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Teach your Monster to Read: First Steps is a new, free game to practise the first steps of reading. Combining top quality games design with essential learning, the game is built on the principles of synthetic phonics and follows the teaching sequence of the Letters and Sounds programme. It has been assessed by reading experts at the University of Roehampton.

Gamestar Mechanic is an interactive site that leads users through the game design experience. This site teaches the principals of game design and systems thinking in a highly engaging environment that allows users to share games with other community members. Tip: Use as part of a STEM initiative, Gamestar Mechanic has a teacher's page with useful lesson plans.

A wonderful site to use when teaching media literacy. It helps students to explore the world of advertising, and how 'stuff' is marketed for ages 8-12. 

NYTimes article with videos of how technology has changed the way teachers teach.  Published: November 20, 2010

A great article by Will Richardson about how we need to teach students how to 'brand' themselves on the Internet. While the focus seems to be high school, we can begin that work in elementary. 

What it is: Mr. Thorne Does Phonics is a website and YouTube channel dedicated to teaching kids phonics through videos.  The site has a great tag line, "Where learning to read becomes reading to learn." The videos are divided up by categories which include: Introduction to PhonicsGeraldine the Giraffe VideosAlphabet Letters and SoundsMore Alphabet Letters and SoundsConsonant DigraphsLong Vowel SoundsConsonant BlendsAlternative SoundsAlternative Spellings200 High Frequency WordsGrammarChristopher Thorne hosts all of the phonics videos with occasional guest appearances from his friend Geraldine the Giraffe (who has her own book!).  The videos are engaging, help students listen for phoneme segmentation, and give them encouragement to replicate the phoneme sounds themselves.  This library of phonics videos is wonderfully comprehensive! How to integrate Mr. Thorne Does Phonics into the classroom: Mr. Thorne Does Phonics is a fantastic introduction to phonics, phonemes, and decoding words. Students can practice word recognition, pronunciation, and phonics rules with fun videos that can be played, paused, and rewound.  The Mr. Thorne Does Phonics site would be a wonderful site to have available for students on classroom computers as a reading center. Students can visit the reading center and pull up the video of the exact phonics skill that they need to practice.  Mr. Thorne Does Phonics would also be a wonderful way to introduce your whole class to a new phonics skill by playing the videos for them using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. If you have access to a built-in webcam or portable video camera, encourage students to create their own Mr. Thorne inspired phonics videos.  These can be shared with other students in the class, parents, and younger grade levels.  The videos also make a great record of progress throughout the school year. Tips: You can also find Mr. Thorne's phonics videos on YouTube. Can't access YouTube at school?

Super Teacher tools has a bunch of great teaching tools that allow teachers and students to create games, quizzes, charts and a variety of other useful things for your classroom. The most popular is a Jeopardy Review Game that you can create custom Jeopardy games for your students. EdTechIdeas: I use this site to have my students create review games for other students to play. They must first research a given topic, come up with questions and answers, and then use those facts to create a game

A UK site that teaches kids how they leave a digital footprint on the web. 

"Fraboom is an online children's museum packed full of games, interactive books, creativity, learning and-are you ready for this-LIVE online teachers!  On Fraboom students can learn about US presidents while they play games, watch Fraboom TV cartoons to learn vocabulary, read interactive books that encourage creativity and join live online classes with real flesh and blood teachers!  Fraboom TV has a variety of cartoons that will teach students content area vocabulary words. Each cartoon on Fabroom TV lists all associated vocabulary words so teachers can quickly find a video that will support learning.  Cartoons can be searched by keyword or category.  The very best part of Fraboom (in my humble opinion) is the live online teachers.  Drawing classes start every hour on the hour.  Students can drop into a class and learn how to draw cartoons.  There is a new challenge every day so content is always fresh!  Students can interact with teachers through the chat feature; students type a message and the teacher responds to them by name.  Fraboom cartoon characters introduce the activity for the day and the teachers interact with the cartoon on the screen- very fun!  Students learn how to draw step by step guided by the teacher and follow along on their own whiteboard space.  When students are finished, they can share their pictures with the class.  After drawing, the class completes a mad lib together.  The teacher explains a part of speech and requests words for that part of speech from the class.  Students can contribute words to the story by typing them into the chat area. Throughout the class, the teacher shares submitted pictures with the whole class.  I attended two live classes and was really impressed with the teachers in both sessions. They are upbeat, engaging and fun.  Fraboom was created for students six to twelve years old.  Content is being added regularly and fresh challenges in the live classes every day.  Plenty to keep kids creating a

MART Notebook search engine is designed to help you find resources designed for teaching with SMARTBoards.

A fake website that helps to teach students about thinking critically about websites.....

"What it is: IDroo is an educational multi user whiteboard that lets students instantly collaborate online.  Everything that is drawn or written on the whiteboard is visible to all participants in real-time.  IDroo supports an unlimited number of meeting participants, the only limitations are computer power and internet connection speed.  There is a professional math typing tool built-in making it easy to teach or work through math problems collaboratively. Best of all, IDroo can be used with Skype! IDroo is free for non-commercial use. Now for the downfall (and this is a HUGE downfall in my humble opinion), IDroo is currently only available for Windows.  I  know, disappointment for us Mac lovers. *sigh*  If you are using a Windows computer this is a great way to collaborate online! How to integrate IDroo into the classroom: IDroo would be a great app for collaborating with other classrooms around the world.  Students can use the multi user whiteboard space to work together, share ideas, and brainstorm.  IDroo would also be fantastic as a way for teachers to tutor students virtually.  Set up an "open lab" time once a week online where students can drop in and get extra help.  Virtual lab times are especially helpful for elementary students who can't dictate their own schedules and often can't stay after school for extra help. Tips: Don't forget to allow IDroo to access Skype API after you download!" iLearn Technology

"Rocks & Weathering is a great animated site produced by the BBC. The site using interactive animations to teach students all about rocks. The site illustrates and explains how sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks form. In each stage of the site, students can "create" rocks and "inspect" rocks with a virtual magnifying glass. Students "create" rocks by compacting sediment or by adding water to cool lava. After creating rocks, students can then "destroy" rocks by adding elements of weather." Richard Byrne

This lesson is about insects rather than parasites, but it teaches students about some insect parasites (e.g., mosquitoes and lice) as well as about insects in general. Students will see pictures of insects that bite and sting, and others of insects that don't bother people. They will classify insects into "likeable" and "not-so-likeable" categories and draw pictures of insects that people like and don't like.

Story Time for Me is a beautiful collection of digital children's books for primary students in kindergarten through second grade.  Each story includes charming illustrations, animation and professional narration with music and sound effects.  Activities accompany every story that encourage imagination and creativity (these are coming soon!).  The stories have been developed to teach important values through positive moral themes.   Story Time for Me currently has a library of over 30 books and growing.  Next Friday (April 22, 2011) Story Time for Me will be launching free personalized activity books where students can become the star of a book. Students can choose to read each story with or without narration, with or without animation and choose to highlight the words as they are read.iLearn Technology