November Technology in the Classroom - A Bountiful Harvest of Technology Ideas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, November is the month when the harvest is in, the heavy work of summer’s growing season is over, and there’s a little more time for reflection.  For Americans, it’s the season of Thanksgiving.  And for almost all of us there is much to be thankful for!

This month’s newsletter features a spectacular website that takes your students right into Plimoth Plantation as detectives to discover the truth about the first Thanksgiving.  It also introduces three new search tools to give them a whole new look at searching the Internet, plus a poster-making tool that will add a different scope and dimension to your visual aids. 

You are the Historian – Investigating the First Thanksgiving invites students in grades 3 - 8 to dig deeply into primary resources to separate myth from reality.  The Teachers’ Guide  at http://www.plimoth.org/education/olc/hpteachg.html provides excellent background information and materials so you can prepare and support your students to get maximum benefit from the highly-interactive pages and discoveries.  The investigations go beyond simply introducing new information about Thanksgiving at the Plimoth Plantation – they invite students (and teachers) to take the role of historian and explore the differences between history and the past.  The material is simple enough that third graders can manage it with support – but the concepts are complex enough to challenge and intrigue high school students and adults.
http://www.plimoth.org/education/olc

Students often start their web searches with Google, type the general term they are looking for, and then are utterly overwhelmed when the search returns literally millions of responses.  Boolify.org helps even young students actually see how refining their search changes the search results and gives them a more manageable return on their searches.

Students begin by dragging a green keyword piece to the Board and type in their keyword – their search returns appear below the puzzle area, along with their search string and the number of responses in blue.  As they drag and add modifying pieces to the puzzle, the numbers below change, as do the responses.  They can see that the returns are much more targeted.  Boolify.org works well for elementary students as their actual search engine, and helps them understand exactly how the responses relate to their search terms.

With older students, this is also an excellent, very visual, tool to demonstrate how the Boolean process works to narrow a search. 
http://www.boolify.org/

How often do your students find a webpage that looks promising, only to discover that the reading level is WAY over their heads?  Twurdy.com (a play on words – “Too Wordy?”) is a search engine that includes a readability code.  The goal is “that elementary students don’t have to click through difficult material to find something they can use.”  And “PhD students don’t have to click through websites designed for kids...”  Simple to use, students can use the color code to quickly scan for articles that are appropriate to their reading level, rather than having to open them to make that discovery.

http://www.twurdy.com/

Being able to SEE the webpages your search has yielded is, in itself, enough to make this an appealing search tool.  However, middlespot.com does much more than simply give a preview of the webpages – it allows the user to select and save the pages that best suit their needs, drag to organize and prioritize, name and save the entire search, and add items from another search.  The saved search gives the user a record of the sites they used in their research so they can compile their bibliography citations.  Let’s take it for a test drive.

To use this search tool, type your search string in the top line and click Search. 

• You can choose to organize your previews into 3 (or more) columns.
• As you pan your mouse over a preview, it enlarges, and it is highlighted in the list in the left menu. 
• If it is a page that looks useful, click save to mashtab either under the page or in the left menu.  This copies it to the mashtab (row of previews you’ve selected) at the bottom of the page. 
• Click one and drag to change the order of the pages. 
• Click the speech bubble in the lower left corner of a page and add a comment.  In the lower right corner, you can click the red X to delete pages that aren’t as good as they first appeared. 
• Once you have the search as you want it, email it to yourself (or someone else) by clicking the email link above the mashtab.  The search is sent as a link, and when you click the link, it opens as an interactive webpage with only the items you selected from your search. 

What a fantastic tool for guiding student research to pages you preselect!  You can even embed a search into your webpage or blog by clicking on the embed link and copying the code into your web or blog page.  To save and archive your searches, you will need to create an account – however, this requires only that you enter your email and a password.  This is a tool with far-reaching possibilities both for student research and for teacher-guided internet searches.
http://middlespot.com

How often have you wished you could enlarge your visual aids so that students could actually see what you’re talking about, enlarge them to fill a bulletin board?  An LCD, opaque projector, or document camera will give you a temporary picture – but frequently teachers need a more permanent display for students to interact with.  

Blockposters.com solves the problem.  At this very simple free website, you upload your image, decide how many “pieces of paper” wide and tall you want the finished poster to be, and the program converts your image into “.pdf” pages (portable document format that opens on most computers with Adobe Reader) You simply print – either in color or black and white.  Each page has an unprinted border that can be trimmed as needed to glue the

poster together, or it can make an interesting artistic effect to leave the borders as sashing between the sections, depending on your purpose. 

http://www.blockposters.com

That's it for November - get busy and try some searches with your students.  You won't have to wait until Christmas to open the bag of goodies in the December newsletter.  See you then - and in the meantime, have fun in the classroom!

You may have received this because a colleague forwarded it.  You can subscribe so you won’t miss a copy of this FREE monthly newsletter that features technology tips, seasonal activities, and dynamic educational sites your students will love.
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October Technology in the Classroom - Oomph for your October!

Welcome to the October newsletter.  The first frantic weeks of September are over, and we in the Northern Hemisphere are settling into the school year.  This month we want to introduce you to several websites that will help add Oomph to your October curriculum.

Fluency with basic math facts grows from drill and practice, but the worksheets that can build this fluency can become tedious for both students and teacher.  This website takes the tedium out of drilling those basic facts.  Because students have their hands busy with the mouse, it also helps them move beyond the finger counting stage.  This site offers individual practice games, but our students really relish the multi-player games.  Here’s how we do it:

• Assign groups of 3-4 students of about the same computation ability.
  
• Select one leader for each group.
  
• All students click Play, and enter their first name.
  
• The leader clicks Create Game, selects Private Game and enters a simple password (we use our school initials), click Next, then Create Game.
  
• Other students click the Private tab, find their leader’s name, and click Join Game.
  
• Students can change their vehicle color by clicking on it.  When they’re ready, they click Start Race.  The leader is the last to click, when all the group members are at the starting line.
  

When the race is over, the scoreboard shows the accuracy and the number correct per minute.  Students tend to focus on who “got First Place” (and last place), so we use individual score sheets where they keep track of their own number correct and chart their own improvement.

You can download the score sheets from http://dyna-ed.net/id8.html

In addition to Math Skillbuilders, this site also features individual and multi-player games to practice antonyms/synonyms/homonyms, verb tenses, parts of speech, spelling patterns, state capitols, and country capitols. 
Arcademics SkillBuilders website: http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/

Take part in an International Science Investigation that will help your students understand the many factors of climate and weather that make up seasons in the Northern Hemisphere.  In this activity, students all over the Northern Hemisphere plant Red Emperor tulips.  They log their planting date on the website’s maps.  In the Spring, students report when their tulip leaves emerge from the ground and when they first bloom.  The website’s maps give a dramatic graphic illustration of Spring’s Journey North.  Weekly newsletters invite students to ponder, hypothesize, and investigate factors like soil temperature versus air temperature, length of daylight, rainfall, etc. as they wait for the tulips to emerge.  There is a wealth of background materials, lesson plans and activities, and printable booklets to help students K-12 interact with and understand how seasons affect plants’ growth cycle.  These activities span Science and Social Studies, with a little math thrown in!  Journey North Tulip website: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tulip/index.html  

Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books that our students loved (in the early 90s - are you that old??)  This Techtorial takes you step-by-step through the process of creating an online choose your own adventure story.  Through the magic of hyperlinks, these books are much easier to read than the paper “Turn to page 9” version.  Creating hyperlinked books adds a whole new dimension to creative writing.  Students must plan multiple plot possibilities and then carefully story-board them in order to keep track of the multiple branches.  A wonderful vehicle to add richness to creative writing! http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/techtorial/techtorial045.shtml

National Geographic for Kids’ website is FULL of informative videos, features about animals people and places, games and stories to reinforce concepts, and seasonal crafts and activities.  This month, the site features a recipe for Kaju Burfi to celebrate Diwali (India’s Festival of Light), a video about Sugar Gliders Kiki and Ariel’s Visit to a Haunted Pumpkin Patch, a pumpkin-carving activity, and explores the question – “Vampire Bats, do they really drink blood?”,  Bookmark and come back to this site often to see great high-interest educational activities related to themes and seasons. http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/

Mystery Penpals launched almost 40 Mystery Partners this month to begin searching the world to find their Mystery Partner Class.  Classes are playing 20 questions via email to try to locate their partner.  Although Round 1 is underway, it is not too late to sign up – you will be assigned a partner class as soon as another class signs up.  To find out more, go to http://dyna-ed.net/id2.html .

That’s it for October. Just wait until you see the great new activities for November!  If you have questions, would like to share an idea via this newsletter, or would just like to send me a comment - please do!  Email Dr. Donna

I'll see you in November.

Subscribe to receive this FREE monthly newsletter that features technology tips, dynamic educational sites, and the Unit Activity of the Month.  Click here
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September Newsletter

Happy New Year ~

Well - for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, HAPPY start of a NEW school YEAR!  (For many teachers and students, the start of the school year is more of a new beginning than the New Year we celebrate on January 1.)

Who am I?  And why am I writing this?  I'm Dr. Donna, an Educational Technology Specialist for Department of Defense Dependent Schools.  My job is to help teachers use technology to enhance their curriculum, and I've started a monthly newsletter so I can help YOU enhance your curriculum, too.  To subscribe, click http://dyna-ed.net/- it's free!  Subscribers will receive a bonus hands-on activity to help their students understand why leaves change color in the Fall.  Feel free to share this with everyone you know who could use a few great technology activities each month.

School is off to a roaring start.  The students are excited to be back in school with their friends, and curious to see what this school year has in store for them.  This time of year you feel too busy to take on one more thing, but I have four great technology sites and projects that are well worth your time and will get your class off to a rollicking start.

Everyone loves a good Mystery!
Are you looking for an exciting, engaging, and innovative classroom activity that will help your students

• develop effective questioning skills in a real-world communication context?
• use deductive and inductive reasoning skills to problem-solve?
• gather, analyze and synthesize data?
• build geography concepts and skills, including global awareness and map-reading?
• expand awareness of cultural similarities and differences?
• Would you like a project that will provide you with dynamic educational ideas, complete, detailed lesson plans and continuous support?

This is it!

Mystery Penpals provides an innovative way for classes in different geographical locations to use educational technology to play "20 Questions" to locate each other. Your students will learn and use a wide variety of concepts and skills to find their partner class. Best of all, you have the option to tailor your partner class' geographic area so that you can seamlessly integrate Mystery Penpals to meet your social studies standards! Find all the details at http://dyna-ed.net/id2.html. The first round begins October 12.

Do your students - and you - dread the weekly spelling list? Painstakingly dictating or inscribing on the chalkboard, students diligently copying them down, and then struggling to find meaningful activities for students to use the words during the week so they practice enough to solidify the spelling. You know the drill.

     Now picture the students logging into a webpage that has this week’s list of words - will even read the words out loud - and there are a dozen games where students engage with the week's words, games that reinforce context and meaning, and others that focus on phonemic awareness. Introduced to this activity, students plead, "Can we p-u-l-e-e-z-e play this when we get home?" Watch your spelling scores soar - just because you added this one activity. You log in and type the words once. Your students go to the website and locate their class spelling lists. They will not only study this week’s words, they'll revisit previous lists!

     It’s FREE! Go to http://Spellingcity.com and see what a difference technology can make. SpellingCity has added a new gradebook feature that will let you track your students’ activities and scores on the site - a perfect tool for grading or portfolios.

Did you know that Monarch Butterflies migrate from all over North America to spend the winter in Mexico?  This migration is happening right now, and Journey North has a wonderful website that invites children in North America to participate in an actual scientific study to chart and map the butterflies’ progress in their Fall Journey South. The website also has tons of materials and lesson plans to give students more information about the migration, plus pictures and video of every stage of the butterflies’ life cycle. You wouldn’t normally think that Fall would be a good time to study the life cycle of a butterfly, but this website and the opportunity to observe the migration via maps and charts make this a perfect time! If you are in North America, sign up and post your observations. If you live somewhere else, you can still take part in the observations and lessons. http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch

This super activity invites students to decorate a paper butterfly, write a message on the back, and send it to Mexico in parallel to the actual Monarch migration. Classes post a “sighting” and a message on the map when they mail the class packet of butterflies. All the packets are gathered in Minnesota, then when they begin their Journey South, students can track their progress via the UPS website. In the Spring, when the Monarchs return to their Northern homes, classes receive packets of new butterflies, and each student goes to the map to post the location of the newly arrived butterfly, and a message to the sender. The teacher receives email notification each time one of the sent butterflies is posted to the map. This activity takes a week or so, and all butterflies must be postmarked by October 13. Get lesson plans and register at http://www.learner.org/jnorth/sm/.

That's a wrap for this month.  I'm already starting to gather exciting units for October!  Everyone who subscribes to the FREE newsletter will receive a bonus investigation that will help your students understand why leaves change color in the Fall.  If you'd like to share ideas, or ask me a question - please do!  Ask Dr. Donna.    I'll see you next month!

Subscribe to receive this FREE monthly newsletter that features technology tips, dynamic educational websites, and at least one Unit Activity of the Month.  Go to this page to subscribe - http://dyna-ed.net