Instructional Technology Jefferson Township Public Schools

Space Program Project Resources

2009-09-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked by a faculty member to assist in finding resources for a project related to the current space exploration initiatives. Specifically we are looking at what is going on with the international space station and the current space shuttle discovery launch. The outcome of this project is for students to present a pro or con argument for the current space program.

We are in the beginning stages of organizing the project. However, I decided to start posting the resources I collect on my wiki. Currently there is a Hubble Telescope page on my wiki. I have decided to add my links for this project to the bottom of that page. I will provide the link below.

If anyone else is interested in a project like this please let me know. I will be happy to share resources and assist in creating the lessons.

Curriculumbits.com Online Interactive ELearning Teaching Resources

2009-08-19T05:57:00.001-07:00

Curriculumbits.com Online Interactive ELearning Teaching Resources

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I came across this great site today for use with an interactive whiteboard. Rather then explain it in my own words I copied their narrative directly from their about page below. Enjoy!

Established in 2006, Curriculumbits.com offer free online access to a growing range of interactive multimedia elearning resources. The online resource library contains games, quizzes, animations and videos in a variety of subjects. Resources have been produced according to key stage 3 and 4 of the UK National Curriculum for students aged 11 to 16. All resources are produced by elearning multimedia specialists in collaboration with every day teaching staff as a direct solution to their classroom requirements.

HOW TO USE OUR RESOURCES
All of our resources are available to access online, completely free of charge in the library. Simply click the PLAY button.

You do not need to register your details to use our resources, although you can enjoy additional benefits if you decide to join us for free.

You are welcome to link to our resources from your school website, intranet, extranet, online curriculum or virtual learning environment (VLE) according to the terms of our license.

Use the bookmark button to save resources to your browser favourites or your preferred online service such as Del.icio.us, Facebook or mySpace. You can also use this button to email resources to your friends, colleagues or students.

From September 2008 Curriculumbits.com no longer offers the facility to download resources due to increased connectivity in classrooms which has reduced demand for offline services.

If it is on Google .... I can take it. Why is this wrong?

2009-06-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

Danielle Smith from St. Louis can tell you exactly why. Someone else could grab YOUR picture.

As NPR reports, a Czech supermarket chain used a family photo Ms. Smith posted online as the centerpiece of their advertising campaign.

Many of our students are under the impression that "if it is on the web, it is free". We have an obligation to address these teachable moments that come up in our classrooms. Information literacy and copyright are two areas of concern among most educators in the country. It is the responsibility of all content areas to address this in our courses.

I have a number of resources available on my wiki that can be used to educate both teachers and students with regards to Internet Safety, Copyright, and Information Literacy.

After reading that article one lesson I have learned is to be sure that you only post your best looking pictures online!

Create Interactive Games for Review

2009-06-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

With the end of the year upon us I have noticed a lot of faculy members looking for creative opportunities to create review lessons. The website Classroom Games and More hosts a number of game templates. The templates are all made in PowerPoint. All you have to do is plug in your information and you are ready to go. These games will work well on a smartboard.

Enjoy!

Connecting With Subject Area Experts

2009-06-12T04:55:00.000-07:00

Are you looking for a way to connect your content with real life experiences for students? Are your students struggling to see the relevance in reading a particular story or learning a particular critical thinking skill? Would you like to have a Nobel Laureate show your students how he or she uses the skills your are instructing?

The open source teaching project is an excellent tool to make real-world connections between your curriculum and the work done everyday by industry leading professionals.

A recent article in the THE JOURNAL stated this about the site:

"The open source teaching project is a Tennessee based program that helps students make real-life connections to academic content. It is a free digital resource that brings students up close with leading professionals across a variety of fields to help them see the real-world relevance of their studies."

This program send interviewers to speak face to face with experts in a range of fields. The interviews are posted online and are free for anyone to access. They also include teacher resources, lesson plans and blogs.

One section of the site contains interviews with college admissions officers. Districts who have utilized these interviews in instruction have witnessed a distinct transition in the way students organize and prepare college admissions materials after taking part in these lessons.

A majority of the interviews are audio only. However, they are in the process of adding video components as well. Included on the site are the questions that are asked for each area of expertise. I found this to be a valuable resource. With the technology we have available in Jefferson we could easily conduct some of our own interviews. We are also setup to host video conferencing sessions. These questions would be useful for those projects.

I encourage you to take a look at this resource. If you are interested in putting together a lesson using these tools I would be happy to assist. If you would like to organize your own video conference or interview with a subject area expert please let me know. I am always here to assist.

Enjoy this new resource!

Interactive Websites and PowerPoint Presentations

2009-06-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

The following website was introduced to me by Sherry Brzostowski, White Rock School. The main site has a number of interactive websites that are categorized by subject. These are great sites to use on an interactive whiteboard, center activities, or as part of a larger project.

The content that I found even more interesting on this site after exploring further is the huge collection of PowerPoint presentations compiled for Language Arts k-12. There are PowerPoint presentations that can be downloaded for many of the topics covered in the language arts curriculum. The largest collection is for grades 3-5. In many cases you could use these presentations or modify them to fit your plans.

The presentations are free to use. If you do use them I would recommend citing the source and maybe sending them a note letting them know you found their resource helpful. I am sure they would like to hear that.

http://jc-schools.net/PPTs-la.html#Grades6-12

Enjoy!

Visuwords

2009-06-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

Visuwords is a visual dictionary / thesaurus. When you lookup a word it displays the results in "Web" format.

I will let the creators explain:

"Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

It's a dictionary! It's a thesaurus!
Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists.
The online dictionary is available wherever there’s an internet connection.
No membership required. "

This is a great tool to use for whole group instruction on a smartboard. It can also be used by students individually. Introduce this tool during a pre-writing session. It can pair very well with mind mapping software such as kidspiration, inspiration or www.bubbl.us. r

Bibliography Maker

2009-06-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

I came across this resource today. http://www.bibme.org It is free web based bibliography maker. You can search for a book, journal, website, film, newspaper article or other publication. Once you find the source you select it. The site will create a bibliography.

Here is what the owners of the site say:

BibMe is a free automatic bibliography generator that supports MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian formatting. BibMe leverages databases provided by Amazon, FindArticles, Yahoo! News, and CiteULike to quickly and accurately AutoFill citation information for you. BibMe will then format the citation information according to the rules and guidelines of the style guides. If you prefer, you can enter your citation information manually. BibMe also contains a quick citation guide to show students the correct syntax for citing in various formats.

Once you have added all of your resources you can download them into MS word with the click of a button. You now how a complete works cited page. Take a look at bibme today!

Enjoy

My Own Books

2009-06-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

I learned about this next site from Larry Ferlazzo's Blog. He Teaches English Language Learners. My thoughts are that this site would be a great resource for not only ESL Students but also any struggling readers.

Here is a quote from Larry's blog:

My own books is a fantastic site for fostering reading skills and thus, English language acquisition. It was created by Anne Pemberton, a retired Special Ed. teacher and she has done a marvelous job.
Students simply chose a story they want to read. Then, they put in their own name and BINGO! The story is all about them! You can print or read on the screen with pictures to support comprehension. Really cool and I suggest students print these out and share their stories. A great way to create a classroom , personalized library!

ENJOY!

Create a Digital Story with Grades k-3

2009-06-04T05:01:00.000-07:00

Good Morning,

I came across this excellent resource that was posted on the blog of Kevin Jarrett. It is a digital story tool developed by Carnegie University. It is called My Story Maker.

My StoryMaker is a free, easy-to-use, Flash-based interactive story development platform developed by The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, with the generous support of Carnegie Mellon University and The Grable Foundation. The basic idea is that you start by selecting characters and a goal:

You then are given an editor and a guide to help you build the story.

All you have to do is drag and drop and arrange the objects where you want them. You can add dialogue and pages to your story. Once you build your story you can choose to share your story. This will generate a six-digit number that can be plugged into the Main Site to search for the story. You also have the option to print you story. It prints as a foldable book and can be printed in color. The site does not require any registration. You just visit the site and start your story.

Enjoy!

Novellinks - A resource for Teaching Novels in Grades 6-12

2009-06-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

I recently was introduced to this site and wanted to share it with everyone. It is Novel links. The site contains an amazing collection of reading strategy resources for most of the popular novels taught in grades 6-12. It also contains a number of resources for literacy units.

Please visit the site and click on Reading Resources.

Novel Links - Click Here

Enjoy!

Google Docs

2009-06-02T07:46:00.000-07:00

Would you like to be able to access your word, powerpoint, excel or pdf files from any computer? Have you ever created a document at home and forgot to bring it with you to work? Would you like to be able to work collaboratively on a document? Would you like your students to collaborate on a powerpoint presentation? Would you like to share a word document or powerpoint presentation with another faculty member and not have to email it or post it in a common shared folder where it could be manipulated?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then you must check out Google Docs. Google Docs is a web based version of MS office. You can create and host word, excel, powerpoint and PDF documents. They are accessible from any computer with an internet connection. You can upload all of your existing office documents. This includes office 2007 docs as of this week!

Google docs also allows you to share your documents with others. It allows multiple users to collaborate on a single document. With its forms features you can create a form that will collect answers/data from individuals.

The best feature is that it is totally free!!! All you need is a google account to get started.

Stay tuned for more details and workshops on Google Docs.

Math Facts Websites

2009-05-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

I have assembled a list of websites that offer games to practice math facts. I posted these sites on my wiki. The link is Math Facts Websites I you have any recommended additions please add a comment to this blog posting with the name and website address.

Enjoy!

Create a Booklet

2009-05-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

I came across this site recently. It is called Booklet Creator and can be found at http://bookletcreator.com/

Booklet creator will take any PDF document that you upload to it and convert it to a multipage booklet. You can select the number of pages and size.

This could be a great resource for teachers and PTA's that want to take documents and turn them into booklets for parents.

You can convert documents to PDF format by using adobe acrobat. If you do not have acrobat you can use PRIMO PDF. It is free. http://primopdf.com

Interactive Whiteboard Sites for Music

2009-05-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

I added a number of new interactive sites for music to be used on an interactive whiteboard. Please visit the interactive whiteboard page on my wiki.

Thirty Eight Interesting Ways To Use Your Interactive Whiteboard

2009-05-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

Here is a presentation that lists 38 interesting ways to use your interactive whiteboard.

http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dhn2vcv5_106c9fm8j

Interactive Benjamin Franklin Timeline

2009-05-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

The Benjamin Franklin Timeline is an interactive exhibit developed for the Benjamin Franklin traveling library exhibit. The interactive timeline contains images, text, animation and interactive exhibits. This is a good resource for an interactive white board. http://www.benfranklin300.org/timeline/index.html

You can also check out the main site www.benfranklin300.org. Here you can view an online exhibit developed to celebrate Ben's life and accomplishments.

Enjoy!

New Google Search Options - Timeline, Map and Info

2009-05-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

Google has introduced some new experimental search features. See results on a timeline, map, or in context of other information types. With these views, Google's technology extracts key dates, locations, measurements, and more from select search results so you can view the information in a different dimension.

Timeline and map views work best for searches related to people, companies, events and places. Info view shows all the data found for each result, to help you select the best choice.

You can access these features by visiting the experimental search page in Google Labs and turning on the feature.

You also can add the following terms to your searches to utilize the features.

Timeline:
In the search bar type: Thomas Jefferson view:timeline
The results will display in timeline view.

Info View:
In the search bar type: space exploration view:info
You will have the opportunity to switch the search results by: Dates, Measurements, Locations and Images.

Map View:
In the search bar type: olympics view:map
The results will appear in map view.

Google has also released a news timeliner: http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/. It allows users to view news and other data sources on a browsable, graphical timeline. Available data sources include recent and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, sports scores and information about various types of media (i.e. music albums and movies).

To dive into the Google News Timeline experience, simply enter your topic of choice, pick out the relevant source and specify the date. The result is an interactive news timeline based on your personal interests. By the way, you can set the time scale to days, weeks, months, years, or even decades!

Interactive Whiteboard Resources

2009-05-07T12:04:00.000-07:00

As promised I will be providing everyone with interactive white board resources. I have organized a number of resources on my wiki . There you will find resources and training materials for all grade levels.

In this posting I would like to highlight one resource in particular. It can be found here http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/15.cfm?s=15.

This site contains a listing of interactive sites organized by grade level and subject. They can be used on both a smart and intelliboard interactive board.

Enjoy!