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.

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!

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! 

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/ 

Sites, Apps, Ideas and A Message from Santa

Good morning! This Friday I will be meeting with the HS in the morning and going through some testing data, but I will be available afterwards. Please let me know how I can help! 

For those that are interested, the iPad Applications (for the classroom set) will be reviewed again on January 3rd. If you are planning on applying, make sure these are turned in prior to January 3rd. I have reattached the application form for you. 

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1) https://www.zooniverse.org/projects Zoo Universe is a really great place to explore the surface of the moon through pictures, check out historical cyclones, and even classify wildlife on the Serengeti! Check out this page of projects to see what else is there. You can also Experiment in the laboratory to see if there is life on another planet or help libraries identify digitized music! 

2) http://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey?feature=watch CGP Grey is a YouTube Channel with a lot of short explanations that would be great to integrate into class or put together to create your own Performance Task. You can listen to a short video on the difference between the UK and Englad to another about Is Pluto a Planet? 

3) https://sites.google.com/site/kernkelley/forms Google Forms Template by Kern Kelly gives links to great self-grading quizzes you can embed on your website or email out, word find maker, miscellaneous documents and also administrative docs you can use. Click on the link, click on the 'make a copy' link and (you may need to sign into your Google Account at this time, if you haven't already today) the template will be saved for you in your Google Docs account. To reuse the document multiple times, make sure to go to "file" --> "make a copy" each time you need to use the document again. 

4) 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-mover/id572997152?mt=8 Word Mover is a new app from ReadWriteThink that I have on the check out iPads that will acts a lot like the "magnet words" you can get and create poetry from. The reason that I like this app is that you can choose famous speeches or texts (like MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech) and only use those words to create a speech. It is a fun way to teach literary devices like diction and even syntax. 

5) http://mp3cut.net/ Online Audio Cutter is a place to upload audio files from your computer, SoundCloud or YouTube and cut the audio and save it. It also links to an Audio Joiner and Audio Converter at the top of the page that I haven't got to check out yet, but sound promising. 

6) https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/spacecraft-3d/id541089908?mt=8 Spacecraft 3D is a cool new NASA app that will allow students to explore 3D models of spacecraft. So cool!

7) http://www.portablenorthpole.com/home The Portable North Pole is the COOLEST place to send a message from Santa to your children, students (as a class even, it would be cool) or even another adult that needs a message from Santa to brighten their day! (Here is the example I made for Leah: http://www.portablenorthpole.com/watch/gQVvQZhcPP3pRRbS4NZ9vuA/p) I made one last year and it was not nearly as fun, so I was excited to see how it had changed. Can you tell? I just love Christmas!

8) https://bingobaker.com/ Bingo Baker is a place to create your own BINGO cards! I think this may be a fun way to review during the last few days before Christmas. You can create an account to save your cards, get a 'full screen' bingo card (which is easier to print) and also peruse other bingo cards people have created via the ink in the upper right hand corner of the screen. 

Have a great week!

MS/ HS Tech Tools Presentation

Here is the copy of the MS/ HS Tech Tools Presentation. We went through some great ways to integrate video in the classroom, ways to store useful classroom videos on playlists, as well as many great FREE video resources.

Crash Course YouTube Channel for Biology or World History

There are 73 videos on this channel that are quick-paced and have interesting graphics. They are between 12- 15 minutes long and may be interesting to show in class. There are topics in both World History and Biology. Take a peak and see if any may be relevant for your classroom. There are some that are better than others, but worth a look to help reinforce an idea learned in class. 

Crash Course YouTube Channel

This year will be great!

After visiting with each group and getting some ideas from you, I know that this year will be great! As promised, I will attempt to only send one mass email to everybody each week. Below is my Tech PD Schedule for next Friday. If you would like to join one of these meetings, but it is not your level or content area, feel free to let me know. 

Tech PD Schedule for Friday, August 24:

9:00 Meet with Elementary about email basics

9:30 to 10:30 Meet with HS English about Blogger in Mr. Gudmundson's Room

Here are some places to go check out this week: 

1) http://noredink.com/ No Red Ink is a site to improve grammar and writing skills and is aimed more MS/ HS. It is still very new right now, but you create a FREE account and have your students create a FREE account as well. The student selects their favorite hobbies and interests and creates practice grammar sentences based on their interests. If they get to higher levels, they can even link it with Facebook and put their friends' names in the sentences. If you are interested in trying this out, let me know and I will be glad to help!

2) http://www.sharemylesson.com/ I recently found this and although you have to create an account, and subsequently get emails from the site, it is full of resources for every level and every content area! You can download Common Core, Standards-based lessons in pdf form and some have supplemental materials and video links as well. 

3) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/inkflow-think-visually!/id519524685?mt=8 Inkflow: Think Visually! is an app that allows you to draw and write with your fingers on the iPad and save a Snapshot, email, export to a jpeg or pdf, and save! I think this may have applications for you as a teacher trying to illustrate a concept or if you allow students to use it as well. 

4) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/math-kid/id465213584?mt=8 Math Kid  is a great app for quick math facts! It is more for lower elementary with just addition and subtraction problems. 

5) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/type-on-pdf-free/id468064548?mt=8 Type on PDF FREE is an app for when you receive a PDF on your iPad email and want to write on it. You will hold on the PDF icon in the email and select to 'Type on PDF'. You can then email that back to yourself. 

Below is a link to my first attempt at a tutorial. As I said, I have helped refresh a few people's memory on setting up group contact lists in webmail. This is a short video to help you out, but if you would like more help, let me know. 

http://screencast.com/t/k2G9HKZ5 

If you like the above tutorial's format, you can use this screen capture option too! Go to www.jingproject.com and download the program. You can do snapshots/ screen capture still frames or short (under 5 minute)  movies with this program. It is for Mac or Windows users. 

Have a great first week! 

Samantha

Dropbox Ideas, Videos, and Questions Answered

I have had a few questions about how to set up a file management system to submit student work to a teacher for grading. I have successfully used Dropbox integrated with dropitto.me to turn in student work. It also works well with the iPad, but you do not need an iPad to correct the student submissions.

Dropbox can also be used to upload your own documents and share them from one computer to another. The video below talks about this more about the private, not educational application. Go to www.dropbox.com to download the app to your computer (it does not matter if your computer is a Mac or Windows or if you are using your iPad/ iPod Touch/ iPhone or Android phone it will all be compatible). 

Like most things that I am going to show this year, there are other ways to do this. This is just one way and if you think it would work for you, I will be happy to help you set it up.

 

The video above was produced by Dropbox and gives you the overview of the product. You are given 2GB of free space to store information, which is a good amount to work with for most people. It probably wouldn't be enough for a major backup source, but for student file submissions it will work well. You can also delete old submissions at the end of the semester or year.



The second video was produced to show the way DropBox and dropitto.me work together. Here is where there is one downfall for our small school. Unfortunately, the work submitted through dropitto.me to your dropbox will appear in a folder called "DROPitTOme". They will not be sorted. To combat this, I had students title assignments with the assignment name and then the student last name. For example: TermPaperWalder or OutlineWalder

Here is what my folder looks like:

You can sort them after they are submitted into folders. As you can see, on the top of the list there is a place to make a new folder. It may take a little time though, which is a downfall.



Above is one last video about setting up your dropitto.me account, but remember, you do not have to do this all by yourself. I am here to help. Email me or stop in and I will help at any time.