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.

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