Group items tagged

"October 6 , 2014 In a post I shared a few days ago, I featured three web tools to use to create screencasts on Chromebook: These are Screencastify, Snagit for Chrome and Google Plus Hangout on Air. Following this post I received a couple of emails from some teachers inquiring about how to use the last option which is Hangout on Air. So I went ahead and created this visual step by step  guide to help you create a screencast via Hangout on Air. This method works in all devices including Chromebook. 1- First, make sure you are logged in your Google account then head over to YouTube home page and click on the "upload" button. 2- Next, click on "broadcast" in Google+ Hangout On Air 3- Type in a name for your Hangout and then click on "share". You don't need to invite anyone. 4- To start broadcasting and recording your Hangout click on "start". In the next window that shows up click on "start broadcast". Now your Hangout will be live on both Google+ and YouTube. . 5- Hover your mouse over the left side of the window until the task bar pops up then click on "Screenshare" 6- Choose the screen you want to share. Now, whatever you do on the selected screen will be recorded in the Hangout. Click on "stop hangout" to end your recording.  Your recorded screencast is now available On your YouTube  channel in your uploaded video section. You can share it with your students or even make it private."

This site has numerous (2,100) carefully selected and annotated resources. You can click on the lobby link on the main page to go to the resources. You can click on the welcome to K12imc.org a t the bottom to go to the instructional media center where there are additional links taking you to specific locations on the site. At the bottom of the IMC page you can click on explore the worlds of K12IMC.org and within the explore page you will be able to link to more resources that are clearly described. Within each of the resource links you will go to a page where there will be a variety of content specific links. This site was interesting. There were lessons for teachers, there was a link on the explor page that will take you to experts in various fields. This is a site worth checking out because a user could, through this one site, find numerous credible and useable resources.

Found this site to be very interesting and loaded with lots of useable resources.

This site was so cool. I created my own comic story. I was able to play brain buster games I read stories and had stories read to me, and watched videos about how to create a comic.. This site was created by Jim Davis, creator of the comic strip Garfield, in conjunction with Ball State University and PAWS, Inc. It give kids the opportunity to explore, create and connect safely with kids around the world. Jim Davis created this site because he felt there was a need to provide a high-quality, free, and engaging web site that could motivate children to achieve their full potential. The approach is kid-centric and tries to close the achievement gap between what kids seek to do on the Internet and standards-based educational activities. The mission of Professor Garfield.org is encourage children to explore academically sound literacy activities and provide them with tools to express themselves through creative writing prorams. It's an Internet destination that is safe, free and fun! The Professor Garfield and Sparktop sites (both found on this link) provide all kids of ways for kids to shine and showcase their talents and abilities! Students can record their own "talent" for Sparkstage (our American Idol-like competition), arrange music with the awesome music mixer tool, create their own comic strip in the Comis Lab, learn to sculpt, or be taught to draw by professional artists in the Art-Bot section. On Sparktop.org kids safely connect with other kids who knwow what they are going through. They find information about how their brain works and get tips on how to succeed in school and life. And they get to showcase their creativity and be recognized for their strengths. Millions of children from around the world visit the web site every month.

Kerpoof is one of my favorite creation tools for elementary students, it allows them to draw, create pictures, cards, books, and even movies. My original post about Kerpoof can be found here. Kerpoof has added some new features that make it worthy of another post. Students can now save their pictures, cards, stories and drawings locally (on their computers). On each canvas is a JPEG icon that will allow any picture to be saved to the computer locally. They are working on making it possible to download the movies locally soon. Kerpoof also introduced info bubbles. In the Make a Picture object library, students can drag out a picture onto the canvas. Now there is a new question mark button that shows up on an object. When students click on the question mark, a little bubble of information pops up. Students will gain all kinds of information from these little fact bubbles. They can learn everything from: who wrote Treasure Island, to learning the national animal of Austrailia.

Neat site for elementary

" 1- Documentary storm This is a great documentary website that provides over 2000 full length documentaries gathered from several resources all around the web. Each documentary has a short description , there is a download button on and under each video, that is just an advertisement of a video tool and not a download page . 2- Documentaryz This is another cool documentary resource you can use to search for and find good documentaries to use with your students. It has thousands of videos and they are organized under different categories such as Art, Animal, Nature, Biography, Business...etc. 3- Free Documentaries This one here streams full length documentary films free of charge and with no registration needed. Some of the documentaries in this website has trailers and can also be downloaded. You might also like: 6 Things You Didn't Know you Can Do with Dropbox The Four Pillars of Education These Are The 16 Attributes of The Modern Educator 6 Excellent Lego Apps to Enhance Kids Thinking Skills Linkwithin Newer Post Older Post Home Twitter Facebook Google+ Pinterest RSS Email Visit Med's profile on Pinterest. "

" 1- Documentary storm This is a great documentary website that provides over 2000 full length documentaries gathered from several resources all around the web. Each documentary has a short description , there is a download button on and under each video, that is just an advertisement of a video tool and not a download page . 2- Documentaryz This is another cool documentary resource you can use to search for and find good documentaries to use with your students. It has thousands of videos and they are organized under different categories such as Art, Animal, Nature, Biography, Business...etc. 3- Free Documentaries This one here streams full length documentary films free of charge and with no registration needed. Some of the documentaries in this website has trailers and can also be downloaded. You might also like: 6 Things You Didn't Know you Can Do with Dropbox The Four Pillars of Education These Are The 16 Attributes of The Modern Educator 6 Excellent Lego Apps to Enhance Kids Thinking Skills Linkwithin Newer Post Older Post Home Twitter Facebook Google+ Pinterest RSS Email Visit Med's profile on Pinterest. "

"n today's post, I am sharing with you some interesting tips I learned from Jonathan Wylie  to help you record your iPad screen and create instructional screencasts and tutorials. The first thing that comes to mind when thinking of creating a screencast on iPad are those popular apps such as Explain Everything and Educreations but the thing with these apps is that they do not allow you to record what you do on other apps. For instance, you can not open Explain Everything and go to Evernote app to record your screen there, once Explain Everything window is closed , recording stops. To be able to navigate your iPad and record this navigation, you will need to mirror your iPad screen to a bigger screen that is your computer. Once you can access your iPad screen  from your computer, you can then use a screencasting tool to record your iPad screen. Here is how you can do it all:"

In the Kids Interactive-Whales, students board the Discovery where they can explore 5 different rooms including the science lab, the research center, the office, the library, and the bridge. Each room has an "expert" that will help the students as they explore the room. As students explore each room, they can take notes by saving text to a clipboard. In the research center, students learn about whale migration, the effects of whale hunting, watch video footage of whales, take an up close view of whale pictures, learn about whale sounds, and even report a whale sighting. On the bridge, students will learn about the rules for viewing whales from land, listen to sounds that different whales make, learn about sonar, steer the boat, learn about the whales that live in Australian waters, learn the rules about watching whales from a boat, and learn the best time to go whale watching. In the underwater library, students will use the database to look up facts about whales (they can take notes on their clipboard), use a dictionary to look up unfamiliar terms, learn about the history of whaling, see how whale populations have suffered, and see pictures of whales that can be used in a research project. In the office, students can watch whales through a portal, read about Australian whale preservation, read a brochure, and view a timeline of how whaling activities have changed throughout the years. The science lab is the last room on the Discovery. Here, students can learn about what whales eat, take a closer look at the anatomy of whales, play a game to practice identifying whales, find out how whales are important to the ecosystem, learn about the difference between whales and dolphins, learn about the research that scientists do, and take a closer look at whale statistics.

Neat site about whales.

Spelling City is a fabulous site for practicing spelling, I have written about its uses in the classroom before (here and here). Spelling City has just added a new feature that teachers are going to love, the ability to add your own sentences on Spelling City! Now you can customize your spelling lists to fit your needs. For example, if you are studying fish and one of your spelling words is "scales", the default sentence that Spelling City might offer is "The scales were not giving the weights accurately." Now as you create a list, you can click on "add" and type a new sentence to fit your classroom needs. The feature is also extremely useful for homonyms (our fifth graders are using this feature this week!). For the teacher created sentences, the audio read of the sentence will be done by a sophisticated voice synthesis. \n

In case you haven't seen this site. Love the capability for teachers to set up their own clas spelling lists that kids can access at home.

" Calameo Calameo is a free platform where you can publish your magazine, presentations or documents and share them with the world. It also lets you embed rich-media content to your publications like videos and audios. 2- Docuter Docuter is a great tool to manage documents, projects, workflows, shared calendars and many more. You can also use it to store and share your documents online for easy access. 3- Wepapers Webpapers lets you store all your papers, exams, lecture notes and research work in one place, and get organized. You can also use it to share and make your documents available to the world. 4- Share Zoho Share Zoho allows you to browse files based on different file types ( ppt,pdf,doc ) and also collaborate in the form of : commenting. flagging, rating, bookmarking, and chatting. 5- Edocr This is another web tool that lets you lets you upload and share your documents with over 300 web services. You can also connect with other users through private messaging and many more. 6- Scribd Scribd is an awesome online library where you can search for, read, publish, upload and share documents and written words. 7- Eight Free Tools to Share your Slideshows and Presentations This is a post I have published earlier and where I have reviewed 8 awesome free websites where you can share and publish your docs and presentations. Check them out. "

Believe it or not, Facebook and Twitter aren't the only cool social networking sites on the Web. If your kids are too young for Facebook, or you're concerned about privacy, consider looking into some lesser-known social networking sites geared for tweens, preteens, and yes, even teenagers. We've rounded-up some of the top social networking sites that allow kids to keep a tighter rein on their privacy. Our choices include sites that limit the ways you connect with friends, offer greater control over how you interact, or home in on specific interests. Some of the sites for kids on the younger end of the scale offer more parental controls, too, so you can have a better sense of what your kid is doing online.

"For those of you asking about Educational Android apps to use with students in class the chart below is a great place to start with. This is a work we have published a few months ago and is meant to provide teachers and educators with a handy resource they can fall back on when they need to try out new educational apps in class.  We have categorized these apps into 17 major categories: note taking apps, portfolio creation apps, presentation apps, reference apps,  video editing apps, concept mapping apps, storytelling apps, apps for teaching kids coding, augmented reality apps, audio recording apps, comics creation apps, reading and literacy apps, apps for learning English grammar, apps for doing virtual trips, apps for learning a new language, apps to unleash students creativity."

"For those of you asking about Educational Android apps to use with students in class the chart below is a great place to start with. This is a work we have published a few months ago and is meant to provide teachers and educators with a handy resource they can fall back on when they need to try out new educational apps in class.  We have categorized these apps into 17 major categories: note taking apps, portfolio creation apps, presentation apps, reference apps,  video editing apps, concept mapping apps, storytelling apps, apps for teaching kids coding, augmented reality apps, audio recording apps, comics creation apps, reading and literacy apps, apps for learning English grammar, apps for doing virtual trips, apps for learning a new language, apps to unleash students creativity."

The purpose of this resource is to provide "Just in Time" training through an online interface for K-12 educators based on the National Eductional Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). These standards are the basic technology skills every educator should prossess. In the process, educators will develop their own skills and discuver what studetns need in order to meet the NETS for Students.

This site is really nice. Many of the things we talked about in the grad class are covered here but the really nice thing about this site is that it take the NETS-T that we used and makes a connection to Marzano's 9 (Classroom Instruction that Works) and 21 things. It is really interesting. On the home page check out the two downloads of 21things and Marzano. On the right if you click on any of those categories, tools that can be used are presented. This is definitely one you will want to save in your own diigo library.

"The Best Resources For Learning Research & Citation Skills September 24, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo | 8 Comments This "The Best…" list is sort of a combination of two lists I had been thinking of making to go along with The Best Online Resources To Teach About Plagiarism (Another list to keep in mind might be The Best Reference Websites For English Language Learners - 2008). The more I thought about it, though, the more I felt that a list of engaging (and even fun) sites to teach research skills and accessible citation resources would make a good combination. Since a graduation requirement in our district is that seniors need to develop a "Senior Project," I've spent some time finding these kinds of helpful sites that might be accessible to English Language Learners.  I have to say, though, that these sites (except for the first one) would probably only be accessible to more advanced ELL's. Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning Research And Citation Skills: LEARNING RESEARCH SKILLS:"

I found this article very interesting. I know when I was in high school there was a lot of goofing around and behavior problems on the bus to and from school. I think that having internet access on the bus would really decrease these problems. Some students spend a lot of wasted time on the bus to and from school and this is a way to make this time productive. Students would be able to work on homework and do research. I also thought that having this option for sports teams to use was great. Imagine being a coach and giving your players access to the internet in between games, or on the long bus trips to the tournament.

"There are different reasons why struggling writers have problems with composition. Some of them are internal such as a disability of some sort, lack of motivation and confidence…etc and others are externally oriented like irrelevance of writing topics, inappropriate writing strategies and so on. In today's post we are sharing with you a set of interesting iPad apps to help struggling writers build up their writing confidence and enhance their writing competencies.We have particularly focused  on three main areas: "

Most of the media in these collections are attached to generous copyright licensing. Though you may not need to ask permission to use them when publishing on the Web for educational purposes, you should cite or attribute these images to their creators unless otherwise notified! If you see any copyright notices on these pages, read them for further instructions. This is a wikispace. Another cool way that wikis can help keep information organized.

"In a digitally focused world, education is getting more and more digitized pushing us, teachers and educators, to re-conceptualize what it really means to be a teacher in the 21st century. Whether you are a technological determinist or instrumentalist, technology has become an essential force shaping much of our teaching and pedagogical practices. It has also placed a number of demands and exigencies on us and to meet these exigencies we need to develop a set of key digital skills. In the chart below, we cited 9 digital skills that we believe are fundamentally important for any teacher. This chart is based on a previous work we published here in the past."

5 Incredible Tips on How to Write Blog Posts

Tips on how to write blog posts.

I know the title may sound like a no-brainer, but I chose to share this article because it focuses on the proven value of Interactive Whiteboards. I have one and I know a few others in our class have them. One of my goals for this course is to better understand the possibilities of the technology available to me. I'm really looking forward to developing lessons using the voter response system, just one way to collect data about student learning.

Field trips can be amazing learning experiences. They provide students with the opportunity to actively participate in education, offering learning possibilities that aren't readily available in the classroom. Unfortunately, it isn't always practical or possible to take students on field trips. Tight budgets, location, transportation, time, and resource restrictions can keep your students school-bound. Virtual field trips can fill this void. Virtual field trips have come a long way from the page of links they used to be. Now students can explore the world with simulations that are so realistic, they will believe they have left the classroom. Below are five of the best virtual field trips on the web: