CALL_IS_VSL

" I rarely say that any site or app is "the best" because what's best for my students may not be the best for another teacher's students. That said, I'm putting together a response to the question in the form of four lists of sites and apps for elementary school. There will be a list for math, science, social studies, and language arts." Visit this blog page to link to the subject areas you wish. T/H R. Byrne

"Back in August I shared an infographic featuring search strategies that every student can use. Yesterday, Vicki Davis posted a great companion to that infographic. Vicki shared this Google Search Modifiers Poster (link opens a PDF). Many of the modifiers featured in the poster can also be used by opening the advanced search menu in Google and making search choices. " Both the sites mentioned here and the links below the short article will be helpful in getting your students to use more productive search terms. T/H R. Byrne

"You could use Google Maps Engine Lite to create your own classroom version of Novels on Location. Ask your students to write short short book reviews in the placemarks that they add to a shared Google Map. If you have students creating video book trailers, those videos could be added to their placemarks too. If could be a fun challenge for your call to try to collectively "read around the world" by locating stories set on each of the seven continents. " A nice tool and an interesting lesson using it. T/H R. Byrne

R. Byrne; "Here are three nice online video creation tools that I frequently recommend to teachers. All three of these tools have themes and or templates that you can apply to your videos."

A video with a little history and discussion of the use of the element should help students remember them better. Accompanying lessons for each element as well.

An interesting discussion of the theory behind maths. No lesson plan has been developed yet for this TED-Ed video, so have a go!

"These videos give you an up to date outline of using the program Blogger. They start off with how to create your first blog all the way through to adding more pages and authors to your blogs" R.Stannard takes you through the updated Blogger program. I have used Blogger for years, but now tend to just use Diggo and Scoop.It, the latter for the more reflective, pedagogically oriented discussions. Blogs are very helpful as a place for student portfolios, and are easy to tag and search.

This is the fourth in a series of Stannard's training videos on Edmodo. The intro to this video tells all about what is available for Edmodo & Moodle.

An educator explains how he uses Twitter to inspire authentic conversations within his class and across the Twitterverse:: "Within days he found students tweeting at each other multiple times an evening, mentioning and "favoriting" their peers' thoughts, and providing ample material for classroom discussion. His students were being "more careful and reading more closely," Bronke noted. Conducting conversations online allowed him to track their comprehension as well. Because most of his students used Twitter for recreational purposes, they could also utilize their experiences in English class and include their class hashtags as they responded to tweets from One Direction and Tim Tebow. And as an added bonus: Bronke used his already-established education-oriented Twitter handle. This meant that the student comments he retweeted were often retweeted and "favorited" by teachers and scholars who wanted to support their ideas. These students learned that their voice mattered even outside of the classroom setting, and that engaging in real dialogue could be fun and worthwhile."

"Socratic Smackdown offers a fun approach to having students practice discussion strategies. Socratic Smackdown is a printable game designed to be played with up to forty students at a time. In the game students are awarded points for using each of six questioning and discussion methods. Students can lose points for interrupting or distracting others." R. Byrne describes the program, with a video tutorial as well. The game includes alignment to Common Core.

This page holds a list of essential sites for teaching computer science and coding to high school students. Spark interest by having students create their own games and apps while learning math.

This Google docs page aligns the apps that can be used to address various aspects of Bloom's Taxonomy. The list is regularly updated by the curates. The "How Do You Use It?" column has lots of ideas for teaching, with an emphasis on creativity and content-based learning. Rich resource. A similar spreadsheet for apps to use with Common Core goals would be very helpful. T/H to A. Burns

"Videos have already become an important part of modern education, whether through well-known education platforms like Khan Academy or content created by teachers for their students' use. Video tutorials can help students with questions on homework or test preparation. However, students are finding the value in creating tutorial videos themselves for other students. " T/H to Nik Peachey

"Mathtrain.TV is a free, educational "kids teaching kids" project from Mr. Marcos & his Students at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, CA." Thousands of videos created by high school students to teach each other. RSS subscription to keep up with updates. This is so far a 7-year project. It would be a good project display point for students as well as a learning tool.

"Back in the day-we usually referred to visible thinking as explicit thinking. But, as with many solid, worthwhile constructs, they are not readily adopted and so often reappear decades (or centuries!) later under a new name with new advocates and with a new dream that maybe this time things might stick and better the lives of students. "So it is with visible thinking. The basic idea is to uncover the implicit and inert thinking and to make that thinking discussable and perhaps available to others. For it is by objectifying knowledge that we can come to understand it." Talking through a project or the composition process is another way to make learning explicit. Explicit understanding of the process is part of Bloom's Taxonomy.

These include tried and true strategies to spark discussion, such as sentence starters and provocative debate ideas, but also colorful charts that can be used as graphic organizers on the wall of your classroom.

Though I don't usually recommend lists, this is an excellent collaboration and is at least partially organized into categories by academic subject, and in some cases types of work, e.g., publish your own writing, create books and posters, use a whiteboard, connect with other classes, etc. EdTechTeachers are a group of prominent teacher educators that consult with and train teachers on a paid basis.

This app is like Evernote on steroids. Free from Microsoft, you can organize a whole class using the apps built into the interface for all devices, both computers and mobile. Organize and publish lesson plans and assignments, create quizzes and make hand-written notes on them, send emails, add photos from other devices, create video and audio messages, clip any webpage to view later on or offline. Works with a large number of other apps, such as fax/scanner tools, Feedly for archiving information, smart pens, ModNotebooks, which digitizes paper and pencil documents. Or create your own app with onenote appi (dev.onenote.com). T/H A. Burns

This will be a very helpful tutorial for those who are beginning to use Moodle for their flipped or online classes. By R. Stannard

Four interpretations of guides to help in writing objectives using Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive learning objectives. These are set out in table format with sample questions and assessments. They should all be very useful in writing curricular objectives and analyzing proposed activities.