Tag: lists

It sounds easy, but to a five or six year old, holding the mouse, clicking that left button, dragging and dropping while holding a finger down is darn difficult. Here’s a list (click for updates):

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It’s easy to confuse ‘using technology’ with digital tools. Your school passed iPads out to all classes. Some of your colleagues think having students read in this tablet format means they’re integrating technology into their curriculum. Kudos for a good start, but they need to use the tablets to differentiate for student learning styles, enrich learning materials, and turn students into life-long learners.

That’s harder than it sounds. Technology hasn’t been around long enough to beget standards that work for everyone (not withstanding ISTE’s herculean efforts), the set-in-stone of settled science. Truth, that will never happen. Technology tools populate like bacteria in a culture. Every time you turn around, there’s another favorite tool some teacher swears has turned her students into geniuses and her class into a model of efficiency. After fifteen years of teaching technology, chatting with colleagues, and experimenting, I can assure you there is no magic wand. What there is is a teacher not afraid to try new ways, test them out in a classroom environment, toss what doesn’t work and share the rest. Her/his success doesn’t come without lots of failure and mistakes, widgets that sounded good but were too complicated or non-intuitive for a 21st century classroom.

Which of these nine mistakes do you make? Then, see how to fix them:

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Pew Research recently reported that about half of Americans regularly get their news from social media. Really? Isn’t SM where you share personal information, stay in touch with friends and families, post pictures of weddings and birthdays, and gossip? So why do students turn to it for news?

This stat may explain it: 60% of people don’t trust traditional news sources. That’s newspapers, evening news, and anything considered ‘mainstream media’. They prefer blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

So when it comes to research, are you still directing kids toward your grandmother’s resources — encyclopedias, reference books, and museums? No doubt, these are excellent sources, but if students aren’t motivated by them, they won’t get a lot out of them. I have a list of six research sites designed by their developers with an eye toward enticing students in and keeping their interest. It’s notable that most are free, but include advertising. The exception is BrainPOP — there are no ads, but it requires a hefty annual fee:

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Quick, safe spots to send your students for research (click here for updates):

1. BrainPop–with the BrainPop characters, a launchpad to curiosity
2. CoolKidFacts–kid-friendly videos, pictures, info, and quizzes–all 100% suitable for children
3. Dimensions–academic research geared for college-level
4. Fact Monster–help with homework and facts
5. Google Earth Timelapse–what changes to the planet over time
6. Google Trends–what’s trending in searches
7. History Channel–great speeches
8. How Stuff Works–the gold standard in explaining stuff to kids
9. Info Please–events cataloged year-by-year
10. National Geographic for Kids
11. Ngram Viewer–analyzes all words in all books on Google Books
12. TagGalaxy–search using a cloud
13. Wild Wordsmyth–picture dictionary for kids
14. World Book–requires membership

Citing Resources

1. BibMe
2. Citation Machine
3. EasyBib

Kids Search Engines

1. Kiddle–visual search engine for kids
2. Kid Rex
3. Kidtopia

How to Research

1. A Google A Day
2. How to Search on Google
3. Power Searching (with Google)
4. Teaching students to search/research
5. Internet Search and Research–a lesson plan for K-8

Lesson Plans

1. Image Copyright Do’s and Don’ts
2. Internet Search and Research

Resources/Research

1. BrainPOP–Bring learning to your fingertips™ with the BrainPOP® Featured Movie app
2. Kids Picture Dictionary
3. Primary Source Documents
4. SparkVue–collect and display live data from iPhone etc to the iPad
5. Talk to Books–research your topic based on books
6. TED app–TED’s official app presents talks from some of the world’s most fascinating people

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Teachers have known for decades that ‘summer learning loss’ is a reality. Studies vary on how much knowledge students lose during the summer months–some say up to two months of reading and math skills–and results are heavily-dependent upon demographics, but the loss is real.

To prevent this, teachers try approaches such as summer book reports, but students complain they intrude on their summer time. When teachers make it optional, many don’t participate. The disconnect they’re seeing is that students consider these activities as ‘school’ rather than ‘life’. They haven’t bought into the reality that they are life-long learners, that learning is not something to be turned on in the schoolhouse and off on the play yard.

This summer, show students how learning is fun, worthy, and part of their world whether they’re at a friend’s house or the water park. Here are nineteen suggestions students will enjoy:

Math

• Youngers: Take a picture of making change at the store. Share it in a teacher-provided summer activity folder (this should be quick to use, maybe through Google Drive if students have access to that). Kids will love having a valid reason to use Mom’s smartphone camera.
• Any age: Take a picture of tessellations found in nature (like a beehive or a pineapple). Kids will be amazed at how many they find and will enjoy using the camera phone. Once kids have collected several, upload them to a drawing or photo program where they can record audio notes over the picture and share with friends.
• Any age: Pit your math and technology skills against your child’s in an online math-based car race game like Grand Prix Multiplication. They’ll know more about using the program and will probably win–even if you do the math faster. You might even have siblings compete.
• Grades 2-5: Set up a summer lemonade stand. Kids learn to measure ingredients, make change, listen to potential customers, and problem-solve. If you can’t put one up on your street, use a virtual lemonade stand.
• Any age: If your child wants to go somewhere, have them find the location, the best route, participation details, and other relevant information. Use free online resources like Google Maps and learn skills that will be relevant to class field trips they’ll take next year.

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Here are the most-read posts for the month of April:

1. Tech Tip #90 Doc Saved Over? Try This
2. 18 Things Teachers Do Before 8am
3. Earth Day Class Activities
4. How to Create a Paperless Classroom
5. 11 Online Resources About Physics
6. Online Reading for National Library Week
7. Human Body Websites for 2nd-5th Grade
8. #32: How to Use Art to Teach Grammar
9. Tech Tips #170: Cover your webcam!
10. How to Stop Hating Your Computer

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In my school, 2nd grade and 5th grade have units on the human body. To satisfy their different maturities, I’ve developed two lists of websites to complement this inquiry. I put them on the class internet start page so when students have free time, they can visit (check here for updates):

2nd-3rd Grade

1. Blood Flow
2. Body Systems
3. Build a Skeleton
4. Can you place these parts in the correct place?
5. Choose the systems you want to see.
6. Find My Body Parts
7. How the Body Works
8. Human Body Games
9. Human Body websites
10. Human Body—by a 2^nd grade class—video
11. Human Body—videos on how body parts work
12. Inside the Human Body: Grades 1-3
13. Kids’ Health-My Body
14. Matching Senses
15. Muscles Game
16. Nutrition Music and Games from Dole (more…)

National Library Week is April 23-29, 2023. It allows us to promote our local libraries and their workers. Find more about here at the American Library Association.

Because I  know most of you online only, I thought I’d share my favorite online libraries with you (click here for updates to the list):

For Children

1. Aesop for Children–collection of fables
2. Actively Learn–add PDFs of your choice to a library that can be annotated, read, and shared.
3. Audio Books–apps for books purchased through Audio Books (and free ones)
4. Bookopolis–focused on student reading
5. Books that Grow–read a story at many different reading levels
6. Class Literature
7. Epic–a reading library for kids, 15,000 books; most digital devices
8. RAZ Kids–wide variety of reading levels, age groups, with teacher dashboards
9. Reading Rainbow–library of books; free to try
10. Tumblebooks (fee)–focused on student reading

For All Ages

1. Free Books–download any of our 23,469 classic books, and read
2. Actively Learn–add PDFs of your choice to a library that can be annotated, read, and shared.
3. Bookopolis–focused on student reading
4. Books that Grow–read a story at many different reading levels
5. Class Literature
6. Epic–a reading library for kids, 15,000 books; most digital devices
7. Free Books–download any of our 23,469 classic books, and read
8. Great Books Online by Bartleby
9. Gutenberg Project
10. IBooks–amazing way to download and read books.
11. International Library
12. Internet Archive— Internet Archive offers over 12,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. There is also a collection of 550,000 modern eBooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account.
13. Kindle–read ebooks, newspapers, magazines, textbooks and PDFs on an easy-to-use interface.
14. Librivox–free public domain audio books
15. Loyal Books
16. Many Books–Over 33,000 ebooks that can be browsed by language, author, title. 
17. Online Books Page
18. Open Library
19. OWL Eyes–for the classics
20. RAZ Kids–wide variety of reading levels, age groups, with teacher dashboards
21. Reading Rainbow–library of books; free to try
22. Tumblebooks (fee)–focused on student reading
23. Unite for books (free) — gorgeous, easy-to-navigate site.

Many Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. To non-Christians (or non-traditional Christians), that event signifies a rebirth of spring that is filled with joy and gifts — and chocolate! Overall, it is America’s most-popular holiday with Christmas a close second. The date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. This year, it’s April 9, 2023.

Here’s a good mixture of games, lesson plans, stories, and songs that can be blended into many academic subjects (for updates on this Easter-themed list of websites, click here):

18+ Interactive Easter websites

Preschool-2

This website includes a colorful collection of Easter (and Spring) games and information that is visual and enticing to youngers. Games are Easter Math, Easter Egg Hunt, Easter Egg Dress-up, Easter Word hunt, complete-the-sentence, and more. Also, viewers will find websites about the history of Easter around the world.

ABCYa Easter Egg Hunt

Preschool-Kindergarten

Like all of ABCYa’s games and activities, Easter Egg Hunt is a colorful and intuitive educational game for young children.  It is easy-to-understand, playful, with favorite Easter symbols and energetic music that will engage children. The five Easter-themed games are easy-to-understand (no directions required) with a countdown clock to motivate activity. Nicely, it also aligns gameplay with the national standards met.

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Here are the most-read posts for the month of March:

1. 11 Online Resources About Puzzles
2. Software vs. Online Tools
3. 19 Tech Problems Every Student Can Fix
4. 25 Sites to Add Rigor and Authenticity to Word Study
5. How to Compare and Contrast Authentically
6. 6 Ways to Make Classroom Typing Fun
7. AI and ChatGPT in Education
8. Use the SAMR Model to Energize Class Tech
9. Beginning Graphs in MS Excel
10. Invention Convention 2023 is coming

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