Reasons to Use SmartBoard and the toolkit

During the class (Tech221) I shared with you why I thought using smart board and the smart toolkit was a useful tool for classroom teachers.  I recently came across the following list put out by Vanessa Cassie, Jan. 2010 (http://blog.sharpsav.com ), where she very succinctly and much more elegantly then I can or did, outlines the usefulness of smart board as a classroom tool for every teacher. 

1. Capture on the fly note: I will print notes for SPED students or those that have been absent, or with broken arms

2. Show a video: digital streaming has become the only way that I show video content anymore, especially in short clips

3. Model a skill or an experiment: using a ruler, a microscope, organizing an essay

4. Add a bit of magic: fading in and out, using the toolkit to add sparkle

5. Conduct the lesson from one locations: quickly jump between applications with touch screen: I don’t have to run back and forth to my computer to change screens

6. Provide good visuals that can be manipulated: pictures big enough for everyone in the classroom to see

7. Organize all the elements of your lesson in one place (add attachments and url’s), embed all of the pieces: I don’t have to try to remember where I put something that I know I want to use in the lesson

8. Page record the lesson for absent individuals or replay as needed

9. Just to operate in the same medium as the students.  Interactively.  Of course, the best is when the students are manipulating the board, playing review games or demonstrating something that they know

180 tech tips.com

http://www.180techtips.com  I can’t believe that I have never run across this site before.  Many of the tips are very basic but I have found after working with teachers in my building and other regular folk that sometimes it is nice to have access to a resource that can quickly answer your most basic questions.  This site does just that and I highly recommend teachers signing up to get the daily tips. You never know when you will find one that will provide you with an answer to a questions you didn’t know you needed to ask.

Readfresh is dead

Unfortunately, one of my favorite web tools, Readfresh,is dead.

I have been using it for about 5 months and having shared it with lots of people I am sad to say that it is closed.  I don’t know what happened and I am not sure what tool I will use to access my favorite blogs.  I liked this tool because it let me easily see the pages and not just the url’s.  I could click on each page and be instantly directed to that site.  I know that there are other tools out there but readfresh was easy to use. I am extremely sad at its demise.

Student Wish List

http://sites.google.com/a/students.halldale.org/tech-tool-reviews/home

Here is a site put together by 8th grade students on what kinds of web 2.0 tools they would like to use in their dream school.  What would you add?

Originally posted by http://rsu2teachertech.wordpress.com

xtranormal- Kingdoms we need for our Planet!

Podcasting with fotobabble

http://www.fotobabble.com

fotobabble is a fun and free tool that lets you podcast a short message that is attached to a picture.  You can then embed it in your blog or on your wiki.

I think that I have found a new tool that will let me send messages to my parents.

 

 

 

Death by ‘Power Point”

From Arizona K-12 center: http://azk12.org/blog/

Most of the teachers that I know are still using power point to give lectures with and to have students produce projects.  It’s not that I still don’t use it but it is my starting point and not the end.  Recently I made a power point on cyber bullying for a presentation that I have to make to our middle school staff next week.  I made the power point, then I saved it as jpgs and put some of them into a glog.  I then made a video of them with photostory, and I made a slide.com presentations as well.  My goal was to show my fellow teachers how to take a simple power point and change it up.  Students could easily accomplish these alternatives once they have their power point, then they could get feed back from people outside of their own classroom.  Plus it just adds a lot of fun to working on a project.  At least I think so.

Plus I came across this at the Arizona k-12 site and found that it makes all the points that I wish I could have said so creatively.

Life After Death PowerPoint from EMT Media on Vimeo.

Classification Alphabet Project 2010

Classification Alphabet project 2010

The students were to make a poster that represented an animal that started with a particular letter from the alphabet. Then they were to find its classification from kingdom to species, plus add a picture, and a few other pertinent details.

Classification of organisms

Voice thread

The reason we should pay attention to detail.

from feedproxy.google.com

Glogging and Blogging

Okay, I think I have become a little wacko.  It is 5 a.m. and I am blogging about glogging.  I have been wanting to have my students do a project using Glogster.com.  After introducing to Tech221 and asking them to try it out I made a couple of glogs myself.  I am addicted.  I have spent all night dreaming up projects that my 7th and 8th graders can do. 

 

I have also decided on a new classroom mantra. Fun, Fun, and more Fun.  After listening to the teachers at my school that went to ISTC last weekend and their discussion of one of the sessions on the ‘reasons to have fun’ in the classroom, I realize that I am a closet ‘fun teacher’.  I do think that if students can equate fun and excitement with learning than we will have life long learners on our hands.  So when the statement was made in the lunch room that mass murderers come from households that did not have any fun time it home that even though none of my students will ever be mass murderers I need to make sure that we have fun in the classroom just because.  Therefore, even though I normally daily try to inject a sense of fun everyday with my general demeanor in the classroom I am going to find activities that allow students to have more fun.  Some of the ways that I do this already is to use smart board games for review, to make sure that in my chemistry unit we burn stuff up, and now I am going to include making glogs.  Glogster glogs are my new fun addiction.  I am old (over 50) and if I can have fun and be inspired by such a simple concept what will my students think.  I know.  They will LOVE it.

The first thing that we are going to do is to film ourselves doing chemical reaction experiments and then put them in a glog.  I can’t wait to share them with all of you.  I encourage everybody to become a glogger.

Lesson Plan maker and examples

One of your classmates asked for some lesson plan templates and examples.  With a simple 5 minute search this is what I came up with.

http://lessonplancentral.com/

http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/Guide.shtml  Details what are good and bad lesson plans

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/WriteLessonPlan.htm  10 steps to good lesson plans

http://www.adprima.com/easyless.htm  Parts of a lesson plan

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/lesson.htm

http://www.tammypayton.net/library/lesson.shtml

http://www.northcanton.sparcc.org/~orchard/Templates4Teachers/wordtemplates.htm

http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/lesson_plan/

http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/intech/templatesresources.htm

http://www.wvschools.com/harrisoncounty/lpt/lptindex.htm

http://www.wordtemplates.org/school-word-templates/lesson-plans-template/

Examples

http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/lessons/lessons_teacherdeveloped.html

http://www.getworksheets.com/samples/lessonplans/

http://www.learningforlife.org/lfl/programs/samples.html

Great for kindergarten

http://www.poissonrouge.com/  Check this out.  I got this from my blogging group.  (http://digitaltoolsforteachers.blogspot.com) This has been the best PLN group that I have connected up with.  It is really the only one but I am thrilled that Ms. Tenkely has taken pity on me from ilearntechnology.  I am learning new things nightly.

tessellate

http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Tessellate/

twitter handbook for teachers

Should teachers use twitter?  Here is a twitter handbook for teachers.   Check it out and see if you learn anything that you can use in the classroom.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14062777/Twitter-Handbook-for-Teachers

News for tweens

http://tweentribune.com/

Another great resource.  Up-to-date news for tweens.  Easily accessible for students and interesting too.

Example of Using a glog

http://mckilloplibrary.edu.glogster.com/McKillop-Book-Reviews2/

 

This is a must visit glog.  Very interactive and well done.

I bet the students loved doing this and the parents must

have been excited to access this to see what their students

were doing at school.

teachers that use technology in the classroom

These are blogs of teachers that use technology tools to enhance learning in the classroom.  Check out what they are doing.

http://misterpfoxford.blogspot.com/

Check out the following wiki for relevant guides on “How to’s”

http://area6ict.wikispaces.com/

Using wallwisher in history.

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/isthistory