Science – Page 11 – iLearn Technology

Flixtime: Video slideshow creator

October 19, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2985 views

What it is: Flixtime is an online tool that lets students create 60 second video slideshows. Slideshows can contain videos, pictures, text and music. The interface of Flixtime is easy to use; it looks a lot like the timelines used in iMovie and would be a great way to introduce students to the idea of video timelines and a separate sound track. With Flixtime, students can adjust the screen resolution of their video and choose a speed for their slideshow to play. As I used Flixtime, I couldn’t get over how much like Animoto it is. If you need an alternative to Animoto, this is your tool!

How to integrate Flixtime into your curriculum: Flixtime is a great tool for telling a story. Students can use Flixtime to tell a story about their learning, to illustrate a science experiment, to create a video timeline of a historical event, to illustrate vocabulary, to create an auto-bio poem, or to create a custom public service announcement. Flixtime is an easy way for students to create something new and demonstrate understanding on any topic. My students have used video slideshows to create math story problems for a buddy to solve, they turn out great and sure beat the dry story problems from math textbooks! Flixtime videos can be saved on the student Flixtime account, embedded in a class blog/wiki/website, emailed, and even downloaded!

Tips: Flixtime requires an email account for sign up. The email account doesn’t need to be verified which means that students can sign up with a temporary email account from tempinbox or mailinator. If you teach elementary students, create a class Flixtime account where students can create and save videos. This ensures that you know what is being posted and puts the videos all in one place for easy viewing.

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

Pinball: Bounce Ideas Around

October 6, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3688 views

What it is: Pinball is a neat site from the BBC that helps students kick-start new ideas to get thoughts flowing and develop creative talents. There are four tools that will help students brainstorm and bounce ideas around. Dot Dash is for firing out ideas, start with a main idea and branch out with connected ideas in a web. Drop Zone is for making quick decisions, add ideas, name the zones, click “go”. As ideas speed by, quickly make a decision and select a zone; analyze the results. Snap Shot lets kids play with images; here they can upload an image or select a random image or word in “Lucky Dip” and then use the tools to play with the idea. Students can reflect, rotate, scale, bend, erase or cut an image or word to get different effects. Wild Reels is for mixing up ideas. Students can create reels of images and words, then they can label the reels. When the ideas are all in, the ideas can be “spun” to see what combination comes up. In each of the tools, the results can be “flipped” to another Pinball tool. Each tool allows students to think about a subject and explore ideas they may have about the subject.

How to integrate Pinball into your curriculum: Pinball is a fantastic tool to help kids think through their ideas for writing, research, science hypothesis, making connections in their learning, brainstorming, and fleshing out ideas. Each tool is designed to let students think visually in a way that lets their ideas flow freely. The integration of one tool with another is really helpful for transferring loosely related thoughts into a more cohesive thought process. Pinball can be used for whole class thinking with an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. For example, as students read about a time period in history, and related events, they can use Dot Dash to show how the events and people are related. Students can each add to the class understanding of the time period. Drop Zone would be a great way for students to generate ideas for a creative writing, or journal project. Students can enter the ideas they have and let Drop Zone help them decide which to write about. Bookmark Pinball on classroom computers so that students can use them as an inspiration station center. Any time your students need to bounce ideas around or think through their learning visually they can visit Pinball and work through their ideas. Pinball would also be helpful for structuring thinking prior to a research report, or science experiment. If you have access to a computer lab or 1-to-1 setting, allow your students time to think about their learning and connect new learning to knowledge frameworks they have already built. The possibilities with these tools are endless.

Tips: Pinball offers links to additional thinking tools that are available on the web including Exploratree, Mind Tools, bubbl.us, Aviary, Mind 42, and Wisemapping. Each of these tools is fantastic for mind mapping, creative thinking, brainstorming, and visualizing ideas.

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

Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master

September 27, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments5593 views

What it is: The Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master is a portion of the Read Me program (learn about it here). This is a really cool online comic creator, the interface is fun to use and very intuitive. It is obviously geared toward students with a great look and even an embedded music player. I love the details on this site, including the headline “Reading isn’t only in books, it’s everywhere!”. Using the Graphic Novel Creator, students can create their own multi-page graphic novels with interesting backgrounds, characters, props, and customized text. The graphic novels can be saved and printed out.

How to integrate Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master into your curriculum: Graphic novels are becoming increasingly popular reading material, particularly for boys. They have even the most reluctant readers excited to pull out a book. Now those kids who love reading graphic novels, can create their own. A graphic novel is a great way for students to show what they know. They can create a graphic novel re-tell of a story as a book report, describe a science experiment, re-tell a portion of history with a superhero twist, practice another language by telling a story, even define and demonstrate understanding of vocabulary words.

Tips: Be sure to check out the read me site for great teachers notes, ideas, and additional resources for teaching with the Graphic Novel Creator. A special thank you to @thebookchook for introducing me to this tool!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master in your classroom!

The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That

September 2, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3754 views

What it is: The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That is a new PBS TV series and website that ignites an excitement about science for primary students. The series is based on the Beginner Book Collection “The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library”. The goal of the series and online resources is to “cultivate positive views about science and scientists among the next generation-the children who will become tomorrow’s citizens and innovators-and help teachers and families build communities of science explorers.” I don’t know about you, but I love the idea of building communities of explorers, science or otherwise! In the TV series, The Cat in the Hat, Sally, and Nick set off on a science adventure. In one episode, the trio flies with birds to discover why they migrate. In another, they are taking a snowcat to the Arctic to explore freezing and melting. As the Cat in the Hat guides them, the children solve problems by engaging in science inquiry. Right now students can watch video clips on The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That website, play related games, find activities and coloring pages to print, and play games with snapshots from the program. Right now adventures on the site include science concepts like bird migration, camouflage, and melting/freezing.

How to integrate The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That into your curriculum: If you are a regular visitor of my blog, you know that I am a big Dr. Seuss fan (see pictures of Dr. Seuss inspired classroom theme here). While this site isn’t strictly Seuss, it does a remarkable job of bringing The Cat in the Hat to life with a focus on scientific inquiry. Use the videos on the site to introduce your students to new science concepts including migration, camouflage, and melting/freezing (my guess is more will be added as the series takes off). Students can engage in the inquiry process along with Sally and Nick and then practice the newly acquired concept in the games section. This would be a fun site to use as a science center that students visit on classroom computers during a coordinating unit. Students can view videos prior to exploring the concept as background knowledge, or watch the videos after engaging in their own inquiry process on the topic and compare the journey of inquiry taken. Did Sally and Nick come to the same conclusions?

The printables on the site include fun mazes, coloring pages, matching vocabulary, and even bookmarks, stickers, and other paper crafts. One of the print outs in the Paper Craft Sections is a Cat in the Hat frame that would be great for framing pictures of students engaging in their own scientific inquiry.

Tips: Be sure to click on the teacher button to find an Explorer’s Guide where you can find tips for engaging young students in scientific inquiry. You will also find tips for using the online video in your classroom, a list of Cat in the Hat science books, and find video enhanced activities.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That in your classroom!

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Kidopo

August 11, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments4294 views

What it is: Kidopo is an online coloring application where kids can color online coloring books. The application simulates a real coloring experience (in other words you can color outside the lines and the more you color over a spot, the darker it gets.). There are a lot of coloring pages to choose from with categories like animals, cars and transportation, cartoons, food, toys, holidays, learning, circus, sports, music, nature, occupation, seasons, and more. Kidopo has fun printables for the classroom including coloring sheets, bookmarks, birthday printables, awards and certificates, mazes, writing paper, connect the dots, room decorations, and stickers. You will find a collection of flash games for kids including brain games, card/board games, math games, memory games, puzzle games, science games, and word games. In the craft section of the website are videos that walk students step by step through a craft.

How to integrate Kidopo into your curriculum: The online coloring book on Kidopo is a great way to help primary students practice mouse manipulation. I like that you can color inside or outside of the lines just like in a real coloring book. If you are in a computer lab setting, the Kidopo coloring book is a fun way for students to practice, and a good way for you to gauge where their fine motor skills are.

The printables on Kidopo are perfect for the classroom. Bookmarks are always fun classroom give aways and the awards and certificates are a good way to recognize your students.

The learning games on Kidopo make a good practice center activity on classroom computers. My favorite are the math games that help students with fact recall through fun arcade-type games. In the word games, you will find a fun game called Word Frenzy that will give your students a place to practice typing. Check out the games, some are better than others but they are definitely worth a look!

Tips: One of the downfalls of Kidopo are the advertisements in the sidebar and introducing the games. I use websites with this type of advertising to teach my students about how to spot ads and discuss with them why ads are placed on websites.

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

Answer Garden

July 26, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments5189 views

What it is: I learned about Answer Garden from an interactive post on Suzanne Whitlow’s excellent blog, Suzanne’s Blog. Answer Garden is a “new minimalistic feedback tool.” It can be used as an online answer collection tool or embedded on a website or blog. An Answer Garden is created as easily as entering a question and clicking create, no registration needed. Embed the Answer Garden on any blog, website, or social network page using the embed code provided. You can also give students a direct link to the Answer Garden. Students can post answers to your questions by entering their own answers or by clicking on and submitting existing answers. All of the answers are represented in the form of a word cloud. 25 answers are visible per garden but as students submit the same answer, that word will grow bigger. Creating an Answer Garden is SO simple. Just type in your question or brainstorm statement and click create.

How to integrate Answer Garden into the classroom: Answer Garden is a fun way for students to brainstorm, plan, and work together. Pose open-ended thinking questions on your classroom blog or website for students to answers. Use Answer Garden to host a classroom poll. Create a geography Answer Garden that gives students a place that they can describe a state or country they are learning about. Use Answer Garden during reading as a place for students to reflect on different characters, plots, settings, and themes. In history, give students a date range, event, or historical figure and let them add words to the Answer Garden that describe. In the primary classroom, type in a phoneme combination and have students submit words that fit the phoneme rule. Create an answer garden to recognize VIP students in your classroom where each child can answer with a character quality that they appreciate about that student. The possibilities are endless! This tool is SO easy to use, try it out in the Answer Garden below.

Where will use Answer Garden?… at AnswerGarden.ch .

Tips: The default settings on Answer Garden only allows students to submit one answer. You can check the optional “Unlimited Answering” to give students multiple opportunities to submit answers.

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

Energyville

July 23, 2010Kelly Tenkely11 Comments3907 views

What it is: Energyville is a game sponsored by Chevron. In the game, students have to provide enough power to meet the energy demands of a city with a 5.9 million person population. As they play, they must keep the city prosperous, secure, and clean. The energy decisions that students make for the city in 2015 are based on current lifestyles and the projected energy demands and costs for developed countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. The Energyville game environment is a lot like SimCity in the way that students build and maintain the city. Students begin by dragging energy sources to the city to bring it to life. Students can choose from biomass, coal, hydro, natural gas, nuclear, petroleum, solar, and wind. As they add energy sources to the city, they can observe the impacts on the economy, environment, and security of the city. The goal is to keep the impact low. There is a comparison chart where students can view the impact of the different energy sources on the environment, economy, and security to aid them in their decision-making. As students move their mouse over the different energy sources, they can read about that energy source in the Energy Advisor panel.

How to integrate Energyville into the classroom: Energyville is an excellent simulation game that helps students to experiment with energy sources. They are able to see the way that their decisions directly affect people and the environment. Students can see how some energy sources may have a low impact on the environment but are high in cost or impact security. This is a great way for students to weigh decisions and defend their choices. Set students up in a computer lab setting where each student has their own computer. Give students a set amount of time and see which students can get the highest score (lowest impact) on their city in that time. Afterward, discuss the best and worst energy sources, and have the highest score walk the class through their strategy. If you don’t have access to a lab, you can send students to Energyville in small groups as a center activity on the classroom computers. You could also play as a whole class with an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer.

Tips: There are two levels of game play. In the first level, students make decisions to meet the city’s energy demands in 2015. In the second level, they must make additional decisions to prepare for the energy demands of 2030.

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

JASON Science: Eco Defenders

July 21, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment6128 views

What it is: Eco Defenders is another excellent Filament Games simulation/interactive. In this game, students design “alien” invasive species and set it loose on an imaginary ecosystem. Students must use their knowledge of ecosystems, adaptations, and competition to design a simulation of an invasive species. Students find out that when an invading species occupies the same ecological niche as native species, they can cause problems for the ecosystem. The game allows for a lot of customization and decisions for students as they choose one of three ecosystems and then design their own alien. As students go through the simulation, JASON host researcher, Russell Cuhel, will ask questions about how invasive species invade an ecosystem giving students the chance to be the expert. Before students play the game, ask them to click on the “Learn More” link where they will receive a tutorial for the game and some background information about invasive species. Students can learn about different kinds of invasive species that exist in our world.

How to integrate Eco Defenders into the classroom: In the Eco Defenders game/simulation, your students will: design their own invasive creature, watch their creature as it interacts in the ecosystem and competes over resources with native creatures, and analyze the interactions among the organisms in the ecosystem. Students will select a creature to target in the ecosystem they have chosen and then design a species that will compete in the same ecological niche. Students will design and then run a simulation to test their invader. Afterward, they will discuss what happened with the virtual host scientist, go over the results, and analyze the data. The great thing about this game/simulation is that no two students will have the exact same results. Eco Defenders is best in a computer lab setting where each student can play individually. After students have experimented and run through the simulation, come together as a class and discuss what students observed. What made their invader successful? What would they change for the next time? As students learn more about ecosystems, eco niches, and invaders throughout the unit, have them run through the simulation again and see if they come up with different results. If you can’t manage access to a 1 to 1 computer setting, play the game as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. The class should discuss each decision, weighing the pros and cons, before making a move. As the students work through the simulation, talk about what they are observing and what tweaks might change the outcome of their simulation.

Tips: JASON Science is worth a look. The tag-line of JASON Science is “Education through Exploration”. I couldn’t agree more!

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

Landform Detectives

July 19, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4439 views

What it is: Today I was searching for websites and games that would enhance and enrich the Treasures curriculum. MacMillan Mcgraw Hill’s reading curriculum is lacking (in my opinion) in the activities that it uses to help students learn grammar, vocabulary, spelling, etc. Most of the suggested activities are not those that require any deep thinking (or in some cases any thinking at all) and usually involve some sort of copying out of the dictionary or filling out a worksheet type undertaking. These don’t impress me at all. So, last year I went through all of the Treasures curriculum, pulled out all of the essential learning and skills that needed to be gained. I have since been on the hunt for engaging activities and games that will help students learn, practice, and create with the essential learning at the core. Therein lies the rub. As I scour the Internet for games and activities what I usually come up with is more worksheets. The problem is, they aren’t labeled worksheet. They are labeled “game” or “interactive”. They aren’t really games or interactive (any child would tell you that!), they are multiple choice online worksheets. I refuse to subject students to them. Today I made the following comment on Twitter: “Dear educational game makers, an online multiple choice quiz is not a game, it is a worksheet. Please stop pretending it’s a game. Thank you.” I was delighted to get the following message back from Filament Games: “Dear @ktenkely. We know, and in fact couldn’t agree more. And thank YOU.”

I had to explore just who this Filament Games was. From their Twitter bio: “Filament Games is a game production studio dedicated to creating next generation learning games that combine best practices in commercial game development.” I am delighted to say, they make incredible educational games that in no way resemble a worksheet! Bravo!
Landform Detectives is just one of the offerings from Filament Games (I’ll explore the others in separate posts). In Landform Detectives, “a violent volcanic explosion immediately and forever alters the landscape. Elsewhere, raindrops gradually pick patterns out of the rock over the course of thousands of years. Can you recreate some of Earth’s most amazing geological features by uncovering the natural processes that shaped them?” Now that is what I am talking about! An engaging game that asks students to use what they know about natural disasters, weather, and the creation of landforms to discover and recreate how they were formed.

How to integrate Landform Detectives into the classroom: Your students will travel the world to unlock the secrets of the Earth’s strangest and most awe-inspiring landforms as they play Landform Detectives. Students will gain a new appreciation for mountains, valleys, and rivers as they solve the mystery of how they got to be that way and think about how long it takes for those processes to happen. Your students will transform into geologists as they discover the suspects like ice, water, wind, and sand in the story of our Earth. As your students travel the globe, they will encounter animated simulations, virtual scientist (Dr. Bob) who can give them more information, and an opportunity to recreate the formation of the landform. This is an incredible way for students to “see” first hand just how landforms are created. The site would be best in a computer lab 1 to 1 setting where each student can explore and discover at their own pace. If you don’t have access to a computer lab, you could also use a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard to travel the globe together. If this is the case, allow students to take turns leading and guiding the exploration. Hypothesize together about how the landforms came to be and how you might recreate them. Then put those hypotheses to the test and try them out. Discuss the outcome, did it look like the students expected? Why or why not?

This really is an incredible way to learn about the Earth sciences. There is just no way that a static text-book can compare to the rich game and media experience that Landform Detectives offers.

Tips: Students can watch a briefing from scientists who share their understanding of weathering and erosion to monitor changes in soils that are used to grow plants for food and fuel.

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

A Walk in the Forest

June 23, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments14609 views

What it is: The Smithsonian site is a wealth of outstanding activities and interactives. In the Walk in the Forest interactives, students are guided through a virtual forest where they do field research using the same scientific methods and tools that Smithsonian scientists use to monitor forest biodiversity. Students can act as dirt detectives, predicting which trees will thrive in each type of soil; learn about forest layers and the plants and animals that take up residence in each; identify a tree; observe seasonal changes; map the forest; and use amphibians as an indicator of the forest. Each of the interactives has the option of narration (audio) or non-narrated (students read through the interactive).

How to integrate A Walk in the Forest into the classroom: The interactive activities on A Walk in the Forest are very well made. They will have your students working and thinking like a scientist. The activities are meant to be completed by individual students, but if you don’t have access to a computer lab, they would also be excellent as a center on classroom computers or on the interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. For whole class participation, send a team of scientists (your students) into the forest to investigate and collect data. Give each student a job to do on the forest adventure. For the students not at the board, create a field guide that they can fill out while they observe. As an extension activity, students can create an Animoto or Prezi about what they learned in the forest. They could also create a comic book style field guide about walking through a forest.

A Walk in the Forest is well suited to all elementary students. Independent readers can complete the activities without narration while emerging or struggling readers could have the interactive narrated.

Every year, we have an outdoor education program for our 5th graders. They spend a week in the mountains, in a forest, learning outside. If you do something similar, A Walk in the Forest is a great preparation activity for students. They can learn about the processes of collecting and analyzing data virtually before they do it in real life.

Tips: If you and your family are visiting national parks this summer, these are fun activities to do before hand that will transform your kids into scientists when they are exploring outdoors.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using A Walk in the Forest in your classroom.