Core Subject Resources

Just a little under a year since I last did a post featuring core subject resources, but that is what two kids and going back into the classroom can do to the time you have available for "other stuff."  Some of these might be old, or shared elsewhere, but I wanted to go ahead and share some of the ones that were added to my Diigo library recently.

English

Just Free Books is a website that provides a search engine to find free eBooks.  It will search through 700 websites.  More and more students and teachers are carrying eReaders.  This would be a good way to provide them books for your class.

Readilicious is a wiki dedicated to providing resources for helping elementary teachers implement various reading activities.

Qwickstory and Zopler are websites for Collaborative Story Telling. 

Memrise is a website for helping students learn vocabulary and create a memorable dictionary.  It is a free way for students to increase their vocabulary in English and several other languages.

Timehop is a website for writing about each day of the year and then in a year, it will email you that journal entry so you can relive your life from a year ago.  You do have to login with Facebook however.

Math

Hooda Math is website that provides games, tutorials, and movies related to math.  Many of the tutorials are for 3rd-8th grade.  If you have a SMARTBoard, this website would be a handy addition.

Mudd Math Fun Facts is a website dedicated to providing facts about numbers and symbols related to math.  There are currently over 200 Fun Fact files available for your choosing.

Math Worksheets provides handouts related to various math concepts for various grade levels.  Look here before creating your own and save some time.

Science

Online Labs provides online resources for Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Anatomy, Geology, and Astronomy.  The resources have a short description and also tell the level they would be appropriate for.

Science Courseware is a virtual courseware project that produces interactive, online simulations for the life science laboratory or for earth science field studies.  The activities are designed to enhance an existing curriculum and include online assessments. They can be used by students ranging from middle school, high school, or college classrooms.

HTwins is a website dedicated to providing interactives and videos related to science.  These would be great introductions to content in your classroom.

Planet Size Comparison is just what is says it is.  Pick two planets from a drop down menu and get the diameter and ratio of the relationship between the two planets.

Science TV is a website dedicated to providing videos, workshops, and other tools for the science classrooms.  There is also a section with tips and tricks for creating your own science videos.

Project Noah is a website dedicated to creating citizen scientist.  The idea is to document nature with a mobile phone and therefore help scientist with research.  You can view maps related to nature and get assistance with using the site in education. 

Label the Cells is an interactive where students get the opportunity to label the parts of a cell.  It comes from a website called Curriculum Bits which provides free online interactive teaching resources. 

QuickStarts are demonstrations that teachers and/or students can perform in a science classroom.  You can search by topic, grade level, or curriculum strand.

Social Studies

Weaving History is a website dedicated to creating threads about places, people, and events throughout history and then visualize the time period in a unique way.  

Animaps is a website dedicated to creation informative animated maps for free.  Basically the service extends Google Maps by letting you create markers that move, images and text that pop up on cue,and lines and shapes that change over time.  When finished, the map works like a video with video display options.

World Time Buddy is a website that helps users easily convert time zones for different parts of the planet.  Useful for geography teachers trying to teach the concept.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has a website that provides information and resources about history from various origins and time periods.  There is also information for teachers and even a subscription available to their History Now Journal.  Teachers can sign up for free and become an "Affiliate"

Dave's Redistricting is an interactive that allows users to draw congressional districts the way you think they should be.  Very interesting tool for government teachers.

World History Sources is dedicated to helping students and teachers better use primary documents and historical evidence in the classroom.  There are several case studies that teachers could use in the classroom.

D-Day to Victory is an interactive website that coincides with the TV Series on History Television that aired in November of 2011.  There is a lot to explore and tons of primary resources and interviews with soldiers.  Worth time checking out.

Games Economists Play is a collection of Non-computerized classroom games for college economics.  You can certainly take some of these games and tone them down for high school classrooms.  There are over 150 to choose from and investigate.

Time Maps provides visual maps for all periods of time till 2005.  Each map is clickable to further resources and information.  A valuable resource for teaching geography and history.

History Engine is an educational tool that allows students the opportunity to learn history by doing the work (researching, writing, and publishing) of a historian.  This collection is growing and previous work can be searched.  You do have to obtain a code to join the program, but you can still search through what has already been done before. 

iPhone App for Remind 101

I have been a supporter of Remind 101 since I discovered it earlier this year.  I have been using it with my students throughout this school year and I have shared it with my teachers and other teachers at conferences.  See a previous blog post HERE.

Well, Remind 101 has come with an update by providing an iPhone App for its users.  This will make it so much easier to send reminders to students.  You can see more about the App HERE.  I am sure that with success of this App, we will see it grow to other services like Android and to the iPad as well.

TED-Ed

A while back I posted about using TED Talks in Education.  Then, today I came across a new website that TED announced earlier in the year (around March) TED-Ed where teachers can search through the TED talks and find videos by subject matter.  You can also find videos that are featured and part of a series.  Each video comes with multiple choice questions and a constructed response option.  TED, is just trying to appease those in charge of education that think this is the best way to show learning.  The TeachPaperless Blog as an interesting take on this service, and I agree with a lot that he says.

When I originally shared using TED Talks in the classroom, the main focus was to provide further evidence of the content I was teaching and to spark discussion related to the content.  Showing a video and then answering questions about the video does not really "show" learning.  Taking that video, discussing the video, then having students create their own "Talks" does.  Could you imagine the impact of a school having their own version of Talks related to issues you are teaching or in the community.  This is taking the education of students to the next level.

You can watch the video below about TED-Ed.

Twimbow

As a golf coach when organizing my teams and players for invitationals I would host, I would always color coordinate players by teams and then by scores.  It made it easy for me to see whether I had players from the same team in the same "flights."  Well the goal of Twimbow is to make your twitterfeed colorful while also providing some other helpful features for reading Twitter feeds.

With the colors you can filter groups of users, catch important tweets, and distinguish between the different types of messages that appear in a feed.   Color coded tweets are broken down into Retweets, Mentions, Direct Messages (to and from), favorites, etc. There are specialized areas for grouping lists by color and then a Monitor area for keeping track of keywords, users, tags, lists, etc.

One interesting feature is that certain tags are replaced with images, making those tags stick out more.   Users can customize and create new labels that are color-coded for different purposes.  You can easily preview any image or videos within the browser, therefore negating the need to open a new window.  If you are into sharing music, Twimbow provides an easy way to share music videos and music files that open within the browser as well.

Now, one of the neatest features that I have seen so far is a Reader.  This feature allows users to read almost any content on the web by removing any other visual distractions from online articles.  No ads, no annoying stuff, just content.  You can easily save the blog post to Instapaper or Read It Later. 

Here is their channel on YouTube to see a few short clips that showcase the software in action.  It is important to note that this service is still in Beta.

For more information, here is a video featuring the CEO as he discusses the service.  It is over 20 minutes long however.

5 Tips For Storing Your Tech This Summer

It is the end of the school year for so many of us.  Some of us are excited about summer.  Many of us are disappointed for the school year to end.  Several teachers will be looking for a new job, whether it be budget cuts or looking to move up into administration.  Either way, in the 21st century, cleaning up the classroom at the end of the school year can be a daunting task. 

Most school districts will have instructions for what to do with technology.  If your district does not, here are some helpful tips to help you store your tech this summer.

1.) Do you keep files on a flash drive or school network drive?  Before unplugging all that, store your most important documents in the cloud.  You can use services like Dropbox, Box.net, Google Drive, or Microsoft SkyDrive to store all your files.  That way you have them available to you this summer from any computer.  This will also help you out if you change schools.  It might take a lot of time to do this, but it will be worth it in the end.

2.) Buy a Can of Condensed Air.  Before you put the keyboard, monitor, desktop, laptop, etc. away, take the can of air and blow all the loose particles out before storing them.  These little pieces of dust slow down and damage all this technology.  We all know how dusty classrooms can get.

3.) Buy some wire ties with labels to store and identify all the wires and cables that go with all the peripherals.  Wires everywhere can be a pain, especially for those of us that have a mild case of OCD.  Learning how to wrap them and store them can make it easier to store them as well.  When I was working as a TIS, it never failed to have a teacher or two who needed help hooking something up because they didn't know which cable went with which piece of equipment.

4.) Did you keep the boxes for all your equipment?  If so, put as many pieces of technology back in the original box.  Makes it easy to store it, keeps it dust free, and makes it even easier to transport to a new room or school if that applies to you.  You can also label the boxes with your name and room number.  Make sure that the equipment is also labeled.

5.) Unplug everything if you aren't storing them away.  Districts are trying to save money.  You would be surprised how much extra it costs school districts every year for keeping technology plugged in all summer that is not being used.

Have a great summer!!