Search Results for: sponge activities

22 Ways Any Teacher Can (and Should) Use Technology

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If your state adopted Common Core, 75% of you will administer yearly assessments online. If students haven’t used online tools or software for classwork, this can be a daunting task. Having computer devices as optional education tools is a massive difference from requiring students to use them for grded assessments. This can be intimidating for both students and teachers.

The tood news: It doesn’t take as much time and practice as you might think to prepare. What it does require is a techie mindset, the acceptance that technology is part of the daily economic landscape, that it be integrated into assignments, practice, modeling, homework, assessments, projects, portfolios, grading rubrics, expectations.

There are ways to get students in shape that won’t take much out of your already-packed day.

Here are twenty-two strategies to use next year that will make your teaching life easier, bump up your effectiveness with students, save time complying with Common Core standards, and prepare students effectively for next Spring. As you’re in your grade-level teams, planning lessons for next year, include these. They will add spice to your classes, build flexible learning paths, , and contribute to sustainable, transformation learning. Once you start using tech in the classroom as a tool (not a separate activity), you will find students self-selecting it when given a choice, coming up with their own ways to make tech today’s adaptive answer:

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10 Ways Any Teacher Can (and Should) Use Technology

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Common Core notes:

New technologies have broadened and expanded the role that speaking and listening play in acquiring and sharing knowledge and have tightened their link to other forms of communication. Digital texts confront students with the potential for continually updated content and dynamically changing combinations of words, graphics, images, hyperlinks, and embedded video and audio.

The underlying theme can’t be ignored by teachers any longer: A 21^st Century learner requires technologic proficiency. Proof enough is that Common Core summative assessments will be completed online—only possible if students use technology as comfortably as paper and pencil to demonstrate knowledge.

But how do you do that if you aren’t a ‘techie’, a ‘geek’, if you barely use a Smartphone much less the myriad of online tools. I have ten strategies that will make your teaching life easier, bump up your effectiveness with students, and save time complying with Common Core standards. Try these ten tech uses. Watch what a difference they make:

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18 Thanksgiving Sites For Your Students

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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):

Various Thanksgiving websites–BillBear 4 Kids
Online/Offline Thanksgiving activities–some require a computer, others not so much
Thanksgiving information–history, poems, and more
Starfall–Silly Turkey
Thanksgiving Tic-tac-toe
Thanksgiving Jigsaw
Thanksgiving Jigsaw II
Thanksgiving Games
Thanksgiving games–Quia
Thanksgiving educational websites from CybraryMan
Thanksgiving Wordsearch
Thanksgiving activities
The First Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Lesson Plans
Thanksgiving Online Coloring Book
Thanksgiving Webquest
You are the historian–Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving video–Brainpop

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New Students? 7 Tips to Differentiate with Tech

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There are two areas where technology can optimize learning better than any other educational strategy. I’m not talking about iPads or laptops or apps. I mean how you deliver your message–done in such a way that more students are able to achieve their goals.

The first is problem solving. If you want students to be critical thinkers, to take responsibility for their own learning and in doing so, excel–and you do–you must must MUST use technology to teach problem solving. More on that later.

Today, we’ll talk about differentiation. If you struggle to adapt your lessons to the multitude of learning styles in your classroom, struggle no more. Technology is like that friendly laugh that diffuses a tense situation, the tale wag from a rottweiler to tell you s/he’s on your side. Tech will become your classroom’s transformative tool–a magic wand that can adapt any inquiry to student needs. Take the cornerstone of literacy–the book report–as an example. When a teacher assigns this sort of compare/contract, who/what/when/where exercise, students thinks paragraphs of words and grammar struggles. Thanks to technology, that project is no longer a nightmare for everyone challenged by phrases and paragraphs. Now, students have options that transcend pencil on paper. Communicate the essential ideas with a comic tool like Storyboard That, an art tool like SumoPaint. How about an audio tool like Voki–or a movie maker like Animoto. The challenge for you as teacher is to provide those tech options and then encourage students to be risk-takers in using them to achieve the project goals. The challenge for students is to analyze what’s available and select the tool that uses their learning style.

You’re probably thinking that before students can use these fancy tools, you have to learn all of them–and teach them. Where’s that sort of time come from–and by the way, you aren’t one of the ‘techie’ teachers. Do I have good news for you. The ideas below require very little prep from you. Students learn to read the screen, look for something that says ‘start’, not be afraid to make mistakes, and collaborate with neighbors on the learning. This can happen as young as 2nd grade. The hardest part for you is to facilitate rather than step in and solve their problems. Students will get used to the new reality that teachers provide guidance not step-by-step instruction. I promise.

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Dear Otto: Use Tech to Differentiate Lessons?

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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 Ali:

I would love some information on differentiating tech lab lessons. I struggle with that the most in my lab.

I love tech for differentiating. There are so many software programs and online tools that speak to a student’s individual interests–Word (for writing-intensive), Publisher (for multimedia), PowerPoint (for multimedia), Voki (for video/audio), Big Huge Labs (for lots of choices). For 5th grade and up, I have a unit I co-teach with the grade-level teacher. I introduce students to about 18 online tools, then they pick one for a class project (whatever inquiry is going on in the classroom at the time). Here’s a link to my collection. You will want to those that suit your group. Favorites are Voki, Animoto, Photostory, a mind mapper. In all the years I’ve taught this unit, I am constantly amazed at student choices. those I would have predicted loved writing pick video tools, and vice versa.

Here are some more ideas for differentiating instruction in your classroom:

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18 Thanksgiving Sites For Your Students

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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):

Various Thanksgiving websites–BillBear 4 Kids
Online/Offline Thanksgiving activities–some require a computer, others not so much
Thanksgiving information–history, poems, and more
Starfall–Silly Turkey
Thanksgiving Tic-tac-toe
Thanksgiving Jigsaw
Thanksgiving Jigsaw II
Thanksgiving Games
Thanksgiving games–Quia
Thanksgiving educational websites from CybraryMan
Thanksgiving Wordsearch
Thanksgiving activities
The First Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Lesson Plans
Thanksgiving Online Coloring Book
Thanksgiving Webquest
You are the historian–Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving video–Brainpop

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How to Integrate Web 2.0 Tools into the Classroom

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‘Web 2.0’ is a term familiar to all teachers. Stated in its simplest form, it’s the set of interactive internet-based tools used by students to enrich educational opportunities. ‘Web 1.0’ referred to the act of accessing websites—

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Which of these do you use in your classroom[/caption]

nothing more. Students read websites, clicked a few links, and/or researched a topic.

Web 2.0—Web-based education basics–includes blogs, wikis, class internet homepages, class internet start pages, twitter, social bookmarks, podcasting, photo sharing, online docs, online calendars, even Second Life—all tools that require thoughtful interaction between the student and the site. For teachers, it’s a challenge to keep up with the plethora of options as the creative minds of our new adults stretch the boundaries of what we can do on the internet.

Students, adults, teachers who use this worldwide wealth of information and tools are referred to as ‘digital citizens’. They leave a vast digital footprint and it is incumbent upon them to make healthy and safe decisions, including:

Treat others and their property with respect (for example, plagiarism—even undiscovered—is immoral and illegal)
Act in a responsible manner
Look after their own security

Here are some activities you can do in your classroom that will make your lessons and activities more student-centered and more relevant to this new generation of students:

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Thirty-two More Ways to Use Spare Classroom Time

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I keep a list of themed websites that are easy-in easy-out for students. They must be activities that can be accomplished enjoyably in less than ten minutes. In the parlance, these are called “sponges”.

You may have read my post with nineteen sites my students love visiting during sponge time (let me know if you liked them, have some to add, I’m always interested in learning from you). Here are thirty-two more. Hope you like them! (more…)