Edudemic is a wonderful website that focuses on "connecting education and technology." It offers tons of articles on up-and-coming products, teaching methods, and social media websites. Edudemic also offers several "guides," which as basically online tutorials, including topics such as Google Plus in Education and How To Do Everything on Wordpress. One of my favorite features--something that distinguishes it from many other websites out there--is the wonderful collection of infographics available; I'm embedding one entitled "Students Love Technology" below this post. There is a wealth of information that teachers can share with students, as well as information that teachers can use for professional development. I know that this website will definitely keep me busy for several days as I search through all that it has to offer. Students Love Tech Infographic View more documents from jesspilgreen.
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This Writing Prompts website run by teacher Luke Neff has tons of writing prompts that are great for visual learners. Each picture comes with a specific writing prompt (such as the one to the left) or a non-specific prompt (tell the story in this picture). Most of them are geared toward creative writing, descriptive writing, or narrative writing. These would make excellent prompts for writing journals, bellringer activities, or online portfolio prompts. To date, there are 258 writing prompts (plenty to stock any writing teacher for the year) and they are high-quality photos, on par with many for-purchase writing prompt books and flashcards. Click on some of the sample pictures below to enlarge the image. I learned about Inside Story Flashcards from reading the iLearn Technology blog, to which I subscribe. This wonderful website offers numerous free vocab flashcards that can be viewed online or printed. (You can also buy some flashcards, all of which are reasonably priced. None of them are as expensive as some of the items that you see in those expensive teacher supply magazines that get crammed into your work mailbox on a weekly basis.) I was particularly drawn to the free flashcards based on common SAT words (330 cards). They also have basic vocab for young children and ELL students (206 cards), easy vocab for elementary students (315 cards) and even some hard vocabulary words (60 cards). The "hard" vocabulary words include an audio file of correct pronunciation (very thoughtful). My district recently purchased vocabulary workbooks, and I think it would be great to have my students create their own version of Inside Story Flashcards on a wiki. Laurie Halse Anderson has published numerous writing prompts, as well as tips about the writing process, on her blog--Mad Woman in the Forest--where she challenges individual to Write Fifteen Minutes a Day for a full month. Anderson tackles topics, such as writer's block, overcoming distractions, and making time to write. Other writing prompts are more traditional, such as character or setting sketches. It's definitely the prompts about being a writer and engaging in the writing process that I was the most impressed with. As teachers, I think we tend to focus on the process of writing without ever addressing the difficulty of writing and how to overcome potential obstacles. Students begin to view as an innate skill that they are either born with, or are not; and they believe that good writers never deal with "issues." Anderson, as a very successful author of young adult literature, does a great job of "naming the beast," so to speak, and getting writers to confront the difficulties associated with writing. Recently, a former student of mine sent me a link to a hilarious post on the blog Hyperbole and a Half, where the author talks about the irritation grammar sticklers feel when they see the phrase "a lot" incorrectly written as one word: "alot." In order to cope with other people's grammar, the blogger has created a fictional creature called the alot (see left--yup, that's an alot). Anyway, this is a fun way to teach your students about the difference between alot (wrong) and a lot (right). Below, I'm attaching files. One file is the blog post with the "alot of beer cans" removed for school-appropriateness reasons. The second file is a linemaster of the alot so your students can design their own creatures. I'm having students make alots for homework passes, and then I'm going to display them on my classroom bulletin board. (I'll be sure to post pictures asap.) UPDATE: Alots created by my students can be viewed HERE. Note: According to the FAQ page on Hyperbole and a Half, the writer does not mind her work being used for educational purposes, but please give credit where credit is due. Don't pretend that you are the wise elder who in fact created the alot.
Obviously, I love Weebly! I've created several websites--including this one--using Weebly. In my opinion, Weebly is hands-down the easiest website creation tool available, and I've been trying to get Weebly into the hands of as many educators as I can over the last year. My colleagues love it because the drag-and-drop interface is so intuitive, and Weebly offers so many multimedia features--all for free. This year, I plan on having some of my students create their own blogs and, when I do, I will be printing out the tutorial embedded below to get them started; I've used the document previously during workshops with other teachers in my district. Note: Please feel free to print, share, copy, embed, etc. the document. Rebus Puzzles are a great way to stimulate creative thinking and have fun with words at the same time. Rebus puzzles make great time-fillers, bell-ringers, or bonus questions. I would recommend printing them on card stock and having them laminated for frequent use. You could also create a Power Point of your favorite rebus puzzles or use them with a document camera. Once you run out of rebus puzzles, challenge your students to create their own based on familiar phrases and idioms.
Catpin Productions offers a free bubble sheet generator for educators. I'll admit, I'm not the world's biggest supporter of multiple-choice-only tests, but for a quick assessment, they can be a wonderful thing and when it comes to the world of standardized testing, they are an absolute necessity. The problem that I've run into in the past with standardized test prep is that Scantron does not offer a form that is set up in the same way that the ACT bubble sheet is formatted (alternating ABCDE with FGHJK). Also, I like the option to create only the number of questions as the actual test contains; it tends to minimize the frequency of student error if there won't be any extra unused answer lines. Now, I know some people will argue that creating these bubble sheets will be a grading nightmare, but I assure you that each sheet can be graded in about 15 seconds as long as you have an old school-style overhead projector. Just create an answer key by filling in the bubbles with a red pen. Then, place the answer key on the projector; light will be shining up through the paper. Next, place a student-filled bubble sheet on top of the answer key. Any incorrect answers will show a red mark; all correct answers will have the red mark from your answer key hidden by the student's answers (as long as the two pieces of paper are lined up correctly). Note: This is also a wonderful way to save time when grading word searches, as some students think teachers check to see which words are crossed off the list, rather than which words are actually circled. Note: While you are on Catpin's website, check out the card trick--it's uncanny! For more information on creating bubble sheets, check out my post on Grade Cam HERE. Or, to create paperless tests, view my post on Classmarker HERE. I've tried several different social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace, and Ning. Now, I'm branching out and "playing" with Twitter. I know what you might be thinking--now Twitter? You're just now discovering it? Doesn't that put you light years behind most technology enthusiasts? Well, you might be right. In fact, I've avoided Twitter for quite some time, until I decided to make the leap in order to follow The Cultural Collaboratory, a professional group of educators that I belong to. I've actually had a Twitter account for a few months, but was strictly using my account to create screencasts using Screenr, which is a Twitter application that I absolutely LOVE! I've posted lots of videos on this blog that were created using Screenr. In my opinion, Screenr is the simplest and most intuitive screencasting application out there. I also love that I don't have to download anything, it's completely free, and I can share my screencasts immediately... but I digress. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Twitter, it's a microblogging platform. Like other blogs, you get to publish your thoughts to an audience of followers. However, with Twitter, you can see who your followers are, and who they are following, allowing you to expand your network extensively. Twitter posts--called tweets--are limited to a mere 140 characters, which means that all of your posts have to be clear and concise. I initially hesitated to use Twitter for blogging because I didn't want to get too wrapped up in one more blogging platform; after all, I've experience firsthand how much time can be swallowed up in one Facebook sitting. However, I have to admit that I really do like a few aspects of Twitter. I do like that tweets are brief. Also, there seems to be less emotional purging going on with Twitter than with MySpace or Facebook. Twitter seems like a better option for professional networking, where the people and organizations that I respect won't see pictures of me asleep on my sister's couch or my dogs wearing clothes. (I mean, really, some things are better left to the imagination.) So, for personal rants and keeping in touch with old friends, I'm sticking with Facebook; but for professional networking, I'm tweeting. Want to follow me on Twitter? I'd love to have you as a follower! Better yet, see who I'm following. Or let me follow you... http://twitter.com/#!/jepilgreenss Scholastic Story Starters is a great interactive way to inspire student writing. The website randomly generates writing prompts based on four variables: a genre, a descriptive word, a main character, and a complication. I've paid money for a similar flip-books that does the exact same thing that this website does for free. (It's not that I wouldn't also recommend the flip book, but why pay for things you can get for free?) In my own classroom, I have a random writing assignment based on the story starter called a 1-2-3 Write About (the flip books have 3 variables, rather than the 4 that the Scholastic website has). It's great for fostering creativity, and when I want to challenge my students a little bit more, I have them use their vocabulary words, a minimum number of "smiley-face tricks" or punctuation marks, etc. It's a fun way to make grammar more interesting, and my students generally enjoy sharing their stories with each other. One great feature is that this website varies writing prompts based on grade level, beginning with Kindergarten and going up through sixth grade (although I would use the 4-6 prompts even with my high school freshmen). Scholastic also allows users to change any one of the elements that is randomly chosen, giving the writer more freedom regarding his or her topic. Once a story starter is selected, the writer can select a layout (notebook, letter, newspaper, or postcard) and can type on the website for a professional-looking document. There is also an option to add a place holder for artwork to each document, if you want to include an art component to the writing assignment. |
AuthorDr. Jessica Pilgreen, Ed.D. Archives
December 2020
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