Teaching Channel “Reading Like a Historian”

Question mark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This past week our school has been focused on the use of questions in the classroom. As I began looking into the many approaches and types of questions teachers can use effectively in the classroom I came across a great video on the Teaching Channel. This video was titled “Reading like a Historian“. I found this video quite informative and a great starting point for our teachers to begin discussing the use of questioning in the classroom. Take a look and tell me what you think or stories you have of using questioning in the classroom.

Click here to watch the video on the “Teaching Channel”

5 Edtech Resources for Students

This year I have put together a list for my students of five sites that they might find helpful in their classes. These sites are ones that over the past few years my students have routinely used. I do not necessarily think that they are all great but there is something about them that students seem to like and have proven to be helpful in their studies.

Search Engines

InstaGrok: This is a great search engine that shows how facts and concepts are related. This is a great visual tool to teach kids about how searches are conducted on the web.

Fact Monster: This site allows students to find information quickly and keeps them on one site so that they do not get lost in a variety of links looking for information.

Images

Pics4Learning: Great website for students to use to find images for projects and other assignments. Teachers can use and feel safe that all images found on this website are appropriate for school.

Writing Tools

Wordsmyth: is and easy to use dictionary that provides definition pronunciation and alternative words for students to use.

Bibme: Is a great free citation and bibliography maker. It is simple easy to use and auto

Image via CrunchBase

fills in a lot of details for the students.

 

Related articles

• The Must-Have EdTech Cheat Sheet
• Infographic: Student Access to Digital Learning Devices – Getting Smart by Getting Smart Staff – blended learning, DigLN, edreform, EdTech, SmartSeries
• Hundreds of Great Ideas and Just One Classroom!

Hundreds of Great Ideas and Just One Classroom!

Well it is that time of year again and I can already hear the school bell ringing. Like many teachers I am hitting the web and my classroom resource creating and organizing lessons. As I peruse the web looking for ideas and resources I can feel my stress level rise as I see hundreds of ideas and resources to use in my classroom.

The problem is the web has so many great ideas that it can be overwhelming. Just today I came across two great posts one from edudemic.com titled “50 Educational Technology Tools Every Teacher Should Know About” and Getting Smarts “50 Essential Edtech Tools By Category” each had 50 different tools or resources. This just added to my stress and frustration about what to do in my classroom. I quickly realized that I need to have a specific goal in mind so that I can focus on one or two aspects of Edtech in my classroom. So over the next two weeks I will be posting about 4 or 5 really good tested Edtech tools to use in the classroom. Each post will focus on a specific content area with Common Core in mind. My hope is to help myself get organized and maybe help someone else out in the process.

GAME ON! as the 2012-2013 school Year starts!

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Videos that Make for Great Teacher Professional Development

education (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

While I normality like to post my ideas and thoughts on education and technology. Occasionally, however I come across a post that is just so outstanding and on the mark that I feel it is just too good not to pass on to my readers. “Ten Videos Every Educator Should Watch (and Reflect on)” was written last February and while I have written about and discussed many of the videos contained in this post I really like the fact that they are all placed together for teachers to look at and think about. This is the time of year when many teachers have the time to look at and think about new ideas and teaching strategies. So I encourage any teachers looking to expand their teaching techniques, philosophies and teaching strategies to look through these outstanding videos and reflect on them.

Click here to read Ammar Merhibi’s “Ten Videos Every Educator Should Watch (and Reflect on)”

And Ammar thanks for taking the time to put this post together. To read more from Ammar Merhibi check out his blog “Eductechnalogy”

Scholastic: Interactive Whiteboard Activities

Like every teacher I am always excited to find good resources. Over the past week I came across a great resource site for interactive whiteboards. This site contains many resources for Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, Math, and others. The activities and media shared on this site are high quality and cover many different areas of study within each subject area. Many of these activities would be a great supplement to any teachers curriculum.

Check out this great resource at: http://teacher.scholastic.com/whiteboards/languagearts.htm

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• Cool Interactive Whiteboard Lessons, Designed and Tested by Teachers (ebeamrocks.wordpress.com)

Don’t Forget You Need a Foundation!

Image via Wikipedia

Education is in a state of flux all across the country. Districts are looking for new ways to improve learning and meet the state and federal guidelines for education. As districts look at these different techniques and technologies, what is often overlooked is the foundation.

There is a great story about the famous basketball coach John Wooden. One of his first lessons that he taught his college players when they came to UCLA was how to put on their socks and shoes. He told them that this game requires you to move and change directions quickly and if your shoes and sock are not on correctly, you could get blisters or your shoe could come untied. In both cases you are then out of the game. If you are out of the game, you cannot be successful.

Today in education teachers are often overlooked as these new approaches and techniques are implemented in their schools. As districts mandate these techniques, they do not consult the fundamental aspect of their educational process, their teachers. Techniques do not teach kids, teachers do and they can often can provide valuable assistance on implementation of these new techniques.  When districts overlook the fundamentals in applying new techniques and programs, they are often met with failure and frustration adding to the dilemma of education today. True change in education today cannot be successful unless it has been built on a good foundation.

60+ Video editors

Well it is that time of year again for student projects. Every year I am always looking for new and inventive ways for students to show me what they have learned in class. This year I really wanted to use video. Students always love making videos. It is a fun and engaging way for them to present information. However, video editors are quite expensive and can be difficult to use. So over the course of the past few years here are a some websites  that are not too difficult to use and many are free. This allows all students the ability to edit video. I have had students use many of these websites and have seen some great videos in the past. I just hope to see more of the same this year. Take a look at the following 60+ video editors.

• Dragontape.com

  tags: youtube tool tools web2.0 dragontape web remix media

• Video Annotation Tool [Academic Technology Services, UMN]

  tags: annotation tools youtube web2.0 flash tool umn Research

• Welcome to Aviary

  tags: tools graphics editor photos photography photoshop Photo audio

• CaptionTube: Home

  tags: youtube captions subtitles tools google education caption translation

• animoto – the end of slideshows

  tags: web2.0 slideshow animation photos tools presentation music audio

• Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket

  tags: photos hosting photography web2.0 sharing image storage photobucket

• One True Media – slideshows, free photo sharing, facebook video, slide shows, Facebook slideshows, Facebook codes, free video sharing, video montages.

  tags: slideshow web2.0 photos media tools photography multimedia sharing

• Flixtime – Video Slideshows made easy!

  tags: digitalstorytelling web2.0 slideshows slideshow presentations animation tools flixtime

• YouTube – Broadcast Yourself.

  tags: youtube editor tools broadcast yourself tool web2.0

• Free Videos Online – Watch TV Online – Free Video Clips | Veoh

  tags: media tv web2.0 social streaming web p2p veoh

• Movie Masher: Free Open Source Online Video Editor

  tags: editor tools editing web2.0 Videoediting flash opensource masher

• Kaltura: Open Source Video Platform

  tags: opensource web2.0 tools kaltura videoblog editing Open Platform

• 404 | RiffTrax

  tags: remix digitalstorytelling web2.0 rifftrax 404 tool | mashup

• Upload videos! Free home video sharing and editing. Secure Home Movie Archiving, Hosting and Storage.

  tags: web2.0 sharing editing social mashup motionbox service share

• USTREAM, You’re On. Free LIVE VIDEO Streaming, Online Broadcasts. Create webcasts, video chat, stream videos on the Internet. Live streaming videos, TV shows

  tags: streaming web2.0 tv broadcast ustream tools media community

• Stroome.com | mix it up. mash it out.

  Video editor

  tags: editing stroome tools collaborative collaboration mix video_editing com

• Home – Creaza

  tags: digitalstorytelling web2.0 cartoon animation audio mindmap storytelling creaza

• JellyBarn – User Generated Video Contests

  tags: web2.0 blog photos mobile phlog Chris’ photography moblog

• Free Online Picture Editor, Image Editor and Photo Editor

  tags: editor image tools ajax tool imagenes photos web

• Stroome.com | mix it up. mash it out.

  tags: collaboration stroome web2.0 com mix tools edit it

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Create A QR Treasure Hunt! Simply and Quickly!

I have come across many different websites that help teachers incorporate technology into the classroom but the QR Treasure Hunt Website simply is one of the best. It is engaging, different and really captivates students attention. It is a win win for any teacher to use.

Teachers can use this website to create a series of questions which are then converted into QR codes, (like the one above) that contain text files for your students to read. Then you simply place these QR codes around the room or school and give them a time limit to answer all of the questions. The student back with the most correct answers at the end of the time limit wins. It is a fantastic first week of school exercise to get students thinking about a specific topic. This website does all of the work for the teachers. Just simply type in the questions and the site creates all of the QR codes. If you are looking for some QR code readers for the students to use see the list below. This is a must try in the classroom for all teachers.

QR Code Reader List: If I am missing one please let me know.

• KAYWA Reader
• Nokia Reader
• i-nigma Reader
• Lynkee Reader
• UpCode
• QuickMark
• SnapMaze
• BeeTagg
• NeoReader
• ScanLife
• MobileTag

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A Ray of Hope For Educators

Well, I am back from a great vacation and feel rested and recharged.  Over the past few days as I began to catching up on my reading and correspondence it did not take long for my frustration with ed-reform and other educational issues to once again frustrate me. Then I found a ray of hope.  Matt Damons speech over the past weekend on saving our schools and his defense of teachers really made me feel better as an educator. If you have not seen these videos I have embedded them below for you to watch. I highly recommend you watch them.

Matt Damon‘s Defense of Teachers

Matt Damon’s speech at the Save Our Schools March in DC

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• Matt Damon (and his Mom) Sticks Up for Teachers (firstbook.org)

Learning not brought to You by the letter A

The video below is a great example of really looking at what motivates people to learn.  So often schools seem to miss the mark in motivating their students.  There is an intrinsic motivator in all students, the key for schools and educators is to tap into this to really achieve success.  Simple saying that all students are motivated by grades leaves out a huge portion of the students population.  Many students are not motivated by grades and often are turned away from school by them. Watch the video below as Dr. Tae discusses how many students are motivated today.

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