Analyze – Page 9 – iLearn Technology

iCivics- teaching students civics through games

June 11, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2661 views

What it is: iCivics is a great way for students to learn about civics in the United States. The site features 16 educational video games that help students understand our government. In addition to the great games, iCivics has great standards-aligned civics curriculum available for free to teachers! Games include topics like: Citizenship and Participation, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Budgeting, Foreign Policy and National Defense, Separation of Powers, the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch. The games are fantastic, and put students right in the middle of the action and story.

Activate- Students campaign for an issue of their choice.
Cast Your Vote- Students choose the questions in a debate, rate the candidates responses, and cast a vote.
Immigration Nation- Students help newcomers along their path to citizenship.
Responsibility Launcher- Students help others with civic common sense.
Argument Wars- Students argue a real Supreme Court case using persuasive abilities.
Do I Have a Right- Student run their own law firm that specializes in constitutional law.
Counties Work- Students make decisions about community programs and services.
People’s Pie- Student control the budget of the federal government.
Crisis of Nations- Student work to solve international problems.
Branches of Power- Students control all three branches of government.
Executive Command- Student get to be president.
Win the White House- Students get to manage their own presidential campaign including raising funds and polling voters.
Supreme Decision- Students help cast the deciding vote.
Court Quest- Student help others navigate the US court system.

Students can join iCivics for free. When they do, they can take part in the Impact Competition where they play games, earn points, spend points on a iCivics real life project of their choice.

As a teacher, you can sign up for an iCivics account where you can add classes and students.

How to integrate iCivics into the classroom: iCivics is a great way to help students better understand the US government. The games are engaging, relatively quick to play (one class period), and teach everything that students need to know to play the game. Students with little or no understanding of the topic will be introduced to everything they need to know within the game.

The games are a great way to learn about civics because they put students right in the middle of the action, the games remind me a little of the SIMS games that I played as a kid. Students will enjoy being the decision maker in the game-this isn’t a power point presentation disguised as a game (you know you have seen those!).

iCivics is best played on individual computers in a one-to-one or lab setting. If you don’t have access to a lab where your students can play, students could play as a whole class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. Make sure that every students gets a chance to participate and weigh in on decisions that are made.

Tips: The lesson plans in the teacher section are truly well done. These are worth using in your classroom! Games are now available in the app store as well!

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

Google World Wonders Project

June 4, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3323 views

What it is: Google has a way-cool new project called the World Wonders Project. Thanks to Google, you can now wander the Earth with your students virtually to discover some of the most famous sites on earth. The site makes a great addition to the history and geography classroom and opens your classroom to the wider world. Not only are wonders of the modern world available, students can also explore wonders of the ancient world. Using the street-view technology from Google maps, Google has made wonders of the world available to all of us at any time. Themes include archaeological sites, architecture, cities and towns, historic sites, monuments and memorials, palaces and castles, parks and gardens, places of worship, regions and landscapes, and wonders of nature. When you explore a site, you get Google’s street view of the site, information about the site, YouTube videos related to the site and Getty images of the site. The result is a truly rich experience that will make your students feel like they have jet-setted around the world.

How to integrate Google World Wonders Project into the classroom: Google World Wonders Project is a fantastic way to help make your students more globally aware. The World Wonders Project lets students really explore and discover the world from the comfort of their classroom. Aside from actually getting to visit these places in person with your students, this is the next best thing! Understanding the world and features of the world that we live in is the first step in becoming more globally minded. Seeing different architecture and landmarks from around the world helps students to better understand the cultures and people who call those places home.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Google World Wonders Project is worth a hundred times more. Students can envision geography and history because they have a picture (that they can interact with), video, a story and a slideshow of Getty images. History comes to life when students can “put themselves” in the shoes of those who lived it. Geography is so much more tangible when it isn’t just a label on a map.

Building up global citizens is crucial. Below are three steps that can’t be skipped if students are truly to be globally minded:

Step 1: Encourage students to be global minded

Educational globe trotting is impossible without this important step. Students have to understand the overlaps in humanity. They have to be willing and open to learn not only about their own cultures, but also the perspectives, values, traditions and cultures of others.
Being global minded means that students know how to show empathy and compassion for others. It means that they know how to respect others ideas. Building global mindedness can feel like a chicken and egg scenario. Connecting your students with others globally is a great way to build global mindedness.Global mindedness truly begins in your classroom. Build a culture of caring, compassion, empathy and respect and it is easier to transfer to the wider world. Reflect often with students about feelings and attitudes. When students recognized the shared humanity in their own classroom, it is easier to understand that shared humanity in light of a larger world.

Step 2: Encourage students to be inquirers

Students who are inquirers are curious, they are willing and open to discover new learning. Kids are naturally curious, unfortunately in school we tend to “undo” this natural curiosity. We allow students only one line of inquiry (the one they have been given). We keep kids from asking additional questions (we don’t have time for that). We teach kids that there is one right answer (the one the teacher has). Without an inquisitive nature, being global minded becomes just another assignment to do. Deep connections with others aren’t made.

Step 3: Teach students to communicate effectively

It baffles me that this isn’t a larger focus in our schools. Communication makes everything else we do in life possible. Students have to learn how to represent their ideas and learning clearly with confidence. They must learn how to work with others, pausing long enough to hear the ideas of others.
There are two extremes that I often see in communication: 1. The student doesn’t believe that their ideas are worthy of words. They are shy or afraid of how they will be received. 2. The student finally gets the floor and doesn’t want to give it up. They want to talk and will go around and around with their ideas without letting anyone else get a word in edgewise. There is a balance here.

Google World Wonders is one way to help students understand other cultures, ideas and times. It can be explored by students individually on classroom or computer lab computers, or explored as a class using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. If you teach young students, make this an experience. Set up your classroom like an airplane. Take tickets, have students “pack”, serve an inflight meal, watch an inflight video about the place being visited, create a Flight Day. When you land in your destination, students can explore the Google World Wonder assigned.

Google has some great teacher guides and educational packages to use with the World Wonders project. Check them out on the Education page!

Tips: I am leading a session in Adams 12 tomorrow about Global education. You can see the website I created with links I am sharing here.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google World Wonders Project in your classroom!

Pinterest Classroom Inspiration Roundup

May 21, 2012Kelly Tenkely4 Comments21596 views

Holy Smokes. It has been a CRAZY couple of weeks. Don’t let anyone tell you that starting a school is an insane amount of work; that is a piece of cake compared to ending your first school year! Blogging has obviously taken a back seat. It feels strange not to blog every day after making that a habit over the last 4 years.

Today is dedicated to Pinterest. I find so many fantastic things that spark ideas for must-dos at Anastasis. I’m sharing a few of them here. I hope they spark some ideas for your classrooms!

This year we did some composting, this was followed by planting seedlings in newspaper just like this. Each student made a newspaper “pot” for their seeds. We love that it is biodegradable!

We are ending the year at Anastasis with a Storyline Expo. This is a showcase of student work throughout the year. We wanted to show a progression of learning and a timeline seemed like a great way to do it.

We are making preparations for our first field day. Water noodle target practice looked like a great activity. What are we most excited about? A food truck for lunch. We are cool like that.

We have spent a good majority of the year sharing wishes and dreams. For our storyline expo, we are creating silhouettes of students sharing what they love about our school.

We have done SO many hands on experiments throughout the year. This one was particularly neat to visualize weather in a cup.

We took pictures of all the kids “holding-on” to rope like this. They made great bookmarks for our first ever read-in!

Every student created a poster with this quote on it. It so perfectly summarizes what we believe about students and learning.

This is SUCH a great way to practice equations and algebra. Each number on the clock is represented by an equation. Our students made some unique “geeky” clocks this year.

We really wanted students to find freedom in their learning this year. Creating unique thumbprints with information and thoughts from each student was a great way to kick this thought process off. They turned out great!

Words we live by daily!

To see the originals of these images (and many more), visit my Pinterest Classroom Inspiration page. Pinterest is my guilty pleasure, I add to it even when I don’t have time to blog! If you haven’t joined Pinterest yet, I highly recommend it. Fair warning: it is addicting!

TED-Ed: Lessons (videos) worth sharing

April 26, 2012Kelly Tenkely2 Comments5456 views

What it is: I have long been a TED talk fan, so much so that I started a lunch group at my previous school called TED Talk Tuesdays where teachers could gather over lunch, watch TED Talks and discuss it’s implication on education. TED has a brand new education site that I am excited about. TED-ed is a collection of educational video lessons that have been animated. These lessons can be used as a supplement in any classroom. Each video on the TED-ed site has an associated lesson, a Quick Quiz with multiple choice comprehension questions, Think which asks questions to help students think more critically about what they have watched, and Dig Deeper which helps students to explore the topic further. In addition to the videos, TED-ed gives educators the ability to “flip” videos. You can use, tweak, or completely re-do any lesson that is featured on TED-Ed, or even create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube. You can re-title a lesson to fit your classroom, add context, questions and follow-up suggestions, and create a custom URL for your video lesson. You can even track your student’s progress to see who has viewed the assigned video, the number of questions they attempted, the answers they provided, and the answers they got correct.

How to integrate TED-Ed into the classroom: TED-Ed is a fantastic new resource for the classroom. The videos can be used for flip teaching. Flip teaching changes up the classroom model. Normally students come to school to get instruction and do their practice work at home as homework. In a flipped teaching model, the instruction is watched at home as “homework” and the practice happens in the classroom where students can receive teacher support. This means that the focus in the classroom is on higher-order thinking and learning skills instead of on instruction. How novel. 🙂 Student can come to class ready for deeper inquiry, critical thinking, discussion with classmates, collaboration and get more personalized attention from the teacher. You maximize classroom time by “going home” with the students.

Video is a great medium for learning because it allows students to learn at their own pace and gives them the ability to replay as many times as they need to. Visuals are always useful when learning something new, video is a great medium because of the way that it helps enhance understanding through the use of visuals.

Videos are searchable by those that have been featured, those that are part of a series or by subject. Students can learn about the arts, business/economics, design/engineering/technology, health, literature/language, math, psychology, science/technology, and social studies. The library will continue to grow as teachers flip the videos and TED-ed adds content from educators around the world.

The videos are great in a flipped classroom model but can also be used within the classroom. Videos can be watched and discussed as a whole-class or put on classroom computers as a learning center. When I taught second grade, I made sure that I had time individually with my students each week. In the mornings, my students worked on groups with “tub work” to make this time possible with individual students. These videos would make a great “second teacher” in a blended learning classroom where students could continue their learning while you work with students individually.

Tips: Remember, if you don’t find a video that meets your classroom needs, you can always flip any video you find on YouTube!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using TED-ed in your classroom!

What do you love: Google’s multi-search search engine

April 23, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3897 views

What it is: What do you love is a nifty little search space from Google that I ran across today. Apparently I’m late on this one, everyone was blogging about it a year ago! Ah well, can’t win ’em all. With What do you love, students can type in a search term and instantly get results grid-style from Google images, create an alert, find patents, look at trends, email someone about the topic, explore the search in 3d with SketchUp, find books, watch videos, translate into 57 languages, organize a debate, find blog posts, maps, call someone, start a discussion group, plan an event, view it in Google Earth, create a instant bookmark to the search, or make the search mobile. This is a super way to help students organize and view information and options for sharing from one place.

How to integrate What do you love into the classroom: What do you love is a great tool for helping students learn about how searches work. Students can instantly see a variety of search options and can begin comparing/contrasting results from the different streams. Ask students to consider which types of searches lend themselves to each type of search (images, video, web, blogs, maps, etc.). It is nice to have a one-stop shop of search results all within one page like this. Students can quickly look at the top items from each available stream and decide from that one point which option best fits their search needs.

As a teacher, this search option is incredibly valuable for the time it saves. Working on a new thematic unit or unit of inquiry? Type it into the search terms and immediately find related books, videos, and other resources to help you maximize your time and effort.

I think that the trends are fascinating to look at and speculate about. Are your students studying current events or an event in history (Titanic anyone)? It is really interesting to see how the trend of the search topic changes over time. Ask students to speculate and think critically about the rise and fall of certain topics.

Did you know that Google will help you organize and start a debate with moderation? Me either. It is a pretty neat little service that gives everyone a voice and lets students gather input from a large audience. This could be a great way for students to get help with brainstorming, collecting public opinion or in preparation for a presentation they are giving. This is an option I would only use at the high school level (it is for 13 and above). I haven’t played with it long enough to receive inappropriate responses, but I’m sure they slip through. This is also a great way for students to get more opinions or input about a topic they love. Right now the top topic on the Moderator site is about Minecraft. This is HUGE with our students right now, they cannot get enough!

What do you love would be a great site to bookmark on your projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard so that students can do searches about topics they are interested in as a class. Using What do you love this way gives you the opportunity to help students wade through results and practice discernment in what is accurate and good information for the topic being searched. I don’t know about you, but YouTube is the first place my students head when they are going to learn something new. I think this is because the video medium is preferred over the text results where they have to wade through information to find what they are looking for. Most students tell me they go to YouTube first because it is easy to know within a few seconds whether a video is going to give them the information that they want (forget deciding if it is a credible source). YouTube IS a wonderful place to learn something new, I often go there myself, but it is nice for them to see other results along side the video. As educators it is our job to teach students how to be discerning about the information they collect and how to use that information appropriately as it relates to the task they have been given.

Tips: Fair warning, this is a search engine. You can’t always guarantee that what a student searches will come up with appropriate results. I often remind students that if they come across anything that makes them feel scared, uncomfortable, or confused they should tell a trusted adult so that we can sit down and help them work through what they found and offer recommendations for a better search.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using What do you love in your classroom!

The Scale of Life

April 19, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2785 views

What it is: The Scale of Life is a neat website that I learned about from a parent in @michellek107‘s class today. The Scale of Life is flash based, and shows the size of objects relative to other objects. Along the bottom of the site is a slider that lets students zoom in or out in size to see things relative to each other. Students can get as small as 0.0000000001 yoctometers to as large as size of the known universe.

How to integrate The Scale of Life into the classroom: The Scale of Life is a neat way for students to explore size, science and math. Students can examine the scale of objects compared to other objects and make observations about size and purpose of the object in the universe. This would be a fun site to explore as a class using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. As a class, students could adjust the scale and discuss size and purpose of the objects. Split students into teams to choose a different scale to learn about. Students can learn more about the items that are in the size range to share back with the class.

The Scale of Life could be a fantastic site for students learning about exponents and scientific notation. Visual students will appreciate that they can see what these big (and small) numbers are representing.

Tips: @michellek107 is digging the music on the site…she has it going in the background of her classroom right now ;). If you aren’t loving it, there is a music note in the upper right corner where you can turn it off.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Scale of Life in your classroom!

3D Toad- 360* images worth more than a thousand words

April 16, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2788 views

What it is: 3D Toad is a site I learned about from @rmbyrne‘s fantastic blog, Free Tech for Teachers. This is like hitting the lottery of educational image libraries. It goes beyond your typical image library and has 3D images that students can spin all around and explore from every angle. Stinking awesome! Even better? (Yes, it gets better.) It works on mobile iDevice browsers! There are great images to explore on a variety of educational topics including: dissections, animal skeletons, human skeletons, music, geology, dental hygiene, coral, yoga, ballet positions, fossils, history, chemistry, emergency preparedness and computer networking.

Our students are learning all about earth systems right now so the fossils, geology and coral are especially exciting!

How to integrate 3D Toad into the Classroom: They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If a regular picture is worth a thousand, these 3D images are worth at least 360 times more. The 3D images on 3D Toad let students examine all 360* of an image. Students can examine, discover, and analyze images from various angles. 3D Toad helps students really visualize learning in new ways.

Use 3D Toad as a visual glossary on classroom computers. Students can visit this “visual glossary” center to explore objects and new vocabulary that they are learning. It would also be great on an interactive whiteboard or classroom computer where students can examine objects together. 3D Toad has a video on their site that shows a teacher using 3D Toad with students. I don’t love their example because the teacher is at the center of a review time before a test. The best use of this site would be to let students loose on it so that they can explore the images on their own.

3D Toad would be a great place for students to practice their observation skills. Each student could choose an object to explore in depth, write a detailed description and observation of the object. Working with a partner, they can describe their object and see if their partner can identify the image from the description alone.

These 360* images can be used for introducing new concepts, as a visual aid for students who are presenting learning, and as a place for further exploration of a topic or object.

Tips: Double click to zoom-in on an image. ***Some of the images have alternate 3D views that can be viewed with 3D glasses! The Giraffe skull is a good example of this. How cool would it be to outfit your students with some cheap 3D glasses for this lesson? I’ve asked local theaters to share leftover glasses in the past, they are usually very willing/happy to help out!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using 3D Toad in your classroom!

You Are Your Words

March 27, 2012Kelly Tenkely24 Comments16619 views

What it is: The American Heritage Dictionary has a new webtool that lets students create a self-portrait using their words. Students can link to places where they have already written (Facebook or Twitter) or write something unique specifically for their portrait. The unique image can be shared, saved and printed. You Are Your Words works best in Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari Internet browsers. I’ve found that pictures with high contrast work better than pictures with similar coloring and low contrast. After you create you image, you can adjust the colors, contrast and font.

How to integrate You Are Your Words into the classroom: You Are Your Words would be a great getting-to-know-you activity. It would give students a neat way to share who they are with the class. At the beginning of the year, a You Are Your Words bulletin board or classroom display would be a fun way for everyone to get to know each other. This site could lead to really interesting discussions about the power that our words have, what they reveal about us, and how they impact people’s perception of us.

You Are Your Words would also be a great way for students to create a mini biography about a hero, person of interest, historical figure, etc. Students could upload a picture and include famous quotes or words that describe the person. These could be used as part of a larger project, or as an independent research project. The site asks where the eyes and mouth of the picture are, so uploading another image or diagram to describe might not work.

Students can create character description cards with words, quotes and phrases that describe fictional characters in the reading they are doing. If you have a class or small group that is reading the same book, each student can choose a character to do this for. Create “trading cards” of the characters that students can create and share with each other so that each student has a card for each character in the book. If students are doing an author study, they could create a “You Are Your Words” about the author.

As students are learning about different roles within government, they could create a You Are Your Words image about each position using a picture of the person who holds that position in government. The writing could be related to the job description of the position.

The picture above is an example of a You Are Your Words image that I created with the words from this post!

Tips: If you have an iDevice, the Word Foto app works very similarly and lets you use ANY picture. This allows students to define vocabulary words with pictures.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using You Are Your Words in your classroom!

Web Adventures: Explore Science

March 21, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3223 views

What it is: Web Adventures-Explore Science is a site by Rice University. Web Adventures lets students explore science-one game at a time. Each adventure has a section dedicated to students and a section dedicated to teachers who are using the adventures in the classroom. In the Cool Science Careers section, students can experience what it means to take on science as a career. They can go through Profession Pathfinder to see which science careers best match their personality based on their answers to career interest questions. Students can select from five different science career fields to virtually try out activities that are typical for the career. With Zoom In, students can learn about different science jobs and read interviews with real scientists. In the CSI: Experience, students learn all about what it takes to be a forensic scientist. There are four cases that students can work to solve. As they solve the crimes, they will learn about forensic biology, ballistics, toxicology, medical examination, fingerprint analysis, digital forensics, fire investigation, and facial reconstruction. In the MedMyst section, students will use the scientific method and scientific process to investigate infectious disease outbreaks. Students can work with the N-Squad forensic scientists to solve an alcohol related crime. Throughout the game, students learn what alcohol does to the digestive, circulatory and nervous systems. In the Reconstructors series of games, students can learn about the health effects of drug abuse while learning neuroscience.

These games are really entertaining while giving students information and understanding of science in body systems, drugs, environmental science, forensic science, infectious diseases, science careers, and the scientific method.

How to integrate Web Adventures: Explore Science into the classroom: This is a fun find. Web Adventures Explore Science, helps students explore science in a new way. I like that the focus of the site isn’t just to deliver information. The mission is really to engage students in science and reveal how science is used in a variety of careers to solve problems. The games drop students into the middle of a mystery, their job is to help solve crimes, discover answers and connect the dots.

This is a fun site for middle and high school students to explore. It can be used to introduce a new scientific discipline or topic, to help students dig deeper in the learning and skills they are getting in science class, or to help them discover what it means to be a scientist. The games are best in a computer lab or 1 to 1 environment where students have access to a computer for an extended amount of time. They aren’t really short enough to be a center on classroom computers. A whole class could explore and solve together using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. While not ideal, it would allow them to pick up the benefits of the adventures.

At Anastasis, we started “crave” classes. These are classes that we offer every Wednesday afternoon. Students are given a catalog of classes at the beginning of a 5 week block. They get to choose which class they would like to enroll in for the 5 week period based on what they are “craving.” Our teachers choose an area of passion to teach. @bestmscott is currently holding a forensic science class for her crave. The kids are LOVING it! After learning about some forensic science, they set out to solve some mysteries. I have a feeling they would geek out over the CSI adventure on Web Adventures Explore Science. Today the kids were creating their very own mysteries that needed forensic science to be solved. I was teaching my own class so I didn’t get to see how the whole lesson fleshed out. What I do know: kids were taking my finger print, asking me to pop balloons covertly, and creating a list of suspects. Their classmates will have the job of using the forensic clues to solve the mystery. SO stinking cool. Our students are the best. Our teachers are out of this world. I have to brag on them!

Tips: Web Adventures has a new iPad app called NeuroKnowledge that quizzes students on scientific understanding. The app is free in the app store.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Web Adventures: Explore Science in your classroom!

BBC-History of the World

March 19, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment15336 views

What it is: The BBC is full of fantastic resources for learning. Recently, I came across the British Museum’s History of the World. It is WAY cool! This is like a fantastic virtual museum collection that makes it possible for students to see primary sources up close. Each piece in the collection adds a little bit to the story of the history of the world. The objects in the collection each have a quick overview about the piece, and the option of delving in deeper and learning more. Objects can be filtered by location, theme, culture, size, color, material, contributor and BBC area. This is a really neat way to view and explore world history. SO much better than the dry textbook fact collection that I had.

How to integrate BBC History of the World into the classroom: The BBC History of the World collection is a great way for students to explore and engage history. Being able to go through the objects and primary sources connects them to story and people from another time in a way a textbook just can’t touch. This is a fantastic place for students to begin an exploration of history; to find an object that “speaks” to them and learn more about the object and the people who created the object. This site gives students the opportunity to engage history.

Instead of starting a history course chronologically, let students select an object or piece from the collection that interests them. Let them learn more about the object, the people and the time period that the object was created in. Let them teach others about the object and its importance. How was it that this object was so well preserved? What does it tell us about that period? What stories does it tell? Give students creative license to do this. Do they want to make it a creative writing piece where the object is personified? Do they want to write a letter as if they were from that period of time explaining the object? Do they want to create a mockumentary about the object? Whatever they do, place the object, along with the others chosen by the class, on a timeline so that students can get a sense for where their object falls in history. Let the kids teach each other and explain why they chose the object they did. Not only will kids be exploring world history, they will be learning something about each other.

Write a class story with a common thread. Create a time traveling team as a class, these are the characters that visit the time period where they find the objects that they have chosen from the BBC History of the world site. Write the beginning and ending of the story as a whole class. Each student can be responsible for writing their own “chapter” where the time traveling team visits their time period.

I didn’t enjoy history when I was in school. It wasn’t ever presented as a story (which I love). Instead I got a collection of facts, dates and names to memorize for the next test. I had a really hard time understanding why anyone would be passionate about history. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that history is really just a set of rich stories that we try to piece together to help us understand who we are in place and time. That I enjoy. That I can get behind. Help your students discover the story in history!

Tips: At the bottom of the window, you will see a back and forward arrow. This lets students time travel.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using BBC History of the World in your classroom!