video – Page 9 – iLearn Technology

Faux Paw and the Dangerous Download

October 12, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment5172 views

What it is: I love iKeep Safe and have blogged about it in the past as an excellent introduction and support for Internet Safety. I learned today about a new Faux Paw book and video called “Faux Paw and the Dangerous Download”. In Faux Paw the Techno Cat’s new adventure, she learns that downloading is a great way to get information, but only when it is done the right way. Faux Paw uses a risky new file sharing program to download a song and learns a lesson the hard way. The video is extremely relevant to the online world that our kids live in and teaches a valuable lesson about illegal file sharing. You can download the pdf version of the book or watch the video (created specifically for iPods but can be viewed with a Quick Time player as well).

How to integrate Faux Paw and the Dangerous Download into the classroom: This is a well made video, book, and story to share with elementary students. The cartoon is easy to understand and will help younger students grasp the difficult concept of illegal downloading and the problems it can cause. Often students can’t discern between safe and non-safe websites and why getting something for “free” isn’t always a good idea. Use this video as part of your Internet safety unit, as an introduction to copyright, or as part of your character education program.

Tips: The Faux Paw series is worth owning. You can purchase books and DVDs for your library. Students will love being able to check out these books to read again and again.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Faux Paw and the Dangerous Download in your classroom.

Free 1 year subscription to Smilebox (Teacher Box)

September 12, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2159 views

What it is: I first blogged about Smilebox September of 2008. Smilebox is offering a free 1 year subscription to educators! Smilebox is a fun, easy way to send photos, videos, and information to students and parents securely. Smilebox lets you create very impressive looking multimedia presentations quickly and easily. The free subscription (a $39.99 value) gives you unlimited access to more than 900 Smilebox designs and lets you choose from thousands of music options (or upload your own). Finished Smilebox creations can be emailed, blogged, printed, burned to a DVD, or saved as jpeg images.

How to integrate Smilebox (Teacher Box) into the classroom: Smilebox is a great way for you to communicate with parents. Smilebox is perfect for newsletters, overviews of teaching units, performance and field trip recaps, classroom activities, school memory books, and more. Smilebox will make you look like a superstar, the results are SO impressive!

Tips: Be sure to sign up for Smile Box (Teacher Box) today, space in this program is limited!

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

Meet Me at the Corner

September 8, 2009Kelly Tenkely4 Comments1519 views

What it is: Meet Me at the Corner is an inventive site that seeks to take students on virtual field trips through videos created by students. The site started with video podcasts of the history and people of New York City. As the site grows through student submissions, people and events of other towns, cities, and nations will be highlighted. Currently there are video podcasts from Colorado, California, North Carolina, Texas, and Maryland. Through the Meet Me at the Corner videos, students can learn about people, jobs, and places around the country and soon around the world. Students can also submit videos from their corner of the world. Meet Me at the Corner also has video book reviews that can motivate students to read books they may not have considered.

How to integrate Meet Me at the Corner into the classroom: Meet Me at the Corner is a great new resource for introducing your students to the wider world. Students can take a virtual field trip to different states through videos, learning about people, their jobs, and where they live. These videos give your students a better understanding of the world they live in. Meet Me at the Corner encourages student video submissions. Consider creating a class video about your city/state/school to submit to Meet Me at the Corner. It would be great for students to get a first hand look at schools and students from around the world.

Tips: Meet Me at the Corner has a contest section with contests that students can take part in. These contests are updated regularly so be sure to check them out.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Meet Me at the Corner in your classroom.

Virtual Volcano

June 17, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment5197 views

What it is: Virtual Volcano is a Discovery Channel interactive where students learn about and test out volcanoes. First students get information about plate boundaries, active volcanoes around the world, and tectonic plates. They see all of this information on a 3-D rotating globe. Next students can learn about the different types of volcanoes, they will discover the three most common categories and read about each categories profile and its association with types of magma. Then students can take a journey inside the volcano. Here they will learn about the vents and how the volcano works. After students have learned some basic information about volcanoes, they can build their own volcano and watch it erupt. Students can set the conditions for the volcanoes, changing the viscosity and gas. When they are finished creating the volcano, they can test out it’s eruption.

How to integrate Virtual Volcano into the classroom: Virtual Volcano goes beyond the vinegar and baking soda models. This site really gives students an inside look at exactly how a volcano works. Students can adjust the viscosity and gasses and get a real idea about what is going on when a volcano erupts. This site would make an excellent experiment center on classroom computers while your students are learning about volcanoes. The site is also perfect for whole class instruction with a projector or an interactive whiteboard. Be sure to invite students up to adjust the conditions of the volcano and create their own eruption. Discuss the type of volcano the class has created and make predictions about what the volcano will look like before erupting it.

Tips: In the upper right corner of the volcano simulator you will find a link to information about Pompeii. Students can learn about Pompeii and take a quiz. There is also an excellent video of a volcano eruption here.

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

NASA Images

June 17, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3030 views

What it is: NASA Images is a website where you can find amazing images of the universe, solar system, earth, aeronautics and astronauts. In addition to images, you will find video and audio collections in this easily searchable digital library. The site has a picture timeline of spaceflight, collections of images, audio, and video, and presentations created by users. The content on NASA images is not under copyright so it can be used without express permission. This means that you and your students can use the high quality images, HD video, and audio in slideshows, movies, classroom websites, blogs, and interactive whiteboard notebooks.

How to integrate NASA Images into the classroom: This is an incredible collection of resources. Students and teachers can use them to enhance any space unit. This site will excite students and build interest around space exploration, aeronautics, and astronomy. Create your own planetarium or journey through space and share with an interactive whiteboard or in a slide show presentation with a projector. Students could create a blog or wiki all about their ‘travels’ through space for other students and parents to view. NASA Images even offers the tools to build a presentation right on the site. Presentations can then be embedded on other websites, wikis, or blogs.

Tips: NASA Images is updated regularly, check back for the newest additions.

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

Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime

May 12, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2030 views

What it is: Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime is an incredible look into the life of Benjamin Franklin. I learned about this awesome site from @kylepace on Twitter (a great educator to follow if you aren’t already). Students can play, listen, watch, observe and have fun learning about Benjamin Franklin’s life and legacy. Students can explore Franklin’s life by different themes such as Franklin’s character, B. Franklin Printer, Franklin at Home, Doing Good, Franklin at Home, and World Stage. This feature breaks Franklin’s life down into manageable pieces for students and provides a well rounded understanding of who Franklin was and why he is an important figure in American history. As students explore the timeline, they will find quotes, stories, videos, and audio about Benjamin Franklin. I wish there was an interactive timeline of every historical figure like this one! History would have been so much easier for me to understand.

How to integrate Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime into the classroom: This interactive timeline would be great for use with a whole class and Interactive whiteboard. Students could take turns visiting the whiteboard to ‘discover’ a new fact about Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime could be set up on classroom computers for students to visit as a center during a unit on Franklin. In a computer lab setting, students could be assigned a theme or time period of Benjamin Franklin’s life to explore and share later with the class. Make it even more fun by creating a time machine atmosphere where students can travel back in time to learn about Franklin…stamp their time travelling passports as they ‘journey’ from one period of Franklin’s life to another. This site is an outstanding way to capture students interest in Franklin and American history.

Tips: Show students the help/tips section for a key to understanding the different symbols on Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Franklin’s Interactive Lifetime in your classroom.

Educational Videos

April 24, 2009Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3305 views

What it is: Educational videos can be expensive, out of date, or hard to find. Happily there are a few sites working to make it easier to access educational videos for free. PBS has always been known for their great educational material. They have hosted videos on their site for some time but they were not located in one place where they could be easily sorted through. Now PBS has PBS video, all the great PBS material in one easy-to-search place. You can browse these videos by program, topic, or keyword search. All videos are on demand, I have been impressed with the quality! Another great website for on demand free videos is American History in Video by History Education. American History in Video has more than 5,000 titles in its collection! The videos allow students to analyze historical events, and look at the events over time through commercial and governmental newsreels, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries. Students and teachers can search videos by year, historical event, people, places, subjects, and by keyword. This is an outstanding collection of free on demand history video!

How to integrate Educational Videos into the classroom: Video is an amazing medium for teaching. It brings textbooks to life and helps students to relate to history and science in new ways. Kids often find history boring and I believe one of the reasons is that they haven’t had enough life experiences to relate what they are learning to prior knowledge. Video helps them make connections that reading a textbook can’t do. Use these videos as an introduction to learning, as a reinforcement during learning, or embedded in lessons.

Tips: Always make sure you watch a video in its entirety before showing it to a class. Sometimes content may not be age appropriate or as on topic as you would have guessed.

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

Learning Clip

April 7, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2432 views

What it is: Learning Clip is a site that I reviewed in Nov. 2008 that I took another look at today and was even MORE impressed than I remembered being the first time I saw it. Learning Clip is a collection of interactive whiteboard resources for primary math. Resources and activities include topics such as: using and applying math, understanding numbers, number facts, calculating, understanding shape, measuring, and handling data. Each activity is interactive and encourages students involvement and discovery in math. Each activity comes with a brief description of the activity, a pdf of notes that accompany the activity, the age appropriateness, and a corresponding worksheet that can be printed out. Each topic has several sub-topics and each sub-topic has several interactive activities. When an activity is loaded, a video clip explaining the math concept will play. Each activity includes a game or interactive activity space for students to practice what they are learning.

How to integrate Learning Clip into the classroom: Learning Clip is an outstanding resource for interactive math activities! The video clips help students understand the math concept that can be practiced in an interactive environment. This site is perfect for use with an interactive whiteboard and whole class or small group instruction. Students can take turns interacting with the content to strengthen understanding of math concepts. Learning clip could also be successfully used in a computer lab or on classroom computers for individual student learning and practice. One thing that Learning Clip has added since I visited last is the ability to choose what currency you would like students to practice with in the Money activities. This site was created in the UK so this feature makes it very user friendly for us Yanks. 🙂 The activities are all wonderful!

Tips: Registration is required but it is free. If you create a username and password, consider creating one that is class friendly. This way if you do decide to use the activities in the lab setting, students will be able to logon and access activities easily.

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

Ideas to Inspire

March 30, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2431 views

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

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

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

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

Hope for 21st Century Education

March 10, 2009March 10, 2009Kelly Tenkely6 Comments2177 views