How Children Used Technology 100 Years Ago

This post from EDUDEMIC  is very interesting.  Times have certainly changed.

Readwritethink.org

READY SET VOTE!  

How about a site that will let you use persuasive writing to create a political ad?  Read Write Think has an interactive for that and many more which blend proven instruction with Internet Technology.

Students can create;  persuasion maps, travel brochures, trading cards, story maps, bio cubes, plot diagrams, printing press, comics, even literary graffiti and much much more!

The site comes with complete lesson plans for grades K-12 focused on the three areas of literacy practice: learning language, learning about language, learning through language. 

Younger students will enjoy their Interactives demonstrating letters, sounds and word patterns.  The lessons for older students focus on critical thinking and comprehension. 

Ready to infuse one of their lessons into your plans?  Just E-mail Janice and she will be glad to come to  your classroom and work with you and your students.

http://tinyurl.com/y9tlvkz
Persuasion Map Interactive

How to Use Technology To Teach Vocabulary

Wordle:  http://www.wordle.net/create  is a word cloud. The cloud you see above this  entry is from   Wordle. It is easy to use.  Type words multiple times to increase their font size.

Tagxedo: http://www.tagxedo.com turns words,  famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, into a word cloud. You can choose from a variety shapes, colors, and fonts for your word cloud.

Lexipedia: http://www.lexipedia.com  a multi-lingual visual dictionary that creates a word web and defines words based on their part of speech. 

SnappyWords: http://www.snappywords.com   This site will interactively help you find meanings for words and connections to associated words within its interactivity and thesaurus. It will look like a “word web” that can easily be manipulated.  Click on the beta link to see an example.  Then you will want to register for your free account.
Visuwords:  http://visuwords.com/  is another word web dictionary. Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a circle to expand the tree. Click and drag to move the background around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over circles to see the definition and click and drag individual circles to move them around  and to help clarify connections.

TheVisual Dictionary: http://thevisualdictionary.net  uses photographs of words in the real world to visually explore them.

Shahi:  http://blachan.com/shahi/ This is a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images and more.

 WordStash:  http://flashcardstash.com  Create your own account at this link.  It is built on top of a dictionary, so you can look up words and save them.  With one click, students can access dictionary information and create flash cards or play the interactive games with YOUR words for review.

 TagGalaxy: http://taggalaxy.de/  The resource will create a 3D galaxy of words and their associations.  You can even click on a word and move it to the center of the galaxy and watch the globe populate it with new Flickr images and facts.  You have to check this one out! Your students will love it. 

Vocabulary.co  http://www.vocabulary.co.il/  has vocabulary games to expand your students verbiage. 
 

Embed Questions in Your YouTube Clips- Beta

Video Questions Editor Beta http://www.youtube.com/video_questions_beta YouTube adds a question component to enable its users to ask questions about their videos. It is in Beta and they are asking for feedback. This is an opt-in beta for a simple Video Questions Editor on YouTube. Through this editor you can setup multiple questions to be displayed on top of your video during playback that a viewer can answer. The editor itself can be found on the video edit page, on the edit bar. After you have added several questions and the users have viewed them, you can see a summary of the interaction your users had with them through the analytics page, within the Annotations section.

Think Before You Post-

This posted was created by S. Long at Technology Rocks as a reminder to stop and think before posting something on Twitter, FB, via text, or blogging. I felt it was worth sharing. Before You Fb Txt Tw or Blog2 She also created downloadable bookmarks you can print for you students.

Publishing Student Work- Also posted in our Sept. Literacy Letter

Students love to publish their projects online and share them with their family and friends. Here are some ideas you could use to publish, share and celebrate your students’ work. Together we can give these web 2.0 publishing sites a try. Email me to set up a time where we can see which one will work best for your students.

 

· Animoto: https://animoto.com Create your free educator account and post book reports, and summaries. This site installs all the transitions and you can choose from their music for background.

· Bookworm:   http://www.bookworm-mag.com Magazine publishes the stories, poems, essays and artwork of kids ages six through fifteen.

· StoryKit:  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/storykit/id329374595?mt=8   application puts student work online privately in a format that can viewed by iPhone.

· Storybird:  http://storybird.com Use the art on the site to illustrate or inspire student storytelling. Good for elementary students or those writing for them.

· Stapleless Book: http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/stapleless-book-30010.html At this interactive site, students follow the prompts to produce their own books. Students can work with bulleted lists, headlines, and text; they can leave space to add pictures after printing. Everything prints out on one piece of paper. Follow the instructions to fold and cut.

· Yudu:  http://www.yudu.com This resource lets you upload all sorts of content including Word documents and PDFs. It will quickly convert the documents into an impressive virtual magazine with flipping pages. Account creation is optional but an email address is required. You can also set privacy settings to public or private.

· Issuu:   http://issuu.com  Pronounced "issue", is another option to upload almost any document format and transform it into a virtual flipping book. Of course, you can share and or embed the resulting creation. For example, you can embed the book on your classroom homepage or wiki.

· Lulu:   http://www.lulu.com Online publishing for books. You could publish a book written by all your students on poetry or perhaps a class recipe book. There are countless ideas on their site.

How to search and view YouTube safely

Have you ever loaded a video clip on YouTube and seen inappropriate ads, or comments posted?  Perhaps the related videos on the right-hand side of the screen displayed a clip that you did not feel your students should be viewing.

Well, there are several easy solutions:

If you type in  http://youtube.clea.nr when you are searching clips in YouTube, you can search and watch the  videos without viewing any of the "related" videos, advertisements or comments on YouTube.

SafeShare.tv: http://safeshare.tv/  , and View Pure: http://viewpure.com/  also make it possible to view YouTube videos without displaying the related videos ads, and comments. To use either resource simply copy the URL of a YouTube video and paste it into the URL box on their link.