literacy – Page 9 – iLearn Technology

DoInk

April 22, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments4505 views

What it is: DoInk is an outstanding free illustration and animation creator. The site has tools that are similar in feel and function to Adobe’s flash. DoInk creates custom animations right inside your Internet browser. There is an explore section where you and your students can get some inspiration for animations. DoInk provides tutorials for illustrating and animating making it easy to get started.

How to integrate DoInk into the classroom: Adobe products not in the budget? DoInk is a fantastic alternative to Flash. DoInk would be a great way to familiarize students with the basics of animation that will lead nicely into using more robust programs like Flash. Allow students to create mini animations to demonstrate science concepts (think life cycles, rock cycles, water cycle, etc.). Students can also create short animations to display an understanding of verbs. Since verbs are action words, an animation is a great way to show the action.

Tips: DoInk requires registration with a username and password. For elementary students, I find it helpful to create one class account where students can create. This keeps you from having to keep track of a class full of login information. It also makes it simple to keep track of student work.

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

Tar Heel Reader

April 17, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3192 views

What it is: Tar Heel Reader is an excellent website that is “a collection of free, easy-to-read, and accessible books on a wide range of topics. Each book can be speech enabled and accessed using multiple interfaces (i.e. switches, alternative keyboards, touch screens, and dedicated AAC devices). The books may be downloaded as slide shows in PowerPoint, Impress, or Flash format.” There are hundreds of books on a variety of topics. In addition to the ready-made books, you and your students can create your own Tar Heel Readers. Students can add pictures to their readers from Flickr or by uploading their own images. Each of the stories can be read silently, or read to students with a child, male, or female voice (computer).

How to integrate Tar Heel Reader into the classroom: Tar Heel Reader is a great place for beginning or struggling readers and English language learners. Each of the stories has the option to be read silently or read aloud. Use Tar Heel Reader to create custom stories to motivate your struggling readers. You can include pictures of people they know, subjects they love, and make them a character in the story. The stories can be read online or downloaded in multiple formats. Because the stories can be downloaded as PowerPoint presentations, they can be opened in Apple’s Keynote and put on an iPod (Nano, Classic, or Touch) for mobile reading. Students will love searching the Flickr collection and creating their own stories on Tar Heel Reader. Older students can create books for younger grades describing science concepts (think weather, food chain, plant cycle, etc.). This is also a great site for students to use during National Poetry month (April) to create poetry. Use Tar Heel Readers as a ‘big book’ that your class can read together using an interactive whiteboard or a projector. Set up a reading listening center during silent reading time with Tar Heel Reader on your classroom computers.

Tips: Create a favorites page for your students. Although the site has been created for beginning readers, some books may be inappropriate for your students. There is a section of books for teens that are beginning readers. Note: to create a book of your own you will need to register for free. You will need an invitation code. I requested a code in the comment section and got a response within 10 minutes of my comment. You can send me a request Tweet http://twitter.com/ktenkely and I will send you an invitation code.

I learned about this site from Larry Ferazzlo’s excellent blog. Thanks for highlighting this great site Larry!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Tar Heel Reader in your classroom.

Scholastic Story Starters

April 8, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3153 views

What it is: Story Starters is a fun site for students in kindergarten through sixth grade to use each day as a quick writing activity. Students type in their name and select a grade to begin. Students are taken to a special Story Starter machine that generates writing ideas for newspaper articles, letters, notebooks, or postcards. They can get a new idea by keeping some elements of the idea and spinning again to change elements. The site also features Scholastic’s Word Wizard which always floats on the webpage. Students can type in a word or double click any word on the webpage and get a definition of the word.

How to integrate Scholastic Story Starters into the classroom: Scholastic Story Starters is a fun website to use with the whole class or as a writing learning center. This is a great site to use with an interactive whiteboard or projector to generate ideas for free creative writing time. Let students take turns being the ‘spinner’ that generates writing ideas. Encourage students to share their writing, it is neat to hear all the different ideas that kids come up with from the same story starter. This would be a great website to bookmark on classroom computers for students to visit as a writing center that they can visit when they are stumped for writing ideas.

Tips: You may have to spin a category a few times to get a story starter that makes sense. This is very quick and easy!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Scholastic Story Starters in your classroom.

Telescopic Text

April 6, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3241 views

What it is: Telescopic Text is a very simple website that could be very handy in the language arts classroom. The site starts off with a very simple sentence: I made tea. Each time you click on a word, the sentence expands adding adjectives, adverbs, and makes the sentence more interesting.

How to integrate Telescopic Text into the classroom: Use Telescopic Text to teach your students about creative, descriptive writing and how to improve writing with descriptive words. Compare and contrast what students knew about the sentence “I made tea.” at the beginning and how each addition of words helped them understand more about the original statement. This can be done as a whole class using an interactive whiteboard or a computer with a projector. Students can take turns clicking on words to expand the statement with discussion after each addition. This is a great exercise to use before writing. Have the students write their own simple sentence and expand it into a story with the addition of descriptive words.

Tips: The highlighted words are those that can be expanded by clicking.

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

Magnetic Poetry

April 6, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2216 views

What it is: Magnetic Poetry is a virtual edition of magnetic fridge poetry. Students can choose from four kits to create their ‘magnetic’ poem. There is Kids Kit, First Words, Best Friends, and Storymaker. After students have chosen a kit they can choose from three backgrounds for their poetry (refrigerator, locker, or whiteboard). Students are given a virtual tub of words to choose from that they can drag, arrange, and rearrange to create a poem or story. When they are finished, students can send their Magnetic Poetry to an email address or save it for later viewing on the site.

How to integrate Magnetic Poetry into the classroom: Magnetic Poetry is a great site to use in April as part of national poetry month. This site is wonderful for those students who are hindered by spelling (you know the students who will only write with words they know how to spell). Students can pull from the word bank of words to create a story or poem that can be saved, sent to an email address, or printed out as a draft and turned into a published piece. This would be a fun website to use with the whole class and an interactive whiteboard, encourage your students to take turns adding words to a class poem or story. This would also make a great center activity for students to visit and create with during the week.

Tips: If a student saves their poem, they are granting permission for the site to use their poem as a possible example on the site or on packaging.

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

TutPup

April 2, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1946 views

What it is: TutPup is an outstanding, free math and spelling practice website. At TutPup students can compete in fun, educational games against kids from all over the world live. The site reminds me a lot of the World Math Day competition. Students are matched up with other students from around the world where they play fact games and compete in real time to see who best knows their stuff. I love that TutPup is available to students all year long (unlike the World Math Day site), it doesn’t collect personal information about students, and there are several games to choose from each with multiple levels. TutPup helps students build math skills in the areas of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebra, and a mixture of those skills. TutPup also helps students build spelling skills with a spelling game, students listen to a word and have to spell it before their opponent. The site is highly motivating, takes into account different learning levels, and builds a variety of skills.

How to integrate TutPup into the classroom: My students absolutely love this website. Any time they can take part in a little friendly competition they are ready to compete. The great thing about TutPup is that it can be differentiated for your different levels of learners. Each student can play games at their own ability level. This keeps the lower math students engaged and feeling successful and the higher level students challenged enough to hold their interest. These types of sites have my students asking, “can I play this game at home too?” When have you ever had a student ask if they could practice math or spelling facts at home?! They truly love the competition of this site and get the added benefit of increasing their math fact recall skills. Use TutPup as a math center in the classroom where students can practice math facts, or a practice center in the literacy block for additional spelling practice. This is also a fun whole class activity with an interactive whiteboard or projector, students can call out the answers to the questions as a class for the teacher to enter. You won’t have to assign this site for homework, students will ask to play from home. Tell parents about this site as an alternative to flash card math fact practice.

Tips: TutPup offers teacher accounts and student accounts for free. However, right now their are no available login ID’s. I contacted TutPup about this dilemma and they are working on a solution. In the mean time, students can access all the games as a guest player. I’ll update this post when TutPup has solved the registration issues.

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

Ideas to Inspire

March 30, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2436 views

What it is: Ideas to Inspire is a truly wonderful site and wealth of resources for teachers. On this site you will find a collection of Google Doc presentations that include a number of ideas for engaging lesson activities in a variety of curriculum areas. The collection comes from inspiring teachers from around the world. You can find Ideas to Inspire on Writing, Interactive Math, Incredible Science, Amazing Art, Marvelous Music, and learn interesting ways to use Google Docs, Pocket Video Cameras, Interactive Whiteboards, Google Earth, Twitter, Netbooks, Webcams, and Visualizers. Ideas to Inspire also has great tips for non-techy teachers (I remember being one of those once-upon-a-time). Ideas to Inspire is very easy to navigate and each presentation is jam packed with truly inspiring ideas.

How to integrate Ideas to Inspire into the classroom: It happens to the best of us, we get settled in our ways and fall into a teaching slump where we can’t come up with a creative lesson idea to save our lives. Sound familiar? Ideas to Inspire is the place to go, here you will find inspiration, helpful tips, and get those creative juices flowing again! Take a few minutes and look through some of the presentations, you will be happy you did. 🙂

Tips: This is my last post for the day, head over to Ideas to Inspire and be inspired today!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Ideas to Inspire in your classroom.

cl1p

March 30, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2755 views

What it is: cl1p is a great little web tool that you and your students are going to love. cl1p lets you copy and paste between computers in three easy steps making it simple to share things between home and school or when working with a partner. The first step is to create a url that starts out with http://cl1p.net. Then click “Show me my cl1p” and you can add images, text, and even upload files that can be saved for 8 days and viewed on any other computer straight from the web browser. Think of cl1p as a web based clipboard where you are copying and pasting from one computer to another.

How to integrate cl1p into the classroom: If you work in a computer lab, library, or anywhere there is a computer, I’m sure that you have heard the words “I forgot my flash drive” or “can I print this out, I don’t have time to read it now?” cl1p is a handy little tool that can be used from any web browser where students can quickly copy and paste text, images, or url’s and access them easily later from another web browser. This is handy for getting a lot of information from the school computer to the home computer without having to remember to bring home the flash drive and bring it back the next day. It perfect for students doing research as a group, each group member can add content and access all research from a shared point at their cl1p url from any web browser. This is also a great site for teachers to send things between the home and school computer and making it easily accessible to colleagues.

Tips: The only downfall of cl1p? Your url is only good for 7 days, so for long-term research projects or those times when you don’t intend to use the information right away, this isn’t the best tool to use.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using cl1p in your classroom.

Story Top

March 30, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4095 views

What it is: Story Top is a simple comic strip creator. Students can create an account on Story Top where they can save, share with classmates, and print out comic strips that they create. Students can choose from a set selection of backgrounds, images, and text bubbles (they aren’t able to upload their own images). Using the Story Top clip art and backgrounds, students can create a fun comic strip about almost any topic with a simple drag-and-drop interface.

How to integrate Story Top into the classroom: Comic strips are an outstanding way to get your reluctant writers writing (especially boys!) The comic format usually isn’t as daunting as a blank piece of paper. With just a little guidance, your students will be writing and creating comic strips in no time! Use Story Top as a classroom computer writing center where students can take turns publishing their own comic strips (these are fun to use in a class newsletter home at the end of the week or on a classroom website). In the computer lab setting, give students a topic and have them create a comic strip based on the topic. Story Top would also be excellent to use with a projector or an interactive whiteboard. Instead of giving your students a bulleted list of notes to copy down on a subject, why not make it fun and create a comic strip that includes all of the notes. Comics are a fun way to mix up the classroom routine and students are much more likely to remember the material if it is presented this way. Happy creating!

Tips: To use your comic strips on your classroom website or in a newsletter, take a screen shot of the strip to save it as a picture file on your computer (on a Mac it is command+shift+4).

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

Toy Theater

March 19, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3138 views

What it is: Toy Theater is a fun place for students to practice math, reading, art, and music through puzzle type games. Toy Theater encourages students in k-4 to get their problem solving brain cells working as they explore and discover the games in Toy Theater. In the art section, students can animate their own cartoon character, put on a puppet show, or make a Matisse. In the music section, students can make music with the Composer, interact with notes with The Music Maker, or go on a pounding mission with the Drum Beats, you will have miniature maestros in no time. In Math students can practice math facts with flippy flashcards, or feeding Freddy, and take a math practice test to put those math skills to the test. In the reading section students can enjoy a good joke, play with words with a sliding crossword puzzle (highly entertaining for teachers too), write their own road sign, or practice their typing skills. In the puzzle section students brains gt put to the limit with tic tac toe and memory games. In the playset section, students can create their very own virtual diorama about cars, sea creatures, plant, insects, ships, characters, aircraft, blocks, dinosaurs, and buildings.

How to integrate Toy Theater into the classroom: Toy Theater is a great website to use as a learning center in your classroom. The short, easy to play games are perfect for short center activities. I love the puzzle type environment that encourages problem solving and bends the brain a little. The playset universe would be a great section to use with an interactive whiteboard, students could take turns creating a ‘universe’ to showcase learning on a topic such as ocean, plants, insects, dinosaurs, geometry, etc. Students can work together to show what they know together. After students create a playset, have them pull out a writing journal and journal about the playset the class created. Being a computer teacher I am constantly looking for fun ways to let students practice typing skills. In the read section you will find a game called letter fall, letter blocks fall from the sky, students have to type the letter before 5 blocks can stack up. There are multiple speeds to make the game a challenge for your different typing levels. In the computer lab setting, see who can last the longest before 5 letter blocks stack up (there is a timer at the bottom of the screen).

Tips: This is a great site to send your students to when they finish work early and are asking “what can I do now?”

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