Excellent Resource for classroom science programs. Includes videos, interactives, and a section where students can email their questions about science to scientists!
One very quick way to look up words on Google is simply to type define:anyword in the Google search field. However, their actual dictionary is far and away my favourite of all the dictionaries I've reviewed, mainly because of its clean, ad-free format. When you click on a sound icon to hear a word pronounced, it doesn't open in another annoying window. The definitions are not too complicated for use by school kids and there are examples used in context and links to other definitions found on the web. At any time, at the top of the page, you can also access web-links, images, videos, etc. that are part of a regular Google search. The site also works with NaturalReader.
Many video tutorials at this site for specialty aspects of Kurzweil and other programs including Dragon Naturally Speaking, Inspiration, Moodle, Powerpoint.
This became my 500th bookmark on Diigo thanks to Jim Batchel. If you are trying to figure out whether blogs/wikis/ning is better for your students, it looks like you can have it all and more at ThinkQuest! You need an account to sign in but under the Projects tab you can look at some public video tours of its features. ThinkQuest is a protected, online learning platform that enables teachers to integrate learning projects into their classroom curriculum and students to develop critical 21st century skills. It includes a project environment where teachers and students engage in collaborative learning; a competition space where students participate in website development contests; and the award-winning ThinkQuest library, a learning resource visited by millions.
This is an amazing tool for students or teachers to create interactive guided presentations by combining web pages, photos, Power Point and more with your voice, notes and highlights. Viewers can control the pages, scroll, click on links, view videos and more.
Dipity is a free online timeliner tool . I've looked at several and think it may be the best for intermediate students to use. It's easy to create a free account and start working. The interface is very simple and requires no tutorial. Basically, each new event gives you boxes for title, date, upload a picture or video, url link, and description. You can share timelines out by email or automatically to popular online sites such as Diigo, Facebook, etc. iLearn website has a review of this timeliner and ideas for using it in the classroom in the July 22 2008 entry.
Excellent online timeliner recommended by iLearn website. See her July 22 2008 review for comments about using Capzles in the classroom to keep a log of your students' reading progress through the year! This timeliner has an extremely attractive interface and is easy to use. You have to upload photos, videos, and audio files that you want to use. You can add short captions and descriptions easily to those files. The descriptions box looks small but expands as you add more text. Once you're out of edit mode a person clicking on the picture sees the whole block of text. If you want to create a longer text entry, you can blog directly on the timeline. It's unfortunate that you can't create a blog entry and have a picture, too, as the text graphic is kind of plain. Very slick feature grabs the date from your uploaded photos and adds them to the correct place on the timeline. Ideal for classroom use if kids don't spend too much time fiddling with the themes options. The only problem for classroom use is that you can't embed live links which is necessary for linking to sources used or other important sites. Or maybe I just didn't figure it out.
The Week in Rap provides a weekly summary of current events in a hip-hop music video for teens and students. Sometimes called "Weekend Rap" or "Week and Rap."
Detailed description (and video) of a vocabulary game using wordle word clouds. The blogger had created a wordle and covered up the words with with rectangles. Students came to the SMARTBoard one at a time to touch the rectangle and reveal a word. Then they used a spinner to tell them to use the word in a sentence, tell how many syllables, or give a synonym or antonym. The rectangles were colour coded by degree of difficulty so the teacher could differentiate instruction. You can download the Notebook file, and the blogger promises a tutorial for this idea.
Students can create a virtual museum box in which to collect items such as text, photos, video, and uploaded items needed to make an argument, describe a person or historical/geographical site etc. Students can also view other museum boxes and comment. For classroom use ideas, see Kelly Tenkley's Jan 06, 2009 post at iLearn Technology. This website was inspired by Thomas Clarkston who carried around a real museum box of artifacts to make a case for the abolition of slavery. It would probably be great for the PG group that's planning to do a Barkerville Unit.
Amazing site presented by the Coquitlam team at the UDL conference. Into the Book focuses on eight reading comprehension strategies for grades 1-4. Kids area has interactive activities for each strategy, teacher area features teacher guides, lesson plans, posters, video and audio clips, downloads, and more.
The Access Center improves students' access to the general education curriculum. The Access Center assists students with disabilities as well as students with other needs. There are links to videos about UDL and many great resources on this site.
Utah's Jordan School District has a great selection of curriculum resources for teaching with technology. This is the district that created the Pay Attention video, and you can download it here.
This is the wiki from the iPad apps session I just attended at CSUN 2011. Great info about good apps for accessibility and great hands-on workshop. They have videos and .pdfs on their site.
This is a powerful video from CBC. It introduces the world of people within the autism spectrum disorder and provides insight into how they feel about us, our views toward them, learning, etc. Fascinating!
Created by students in a Grade 6/7 class.