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Another must see Mastery Connect is both an online standards tracking tool (parts of it are free) and a free iPhone/iPod/iPad app. Because the app is truly free, I'll start with it. the Mastery Connect app is a handy way to keep the Common Core standards accessible while you teach. the app sorts the common core standards by grade level, subject and strand. This is REALLY nice for quickly locating and referencing standards. Mastery Connect the website is the real gem. the site is brilliantly designed, easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing and best of all, it works the way you think it should. With the Mastery Connect Master Tracker, teachers can assess core standards, monitor student performance and report student progress to parents and administrators. Master Tracker makes formative assessment that is standards based manageable to keep track of. Rearrange standards in the Master Tracker based on the order that you teach them in. View only the standards you are currently assessing, and view the entire standard as a pop-up. Within Mastery Connect, teachers can create and share common assessments. Similar in feel to other social networks, Mastery Connect lets you connect with other educators to share assessments, interact and offer each other support. It is easy to expand your PLN into the space, just find teachers with similar interests and goals and start sharing! And now for my VERY favorite part- bubble sheet scoring. Mastery Connect uses GradeCam technology to make assessment about as quick as it could be. Just hold up bubble sheets to your webcam or a document cam and it is instantly scored and entered into the Master Tracker associated with the student it belongs to and the standard it is addressing. Seriously cool. I am not a big fan of multiple choice testing (mostly because I think it is a lazy way to find out what a student knows and doesn't give a true picture of what a student knows or can do) but I think I have figured out ho

How to integrate Pegby into the classroom: Pegby is one of those tools that I get totally geeked out about. I love the 3×5 note card look, the columns, the tagging, the associated calendar dates. A recipe for edu-love I tell ya! Pegby is a great tool for organizing your teacher self this year. Add ideas for the school year, tasks, lesson plans, to-do items, etc. to your board as cards. Create columns that make sense to you and organize to your heart's content! Want one better? Share your board with colleagues so that you are all on the same page and can share lessons/resources/task responsibilities. Older students can keep their school year organized by adding assignments, tasks, uploading work, taking/keeping notes and sharing their board with Pegby. As students work on and complete tasks, they can move items from one column to the next. Those unit tests won't be a problem because they can tag pertinent information and easily study and review tagged information. Pegby would also be a great tool for organizing research projects (even collaborative research projects). Students can decide how they want to organize their research and notes, tag information and attach documents. All of the research is in one place and tagged for easy reference when it comes time to compile the research. Does your school use standards to keep track of learning? Why not create columns of Standards headings, and associate each standard with a note card? Students can upload any files or work associated with the standard. OR instead of making each column a standard heading, columns can be associated with mastery level of the standard. As a student moves through levels of mastery, they can move that standard card from one column to the next making stacks out of the standard subject. Students can keep track of their own learning, share their "Standards" board with teachers and parents. Is your class collaborating with other classrooms? Create a collaboratio

to integrate History Buff into the classroom: History Buff is a website that can help history come to life through story, virtual tours, audio and primary source news papers. I suspect that most students fall into the judge-a-site-by-it's-cover category like me. For this reason, if I was using it in my classroom, I wouldn't send students directly to the website to do a lot of digging on their own. Instead, I might direct them to the portion of the site I knew we would be using through a classroom website, wiki, blog or use a Weblist or Symbaloo to link to them. It is amazing how changing something as small as the entry point into a site can change a students attitude about the site (heck, I'm like that too!). Once I got into History Buff, I really appreciated the connection to primary sources and the way that the "actual" newspapers bring history to life. I REALLY liked the hoaxes in news section and suspect that students will get a kick out of it to. Your kids will be asking, how can people be SO gullible? these kinds of stories are wonderful discussion starters and will make students think critically about their own news media. As a fun extension, have your students write their own hoax news stories. Okay, now for demystifying the navigation of this site. See the itty bitty brown words in the left sidebar that are all squished together? That is the navigation. For real. I didn't notice it at first either! Go ahead and click on one to test it out…not so bad when you know what you are looking for, right? Right. For your convenience, I'm linking to each page of the site below so you can easily find what you are looking for. :) Online Newspaper Archives Historic Panoramas Reference Libraries (audio resources, hoaxes) Primary Source Material State Facts Interactive Quizzes Tips: History Buff has a newsletter you can subscribe to if you are, you know, a history buff. Just enter your email in that box under the header and clic

We Give Books instantly increases your classroom library and puts high-quality books within reach for children everywhere. We Give Books makes an excellent companion to the interactive whiteboard or projector-connected classroom computer for a class read along. Pull up a story and read the book chorally, ask students to take turns reading, or simply follow along. Everyone can see the pictures and words! This is a great resource for practicing reading strategies together as a class. We Give Books makes a wonderful reading station on classroom computers. Students can access wonderful stories any time through We Give Books. For those students that struggle with indpendent reading (or are emergent readers) there is a read-along option on some of the stories. Students can follow along with the reading building fluency, flow and vocabulary. If you are a primary or elementary teacher, this is a must-add link to your classroom website or blog. Be sure to share the site with families so that students can access the same wonderful library of books from home. Students (and teachers) can create their own library where they keep the books they have read (or enjoy reading). To add a book to a library, you must be a member of We Give Books- no problem, it is quick and free to become a member! Tips: Students can use the word cloud on the right side of the We Give Books page to find books about their favorite subjects.

Comic Creator in the classroom: the Boy's Life Comic Creator is a great little tool to help your boys connect with writing and story telling in a way that they enjoy and understand. the tool is simple enough to use as a writing station/center on classroom computers. the comic does need to be created in one sitting, there is no way to save and come back to a comic later. Completed comics can be printed off and shared. the Comic Creator is a great entry point into writing but could also be useful in math for creating and solving story problems. Students can create a short math comic strip that can be traded with other students to solve. Students taking a foreign language class could practice new words by creating a comic strip story in Comic Creator. Use Comic Creator the first week of school as a way for boys to tell all about themselves. Each student can create a comic strip that stars them as the main character. Invite other students to try to match the comic strip with the student as a fun interactive bulletin board activity (Think comics on one side, student pictures on the other and string to draw the "line" between matches).

Most of the material on the Why Files is geared toward an elementary and middle school audience. the teachers' section of the Why Files offers pdf guides and quizzes that you can use to teach the science of the stories featured on the front page of the Why Files. the Why Files could also be a good resource for students to explore independently or with their parents.

Surfboard is a very cool service (similar to Flipboard on the iPad) that displays any website in a flippable newspaper-like display. All your different blog entries or pages are displayed and all the links stay alive. This makes the web reading experience a much more enjoyable one. This is a great Web 2 tool for everyone! To use Surfboard all you have to do is enter the url of your favorite website and click "get surfing." That site will then be displayed in a manner that allows you to flip through the site's content without seeing the sidebar widgets and or advertisements. For proper flippable display Surfboard requires the use of the latest versions of Chrome or Safari.

Scholastic's Share What You Read service is very easy for students to use and for teachers to incorporate into the classroom. the advantage of using the Scholastic service over a creating a wiki for the class is that the Scholastic service saves teachers time. the Scholastic service does not require users to create an account prior to writing a review. In fact, the only information they ever ask for is the student's first name, grade, and state.

Pinterest is a great way to organize yourself as a teacher. Gather up all those ideas you see online and then share them with other teachers (who may or may not be Pinterest users…it really doesn't matter). Because you can share Pinterest boards with non-Pinterest users, this is a great way to share things with students. the resource could be anything- pictures, a website, a video. Create a board for every unit that you do and share those boards with students so that they can continue exploring and learning. Students can use Pinterest too, invite young students to help build boards in a class Pinterest account. Create a board for every letter of the alphabet and let students add pictures that they come across to the letter board that it matches. Pinterest has a bookmark tool that you can put in your bookmark bar to make this as easy as one click! Students can put their first name in the description so you (and other students) can keep track of who found what. Like a year-long web scavenger hunt! Older students can create their own Pinterest boards. Pinterest would be a great place for them to collect images that they feel say something about them-an identity board. these boards can be shared with others and added to all year. Not only will you get to know your students better, but other students will find connections they didn't know they had. Pinterest is a nice visual way for students to share their web findings. Pinterest even lets students decide if they want to be the only contributor to their board or if they want to open it up for collaboration so others can add their findings to the board. Way cool. I have two Pinterest boards that may be of interest to you, one is Classroom Inspiration where I am keeping ideas of things I want to do with students or for our classroom. the other is School Design where I am collecting inspirational designs that I want to see in our school when we build our own building.

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The Write-n-ator highlights words and vocabulary through fun videos and writing challenges starring The PBS character Word Girl.  Offer These challenges to your students as a class using a projector or interactive whiteboard.  Watch The video clip and create a class response to add to The challenge.  Alternately, each student can take The challenge in a writing journal.  These videos and challenges make for a fun introductory activity to use as a writing warm up.  They have The added benefit of introducing new words and vocabulary.

Long live the P.O.W. ~ Projectors on Wheels! Take the computer off the cart and put it in teachers' hands. Take the projector off of the ceiling mount and put it on wheels. Why? Read on

The National Archives' Digital Classroom offers a multitude of resources for The use of primary sources in The classroom. With access to copies of primary documents from The holdings of The National Archives of The United States, teachers can develop Their own activities and lesson plans that make historical periods come alive for Their students or choose from dozens of resources that have already been developed and are featured here.

While there are some UK-specific terms thrown in here and there, a simple preview of the activity yourself will determine if it's significant enough to be a concern. (I'm willing to bet it won't be.) I can see these activities used in a whole-class setting for formative assessment, to introduce topics or reinforce skills, especially where Interactive White Boards (IWBs) are available. Bring students up to the board and let them explain how they are solving the problem! the site could also be used effectively in centers, especially given the ease of navigation. Finally, since each activity has its own unique URL, it's easy to add Favorites or Bookmarks to local browsers, making immediate access a snap.

Scrumblr is a very simple brainstorming tool. The post-it notes you can add to The page are purely text - you can't add links, images or videos like oTher tools such as Wallwisher or Stixy. It's basic, but this can be a useful feature as There are less distractions or things to confuse learners. Simply click The + icon to add more notes and double click on The notes to add text. You can also add text to The backgound to create different zones.

Math activities to help show your child the fun side of learning! From easy math activities to more advanced, we've got you covered! Use the selector on the right to narrow your search by grade. For more structured math practice be sure to check out the Math Worksheets and Math Study Guide sections of the site before you leave!

Especially for 5th grade teachers It's an amazing course for those interested in the birth of America. the American Revolution entailed some remarkable transformations - converting British colonists into American revolutionaries, and a cluster of colonies into a confederation of states with a common cause - but it was far more complex and enduring than the fighting of a war. As John Adams put it, "the Revolution was in the Minds of the people… before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexintgon" - and it continued long past America's victory at Yorktown. This course will examine the Revolution from this broad perspective, tracing the participants' shifting sense of themselves as British subjects, colonial settlers, revolutionaries, and Americans.

Cite Bite could be a handy little tool for those times when you want all of the students in your classroom to read and discuss a passage from an online article. While you could probably accomplish the same thing by just posting the source link on your classroom blog, the benefit of Cite Bite is that it will automatically highlight and direct students to the passage you want them to discuss.

Whether you use the web version of Squrl or the iPad version of it, Squrl could be an excellent way to create playlists of educational content that you want to bring into your classroom. Because you can source video from across the web in one place, you should save yourself the time of visiting multiple sites to search for video.