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.
Another good article in the series by R. Cayley. Be sure to follow up with Constructing the Paragraph , which has good exercises for your students on transitions.
This is a little complex, but students will catch on fast. One use, pointed out in the QR tutorial, is to create an electronic portfolio where all docs, references, video, photos, etc. can be collected and shared in one place. Connects to Twitter and Facebook, of course. Brief video tutorial on the front page, and lots of fun backgrounds and colors to play with.
A social blog oriented to middle-school learners. Teacher can set questions and request students to join. Free. Nice instructional video at the >Learn more about link. There are also many teacher/school district blogs to view as examples.
If you are looking for the books that are perfect to fill the Christmas time with the pleasure of reading, this infographics should give you enough recommendations.
Did you shape your image of Christmas according to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women? Everyone loves Christmas stories; they are the perfect mixture of sweet and sour that reminds us how shallow our daily worries are.
"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.
"Student choice is not only a simple way to increase student engagement, it's also an essential factor in developing digital literacy while building 21st century life and career skills. Choice boards typically start with a specific learning goal, then provide students with a variety of ways to practice a skill, learn a concept, or demonstrate understanding." Site offers a variety of Choice board templates for your classroom use. T/h N.Lafave
"Virtual Impersonation
"Creating social media posts and profiles for people (real/fictional), places, plants, and animals has proven to be an engaging and thought-provoking experience for students. From creating FaceBook pages for endangered species to Tweets from Abe Lincoln, virtual impersonation can be a powerful tool for learning. I recently shared a great Google Slides Instagram post template. A coworker was looking for something a bit more interactive that would allow for multiple posts, so I built a multi-slide profile/gallery template.
"The Instagram template is available for Keynote, Google Slides, or PowerPoint. Students just replace the profile text (name, job/title, description, location), then begin replacing picture placeholders with images of their choosing. Each small image placeholder is hyperlinked to a separate slide for that image's post."
Impersonating an historical figure or book character, et al., is a great way to really get into the content. T/H to Nick LaFave
Captions are the law, but also they may aid ESL students and students with learning disabilities. Some evidence is provided for improvement in test scores, and captioning certainly is a study aid. Captions can also aid in video searches.
It's the law, but captioning also helps ESL students and students with disabilities. There is also some evidence of improved test scores when captioning is used throughout a school term. Captioning also makes video search easier. T/h to N. Flynn (cielo24.com)