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