SPENT - Experience Life on a Low Income

SPENT is a great interactive for Practical Living and Economics classrooms.  The site comes through a Faith Based Ministry called Urban Ministries of Durham, so if that is an issue for your school, I wanted to let you know that.  However, I hope that it is not an issue because this could be a great lesson for students who don't have a grasp of reality.

Students will go through a process of seeing if they can make $1000 a month last while trying to take care of a kid, daily issues, bills, make a paycheck last, etc.  The goal is to finish the interactive with positive money in the account after 30 days.  Each selection that a student makes in the interactive, it provides a scenario for making that decision and information about homelessness and poverty.  It is a great way for students to gain a "realistic" view of life on a low income.

I highly recommend doing this as a class and letting students choose options as a class and see if as a class they can succeed.

IDroo - Intergrated Whiteboard for Skype

IDroo is a collaborative whiteboard for educators.  There are several other options for collaborative whiteboards: Twiddla, Flock Draw and CoSketch to name a few.  What sets IDroo apart from those options is that it integrates directly with Skype, so it uses your Skype Contacts to collaborate on the whiteboard.  With IDroo, not only will you be able to video conference with others, but you will be able to also draw with each other.  You also have an unlimited number of participants that can participate in the collaborative drawing.

For math teachers, there is a professional math typing tool that you can use for integers and functions.  There are also several geometrical sheets that you .  You can easily add pictures through upload and drag and drop as well.  For homebound students and absent students, IDroo offers a great service for supplying those students with notes and other aspects of a daily classroom lesson.

Weekly Core Subjects Resources

Hope everyone is having a great President's Day.  Our district will be in session because we are using it as a snow day make up, so no celebrating George Washington's birthday for me.  If you are off, then take this time to check out some great resources for the subject area that you teach.

English
1.) VocabAhead has a great Study Room where students can go to learn about critical vocabulary that you would see on the GRE, SAT, and ACT test.  The Study Room provides a short video providing the definition of each word and a real life example of its use.  There is also the text available for the video for students with special needs.  A great resource and possibly an even better tool for Bellringer activities.

2.) Readability is a web & mobile app that zaps online clutter and saves web articles in a comfortable reading view. No matter where you are or what device you use, your reading will be there.  It does cost $5.00 a month to use the service, but for those of us that read on the web a lot, it would be a great add on.

Mathematics
1.) Math-Drills.com is a site that provides various worksheets for mathematics classrooms.  There are several to choose from and are available in links at the top of the page.  Each worksheet is available in PDF format.  Another option is The Math Worksheet Site.

2.) Math TV is a website for sharing video tutorials for explaining various math concepts.  You can choose from videos for basic math, algebra, geometry, calculus, and trigonometry. 

3.) AplusMath is a site for students who need a little extra help learning math.  There are several activities, games, and even a homework helper.  There is even a flashcard creator. 

Science
1.) The Apollo 13 Mission Transcripts is a site that provides all students would need to know about the Apollo 13 mission.  You can get the transcripts that are divided into 6 difference phases of the mission.  An excellent personal and primary document resource.  The site Spacelog also has transcripts for other missions as well that are worth checking out.

2.) The Encyclopedia of Life is a valuable resource for science teachers and students in the science classroom.  Students can learn about the various species as well as get the latest news on life sciences. 

3.) The Arthropod Story takes you on a tour through the amazing evolutionary history of arthropods. Along the way, you'll get a healthy dose of taxonomy, paleontology, natural history and principles of evolution.  Looks like a great webquest from the Understanding Evolution website that has other valuable resources for science teachers.

4.) The Plant List is a working list of all known plant species. Version 1 aims to be comprehensive for species of Vascular plant (flowering plants, conifers, ferns and their allies) and of Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts).

5.) The Science Museum provides a great website with resources, activities, interactives, simulations, and games that students can participate in to learn science concepts.  There is an educators section that has classroom resources, one if which is a game called Thingdom, a fun game about genetic inheritance and selective breeding – adopt a thing, care for a thing, make baby things!

Social Studies
1.) Time Zone Converter is a valuable tool when teaching geography to help students understand time.  It is always a struggle for students to understand how it is a different time and day in other parts of the world.  This would be a great supplement. 

2.) 65 Twitter Feeds for History Teachers is a great blog post for teachers looking for ways to integrate Twitter into the Social Studies classroom.  A great list of hashtags and usernames. 

3.) The CIA World Factbook and Google Earth are great resources for teaching Geography.  Now thanks to a one man project by David Tryse he has combined the two into the KML Factbook.  Awesome is an understatement.  You might be interested in checking out his other Google Earth Projects.

4.) Legistalker is a great website for staying up to date on what legislators are up to.  Always good to see current events in real time.  A great resource for studying government trends and happenings. 

5.) The Reading Like a Historian curriculum engages students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features sets of primary documents modified for groups of students with diverse reading skills and abilities.

Fur.ly

Fur.ly is another site offering users the ability to shorten multiple URL's into one.  You can find previous posts where I discuss these services.  Fur.ly is not much different.  You copy and paste several URL's and then it provides you with one short URL.  When you visit the URL it created you then view each website in a slideshow fashion. 

Fur.ly does allow you to open links you shortened in a separate window and it also provides a drop down menu to each long URL you provided.  An added bonus is that you also receive stats to determine how often they have been viewed.  These stats will help you determine whether students are accessing the links that you have provided them.

Psykopaint

Personally, I was never really that good at art.  I remember one time doing a stencil drawing of a still image and being impressed with my skills...after that, it all went down hill.  Needless to say, my artwork at 4 was better than at 14.

Psykopaint is a website for those of us that have a limited ability to think abstractly or understanding colors and shading.  We also might struggle understanding the different styles of art.  With Psykopaint you can upload and photo and turn it into a fascinating work of art.  From the picture the software knows what colors go where, you just determine the style.  When you are finished you can pay to have your artwork put on a canvas, thus making it a great gift idea.

So what about classroom use.  Psykopaint would be a great way for Arts and Humanities teachers to discuss the various styles of art, both modern and contemporary.  It might be a neat way to take images that you share in class and change the appearance and then have students guess what they are looking at, and then reveal the original, especially famous people. 

The site still takes some artistic creativity, but at least you can start with something instead of a blank canvas....but the site also allows you to use a blank canvas if you so desire.  Just visit the front page of Psykopaint and see the samples and play around with the samples.