Category: Websites

Need a few websites to fill in sponge time? Here are Thanksgiving sites that will keep students busy and still teach them (check here for updates on links):

1. Various Thanksgiving websites–BillBear 4 Kids
2. Online/Offline Thanksgiving activities–some require a computer, others not so much
3. Thanksgiving information–history, poems, and more
4. Starfall–Silly Turkey
5. Thanksgiving Tic-tac-toe
6. Thanksgiving Jigsaw
7. Thanksgiving Jigsaw II
8. Thanksgiving Games
9. Thanksgiving games–Quia
10. Thanksgiving educational websites from CybraryMan
11. Thanksgiving Wordsearch
12. Thanksgiving activities
13. The First Thanksgiving
14. Thanksgiving Lesson Plans
15. Thanksgiving Online Coloring Book
16. Thanksgiving Webquest
17. You are the historian–Thanksgiving
18. Thanksgiving video–Brainpop

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How to keep their children safe online is a constant question from parents at my school. They ask about firewalls, filters, kidsafe desktops, nannycams. Should they keep their children away from computers or just off the internet? Do they have to sit with them while they work?

No. No. and No. What parents need to do is teach children to take care of themselves while visiting this vast, anonymous, addictive neighborhood called ‘the internet’. Just as they come to understand that they stay at your side in large busy stores, that they don’t talk to strangers, that they don’t open the door to people they don’t know, they will learn to be safe in the digital world. Because it’s part of our genome–to do what keeps us safe.

While they’re getting to that epiphany, here are some ideas you can employ:

1. Teach your children how to use the internet. They are digital citizens. They have rights and responsibilities. Just as in their neighborhood, they must learn to do it right. They aren’t born with that knowledge. Teach them to avoid ads, about online relationships, tell them again, and again. Sooner than you think, they will own it. Just as they don’t cross the street without looking both ways, they won’t cross the ‘digital street’ unless it’s safe.
2. Discuss with your child what they can and cannot do online. Discuss why. Help them to understand. They feel invincible. You want them to feel safe, but able to take care of themselves. Part of taking care of themselves is not putting themselves in harm’s way.
3. Use a parental control filter. Only you know the password which makes it your perogative what types of activities are available. Start by blocking ‘pornography’ because few little boys can resist the urge to type that whispered three letter word heard on the playground. From there, block everything you worry about–chicks, Minecraft, girls, Facebook, xxx, murder. It’s easy to unblock if your child needs a site that won’t come up. More importantly, it leads to a conversation with your child about what they’re researching, why they need it. You want your child comfortable with you involved in their lives–not as an arbiter of right and wrong, but as an interested loving party.
4. Do not assume parental controls are perfect. Assume they aren’t. Stay vigilant. Be aware when your child is too quiet or too noisy at the computer. Ask questions. Pop in unexpectedly.
5. Enforce rules. Don’t decide you’re too tired one night to go check a website your child tells you they need to visit. Always always always follow your own rules.
6. Check ‘history’ on your child’s computer. Do it with them so they understand you’re not hiding anything. This is part of the plan to keep them safe.
7. Know what their school does to keep your child safe online. Follow the same rules, or follow your own. Do explain the differences to your child. Children are flexible. They will be fine with varied rules.

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Here’s a short list of fun Halloween websites for your students. Enjoy!

1. Ben & Jerry
2. Billy Bear’s
3. Carving Pumpkins
4. DigCit and Halloween–video
5. Enchanted Learning
6. Funschool
7. Halloween videos–nicely done
8. Meddybemps Spooky
9. Pumpkin Toss
10. Save Ed
11. Signing Halloween–a video
12. Skelton Park
13. The Kidz Page

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: How do I check to see where my kids/students have been online without making them think I don’t trust them?

A: If they’ve been online without you (because you considered them mature enough for this action), by all means check up on them. This is not a sign of distrust any more than guiding them through any other new skill is. This is you showing them the correct way to use the internet. You’re not spying on your children; you’re making sure everything is OK, kind of like checking in on them while they sleep.

Go to what’s called ‘history’. ‘History‘ is where a list of all the websites whoever logged in under a particular user name went. Here’s how you do it:

• Hold Control key (Ctrl) and push H. That brings up a sidebar with the sites they’ve visited.
• Select the time frame you’re interested in

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Drop by every Friday to discover what wonderful website my classes and parents loved this week. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of yours as they are of mine.

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Here’s a list of student-oriented news websites to get students interested in current events:

1. Allsides (news stories compared across multiple political perspectives)
2. BBC News (app)
3. C News for kids
4. Common Sense Media
5. Kids News – Current Events
6. Listenwise
7. Newsela–news for kids, reformatted at different reading levels
8. News-o-matic for kids (app)
9. NewseumEd
10. News for Kids–free
11. Newspaper Navigator–from the Library of Congress; search endless newspapers
12. PBS Newshour Extra–for grades 7-12
13. Reach Out Reporter — science news for elementary students
14. Scholastic
15. TeachingKidsNews
16. TweenTribune–by Smithsonian
17. US News Map–the news headlines between 1789 and 1922
18. Youngzine
19. Youth Radio
20. Yummy Math—math news

I update it every few months here.

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When you were a child, your parents worried that the educational content you were learning might be out of date. Did history include the most relevant theories? Did science have the latest discoveries (and was Pluto still a planet)? When you became a teacher, you probably thought one of your big responsibilities was to stay current in your subject. You’re right–but today, ‘current’ is as much about content as how the message is delivered.

And delivery more and more often is powered by technology.

But when you read about tech tools used in cutting edge schools, your stomach churns. Is there enough PD time in your life to teach you all the tech you need to know? What if you can’t learn it?

Truth, you don’t have to know all 2878 (and counting) tech tools being used around the country. You just need to know five. Learn them. Use them with students. Expect them to use them. When those are solid, pick five more.

Ready? Here are your first five:

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Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Laurie:

Do you know of any websites where teachers can create a free web page for their classroom? But I’d like to have my students maintain it, so they would need accounts and then I approve and publish the material?

Labor Day is annually held on the first Monday of September (this year, September 2nd). It was originally organized to celebrate various labor associations’ strengths of and contributions to the United States economy. It is largely a day of rest in modern times. Many people mark Labor Day as the end of the summer season and a last chance to make trips or hold outdoor events.

I’m going to repost an article I did last year with some updated (where necessary) websites for your kids while you work on dinner…

You’re bbq-ing. Friends are over. Life is good. Summer is ending, but that’s tomorrow. Not today. Today is about fun.

What do you do with the child who got sunburned so badly s/he can’t stay outside? Or those last fifteen minutes when the kids are hungry, tired, and completely disconnected with everything that they’ve been doing? Here’s a list of websites they’ll find irresistible:

Google Moon

You can access this from the downloaded software for Google Earth (under the satellite tool) or directly from the internet (click the link above). The online version includes built-in tours of the moon which are fascinating, but doesn’t have the flight simulator that my students can’t get enough of. They fly all around our galaxy, to other planets, other stars. They think it’s pretty amazing to land on the Sun!

I get students to the website and leave the rest to their curiosity and the explorative side of human nature. From first grade on, they figure out what to do. A great student-led activity to teach about space, exploration, science.

Electrocity

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Monday, September 2nd, is America’s Labor Day. It was originally organized to celebrate labor association strengths and contributions to the United States economy. Now, it has become a day of rest, the traditional end of the summer, and a last chance to make trips or hold outdoor events.

Here are some wonderful websites that will generate organic conversations about The Day:

1. Child Labor
2. Cybraryman’s Labor Day page--comprehensive as is his way
3. Labor Day activities, games, drawings for kids
4. Labor Day infographic
5. Ten Labor Day Facts (from Forbes)
6. Today in History (Labor Day)–from Library of Congress
7. Why do we celebrate Labor Day (from How Stuff Works)

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