Tuesday, November 8, 2016

I love things that make it easier for teachers and the website Flippity seems to do that.  This blog post from Richard Byrne explains how you can make Madlibs using Google Docs and a template from Flippity.  Madlibs might seem like silliness but they are fun and it would be a good way to help students with parts of speech.

Check out Richard's blog post here.

Friday, September 30, 2016

Digital Citizenship Resources from Google

I have been looking at the training in Google for Educators, my district has begun to use it more and we are moving in the direction of Google Classroom.  One of the areas of most concern is digital citizenship.  Even though my main position is tech support I also support our teachers as they use technology for their classroom curriculum, so I thought that going through the training would be helpful.  As I am working through it there was a host of wonderful resources listed for digital citizenship so I thought I would share them here.

Cybrary Man's Education Web Sites
To quote the site:  "The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators & parents.
Over 20,000 relevant links personally selected by an educator/author with over 30 years of experience. "


This site has a host of resources for technology in schools, digital Citizenship is just one part.  Worth taking a look.


Digizen.org
Wonderful resources for teachers, parents and kids.  A good look at Social Networking. This is from Childnet International.

Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner (from the Australian Government)

Generation Safe Quick Tip Videos
Series of short videos covering many digital safety topics.  These are YouTube videos, something to be aware of if your school blocks YouTube.

SWGfL Digital Literacy
South West Grid for Learning - not for profit from England providing learning resources in internet safety.

InCtrl
Lessons originally developed by Cable in the Classroom that teach concepts of digital literacy.


Wednesday, September 21, 2016

I love talk like a Pirate day.  This post is late but keep it in mind for next year, put it on your calendar!  Teacher Reboot Camp, another great educational blog has lots of resources for Talk Like a Pirate Day, Sept. 19th.  Lots of story telling resources, activities, websites, etc.  Everything you need for an awesome Talk Like a Pirate Day celebration! Check it out here.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

I was looking at the Technology Tidbits blog and he featured a link to a math game site, BoomBlocks.  It is a really nice math game that would probably be fun for most kids.  It works like most video games, with students trying to solve the equations as quickly as possible.  They get power-ups and other rewards for answering correctly.  They can level up in the game to more difficult levels with more problems.  Check out the blog here.

But then I went back in the site to the home site and found even more resources.  While I don't think games on the internet will solve a child's learning difficulties it is a nice, fun way for kids to practice and reinforce skills.  They will work longer if they are having fun!  Here is the main site for the BoomBlocks game.
Larry Ferlazzo is one of those bloggers everyone follows.  His focus is ESL but his posts are relevant to so many different disciplines.  He has great content.

Here is a blog on an educational youtube channel called Free School, take a minute to read this, it is worth your time.

Larry Ferlazzo - Free School

Thursday, March 17, 2016

I found a new coding site for kids from Technology Tidbits, I love this.  It is called Erase All Kittens and it has students using HTML code in a game to save the kittens.  It is really cute and clever, and explains what is needed fairly well, but the students still have to think a bit to solve it. You can find the site here: Erase All Kittens


Monday, March 7, 2016

Beth's Thoughts on Technology in the Classroom is a blog I follow regularly.  I love today's, it provides links to training resources for Google Apps, and with more schools heading in that direction providing training for teachers definitely decreases the stress involved.  Getting a few teachers to try the train the trainer training would be beneficial to all schools, it puts someone in place who can help guide teachers more timid about learning new things.  

Google Training

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

News Perspectives

Another one of my favorite bloggers is Larry Ferlazzo, he writes a blog for ELL teachers but so much of what he features is useful for all teachers.  He has a couple of posts this week that feature news perspectives.  One is an app, Perspecs, there are both Android and Apple versions.  It shows 3 different perspectives on a news topic.  What a great tool to show students how a topic can be viewed by different people.  The other is a brand new website called AllSides. It just opened up.

Here are the links to Larry's posts:

All Sides
Perspecs

I also love factchecker.org and Politifacts.com both sites check the truthfulness of many of our public figures statements and pronouncements.

Monday, February 29, 2016

How Big is the Sun

This blog post from Free Technology for Teachers features a video from Minute Physics, the video is really nice, short and easy for students to understand, but Minute Physics on YouTube has a lot of other videos too.

How Big is the Sun?

A Classroom Timer

I love little internet tools that are free and make life a little easier. This is just such a tool, a popup timer with a buzzer.  It is very simple, easy to use and who doesn't need a timer now and again.  I got this from one of my favorite blogs, Free Technology For Teachers.

Timer Pop

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Love this really cute site I found on the Technology Tidbits blog, I think it would be a fun way to help students work on Language Arts and also digital storytelling.  Students create their own monster, they play a game where they identify parts of speech by having their monster eat them and students can create and watch their own story.


Story Monster

Thursday, February 4, 2016

A great blog about Hello Ruby

I was not a computer person growing up, in fact I am old enough that there weren't any and when I started college you had to get time at a terminal to access the main frame!  I was a theater major, totally right brained and thought computer programming was gibberish.  I had my first in depth introduction to computers in my 40s and it was love at first sight.  Mostly because of the ability to correct and rearrange my writing.  Organization is not my strong suit, in fact, I work for disorganization because it was to discouraging to try and be organized.  Computers changed that for me, I am so much more able to organize myself.  I don't forget meetings as often, my files are alphabetized!  Amazing stuff.  I learned about programming in my early 50s and I really loved it.  Programming is a language and I am good at languages.  It has vocabulary, syntax and punctuation, I could do this.  I still love programming, I never really got very good at it but I really enjoy it and love watching children master programming.  I cannot wait to introduce my granddaughter to Scratch, Alice and all of the other wonderful tools that are being developed for kids.  I just read this blog from iLearn Technology about Hello Ruby, a book about programming for children and now a whole website.  I ordered the book right away, I can't wait to see it.  This is one I definitely want to share!

Hello Ruby: A whimsical way to learn about computers and programming

Friday, January 15, 2016

I found a cute YouTube Channel from Free Technology for Teachers that uses video to reinforce math concepts.  It was really nice and looked like a good way to add a little more to math lessons.  I loved these types of things when I was a kid, Schoolhouse Rock was a favorite!

Numberock - Math Music Videos