Change of address!Due to the problems I have encountered with my account at edublogs, I am moving my blog to a new address: http://amyboehman.blogspot.com/
Boehman’s Blogging Bits will also have a new name, “Technology for Teachers K-12″.
You can find all the old posts at this new address, as well as the new posts that I will add in the future.I will be deleting my edublogs blog and account within the next few months, so please make note of my new address!Hope to see you there.J
After transitioning my blog from wordpress.com to edublogs.org in the past year, it looks like I will be shopping for another provider. Six months of posts have disappeared from my blog from November 2006 to April 2007. After writing to edublogs.org on their “help” forum, I received this response, “Everything that we have been able to do we have done. There is nothing we can do about the missing posts.” Another admin from edublogs.org stated, “Sorry if you don’t find this satisfactory but there’s not much more we can do. Closing Thread.”
I guess I don’t appreciate the abrupt tone from the admin side of the site, and sometimes an apology can go along way. Closing the thread on my forum topic seemed even more unnecessary. I have had other edublog members contact me after this thread had been closed asking if I had solved this issue since they were having the same problem. Nope. The issue was not solved, and I didn’t have a chance to ask if they anticipated this to be an on-going problem. Yet I see over 58 posts discussing the addition of ads on blogs with people complaining and rehashing the same annoyances over and over again. They didn’t get closed down.
But they are absolutely right. I don’t find this satisfactory. As a technology specialist for the public school system in my county, we have been avid supporters of edublogs.org for teacher and student blogging. However, we cannot promote or support edublogs.org in our county if posts can disappear suddenly and can’t be found. It doesn’t make sense to put time or effort into this site if it cannot be a reliable tool.
Lesson Learned: Back up your blog.
Next Project: Look for another provider. I have heard positive feedback about Blogger.com, but they do not support the feature to import blog posts from another blogging tool.
Any ideas out there? I have made the decision not to continue with Edublogs.org.
Please stay tuned for the URL to my new blog address where I will continue posting on a regular basis.
Turkey Day is almost here, which means it’s time to start looking at interactive Christmas sites for kids. There aren’t as many good sites for Christmas as there are for Thanksgiving, but let’s take a look at what I have found so far:
Celebrate winter holidays by Scholastic features Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa all on page complete with a teacher’s guide and holiday clip art for teachers to use. There are holiday articles to download on each holiday, as well as a section on printable crafts, recipes, and thinking questions. Clearly this is my favorite among all of the sites listed here. Check it out!
Trim a tree with Jan Brett at her homepage! Using the tree template, kids click and drag the ornaments onto the tree. When they are finished, kids can print their creation and give it to a friend. Jan Brett, a popular children’s book author, has written several holiday books for kids including The Christmas Trolls and The Gingerbread Baby. Her illustrations are gorgeous, and she has newsletters available for teachers to incorporate her books into lesson plans. Her website is also full of interactive activities to match each of her books. In addition, there is a whole page full of Christmas related activities besides “trim the tree“.
At Santa’s Net there is an extensive list of how Christmas is celebrated around the world. There is also a list of multicultural Christmas recipes and a list of how to say “Merry Christmas” in different languages. There are Christmas songs, too, but they only are comprised of the lyrics - you can’t hear the music. Bummer.
North Pole has several different activities all in one place! I have not had time to explore the site since it is so big. Here is just a small list of what you can do here:
Send a letter to Santa
Send a holiday postcard
Stories to read and color
Games to play
Recipes to bake
Puzzles and Activities
Sing Christmas Karaoke
Visit the toy shop (disclaimer, this takes kids to Amazon.com)
If you have a favorite holiday site, feel free to let me know about it in the comments section!
Many special education teachers and reading teachers ask me about sites that have stories online where students can HEAR the book being read to them. While there are several sites that do this, very few of them have the words or captions that go along with the passage. These sites make good learning stations for students in your classroom. Here are some of my favorites:
Storyline Online is a website sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild. There are several celebrities who offer their talents to read a best-loved children’s book on video. Stream the video to watch the actor read the story complete with story book pictures and captions that you can turn on or off. A few of my favorites on this site are: Stellaluna, Knots on a Counting Rope, and The Night I Followed the Dog. This is a GREAT SITE! This site is for elementary school students.
Loudlit.org is a site that boasts “literature for your eyes and ears”, and they’re right. The website features novels, poetry, historical documents, children’s books, and short stories that you can read and follow along as someone reads it to you. You can stream the audio or download it. I especially like the poetry section since it helps students hear how poetry should be read with pauses and breaks. Famous pieces that are featured (and here are just a FEW): The Highwayman, The Raven, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Tale of Two Cities. This site primarily targets secondary students, but there are some selections for primary aged kids.
ByGosh.com is a good source for digital text online, although it doesn’t read the text to you. However, many teachers have the use of text-to-speech software that allows them to copy and paste text into the program to read it to the student. This site has items for elementary and secondary students.
At Childtopia, there are seven stories that you can hear read out loud to you. This is definitely geared for elementary school students.
My favorite of these sites used to be Tumble Books - not featured here since they have recently turned their site into a paid site. Previously their content had been completely free. If your school is willing to pay for a subscription, this site would be worth your time and money.
The first contest is a poetry contest found though Creative Communication. The contest is open for K-12 sttudents and there are over $3,000 worth of prizes. The students who win the contest in each grade level category win money as well as a free copy of the anthology that is created from the winning entries. Schools with 15 or more kids accepted into the anthology will receive a writing achievement award and they are eligible for a $250 grant. There are three deadlines for this contest:
December 11, 2008 (for the fall 2008 contest)
April 14, 2009 (for the spring 2009 contest)
August 18, 2009 (for the summer 2009 contest)
The second contest is Global Schoolnet’s Cyber Fair 2009 contest. As stated on their website, “students are encouraged to prepare for the future – by thinking about the possible future, the probable future, the preferable future and the preventable future. Projects that best illustrate “future thinking” are invited to the World Future Society international conference in Chicago, Illinois, July 2009.” Click here for more information.
If you read this blog at all, you know my fascination with astronomy websites. I love space. I wanted to be an astronaut until the Challenger disaster in 1985. Now I use the web to get my fix on astronomy. Here are some more good ones:
Human Space Flight is a website where you can enter your city to see which space objects will fly by your night sky for you to see. It gives you the time of the object and how long it will take to pass over your location. Look up satellites or space shuttles!
I did not post an example picture of Astronomy Picture of the Day because the NASA photographer does not give rights to copy his pictures without written permission, but these photographs are amazing and would lend themselves to good teaching points in the classroom.
The Observatory has great resources for Venus, Saturn, Mars, Mercury, sunspots and auroras. The interactive format allows you to click on different parts of the image to see more information. In addition, there are many more interactive sections of the site such as: Your Weight on Other Worlds and Your Age on Other Worlds.
At first the Solar System Visualizer looks to be a very primitive site. There is an image of our solar system with the planets orbiting the sun. Okay… now what? The magic comes in by clicking on one of the planets – try Saturn or Uranus for example. You will see the planet in the middle of the screen with its moons orbiting in animation. BUT then you need to ZOOM OUT. Did you know there were so many bodies orbiting our planets? It was amazing. Check it out.
There are several interactive Thanksgiving sites that you can use with your students to teach about life in the 1600s and how the holiday began. All of the sites below have something different to offer, so check them all out!
Journey on the Mayflower is a wonderful site from Scholastic. It begins with an interactive timeline. With each stop on the timeline, there is a mini movie complete with sound effects and narration. Also explore the tab at the top of the site about “Daily Life“.
The First Thanksgiving, also from Scholastic, has wonderful slide shows depicting what life could have been like during the 1600s as well as a webquest for your students to complete.
Colonial House from PBS has many different pages worth exploring. For example, there is a section on “375 Years Ago at 360 Degrees” with panoramas of the colony. Very cool! Also, you can play “Dress Me Up” to see if your students can match the correct clothing with the colonists for the time period. At the bottom of the home page, there is a section for teachers called “Educational Interactivities” with lesson plans completely written out for you. Thank you, PBS!
This is one of my favorites! Plimouth Plantation’s You are the Historian allows students to be the historian and investigate the first Thanksgiving from the point of view of the Native Americans and the Colonists. As you click through your investigation, there are interactive activities with narration and sound effects to keep the youngest learner engaged.
Mayflower History’s site, based on the book by Caleb Johnson, is geared for intermediate students, probably 4th grade students and older. Click on “Pilgrim History” to be taken to a page full of resources on the voyage, life in the new world, the Native Americans and more.
Speaking of childhood favorites, remember Madlibs? We used to buy them at book fairs and take them with us on road trips to keep us entertained. Little did we know at the time, it was a fun way to practice parts of speech.
Now Funbrain.com has Madlibs online for kids! There are different themes to choose from: School, Once Upon a Time, Prehistoric, and Alphabet. Once you choose your theme, the Madlibs generator appears asking you to fill in a part of speech. For example, if it asks you for a “noun”, there are several floating nouns around for you to choose from. Click your choice and click OK to continue. When you are finished, a pop-up window appears with your printable story. Fun!
So you think you are an expert at the child’s game Tic Tac Toe? Now try it in 3D at MathsNet Interactive! This game was designed in 3D to prevent the first player from always winning. Instead of connecting three in a row to win, you have to connect two rows that meet at a right angle to form an “L”. You are the blue marbles, and the computer plays the part of the red. By clicking and dragging the 3D shape, you can rotate and spin the cube so that you can see your game board from all angles. Check it out! This would be a great follow-up activity to teaching about 3D solids in Geometry, not to mention it would also work well with an Interactive Whiteboard.
Students are presented with a problem: they have friends coming over and cookies to share. You can choose how many friends you have and how many cookies you want to share among all of them. If your cookies don’t divide out equally, you can put the cookie on the cutting board and chop it into fractions to share equally among your friends. The best part is there are printable “friends” and “cookies” that go along with the site so that kids can follow along at their desks. Kids and Cookies would be a great supplemental resource to use with the book The Doorbell Rang.
Try using Kids and Cookies with your Interactive White Board as well!
If you have an interactive whiteboard (Promethean, SMART, or Polyvision), it’s always nice to know where you can find websites that work especially well with your board. A site that may not be suitable to use with your class in the computer lab could be very valuable once you use it with your interactive whiteboard in a whole group instructional setting.
As I was searching for interactive whiteboard links, I came across this site by ETTC (Educational Technology Training Center). The site has tons of links suitable for your interactive whiteboard. But the best part of the site is that the links are broken down by elementary sites, middle school sites, and high school sites. ETTC also separates the links by subject area: math, language arts, science, social studies, music, PE, art, software, tutorials, and other.
It’s the best list I have seen to date. I looked at about 70% of the sites under “elementary” and was astonished that the sites were of high quality. There is nothing worse than a hotlist of sites that suck.
Today I had the privilege of listening to Hall Davidson, head of the Discovery Educator Network, speak on a topic entitled, “Revenge of the Digital Natives“. He spoke of how the digital natives (children growing up with technology) have the ability to multi-task unlike any generation before them. While the amount of time these students spend watching TV can increase their inability to attend, they can also multi-task with several different medias and expect to learn with several different medias. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Digital natives typically spend 2 seconds on a webpage before they decide whether or not the page will yield the information they are looking for. What does this mean for teachers? Think of the media you use in your class. Mr. Davidson gave the example of how the old way to show an education video in schools was to play the whole 30 minute video. Now with resources like United Streaming, teachers have the ability to download a short video segment that narrows in on their objective that they are teaching. No more wasted classroom time!
Mr. Davidson also shared some websites that can be used in a new way to engage students in the classroom:
Google Lit Trips: Virtual field trips in Google Earth around famous works of literature
Gcast: Call an online service, leave a message, and turn it into a podcast automatically
Polleverywhere: Participate in a survey via your cell phone and results are displayed on the website live
Jott: send yourself reminders via email by calling the Jott.com number
I have seen Mr. Davidson speak at the Day of Discovery in Silver Springs, MD back in August, and still find that he has new ideas to share with his audience. I hope to continue to be as motivated and excited about technology as he is!
FotoViewr is a cool new site that I came across today that allows you to access your photos from your Flickr or SmugMug account, create a slideshow, and embed it into your blog or website. Why do I like FotoViewr?
You don’t need to sign up or create an account to use the site.
Easily access your photos by entering your username and the “tag” of the photos you wish to view.
Pick a “gallery” tool to showcase your photos.
Embed the slideshow using the code Fotoviewr provides for you.
The transitions remind me of PicLens (otherwise known as Cool Iris), which is a new way to search for multimedia on the web. The effects are very similar to what I see in FotoViewr. If you can’t see the slideshow below, try viewing this blog in Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
Virtual worlds like Second Life have exploded with the rise of the Internet. Interacting in a virtual world means you need to have an avatar, a virtual representation of YOU. But how many people actually make their “virtual” selves look similar to their real selves? I dare you to compare!
Hair down, hair up. Let’s look at the avatars now.
Try as I might, it was impossible to look good as a Simpson’s avatar. (see above)
And finally, my avatar in Second Life. (see above)
Given the chance, would you try to improve on your real self or try to make your avatar really look like you? One person on Second Life who tries to make his avatar look like himself is David Warlick.
Struggling with solving your math homework? Sometimes you have most of the problem figured out, but the last step is where you get stuck. Where do you turn to for help especially if you are working on Algebra, Calculus or Trig? Chances are that mom and dad forgot how to do this once they left a formal schooling environment. Try mathaway.com!
Using Mathaway, you can type in your problem ranging from Basic Math through Calculus (no option for Geometry at this time) and Mathaway will lay out how to solve the problem step-by-step. One of my friends was lamenting over Algebra homework – she had one problem left to do and was stuck. I sure don’t remember how to do this. Mathaway came to the rescue! It provided clear step-by-step directions on how to reach the solution.
I was more impressed with Mathaway for higher-level math than for basic math. For example, if I entered a basic math problem that was addition, subtraction or multiplication, Mathaway mearly gave me the answer without showing me the steps or the process of how it arrived at the answer. (See below)
But if I entered a long division problem, it was beautiful! Everything was written out step by step with clear explanation. (See one step of this problem below.) Mathaway had similar results for the higher level math problems, so I can see where this site would be a life-saver.
Overall, I like Mathaway for higher-level math problems and not for basic math. I think this could be the key to helping students who are missing one step in a process, and don’t have anyone at home who can help them.
To get into the Halloween spirit, why not carve a pumpkin online? There are two sites that I have found that are fun.
The first one located at theoworlds has the most options for your pumpkin. It gives you to option to cut “freeform” or with straight lines only. When you connect the lines of your cut, then the piece automatically falls out of your pumpkin. You can change the background picture, add your own message, print your pumpkin, save it to view later, or send it to your friends in an email. Don’t forget you can turn on and off the spooky background music! As you can see from the picture above, the pumpkin is realistic instead of a cartoon. I like it!
The second pumkpin site is called the “Pumpkin Simulator“. You have a cartoon pumpkin to carve on, and when you are finished, you click, “done”. At that time, a lit candle is added to your pumpkin and spooky music plays. It doesn’t have any of the other options as the first pumpkin site, but it still provides entertainment! Happy Halloween!
choose a technology that is present in their lives
explore how it works, when and why it was invented
imagine and explore what the technology would be 20 years from now
write an in-depth report to convey their vision to others
Prizes range from $5,000 – $10,000 savings bonds, a toshiba notebook for the school, and special gifts for the coaches and mentors. See the website for complete details.
Why should students enter? Strengthen the following skills:
higher-order thinking
communication
organization
imagination
research
collaboration
writing skills
Deadline is January 28, 2009. What are you waiting for?
Volcano Maker: Build a volcano and watch it erupt. After you build your volcano, click the keywords to learn about the parts of a volcano. Cool sound effects. Very dramatic.
National Geographic’s Forces of Nature: Tornadoes, Volcanoes, Hurricanes, and Earthquakes, OH MY! Each section of the website has information and an interactive section. Facts and fun in one!
Explore Mars Now: Realistic images allow students to simulate what it could be like to explore Mars with robots and vehicles.
The Virtual Body: Interactive tour of the different systems of the human body. Available in English or Spanish. There is also a choice for a “narrated tour”.
Fossil Dig: Aimed at elementary school kids, this interactive dig is takes you along as you search for fossils.
Rock Flashcards: This site reads the name of the rock to you as it shows a picture of the rock.
Are you a lurker? Do you read blogs, gather information, and quietly slip away? Join the conversation! Feel free to comment on blog posts that interest you. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see your comment posted immediately. I moderate comments before posting them to help cut down on spam from automated sites, but comments appear within 24 hours of submitting them. So join the conversation! Let us learn from you! Tell us your thoughts, opinions, perspectives, ideas…
The power of blogs lies in its community and the exchange of ideas from within. There is a community here on my blog, which is evident from the Cluster Map. So…
Posted by: amyboehman | September 25, 2008 | No Comment |
If you enjoyed this post, please follow me to my new blog address where I will continue to post new tech tips: http://amyboehman.blogspot.com
I’m testing out Sliderocket, a new website for creating presentations online. I created the slideshow embedded in this blog in about 20 minutes. It’s important to point out that the site is currently beta, and the terms and use of the site maintain that it is free for now, but charges may apply to use the site in the future.
·The design is slick – unlike anything I have seen from an online service
·Basic features available such as: changing the layout, adding transitions (cools ones, too), adding pictures, videos, quotes, charts, hyperlinks, etc.
·Publish to make it public to the world or keep it private
·Embeddable code that works with blogs, social networking sites, wikis, and websites (Embedded options allow you to password protect the show or take the “share” feature off.) BONUS POINTS
·Share the show by URL if you wish
·Photos within the site to use with your presentation, or search directly from Flickr’s creative commons
·Visual design of the site is slick and visually appealing
Things to improve on:
·I’m going to try this from another location, but I believe it is slow loading here on my blog compared to other videos and slideshows
·It has been slow logging on and Internet Explorer has frozen on me twice
·When the slides transition, the design is lost until the slide stops moving.
·Limited number of choices for design templates, although the ones they have are nice
·Takes some time to learn the tools
Overall, I’d like to keep my eye on Sliderocket. I’m sure they will continue to improve since they are still in the beta phase. Let me know what you think.
