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For those vacation assignments!! Do you have students who take family vacations or have special opportunities to travel during the school year? What sort of assignments do you require them to do while away? Do they journal their adventures and gather brochures to report back to the class?

In the past, my students have used Photostory3 to show and talk about their learning as a starting point for their Student Led Conference with their parents. I'm now teaching in a mac school so Photostory3 was not an option. After considering iMovie (and all of it's amazing features) I felt that it had too many features that might be distracting for what I wanted. The ease at which a mac allows you to record your voice, and video using the inbuilt webcam and mic was still going to be the foundation of recording our learning but I still needed to find a suitable platform. A wiki was a consideration and then the brainwave of VoiceThread appeared in my head late one night! The more I considered VoiceThread, the more it's interactive features appealed to me. Using Photostory3 meant a final product. Nothing more added, no room for comment by parents and unless you sent the exported movie file, or embedded it on a wiki, no way for other family members in different parts of the country or in other parts of world, to see it. Using VoiceThread was easy! We've already used it several times this year, so the "tool" and how to use it was already established. Here's the step by step organisation we used to complete a digital protfolio for each student in Room202.

Greg, possibly a way forward for sharing grades with families easily.

Plastelina, (http://www.plastelina.net), has some of my favorite online games for gifted children.They have a good selection of logic games that are sure to appeal to gifted children. Five of the games are free to play, Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/family/articles/70813.aspx#ixzz0nVomMGi4

The Fun Brain Math Arcade, (www.funbrain.com/brain/MathBrain/MathBrain.html), covers a wide gamut of math skills and would be great practice for gifted math students. The games start off relatively easy, but soon increase in difficulty to provide the level of challenge required to engage students. There are 25 games in all to complete as you work your way around this virtual board game, and each is presented in a fun and engaging way. As well as basic facts, you will encounter skills like angles, double digit multiplying, and decimals. Each one seamlessly combines video game skills with Math skills. Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/family/articles/70813.aspx#ixzz0nVog4SyY

Despite its name, not all the content on CoolMath.com is directly related to Math. In fact, their tag line is 'Math and Thinking games'. The Cool Math games site, (www.coolmath-games.com), has many great online games for gifted children. Take, for example, the ever popular Bloxorz, the Lemonade Stand Game, or Bloons Tower Defense. Each are maddeningly fun and addictive, but each are also designed to engage the thinking skills of gifted learners. Many teachers quickly turn to Cool Math when they are looking for extension activities for their fast finishers, and now you can too. Everything on the site is free to use. Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/family/articles/70813.aspx#ixzz0nVoYSMoo

The ProProfs website has lots of free online games for gifted children, but the best place to start is with the logic games. Leapfroggies, Chess, Sliding Block Puzzles, Mazes, Nonograms, and SHOT are all great games to get started with, as each involves some kind of higher level thinking in order to be successful. There are many more online games that would also be suitable for gifted children in the Brain Teasers or Brain Training sections. Just click the links at the top of the page and explore. Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/family/articles/70813.aspx#ixzz0nVoWEgOF

"Science Games Children have inquiring minds. They are always asking 'why' and are forever curious as to how things work. Science is a great way to satisfy this thirst for knowledge, but it has to be presented in a fun and easy to understand format. Games are undoubtedly one of the best mediums to do just that. The best online science games are engaging, educational and provide ongoing learning opportunities. The six that I have chosen for you today all meet, or exceed, this criteria and can be used with kids both young and old."

Good to add to your weebly.

A wiki that breaks apps into age/grade use, could be good for a "suggested"apps for families with ipads for their kids?