Mister Mak's Learning 2.0

Gone Google Earth!

Here are some links to curricular resources using the Google Earth software. Please let me know if something piques your interest and I’d be happy to help integrate this tool into your lesson plans.

My Google Earth Resources – http://site.maklary.com/home/google-earth

This is my ongoing collection of tutorials, links, and educator resources based on Google Earth.

Google Earth for Science Education - http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/google_earth/activities.html

collection of geo-science activities and lessons that center around Google Earth

Real World Math - http://www.realworldmath.org/Real_World_Math/RealWorldMath.org.html

Use Google Earth to help teach math concepts. The Lessons page offers a menu of lessons grouped into five categories: Concept Lessons, Project-Based Learning, Exploratory, Measurement and Space.  Each grouping contains 4 or more lesson examples to preview.

US History Google Earth Tours - http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/america8/full/historytours.aspx

A collection of Google Earth files that center on specific events in US History. Google Earth tours add a nice geographic twist to delivering content to your students. Some of the tours include:

• Pre-Columbian Sites and Their Significance
• The Revolutionary War
• The Lewis & Clark Expedition
• Indian Removal
• The Path to Civil War
• The Emergence of a National Park System
• Conflicts in WWII: Pearl Harbor, Midway, D-Day, Stalingrad, Okinawa & Others
• The Road to Civil Rights
• Vietnam Conflicts: Dien bien Phu, Ia Drang, Khe Sanh, My Lai, Kent State & Others
• The 20th Century Power Grid: From Hydro-Electric to Nuclear Power
• Ten additional tours will be added for Fall 2010.

Google Lit Tours - http://www.googlelittrips.org/

Where in the world will our young readers travel as they discover the world of books? This is a collection of Google Earth tours based on books and classic literature (grades K-8). Some of the books include:

• We All Went on Safari by Laurie Krebs
• A Family Apart by Joan Lowery Nixon
• Possum Magic by Mem Fox
• Brothers in Hope: Lost Boys of Sudan by Mary Williams
• Seaman by Gail Karwoski
• Abuela by Arthur Dorros
• Big Anthony: His Story by Tomie DePaola
• The Yellow Balloon by Charlotte Dematons
• Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling Clancy Holling
• Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
• By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleishman
• The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
• Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
• Marching for Freedom by Elizabeth Partridge
• Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Brothers’ War: Civil War Voices in Verse by Patrick J. Lewis
• Remote Man by Elizabeth Honey
• Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker
• Hana’s Suitcase by Karen Levine
• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Bashares
• The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox
• My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier & Christopher Collier
• Os Lusíadas by Luís Vaz de Camões
• Expedition Literature: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Aeneid by Virgil
• Candide by Voltaire
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Night by Elie Wiesel
• The Odyssey by Homer

SMART Boards and Tagxedo Word Cloud Generator

I am in awe of one of the latest entries into Word Cloud Generators called Tagxedo. The options for creating word clouds are simply incredible and best of all, the site makes it very easy to save your work as an image file without the need to "capture" your work.

The flash-based results are a lot of fun to use and when you are using your SMART Board, you can touch on a word to make it enlarge and come to the forefront.

Here's a word cloud image I created from the words in my post from yesterday:

The site allows you to change almost any aspect of your word cloud including font, colors, number of words, shape, orientation, etc. When you're finished, you can Save your work in various sizes and formats.

Teachers Love SMART Boards - http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/

After the SMART Exchange, this might be one of the best resources for tips, tricks, ideas, and Notebook files out there. They revamped the site a bit to include:

• Categories that make it easier to find curriculum resources
• Weekly Notebook Lesson and web resource recommendations
• Notebook video tutorials

You really should bookmark this site along with the SMART Exchange.

For this afternoon’s Technology Time to Explore/Plan, please take a look at the following resources I have provided. Please try to find one or two ideas that you can implement into your classroom and curriculum. If you would like some follow up support on this or any other tech-enhanced curriculum project, please let me know. Thanks!

Teacher LED IWB Resources - http://www.teacherled.com/all-interactive-whiteboard-resources/

This is a nice collection of web-based activities suitable for your SMART Board. The site seems to focus on Math but also includes interactive activities for Geography and English.

Search Engines for Students - http://www.netvibes.com/ansercharter#Search_Engines

This is a collection of student-centric search engines that might be more suitable for kids than Google. Toward the bottom of the page, you will also find resources for copyright-free and public domain images.

Blog from Anywhere Instantly - http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/28413/blog-from-anywhere-instantly-with-posterous/

I’m giving a presentation at the Region 4 Tech Apps conference in October on this topic. Posterous is an amazingly easy blogging platform that allows you to blog by simply sending an email.

Attribution for the above resources: Tech the Plunge

And just for fun…

Dotty-Dots - http://dotty-dots.appspot.com/?h=4d722e204d616b6c617279

Load this site on your SMART board and enter some text. Then move your finger around the “dotty” text and see what happens.

Engage and Educate

Arcademic Skill Builders are online educational video games that offer a powerful approach to learning basic math, language arts, vocabulary, and thinking skills.

Our philosophy is inspired by the intense engagement arcade and video games foster between the player and the game. The Arcademic goal is to make aspects of classroom instruction as effective in creating persistence and involvement as observed in video game players. Our games are a result of blending video game features into instructional research in order to achieve a high rate of student learning through increased time-on-task and increased engagement. Students must employ strategy under exciting circumstances to make rapid responses while being given immediate feedback on their decisions.

These educational games provide fun and focused repetition practice that enables automaticity and fluency to be achieved more quickly. With what we now know about automaticity and fluency in academic performance, we can help students achieve masterful levels performance faster than ever before!

Students have more information at their fingertips than ever before, yet the challenge remains for them to find, evaluate, and apply the information they discover in the classroom and beyond.

Applying critical thinking skills through web research can help students:

·         Improve search skills.

·         Evaluate the information they find.

·         Incorporate them in their work.

Explore the ready-to-use curriculum below, including detailed lesson plans, student worksheets, and class demonstrations.

(download)

Click here to download:

Web_Wednesday_-_Sept._7_2010_t.zip (107 KB)

Big, Huge, Free US Presidents Timeline Poster - http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/02/big-huge-free-american-presidents.html

Sign up for a free C-SPAN teacher account and you can receive a free poster.

Newseum Front Pages - http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/

The Newseum displays almost 800 daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form from around the world. You click on points on a map to see the front pages. This is a GREAT way to get different perspectives of current events from all over the globe.

KidBlog.org – http://www.kidblog.org

I just ran across this yesterday. This is a protected site that can allow your students to blog within the context of your classroom. What’s nice about it is that the teacher can moderate everything from actual posts to all the comments. Each student can have their own blog with varying privacy protections.

If you are interested in taking writing to the next level, this might be a great platform to try. If you ARE interested, let me know and I will help you set one up. EASY. FREE. SAFE.

QuizHub – http://www.quizhub.com

WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK!!! We have acquired a trial account for this service and we’d like you all to check it out and provide some feedback. The Quiz Hub is a fun online interactive learning center that features hundreds of educational quiz games for English language arts, math, science, and social studies. The following account will give you full access to the Quiz Hub through March 12, 2010.

Username: stlaurence

Password: 0312

Math Magic – an iPhone App - http://appshopper.com/education/math-magic

Here is a “FREE only for today” iPhone application that can help students with their math facts. My 4^th grade boy could use this application to help him with division fast facts that they do at school. If you have an iPhone and an elementary-aged child, download this today to take advantage of the free offer. Normally, it’s $.99 which is still a great bargain.

100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time in School - http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2009/10/25/100-google-tricks-that-will-save-you-time-in-school/

If you’re a Google user, you will definitely find some great tips here. Learn how to generate better search results, use Gmail and Google Calendar to organize your life, and tips on using Google services on your cell phone.

SMART Board Thanksgiving Resources - http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/smartboard-thanksgiving-holiday-resources.html

Interactive Thanksgiving timelines, Turkey stories, Notebook files, and primary games related to Tom Turkey Day.

Teacher Training Videos - http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

This is another nice site with video tutorials mainly covering web 2.0 applications and open source software. Some of the applications covered are PBWorks, Audacity, Jing, XTimeliner, Podcasting, etc.

I’ll be out at the Region 4 Technology Applications Conference on Wednesday so I’m sending this a little early. Enjoy!

We Podcasted Today! So, Did you Learn ANYTHING? - http://langwitches.org/blog/2009/10/19/we-podcasted-today-so-did-you-learn-anything/

Really nice reflection on using podcasting in elementary classrooms. Take a read, take a listen and let me know if when you’d like to start podcasting projects in your classroom.

A Lifetime of Color - http://www.alifetimeofcolor.com/

A collection of lesson plans that incorporates Art in cross-curricular activities including Math, Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts. If you like this, also check out 73+ Lesson Plans for Arts and Media Educators.

Free Clipart - http://www.phillipmartin.info/clipart/homepage.htm

I’ve seen a LOT of clip art sites but none with this kind of quality. This site has clip art that was drawn by one artist so the look is very consistent. Use this site to find images to spruce up your Notebook files. Good stuff!

SMARTBoards and Inserting Sound Into Notebook - http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/2009/10/smartboards-inserting-sound-into-notebook.html

This is a short video tutorial to help you insert sounds into your Notebook files. Using sounds for student feedback in Notebook is a great way to make your lessons more interactive and engaging for your students.

If you are looking for Halloween related activities for your SMART Board (or without your SMART Board), take a look at this blog post from Teachers Love SMART Boards. It has an extensive list of games, SMART Notebook files, sound files, clip art, puzzles and interactive activities… all Halloween related.