Friday, August 31, 2012

Free Technology for Teachers: Get 25GB of Box Storage with Fetchnotes

Free Technology for Teachers: Get 25GB of Box Storage with Fetchnotes: "I've written about the collaborative task management tool Fetchnotes a couple of times this year (click here for my latest review). This week Fetchnotes announced a great promotion with Box. Now if you register for a Fetchnotes account and a new Box account, you will receive 25GB of free Box space. Since Dropbox dropped support for sharing of folders (for new accounts), Box has become my preferred file hosting and sharing service."

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TimeMaps - World History Atlas

TimeMaps - World History Atlas: "Explore world history with this FREE, award winning World History Atlas.
The TimeMap of World History is an all inclusive look at world history. It combines maps, timelines and chron- ological narratives that work together to enhance historical understanding. New content added daily."

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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Langwitches Blog | Archive | Digital Learning Farm

Langwitches Blog | Archive | Digital Learning Farm: "“Tutorial Designer” is one of the six roles, Alan November lists in his Digital Learning Farm that empower student learners and describes in his book ‘Who owns the Learning?.
Where does your imagination take you?
What ideas come to your mind?
What comes to mind for YOUR STUDENTS TO SHARE?
What lesson or unit, could you “upgrade” to include the creation of a video, audio or screencast?
I believe strongly, that teaching and upgrading to include emerging literacies and amplified skills for the 21st century learner rely HEAVILY on imagination, willingness and ability to experiment, fail, tweak and try again.

Please share samples of you and your students’ imagination and tutorials, guides or step by step instructions."

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10 Things Students Won’t Need To Know When They Graduate | Edudemic

10 Things Students Won’t Need To Know When They Graduate | Edudemic: "A generation ago, change often took a decade, and trends in music, fashion, and politics all phased in and out in these generous chunks of time, but the tempo of life has changed as technological advances have accelerated life to a point when decades worth of changes are now being compressed into a year or less.

This creates unique challenges for today’s school leaders as we try to wrestle our curricula into a shape that can meet the needs of individual children while being vibrant enough so the curricula don’t become an outdated document over the course of a year."

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Primary source activities aligned to the Common Core « History Tech

Primary source activities aligned to the Common Core « History Tech: "I do think that most history teachers incorporate the sorts of things that the Common Core is encouraging – though not often enough and not as intentionally as they should. So their question about “what it looks like” is a good one. So today some examples of how you might use primary sources to align your instruction with Common Core standards.

My first suggestion is that you head over to my Common Core and the Social Studies Classroom page and browse through some of the stuff that’s over there. Tim Bailey has a great article that we link to and there are some helpful videos of classroom examples. You’ll also find a great resource from the Smithsonian called Engaging Students with Primary Sources that gives some specific classroom examples. We will continue to add new and useful goodies to that page so you might want to bookmark the page before you’re done there.

The thing that I really like about the CC is that as part of the ELA standards, K-12 students must use evidence as part of their written arguments. Students also learn to"

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Saturday, August 25, 2012

The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…: "A key concept that’s important for students to learn is the importance of engaging with the text — not just being a passive reader.
There are obviously many effective instructional strategies to help them practice that lesson.  One pretty explicit way is for them to have access to reading “choose your own adventure” stories where they are periodically given choices of what they want characters to do, and then participate in the construction of the story itself.  The Goosebumps series of books is a well-known example of this genre.  In the world of English Language Learner teaching, these kinds of stories are also called “Action Mazes.”"

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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

“textivate” Has Potential, But….. | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

“textivate” Has Potential, But….. | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…: "You can copy and paste any text up to 500 words into textivate and get, in return, multiple different exercises using that text, ranging from “scrambled sentences” to “Fill-in-the-blanks.” In fact, you can automatically try twenty-seven different variations. You can get a public url for it (it says you can also get an embed code, but it didn’t give me one). You can see what I did with it here."

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Monday, August 13, 2012

Free Technology for Teachers: A Simple Visual Thesaurus

Free Technology for Teachers: A Simple Visual Thesaurus: "Words Like is handy little website for those times when you need a thesaurus. Words Like works in your choice of two ways. You can browse the word clouds or simply enter a word in the search box. Any word that you click on in either the word cloud or in the list generated by your search will lead you to at least one word with a similar meaning. Definitions are provided for every word on Words Like."

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Friday, August 10, 2012

Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Video Projects to Try With Your Students

Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Video Projects to Try With Your Students: "Video creation projects are some of my favorite things to do with students. I like video projects for a number of reasons not the least of which is that students generally enjoy them too. I like video projects because when they're organized properly students have to write, research, produce, and revise just as they would if they were writing a story or research paper. The difference is that shared finished video projects have the potential to reach many more people than a well-written essay does. Another bonus is that I can invite my administrators into my classroom to watch a few short videos and they can quickly see what my students have been doing."

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