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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  The website features novels, poetry, historical documents, children’s books, and short stories that you can read and follow along as someone reads it to you.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.

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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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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.

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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!

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Thanks to Vicki Davis’s Cool Cat Teacher blog, I learned about Toshiba/NSTA’s ExploraVision contest for kids K-12. The contest challenges teams of students (working under a mentor) to:

• 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?

Image by ILoveButter from Flickr.

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Photo courtesy of Photocatcher via Flickr

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…

Peek-a-boo!  I see you! 

Tag.  You’re it.

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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!

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!

Again, I found a few more art websites by navigating my network in my delicious account. I think you will find them as fun as I did.

One Million Masterpieces

This is a collaborative art project that allows the user to submit an art piece, no matter how small, to be a part of the “biggest collaborative art project in the world.”

Scribbler

Scribbler is an interactive site where you draw a simple scribble or doodle.  When you are finished, you click “start scribbler” and the site makes an interpretive scribble of your carefully created doodle.  Interesting!  Experiment with changing the colors as scribbler makes your piece for added beauty.

BRUSHster: National Gallery of Art

BRUSHster is an online painting canvas with different brush sizes and shapes as well as a variety of colors.  The only thing I didn’t like was that I could only click “undo” and step back one time. 

Collage Machine: National Gallery of Art

The collage machine makes collages (surprise!) with different shaped pieces of papers in a select number of colors.  However, by changing the transparency of the pieces, you can make more of the limited choices you have.

Mondrian Machine

The Mondrian Machine is inspired by the art of Piet Mondrian, which consists of perpendicular black lines that subdivide his canvas colored with primary colors.  This site is probably the most primitive of the bunch listed here, but could still serve a purpose in art class if you are studying this topic.

Surreal Painter

Create surreal art with the help of pre-made backgrounds and objects!  After you create your masterpiece, you can share it with your friends.  It will look like you spent hours in a high-tech art program when really it only took you a few minutes using this site.  Be cool among your artistic friends!