Group items tagged

"Succeeding with Science is a website built around fun and interactive educational games, activities, and videos to help students learn and love science. The student activities are sorted by age range from 4-7 years up to 16+ and there is also a teachers section. Each activity come with PDF lesson plans and support materials as well. Science teachers at all levels should find this site to be useful way to support their curriculum." Thanks to Sam Sheridan

Teaching Channel video: A nice demonstration of how to conduct discussions in small group and pairs. Demonstrates active listening by the teachers as students report back then go to the board to offer the results of their discussions. Structured discussions and student ownership of the reasoning process are good even for very young learners. Applicable for all levels.

"As part of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), students need to "ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century." Many teachers have little to no formal training on how to teach about climate change. Along with the ever-changing research and the controversy that comes with it, some teachers inevitably shy away or even prevent students from digging deep into the content. Some suggest that teachers might be getting climate change all wrong. Since teachers can't rely on books to stay current with all the new research, digital resources are the only effective way to stay on top of such a dynamic field. Consider these practices when using technology to teach about climate change:" Sites include NASA Global Climate Change, Climate Kids for younger learners, Global Oneness Project, and Earth-Now to analyze realtime data.

Offers songs in multiple European languages with text lyrics which you can manipulate as cloze activities. Lots of student control to repeat lines of a song, click on tab to show an answer to a missing lyric, etc. Students ign-up to keep a record of songs and the tasks completed. Provides 3 different levels of activity; e.g., "expert" is total cloze. R. Stannard has a training video on using this site at

"Each day author/teacher Bill Zimmerman is offering excerpts from a new ‘’Make Beliefs’’ book aimed at encouraging students to express their thoughts through writing and drawing, as well as to spur their creative imaginations. They are in the form of comic strip panels in which comic characters raise a provocative question and students can write their responses by creating comic strips at MakeBeliefsComix. com, a free educational resource. " These are imaginative prompts and many could also be used for stand-alone creative writing activities.

Great tips for the budding student artist. I would recommend this to any student who shows artistic promise with photography. Let the creative juices flow. You can send your direct learners directly to this page for a visual feast, plus good advice from professional photographers.

"Mouse Mischief integrates into Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, letting you insert questions, polls, and drawing activity slides into your lessons. "Students can actively participate in these lessons by using their own mice to click, circle, cross out, or draw answers on the screen. " This sound like a great tool to make your presentations interactive, get students attention and help them learn as you teach. Sorry--looks like Windows only. Originally from Gre Duncan's blog: http://coolthingoftheday.blogspot.com/2012/02/add-little-mischief-to-your-next.html

ISSU can create an ezine, here a student zine published by Aiden Yeh's students in Taiwan. Colorful and with the look and feel of a real magazine.

"If we hope to construct enduring understanding in our students, it's critical that, now more than ever, we know their strengths and interests. By incorporating students' strengths and weakness into authentic learning experiences from the beginning of each unit, while at the same time including opportunities for feedback, metacognition and revision, we promote a variety of cognitive and emotional benefits that can lead to academic success. " A thoughtful description of ways to successfully integrate learner feedback into the assessment process.

This chat room tool might be useful for your classes, or as a backchannel if several teachers are working on a presentation together. The interface can be mounted on your own website, ensuring that students don't wander off. You can easily save a transcript of the chat, and it lets students join from home or other classrooms. T/H to H. Dilatush who let us in EVO know about it.

Many of these sites/apps have surprising features, such as the ability to insert a poll, educational portals where student accounts can be created, easy embedding of a collage or slideshow in a blog, student response systems within the slideshow, video mash-up, animation, video narration side-by-side, mobile apps, etc. Far more than Powerpoint can do.

SimplyBox is a great way to add some Web 2.0 to your research. This would be esp. useful with group objects where students can then look at what each other group member has found. Use SimplyBox for Education, and get the free app (also has fee-based district or school-wide application that can be hosted and access controlled safely, and boxing from any application). The teacher could start the ball rolling, and have students join in, boxing their own sites and info. Esp. good for visual learners. This page has three good help videos: Overview, Sharing, and Twittering with SimplyBox. Fairly easy to use, once you get used to it.

100 Great Google Docs Tips for Students & Educators

Describes LinoIt and how to use it--a nice brainstorming and student collaboration tool, but it's great to see examples and how it can be used with students. Free.

A great place for students to read about and study cultures of the world. A contributor to the Blog is Carla Arena. This would also be a good way for students to enter a project about their own region of the world. The site is organized by Culture, Topics, and Blogs about culture.

"Collect up gifs related to any vocabulary area you want to teach or revise. Embed them in an html page on your desk top and start a collection. Each time you add new ones send the html page to your students. (They will need to have a live connection on their computer to be able to view the gifs) Ask them to make notes of any words they relate to the images they see." This is another neat little tool with notes on how to use it from the very extensive collection by Nik Peachey. I'd suggest having the students make animated vocabulary gifs of words they want to learn/find useful.

You can select any pictures in Flickr and add dialogue bubbles to them. Good for projects where students upload their own pictures or select them from a search at Flickr. (See Russell Stannard's video on how to encourage students to use Bubblr for writing: http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/newBubblr/index.html.)

You can select any pictures in Flickr and add dialogue bubbles to them. Good for projects where students upload their own pictures or select them from a search at Flickr. You can also blog the archived set of pictures. (See Russell Stannard's video on how to encourage students to use Bubblr for writing: http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/newBubblr/index.html.)

Describes ways to use images, video, music, voice, and text in teaching literature with advanced level students to improve writing and pronunciation skills. Students engaged in online discussion through commenting and VoiceThread. By Jane Petring.