Teach Me How To Study

My pre-teacher buddy showed me this video made by students in at a Charter School in Los Angeles. It's absolutely AMAZING! Enjoy!

Contxts

With the site Contxts.com you can text homework assignments to your students for FREE! If this is kosher with your school policy, this is an excellent way to remind students when assignments are due. The site was originally designed for business professionals to exchange business cards through text messaging. Essentially it is the same as texting your contact information, except it does not reveal your phone number.

All you have to do is enter your first and last name, create a username and password, and provide your number and email address. Next you add your homework to the "Your Txt Card" box. The "Txt Card" box only allows 140 characters, either you can send multiple messages or keep it short! Once you enter your information, click submit!

Then the site will give you directions to tell your students how to access the text messages. It will say something along the lines of "tell your friends to txt msforrester to 50500." Once my students text "msforrester" to the number 50500 then they will receive the homework assignment!

Now you can send reminders or homework assignments to your classes! How cool is that!?

Qwiki

A few weeks ago I found this awesome site, Qwiki.com that shows images and plays audio concerning information on just about anything you can think of. I thought this would be a great way to introduce some background knowledge before entering a literature unit. So, in light of the holiday, enjoy this Qwiki on Easter!

View Easter and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

Siftables

This is so amazing that my brain almost melted. Really.

MIT graduate student, David Merrill worked on these small computerized blocks that interact with one another. Watch the video below to see these ingenious blocks work together, and how they have the possibility to impact education.

Mixbook

Earlier in the semester, one of my classmates introduced us to this awesome FREE online resource called Mixbook.com. Essentially you upload photos and images to create your own digital photo book. The site also lends itself to educators where you can work on a year book for your class or school. For the edu edition, Mixbook provides free collaborative classroom tools, a secure online environment to promote interaction between students in your classroom, including a discount if you wanted to print books that your class creates!

I think this would be an excellent way to show case student writing, especially if you printed the book at the end of the semester. Perhaps you could use Mixbook as a presentation tool for students to work on their background knowledge before a literature unit. Also, while looking into Mixbook, I came across this blog from a teacher who highlights technology in his classroom. It's an excellent place for some innovative ideas, be sure to check it out!

Mixbook is easy to use and will excite your students to participate with this online scrapbook! For a 30 second demo on how to use Mixbook, watch the video below!

Glogster

The site, Glogster.com is an excellent place for projects with ELA because you can create your own posters online! I'm sure this would work for other content areas such as Science or History for fact based reports. What is so captivating about the site is its usability. The posters are interactive; you can include video and music files which would be impossible with traditional paper posters. It's incredibly easy to upload photos and pick from their wide range of stickers, images, backgrounds, fonts, and colors to give your poster its own pizzaz.

For example, see the poster to your left that was created for a report on Harriet Tubman. Through Glogster, you can engage a student's prior knowledge or scaffold prior knowledge into your own presentation. This technology would also be great for generating posters that you create as a class such as one that highlights writer moves or things that students should remember for an upcoming exam. I've seen Glogster used in middle school classes and it was well received by the students. I would recommend working through the education version of Glogster, as some posters on the regular edition might be inappropriate for school. Either way, the site is free and for a fee can be used by entire school systems or individualized classes. Check out the site and enjoy!

The Raven & The Simpsons

Yesterday, one of my professors mentioned that an intern she observed used the clip below to discuss Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. Gotta love The Simpsons! They also do a great summary of The Odyssey which might be fun to show students! Enjoy!