Technology Gems, Ideas, and Facts
Friday, Nov. 20, 2009
Gem ~ a website or application that might work well for you or your students
Rubrics can be an effective way to assess a variety of student work. teAchnology has a collection of rubric makers and premade, printable rubrics for many different curricular areas. Even if you don’t find one that suits your needs, these could be good models to get you started creating your own. Thanks to Elementary Gifted Support teacher Wendy Palese for passing this one on to me. (http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/)
Idea ~ a way to enhance your LFS lessons with technology
I don’t usually blog about the same site or resource twice, but this is an update. A few weeks ago I told you about Word Magnets…a great site that allows you to create words or phrases and move them around on backgrounds. They had a decent collection of graphic organizers as backgrounds, but you had to take a screenshot in order to be able to save your work. Enter Word Magnets 2.0! The company is announcing upcoming improvements including the ability to upload your own photos as backgrounds, change colors of magnets, and even save your work. I love when companies like this are responsive to feedback from users. I couldn’t find a date when the new version will be live, but keep yours eyes out for it! (http://www.triptico.co.uk/Magazines/WordMagnets/newFeatures.html)
Fact ~ just a bit of information
Thanksgiving is less than a week away. If you’re looking for some activities related to the holiday for your students for next week, here are a few I’ve collected. (http://delicious.com/areardon222/Thanksgiving?page=1)
Have a great weekend and a very Happy Thanksgiving!
Anne
Technology Gems, Ideas, and Facts
Friday, Nov. 13, 2009
Gem ~ a website or application that might work well for you or your students
Copyright Friendly Image Sources is a page from the TeacherLibrarianWiki which lists several dozen sites that provide images for a wide range of curricular topics. A few of the links I tried were no longer valid, but the majority lead to great collections of images. One of the most valuable parts of the page however, is the link near the top of the page to a Creative Commons video. This short video explains what Creative Commons is and how it can help teachers and students find images or other media to use in projects without violating copyright. (http://teacherlibrarianwiki.pbworks.com/Copyright+Friendly+Image+Sources)
Idea ~ a way to enhance your LFS lessons with technology
Just in case you’ve exhausted your supply of graphic organizers, I found another site for you. This one comes from Alberta, Canada and is designed for Social Studies, but the templates could be used in any curricular area. The organizers can be downloaded as Microsoft Word files which means that you or your students can customize the text. (http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/ssass/html/graphicorganizers.html)
Fact ~ just a bit of information
I came across this image this week while looking for something else. Not only do I like the image and the quote, but I thought it might be a great project idea for a class. Have them search for images to match a quote from history, literature, or another curricular topic and combine the two. It would be really interesting to see how different students interpret the same idea through the images they choose. (Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyteacher/3580553044/in/pool-858082@N25)
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Anne
Technology Gems, Ideas, and Facts
Friday, Nov. 6, 2009
Gem ~ a website or application that might work well for you or your students
Footnote is a site that contains a huge collection of historical documents and images. You can search using their timeline or by topic, or browse their special collections. This site could be useful for student research at the secondary level, while elementary teachers could use it to find resources for building background about historical topics. (http://www.footnote.com/)
Idea ~ a way to enhance your LFS lessons with technology
neoK12 provides educational videos on a wide variety of curricular topics for students in K-12. The videos are all reviewed and approved by K-12 educators. Videos are not available for download, but they are accessible on our network, even though many of them are hosted at sites such as YouTube. You may have to wait a few seconds for the streaming video to be ready to play, but once it is, you can drag the controls through the video to show only the sections that pertain to your lesson. There are also some quiz games for certain topics. By setting up a free account, you can save playlists and create presentations using photos available on the site. (http://www.neok12.com/)
Fact ~ just a bit of information
This week the US Department of Education announced the appointment of Karen Cator as the new head of the federal Office of Education Technology. While this may not be news in your circle, I have met and worked with Karen on several occasions and I am thrilled that someone with her experience and vision has been named to this position. Karen really “gets” it when it comes to the role of technology in teaching and learning.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Anne