Best of the Web

Richard Byrne's presentation at the Christa McAuliffe Technology
Conference in Manchester, New Hampshire

Best of the Web Nov. 2012 from Richard Byrne

Edudemic & 88 of The Best Apps for Mobile Learning

What is Edudemic?  It is “a global community designed to keep educators, administrators, and everyone up to date on what is happening in the world of education and technology. It pulls from more than 100 different online educational resources to inform and connect the world of technology and education” (About Edudemic). The site contains news, ideas for mobile learning, best classroom practices and more.

To get started using Edudemic…

1. Go to http://edudemic.com/. You do not need to register or subscribe you can start reading directly from their website.
2. You can follow their posts on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, RSS Feed or you can subscribe to their Daily Digest that is delivered to your email. 

Here are a couple articles to get you started.  I linked to the last one a few weeks ago,. 

• The 88 Best iOS Apps For Mobile Learning
• How Children Used Technology 100 Years Ago

Free E-book Resouces

This month I thought it would be fun to highlight a few of the excellent online resources for free ebooks that you and your students can use.

One of my favorites is Storyline Online: http://www.storylineonline.net/. Each of their books have accompanying lessons.  If you click on “All Stories” and then on Polar Express, you can see and hear this award winning book read by Lou diamond Phillips.

Five other noteworthy online resources for elementary students are listed below:

·         Lil Fingers: http://www.lil-fingers.com/storybooks/index.php

·         Speakaboos: http://www.speakaboos.com/corporate/stories

·         Magic Keys: http://www.magickeys.com/books

·         Meegenius: This site not only reads the text but it highlights the words that are being,  read.  There is also an I-pad Meegenius app that is free with over 300 titles.   http://www.meegenius.com/store/books/free/

·         Readquarium’s online library: http://www.gamequarium.org/dir/SqoolLibrary/

A couple of outstanding secondary resources are:

·         E-Books Directory with more than 6000 titles. The E-Books Directory provides freely downloadable textbooks, documents, and lecture notes.

·         The Open Library http://openlibrary.org/ is a collection of more than one million free e-book titles.

·         Google Books hosts thousands of books that are in the public domain. To find public domain books go into the advanced search option http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search  and select the "public domain only" and "full text" options to find free full-length books. 

Free Educational Videos Linked to the Common Core

WatchKnowLearn has indexed over 33,000+ educational videos, placing them into a directory of over 3,000 categories. The videos are available without any registration or fees to teachers in the classroom and to students at home 24/7. Users can dive into their innovative directory or search for videos by subject and age level. Video titles, descriptions, age level information, and ratings are all edited for usefulness. Their web site invites broad participation in a new kind of wiki system, guided by teachers. 

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.