iOS – Page 8 – iLearn Technology

Children’s Books Forever

August 31, 2011Kelly Tenkely11 Comments5364 views

What it is: Children’s Books Forever is a simple site that packs a powerful punch for instilling a love of reading at an early age. These are free children’s books that have become classics and children’s favorite books from around the world. The books can be used on an interactive whiteboard, power point, overhead projector, on iPads (or other iDevices), or classroom computers. Did I mention they are free? These fun picture books are downloadable in pdf format and are wonderful for expanding your classroom library. New books are being added regularly to Children’s Books Forever so be sure to check back often!

How to integrate Children’s Books Forever into the classroom: I love sites that spread a love for reading while simultaneously beefing up the classroom library (and student’s home libraries). The site is simple to use, just choose a book, download as a PDF and read. Couldn’t be any simpler! The books can be read in multiple languages making it a wonderful place for students who are learning a second language or speaking English as a second language. Be sure to click on the links in the left side bar, they will lead you to additional books. Find books for toddlers, Waldo humor books, inspirational books and more information on author Hans Wihelm in addition to the books featured on the home page.

The stories featured on Children’s Books Forever are beautifully written and illustrated. Do your students have a pen pal or buddy in another country who speaks a different language? Why not find a book that is featured in both languages to read and discuss together? This is a great connecting point for students!

Bookmark Children’s Books Forever on classroom computers so that students can easily access the books during reading time. The books can also be printed and added to the class library. Be sure to remind your students they can access these stories from any Internet connected computer, they can keep reading at home too.

Many of the stories on Children’s Books Forever can be used for character education discussions in the primary classroom. Project these stories on an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer for a class read along.

Tips: Be sure to sign up to be notified when new books are added to Children’s Books Forever via email!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Children’s Books Forever in your classroom!

Make your own iPad Stylus for less than 10 cents!

August 30, 2011August 30, 2011Kelly Tenkely24 Comments16875 views

We had an incredible first week at Anastasis Academy. It was amazing to see all of our hard work come together in the form of a student body. Walking through the classrooms this week it was obvious: this is a place of learning.

One of our first-week of school activities was creating our own iPad stylus. Since we are a one-to-one iPad environment, this seemed like a good beginning for everyone.

We learned that to make a stylus, we first had to find some soft, conductive material. A Google search informed us that we could use conductive foam (the kind that is used to pack electronics), conductive thread, conductive yarn (we thought this would be PERFECT for our pens but couldn’t get any delivered fast enough), or a Scotch Brite sponge. I was a little skeptical of the Scotch Brite (it just seemed TOO easy) but it worked like a champ!

The kids had fun exploring how the yellow, soft part of the sponge would draw on the iPad when they held it in their hands. Some of the kiddos were a little baffled when they put the sponge into the plastic pen body and they found out that it no longer worked. Students added a little wire and soon the pens were working again! It was a great way for all of the kids to experiment with conductors and insulators.

Below are the steps for making your very own $0.10 or less iPad stylus.

*I bought a pack of Scotch Brite sponges, cheap, penny pens from a local office store, and a small roll of craft wire. We made about 50 pens for $6.00!

1. Separate the Scotch Brite sponge from the abrasive green backing. Cut the yellow sponge remaining into small wedges.

2. Take the ink out of some cheap plastic pen casing. Drill a hole near the head of the pen with a small drill bit.

3. Cut 6 inches of wire.

4. Tightly wrap the wire around the small end of the sponge wedge.

5. Thread the sponge through the head of the pen (our pen head separated from the pen body).

6. Bend the end of the wire farthest from the sponge into a 90* angle. Thread this into the pen body and through the pre-drilled hole.

7. Pull the wire through the drilled hole and wrap it several times around the pen body.

8. Cut the exposed end of the sponge into desired pen-nub shape.

9. To use the pen, make sure that your hand is touching the wire at some point. Draw or write with your stylus!

The kids loved making their own stylus. There was a lot of talk about perseverance (when we tried to thread the wire through the small drilled hole), conductivity and exclamations of “I did it!”.

It was a wonderful exercise in frustration and success. Every student was proud of their finished product that actually worked! Students learned about conductivity, perseverance, insulation, and building with every-day materials.

One of our students, Benton, made a short stop motion animation with his pen…you can see it below:

Now for our next trick- working with @ianchia to figure out how we can construct conductive manipulatives that work with the iPad. Should be fun!

Automatoon: Create HTML5 animations

July 13, 2011Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment14860 views

What it is: Oh. My. Word. I’m slowly but surely making my way through my Google Reader and stumbled on a post by @rmbyrne on his EXCELLENT blog Free Tech 4 Teachers about Automatoon. I immediately started playing with Automatoon and cannot say enough about how COOL it is! Automatoon makes it simple for students (or teachers) to create animations within a web browser. My very favorite part? It was built-in HTML5!! Do you know what that means? It works on iDevices (like the iPad and iPod touch). A non-flash animations site! Pure genius. This is one of the easiest animation programs I have seen. Students can draw characters in pieces (kind of like a puppet or paper doll) and then create points where the pieces connect. The drawings can animate by moving, bending or adding pieces to the picture. SO cool! After watching the demo video, I think even young students could have Automatoon mastered in no time. The tools built into Automatoon are pretty robust for what a simple program it is to use. Your students will look like animation masters, bringing their creations to life. When students are finished creating their animations, they can download them as a zip file to be uploaded to any site. There are two ways to login, students can login with a “throwaway” login that will not save their animation (but will let them create and download a quick animation) or login with a Google account. This is fantastic for schools that take advantage of Google apps for education!

How to integrate Automatoon into the classroom: Kids of all ages love cartoons and animations, Automatoon gives them the tools to be the creator of those cartoon animations. Students can create animations to animate processes in science (think the water cycle, plant life cycle, rock cycle, etc.), vocabulary words (in either native language or a second language), animate a piece of creative writing, animate a persuasive argument (think advertisement), animate a “book report”, animate solving a math problem, animate a story problem or animate an event in history. The possibilities are really endless on this one, students will only be limited by their imaginations.

Automatoon is easy enough to use that with a little pre-planning, students could create animations in 5-10 minutes. This is handy for those situations where you have one or two computers in the classroom or a limited time in a computer lab. After learning how to use Automatoon, students can quickly create animations to illustrate learning. Automatoon is a FANTASTIC little tool for your visual learners…they will “get” it.

Are your students having a hard time understanding a math or science concept or a vocabulary word? Why not create an animation that illustrates the concept/word and share it on an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer? The animation can be saved on the classroom website so that students can go back and access it throughout the year.

If you have a classroom website or wiki you could create a classroom animation collection. Students can upload their creations to the class site for a great collection of learning. It would be neat to animate sight words (Snapwords style), math or science vocabulary and create a visual “glossary” online that all of your students have contributed to. Classes can add to it every year or you can work with other classes around the world to create a collaborative glossary. This would also be a great tool to aid students in creating their own “e-textbooks” about any subject. Students can create animations to embed in their other research, reflections and links.

Way cool.

Tips: Be sure to watch the intro video (above) to get a 5 minute low down on how to use Automatoon…very useful!

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

Mastery Connect: Standards Based Grading made manageable

July 8, 2011Kelly Tenkely6 Comments8394 views

What it is: Mastery Connect is both an online standards tracking tool (parts of it are free) and a free iPhone/iPod/iPad app. Because the app is truly free, I’ll start with it. The Mastery Connect app is a handy way to keep the Common Core standards accessible while you teach. The app sorts the common core standards by grade level, subject and strand. This is REALLY nice for quickly locating and referencing standards. Mastery Connect the website is the real gem. The site is brilliantly designed, easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing and best of all, it works the way you think it should. With the Mastery Connect Master Tracker, teachers can assess core standards, monitor student performance and report student progress to parents and administrators. Master Tracker makes formative assessment that is standards based manageable to keep track of. Rearrange standards in the Master Tracker based on the order that you teach them in. View only the standards you are currently assessing, and view the entire standard as a pop-up. Within Mastery Connect, teachers can create and share common assessments. Similar in feel to other social networks, Mastery Connect lets you connect with other educators to share assessments, interact and offer each other support. It is easy to expand your PLN into the space, just find teachers with similar interests and goals and start sharing!

And now for my VERY favorite part- bubble sheet scoring. Mastery Connect uses GradeCam technology to make assessment about as quick as it could be. Just hold up bubble sheets to your webcam or a document cam and it is instantly scored and entered into the Master Tracker associated with the student it belongs to and the standard it is addressing. Seriously cool. I am not a big fan of multiple choice testing (mostly because I think it is a lazy way to find out what a student knows and doesn’t give a true picture of what a student knows or can do) but I think I have figured out how bubble sheets can be used by teachers during formative assessment. Students get immediate feedback from Mastery Connect and can see where in the standards they need some extra work. Teachers can view class wide item analysis of assessment and can track progress by standard.

Students can also use iDevices (iPad/iPodTouch) with the bubble sheet app. This is connected to Master Tracker so as soon as students input answers, it shows up live. Are you feeling your assessment work-load lighten yet?

Students can also take assessments using any web browser. It really is a tool that works for schools with minimal tech, to schools that have ubiquitous tech.

Mastery Connect exports to ANY gradebook or student information system. A one touch export feature makes it about as quick as it could be!

Mastery Connect makes it quick and easy to keep parents informed of student progress. Student reports can be quickly created and emailed or printed out for parents. You can also enable parent notifications that will notify parents of student progress as it is entered.

How to integrate Mastery Connect into the classroom: Mastery Connect is actually the tracking tool we will be using at the school I am starting, Anastasis Academy. We are doing away with traditional A, B, C, D, F grades all together. I have yet to be convinced that traditional grading is productive and helpful for students (or teachers for that matter).

At Anastasis Academy, we are using the Common Core Standards as a framework for setting learning goals. I see these standards as the critical-mass-of-knowledge that students need to be successful in learning. Hear me say, I DO NOT believe that these standards are comprehensive of everything a child should, or wants to know. They are simply the framework that we will use to build the rest of learning around. They will help us to ensure that we have a rough road map of where we are headed in learning. Students, teachers and parents will sit down for a conference each block and use those Common Core Standards to help map out learning goals. You will notice that we don’t leave this up to teachers alone. We want our students to have ownership and a say in what their learning looks like. We don’t want the teacher to be the holder of all the keys, slowly revealing learning to students as they see fit. Instead, we want students who can look at the learning ahead of them, and offer input about how they would like to go about that learning with parents and teachers acting as guide. The Mastery Connect app will be SO helpful in this process. Everyone will be able to access those standards easily at any time they need to recall them. Brilliant.

We will use Mastery Connect a little differently than I’m sure most schools will. Instead of bombarding students with multiple choice “bubble” quizzes and assignments, our bubble sheets will be for teacher use. For example, we may create a bubble sheet based on a standard with the specific skills or content that we are looking for. As we formatively assess students, the teacher can fill in that bubble sheet either on paper or on the iPad for instant input into Master Tracker.

Tips: I have been extremely impressed with all of the Mastery Connect tools. Not all of it is free but the portion that is not free is very affordable ($4/student/year). I like that Mastery Connect offers parent, teacher and student all of the information and tools they need to understand where they are and how they are learning. The people at Mastery Connect have been dynamite, they are helpful, flexible and friendly!

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

PlanbookEdu: Lesson Plans in the Cloud

July 6, 2011Kelly Tenkely8 Comments4359 views

What it is: Planbook EDU is a great cloud-based (a.k.a online) lesson plan book. Because Planbook EDU is hosted in the cloud, all you need is an Internet connection, your plans travel with you. Planbook EDU is listed in the Google Apps Marketplace and is a natural fit for schools already using Google apps for education (email, calendar, documents, etc.). The free version of Planbook EDU has nothing to install, let’s teachers access their planbook from any internet connection, is easy to use with word processor like editing, is fully customizable, works in all major web browser and is iPad/iPhone supported (word processor editing doesn’t work on these devices).

How to integrate Planbook EDU into the classroom: I am a big fan of organizational tools, they let me organize my thoughts so that in the fire hose of ideas what is important (the learning goal) doesn’t get lost. Planbook EDU is a simple way to organize and plan units and your school year. I love that it is cloud-based so that I can access my plans from anywhere and any time. The basic features are robust enough to get your planning in place and the extras that can be added on make it VERY useful.

The premium version allows you to embed your planbook directly in your classroom website…very handy for keeping students and parents up to date with what is coming!

Tips: For $25/year, you get all of the free features plus- attach files to lesson plans, assign Common Core Standards, embed your planbook on any website, share lesson plans with anyone, print from your browser, export to Microsoft Word or PDF, built-in spell check and enjoy access to unlimited planbooks each school year. EVERY user gets a free 14 day trial of all the premium options from Planbook EDU.

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

iPad/iPod Touch App Bloom’s Taxonomy

June 7, 2011June 7, 2011Kelly Tenkely9 Comments5115 views

I’m sure you all have figured out by now that I am a fan of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Big. Fan. How could an organization freak like me not be impressed with a way of categorizing how we learn and produce? Recently I came across not one but two Bloom’s taxonomy resources for apps. Organizational heaven I tell ya. I thought I would share all of this appy, bloomy goodness with you!

Bloom’s Apps

Teach with Your iPad: Bloom’s Taxonomy apps

Pretty cool right? Right. Didn’t get your fill of Blooms? Here are some other resources I have created:

Bloom’s Taxonomy Live Binder

Oh yeah, in case you forgot, I organize ALL of my posts by Bloom’s Taxonomy level both here on iLearn Technology and on my app sharing blog iPad Curriculum. Just choose the level of Blooms in the category search in the sidebar and away you go. Happy bloomin’ friends!

You can purchase my Bloom’s posters in PDF 8.5″x11″ format from my store (only $0.99 for all 4, a steal!) Sales help fund Donor’s Choose projects like this one that funded a class set of Leap Frog systems:

Min.us: Instant document sharing

June 6, 2011Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2208 views

What it is: Do you ever find yourself wanting to share a file quickly and easily without relying on email to deliver it? You do? I thought so. Min.us is a great way to share files quickly and easily, it even provides file sharing options between devices! Students and teachers of all ages can use Min.us to share files. Just drag the file onto the screen and click “Start Sharing”. It could not be easier. Choose to share publicly or privately. Share using the unique URL that is generated. Easy peasy. No need for students to sign in. A built-in timeline shows all of the files that have been shared. Min.us has a desktop application that can be downloaded and placed in the task bar for sharing without opening a browser. Min.us has apps for sharing on mobile devices including the iPhone, Android, and Windows 7 with more mobile options coming.

How to integrate Min.us into the classroom: Min.us is an easy way to share documents with your students, colleagues and parents of children in your classroom. Drag and drop a document and share the link for fast, easy sharing. Include permission slips, class documents and make-up work as Min.us links in a weekly newsletter for easy access to EXACTLY the document that each family needs. No more sending emails full of attachments that get filtered or bounced back! Quickly share documents between teacher and student computers. Students can use Min.us to turn in work, teachers can use it to share documents quickly with classroom computers or share documents immediately with a computer lab full of computers.

Tips: Login to follow your documents (how many downloads, a feed of documents you have subscribed to and a full history of all of your documents).

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Min.us in your classroom!

Using Angry Birds to teach math, history and science

May 18, 2011October 24, 2012Kelly Tenkely55 Comments10632 views

This post has been generously sponsored by iTutorMaths – GCSE Maths Tutors in the UK

Yesterday instead of dutifully writing a blog post, I was having fun building catapults with kids. I was playing with a transdisciplinary lesson using Angry Birds as my inspiration. Yes, you read correctly-Angry Birds.

It doesn’t seem to matter what age group or demographic that I talk to, kids (and adults) everywhere are fans of Angry Birds. As I was playing around with Angry Birds (yep I’m a fan too), I started thinking about all of the learning that could be happening. I have watched a two year old tell an older sister that “you have to pull down to go up higher”. I have watched as kids master this game through trial and error. Being the teacher that I am, I started dreaming up a transdisciplinary lesson with Angry Birds as the base.

I happened to be writing an inquiry lesson that has students look at inventions throughout time and thought: the catapult-that is an invention that has technology and concepts that are used even today. This is one of those inspirational moments that comes when you are drifting off to sleep and has you frantically searching for paper and pen to record as fast as the ideas come. So what did I do? I got myself out of bed and went to work sketching out a super awesome plan.

Here is the embedded learning that I came up with:

Primary Math: positional math language (above, below, left, right, bottom, biggest, smallest), measurement (distance), angles, shapes
Intermediate Math: parabolas, velocity, angels, trajectory, acceleration, quadratic formulas
Science: simple machines (lever), mechanics, force, energy, velocity/speed
History: history of the catapult, changes made to catapult technology throughout history, modern-day inventions that use this technology
Music: Tie in with history, what music was popular in the middle ages when catapults were invented (give students a feel for the culture of the time).
Art: Tie in with history, what era of art was happening during the middle ages when catapults were invented (give students a feel for the culture of the time).
Language Arts: reflection writing, reading text for information (non-fiction books and websites)
Learning: application of Angry Birds on students as learners, application of building a catapult on students as learners (I can’t claim this one it was all @stumpteacher with this blog post).

I set up 3 stations of learning and exploration. In the first station students found Angry Birds on the iPads (now also available on the Internet in Chrome here), guiding questions, sticky notes and books on the history of catapults and simple machines. Guiding questions were on chart paper and invited kids to join in the question asking by jotting down their own “wonders” on sticky notes and adding them to the chart questions. At this station students “tested” Angry Birds and were asked to consider energy, force, acceleration, speed, angle and distance as they played. Kids had fun with this, I anticipated that they would stick strictly to the iPad and Angry birds but all of the kids looked through the books at some point. There was a lot of talk about strategy, what they noticed about angle and how far to pull back on the different levels to get the bird to reach the target.

Open publication – Free publishing – More angry birds

At Station 2 students found random materials that they could use to build their own catapult. We included small blocks of wood, duct tape, string, rubber bands, paper clips, plastic cups, smaller dixie cups, paint stir sticks, popsicle sticks, plastic silverware, markers, empty toilet paper rolls, clothes pins and of course the marshmallow to launch. Students colored their marshmallow with sharpies to look like an Angry Bird (if doing this with kindergarten, be sure to mention that as soon as the marshmallow is colored, it is no longer food…we had a couple who were begging to eat the colored mallow!). Next, students went to work constructing their catapults. We offered no instructions and just let them go to town. There was a lot of trial and error but all of the kids (kindergarten through eighth grade) made working catapults. Students tested their catapult and experimented with speed, distance, accuracy, fulcrum, angle and force. After launching the marshmallow bird they measured for distance and recorded.

As students tested we asked them:

What makes the catapult more accurate?
What makes the bird go the furthest?
Does mass affect the results?
How do objects move?
How do we calculate motion?
What is acceleration?
What is speed?
What are some forces that act on objects in motion?
How did the catapult set the marshmallow in motion?
Which challenge did your catapult meet best, accuracy or distance?
What helped the catapult?
What kind of energy did your catapult use?
What kind of force?
What are other kinds of levers?
What are simple machines?
What happens when the arm of a lever is shortened or the load is moved?
What happens to the force needed to make the load move?
What happens when you move the fulcrum?
What is the relationship between force and distance?
What happens when you adjust the angle?

Students had a fantastic time learning through trial and error and working together to reach our pig targets. The collaboration among students was neat to watch, students would give each other ideas for fine-tuning the catapults to improve results.

Open publication – Free publishing – More angry birds

In the third station, students had the opportunity to reflect on what they learned. We asked them to reflect literally and figuratively. Literally what did you learn about how a simple machine works, parabolas, measurement, etc. What did you learn about catapults and how the technology is used today? Then we asked them to think about the activity figuratively, what can Angry Birds teach them about life? What can it teach them about the learning process?

Older students looked at the math and science behind Angry Birds, using screen shots to determine if a bird would make it to the pigs based on parabolas.

Younger students labeled their catapult diagram with the language they learned about simple machines, force, and motion. Students also labeled the Angry Birds diagram.

To wrap up we discussed the middle ages as a class and went through some of the texts together. We read the history of the catapult and talked about why it was a necessary invention. We connected all of this with how the technology is currently being used on air craft carriers (the boys really got into that discussion).

Who knew you could learn so much from a game of Angry Birds?

Here are some of the resources that we used during this lesson:

Projectile Motion simulation

Angry Birds Pig Target

Catapult guide for students

Myth Busters YouTube clip of tree catapult

The Physics of Angry Birds

Angry Birds Geogebra

Zoodles: a kid safe mode for every device

March 21, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments8671 views

What it is: Zoodles makes it possible to have a “kid safe” mode on every device: Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android. Zoodles includes wonderful features for technology use in the classroom and at home. With Zoodles every child has their own “playground” space (login) that they access by clicking on their picture. A parent dashboard lets teachers (or parents) customize Zoodles to meet the needs of students. Parents and teachers can clearly see where a student spends their time, what their interests are, and what subjects they have been practicing. Every game in Zoodles has been previewed by experts and is rated based on it’s educational merit. Parent play-along mode makes it possible for parents or teachers to guide the learning experience. The interface is focused on kids and is extremely intuitive. There are no distracting “extras” in the navigation or URLs where students can get sidetracked or lost. The content in Zoodles adapts to each child’s age and ability level so they are constantly being challenged and engaged. There are thousands of educational games built into Zoodles…students always have something new and challenging to interact with. Zoodles also gives students access to fun educational videos. Zoodles is geared for toddler to third grade (8 year old) students. You can peruse the games included in Zoodles by clicking on the “Games” tab on the site. There are games for: cognitive development, creative development, life skills, math, reading, science, and social studies. The games and videos in Zoodles are pulled from several places on the Internet. What makes Zoodles a great tool is the ability to guide students in their learning, easily find quality educational content, scale as a student is ready, and keep ads blocked and hidden.

How to integrate Zoodles into the classroom: Zoodles is great for classroom computers and devices in the primary classroom. It provides students with access to quality learning games and content from the Internet without having to sort through the Internet to get to it. Zoodles is perfect for classroom computers that are used as learning centers. For the classroom, create 3-5 different accounts. Instead of basing the accounts on individual students, the accounts can be based on a learning level. Through the dashboard, teachers can guide the learning that happens in each account. This keeps your students on task, learning at their level, and engaged in meaningful activities. Even if you don’t use the Zoodles interface on your computers for students, it is definitely worth a download as a teacher. The games and videos are broken up into subject areas and age groups. This makes it easy to find an activity for any learning that you are doing in the classroom. Use Zoodles as your guide to find great activities and learning games on the web.

Tips: I found Zoodles when searching for a solution for one of the families I teach. They were looking for a way that all of their kids (2 years old to 8 years old) could use the family computer for fun, safe learning experiences. This is a great app to recommend to parents who don’t know what they don’t know, but want to provide their kids with virtual learning experiences. Be sure to recommend it to your students families! There are premium features that families will LOVE!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Zoodles!

World Spelling Day

March 2, 2011Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1534 views

What it is: World Spelling Day is brought to you by the same folks who hold World Math Day. This year (2011) World Spelling Day is taking place on March 3. Don’t wait, sign your kids up now and they can start practicing! World Spelling Day is a world-wide competition between students where they engage in live games of spelling. Each game lasts for 60 seconds and students can play up to 100 games to earn points for their personal tally. Students can play more than 100 games during the event but only 100 count toward the Spellometer. Students who answer the most correct question will appear in the World Spelling Day Hall of Fame. World Spelling Day has 5 levels to play and 20 games at each level. Just like World Math Day school age students (4-18 years old), individual children, and homeschoolers can register and participate. Register as many or as few students as you want (for free!). Even better, if you already registered for World Math Day, your login credentials will work on the World Spelling Day website!

How to integrate World Spelling Day into the classroom: It couldn’t be easier to get your students involved, just sign them up by registering, pass out usernames and passwords and away you go. Students can play in a computer lab setting (they like to try to login at exactly the same time so they can play against each other in games) or on classroom computers in 60 second rotations. The 60 second time limit on games makes it easy to pass all of your students through a World Spelling Day center on classroom computers. In addition, students can take their login information home with them to play at home. World Spelling Day takes place every March, now that you know it is coming, plan to make it an Olympic type event in your classroom. I have been known to hold opening ceremonies in my classroom prior to the event.

Since your students are competing against students from around the world, why not use the competition to practice using a map and identifying countries? Since I had a Promethean board, I did this digitally with a Google Map. Each time a student competed against a country, they would come up to the board and put a “pin” in the map. Don’t have an interactive whiteboard? The paper map and actual pins are just as fun!

Tips: There is a free World Spelling Day app for the iPad, you can get it here.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using World Spelling Day in your classroom!