Better Lesson

Better Lesson is a site for teachers to upload, share, download, and use lessons and activities that other teachers have used in their classroom and have had success with.  Setting up an account is as easy as supplying an email address and then getting a verification to set up an account.  When you create an account, you provide your name and password and then choose the grade level and subject matter that you are interested in.

Once you have created an account you can find lesson plans, classroom materials, and instructional resources from high-performing teachers.  Through Better Lesson you will be able to browse through a wide array of documents, presentations, full lessons, and even complete units and courses.  Share your curriculum and then connect with teachers from all over the world.  Through your profile page you will be able to browse through educators, resources, and networks.

Better Lesson seems very promising for creating a Lesson Plan Social Network for Teachers.  See the video below for more information.

An Introduction to BetterLesson from BetterLesson on Vimeo.

Synchtube

Synchtube allows you to instantly create public and private rooms where you can synchronize YouTube and Vimeo music and videos with up to 50 people. Everyone views the same video at the exact same time!  For schools that are a 1:1 program or classrooms where every student has a computer, this site would be beneficial to allow students to watch a video without having to look towards the front of the room. 

Synchtube is simple to use.  You click on the Create Room button and you are provided an area to copy and paste the video URL.  What is great about this part of the site is that it allows you to copy and paste multiple video URL's, therefore, creating a playlist of videos for students to watch.  Synchtube automatically provides an easy to share URL.  There is also a chat area which provides a way to backchannel and allow students to discuss the video as they are watching it. 

For each "room" that you create you can determine whether it is a private room or a public room and also provide a welcome message.  This would be a good place to have your lesson objective or "I Can" statement so that students know what to look for in the video and know what they need to be prepared to discuss.

A Quick Shout Out

Recently I noticed a lot of traffic to my blog coming from Warren County Schools in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which is home to my Alma Mater, Western Kentucky University.  Peaking my interest, I decided to check out the website where my site was linked.  The site belonged to a Technology Education teacher at South Warren Middle School.  Come to find out, the teacher of the class, Bryan Priddy, was actually teaching math at another middle school when I observed him while going through the teacher education program at WKU.  The phrase small world never gets old, and it was social media that helped me realize this connection.

So searching through his website I noticed that he was having his students use the links that I had set up on my blog to look through them and discuss how a teacher could use them in the classroom.  He was also discussing the eBooks, Tools for the 21st Century Teacher, that I have created as well.  It is great to see something that I created for teachers being used by students.  It is important that all these great tools on the web be shared with students and let them explore the ones that they like.  Then allow them to create a project in class using those tools. 

So here is my SHOUT OUT to Mr. Priddy's students.  Keep up the great work, maintain interest in technology, and be glad you get to have a cool class where you get to play and work with all these great tools!

Tripline

Tripline is a website that allows users to create a trip using photos, links, music, and stories.  Students could create their own stories using pictures they find from the web, or take themselves.  With Tripline users also have the ability to explore previously created trips as well.

I can see Tripline being used in the Geography classroom for students to create a project where they explore a country by having a virtual trip explaining the various cities and cultures within the country.  In history classes, I could see it being used as a way to recreate travels of famous explorers, or the movement of armies in a war.  Here is a great example of Lewis and Clark.

February - Most Popular Posts

Hard to believe that February is over and we are heading into March....the long month for most teachers.  Looking back, February was a long month with snow days, and sickness, and everything else.  Hopefully March brings brighter days, but seeing how February ended with stormy weather, March is not looking to good.

You will notice that I changed the pages at the top of this blog to more adequately make the resources I find available.  There are still several updates that I need to do to those, so it is not current at this moment.

1.) Tools for the 21st Century Teacher: Volume 2 - My eBook that I recently made available featuring several tools for teachers to use with their students. 

2.) Weekly Core Subject Resources: All Together in One Place - I share weekly resources for core subject areas and I recently decided to make them available in a Google Doc, so you can find them when I update them each month.

3.) Digigogy - a Digital Pedagogy - This is a website that I found that promotes the use of digital tools in developing a sound pedagogy. 

4.) iDroo - This is a collaborative whiteboard that integrates with your Skype account.

5.) EmbedPlus - This is a YouTube extension tool that allows you to add various features to a YouTube video.