Character Education – Page 13

Clicky Live

November 21, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1587 views

What it is: Clicky Live is a free Internet safety webcast for kids being held on December 10, 2008. Clicky is the NetSmartz kids robot and is an expert on Internet safety. This year, Clicky wants to make sure kids ages 5-10 have all the tools they need to stay safe online. The NetSmartz live webcast will engage kids in a dialogue about Internet safety through chat or call in features, allowing them to have an interactive experience with Clicky. You can sign up individuals or a whole class for Clicky Live by RSVPing and submitting questions to Clicky for the show. There is also a step-by-step guide to facilitating the Clicky Live show and accompanying NetSmartz activity pages.

How to integrate Clicky Live into the classroom: Clicky Live can be enjoyed by a group of students or individual students. The Clicky Live event is held on December 10, 2008 at 5pm and 7pm EST, because most kids are out of school at this time, you can send fliers home to encourage students and parents to participate individually, hold an Internet safety night where parents and students can come back to school for a Clicky Live event, or use Clicky Live in an after school program. Be sure to check out the step by step guide to facilitating the Clicky Live show for some great ideas.

Tips: Offer extra credit to those students who participate in Clicky Live at home with their families.

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

Picturing America Bookshelf

November 19, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2121 views

What it is: I have written a few posts about Picturing America but I have to do another one! Picturing America is now offering a free Bookshelf to k-12 libraries. The Picturing America Bookshelf is a set of classic books for readers in kindergarten through twelfth grade. Applications for the Picturing America Bookshelf are being accepted online now through Jan. 30, 2009. All that is required of your school is that you would encourage young readers to explore the Picturing America books. The great literature included in the Bookshelf can provide students with a window into our nation’s character, ideals, and goals. The books will give students the chance to experience some of the most iconic times, people, places, and stories in American history. The Bookshelf comes with the following titles:

Kindergarten to Grade 3: Walt Whitman: Words for America by Barbara Kerley; Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull; Cosechando esperenza: La historia de César Chávaz by Kathleen Krull (translated by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy); The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Sweet Music in Harlem by Debbie Taylor.

Grades 4 to 6: The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich; American Tall Tales by Mary Pope Osborne; On the Wings of Heroes by Richard Peck; Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule by Harriette Gillem Robinet; The Captain’s Dog: My Journey with the Lewis and Clark Tribe by Roland Smith.

Grades 7 to 8: The Life and Death of Crazy Horse by Russell Freedman; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving; La leyanda de Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (translated by Manual Broncano); Across America on an Emigrant Train by Jim Murphy; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Grades 9 to 12: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis; Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange by Elizabeth Partridge; Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck; Viajes Con Charley – En Busca de América by John Steinbeck (translated by José Manuel Alvarez Flórez); Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.
Bonus: Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out by The National Children’s Book and Literary Alliance; 1776: The Illustrated Edition by David McCullough.

These books would be excellent companions to the Picturing America art and curriculum! Be sure to apply today, if the Picturing America art is any indication of the quality of the bookshelf, it will be amazing!

Tips: Be sure to visit National Endowment for the Humanities site EDSITEment for sample lesson plans and resources to enhance the use of the Bookshelf in your classroom or library.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Picturing America Bookshelf in your school.

Cyberbee Copyright Application

October 31, 2008Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3609 views

What it is: Cyberbee Copyright is an online flash application to teach students about copyright laws. Copyright laws can be difficult to teach and difficult for students to understand. Cyberbee makes it simple. The flash site features students raising their hands, each asking a different question about copyright issues. When students “call” on the cyber student, they get the answer to the question. The site uses language that is easy for students to understand.

How to integrate Cyberbee Copyright Application into the classroom: This is a great site to introduce your students to before any research project. The interactive nature of the site makes it perfect for an interactive whiteboard and whole class participation. The Cyberbee Copyright Application is a site to bookmark on your classroom, library, and computer lab computers. Students can refer to the site often to refresh themselves on copyright laws.

Tips: Take a look at the other offerings of Cyberbee for research projects. You will find web evaluation resources, citing electronic sources, a quick site tool, and more!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Cyberbee Copyright Application in your classroom.

Piki Kids Comic Creator

October 6, 2008Kelly Tenkely2 Comments5289 views

What it is: Piki Kids Comic Creator is an online comic creator for students. Students can upload pictures from their computers, or search Flickr for images to use in their comic strip. The comics are very flexible so students can make them uniquely their own. Students can choose the number of panels, the look of the panels, color choices, and much more. When students are finished creating their online Piki Kids comic, they can save them to a gallery, or print out.

How to integrate Piki Kids Comic Creator into the classroom: Students love reading comics, there is something about the interaction with a comic that makes even struggling readers willing to try. I find that the same is true with writing. Many kids who struggle to write would dread writing out a story or series of events after reading a book. But, introduce a comic and suddenly those kids who don’t like writing are writing full stories. Piki Kids Comic Creator is the perfect way to get your students writing about anything. Studying dinosaurs? Have the kids find some clip art of dinosaurs that they can upload to Piki Kids and have them write about what they are learning comic book style. Learning about the Civil War? Have the students retell the story as a comic strip. You will see creativity that you didn’t know your students possessed! Comic strips are also an excellent place for students to “write” a book report after finishing a book. Comics can be used in science to show processes (like plant cycle…give those plants a voice!) Comics can be used in math for students to create word problems for fellow classmates to solve. Use comics in character education, after teaching a lesson, students can illustrate, comic-style, what that might look like. From the technology side of things, Piki Kids Comic Creator is a great place to teach kids skills like uploading to a website, searching flickr for pictures, changing font, size, and color.

Tips: Piki Kids Comic Creator is an excellent tool. Be aware that there are adwords on the website. I use these as an opportunity to help my student spot advertisements and talk about why sites include ads on websites. Everything can be a learning experience!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Piki Kids Comic Creator in your classroom.

Free Rice…New and Improved!

September 15, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3507 views

What it is: Free Rice is an amazing website that I have posted about two or three times in the past. It has been a site where students can play a vocabulary game and earn 20 grains of rice for each correct answer. The grains of rice are distributed to hungry people all over the world through the UN World Food Program. Two of my students came in this morning with a printout of how many grains of rice they had earned over the weekend on the Free Rice website (we have a contest going each year to see which class and grade can earn the most grains of rice). They were unusually excited about this bunch of earned rice because they discovered some new features on Free Rice. Free Rice is now much more than a vocabulary game! Students can choose the subject they would like to play. As they increase in all types of knowledge, there is the added bonus of helping people in need. Free Rice subjects now include art (famous paintings), chemistry (chemical symbols), English grammar, geography (world capitals), language learning (French, German, Italian, Spanish), math (multiplication), and of course…vocabulary! Free rice is an incredible place for students to practice facts for a wide range of subject areas. Some additional new features: now students can click on a speaker next to a word to hear it read to them and can change the level of difficulty manually! I am so impressed with the site and impressed with my students for finding and sharing these new treasures!

How to integrate Free Rice into the classroom: With all of the new subjects on Free Rice, it is the perfect place to send your students for fact practice. Whether they are learning a new language, or need some practice with their multiplication facts Free Rice is a great place to practice. What I love about Free Rice is the added bonus of character education. Free Rice teaches students compassion and empathy. My students truly play the game not for the learning taking place, but because it makes them feel good to do something for others. Kids often feel like there is nothing they can personally do to help a cause…Free Rice gives them a voice and the ability to make a change. It empowers them.

Tips: Set up Free Rice on your classroom computers as a place for students to go when they are finished early and need a little something extra. Free Rice is also excellent in a computer lab setting and for home play.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Free Rice in your classroom.

Inspiration

September 11, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2245 views

Some school years start out much bumpier than others. This year has definitely been a bumpy one for me. Nothing seems to be working the way it should, the kids are disappointed that in the first 4 weeks of school they have not had computers available in computer class. I am feeling frustrated at the lost teaching time (so many things to fit into a 35 min. once a week class!) This weekend one of my professors from my college (Colorado Christian University) days spoke at church. Sid Buzzel was/is one of the most influential educators in my life and one the I deeply respect. He came to teach about education. It was exactly what I needed, I loved hearing his passion for education and his explanation to parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, children why he is an educator. He reminded me of why I am an educator. I miss being taught on a regular basis by Sid. The church recorded Sid’s inspirationalwords. I highly recommend this podcast. I’m sure it won’t take long to figure out why this man made such an impact on me and my teaching career. I’m ready to press on through the problems and teach my students…with or without computers! 🙂 Take a break, put your feet up and get renewed. Let me know what you think and tell us about the influential educators in your world.

EdWeek Maps Website

August 29, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1395 views

What it is: I heard about EdWeek Maps Website just after writing my post “Up On My Soap Box”. The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (that is a mouth full!) launched a feature of its EdWeeek Maps Website that allows you to access and download a detailed report and map on high school graduation rates for every school district in the United States. You can look at individual districts, their graduation rates and trends, and compare it with state and national figures. It is VERY interesting to browse.

How to integrate EdWeeks Maps Website into the classroom: This may be a good site to share with students starting in middle school. Open up for discussion why students think the graduation rates are what they are. Take the opportunity to show your students how important education is and more importantly how critical it is that they learn to learn. If our students can be life long learners we have reached our goal!

Tips: Share this site with fellow teachers, administrators, community members. Lets come up with a way, together that we can change education so that we live in a community where education is valued.

Leave a comment and share how you are using EdWeek Maps in your classroom.

Animoto for Education

August 7, 2008August 7, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4911 views

What it is: There are some really neat online tools that I find that live in my Google Notebook for a long time (I have upward of 800 links for educational websites yet to post to iLearn Technology…and growing daily!) Some get pushed aside for my newest cool find, and some move to the bottom of the list because, while they may have educational value, they are not intended JUST for education and may have some questionable user created content that I wouldn’t want my students to stumble on. Animoto was one of these sites for me. It is an amazing and COOL tool but wasn’t necessarily geared just toward education. I got a fun email today that Animoto now has an education only site! Animoto for education is a site where students can create compelling and impressive digital content quickly and easily. It is the perfect addition to your classroom’s digital storytelling kit. It is very intuative and easy to use, in no time students have digital videos that they created! This is also an amazing place for you, the teacher, to create a video that will bring your lessons to life. You can post or embed videos on your class site or even, are you ready for this?, download for in class presentations. Animoto for Education makes it simple to mix audio and visual for a dynamic, unique presentation in no time. It is so easy to use that students could create a complete animoto presentation in one computer class.

How to integrate Animoto for Education into the classroom: Animoto for education is a great place for you to teach from. Make any lesson come to life with audio and visual, use at the beginning of the day as a ‘teaser’ for what your students can look forward to learning each day or use to teach complex concepts in history, math, science, or character education. Students will respond to new media in the classroom. Allow your students to display knowledge of a concept using Animoto. Use Animoto for Education for a beginning of the year get to know you activity. Students can each create an Animoto showcasing who they are through pictures and music. Animoto presentations are quicker to create than traditional PowerPoint type presentations making them ideal for digital storytelling in the classroom setting. Because Animoto is completely web-based, students can create videos from school and continue working on them at home. The ability to download videos is outstanding…students could save their work for offline viewing too!

Tips: Children under 13 can’t sign up for their own account. To use Animoto for Education with your students you can register your students with dummy accounts using dummy email addresses. Animoto is private to your school. This means that other people can’t come accross student videos or contact students through the site.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Animoto for Education in your classroom.

Websites with a Cause

July 21, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3078 views

What it is: I have posted before about a website called Free Rice. This vocabulary game has the added benefit of donating rice to help end world hunger. For each correct answer, Free Rice donates 20 grains of rice on your behalf. This isn’t the only website with a cause. Aid to Children is a vocabulary game like Free Rice, for every correct answer $.25 are donated to children in need through World Vision. Free Poverty is a world geography game. See how many cups of water you can donate by testing your knowledge about the world. Each correct answer means that 10 cups of clean water have been donated on your behalf. Free Corn is another vocabulary game like Free Rice, for every 25 visits to the website, 1 kernel of corn is donated. Free Kibble is a trivia game. Every day your students play Bow Wow Trivia 20 pieces of kibble are donated to Animal shelters to help feed their hungry dogs. Free Kibble Kat also donates 20 pieces of kibble per player each day…this time students are raising kibble for cats.

How to integrate Websites with a cause into the classroom: Each of the above websites offers a wonderful opportunity to teach students to look outside their own needs to the needs of others. Use these websites to teach your students compassion, about other cultures, and about helping those less fortunate. The websites will also be a great way for your students to practice vocabulary or geography. Encourage your students to play these games from home when they are “bored” or just for fun. See how much rice, money, corn, water, or kibble you can raise as a class. Use these figures to teach graphing and charting. You can also use the sites to teach persuasive writing. Students can create a “commercial” for the site, a poster advertising the site, etc. (I found a commercial that I made as an example for my students on Free Corn…small world!) Using these websites with my class taught me just how compassionate and concerned my students are. It was wonderful to see my students come together around a common goal. Using these websites with a cause in your classroom is a real life character education lesson!

Tips: Bookmark these sites on classroom computers, kids who finish their work early can sit and play one of the games while they wait for the next activity.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Websites with a cause in your classroom.

ipopetz.tv

July 17, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3770 views

What it is: ipopetz.tv is a fun web 2.0 site that your students will love to use. Students can create their own 3-D mini cartoon show by selecting a puppet, creating and recording their show (with their own voice) and then sharing their show. The puppets that students have to choose from are a lot of fun. The shows are easy to create, students make their 3-D puppet move by using their mouse and keyboard and record their voice using the microphone. The puppets lip sync to the words your students say!

How to integrate ipopetz.tv into the classroom: The ipopetz.tv puppets would be the perfect way for students to display knowledge. They can use their ipopetz character to give a book report. Instead of standing up in front of the class and reading off of their book report, students can “advertise” a book using an ipopetz puppet. Because they can record their own voice and manipulate their puppet, they display their knowledge in a new and fun way as well as become the directors for their own 3-D cartoon. So much fun! Have students create shows about any subject. For example, students could create a show about a current science topic. Instead of studying from a text book before a test, students can watch eachother’s informational cartoon shows. If your students are like mine, they can’t recall facts from a textbook at the drop of the hat but they can all quote Kung Foo Panda. Let them create and learn in a way that they love. I garuntee this will be a huge hit with your students! It is easy enough for as young as first grade but will hold the attention of students through middle school (maybe even through adults…I am throuroughly entertained!) Create your own cartoon to teach a subject for a change of pace, it will give you a break and the students will enjoy something new. You can create your show, save it, and use a projector to teach the whole class. If you are lucky enough to have a projector in your classroom you could even start out each day with a message or brain teaser for your students.

Tips: ipopetz.tv does require a download plugin for Quick Time. It is a quick and small download. Make sure to download the plugin for every computer that you will be using ipopetz.tv on. Also be aware that this site has advertisements, be sure to use this opportunity to teach your students about online ads and set up the rule that they not click on them before you start a project.

Leave a comment and share how you are using ipopetz.tv in your classroom.