Class 6: Educational Applications: Software
June 17, 2010
Activities:
1. Review Remaining Ellis Island Projects
2. Demonstrate, Explore, Discuss, and Categorize Educational Software and Tools
a) What are the elements of an ideal lesson or activity? Create an outline. elements of an ideal lesson.doc
b) Teachers will choose three products that they would like to use with their class(esand explain why
they chose them and what impact they believe they can have on their students' learning.
c) Teachers will use these tools (and others) in their Exemplars Assignment).
d) Teachers will categorize and describe all the products that they explore in a Software Table.
e) Demo Susan Boone lesson & Technology Activities Database
3. Continue Leadership and Ed Tech Philosophy Discussion:
b) The Impacts of Technology in Education: Continued from Thursday)
c) Create an Educational Technology Rubric
Describe:
(1) Entry Level Uses
(2) Adaptive Uses
(3) Transformative Uses
Technology Integration Exemplars Assignment
Provide evidence of your ability to use computer-based productivity tools to develop instructional materials that integrate technology to meet the target needs of your students and are consistent with your educational philosophy and/or work to incorporate the 21st Century skills discussed in the Foundations course. The following will be used to evaluate your assignment:
- The lessons/activities submitted as evidence were developed using hardware and /or software.
- The products submitted as evidence demonstrate that technology is integrated with classroom curriculum and instructional practice. They are creative, they incorporate knowledge and experience gained in the Foundations course.
- The products are submitted to the course site and are published to the author’s class Wiki.
I. Explore ed tech strategies and products for a variety of grade levels and subject areas:
The Bugscope project provides free interactive access to a scanning electron microscope (SEM) so that students anywhere in the world can explore the microscopic world of insects. This educational outreach program from the Beckman Institute's Imaging Technology Group at the University of Illinois supports K-16 classrooms worldwide.
Bugscope allows teachers everywhere to provide students with the opportunity to become microscopists themselves—the kids propose experiments, explore insect specimens at high-magnification, and discuss what they see with our scientists—all from a regular web browser over a standard broadband internet connection.
Internet Telescope:
It appears that video games are not the only hot item in the cosmos. In its first month of operation, the Seeing in the Dark Internet Telescope (SIDIT) has shot images of distant galaxies and nebulae in response to requests from more than 1,000 students around the world.
Struggling to engage students in Math? See how Math Concepts come to life with InspireData. Make Data Analysis fun and engaging.
Seasonal change is all around us. Children see it in the length of a day, in the appearance of a flower, in the flight of a butterfly. Journey North is a free, Internet-based program that explores the interrelated aspects of seasonal change. Through interrelated investigations, students discover that sunlight drives all living systems and they learn about the dynamic ecosystem that surrounds and connects them.
* Sunlight and the Seasons: Children study seasonal change in sunlight in a global game of hide and seek called Mystery Class.
* Plants and the Seasons: Children explore tulip growth in their own gardens, running an experiment that tracks the arrival of spring.
* Seasonal Migrations: Children follow animal migrations. They observe, research, and report findings and watch journeys progress on live maps.
WiER connects students across Canada with writers, teachers and one another in an animated exchange of original writing and commentary.
Atomic Learning provides web-based software training for more than 110 applications students and educators use everyday. Our short, easy-to-view-and-understand tutorials are an integral part of a professional development program, a valuable curriculum supplement, and an anytime/anywhere training resource.
Introducing the most powerful and intuitive interface for science education. Engage your students with hands-on science in your classroom or in the field.
FanFiction.Net allows students to write new chapters for their favorite books, or write new books in the genre and style of books they love. They publish their work, and receive feedback from fans and colleagues.
Comic Life is the perfect software tool for all students to be creative. Comic Life will inspire everyone — teachers and students — to approach learning in new ways.
The company is dedicated to enhancing the education of today’s youth with highly effective technologies that deliver the rich educational value of the Internet to every child in a safe, relevant, easy-to-use format. netTrekker is the #1 educational search tool and was first to market with a standards-based solution utilizing the services of Academic Benchmarks, the premier provider of comprehensive standards-based K-12 educational databases, alignment tools, and integration products.
SAS Curriculum Pathways
This resource is your online partner for teaching the core curriculum: (This Product is Free)
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English, history, science, mathematics, Spanish |
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Learner-centered tools, lessons, and resources with measurable outcomes |
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Interactive components that foster higher-order thinking skills |
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Twenty-first century skills integrated into content |
Criterion software uses artificial intelligence to assess the basic components of essays.
Below is a list of eduational sites and resources provided as a starting point to guide your exploration or as a departure point for your own searching and discovery.
Susan Boone Real World Math Lessons - Susan's lessons utilize real world data available via the Internet such as Real-Time Houston Traffic data, the Census Bureau's Population Clock, etc.
Gizmos - ExploreLearning.com - Classroom Examples
Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.
VisuWords online graphical disctionary
Type in a word and see the graphical connections to definitions and other related words.
Google Math - This website is designed for educators who wish to extend the concepts of the math curriculum beyond the pages of the text. Google Earth is the dynamic tool that will be used to accomplish this.
Google Lit - This site is an experiment in teaching great literature in a very different way. Using Google Earth, students discover where in the world the greatest road trip stories of all time took place... and so much more!
TerraClues - is the ultimate Google Maps scavenger hunt game!
- Follow clues to find hidden locations on the map
- Create your own hunts for others to play
- A fun game that makes you think!
Geometer’s Sketchpad – Math visualization and graphing
The leading online resource for improving math learning, teaching, and communication since 1992. We are teachers, mathematicians, researchers, students, and parents using the power of the Web to learn math and improve math education.
Jib-Jab - Put yourself in a funny animation.
Re-Mix America - Remix America is a nonpartisan, nonprofit in-browser editing tool that allows citizens around the country to remix the great words and speeches of American History with the hot button issues of today.
Animoto - Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. Fast, free and shockingly easy.
Delicious – shared bookmarks and web-based sharing of bookmarks.
xtimeline is a free web-based timeline. Easily create and share timelines with pictures and videos.
Photo Story - Bring your digital photos to life with Photo Story 3 for Windows.
Movie Maker - Windows Movie Maker makes digital movies amazingly easy and fun.
Screencast-o-matic, ScreenToaster, Camtasia, Jing - Create screencasts.
SketchCast - Record your voice as you sketch.
Footnote - Footnote allows students to access thousands of primary source documents and photos, and easily create online history reports. Their urls can then be posted, and students can also leave comments on their peers’ reports.
Smile and Clear - They’re both from Michigan State University, and allow teachers (and students) to easily create clozes, drag-and-drop exercises, and sequencing activities. They also allow you to use audio and video with the activities, and will host them as well.
ESL Video - It’s super-easy to take pretty much any video off-the-net and create a quiz to it. It’s designed for ESL/EFL students, but it can also be used by and for mainstream students.
One True Media - It’s a very easy way to create slideshows on the Web, and add text, music and images.
Community Walk - Students can put many sites on a map with descriptions and images (which can be easily grabbed off the web). Students can use this to describe field trips, report on historical events, and do other mapping applications.
Show Beyond - This allows audio narration of slideshows. You can also add music and text. It’s particularly good in District’s that block streaming media (like VoiceThread).
VoiceThread - You can upload pictures and create an audio narrative to go along with them. In addition, audio comments can be left by visitors. VoiceThread also provides a great deal to teachers by allowing them to get their premium services for free, including allowing them to create a zillion VoiceThreads for free. Happily, they’ve finally incorporated the feature of allowing you to include images off the web just by inserting its url.
Bookr - It would be difficult to create an easier application to make slideshows with captions on the web. The only drawback to it is you can only use images off Flickr, and not others on the Web, but that’s a small price to pay for such an accessible application.
Tumblr - This “micro-blogging” site upgraded their service this year. It’s a great place for students to easily post a whole lot of their work. Students can have individual or group “Tumblrs.” A student can also share their password with a small number of students who can leave comments.
LunaPic - Web based image editor. Great effecs and animations.
Prezi - Web-based presentation tool with stunning effects.
SlideShare - Upload your students’ or your own powerpoint files in order to embed them on your classroom blog
Vimeo - Video tools and video sharing.
TimeToast - Web-based timeline creator.
KickYouTube - Download YouTube Videos
Read Write Think - Massive compilation of interactive activities and resources for teachers.
Squido - Makes it easy to find useful overview pages -called lenses - written by real people. It's also a great way to publish your own lenses for free. Get published. Get found. Get followed.
Lumifi - Content analyzer for deep research and sharing.
Kathy Schrock’s - Guide for Educators. A list of sites that are available for teachers to evaluate and/or purchase. I am not personally recommending any of these titles, but have just collected them so you can try them out!
Learn Spanish - on your terms with mobile podcasts and a global community of Spanish learners.
e-Learning Reloaded: Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Info Junkies, Researchers & Students
There's a reason why the Web is called the information superhighway-it's full of seemingly limitless resources for learning and research. And with the advent of Web 2.0, harnessing this information has never been easier. These are some of the best tools for organizing, citing, searching, and more online
ThinkFold - Shared outlining and brainstorming.
Bubbl.us - Collaborative brainstorming maps.
FlowChart - an online multi-user, real-time collaboration flowchart software. It's Flowcharting made easy.
NoteCentric - An online place to keep and share your class notes.
BookRags - the premier research site, with over 8.3 million pages of literature summaries, biographies, literary criticism, essays, encyclopedias, and eBooks sourced from over 100 respected education databases.
wikiHow - a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. With your contributions, we can create a free resource that helps millions of people by offering solutions to the problems of everyday life. wikiHow currently contains 65,523 articles
Powers of Ten is an extremely valuable tool for teaching and understanding our world through the concept of scale. Although math is the most obvious field of study, it can be applied to every subject matter. In the same way that a knowledge of geography allows us to comprehend locations and their relative distance, a knowledge of scale gives us the perspective to see all things in terms of relative size. It gives us a sense of place in the universe and expands our thinking in non-linear ways.
Playing With Time is an exciting, new project that looks at how the world around you is changing over many different time periods.
Ricci Adams first envisioned Musictheory.net during his senior year of high school. Soon afterwards, he created his first lesson: The Staff, Clefs, and Ledger Lines. The Interval Ear Trainer was developed a few weeks later and the site officially launched on January 1, 2000. Since that date, he has authored over thirty new lessons and several new trainers.
Free online Interactive Courseware for Math and Science
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
A free and open learning community for sharing new and emerging tools to teach Science.
With Gliffy online diagram software, you can easily create professional-looking flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, technical drawings, and more.
Google Sites is a free and easy way to create and share webpages.
Web Worksheet Wizard and Project Poster have combined to make Web Poster Wizard. This FREE tool allows educators to create a lesson, worksheet, or class page and immediately publish it online.
Web 2.0 for the Classroom Teacher
Zoho - Online database creator
SS EarthKAM - (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students) is a NASA education program which enables students, teachers and the public to learn about Earth from the unique perspective of space. At the core of the program is a spectacular collection of digital images of Earth. The image collection and accompanying learning guides and activities are extraordinary resources to support classes in Earth science, space science, geography, social studies, mathematics, communications and even art.
ISS EarthKAM images are unique because they are taken by middle school students. Using the World Wide Web, select middle schools request images based upon their classroom investigations. Since the program's inception in 1996, the ISS EarthKAM camera has flown on five Space Shuttle flights and taken almost 5000 images. Currently, the camera resides on the International Space Station and has taken a variety of pictures.
Adaptive Curriculum – Math and Science
Office Tools - Provide examples of student designed and created products
Technology in the classroom promotes an increase in writing skills; better understanding of math; the ability to teach others; and greater problem solving and critical thinking skills. Learn more from these sites.
Quia provides a wide variety of tools, including:
* Templates for creating 16 types of online activities, including flash cards, word search, battleship, challenge board, and cloze exercises. Quia activities are designed with different learning styles in mind to suit the needs of all your students.
* Complete online testing tools that allow you to create quizzes, grade them with computer assistance, and receive detailed reports on student performance.
* Access to over 3 million online activities and quizzes in 300 categories. All of the shared activities have been created by teachers from around the world.
Laptop Integration in the 9th Grade ELA Curriculum
Primary Source materials
Provide context for the use of a wiki in the classroom:
Women in War Wiki: Women in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars
Wiki Assignments for Teachers: Suggestions for using WIkis by Subject Area
Wikis in Education: Compiliation of Wiki Sites Created by Students
Good Examples of Wiki Use in Classrooms