Legitimate Resources for the Classroom

Lately, it seems like a hot topic again in Education blogs and Google Circles to look at finding good resources for student research in the classroom. As a former English teacher, it seems as though I've never left the conversation about finding good articles for the classroom. Whether it is sourcing information or just finding legitimate information for your classroom, it is going to be a never-ending topic as our resources are ever-changing. Although, who doesn't love a good article about a Tree Octopus?

The resource I want to share with you is a tutorial that was adapted out of the University of Wyoming and it is one of the best I've seen for students doing research. The students can go through each piece on their own or you could project it on the board and have them discuss as you show them the tutorial's slides.

Now, not only are "good" resources hard to find, so is making sure that students reference all of their work properly and are not plagiarizing.  In our school system, we have been using EasyBib for years for students to cite their work, but it's important that students do not just auto-cite all of the resources. Instead, they have to make sure that they are putting in all of the relevant information that they can find from the website. And, if you can't find all of the information, maybe you need to re-evaluate the website for it's legitimacy.

Mathematics Resources

I have been researching different Mathematics resources and found some great resources that I wanted to share. At Illustrative Mathematics you can find PDF illustrations, drop down/ color coded illustrations and also videos of standards K-12. I think that the best part is the example problems, especially as I am a non-math teacher, it is important for me to get a chance to see how the math standards are layered.

Khan Academy has changed and developed a lot over the past few years. So, instead of just thinking, "oh, yeah... I've heard of Khan Academy." I'd suggest giving it another try. You can now create your own learning account or coach students through a program and see how they are working through their problems and moving from level to level. The coaching aspect that Khan Academy has now is much more exciting than just the videos. So, you have to go back and revisit Khan Academy... you can teach yourself coding, all levels of mathematics, chemistry, biology, organic chemistry even world history and finance! It is definitely a way that you can personalize your teaching/ learning for students as you can see where the student is struggling or advancing.

Desmos is another web app that I think has developed a lot as well. Make your graphs dynamic with interactive sliders, data tables and even challenge your students to replicate or create their own student art! You can do a lot with graphing calculators, plat circles and quadratic formulas, but how do you have them explain what they just did? Here's how: 1) Have students install Chrome Extension "Awesome Screenshot" to take a screen shot of their graphing, 2) Students can save the screenshot on their Google Drive, 3) Import the image they took of their drawing on a Google Doc, and 4) Have students explain on the doc the steps that it took for each of them to work through their problem and solve it with the graph. Students can go back to their Desmos problems to change them if they are incorrect, but it is a good way to have them do the explanation of their work and also integrate writing into the classroom.

Geogebra and it's supplementary video site, Geogebratube, are both great resources. Geogrebra is a construction piece to create three-dimensional or plane shapes. Geogebratube has tutorial videos that could be used just to be a bell-ringer activity, flipped classroom activity or even more!

Socrative is something I have used before, but I recently read a new way to use it in your classroom. First off, create your Socrative account and start creating your quizzes. The quizzes are self-graded and you can use this with iPads or Chromebooks. I have read some teachers use Socrative and have students log in with their device, choose about 5 different problems and have students just answer the problems with their final answer. Socrative self-grades and then you have just a good "check" on how students are progressing. I could see this being used easily for vocab quizzes, quick "check" for reading quizzes or even surveys. It will work well for exit tickets or there is even a feature for "space rocket races" where you could project the results on the board as the students are randomly put in groups and race to the finish.

Here are just a few ideas... for the math classroom. Hope you get a chance to try them out!

Publishing Student Content

I have a couple of teachers that are interested in publishing student content on the web in a magazine or newspaper-type format. So, I have been looking at options for the students. I'm quite excited about some of the items that I've found.

The first resource... Zeen (which I believe is short for MagaZEEN) is an online content creator and publisher. I have only explored this slightly, but it looks to have good reviews despite still being in the beta version. The layouts the authors/ designers can choose from are very professional in format and theme. Overall, it looks easy enough for even upper elementary students to use.

JooMag is my second find, which does have premium/ paid options for subscription, but I think for the purposes that we need for the classroom will work okay. I am normally leery of recommending any resource that may have additional, in-site or in-app purchases, but this may work. You can create the magazine from a template or by just uploading a pre-created pdf. I like both options and some of the templates are quite fun. Also, as you get started, there are tutorials that pop up to help you move along through your magazine creation. The publication options are also very similar to that of Google with private, anyone with the link, and simply public on the web. The publication can also be embedded in a site or downloaded as a pdf. I also like everything and anything that can be MOBILE READY! That is very important for me and my teachers as well.

I am still in pursuit of others, so if you have good ideas, please share!

Google Updates for October

Tomorrow for Professional Development, I will be updating the Middle School and High School on some of the Google updates that are coming down the line for us. We are on a "scheduled release" not "rapid release" so we will have time to update staff prior to changes coming out. If you can think of some others that I haven't mentioned, please let me know by commenting below!

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Log in Updates:

• Still Red Sign in Box still in upper right hand corner

• Before Sign in:

• After Sign in:

• Google Plus (Google’s Social Media Equivalent)
• Gmail - This will take you to your Deuel GMail account
• Images - This will take you to a Google Image Search
• App Launcher icon (similar to what the students see on their chromebooks in lower left hand side- similar to windows start menu)
• Here is where the main apps are located and you can go to “more” to find the others
• You can also put shortcuts on your Chrome bookmarks bar to make this work as well
• Notifications
• “Share” (works with Google Plus) and Your Profile Image

A new place for Settings and Advanced Search in the lower right hand side of your screen.

• Search Settings can help you with filtering, voice search (the microphone icon in the search bar on the right side of box), and results opening in a new window, if you prefer.
• You can also save your search history, if you prefer.

• Advanced Search will allow you to add in search parameters, if desired.
• Search History will help refine your searching- Think of it like personalized searching… for example, the suggested results you see on Amazon.

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Google Drive Updates:

• Docs/ Sheets/ Slides/ Drawing/ Forms all changed the document header to make more compact and with a new icon in the upper left hand corner
• Icon also is an active link that takes you back to Google Drive in a new window

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Other Updates:

• If you are a mobile device user, you can see that the new login interface is very much positioned to be for the mobile device user.
• The new update to the Google Search Algorithm (now called Hummingbird) is more question-driven and mobile based. They are really pushing the ability for voice integration. Social integration, location and previous search activity will help to build your search query now, instead of just key words, like previously.
• This will make it all the more important to choose a search engine, stick with it and be signed in at all times. For example, my searches probably have a lot about technology, google, curriculum, geography, babies… and Google will start to anticipate exactly what I may be looking for.
• Previously, the more words that you add into the search bar, the more difficult it was to get what you really wanted, now, they are moving away from that.
• Learn more about the Search Changes in the video below
  
  

  
  

• When in Chrome, right click on an image on the web and search the image.
• For Chrome 30 users, update this by opening chrome, going to the three lines in upper right hand corner of browser, selecting “About Google Chrome” and updating to Chrome 30.

• How can I use this?
• For finding what website the image was taken from if embedded into a project/ document.
• Finding the image in another size/ color
• Finding similar images

• These updates slowly roll out to students.

"Into the Outdoors" Series for Science

A friend of mine forwarded me this site, and I thought that I'd share. Especially as a South Dakota country girl, I love it when we can integrate some "home grown" topics into our science curriculum. Into the Outdoors is a collection of videos and supplemental materials that teaches everything from Farm Science to Biology. Check out this video about Soybean Farming:




To me, seeing the the John Deeres out is common place in my morning drive, but to many non-farm kids, tractors are foreign machinery. I think it is incredibly important to learn about where our food comes from and how important agriculture is to our economy in America and this site seems to have a few good items to help that pursuit. There are also some great learning tools associated with the beef industry as well.

I hope you get a chance to check it out and use it in your classroom!

Making and Embedding a Google Form

Tomorrow I also get to work with the middle school and high school students to do a couple of different projects. We are going to combine Google Forms, Running a Script (flubaroo) and also embedding on a website! It's going to be a good day!

Basic Elementary Site from a Template

Tomorrow I get to present to the Elementary Staff at our school about a Basic Google site for parent/teacher/student communication enhancement! I'm really excited and wanted to share the presentation with you!

 

YouTube is More Than a Place to Watch Videos

Well, as you know, the experiment with YouTube has been working well... So, YES, it's pushing the limits and we may have trouble if everybody is doing this at once, but it's something I have to share! 

There are some great options in YouTube that we haven't been able to use in the past that are too good not to harness for classroom use. 

1) YouTube Webcam Recording

This will allow the signed in Google User (Google bought YouTube a couple years ago) to record easily from their webcam. Go to this link and click on record (you have to agree to the permissions first on both the Chromebook or your teacher computer). 

When complete, click "upload" and for any video or student projects, you can have them set it to private or unlisted if you'd like. The user sets the privacy. Unlisted is a public video, but it doesn't appear in search results and private is available only to the user. You can only do videos up to 15 minutes at a time. 

2) YouTube Slideshows

This will allow the user to create a slideshow of photos. It is something you could also assign students to easily do within Google Slides (under Google Drive), but this is set up more like iMovie. 

3) YouTube Editor

This will allow you to edit videos that you have recorded or taken. Again, this takes up bandwidth, so it is probably something we will need to communicate about if we are all doing this as a semester project, but if we have the capability, we need to try. 

The other on this page is about Google Hangouts, which are currently blocked, but will have a place in the future. 

I am excited about sharing this opportunity, especially for short videos that you may want students to create. That being said, it is pushing our bandwidth boundaries, but I'm sure some famous athlete once said that we need to push our boundaries to know our limits- right?! So, give me some feedback if you'd like to use some of next Friday's PD time to go through some of this YouTube fun or if you just want me to come help you individually try something out.

Remembering that you or your students will be able to embed these videos on your website, blog or presentation to make your assignments even more interactive, if you choose. Also, think about the possibilities for flipping your classroom curriculum! 

Soft Skills to Pay the Bills

When teaching workforce skills, we often forget some of what are called the "soft skills". The U.S. Department of Labor has created a learning module with videos and additional text to support teaching these soft skills in your curriculum for a "workability" type of class.

The US DOL categorizes soft skills as: 

1. Communication
2. Enthusiasm and Attitude
3. Teamwork
4. Networking
5. Problem Solving and Critical Thinking
6. Professionalism 

And, for each of the soft skills, there is a pdf with information and a video that corresponds. 

The Disability Employment Policy Office has put this out, but I could see it being very beneficial to any teen or young adult looking for career opportunities. 

Auto Reloader For Chrome Broswer

During in-service on Friday, I had a great question and now I great answer! As a district, we are using Hapara to more easily manage our Google Drive and Chromebooks. A great "add-on" feature of this is the ability to see a screenshot of the current screen on our students' Chromebooks. Unfortunately, Hapara doesn't refresh this automatically and, as teachers, we all know that students can get off task in a blink of an eye, so it's important to see the students' computer screens at any given time.

Here is the answer: "I've got an Extension for That!" 

Auto-reloader is an extension that you can set to automatically reload a page at set intervals. If you do this every two or three minutes, you will surely be able to refresh what you see on your Hapara monitoring screen in a timely-enough fashion and not feel like you are clicking crazy waiting for it to reload.

I hope this helps and, thanks Cindy, for the question and now solution!

Google Sites for Beginners Presentation

Here is "The Basic Site" Presentation for our PD tomorrow morning. We will be working on creating basic sites with some basic embedding and link creation from our District Teacher Template.

Hapara List for Launch!

Here is the link to the Google Doc as well.

Our school district is using Hapara Dashboard to organize our Google Accounts and Chromebooks more easily. Here is the document from our first training. It was good to have this to go with as we were starting out our training and, so far, Hapara is going well. We all want MORE than it does, (instant updates on Chromebook screens, interactive chatting and remote control of Chrome desktops, multiple smart copy location choices, etc.) but what it is supposed to do has been working well.

Hapara Week One

As our school dives into Hapara, we are encountering a lot of questions, but we are also finding answers as well. I have shared with you a "Hapara Launch" document that I used as we did training sessions on Monday and Tuesday after school which may be helpful.

I think that all of the teachers that have been trying the Hapara Teacher Dashboard would agree that the "Smart Copy" feature is the most exciting feature of Hapara. Below is a short training video that you may find helpful, but please feel free to stop in if you have other questions.

I added the information above, as well as the great PDFEscape Tutorial that Mr. Gohring had students create at the bottom, to the Deuel PD website. (You must be logged into the Deuel account to view the PDFEscape document.) There are a lot of other tutorials available on the site with Google under the Google Apps link list on the right side of the page.

I hope that you are having a great week!

724 Math Sorted Math Resources

Math Teachers-- Have you seen this yet?! What a great SORTED resource!

http://illuminations.nctm.org/Weblinks.aspx

Above is a link to 724 resources sorted by math category: Algebra, Probability, Measurement, etc. Many look like good resources and as they have been reviewed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, I'd hope they would be! I hope you can find something here you can use. 

Check out this Blog Site!

Blogs have turned into a great professional development tool and I want to start trying to share a few with you! Below is a blog that is relatively new, but has a very respectable author. He reviews iPad apps (some paid, some free) and gives some great integration ideas as well. Once you have visited this site, I recommend bookmarking it and checking it every now and again to get some new ideas. Check it out! 

 http://ipadapps4school.com/ 

Target Field Trip Grants

Many corporate entities provide funding to give back to their communities and as I am an avid Target shopper, I was glad to see this opportunity. Check out the Target Field Trip Grant Program and apply for this school year!

Target provides up to $700 in funding for many educational field trips throughout the United States. It looks like a relatively simple form and may be a great way to fund a field trip this year! The grant deadline is October 1st. If you have any questions or I can help in any way, please let me know.

 Have a great day!

Google Apps for Edu Great Plains Summit #gpsummit

I had been looking forward to this all summer long and the #Google #AppsforEduSummit in Lincoln, NE lived up to the hype. In 100+ degree heat, five teachers and I travelled six hours by minivan to Lincoln and, somehow, everybody had fun and learned something! 

I had personal goals of exciting everybody else on the trip, but not overwhelming them at the same time. I will be the first to admit, Google Apps for Edu and going Chromebooks can be overwhelming. But, like almost everything else, I liken it to running. As a marathoner, I'm often asked, "How in the world do you run 26.2 miles?" My reply is easy... one step at a time. When I started running, I never set out to run marathons, half marathons or even a 10k. I was going to run one local 5k that was raising money for a young family with a son in the NICU, but as I crossed that first finish line my mind was immediately changed. I didn't win and I wasn't last, but I knew I could do better. It wasn't a race against anybody else, it was to be the best I could be each day. 

So after that first race, the educator in me set out to learn everything I could about running. I read every issue of Runner's World (old and new), asked questions to every runner I could find, and found blogs of runners that were just like me. To make a three-year story short, about fifty 5ks, twelve half marathons, a fifteen mile road race and thousands of training runs later, I became a marathoner two months shy of my 30th birthday. 

Google Apps for Edu can be a lot like running a marathon for teachers new to cloud computing or online collaboration. If you try to run 26.2 miles just after getting off the couch, you WILL NOT make it. You will not be hydrated or fueled properly for your run and half way through will cramp and give up. So, don't let your Google Apps for Edu colleagues give up, find a training plan. Run a 5k, a 10k and a couple half marathons before you hit your stride for a full marathon. 

If you are ready to start with Google Apps for Edu, head over to the Great Plains Summit page and check out some of the resource materials. There were awesome presenters that can bring you from Couch to 5k or send you out on your first full marathon. 

Finally, here are the intro slidedecks from our Deuel trainings on Drive last spring. Check them out to refresh your memory. If you need help with your username/password for our Apps for Edu account, just email me. 

Apps, Story Starters, and an Inexpensive Document Camera

Here are a few items for today! I hope that the week is going well for you.

Storylines for Schools:  Looking at a new way to learn vocabulary terms? How about Spelling words? Check this out. Tell stories using your spelling words drawing pictures... even have the students sit in pods and rotate devices to get a really crazy story going!

Pic Collage: Want the students to create a collage on a topic? How about a collage to describe vocab terms? This is quick, easy and fun. Have the students create a collage, take a snap shot by clicking on the home button and the power button. Send the students to the "Photos" app and email you their collage!

ThingLink: I think I showed you this before, as I was using it in my high school classroom for students to create interactive maps. I just visited with teachers today using thinglink in 3rd grade classrooms with students in the computer lab. Each student chose an image of a place they would want to visit and put in 5 facts to remember and 3 links for more information about the place they would want to visit. Another teacher talked about students creating word doc with a paragraph, saved it as a jpeg, uploaded it to Thinglink and had the students label each part of speech on the jpeg. They were also required to find the wikipedia page that defined each part of speech as well. Great new ideas! If you are interested in trying out Thinglink with the devices you have access to in a lab or in your classroom, please let me know and I'll be glad to come be your aid in your classroom for a day.

iPEVO Camera :
I know that Document Cameras were something a lot of people wanted and I just got to play with one today and heard great reviews! I know requisitions are already in, but maybe something to check out/ see if you can go back and change. It doesn't have a light, but will go full screen and looks easy to use. It hooks up using a USB port and requires you to download some software, but the price will hook you! For those that are interested in a document camera, this is inexpensive for only $69! 

Scholastic Story Starters: Want a good way to start a story for students? This will give you a story starter for your classroom. You can choose ADVENTURE (think pirates), FANTASY (think princesses and princes), SCIFI (think aliens) or SCRAMBLER. Then choose K-1, 2nd, 3rd, or 4-6th for grade level and SPIN THE WHEEL for your story information. Choose your format for the writing: newspaper, postcard, notebook and download to email or print when complete. Very fun! 

Flubaroo Teaser: I have used Flubaroo for awhile, but until today (when somebody asked what in the world I was doing) I kinda forgot how cool it really is. Flubaroo is a script you can run in Google Drive's Forms application after you have the students complete a Multiple Choice, T/F, short answer, choose from list with multiple answers or ranking questions. It will self-correct and if you remember to have an item on the Form with their email address, email them their score report with the questions and answers (if you choose). Click on the link for a youtube video that explains it and if you are interested, please let me know and I will be glad to help! This is such a great time saver!  

Have a great Easter!! 

Five Out of the Way Google Tools

I make no secret about how cool I think Google is for educators. So, I have a few Google extras to share today!

1) The Google Art Project has been around for a few years and only started with 6 institutions putting their artwork online. Today, 151 institutions from over 40 countries have their work online. Some have their work in Google's Street View that actually makes you feel like you are walking through the museum. If you are looking to target some of the multicultural or multiple medium interpretations standards, Google Art Project is the place for you! There is also an education section that allows you to make quizzes and evaluate art just like the pros! 

2) Google Trends Search allows you to check what the trend of a particular topic has been in search. You can find out what the world or specific countries are searching right now like Hugo Chavez dead. (Click on hyperlinks to take you to the pages.) Or take something like the Superbowl that is annual and you can see the popularity rise every year. This could be very useful for research and also quick looks at popularity of certain topics. 

3) Google Type will make your words into a fun, image print like the Google Search page is everyday! Check this out... Deuel Google Typed This could be fun for students to use and grab a snapshot of for a project. 

4) Panaramio  is a collaborative, worldwide collection of photos with geolocation tags around the world in using either the Google Earth plug in or Satellite view of maps of the world. Are you looking for images of Hayti? (I'm sure you are...) Then, type in Hayti and this what you get: Flooding Pictures somebody uploaded. Or you can be much more interesting and check out the "Bone Church" in Kutna Hora .

5) Finally, StoryBuilder by looks like a Google Doc that will let you create a conversation to play back.  Just go to "Create Story" and create your account to save your conversations. It limits you to only 12 interactions, but it is a fun way to start a lesson or keep kids' attention for a short period of time. Very fun and it has sound effects like the keyboard too.

Hope you have a great week!

6... which was supposed to be 5

I said that I'd just present 5 technology tools for the classroom tomorrow, but it's going to be 6 ideas for technology in the classroom. Let me know your thoughts. Have you used any of these tools? 

Valentines Day Freebie for Breaking Down "10"

My four year old loves numbers and despite the fact that I love reading more than 'rithmetic, I feed her habit. I am going to print these tonight and tomorrow night we are going to try this out. Breaking down 10 for Valentines Day!

Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium and Chromebooks

In South Dakota today, there was a conference call with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) in regard to the technology standards and recommendations for the future SBAC testing. For our school district, this is particularly important as we are almost finished with our decision on new computers for the next year. We do not know what we are going to do, yet, and are looking at all options. While making this decision, there were a lot of considerations, but testing compatibility is paramount.

They have said that for the 2014- 15 and 2015- 16 school year (the first two years of the SBAC/ CCSS tests) that the Chromebook will be compatible. I'm excited for the implications that this may bring across the country and what Google may do to help with SBAC testing. As the Common Core State Standards Initiative is not going away, I am sure that the Google Chrome browser and, subsequently, the Chromebook will have to follow.

There was also talk of the iPad being used for testing. SBAC said that they did a beta test with 800 students (no word on the age of these students) testing on the iPad and students did not like using the virtual (on-screen) keyboard. These were iPad 2s using iOS 6 and the iTester App. The discussion from SBAC about iPad minis was solidly a "no" for testing purposes as the screen was too small. (On a bit of a tangent, I was unsure how I would like the iPad mini, but once it was in my hand... I am a believer that the iPad mini has a place in our schools.) Our district had 4th graders and 5th graders testing on the iPad 2 during a Benchmark testing pilot and had no troubles with the keyboard. I think that testing on the iPad with a virtual keyboard would only be an issue with students that do not use the iPad on a regular basis.

Also, I think that it also matters what age the students were that were in the pilot. If it was 800 Juniors testing that have only had access to iPads for an hour a week or only one class a day, as opposed to students in a 1:1 iPad environment, it may be a more serious impediment to the validity of the test. I think that we will find this a question of testing validity as other testing goes online in districts that do not currently have a 1:1 environment.

I am glad that the SBAC is looking into all types of operating systems and hardware options. I hope that no matter what, students are able to test on what they currently feel comfortable using regularly.

Snow Day Ideas: Google Drive App, Documents by Readdle and Socrative

As school was called off last night, I invited the neighborhood girls over for a crafting morning. I love getting the girls together in the summer, but at the dining room table is an entirely different story. This morning just reminds me all too much how much I respect elementary teachers and everything you do everyday. Wow! Elementary teachers are amazing! The noise.... my goodness.

Here are some snow day ideas:
1) Did you know you can Skype with a Yellowstone Ranger? https://education.skype.com/projects/2237-yellowstone-national-park-rangers-can-skype-with-classrooms I can help you set Skype up on your iPad or your computer if you are interested in having your students chat with a Yellowstone Park Ranger or explore the Skype in Education page to check out the other chatting opportunities that you may want to use.

2) Padlet/ Wallwisher is a blank page for upper elementary, middle school or high school students that allows you to collaborate and compose. Students could create a bulletin board for a presentation, share ideas with other students, project for a presentation or have an online question and answer session during literature circles or a reading activity.

3) Socrative online and the Socrative App for iDevices or Android Devices (Kindles, too)  has made me feel incredibly guilty. This has been on my iPad for over a year and until last weekend when I saw the Instructors at STI using them, I always thought it looked not very user-friendly. Was I ever wrong! As a teacher, you sign up and are given a room number.

Step a) You can create short answer or multiple choice quizzes using the online program or Excel/ Sheets templates.
Step b) The students tap the app or go to Socrative.com and type in the teacher's room number.
Step c) Teacher is online with teacher app or Socrative.com teacher login using computer and assigns quiz.
Step d) Students take quiz.

There are so many options with this program! Teachers can let students go at their own pace or only let them go question by question (so you can review as you progress through lesson). Teachers can also combine quizzes as a review and have students separated into teams (as assigned by Socrative) to see which team can get the most questions correct the fastest! Tomorrow morning I'm putting this on the iPads and I'm very excited to use it! I am guilty as charged though, I downloaded it last year and never realized how great this is!

4) If you like Google Drive and you like your iPad, here is the tutorial for you. You can download this to your iPad and save in iBooks or Documents by Readdle App. The new Google Drive App has impressed me. And, for all iPad users, if you haven't downloaded the Documents by Readdle App yet, do it soon! There is no way this one will stay free forever. It is just a great document reading application.

5) TypingWeb is a free place for students to work on their typing abilities. There are games and tutorials for the home row. It reminds me a lot of the typing exercises I did in my typing class once upon a time... and it is free! I don't think it is something you would want to spend a lot of class time on, but maybe something to integrate or show students that want to learn to type quicker.

I hope you have a great day in the snow! Remember, we are so tough in South Dakota we don't name our storms we call them "Winter."

Also, this and all Tech Integration Idea emails are archived at teachertechweekly.blogspot.com

Animals, Science Fairs, Numbers and Lingro!

1) http://explore.org Is a fun site that has live video streams of many animals or places. It might be fun for some background as students work on an animal assignment or for students to evaluate the behavior of animals. 

2) https://www.googlesciencefair.com/en/2013/ The Google Science Fair is accepting submissions for the next 90 days. So, if you are interested in checking this out, they have a lot of age divisions and also have some inspiration here for other projects. 

3) http://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile This link is a YouTube channel with "Videos about numbers and Stuff" as they say on their website. There are videos about everything from solving a Rubik's cube to Numbers and Brains. In the same place I found this, I also read an interested blog post about raising mathematicians: http://davidwees.com/content/raising-mathematicians Some of these questions sound very familiar to some of the morning Math I've heard in Elementary classrooms. Very cool! 

4) http://lingro.com is a web tool that will allow you to translate a website or, even more exciting, define every word on a site. Here is one that I did for a Rube Goldberg website: http://lingro.com/translate/http://rubegoldberg.com 

Steps: 

1) Copy URL

2) Paste into lingro.com's text field

3) Click blue arrow and wait... it takes awhile for text-teavy sites

4) Then, your site will have the blue lingro bar on the top of the page and when you click any part of the page, it will pop up with a blue box with the definition! 

5) http://d97cooltools.blogspot.com/2012/09/commoncoreunpackingacademicvocabulary.html The link prior is an Unpacking Academic Vocabulary for Common Core blogpost. It has a lot of good information about what "Tier" of words you are using in the classroom. It also talks about using the Find Tool that works in most browsers and web sites (control + F on windows or command + f on Mac). Check it out if you have time. 

6) http://www.thinglink.com Do you know all those cool graphics in the Washington Post online or Time Magazine that you can hover over and get more info in a pop up bubble? Well, Thinglink allows you to make a jpg interactive. You have to create an account and upload your image or use a public image to start creating. I am excited to use this in Geography class so that students can take an image of a country or region and make it an interactive image with labels "hovering" over the image. 

I am gone on Friday to a training, but if you have any questions or I can help with anything, please let me know. As a reminder, the iPad checkout is located at: http://tinyurl.com/deuelipad  and you can check out the archived emails at : http://teachertechweekly.blogspot.com 

Have a great day!

10 Apps for Tuesday

I found some great free apps that I had to share! 1) Click on the link below 2) Click on View in iTunes and iTunes will open for you 3) Click on Purchase and put in your password. If you have any questions about downloading, please let me know and I will stop down and help.

1) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/endless-alphabet/id591626572?mt=8 The Endless Alphabet App is an interactive 'monster app' that has almost like alphabet flashcards and upon selecting a flashcard a word starting with that letter comes up. Students have to plug in the letter and as they drag the letter it makes it's sound. So cute! It is updated on a regular basis with new words. 

2) https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/hudsonalpha-icell/id364882015?mt=8 HudsonAlpha iCell App is an interactive app to travel through plant, bacteria, and animal cells. It is color coded and I wish I would have had this when I was in science classes! 

3) https://itunes.apple.com/app/powers-of-minus-ten-bone/id591722396?mt=8 Power of Minus Ten- Bones is an app to show you the inside of bones, a broken hand bone and how it heals. You can zoom in both ways and has scientific names with explanations. 

4) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disney-fish-hooks/id550005327?mt=8 Disney Fish Hooks App looks a lot like just a game, but it cleverly disguises critical thinking and process skills as learners have to get the fish out of the bubble at the top of the screen to the aquarium tube by carefully angling series after series of logs with the correct angle. I thought it looked easy until we got to the higher levels and then, it got really fun. It reminded me of a Rube Goldberg machine. 

5) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gesundheit!/id591696651?mt=8 Gesundheit! is the app of the week on iTunes and, again, at first looks like a game, but to get your "guy" from place to place, you have step on levers, get fruit, and... okay, fine. It's more of a game, but fun to learn how to use the multitasking gestures on the iPad with short tutorials coming up when needed. Not to mention, it has fun flute music. 

6) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wheels-on-bus-all-in-one-educational/id543545550?l=es&mt=8 The Wheels on the Bus Activity Center has counting, racing games with spelling, puzzles, and other fun activities centered around transportation. The full version has more, but this is free and has quite a lot. 

7) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toontastic-free/id404693282?mt=8 Toontastic was mentioned in a past email, but it keeps getting better with updates. You can have students create their own cartoon based on many fun characters, backgrounds, record their own narration, and it even coincides with the traditional plot diagram with a story arc. I can see a lot of possibilities for Elementary all the way up to Middle School. Even if you do not have an iPad right now, stop in and use one for a day or so to check it out and use them in class. The iPad checkout is located here: http://tinyurl.com/deuelipad

8) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/language-development-preschool/id554622105?mt=8 iLearn with Boing has multiple apps, but you can only do the "words" portion of each app for free. The words portion allows you to take the seals (in the ocean app) and move the letters in the order of the word. There are many other iLearn with Boing apps too.

9) https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/geodash-wild-animal-adventure/id573679651?mt=8 GeoDash combines a Mario World type game with learning animal characteristics and specific animals in different biomes. As it is a National Geographic sponsored app, it has a lot of great information read aloud to the students as they go through the game. 

10) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/where-do-i-go-group-match-words/id499190609?mt=8 The Where Do I Go? App is a fun way for students to learn how to group and classify animals, food, geography, climate, and home. It is fun to watch as they are given a theme and have to choose all of the applicable items in that category. 

I'll stop at 10 for today, but had to share some of the latest. Also, a new update is available for iPads as of yesterday. Go to your Systems App, General, Software update and tap install. You cannot install software using the school's wireless, but you can at home. I can also do this install when I hook iPads up to the MacBook Pro in my office that does not use the wireless. If you need help with this process, let me know. 

Have a great day! 

-6 is a win for Tuesday

Wahoo! It was only six degrees below zero as I drove to work today, which is ten degrees warmer than yesterday. So, I'm going to consider that a winning Tuesday! Not to mention, it going to be a 30 degree swing in temps by Saturday! 

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I will be gone tomorrow and Thursday, but will be back Friday. I will need to ask teachers checking out iPads Wednesday and Thursday a favor. Please make sure if you are first on the list to work with Kim to get my office unlocked and take out the iPads that you need from the cart. The last person to check them out, please make sure to put them back in the cart, lock the cart with the padlock, and lock my office door. I appreciate your help, but free to email me with any questions. I will have my phone on me. 

On another note with iPad care, please make sure to stack the iPad vertically in the case, all facing the same direction. Also, the iPad checkout is at http://tinyurl.com/deuelipad and be sure that you are refreshing your page before putting in a name. This is especially true on an iPad as the iPad seems to have more of delay in updating than a computer. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about checkout times. I am open to ideas to improve the process. 

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1) Six Weeks of iPad Apps for School are reviewed and explained in the previous link. Most of them are free and seem to be some interesting apps. Each app's page on the AppStore is linked on the presentation for easy download. Please let me know if any of these are something you would like on the cart's iPads. 

2) http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/ I have told a few of you about the Power Searching with Google online course I took in October. Good news! There is an Advanced Power Searching with Google Course starting January 23rd. If you do not think you are ready for the Advanced, you can click on the link along the blue bar that says "Power Searching" and complete that course at your own pace. I would highly recommend it. And, if you are interested, I'd be glad to work with you on some of this. There are so many great resources on the internet... it's wading through all the bogus sites first that takes work. 

3) High quality rubric creation is a lot of work and the following is a link to a great repository of 21st century learning and digital rubrics. Check them out if you are not sure where to start in creating an assessment tool.  http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/rubrics.cfm?THEBIGDEALBOOK=634611295785560000 

I have also sent you http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ before to help create Rubrics, if you are interested in referring back to this as well. 

4) Flipped Classrooms are a buzz word today in Education, but there really are teachers doing it and here are some examples: http://edudemic.com/2011/12/15-flipped-classrooms/ Check them out here and click on each school's name to find out more. 

5) I never thought I'd say this, but one of the lessons/ projects I really miss about teaching English is book reports. So, to reminisce a bit, here are 41 Ways to Go Beyond the Book Report that would be good for almost any grade level reading individually or as a class. 

Have a great week and stay warm!

Thanksgiving Ham

Fun tools for this week and a story about Ham:  

1) Primary Wall (http://primarywall.com/) and PiratePad (http://piratepad.net/) are two places that students can collaborate online for journal prompts, writing openers, opinion questions, and reviews of recent information. Check them out!

2) Perfect Pitch (http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/interactives/perfectpitch/) teaches the 'player' about either Modern, Romantic, Baroque or Classical instruments through a baseball game. It's a really fun way to combine music and baseball.

3) XtraMath (https://www.xtramath.org ) is a free place to sign up teachers, parents and students to your class to learn math through short videos and tutorials. You can go to the 'About Us' to learn how to sign up and sign up as a teacher, set up a class and assign lessons. There is a place to print out a parent flyer so that parents can follow along to see how their student is doing as well. 

4) In a Nutshell (http://www.planetnutshell.com/videos) is an idiom we have probably all heard and these on the page linked above are some In a Nutshell videos for you to use in the classroom to teach about Internet Safety. They are on the lower right hand column of the page. A range of topics from Distracted Driving and Say no to Sexting for teens and What is the Internet? for elementary students are covered "in a nutshell." These would be great Write to Win starters, if you want to integrate it at the start or end of a unit.

5) SkoolBo (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skoolbo-core-skills-hd/id534555129?mt=8) is an app for the iPad that targets map and reading skills with a lot of games for students up to age 10. I will have this on the 25 iPads you can check out next week, but if you have an iPad and are reading this email from the iPad, Click on the link in this summary which will take you to the AppStore so you can download it on your iPad. 

6) Postcards then and Now Blog ( http://postcardsthenandnow.blogspot.com) is just a fun blog that shows you old postcards and then goes to Google Street view using Google Maps to see what it looks like now. I'm a big fan of anything comparing history to modern day, so this is just for fun to show you what Google Maps can do. 

7) One last thing to check out: Google Drive (https://www.google.com/intl/en_US/drive/start/index.html?authuser=0 ) or Google Docs is something that many of you have heard me refer to over the past few emails. Check this video out and explore this site. Google Drive can change the way you store files and will allow you access from any computer or mobile computing device anywhere in the world. Seriously, cool stuff. Let me know if you have any questions about integrating Google Drive (Docs, Spreadsheets, Draw, Forms, Presentations) into your classroom or ask your colleagues that are already using it. 

8) How to Cook a Ham 

My brother-in-law, Gary, told my family a story a few Thanksgivings ago that seems applicable this semester. He said that his niece was hosting Thanksgiving for the first time so his sister went over to help cook the meal. His sister proceeded to cut the ends of of the ham to put it in the oven to bake. His niece inquired, "Mom, why do you cut the ends off the ham before we bake it? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the ends on the ham so it stays moist? Then I wouldn't have to cook gravy. I'm trying to go low carb, you know." 

Gary's sister replied, "My Mother always did it this way, so it must be the way to get her famous honey glaze to soak through the ham, but let's ask Grandma when she gets here." 

That evening at Thanksgiving supper, Gary's niece and sister asked his Mother why she cut the ends off the ham. She explained that was the way that her Mom showed her how to do it. After a few questions, Gary's Grandmother adjusted her hearing aid and said, rather disgusted, "I cut the ends of the ham off because I never had a pan big enough to cook a whole ham at once and Grandpa worked for the elevator in town and always got a big ham for a Thanksgiving bonus. I cut the ends off to make soup otherwise I would have never been able to cook the ham whole." 

So, for three generations, everybody cut the ends off the ham and either ate dry ham or adapted the recipe with a glaze or gravy. One generation was making due with what they had to fit the ham in the pan. The next generation concocted a famous honey glaze and the next just cut the ends off, made a dry ham and learned how to make good gravy and finally somebody asked why. They all cooked ham, but amended the recipe to fit their cooking style, family's taste or cooking tools available. 

Moral of the story: My brother-in-law Gary embellishes stories to fit our conversation at dinner... yes, I mean, No. Not the point...err... Anyways... Did they all still get ham at Thanksgiving? Yes. Did they have to use the same recipe? No. 

My attempt at an analogy is to remember no matter what we are doing to "re" map our curriculum to the Common Core vernacular, that it is still your classroom. Adapt it the way that works for you. We do not all have to get there the exact same way with identical lesson plans, but we all still have to get there. And, this year more than ever, I've learned that everything we need to know about curriculum and teaching strategies to help our students get to the "Common Core Standards" is in this building, all we need to do is share and have those conversations. Overall, I just encourage you to have an open mind and share what you know with the rest of us that are still learning to be better teachers.

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Have a great week and let me know if there is anything I can do to help. Except if it's cooking ham... It's best you consult Pinterest or your most recent Thanksgiving hosts. 

Samantha Walder
Deuel School District
Career Counselor
Technology Integrationist
https://sites.google.com/site/samanthawalder/