Group items tagged

Support for reading

This is what it looks like and sounds like!!! Scenes from the Unquiet Library: Four Classes Researching, Learning, and Collaborating I'm always amazed by how beautifully classes co-exist in our learning space when we max out with four classes. I thought it would be fun this morning to capture a quick snapshot of what learning looks like at The Unquiet Library-moments like this are the happiest for me here in the library and validate the vision of a learning-centered library. Share this: StumbleUpon Digg Reddit Facebook Twitter Email Print « Older Posts Email Subscription Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Join 478 other followers RSS feeds RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Search Recent Posts Video: The Librarian as a Catalyst and Learning Specialist in K12 The Possibilities and Challenges of a Participatory Learning Environment: Students and Teachers Speak Scenes from the Unquiet Library: Four Classes Researching, Learning, and Collaborating Lisa Schwartz - DML Summer Institute 2011 Framing Transliterate Learning Through Inquiry and Participatory Culture Recent Comments Buffy Hamilton on Li… on Video: The Librarian as a Cata… Another Provocation… on The Possibilities and Challeng… Zoe Midler (@zmidler… on Scenes from the Unquiet Librar… Archives Categories Blog Stats 309,618 hits 2011 Library Journal Mover and Shaker Tweets Is it possible to run a premade report in Destiny to calculate the # of titles added in a particular time period? #tlchat 38 minutes ago School librarians: anyone else receive a survey endorsed by AASL from U.S. Census Bureau about schools and st… (cont) http://t.co/D005LNrs 1 hour ago feeling a little weepy/emotional reflecting on what a gift it was to talk to my former elem. school teachers for first time in 30 years f2f. 15 hours ago Tags Advocacy books collaboration coo

Kids these days don't read email. So how do you get them to remember important assignments, tests or messages for their parents? You send them a text. SendHub is a fast and simple communications tool designed to help educators communicate more effectively with their students after the school day ends. Their simple user interface enables teachers and administrators to make calls, send messages to individual students or entire classes, and also stay in touch with parents. Here are a few reasons why SendHub might be right for your class: * Easily build your class database with text to join, or simply import existing contact lists. * Send messages from your phone or the Web-- communicate the way you want to. * Schedule assignment or test reminders to be sent to students for any time in the future. * Share groups with other teachers or administrators without hassle-- then everyone with your group will get changes you make immediately. Signup for free at www.sendhub.com

4. QuizBean (formerly known as QuizPoo) is nice platform for creating simple image-based quizzes that your students can complete online. The service recently received some updates that teachers will appreciate. First, you can now add more than two answer choices to each question. Second, you can now assign quizzes to students on a class-by-class or individual basis. Third, quiz results are automatically sent to your teacher dashboard when students have completed a quiz. One of the things that I like about QuizBean is that students get immediate feedback on each question that they answer. Before moving to the next question students are told if they got the previous question right or wrong. The new option of having your students' results sent directly to your dashboard will save you a lot of time grading quizzes. The option to include pictures makes QuizBean a good platform for asking questions that include diagrams and equations.

With Tellagami, begin by creating and customizing a character. Although there is not a great deal of variety in virtual appearance, just enough options exist to personalize your character. From there, you choose a background either from a few in the app itself or your camera roll. I love to take a picture at the front of the classroom and have my character introduce me to the class. I have worked with teachers where they introduce the classroom to students or parents with their character in different spots around the room, even on a bookshelf. After you customize your character and background, you can choose how you want your character to talk, either by recording your voice or typing in text. If you record your voice, you have 30 seconds. If you choose text to speech, there are male and female voices with a few different accents. Some quick ideas you might try: * Have your character tell a story. * Pick a person in history and have them introduce themselves * Use a plant cell as the background and have the avatar name and discuss the function of each part of the cell. * Recite a famous poem or speech * Read a poem they wrote * Take a trip or go back in time and describe where the location/time period * Speak in Spanish, French, Mandarin or any language When you are all done, Gamis can be emailed, posted to Facebook, or Tweeted, which also generates a link to share. You can also view your movie online and get the embed code. I could see embedding a whole bunch of these on a class wiki or blog. You can also save them to your iPad Photos, which is what I like to do. From there, Gamis can be combined together in iMovie or incorporated into other apps like Explain Everything. (Greg Kulowic has some great examples of this, as "appsmashes.") Your only limit is your imagination! Using animation with your students can have a profound effect on how they participate in a project. Their work can be liberated when they have the opportunity to separate

gClassFolders is a Google Drive script that will create folders for you for as many course sections as you need. The concept behind it is this; students have a "dropbox" folder in their Google Drive accounts that you have shared with them. To submit work students drag files into that "dropbox" folder. From there gClassFolders sorts submissions to the correct folder for each student. The latest version of gClassFolders is part of gClassHub which includes other useful scripts like Doctopus. This means that after your students have submitted their work through Google Drive you can grade it, write feedback, and have emails sent to students from one spreadsheet in your Google Drive account. Some other highlights of the latest version of gClassFolders include the option to add students to add students without having to re-create all of your folders and an option for moving students from one class to another without having to re-create folders. Applications for Education It does take a few tries to really understand using gClassFolders and Doctopus. Once you get the hang of it though it can save you a ton of time in the management of the files that students share with you. Visit the instructions page on gClassFolders for detailed directions on running gClassFolders.

"View & Comment on Any Document Review a Word document, fill out a PDF form, mark up an image, and more... All with Crocodoc, all online, all for free." Similar to Google Docs but being used in Emerging Technology class for 8th grade

suggested by Linda Lawson 2/28/12

CK-12 Foundation is a nonprofit organization that offers free, fully customizable, open-source digital textbooks for math, science and engineering classes that are aligned with the standards. Users may read, download, print, and annotate these books written by subject area experts and educators on any ePub compatible device.  Teachers may incorporate all. Most, some, or no content from CK-12 into their digital textbooks, and can build their own from scratch. To create a true multimedia experience, textbooks contain images, videos, graphics, web links, and animations. 

Flowboard is a free app that allows users to create presentations on the iPad. You can add images, text and video to the presentation to make them look more appealing and informative. This app lets students make group presentations on topics assigned to them. When working in groups, students have to cooperate with each other to make a presentation that explains a particular topic to the rest of the class.

"Here be Fiction has been developed to support the discovery of fiction ebooks available from many of the same K-12 publishers that we are already working with for informational ebooks. These publishers have been producing high quality, award winning fiction books for years, but many school librarians are not familiar with the authors and titles. Here Be Fiction is working with the publishers to provide free access to selected ebooks to help school librarians discover the great fiction available right now. We need your help to read these books, write reviews, and discover the hidden gems. Some of our colleagues have already begun the exploration; Here be Fiction will help accelerate the efforts by creating a critical mass of readers and reviewers. The site will remain available throughout the year for anyone the explore the reviews. Registered users can create wishlists of books that look interesting. Participating publishers have agreed to the following terms: Publishers must provide either multi-user access or individual access with a discount for licensing multiple simultaneous readers so ebooks can be used for class novels, book clubs, reading groups, etc. Publishers must make ebooks must be available for offline access through a secure platform such as MackinVIA or a download using appropriate security to avoid digital divide issues and allow increased home access and reading in schools without wifi. Publishers must, when possible, allow the use of text-to-speech ability available through the reading platform to support struggling readers or those with special needs."

"The primary goal is to inspire youth to explore their own interests through a series of online activities and related incentive badges. Many of these badges are integrated with content from online education conferences, which highlight a variety of different topics. Smithsonian Quests & BadgesThe second goal is to enhance students' cognitive capabilities by incorporating knowledge and skill-building into the quests. The online conferences and quests are interdisciplinary in nature, offering students the opportunity to choose what they care about most. All quests engage students in exploring a topic of interest either as part of a formal standards-aligned school curriculum or as a student-driven after school activity. An important secondary audience is you, the educator, whose support is vital in connecting with students. To this end, you also will be offered badges that will document their participation in Smithsonian online conferences, online professional development sessions, and the completion of class projects. All quests will be reviewed and badges awarded by a team of Smithsonian experts."

The TooLoud! app is ideal for the teacher who needs to limit noise in the classroom environment. It records decibels, displaying the volume levels in numbers. Use it to let the class know when they cross the auditory line.

Skaffl is a free iPad app that is designed to help you distribute, collect, and grade assignments on your iPad. Like similar apps, on Skaffl you can create classrooms that your students join through a class code. Once your classroom is created you can distribute assignments and hand-outs to your students. Assignments can be created in the app or you can attach items created outside of the Skaffl app. Your students can submit work through the app. You can grade your students' assignments directly within the app. Assignments that aren't going to be graded (a rough draft of an essay, for example) can be annotated by you to provide students with ungraded feedback.

The national survey of kids ages 6-17 and their parents also found that half of kids ages 9-17 say they would read more books for fun if they had greater access to ebooks-although 80 percent of kids who read ebooks say they still read books for fun primarily in print. Read to find more information.

"In-class participation has increased across the board. I'm not getting the blank stares I used to. My students are excited to voice their opinions." - Nico Saldana, High School History Teacher "With Collaborize Classroom, students engage and interact in ways that I never thought were possible.

19Pencils helps you connect with other teachers to share resources. Discover websites, videos, and more for your Pre K-8 students from teachers just like you, from around the world. Easily publish content for class access with a with a single click and no student account required. Sign Up Now For Free, or Learn More.

"Meanwhile, Sandra Zelno of the Education Law Center shared school library initiatives from other states and pointed out that while Pennsylvania doesn't require librarians for public schools, it mandates them for private schools and prisons."

PA looks at school libraries and librarians

Might be good to share some of these tips with teachers at the beginning of the year.

Photopeach -- now has an educator account but it's not free. Some advantages over the free tool. Cost depends on how many student accounts you would like to create. $9.00/mo. for the least expensive for 50 student accounts and one teacher account.