Category: Social Studies

More Advent Calendars: Student created, creative, and imaginative!

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on More Advent Calendars: Student created, creative, and imaginative!21340 views

After my last post I found some new advent calendars that I just had to add to the list.

First is an advent calendar created by eighth graders at ASLS who’s teacher Mr. Akerson (@mra47) I follow on Twitter.  What is so neat about this advent calendar, is it is made up of pictures of the students and teachers.  Each day that you click on delivers a new devotion written by one of the eighth graders.  I have NO idea how they created this site, each day all of the students pictures look a little different direction so that they are focused on the person on the date of the day (that is a total of 2200 pictures!!).  Genius! They are making Weebly do things I am sure it wasn’t intended to do.   The students at ASLS have a goal to get someone from every state in the US to view their advent calendar.  I think we can help them out with that and do one better, let’s get them views from around the world! This student created calendar is not to be missed! This calendar is a fun one to use with your students, but why not blog lift their idea and create a similar calendar with your students?  Since we are already into December maybe yours is a 12 days of Christmas calendar or a unique lead up to your schools winter break.  Students could create a “word a day” calendar, math problem of the day, featured student art, story of the day, poem of the day, fact of the day…the possibilities are endless on this one. Ask your students, they will have great ideas!

The second calendar is one that is sure to spark your students imagination and creativity.  Send Felicity is a beautiful idea and way to celebrate all things imaginative.  Every day Felicity From Thin Air will surprise your students with fun activity ideas that are illustrated by some of the best children’s book illustrators in the world.  The idea behind the Send Felicity and the illustrations are enchanting.  Currently ideas are being shared on the Send Felicity website.  There is an accompanying application for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad that is soon to be released.  This complimentary (read free) application will guide students in creativity and imagination.  Eight arts and crafts ideas will be interspersed throughout for students to complete with their families or at school.  All creations can be submitted to the Send Felicity gallery.  Felicity from Thin Air is meant to be a new way of learning and engagement for the mind. It is about creativity, collaboration, and sharing with a global audience.  In addition to the daily activities, there are magic surprises.  I don’t know what the magic is but I am assured I will know it when I see it 🙂  Get your students families engaged in some fun holiday spirit.  Instead of homework for the month of December, why not give your students (and parents) the homework of following Felicity from Thin Air and engaging in creativity as a family.  I guarantee that the positive effects will be much more lasting than any worksheet you could send home.  Today’s Felicity from Thin Air activity is Fancy Dress for Dinner.  Pick any theme and invite the whole family to show up for dinner dressed for the occasion.  Costumes can be as silly or creative as you like!  Following Felicity at school?  Adapt the idea for a Fancy Lunch or Fancy Math class and have your students create impromptu costumes out of classroom items.  Don’t have time for the cut/paste? Have your students draw their costume.  The goal is to let kids be creative and imaginative!

Librarian extraordinaire Shannon Miller of VanMeter shared the Polar Express advent calendar with me.  This calendar includes the beautiful Polar express illustrations and combines it with fun activities and give away opportunities.  Enter a chance to win the giveaways for your class (for example yesterday was a chance to win the Polar Express bell from Santa’s sleigh) and complete the activities together.  Each day is a new surprise!

How to integrate Interactive Advent Calendars into the classroom: The season of Advent is always filled with eagerness and expectancy. Build some of that anticipation into your school day by allowing students to unlock a new secret on the advent calendar each day.  Use these advent calendars with the whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector, or set them up as a quick center activity that students can visit.  Use the advent calendars that reveal a story to practice looking for foreshadowing clues, using context clues to guess what will happen next, or as story starters for students own stories.

Tips: Each of these advent calendars has some fun goodies and hidden surprises, find the one that best fits your classroom needs.

Thank you to all of you who have spread the word to fellow teachers about my Web 2.0 advent calendar, I am glad you are enjoying it!

The Street: World Music

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on The Street: World Music2594 views

What it is: I am currently working on a fun project for Starrmatica tagging and organizing websites and resources.  One of the resources that was new to me is The Street: World Music.  This is a neat interactive learning journey from BBC radio where students can learn about other countries and cultures through music.  The Street features five families from five different countries including India, Ireland, Brazil, Turkey, and Nigeria.  In each house students can learn more about the country, instruments, musicians, religion, and food from the country.  Students have plenty of opportunities to listen to the music.

How to integrate The Street: World Music into your curriculum: Music is a neat way to introduce students to other cultures.  It allows an inside look into the culture by sharing the sounds of the culture.  What I like about The Street, is the way the music is introduced along side religion, food, and information about the country.  This site gives students a wonderful overview of five countries where they can not only read about the differences, but they can see the differences (through photos) and hear the differences (through music).  The Street is a great site to introduce into any classroom, music teachers will appreciate the look at the instruments and musicians of the country.  As an extension activity, have your students create their own “house” for The Street. This can be done offline with paper and a collection of music, photos, and information.  Alternatively use a website builder like Weebly or Wix or a Wiki to collect the information in an online space.  Students can choose a country to learn more about or create a house for their own country, thinking about what is important to their culture.  Want to extend the activity even more?  Connect with teachers from different countries and have the students learn about different cultures together.  Use Skype or Wetoku to connect the classes and play music from each culture.  Create a wiki together to collect and  share information learned.

Tips: If you are looking for teachers to collaborate  with, use and search the #glolab hash tag to connect.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Street: World Music in your classroom!

Collaborize Classroom-free for the 2010/2011 school year if you sign up before November 15!

Kelly Tenkely3 Comments on Collaborize Classroom-free for the 2010/2011 school year if you sign up before November 15!2975 views

What it is: Collaborize Classroom is an online learning platform developed for classroom discussion and engagement.  Collaborize lets students and teacher collaborate in online discussions. It can be used for meaningful conversations related to classroom curriculum, to ask and answer questions, to collaborate on projects, to vote on ideas/issues, and more.  Teachers can continue valuable discussions, facilitate online learning groups, encourage the sharing of resources, and provide students with space to engage in collaborative learning.  Collaborize is easy to set up and navigate for both teachers and students.  Questions can be posted easily including multiple choices, yes/no, vote or suggest, and forum.  After the questions have been answered, the results of the discussion can be published on a results page.  Collaborize has great teacher features.  Add attachments to any question including photos, videos, and documents.  Send a message to students using the built-in messaging system.  Participation reports track each student’s activity on the site including number of logins, votes, comments, and replies.  Activity reports can be sent to your email daily for review. Set up a watch list to follow a discussion more closely.  Collaborize has fantastic supporting materials including lesson plans, helpful tutorials, and research articles.  If you sign up for Collaborize before November 15, 2010, the product is being offered at no-cost (read FREE) for the 2010-2011 school year!  In partnership with Democrasoft, The Kids in Need Foundation made this free year possible…take advantage of it before the 15th!

How to integrate Collaborize into your curriculum: Collaboraize is an awesome tool to facilitate discussions in (and out of) the classroom.  The format of Collaborize makes it flexible enough to use in any classroom and in a way that works for you.  Use Collaborize to facilitate discussions and literature circles, plan a science lab or experiment to be conducted in class, practice second languages with online dialog, post current events for students to reflect on, work with classrooms around the world to discuss and debate any topic, pose a math word problem and ask students to discuss the different ways the problem could be approached.  Collaborize is a wonderful tool for student discussion and collaboration, but the teacher tools are what make it such a perfect fit for the classroom setting.  It is easy to sign up, get your free year today!

Tips: Collaborize has really helpful resources for teachers.  Learn about the do’s and don’ts of student forums, the art of asking questions, lesson and activity ideas, rethinking your role in the classroom and much more.  Even if you don’t sign up for Collaborize, I recommend spending some time checking out these free documents, they have great tips that can be applied to a variety of web collaboration tools.

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


Stories of Learning: Christopher Columbus Creates 21st Century Explorers

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Stories of Learning: Christopher Columbus Creates 21st Century Explorers2650 views

Yesterday, Silvia Tolisano of Langwitches Blog (The Magic of Learning) shared an incredible story of learning.  After reading through her post I asked if I could share the story here and she graciously agreed.  Siliva and the fifth grade teacher she worked with did an incredible job of letting her students take charge of their learning.  It has been so successful that her students want to continue learning and connecting their knowledge about Christopher Columbus.  I love that Silvia’s story of learning begins with a glimpse of what the planning for the learning looked like.  Silvia lets us peek inside the intentional planning and organizing of the learning.  Using an iPad and the iThoughtsHD app, Silvia and the fifth grade teacher planned a unit on Christopher Columbus that went beyond the textbook and exposed them to authentic research,  multiple perspectives, and the opportunity to come up with their own conclusions about the “hero” status of Christopher Columbus in the United States.  The results are truly incredible. You can read this awesome story of learning at my blog Stories of Learning or directly from Silvia’s blog.

Animation Chefs: Kids learn animation

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on Animation Chefs: Kids learn animation2479 views


What it is: Animation Chefs is a fun website/blog that teaches kids how to create their own animations using stop motion video techniques.  The Animation Chefs teach how to create animations using a “secret” recipe.  To create animations you need two things: a camera and a computer.  Animation Chefs aim to help young producers of stories and animation learn about the latest and greatest ways to get their content created.  The blog will continually be adding tips, tricks, and tutorials for creating online animated videos.

How to integrate Animation Chefs into your curriculum: Animation Chefs is a great place for students (and teachers) to learn the tricks of stop motion animation.  Students can use this site to learn new techniques and get advice for creating their own videos.  My students loved creating their own videos.  Any time I mentioned a video project, the students would ask daily when we would start with it.  Our students have grown up in the video generation and this is one of the languages they want to learn to speak in.  Visit Animation Chefs as a class to learn about stop motion animation, for inspiration, and to learn new tricks.  If you have students that are particularly intrigued by using video to tell a story, this is a great place for them to learn the tricks of the trade.  Often we as teachers shy away from lessons that we aren’t familiar with.  With Animation Chefs, even if you aren’t familiar with creating stop motion animation, you can provide a fun learning experience for your students.  How can your students use stop motion videos for learning?  Students can tell any story, illustrate their learning, explain a difficult concept, reflect on learning, or create videos for younger students/grade levels.  In my computer classroom, I had students take a picture of themselves every single time they logged into the computers during the school year.  We put all of the pictures in a “me” folder on their desktop, labeling each picture with the date.  The last week of school, we created a stop motion video with all of the pictures by putting them into iMovie and setting the picture clip to 1 second.  Students added music that they created in Garageband and a title page.  The end result: each had videos of their school year where they could watch themselves “grow” up.  This works especially well in second through fifth grade where the changes in a years time are marked.

Tips: Animation Chefs has a Twitter page, if your class is on Twitter, they may be a good tweep to follow as a class.

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

Flixtime: Video slideshow creator

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Flixtime: Video slideshow creator2989 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!

Mission U.S.

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Mission U.S.1295 views

What it is: Mission U.S. is a brand new multimedia adventure game site (currently a preview site) that is set to officially launch September 21, 2010.  The site will feature interactive adventure games that are set throughout U.S. history.  The first game, Mission 1: For Crown or Colony, is available for play now.  In For Crown or Colony, student play Nat Wheeler, a 14 year old printer’s apprentice in 1770 Boston.  As students explore Boston 1770, they will encounter merchants, soldiers, sailors, poets, Patriots, and Loyalists.  The game helps students virtually experience the rising tensions of 1770 and ultimately asks them to choose where their loyalties lie.  The website is extremely classroom friendly, teachers can use the teacher tools to manage classrooms and track student progress.  The teacher page is incredible, on it you will find everything from models of instruction, to a synopsis of each stage of the game, to additional tips and resources, and a downloadable version of the game.  From the looks of the site there are more great adventures in history to come!

How to integrate Mission US into your curriculum: Mission U.S. looks like it is going to be an amazing collection of adventure games that drop your students right in the middle of American history.  Students will really understand the history they are learning as they meet historical characters, learn about the conflicts of the day, and are asked to make decisions of loyalty.  A textbook just can’t provide this kind of up-close-and-personal experience with history.  Use the Mission U.S. game and resources to immerse your students in history.  Student progress can be tracked making it easy to use in the classroom as a center or in a lab setting.

Tips: Students can even play the pennywhistle in the mini game, Pennywhistle hero.

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

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Copyright Exposed: Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright

Kelly Tenkely59 Comments on Copyright Exposed: Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright10000 views

What it is: Copyright can be tricky for students (and adults) to understand.  Copyright Exposed: Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright does a good job of just that, taking the mystery out of copyright.  Here your students will watch a short video/comic that explains copyright.  Next, students can explore how copyright came to be by looking at the milestone files on record.  Reading the Fine Print helps students answer questions such as: “Do I have to register a copyright to secure protection?”; “If it’s on the Internet can I use it?”; and “Is it okay to use up to 5% of someone else’s work?”.  Finally, students can learn what steps they need to take to secure a copyright for their work.

How to integrate Copyright Exposed: Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright into your curriculum: Copyright law is important to teach our students of all ages.  As soon as we ask students to create original work, we should be teaching them about copyright.  I always found copyright difficult to teach, students had a hard time understanding what was fair use and when they were violating copyright.  It didn’t help that many of the adults in their lives weren’t model good copyright habits.  When students create their own original work, and you can walk them through the copyright process, it starts to resonate with them more.  Students may think nothing of “borrowing” something off of the Internet for their own use without permission but when they think about someone else claiming the work they created, they start to feel differently about it.  Copyright Exposed is an excellent presentation/site to go through as a class.  It helps answer those “sticky” situations of fair use, owning a copyright, and using content from the Internet.  The site is written in easy-to-understand language so students will have no trouble following along.  Students can navigate this site independently, but I prefer using it with a projector where the whole class can work through copyright together and discuss what they are learning with others.

Tips: I wrote about Cyberbee in 2008, it is another great site for teaching about Copyright!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Copyright Exposed: Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright in your classroom!

Rustle the Leaf

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on Rustle the Leaf4872 views

What it is: Rustle the Leaf is an enchanting site that I learned about from @alexgfrancisco’s excellent blog ZarcoEnglish-Tool of the Day.  Rustle the Leaf is a collection of online comic strips that teach about the environment.  The comics star Rustle the Leaf (don’t you just love the name?) and his friends.  Each comic is designed to help kids think about and understand their relationship to the planet and how their actions affect the Earth.  The site has a great collection of teaching resources that include lesson plans, offline games, and comics.  In the kids fun section, students will find Earth Day e-cards, printable cards, computer desktops, printable posters, and book downloads.

How to integrate Rustle the Leaf into your curriculum: I feel like when I was in elementary school (in the 80’s), that protecting the environment was a much bigger theme in schools than it is now.  Maybe it just isn’t as widely taught at the schools I am in, or maybe it has been cut out of curriculum because it isn’t tested on.  Regardless, the environment is as important to teach today as it was when I was growing up.  Rustle the Leaf is a fun way to help your students think about and understand environmental issues.  Use the site as the basis for a unit around Earth Day or help your students understand that everyday is Earth Day by reading and discussing a new comic every day.  The comics would be great discussion starters at the beginning of the day.  The resources on Rustle the Leaf are really well done, these can be used throughout the year, monthly, or all together as a focused unit.  Set the desktops on classroom computers with Rustle the Leaf wallpapers as a daily reminder of how to care for the environment.

I have a feeling that students will fall in love with the Rustle the Leaf character.  If this is the case for your students, they may enjoy creating their own Rustle the Leaf comics about the environment.  They could even create a Rustle the Leaf comic reminding others to turn off the water or lights to be posted next to sinks and light switches in the classroom.

Tips: At the bottom of the Rustle the Leaf homepage in the left sidebar, you will find links to animated shorts starring Rustle the Leaf.  These are entertaining and have a great message that tie directly into the comics and lesson plans on the site.  Don’t miss them!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Rustle the Leaf in your classroom!

ArcGIS Explorer Online

Kelly Tenkely7 Comments on ArcGIS Explorer Online3000 views

What it is: ArcGIS Explorer Online is a neat mapping experience powered by BING that lets you use, create, and share ArcGIS (Global Information System) maps online.  The online software lets you read and write ArcGIS maps that can be used with the website, ArcGIS for the iPhone, and ArcGIS desktop version.  Mark up maps with notes that have photos, text, and links embedded directly in the map. Measure distances on the map and include them as a layer of the map.    Create a presentation in the map that guides viewers from one location on the map to another.

ArcGIS lets you create an interactive map experience.
1. choose a basemap to display your GIS data on top of.
2. Click on one of the map notes shapes to add a GIS note to your map.
3. Click "edit note" along the bottom of the note and add text, a picture, and a link.
Create a slideshow presentation of you map by clicking "Edit Presentation"
Click "Capture New Slide" to take a screen shot of your map to become a slide in the presentation.
Format the slide with the formatting tools above the map. View slides in the slide pane to the left of the map.
Click the home tab to return to the default tool bar. (You can switch back and forth between the two).
Click Measure to measure distances on the map. Click "add to map" if you want to add the measurement to the map.

How to integrate ArcGIS Explorer Online into your curriculum: ArcGIS Explorer is an impressive online mapping tool.  Use it to create guided tours for your students that can be played on classroom computers as an independent learning system or on the interactive whiteboard as a whole class map tour.  Embed links to informational websites, pictures relating to learning, and text to help guide your students through their journey.  Do one better by asking your students to create a map where they layer information, pictures, measurements, etc. on a map.  Students could create and swap tours of their home town with pen pals/blogging buddies around the world.  Create historical maps by adding notes with primary sources, pictures, links to additional learning (or blog posts that your students have written), and text that indicates the importance of the place.  Create literary maps by making note of key locations in literature that students are reading.  Students can add a note to the map with a quote from the book or a description of what happened there.  When they are finished reading, students can create a presentation/tour of the literature by creating a slide out of each place in the book.  An interactive literary tour of learning beats a traditional book report hands down!  ArcGIS would be a really neat way to plot a Flat Stanley project in the elementary classroom!

Tips: ArcGIS requires the Microsoft Silverlight plugin to work.  You can download Silverlight for free directly from the ArcGIS website.

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