Tech Tips Tuesday - 15 Free Tech Tools for the Classroom

Today I share with you a guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online classes for OnlineClasses.org. You may have also enjoyed Karen's previous guest post: 20 Free Learning Technology Resources.

15 Free Tech Tools for the Classroom

Tech tools don't have to put a strain on your district's budgets. There are plenty of free tech tools that can be found online. Many of these tools were designed specifically for the classroom or for educators who want to enhance their lessons. Here are 15 free tech tools to try throughout the school year.

Edmodo - Designed specifically for the classroom, Edmodo provides a private platform for students and teachers to communicate online. Some of the things that can be shared through Edmodo include grades, assignments, polls, files, links, and class calendars.

Engrade - Engrade is a free classroom community for teachers who want to communicate privately and safely with students and parents online. Teachers can post assignments, grades, event reminders, progress reports, and more.

Empressr - Empressr is a web-based rich media presentation tool that can be used in the classroom to present lesson plans. The tool is easy to work with and allows everything from text and images to audio and video.

Eduslide - Eduslide makes it easy to create and deliver your own lessons, tutorials, and elearning modules online. You can also use this site to create your own websites for the classroom.

Web-Chops - Web-Chops is a great way to share specific parts of the web with your students. The site allows you to clip parts of the web--text, images, videos, etc.--and place them on one easy-to-navigate page.

Mikogo - Mikogo is an amazing tech tool for the classroom. It works across multiple platforms and can be used for multiple purposes. Mikogo is ideal for desktop sharing, web conferencing, online meetings, and remote support.

Anki - Anki is an intelligent flashcard program that works on a spaced repetition system. You can use it to create and share decks of flashcards with your students in the classroom. Flashcards can contain text, images, and audio.

Popling - This desktop application also works well for creating flashcards that can be displayed on a computer at scheduled intervals. Popling is most often used by language learners, but works just as well for students of other subjects.

Class Marker - ClassMarker is a testing website that allows users to create free quizzes and tests that can be taken online. The site creates professional-looking quizzes and tests and marks them when students are finished so that you don't have to.

FreeRice - FreeRice is a unique web program that allows older students to practice their vocabulary and participate in a charitable cause at the same time. For every answer students get correct, 10 grains of rice are donated to the UN World Food Program.

The Stacks - This scholastic site is a fun place for young readers to connect with each other and explore books and authors. The Stacks also offers games, videos, daily polls, and other interactive materials to engage students in literature.

International Children's Digital Library - This multicultural digital library provides award-winning books in multiple languages. After reading a book, students can expand upon the stories, create games, participate in scavenger hunts, and much more.

Shmoop - Shmoop offers study guides and unique web-based teacher resources that are perfect for the classroom. Covered topics include literature, poetry, U.S. history, and civics.

Topmarks - This UK site provides a wide range of interactive whiteboard resources on nearly every K-12 topic imaginable.

Metropolitan Museum of Art - The Metropolitan Museum of Art provides interactive virtual tours that give students an inside look at the museums permanent exhibits. Other site features include a timeline of art history and a collections database.

The Blogger Behind this Blog #7

I know you've all been dying to hear about my trip to New York City, and I've been dying to tell you about it. It was really very depressing to arrive back home and have to jump straight into work again, so it's nice to have a few minutes this morning to reminisce and share my experiences with you.


Background

For those of you who don't know my background with New York, I'll give it to you quickly here. In 2005 my husband and I did a whirlwind 17 day tour of the US including LA, Vegas, Grand Canyon, Orlando (Kennedy Space Center and Disney), and New York City. During our four days in New York City, my husband said "We should come and live here for a year!" I agreed, thinking he would probably forget about it when we got home. No such luck! In fact, his interest only grew stronger.

So, I looked into it and finally managed to get a job etc lined up. We packed up everything, sold our house and moved to New York City with the thought that we might end up making it permanent. We did, however, have a safety net - we both took a year's leave from our jobs so that we could return if things didn't work out. (You can read more about our experience at my New York blog.)

It wasn't so much that things didn't work out. In fact, we were loving our lives in New York. But when we weighed up all the elements, we felt that we had greater security in the long term back in Australia - superannuation, secure jobs, health care, etc. So we did the 'sensible thing' - we came back, bought a new home, returned to our jobs and...missed New York! In 2008 we returned for a month holiday during the summer, and then this year we went for another 17 days in late September/early October. This time my husband's mum, sister and her partner came along.

We just can't stay away!


Highlights from this trip:

As I was very busy in the lead-up to the trip, my wonderful husband took responsibility for most (all) of the planning. He managed to line up a number of tickets to sporting events. This was a real highlight for me because spectator sport is so exciting in the US. There's always such a great atmosphere with lots of tradition. I also like to do the whole food thing while watching the sport!

We went to the new Yankee Stadium for a Yankees vs Red Sox game. It got rained out and was postponed for an hour or so, but was a great game and well worth the wait.

We went to Michie Stadium to watch Army play Tulane in College Football. (Again a little rain, but not game-stopping)


Also on the same day as the football, we raced back to NYC for the first ice-hockey game of the season for the Rangers.


Another highlight was the Statue of Liberty. The crown has been closed to the public every time I'd visited, up until this time. We booked crown tickets well in advance and I enjoyed exploring this extra aspect. I'm always captivated by the beauty of Lady Liberty.

I really enjoyed catching up with friends and just generally hanging out with them. It was great to see our friends' kid who was a teeny-tiny baby on our last visit. So...it's not impossible to do babies in NYC...hmmm!

Another of my favourites was the view from our apartment - again, thanks to my husband. We were on the 31st floor in a mid-town apartment. Throughout the night I would stir and look out the window at 'my city'. As you can see, it was truly beautiful.


I also had the privilege of doing a school tour of Collegiate College. This counted as a highlight for me because it reminded me of the things I love about teaching in New York. I taught the boys a song "Waddly Archer" and met teachers and IT specialists.

We went to Sofia's to watch Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks play their 1920's style music. They were great as always and there were plenty of dancers to watch as well.

And, of course, I loved just being back - the smells, the air, the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the people.

Friday Fun - 14/11/09

Yet again I'm catching up on two week's worth of activity. I was away at a wedding last weekend and so didn't get a chance to post. Our learning continues to be very heavily focused on Space, so be sure to check out the Space Spectacular posts.

Fun this Week

Spelling
I realised that students were making many mistakes with homophones in their writing, so last week our Spelling lists focused on homophones. We discussed some homophones together and then used the BBC Homophones quiz to practise some examples. Students voted for their answer using a show of 1, 2 or 3 fingers. This allowed me to see the students who needed extra support. I introduced students to the Confusing Words website which can be used when students are uncertain which word to use. Students then brainstormed all the homophones they could think of and circled the ones they find most difficult to remember. I used the circled words to create Spelling lists for the students for the week.

Maths
We have been learning about 3D shapes as well as reviewing previously taught concepts. I found some really useful resources through both Mathletics (subscription based program) and Smart Kiddies (free but need to register) to support students with developing these concepts. Smart Kiddies had some great worksheets that I could print out, while the new concept search in Mathletics offered step-by-step instructions for how to draw cubes, cones and cylinders. I also used one of the interactive games from Smart Kiddies for students to sort 3D shapes as prisms, pyramids or neither.

Sport
We have had students out of class over the past two weeks playing cricket for school teams. They had a lot of fun doing so and came back to school hot and exhausted at the end of the day!

Music
Students have been learning a new song to perform for our next assembly and have been experimenting with pairing their voices and instruments to get the right rhythm. They are becoming very skilled at this and the song sounds amazing when they put it all together.
We are also preparing for our "Best Of 2009" concert where we will be performing "Rak Niwili" and "The Australian Twelve Days of Christmas".

Space Spectacular #3

Week 4 and 5 - More Finding Out and Sorting Out

The activities in these weeks were designed to provide opportunities for students to find out about space and sort their ideas in a range of forms. Students typically "found out" through books, videos, websites, songs and experiments. They "sorted out" using writing, diagrams, reports and art.

Science
One of the focus questions for this unit is: "What are the relationships between distance and apparent size of objects to an observer?" My first thought was, "Huh?" closely followed by "Hmmmm." The models we made in weeks 2 and 3 touched on this but didn't really EXPLAIN anything or help students to make these deductions. I found an explanation of Emmert's Law on Wikipedia, but it was still too confusing for Year 4 students to really grasp. Somewhere along the way I thought about the funny photos you can take that play with this concept. Like this one by Andy Hay:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyhay/ / CC BY 2.0

I found a bunch of these at 100+ Funny Photos Taken At Unusual Angles and pulled out some appropriate ones to use with my class. (WARNING: Some are inappropriate, so do not use this site uncensored with your students.)
We looked at these at the start of the lesson and discussed the concept about apparent size and distance. I compared this to the apparent sizes of the sun and moon from Earth. I then gave students two different sized balls which they took outside and had to space apart in such a way that they looked the same size when viewed through the camera. Students then glued these pictures into their books and wrote an explanation of what they did and what they learnt. Those who finished early had time to create their own funny photos using their creativity.


Integrating with Literacy

Writing an Information Report

We needed to assess students' writing in preparation for end of year progress reports, so we decided to have students research and write about the sun. Information was provided through:

• a double-page spread from a book about space (including a diagram)
  
• this NASA diagram of the sun
• this Space School video on the sun
• and the following 'music video'

Students took notes while we explored these together. We watched the videos twice each and I demonstrated how I would take notes and add to them during the second viewing. Students then had the rest of the session to begin sorting through their notes to determine which ideas could be grouped together and to consider paragraph headings.
In the following session students began writing their report and drawing a diagram. In our next session students will review their work. You can see a copy of the Assessment Booklet below:

An Information Report About The Sun

View more documents from pennyryder.

Integrating with Art

Nebula Watercolour Paintings

Having just explored the lifecycle of a star together, I showed students some photographic images of nebulas and super novas. We discussed the range of colours and the shapes and lines that were used. We then looked at these watercolour paintings by Ken Bandaruk. I gave students a large sheet of paper and some watercolours and left them to their own creativity to make nebula watercolours of their own. Once the painting was complete, students used a bamboo skewer and some white paint to add a layer of stars. Students who finished early went on to create super nova paintings using crayons and watercolours.

One Point Perspective

Building further on the concept from Emmert's Law, I taught students how to draw with one point perspective using these step-by-step instructions. Now that students have the basics, they are going to take it further, creating scenes of their own.

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out previous posts in the Space Spectacular Series.

Tech Tips Tuesday

This Week's Tip: Ten Tips For Starting Out With An Interactive Whiteboard

Earlier this year I thought I might like to contribute to a magazine. Education Quarterly Australia was producing a magazine on the topic "It's a Digital World" so I decided to add my own thoughts. My article "An interactive whiteboard...What next?" appeared in the Spring edition of the magazine. Here I outline 10 tips for getting started and or going further with interactive whiteboards.

Rather than republish that article here, I encourage you to pop by EQA's website where you can also read the other featured article for this edition.

Enjoy!