Weekly Core Subjects Resources

Another week, another serving of resources for English, Math, Science, and Social Studies.  I included an extra one this time for Music Teachers as well.  It still amazes me how much is out there for teachers to use with students in their classroom.

English

WordCounter is a site for students to copy and paste the words from a paper and get detailed information about the words and types of words contained in their piece of writing.  Students can also use it for research to find a particular subject in a paper they are looking for.  WordCounter can limit the search to 25 words, or as many as 200.  You can choose to remove common English words if you want as well.  It is currently only available to copy and paste.  Uploading will be available in the future.

Mathematics
DeadLine is a freeware download that provides software to help you with math and engineering problems.  You get a calculator and tool to help plot graphs.  It recognizes the most common mathematics functions and uses those to solve equations. 

Calculation Nation is a site where visitors can create an account and then participate in several math style games and then compete against other users online or against themselves.  There are 9 games available and I tried several of them.  I could see these being used in middle school math classes.  You can learn about the games by visiting the Educators/Parents Page.

Social Studies
The Flow of History is a site created by a teacher that examines how historical events impact each other through the years.  You can find several resources as well as flow charts that help explain how history flows.  You can find the resources broken down by the units of study which can be helpful when studying a specific time period. 

The Library of Congress has a great website.  What is even better is that they have a great website for Teachers.  The For Teachers section of the Library of Congress has several lesson plans and activities to use with their site.  You will find classroom materials and primary source documents as well as several presentations that you can use in the classroom. 

Science
Microscope Measurement is a site to virtually learn how to use a microscope.  There are several other interactive tutorials that you might want to look at.  This seems like a very practical resource for the classroom.  There are even learning goals that go with each tutorial.

Wikispecies is a partner site for Wikipedia that focuses on Species.  There are over 240,000 entries that you can search through.  You can search through plants, animals, insects, etc.  Very promising, but like all Wikipedia sites, students should use with caution and carefully examine the sources for the information. 

The Chemical Education Digital Library is a site with resources available for teaching chemistry.  I will avoid reinventing the wheel and point you to Free Technology for Teachers to get a good description of the site, since that is where I learned about the site. 

3M Science of Everyday Life is a website from Discovery Education aimed at assisting visitors to understand how science plays a role in our everyday life.  There is a section for teachers (Resources and Lesson Plans), students (Games, Activities, and Virtual Labs), and parents (Activities and Resources).  There is also a section titled Innovation HQ which examines how innovation is helping with progress.

ToxTown is a site dedicated to sharing how toxic chemicals can impact our daily lives at work, home, and in play.  There is an index to disasters and terminology for different chemicals.  There is a special area for teachers as well. 

Biological Animations is a site that provides several animations for several topics and processes in Biology.  There are animations for Enzymes, Cell Structures, Membrane Transports, etc.

Science Review Games is a site to help students study for science exams across the curriculum.  Games are broken down by subject matter and then students can find games for the unit that they are studying. 


Music

KISSTUNES is a site that uses your computer keyboard to play the piano.  You can just play around on the piano, or you can actually record what you are playing.  Learning the keys on the keyboard takes some getting used to, but it is still kind of neat.  You can choose from three different instruments - Electric Piano, Grand Piano, and Vibraphone.  If you create an account you can save your recordings. 

ScreenCastle - One Click Screencasting

ScreenCastle is a One Click screencasting tool that uses Java to create a simple screen-cast.  It is a great option for people who want an easy way to create a screen-cast.  I have created a demo of the tools in action for a section of this blog post.  When you open the tool to record, it appears at the top of the screen.  When you are finished, you just run your mouse over a red line that appears at the top of your screen.  You then click the stop recording button.  You can then preview your screen-cast and save it.  Once saved, you get tons of options for what to do with that video.  ScreenCastle easily provides you the links, embed codes, Image links, etc; see image below.

Below is the embedded video of my sample.

From a Blog to a Book

My blog is officially a year old.  I wanted a way to save all these post if for some reason something happens to it.  So I used the site BlogBooker to create a book (PDF) of my blog for the entire year.  Turns out that my blog takes up 307 pages all together with a title page and table of contents.  It has been a monumental year and am happy with the direction that this blog has taken.  Thanks for being loyal readers throughout the past year.

To get a pdf copy of The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness, click here.

LinkBunch

LinkBun.ch is a site that allows users to paste several links in a box and it will bunch all those links into one link.  Great for using on Twitter and other social media sites.  You can also send the links via SMS.  Another feature is your bunch of links can be copies to the clipboard so that you can access your list outside of the single URL provided.  You can learn more about LinkBun.ch by visiting their help page.  There is also a Firefox Extension that allows easy "bunching," that you can learn about through its blog.

LinkBun.ch could be an effective way to share various links with students for completing research.  You could also share various links with teachers in the building over subject matter that will be taught in the curriculum.

I recently posted two other options for putting URL's together - bit.ly Bundles and BridgeURL

Happy "Bunching"

Epic Fail Terminology Lesson

As hard as it may be for many of us to understand and speak in the "language" of our students, it would be great to try.  Ask your students what an Epic Fail is and they can probably tell you.  If you are in touch with social media, then you probably know what Epic Fail means.  I came across this interesting take on Epic Fails in Literature from Schmoop, which is a great site that offers study guides and teacher resources for English, Social Studies Classes.  They have some great resources for your classroom, so I suggest checking it out if the idea of the Epic Fail lesson scares you....

So, how could you incorporate this Epic Fail terminology in the high school Social Studies classroom?  Just think about it for a second.  Let's look at JUST World War II.  The allies failure to believe the words of Hitler in his book Mein Kempf helped lead to WWII - An Epic Fail.  Hitler's concentration on the Jews kept valuable resources from fighting actual battles - Epic Fail.  The United States failure to pay attention to Japan - Epic Fail.  Do you get where I am going?

What about Science?  Well, you could Start with the Geocentric and Heliocentric models of the universe - Epic Fail.  You could look at Newton's Laws because many of them happened because of an Epic Fail in understanding, that actually led to an Epic Win (which Epic Wins could be a whole other lesson).

We have to start trying to teach in the language our students use.  I hear students all the time say Epic Fail in relation to something.  Why not have them say it in relation to something we teach?

What do you think?  Have any ideas for Math?