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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.

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Mandala Maker Perfect for Math Concepts

Division: Visual Representations Online

Online Math Manipulatives and Activities

Math Help Step-by-Step

Interactive Whiteboard Links

Games for the Interactive Whiteboard

Kids and Cookies: Fun Division for Kids

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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.

RELATED POSTS:

GAMES FOR THE INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD

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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
• Google Sketchup: Construct a 3D building
• 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!

RELATED POSTS:

MD, VA, DC Day of Discovery

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Every year there is a program that I decide I adore.  This year it’s Tech4learning’s Pixie - Check out the software overview by clicking the link.  Our county purchased Pixie as part of Tech4learning’s Imagination Suite.  We also received Image Blender and Web Blender as part of this package. 

What is Pixie?

Pixie is a drawing and painting program that allows children to express their creativity and practice much needed educational concepts. There are hundreds of educational templates that are ready for your students to use within the program. You can also create your own activities for students to complete within Pixie.

RESOURCES
TRADING POST. This Tech4Learning website is a place where educators can upload their Pixie templates, activities, and lesson plans. They are there for you to download and use with your class! Sign up for free.

Tech4Learning’s homepage is a great resource for tutorials, tips, and support for any of their programs: Pixie, Web Blender, and Image Blender.

Recipes4Success is a great website that provides tutorials on this program and all Tech4Learning programs.

BEST FEATURES ABOUT PIXIE:

1. Print multiple pictures:  If you choose to print multiple paintings at one time, you can print as “trading cards” and trade your pictures with your friends.  Think of classroom implications: if each child trades a different historical or literary figure, they can learn from each other’s cards.  You can also print mini booklets, comic strips, and table tents.
2. Share your pictures:  Choose to play your pictures in slideshow format directly from Pixie.  Add music, transitions, and have it run continuously.  In addition, you can export your slideshow as a Quicktime video, a web page, or a full presentation.
3. Export your pictures: Export Pixie paintings as common picture formats such as JPS or GIF.  Now you can import them into Microsoft Office, Photo Story, Movie Maker, etc.  This also means you do not need to have Pixie on your computer to view your pictures.

Language Arts Ideas

Create an ABC book. Give each student a different letter to stamp out with stickers or draw with the tools.
Create a noun sort by person, place and thing.
Sort words by consonant sound or vowel sound
Complete a Making Words activity using the letter stickers.
Create writing prompts for kids: Seasons, My Favorite Animal, My Hero, etc.
Graphic Organizers: Venn Diagrams, Story Maps, KWL, etc.
Sort words by syllables
Type and illustrate a poem
Create trading cards of literary figures
Sort between real and fictional characters

Math Ideas

Import real pictures. Draw and label angles that you find.
Use the coins to show different ways to make the same amount of money.
Stamp out number sentences to illustrate them.
Symmetry with the mirror tool.
Expanded form

Science Ideas

Illustrate Life Cycles
Sort by Living and Non-Living
Illustrate the Water Cycle or the Rock Cycle
Illustrate weather for the week
Sort objects by sink or float
Label parts of an insect, parts of a flower, layers of the earth, planets in the solar system, layers of the rainforest, etc.
Food Chains and Food Webs
Food Pyraminds
Differences between whales and fish
Differences between the different types of rock
Create trading cards of different rocks, minerals, or elements

Social Studies Ideas

“If I were president” writing prompt
Label a map of the US by the intials of each state
Compare presidents or any 2 historical figures
Add a state stamp and fill it with stamps that represent resources available from that state
Color the regions of MD
Sort by community helpers
Sort by human, natural, and capital resources
Create trading cards of historical figures or current political figures
Create a postcard from a historical landmark or location

Art Ideas

Design a kite
Design a Christmas ornament
Paint a self-portrait
Label a color wheel

Paint anything!

Kitzu is my newest find!  I mentioned it briefly in an earlier post, but I finally had a chance to look at it this weekend.  Kitzu offers free, copyright-friendly, and educational media packages for teachers and students to use in multimedia projects.  Most packages include about six pieces of media around an educational theme from the 21st century that can include images, documents, audio clips, video clips, and illustrations.  As a teacher, download one of these kits to use with your whole class.  You will be amazed that each student uses the media differently to create a unique project.  For teachers who do not know where to start, Kitzu is the perfect first step for integrating with PowerPoint, Photo Story, Movie Maker, or Adobe Premier Elements.

While Google Mars is not as exciting as Google Earth, it is still worth a visit.  You can tour the planet by elevation, infrared, or visible surface.  Zoom in or out of the planet and search by plains, ridges, craters, mountains, canyons, dunes, spacecraft landings, etc.  Once you search for a specific place, often Google Mars will link to an article that you can read for more information.

On the “About Google Mars” page, Google provides this introduction, “This map of Mars, published by Percival Lowell in 1895, was the result of many years spent carefully studying the Red Planet through his telescope. Now you can do the same through your web browser. In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, we’ve created some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made.”

I enjoyed it!  Imagine being able to explore Mars from the comfort of your classroom.  Take a virtual field trip today!

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Planet Science is a site from the UK, which sometimes causes educators in the USA to pass it by.  I don’t know why – many of the interactive, educational sites worth visiting come from the UK.  Ok, so they spell things a little differently and use the metric system (like everywhere else but here)!  Their sites still rock! 

Planet Science has interactive games for K-12 students.  I played a few of them and have enjoyed ALL of them so far.  The first one I tried was the Smoothie maker.  You can choose the ingredients to add to a blender to make your own smoothie.  When you’re done, start the blender!  The site will tell you how nutricious your smoothie is complete with how many grams of sugar and how many carbs you just drank in your smoothie.  The best part is the “Smoothie” song the site plays as it mixes your drink.  So much fun!

Next I tried Planet 10: World Builder (because Earth can’t last forever).  The student creates a new planet by choosing many, many different things such as: size, orbit, atmosphere, shape, moons, terrain, organisms, distance from sun, etc.  After you make all of your choices, you launch your planet into the atmosphere and see if it “survives” in space.  After a lot of careful planning, I managed to burn up all the living organisms, evaporated my atmosphere, and got hit by a comet.  Disaster.  But so much fun!

Planet 10: Solar System is also a nice resource.  Students can zoom into different planets to learn more about them.  Fun!  It has better graphics than Google Sky, but I’m not sure if the information is as detailed as Google Sky.

The site also has a list of science games on the Internet that are worth looking into as well as a parent page to get them involved. I love this site! Thumbs up from me!

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Check out this new site called Statetris!  This online game is very similar to the old favorite game called Tetris where you have to fit falling geometric shapes together as they fall from the sky.  Statetris is similar, only instead of geometric shapes, you can use states for the United States map, or countries for continent maps.  How much fun would this be to use with an Interactive Whiteboard (like a Promethean board)?  Imagine how much fun it could be reviewing for a geography test with this site.  Fun, fun!

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Teachers, what do you do when you are teaching division and your students just don’t get it?  Just like we learned in college, you go back to manipulatives.  Once children  understand concrete examples, they can start moving to abstract problems.  Until they get to that point, any visual examples you can provide the child will help.  For example, the online E-Lab through Harcourt School Publishers is a wonderful opportunity for children to “see” division problems. The first site illustrates division with two digit divisors. (See picture below.)

The second site by E-Lab allows children to practice division with remainders depending in the problem you type in. (See picture below.)  Very few sites give children a visual representation of how division works, so these sites are valuable resources to teachers.

Happy dividing!