to interactive whiteboard content. This is a link to National Geographic’s premium content that can be found on Promethean Planet. These flipcharts are fantastic and include a teachers guide, printable blackline masters, teaching notes, and offline materials.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using National Geographic Young Explorer in your classroom.

Online Audio Stories

February 24, 2010March 2, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments5249 views

What it is: Online Audio Stories is an impressive collection of free audio stories online. The audio books are all free and downloadable. The online version of the story includes accompanying text for students to follow along with. The short stories will transport students on a fun adventure of listening to fairy tales and classics. The extensive collection includes stories by Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Brothers Grimm, Tales of Time, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Bronte, Aesop, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Joseph Jacobs, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Louisa May Alcott, Hans Christian Andersen, William Shakespeare, and many more. The stories are read with excellent voice, inflection, and timing, making them a joy to listen to.

How to integrate Online Audio Stories into the classroom: These Online Audio Stories will transport your students to new magical worlds and adventures, they will allow struggling readers to enjoy stories that may be just out of reach otherwise. Online Audio Stories will help increase student vocabulary and improve listening comprehension skills. Students may not choose to pick up these classics in the library, but they will enjoy listening to the stories online. This is great exposure to the classics! If you have computers in your classroom, set them up as a reading/listening center that students can visit during silent reading time. Because the Online Audio Stories are free to download, these are also perfect for downloading to an iPod or MP3 player.

Tips: Let parents know about these free online stories, they make great bedtime stories, listening enjoyment for long car rides, or for a fun listening experience any time.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Online Audio Stories in your classroom.

Reading Street Supplement

February 21, 2010Kelly Tenkely15 Comments5153 views

http://web.me.com/jtenkely/Reading/Home.html

What it is: Over the summer I worked with a teacher at Marquette Elementary school in Gary, Indiana to supplement their reading curriculum. They used Pearson’s Scott Foresman Reading Street, but were struggling with the program. Students weren’t understanding concepts and were really struggling with even the basics. Marquette held a summer remedial reading program where they aimed to supplement the curriculum and help students to become more successful in their reading. I took a look at the Reading Street curriculum for third grade and noticed right away that a huge number of concepts are presented, but there is no depth or opportunity for students to really learn and understand the concepts. My goal was to take the curriculum (in this case Unit 6 for third grade) and supplement it with technology. My goal was to add some richness to what was presented. I aimed to give students the chance to learn, practice, and create with the material presented. Because we were working in a summer program, we were able to spend more time with the material and work with fewer students. Below you will find my curriculum guide for 3rd Grade Reading Street Unit 6. Even if you don’t use Reading Street, or teach at a different grade level, I encourage you to take a look at what I did with the curriculum. I hope that you will find some ideas that you could use to supplement the curriculum you are using in your classroom. I created a website for Unit 6, called Reaching for Our Goals, so that students had one place to access all of the websites and resource they needed. (If you study suffixes, parts of speech, commas, compound words, punctuation, MLK, Space, the Wright Brothers, or Jim Thorpe there are some great links.) I also created a wiki (this is an example) where they could collaborate and show off their finished projects. On the wiki, you will find example thinking pages, VoiceThread projects, and Animoto projects.