Tag: teacher

Bloom’s Taxonomy Bloomin’ Pinwheel

Kelly Tenkely19 Comments on Bloom’s Taxonomy Bloomin’ Pinwheel17747 views

Over the past few weeks I have been sharing some of my Boom’s Taxonomy re-imagines.  I created these for my classroom so that I could share Bloom’s with my kids in different ways that would make our classroom fun, but also give them a different way of viewing the information.   Today I am sharing my Bloomin’ Pinwheel.  As I started making my Bloom’s re-imagines, students started coming to me with ideas of how to display the information.  The pinwheel was a student recommendation.  I think it turned out pretty cute!  Some of you have asked what program I used to create my pictures.  I use Apple’s Pages for almost everything, the Bloom’s Taxonomy was no exception.  I use the free hand drawing tool, the shapes, fill tool, text box, and inspector to make my version of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Below you will find my original Bloomin’ Pinwheel, along with my digital version.  Many of you have asked for a printable version of these Bloom’s Taxonomy re-imagines, you can now find a bundle of 4 (Bloomin’ Peacock, Um-bloom-ra, Bloomin’ Pinwheel, and Bloomin’ Tree) in my store.  You will get 8 8.5″x11″ posters, this includes the digital version of each.

Here are links to the digital tools in my Boomin’ Pinwheel:

Remember:

BBC Skillwise- http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/

Spelling City- http://spellingcity.com

Starfall- http://starfall.com

Discovery Streaming- http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com

Lexipedia- http://lexipedia.com

YouTube- http://youtube.com

Gamegoo- http://www.earobics.com/gamegoo/gooey.html

PBS Kids- http://pbskids.org

Understand:

Into the Book- http://reading.ecb.org

Skype- http://skype.com

Treasures- http://activities.macmillanmh.com/reading/treasures/

Book Adventure- http://bookadventure.org

Twitter- http://twitter.com

Apply:

Kerpoof- http://kerpoof.com

PhotoBooth- Software

Scholastic- http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/learn.jsp

Fotobabble- http://fotobabble.com

Google Earth- http://google.com/earth

Analyze:

Read Write Think- http://readwritethink.org

Cool Iris- http://cooliris.com

Wordle- http://wordle.net

Creaza- http://creaza.com

Mindomo- http://mindomo.com

Evaluate:

Shelfari- http://shelfari.com

Wikipedia- http://wikipedia.com

Think.com- http://think.com

Nota- http://notaland.com

Create:

Pic-Lits- http://piclits.com

Kerpoof- http://kerpoof.com

ZimmerTwins- http://zimmertwins.com

Wiki Spaces- http://wikispaces.com

DomoNation- http://domonation.com

Glogster- http://edu.glogster.com

Creaza- http://creaza.com

Voicethread- http://voicethread.com

Kidblog- http://kidblog.org

Wetpaint- http://www.wetpaint.com

edublogs- http://edublogs.org

Stage’d- http://stagedproject.com/

Garageband- Software

iMovie- Software

 

57 Ways to Celebrate National Literacy Day

Kelly Tenkely8 Comments on 57 Ways to Celebrate National Literacy Day9302 views

Did you know that today is National Literacy Day?  It is!  I think that literacy is something to celebrate, being literate is a gift I enjoy every day but don’t stop to appreciate nearly enough.  In honor of National Literacy Day, I thought I would share my favorite technology enhanced literacy tools.  In no particular order, here are my favorite ways to celebrate literacy.  What are your favorites?

1.  Save the Words– an excellent site that values language, vocabulary, and words.

2. Grammaropolis– an enchanting site that teaches students parts of speech through character and story.

3. Signed Stories– an online story collection accompanied by British Sign Language, pictures, and sound.

4. Learn Direct– where students can be the star in their own online storybook.

5. Inkless Tales– a literacy website with a beautiful mission statement “You can do anything. Try, try again. Don’t give up. Experiment. Write, draw, explore and more.”

6. Storybird- a beautiful collaborative storytelling website.

7. My English Images– images that illustrate difficult vocabulary and language concepts.

8.  Lexipedia– a visual dictionary and thesaurus.

9.  Tikatok– Students become published authors with Tikatok

10. Free Reading– an open source instructional program to help you teach early literacy.

11. Word World– a great site for kindergarten and first grade letter and word recognition.

12. Reading Rockets– free reading guides for teachers to improve reading achievement of kids.

13. Super Why! – a site that helps kids gain important foundational reading skills such as alphabet, word families, spelling, comprehension, and vocabulary.

14.  Get Ready to Read!– a great site that helps teachers equip children with the basic skills necessary for learning to read.

15. Roy the Zebra– Excellent site for emerging readers.

16. Fable Vision– the beautiful virtual town filled with stories and games.

17. Kidoons– brings time honored tales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Thorton Burgess, and more to life.

18.  GameGoo– fun educational games that help students develop reading and language skills.

19. Read Write Think– a collection of online student resources that support literacy learning k-12.

20. Seussville– the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss brought to life.

21. Digital Booktalk– book trailers that will whet your students appetite for a good book.

22. Storybook Web– a website based on popular children’s stories where students can listen to author’s reading excerpts.

23.  Mee Genius– where students can read books, personalize them, and share them with a friend.

24. Stage’d- a tool that helps students tell stories digitally.

25. Kerpoof– where students can create their own storybooks, comics, and movies.

26.  Lightning Bug– “your writing partner, helping you write a story from beginning to THE END.”

27. ePubBud– for publishing your very own ebooks.

28. Magic Treehouse- a wonderful website where students can engage in the popular book series.

29. The Stacks– a wonderful creation by Scholastic that excites students about reading.

30. The World of Peter Rabbit– an absolutely captivating site based on the work of Beatrix Potter.

31.  My Hippo Has the Hiccups– a free poetry ebook by Kenn Nesbitt.

32. Weboword– a visual vocabulary site.

33. National Geographic Young Explorer– non-fiction for the primary classroom from National Geographic.

34.  Online Audio Stories- an impressive collection of free audio stories.

35. Story Nory– another collection of free audio books for kids.

36.  Skratch Track– a virtual bookshelf for primary students.

37.  Picture Book Maker– a place for students to create picture books.

38. Story Cove– a collection of stories from around the world.

39.  Skype an Author Network– connects teachers, students, and authors over Skype.

40.  Word Ahead Vocabulary Videos– animated vocabulary videos.

41.  My Story Maker– a website where students are in charge of the interactive story.

42. Book Wink– an incredible site that motivates students to read through podcasts and web video.

43. Scholastic Story Starters– a tool that generates writing ideas.

44. Telescopic Text– a site that expands a sentence to demonstrate descriptive writing.

45.  The Tale of Despereaux Adventure- a beautiful interactive story book.

46. Literactive- leveled guided readers, comprehensive phonics activities, and supplemental reading material.

47. Pic Lits- a creative writing site based on pictures.

48.  Speakaboos– a collection of online stories and ebooks.

49. Animailia– a site based on the popular book by Graeme Base.

50. Mrs. P’s Magic Library– an absolutely enchanting site that celebrates books and reading.

51.  Free Rice– practice vocabulary while helping others fight hunger.

52. Shelfari– a virtual bookshelf.

53. Read to Feed- Heifer International reading project for kids.

54. Into the Book– an outstanding site that teaches reading strategies for comprehension.

55. Google Lit Trips– exploring literature using Google Earth.

56. Starfall– a must see website for phonics.

57. Book Adventure– a free reading motivation program.

But the very best way to celebrate National Literacy Day…read a book!

Project PLN

Kelly Tenkely6 Comments on Project PLN4503 views

Finally the wait is over!  Today was the revealing of #ProjectPLN.  In case you missed the build up, @ProjectPLN has been slowly releasing videos for the past few weeks leading up to…well no one really knew what until today at the 7:00 #edchat.  The wait is over, Project PLN is out of the bag and I don’t have to keep the secret any more!

A few months ago Nick (@thenerdyteacher) ran an idea by me to start a PLN magazine.  I immediately said yes, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be a part of something that highlights the awesome educators in our PLN.  My hope is that this magazine will introduce you to members of your PLN you might not be familiar with, share and celebrate the amazing work and voices of the PLN, and encourage teachers who don’t yet have a PLN to build one.

Each month we will release a magazine (both available online and off) that centers around an educational topic.  Nick and I will choose “articles” that are submitted, a re-post of a blog post, videos, photos, and Tweets related to the topic.  We are using an online tool, Openzine, to put together the magazine each month.  We aren’t sure how Openzine will be able to take all of the traffic on their servers so we also have the magazine on Slideshare where it can be downloaded and printed out to share with your staff.

Send colleagues the link, print it out and put it in everyone’s mailbox, leave a copy in the teacher’s lounge, or RT on Twitter.  We hope that you will help us spread the word so that we can grow our PLN!

Below is this month’s ProjectPLN magazine, check out the Openzine version for videos and extras!

Proejct PLN: September Issue 1

View more documents from ProjectPLN.

Um-bloom-ra Bloom’s Taxonomy

Kelly Tenkely18 Comments on Um-bloom-ra Bloom’s Taxonomy16719 views

Last week I blogged about my Bloomin’ Peacock, a new Bloom’s Taxonomy visual I made to share with teachers in a training.  Over the years, I have created a number of Bloom’s Taxonomy pictures to hang in my classroom for students to refer to.  My Bloomin’ Peacock was such a hit with you all, I thought I would start sharing the others I’ve made.   Today I revived one that I created for my classroom and added the digital version (again the digital tools displayed relate directly to the Treasures reading curriculum).  This is my Um-bloom-ra Bloom’s Taxonomy:

…and the digital version:

Here are the digital tools included in my taxonomy:

Remember:

BBC Skillwise- http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/

Spelling City- http://spellingcity.com

Starfall- http://starfall.com

Discovery Streaming- http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com

Lexipedia- http://lexipedia.com

YouTube- http://youtube.com

Gamegoo- http://www.earobics.com/gamegoo/gooey.html

PBS Kids- http://pbskids.org

Understand:

Into the Book- http://reading.ecb.org

Skype- http://skype.com

Treasures- http://activities.macmillanmh.com/reading/treasures/

Book Adventure- http://bookadventure.org

Twitter- http://twitter.com

Apply:

Kerpoof- http://kerpoof.com

PhotoBooth- Software

Scholastic- http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/learn.jsp

Fotobabble- http://fotobabble.com

Google Earth- http://google.com/earth

Analyze:

Read Write Think- http://readwritethink.org

Cool Iris- http://cooliris.com

Wordle- http://wordle.net

Creaza- http://creaza.com

Mindomo- http://mindomo.com

Evaluate:

Shelfari- http://shelfari.com

Wikipedia- http://wikipedia.com

Think.com- http://think.com

Nota- http://notaland.com

Create:

Pic-Lits- http://piclits.com

Kerpoof- http://kerpoof.com

ZimmerTwins- http://zimmertwins.com

Wiki Spaces- http://wikispaces.com

DomoNation- http://domonation.com

Glogster- http://edu.glogster.com

Creaza- http://creaza.com

Voicethread- http://voicethread.com

Kidblog- http://kidblog.org

Wetpaint- http://www.wetpaint.com

edublogs- http://edublogs.org

Stage’d- http://stagedproject.com/

Garageband- Software

iMovie- Software

Some of you have asked what program I use to create my Bloom’s Taxonomy re-imagines, I use Apple’s Pages to create them (it is SO much more than a word processor!).  Pages makes creating easy, the only downside is that the images aren’t big enough to make into posters larger than 8.5″ x 11″.  Luckily I married a graphic artist and after the initial laughter that I used Pages instead of something like Photoshop or Illustrator, he agreed to help me make a larger poster happen.

If you are interested in my Bloom’s images on a mug, mousepad, tote bag, etc. you can find it in my store.

Friday Recap

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Friday Recap1870 views

Happy Friday everyone! In case you missed it, here is what I was up to this week outside of iLearn Technology.  Have a perfectly wonderful weekend 🙂

  • Redefining Cheating– this post created a lot of discussion and controversy this week on my Dreams of Education Blog.
  • Why I Love Worksheets– this was a follow-up post I wrote to the Redefining Cheating post on Dreams of Education.
  • Flipboard– a review of how to use the Flipboard app in the classroom on my iPad Curriculum blog.
  • ARIS– a review of an Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling application…probably the best application I have seen for education to date!  Check out the review on my iPad Curriculum blog.
  • This week I created an Edublogger Alliance social network.  Join us if you are a blogging educator!
  • On Blogging– a blog post I wrote on the Edublogger Alliance social network about blogging.
  • Still no word on funding for my iPad project.  I would still appreciate your votes in the Kohls Cares $500,000 give away.  Click this link and vote for Cherry Hills Christian.

Thank you all for your comments, tweets, retweets, and support this week!

Sharendipity

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Sharendipity3067 views

What it is: Sharendipity is an excellent online tool that lets you easily create your own learning and educational game.  You can do this by using one of the Sharendipity ready-made templates, or you can create a game from scratch.  There just isn’t always a quality game for students to practice with when you need one.  I know I have found myself wishing that I could find a game focusing on the exact phonic skill or a game that used the vocabulary that we were working on in class.  Often those tailor-made games just don’t exist.  Sharendipity is the answer, making it simple to create your own custom games.  Games are a fun way for students to practice a new skill and they make a great quick center activity on classroom computers.

How to integrate Sharendipity into your curriculum: Create games that are tailored to your students learning needs.  Sharendipity makes it easy enough to create fun games, you can create one in the time it would take you to make copies of worksheets.   Use one of the ready-made templates for the easiest game creation, or if you are feeling brave, start from scratch and make your own.  You can upload all of your own images to Sharendipity making customization really easy.  Consider using pictures of your class, school, or students as the background of a game.  Your students are sure to love seeing familiar faces or landmarks as part of the game.  These games are great for fact practice and recall in math, vocabulary, spelling, phonics, or geography where quick recall of the basics is key.  Sharendipity will walk you through each step of the game making process and when you are finished, you can share the url or embed the game in a class website.  If your students are a little older, they can make their own Sharendipity games to practice with.  Students can create games for their classmates to play as a way to study.  I have students who were constantly creating games and practice activities for my classroom; they got really good at it!  If you are teaching in a computer lab, Sharendipity is a fun way for students to create “original” content for their wiki, blog, or website.  At my school, we buddy up older grade level students with younger grade level students.  It was fun for the older kids to create special games for their buddies after learning about their buddies favorite things.  For example, one student found out that their buddy loved basketball and created a basketball themed spelling activity for them.

If you collaborate with another class or another school, it would be neat to swap customized games with them.

Tips: If you are braving creating your own game, be sure to check out Sherendipity’s learning center for a great guide on how to use the tools.

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

DragON Tape

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on DragON Tape3929 views

What it is: DragON Tape is a web application that lets you create video “mix tapes” (mashups) of YouTube Videos.  DragoON Tape is really simple to use, just search for a video by YouTube URL or subject and drag it down to the timeline.  Add as many videos to the timeline as you want and save it.  DragON Tape makes it easy to give your students access to several videos with just one url.

How to integrate DragON Tape into your curriculum: DragON Tape is a simple way for you to create a mix of videos for your students to watch, collected under one url.  DragON Tape is very easy to use and share, you can create a video mashup in no time.  This is a great way to send video collections to students and colleagues.  If you have access to YouTube at school, students could create their own DragON Tape mixes on any subject.  Students can mix the best of the best videos on a subject to share with classmates.  This year, I had my students make video commercials advertising Free Rice that we uploaded to YouTube.  DragON Tape would be a fantastic way to collect all of the student videos in one url so that students and parents could watch the student creations in one place.  DragON Tape is easy to fast forward and rewind through making it perfect for this type of class video collection.  Want to see DragON Tape in action? Check out this phonics mix I made in under 2 min!  Another thing that I like about DragON Tape is the way that it isolates YouTube videos against a black screen when it replays them.  There are no distracting comments, advertisements, or related videos suggested.  DragON is perfect for the projector-connected computer, interactive whiteboard, or on computer lab or classroom computers as part of a guided learning activity.

Tips: DragON Tape requires an email for registration.  If students are creating mixes, consider creating and using a class email address as the login credentials or used a @tempinbox or @mailinator temporary inbox address.

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

Whiz Kids

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on Whiz Kids3668 views

What it is: Whiz Kids is a new site developed for autistic children.  It was designed to give these kids a fun place to develop life skills.  All of the games and videos have high production values, making them engaging and impressive, they feel as though you have stepped into a Pixar movie.  Through this one portal, you get 16 interactive and therapeutic games.  The games help kids develop essential life skills like empathy, recognizing emotion, making decisions, coping with change, transactions,  non-verbal gestures, grouping, schedules, finding a route, and making eye contact.  Although these games were specifically developed for children with autism, they are wonderful for primary elementary students and ELL students as well.

How to integrate Whiz Kids into the classroom: Whiz Kids has an incredible back story, the site was created by more 80 students 8 lecturers and 10 autism specialists, the project represents more than 16,000 hours of research and development.  The games are tailored to fit the needs of autistic children.  If you teach autistic children, these games will help them develop important life skills that will aid them when interacting with classmates.  The games would be great for classroom computers as a center activity.  Help other students in your classroom understand how they can help the autistic children in the classroom by having them play the Whiz Kids games as well.  This will give your students a shared vocabulary and experience to draw on when they are working and playing together in the classroom.  Because the games focus so much on character development, they are appropriate for any primary classroom.  Help your students learn about complex human interactions like empathy, non-verbal communication, and coping with change through game play.  The games can be played and discussed as a whole class using an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer, or they can be played independently at a computer center, or a computer lab.  After playing the game, practice the skill taught as a class.  For example, if students play Robbie the Robot and are practicing recognizing emotion and facial expressions, follow up by asking students to work with a partner making faces and naming the emotion.  ELL students can use Whiz Kids to develop character related vocabulary and understanding.

Tips: On the Whiz Kids sister site, Autism Games, teachers can get more information about individual games and how to use them with students.  Each game is categorized based on the life skill that it teaches.  The game descriptions and suggestions are fantastic.

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

iLearn Technology Edublogger Alliance #2

Kelly Tenkely8 Comments on iLearn Technology Edublogger Alliance #23683 views

Setting a deadline at the end of the school year was a BAD idea.  It seemed feasible when I set the deadline but soon I was packing away 7 years of classroom… stuff, and sorting through 7 years of digital mess.  Alas, the release of the second edublogger alliance is a little later than I had hoped.  Better late than never, right?  (If you joined the alliance and didn’t receive an email from me today, I have an email address from you that is invalid. Send me an email through my contact form with your correct email address so that I can re-send that email.)

As I compiled the second alliance and sorted through blogs, I was again reminded of the greatness I am surrounded by in the educational blogger community.  Every time I read your blogs, I am overwhelmed with a sense of hope that together we can solve the problems of the educational system.  With amazing educators like you there is nothing stopping us!

If you aren’t currently reading and following educational blogs, I highly recommend it.  Nothing will boost your learning, enthusiasm, and professional development like subscribing to some good educational blogs.  To subscribe, simply click on the link below and then choose the “subscribe” button.  The blogs will be added to your Google Reader account.

Edublogger Alliance #2

The Original Edublogger Alliance

If you are new to Google Reader, here are some great keyboard shortcuts that will have you navigating quickly through those blogs in no time:

n- view the next post

p- view the previous post

v- view the original post (this is helpful when you want to comment on the post)

s- stars an item for your favorites

shift d- share the item with a note

r- refresh

a- add a subscription

If you come across a blog that is in another language, you can easily have Google Reader translate the subscription so that each time you get a new feed, it is automatically translated.  To translate a blog, click on “Feed Settings” and choose “Translate into my language”.  Easy!Screen shot 2010-06-14 at 5.11.10 PM


Finally, the educators who participate in the educators blogging alliance are also great Tweeters.  You can follow the educators who participate in the alliance by following these Twitter Lists

edublogger alliance 2

edublogger alliance

Thank you for all who are participating and to those who join us as readers.  If you are wondering how you can encourage an educational blogger, there is no higher praise than Tweeting about our posts or leaving us a comment!

Webspiration Wednesday

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Webspiration Wednesday3309 views

I learned about Guy Doud in one of my education courses in college.  We listened to a tape of a keynote speech he gave and read his book as part of the course.  Guy Doud was the Teacher of the Year in 1986.  He is an inspiration in education, even today.  I had the privileged of presenting at a conference where Guy was the Keynote speaker.  He is still an incredible voice in education.

Unfortunately I can’t offer you a full view of Guy’s speech (I have it on DVD only), but this clip should give you a look into this teacher of the year, and will, perhaps, encourage you to pick up his book: Guy Doud Molder of Dreams.

Guy Doud speaks about the focus of education: children.  When we get right down to it, isn’t that what we are all in this for?  He talks about the challenges that children face before they even step foot in a classroom.  He speaks to fostering the heart of children before we try to foster learning.  A child who is being abused, is hungry, is grieving the loss of a parent, has failed at life, really isn’t interested on your perfectly tuned lessons on superlative adjectives.  Whether we like it or not, we are in the heart business.  Teachers are called to be all things to the hurting kids who walk through our door.  Sometimes we play nurse, other times counselor, and sometimes even social worker.  Guy has an incredible rapport with his students and each of them leave his classroom knowing that they are important, that they matter, that they aren’t failures.  Watching Guy renews my spirit and gives me the inspiration to love those students who are hard to love.  To remember to get down on their level.  Many of our students have already been convinced that they are failures.  It is up to us to be their cheerleaders and let them know that they are uniquely gifted for a special purpose.  Our job is not just to teach and grow learners, our job is to assure students that they matter.