Sunday, December 2, 2012

Google Maps for Educators: A Resource

One last resource tonight from Richard Byrne and his great blog Free Technology for Teachers. Please visit his blog or at least bookmark it as he blogs daily and always has some great resources. This time, he has a powerpoint explaining how you could use Google Maps in your class and how the students can use it as well. If you have students do anything with maps, this is a must-see resource. Give it a look and see how you can start using it in your class this year.

Richard Byrne Google Maps for Educators click here!

Living Wage Calculator

  This may be mostly for me, but I really liked how simple this website was and the basic information it gave. It will be useful in Life Skills when we talk about salary and how much you need to survive. It shows you county by county how much minimum wage is, how much the poverty wages are, and how much the average careers in that area make. Then it goes on to show how much you need each month to pay the different category of bills (rent, childcare, food, etc.) depending on how many kids you have or need to support. Very good website, definitely one I will use in my class.

Living Wage Calculator click here!

100 Best Apps and 60 Best Websites and Apps

Two big resources in one! I have posted links for 2 great resources below. One is listed as a source for the 100 best free apps for kids. Who doesn't love Free?? I have tried some of the apps they note and they have been very good for my kids. My guess is most of these will be for kids younger than middle school, but some of them are likely middle school appropriate and some may be for our struggling learners as well.

  Secondly, Richard Byrne has his 60 Best Apps and Websites for Educators. A lot of really good stuff in here too. Thanks Richard and thanks for your blog Free Technology for Teachers!

Enjoy!

Manifest Destiny Interactive Site

Thanks to Richard Byrne and his blog site Free Technology for Teachers, this site looks pretty interesting and pretty useful. I have not tested it out, but if you are studying anything about the beginning of our country's history and how we got to our present day state and alignment, this site might be pretty useful and interesting for both you and our students. You can look at what our country looked like at any point in our country's history and see what happened to have us take that certain territory. Give it a try!

Manifest Destiny blog post by Richard Byrne click here

Trading Cards for Historical or Fictional Characters

I love ideas like this! Next time you are studying something in history, social studies, or even reading a book in literacy, have the students make a trading card of one of the historical figures or book characters. To make the cards, you would have to know lots about your person and the student would have to research the person more to add details to the card. Similar to the fake Facebook page for a historical person, but a little simpler. Would be fun to see what the students come up with. Give it a try or have some students do it for an extra credit option. Good luck!

Trading Cards of historical figures click here!

(Oh, you could do it for famous scientists too!)

Speaking of Apps, This App Finds the Free Ones!

I have not downloaded this app yet, but I plan to. This app catches those top rated apps that pop up free on certain days or at certain times and let's you put them on your IPad for free when others might have to pay. Since it is a free app itself, definitely worth the try putting it on your class Ipod or Ipad.

App Bump click here!

5 Dice: Harder Than It Sounds

At first, I thought this game might be a good free app to put on our Middle School IPad for our students in math intervention. Then I put it on my own personal IPad and I was nearly stumped from my first roll. Now, I think this might be more of an App for our advanced students in each grade and maybe for students when covering order of operations. And maybe students don't have to get the answer exactly correct, but just use what they know about order of operations to get as close to the target as they can. But I did have fun trying this game and I definitely had to know my order of operations. So it is a good app to download (since it is free!) and have your students try.

 5 Dice Order of Operations App click here!

Tech Tips from Pros

Ran across this website while catching up on blogs. Great idea, but it does not look like they have posted many tips in the month of November. I wonder if they will begin to post more. If they do, this could be a good site to bookmark. Either way, some of their current tips are pretty good and pretty relevant to questions our own teachers may have. I would bookmark this site and check it whenever you have a tech question to see if they have addressed it. And hopefully they start posting more to their blog.

Technology Tips from the Pros click here!