StoryToolz for Literacy Teachers....and Any Teachers or Students!

  Not sure if I did a blogpost before on Storytoolz, but even if I did, it is worth a repeat. This is a great site for our Literacy teachers and students to bookmark and use in class. You can use the site for simple idea generators and story starters, but you can also use it to evaluate your writing. Our students could put in their writing samples to see the reading level and the wording that they use and if they could improve their writing. They can also set word count goals and track their reading. Lots of possibilities currently and future updates could make it an even better site. And all of this for free....which is great! Give it a look-see over your summer break and see if your students could use it.

Storytoolz.com click here!

Room Recess: Good for Quick Skill Review and Interactive Whiteboards

Room Recess is a great game site to bookmark for teachers who want some basic math and word games for kids to play at the end of class or at the end of some computer lab time. I  tested out the snowball game and thought kids would love it. The math problems are basic math facts, but middle school students can still benefit from that type of skill practice. There was also a competitive flashcard game that can pit two teams against each other using an interactive whiteboard. I am not sure if you would need two Mimio pens or not, but still pretty fun for students. Give it a try!

Room Recess click here!

Tutpup: Math Practice and Competition Site for Kids

Tutpup is another math resource for any students who need extra practice on their basic math facts. They even have spelling practice too. What makes this site different is that students can log in and challenge other students from around the country/world in math facts or spelling contests. The challenge function gets the competitive juices going and get the students having fun and learning at the same time. I plan on seeing if my own son likes it, he loves challenges like this.

Tutpup...click here!

Book and a Hug: Site for Student Book Reviews and Class Book Lists

If you teach literacy or reading or maybe if you are a media center specialist or librarian, this site might be great for you. Students can find book reviews for many books on this site and find out if the book is the right choice for them. But even better, students and classes can set up a class group lists of books where students can add books to the class list, read the reviews, and even write new reviews. When you can get kids not only reading books, but reviewing them and writing about them too, you will get the kids even more involved into their books and their learning. So, if you get a moment, register for this site and explore it some more.

A Book and a Hug click here!

Another Site Where You Can Make "Fake Facebook Walls" for an Assignment

I posted awhile back about a site where you could make a fake Facebook wall for an historical figure, a book character, or even a current person that a student needs to prove they know some things about. By doing a Facebook page, students can have fun and use a platform they know all while showing they know the topic or subject as well. I like this site/tool better and it looks more real. I suggest you try making a few before you have students do their own. I also suggest that you look at some of the "favorites" on the home page. Those are really good. I could see our students really having some fun with these after reading a book or when they are assigned a famous historical person to do a report about.

Fake Wall website here!

Google's Dictionary Tool

Google always has the coolest and easiest tools, so I decided to try out Google's dictionary tool. I figured it would be like the rest of the online dictionaries, and it is to some extent, but in true Google fashion, the website is easy to find and navigate so I feel it is simply better than the others. You can get the word said aloud for you. You can get words in any language as it has over 50 languages. It gives the possible tenses of the words and well as sentences that use the word. It will even give images and other web defintions. This is a great site for looking up any word and if students can't remember the web address, they can just search "google dictionary". Give it a try!

http://www.google.com/dictionary

Two Very Cool Flashcard Sites!

I learned about both of these Flashcard sites from the same blogger: Dave of the Education Technology Guy blog. I played around with both and both are very cool and very interesting. I liked WordStash simply because I could look up the definitions of basically any word without even registering or making a flashcard. Plus, links to where those words are used online or how those words are pronounced are right there for easy access. As for Braineos, games with the flashcards that you make are the key function. Kids like games, so to encourage or assign kids to make flashcards and then letting them play games with those flashcards right away would be kind of fun. Both sites allow games with the flashcards, but Braineos focuses more on this part. I noticed kids or teachers could also log on to Braineos using their facebook or other networking log in, a nice added feature. If you like or want students to use flashcards, give one of these sites a try.

WordStash

Braineos

ZooBurst Making Some "Best" Lists

Catching up on some blog reading and research, I have found that ZooBurst has made some people's "Best of 2010" lists. I took a quick look to see what it was all about and did find it interesting and fun. I did not try to make my own pop-up book, but it appears to be fairly easy. The downside is how you would use it in class and have upwards of 150 students make a pop-up book. I could see students making pop-up books to explain science or social studies to a younger student. We did similar things at the high school level where students made little kid books for elementary kids and explained science content to them along the way. I think you could do this or even re-create/summarize a book from reading class. The question is how to do all this easily and for free. Students might have to register for the site using an email so they can store their own pop-up book. Other than that, this site looks pretty fun and right up middle school kids' alleys. Give it a look and make sure to view a book or two already made in their gallery.

ZooBurst: Make A Pop-up Book!

IPhone App....I Wonder How We Could Get This in our School?

Maybe the coolest educational app ever and can you imagine how useful it could be in schools? Instead of typing and talking about it, just watch the video. Could we get an Iphone to some of our students? How long until it becomes and IPad App and could we get that? Interesting....

Google EBooks is Now Live and Ready to Use!

Alert!! Google Ebooks is now live and can be used by students, teachers, or whoever wants to use them. The best part? You don't have to pay for some books. The classics like "Pride and Prejudice" and "Great Expectations" are free and ready to read. Not sure how teachers could use all of this free material without laptops or tablet computers in class, but might be good to look at some in the computer lab and maybe encourage students to read more on their "own devices" when away from school. I am sure more books will be added in the future and in the future, if we have devices for student use, who knows....they might be reading this way in class!

Check out Google Ebooks at www.google.com/ebooks

UPDATE: I can't get the link to work above possibly because I am logged into my Google account. Either way, you might just google "Google books" and see what you can find. It is really neat to see how many fre books are available.

Booklet Making Site....Another One

I have blogged about booklet making sites before, but this is another one that might be a good tool for students or teachers to try to use in class. I liked this booklet site because you can add video, pictures, text, etc. into the booklet. So this got me thinking that this could be a cool and technological way for students to make a booklet about something. Similar to the CUBE activity they did for me earlier in the year, this could be a booklet about their life. Or, they could make a booklet about a topic, a unit idea, a book review, etc. Lots of options to try. If you try this site for your own use or for your classroom, leave a comment as to how it works.

Simple Booklet...click here!

Type Notes on a Webpage to Help Students or Parents See Key Items!

Another great tool that I found.....Webklipper. Using this site, you can put your comments on any webpage or highlight any material and then save it. Your new webpage will look the same as the original, only now it will have your comments and highlights saved on it. This would be great for students to show you what they learned: they can highlight the online article they are reading. Or maybe they can put sticky notes on the website to show you what they have learned. Can you imagine putting an animal picture on there and having students label the parts? So many uses, it boggles my mind! Anyway, here is the site where you can get started, very simple! After the site, I placed another link which is where I sticky-noted and highlighted my blog site just to show you how you could use this Webklipper tool.

Webklipper

My blog page with my sticky note comments.

Make a Booklet Online....or Other Items!

I have only played around with this site a little bit this morning, but I can definitely see some value for projects. You could have the students make a children's book, have them make an informational booklet, or simply a pamphlet. Pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it and I had some fun trying some things out. When all was said and done, I only produced what you see below. Work to do, so I didn't play around with it much, but would love to try it more. If any of you try it out, let me know what you think!

Simple Booklet...click here!

My booklet (couldn't embed it...sorry!)

WallWisher: Could We Use This For Student Questions?

I have seen multiple blog posts and comments about how Wallwisher can be used and am fascinated by the many possibilities. Before I get to my idea, Wallwisher is a website that you can title a blank wall and than give that URL to a class and have them post 160 character or less thoughts on your topic by typing a virtual sticky note and posting it on the wall. So, here is my idea:

Could you make a wall for students when you are in the computer lab and use the projector and project your wall onto the screen at the front of the room. As you circulate and help students, students would also be free to post questions on the wall for all to see. You could check the wall and answer the questions or read the comments so all can hear what people are thinking and struggling with. An idea to consider anyway. Other ideas would be to post your topic and have students write questions they have about that topic, things they know about that topic, or what they want to learn about that topic. I have placed a few other links below where you can find more ideas on how to use WallWisher. I would be interested to see if some of our staff try it out and what they think of it.

Wallwisher.com

5 activities to use on Wallwisher

Another link that contains even more links about Wallwisher

Book Report Alternatives

I have posted a blog or two before about some book report alternatives in the past, so this is more of a recent update. Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers just posted a one-stop shopping blog post for some of these ideas. I really like the idea of creating the "book trailer" but that could be just because I love movies and movie trailers. And anytime you can use Google Maps in a creative way, it is worth a try and one of the five alternatives uses Google Maps. For any language teacher who wants to try a "paperless" book report or a book report using technology, give one of these a try and drop a review in the comment section below so others know what you think.

Five Alternatives to Traditional Book Reports

Phonics Site is Free and Could Be Useful at Middle School

This site is geared for young learners who are learning to read, so at first glance, it is useful for only early elementary students. But as we all know, we get students at the middle school all the time who struggle reading even above the 1st or 2nd grade level. So, this site might be good for those students or special education teachers. If nothing else, many teachers have their own children and we are always looking for ways to teach them for free or give them enrichment activities for free. So....give this site a try. I tried the sample book and plan on registering for this site this week and downloading some stuff for my kids. I hope it helps wherever you need it to help.

Progressive Phonics

If your Students Blog, They Could be Writing a Book

Can you imagine telling the students that they will write a novel this year? A book? Or a 30-chapter story about themselves? They would likely freak out! But, if you have them blog weekly using Wordpress (a format I have used in the past), they could easily write a book over the course of the year and Wordpress has the ability to have them turn it into an ebook or a printable book! If you use the link below (thanks to Free Tech. for Teachers, again!), and have the students blog using Wordpress, they can click, drag, rearrange, add chapters and titles, and eventually organize all of their blogs into a book. As someone who has always wanted to write a book, I hope their is a way to do this with blogger, the format I use. I wish stuff like this was around when I was young as I wrote enough to make a book, but never had a way to put it all together very easily. Very cool stuff...give it a try!

http://anthologize.org/

Making "Book Trailers" as Option to Book Reviews

I am a huge fan of movie trailers (you know, the previews of upcoming movies before the real movie starts??). In fact, I often watch movie trailers online the day or week they come out and by the time I go to a real movie (not often with kids at home!), I have often seen all the movie trailers already online. But I still love watching them again. When Free Technology for Teachers alerted me of a site where you can watch and post "book trailers", I was intrigued. Not only did I enjoy watching a few, I agree with the idea that this could be something fun for students to do and make as well. I am not really sure how to make these book trailers, but I am sure there are multiple methods and I am sure it is similar to the way students videotape and post to Youtube as well. So, if you are teaching reading or language or just love books, take a look at this site and have some fun!

http://www.booktrailersforreaders.com/