60 Sites

I recently did a fun presentation at the ASTE Conference (Alaska Society of Technology in Education). Usually when I do these it is more of a "how to". Those are fine and I like to share share share, but this year I decided to do something fun. Teachers, including myself, like good resources. At any kind of conference, we love those little sessions where someone is just giving us some straight up good resources - it's like free candy. That's what I tried to do this year in my section called "60 Sites in 60 minutes" - it was the free candy session. Here is the link to the wiki I put up for the sites - all links are embedded. Enjoy!

60 Sites in 60 Minutes

Simple, virtual, booklets for your students to create

Simplebooklets is a great site in which you can create any type of virtual booklet. It's easy to insert text, pictures (maps, graphs,etc), sound, and video. Although the booklets are simple to make, they have a very sophisticated look to them.

Simplebooklets reminds me of Glogster - a virtual poster app, but it's much, well...simpler! Also, it loads and runs much much faster than Glogster.

The booklets are easily embedded into a blog or a wiki, and have the little tab in the upper corners for easy page turning by the users.

For those of you looking for students to make great visual presentations using posters, slideshows, or books, Simplebooklets is an easy way to go. Students will love the ease, and also love how creative they can be!

Take a look at this book I embedded from the Simplebooklets site.

The Classroom Camera

Although your classroom may be tech-poor, chances are you can gain access to at least 1 digital camera - even if it is your own - even if it's just a cell phone camera! Although more would make certain things a little easier, one is really all you need to do a lots of great things! There are some activities that can be done as a class and the teacher takes the pictures, and some where you could group the students and then easily stagger their picture taking time. What kinds of great things can you do? The things that make learning more personal, engaging, and visual for your students. So for the purposes of this blog (the need to get tech ideas in a sec), we'll keep our list short.

1. Visualize the spelling/vocabulary list for the week. For elementary students, this can be a fast but fun activity. Put the list of words up and talk about them a little. You can ask the students to show what a word means through some kind of pose, use of props or other creative means. Take a picture! Do that for all of the words on the list. This picture activity not only visually documents the students' interpretation of the words, but the act of "acting out" or visualizing the meaning of the words is an activity that will help the students to better learn the words. You can print out the pictures and post them by the list, or load them into a simple PowerPoint that your run on your overhead projector whenever you do a review of the words. Students can see the pictures and then use their own paper or mini dry erase boards to guess and spell the words. Lots of fun - especially when the students themselves are in the pictures!

2. For older students, split up a word list - and give a pair or threesome of students their word group. Let them take the camera and get a shot of their own interpretation of the words (they will have to discover the definitions on their own). Either print the pictures or project them. Have other students guess what the word is - or have the students who took the picture give clues or describe the meanings. This often becomes a contest about creativity among the students - figuring out the most interesting way to interpret a word visually.

3. Picture scavenger hunts - especially useful when teaching an abstract concept, like "democracy". Students can use the camera to set up a scene that is meant to capture a key concept like equality, majority rule with minority rights, etc. This is a great way to teach students to think metaphorically as well, and modeling for them ways that a simple visual image can convey many ideas without being literal.

4. Story board planning - really fun for group stories! Set up a story board for students to work with (individuals or groups could easily do this). Have students plan their plot, characters, and scenes by using photographs. The story boards can be digital - in Comic Life (installed on all teacher Macs), or even on a simple slide show like PowerPoint, or Google Presentations. The story boards could also just be a large chart of paper - pictures could be printed in black and white and tacked up onto the story board. Students can visualize points of plot, characters, and order. There are also tons of great online digital storytelling tools if you want to go that route, like Storybird, Picture Book Maker, or Kerpoof, just to name a few.

5. Summarizing - learning to summarize the key points of a story or piece of information is an important skill for students. Summarizing using a picture or two can help more visual students hone this skill. After reading a chapter in a book or a section or scene in a story, ask the students to come up with an idea for a scene that would capture the essence of the message.

The great thing about using photos this way in the classroom is that you can have a lot of fun discussions modeling how pictures can tell many stories. Put together a simple PowerPoint for the projector and fill it just with images that you can discuss with the students. Google Images, Flickr, and Picasa are fantastic sources of crowd-sourced pictures that you can easily narrow down by category. Select a set that you think would make for a great discussion (depending on what you are teaching - i.e. summarizing, metaphorical representations) and just drag those photos to your slide show - no need to type any text. Or, you can even snap your own photos of people and places the kids know around town or the school for the same effect. This makes even a modeling lesson engaging and lively!

The Google Classroom

Whew - it's been awhile since I've posted 'round these here parts, but I'm back with more EdTechSec info! As always, I'd like to remind you to just scroll through old entries and the archives - you'll surely find something useful!

So - Google! Yes, Google is "The Man" and Google is taking over the world, but this is a case where world domination is actually working for some of us. Google has become like our favorite superstore - everything under one roof. That's pretty handy - having a Gmail address gives you access to everything they've got!

Google Classroom is a nice little wiki set up to give you a quick rundown of Google's apps that work great in the classroom.

Of course we all know about Google Earth, but there are lots of other useful classroom goodies as well. The Google Classroom wiki gives a simple rundown of only the apps that have really proven useful in classrooms - not the whole Google bag of tricks. It's descriptions are pretty simple. When you click on one, for example Google Earth, it will take you to another wiki page where it explains some suggestions for ways to use the tool in class. You are given just a couple of links that will help you get it, and some nice short video tutorials telling how to get started with it.

So rather than having to navigate all of Google's vastness, Google Classroom keeps things nice and tidy - a great time saver for teachers wanting to know more about using Google in the classroom, but have felt like they just don't have the time to tackle it all.

Of the 18 tools listed on Google Classroom, I personally use 8 of them pretty regularly with my students - and there 3 more that I've used for myself.

Google is "the Man" for a reason! I'm a lifelong fan (until they start charging!)

So many cross-curricular resources in one spot!

No matter what you teach, if you are looking for a lesson or a unit for a particular concept, chances are Curriki will have something you can use.



Curriki is a collaborative website containing tons of curriculum for math, language arts, science, and social studies.

If you're a giver, you can contribute lessons or units you've created to Curriki. The site definitely depends on the givers out there to amass the wealth of resources they have.

If you're more of a taker, you'll find plenty of good quality lessons and units here. I used parts of several units from Curriki this year for some history lessons on the spread of Islam. I was able to download the background info I needed to teach some lessons, and also some great individualized projects to go with it that were created by a contributing teacher. They were so good I wrote him a thank-you note/comment on the site!

If you're both a giver and a taker, then you'll love the collaboration aspect of this site. It's possible for you to work with one or more teachers in your content area to contribute materials and create a joint lesson or unit!


Becoming a member of Curriki is simple - just the usual name and email information. I can tell you from personal experience they almost never bug you with info or updates. I've gotten maybe 2 emails from them since I first joined last August.

I can tell you that the site is really easy to navigate, and more new materials are added all the time!

Wordle for All!

Wordle is one of those cool applications that is so simple that at first glance you might not think it has much use in your classroom beyond making something interesting looking. I'll admit that it's a tool I've kept on the back burner since last year, only using it a few times. Every time I get into it and toy with it I wish I was spending more time with it in class - it has so many possibilities! It's definitely one of the simplest, yet most versatile tools available on the web right now.

Here is a Wordle I made by pasting in the Lewis Carroll poem "Jabberwocky".

What is Wordle? Wordle is simply a word "cloud" tool - you copy text into it and it arranges the words into a cloud - usually prioritizing by frequency of text if applicable. It then creates a beautiful word cloud that is visually interesting - and telling - depending on what you are looking for!

I've used Wordle several times in my French class, and find it to be a nice tool for working with new vocabulary.

Last year when I was teaching 3rd grade I used to put my spelling lists on a Wordle each week and print out several copies. I'd hang them around the room for the kids to find - they enjoyed seeing their word lists in this interesting display, and used it as a kind of puzzle to find their words.

Here is an example of a Wordle I made with a 3rd grade weekly vocabulary list.

So, there have been a lot of other ideas I'd like to try with Wordle, and as I write this post I've got a few new things churning around in my brain!

Using Wordle: One thing I do know for a fact is that Wordle couldn't be easier to use. At the Wordle home page, hit "create". Then you just type or paste in your text into the box and hit "go". It gives a pretty immediate result - and if it's not quite what you're looking for, or you just want to play around a little, just keep hitting the "randomize" button at the bottom to get different styles of "clouds". Or you can edit it yourself for font, layout, and color.

Tons of Wordle Ideas for K-12: What I'm going to give you now is a couple of links, each with a bonanza of great ideas other educators have put together for Wordle. Hope you find something you can use - quite a few of these are very appealing to me! These resources will give any k-12 teacher an idea for using Wordle in their classroom!

Forty-Three Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom

Wordle Ideas

Looking for some quick and easy projects before Christmas? Wordle makes fantastic Christmas cards! Have your students write a holiday poem, jot down their favorite holiday memory, or just make a list of everything they associate with the season - paste them in to Wordle and ...ta da! - festive card or decoration!

Can you guess what famous Christmas poem I've "Wordled" here?

Student Blogging - starting discussions

My lucky middle school students! Even though they are new bloggers this year, they have had the good luck of some early (and timely) traffic to their blogs!

For those of you who may not know, I use Twitter, and every once in awhile I put out a "tweet" asking other educators who follow me to check out my student blogs and give me some feedback (my students also like to see the dots pop up on their ClustrMaps). This has generated a lot of good discussion for me - I have had several teachers contact me to ask questions about my students' blogs, and also make comments and suggestions about them.

Recently, I have had several emails from educators in the U.S. and Australia wondering why there were so few comments on my students' blogs. Excellent question, and one I have been wrangling with for awhile now.

Up until recently, most of my work with the student blogs has been technical in nature - I want the kids to learn how to embed videos, upload pictures, copy code, etc.

After that, I want to give them varieties of applications to know better - that way they can make choices about which kind of application (video, slideshow, animation, mock interview, virtual tour, etc) would be the most effective at getting across their information with the style and voice they are trying to project.


But the teachers giving me feedback are absolutely right, and their questions couldn't be more timely for me AND my students. Time to start commenting!

When I explain the purpose of blogs to my students I use the example of a nice poster with pasted on pictures and information about the Mughal Empire hung up on my bulletin board. I ask them if it looks good - they agree it does. I ask them if they have looked at it closely or read it - they admit they have not. I ask them if they have any comments or questions about it - no, not really. I ask who will see this poster - easy, everyone in this classroom. I ask who will give feedback on the poster - also easy, just me. I ask them what will happen to this poster after the unit is over - they know it will come down and never be seen again - we are done looking at it and any possibilities of talking about it are definitely over. I ask them if they would like to have some kind of discussion if there were any new or interesting information on the poster - they think maybe they would. I ask them how that discussion would take place - not sure.

Then I remind them, that with a blog, the answers to these questions are much much different. They know that from their own experiences with blogs this year. The questions we need to focus on now are the questions about feedback and discussion. Because a good blog can be a conversation starter.

To that end, the students are now beginning to practice commenting. We are starting in what I call a "forced" situation - they are required to comment on two other student blogs each week. Comments must be somewhat substantive and related to the post. They can be observations or questions about the content itself, or the technical aspect of the post. There was a little groaning initially. I feel their pain on that - I really hate taking a class where a requirement is a forced posting on a blog or ning. I don't feel like it's authentic conversation - not at all like when I read a blog that inspires me to comment or join in the discussion. However, we all have to start somewhere. I have a feeling that students will begin to enjoy seeing the comments about their work from their peers.

When they become a little more used to putting it "out there", we'll begin reading other blogs and entering into those conversations. As I said at the beginning of the post, one real piece of luck my students have had is getting an immediate audience, and knowing it. Although the excitement has worn off, that awareness of audience has not - it gives them confidence, and helps them to self-assess their posted work very critically. I think the commenting aspect will take that a few steps further.

What do you think? For those of you who run student blogs, how do you move students from a strictly presentation mode to a more participatory conversation mode?

If you have time, check out the posts and comments on my students' blogs (the links to them are on the right side of my class blog). What do you think? Are they moving in the right direction?
For those of you thinking about beginning student blogs - this is a bridge you will eventually have to cross - some planning ahead would be useful!

Thoughts and ideas about student blogging and commenting are most welcome!

Internet4Classrooms is a wealth of resources

There may have been a few of you who have already happened across this fabulous site. Internet4Classrooms is definitely worth your time to check out! You can choose your grade level, choose your subject area, and even choose your focus of study and you will find a mind boggling amount of great resources.

What makes the resources on Internet4Classrooms great? One - it is easy to narrow down your choices to find what you want. Two - all of the resources listed are usually visual and interactive in nature - you won't just find some web page full of text. There are web quests, explorations, and all kinds of interactive activities for all grade levels to let students really explore a particular strand of content. Their symbols tell you quickly what kind of resource link you're looking at.

Just take a second to go to Internet4Classrooms and see what they've got!

Class Blog or Class Wiki?

For people who are just deciding to get something set up for their classes, a big question seems to be blog or wiki? And of course my answer is - "depends"!

I'll try to give you some points to think about that may narrow your decision making process so that you can get something that will work for you. So, here are some questions to consider...

1. Who is your primary audience for this site? I will say that if your primary audience is parents - my opinion is that a blog is the way to go. They read just like a newsletter, they are easy to navigate, and the posts show in dated order, with the most recent at the top. People can easily navigate back to earlier posts, and the information never goes away, it is just archived. Blogs can host links, pictures, videos, and other embedded programs, and they are very easy to use. You can also have "guest bloggers" (like students) to get a little student voice. Side bars are handy for helpful links and other widgets like polls.

If your primary audience is students, then next question...

2. Will the site be used for news updates for students? If the site will just be used for news updates, like a "scrapbook" showing highlights of student work (articles, student pieces, videos, pictures, etc.) then I still think a blog is probably the way to go - same reasons as for question #1.

If you do not want to run a general student "bulletin board", then next quesion...

3. Will the site be used for regularly posted class information? Do you just want a place to post the homework assignment? Your lesson plan? One or two important links students will need for an activity? If this is the case, a basic blog will still do the trick. Daily small doses of information in the form of text or links would work nicely in a blog. Students could easily navigate back to previous days, or access assignment or class information when they are absent.

4. Do you want to host a class (or classes) online - posting assignments, project outlines, class calendars, syllabus, links, places to categorize units of study, classes, and student work? Definitely go wiki. Wikis are great in their versatility. They can work like a blog, but work great as a way to categorize and add to a growing body of information for your students. You can give your students access to certain parts of a wiki too if you want - then they can post information as well.

Of course my answers are not the RIGHT answers - many other people have some pretty creative ideas for ways to use these. I would suggest that if you are just beginning with this (and you are a middle or high school teacher) that you pick one class to start with and go through the decision making process I have just outlined. As your comfort level grows, expand your class, or add more classes.

I personally use a combination of blogs and wikis for each of my 6 classes. I use a blog as my "portal". This is a central place that all of my students in all of my classes go. The blog serves as a general newsletter - mostly for students, but parents may enjoy the "lite" news on there as well. I try to get lots of pictures of the kids on there - students and parents like to see that. I use the side bar on that page for links to each of my class wikis (I host a wiki page for each of my 6 classes). I also use the sidebar of the blog to post links to all of the student blog pages. The blog is a central page where all of my students can get to anything they need.

Each of my class wikis is like a growing online "textbook" for that particular course. I have a main introduction page, then a page for the class calendar, and different categories - an assignment page, and different pages for different units of study.

That works for me - I would definitely suggest you use the guiding questions I have posted above to find your starting point and go from there.

You've made the decision - now what?
Two good free and easy blogging platforms I could suggest are Blogger and WordPress. I have used both, although I am more familiar with Blogger (this blog is hosted by Blogger).

I highly recommend Wikispaces for a super-easy wiki. They are simple to set up and very easy and versatile. I have found them to be a very dependable wiki host.

Using Timelines

Teaching kids the proper way to make time lines is like a rite of passage for history teachers. Choosing what increments of time you'll use, how those will be represented (inches? centimeters?) and the trial and error. Sometimes it seems like the whole point of the lesson - to see when events occurred relative to other events, to create a custom time line, or to analyze events - gets lost in what you never intended to be a weak math/art activity. And let's face it - when they're done, they are not too exciting.

Internet to the rescue! Thankfully there are now some easy time line tools that are very accessible on the web, easy for kids to use, and you get what you want - the results for kids to look at, compare, and analyze. Best of all, kids can really bring some creativity to the table with these time lines. They have the opportunity to make sense of historical events in ways they can see, hear, and explain to others. If they made some new connections, or have some new theories, these tools are the ultimate way for them to express this new learning.

But where will they put these beautiful new time lines? Who will see them? Easy - more and more of you are building class blogs and wikis (haven't done this yet? Ask me how and I can help you set one up in less than 5 minutes), so that's where these beauties will go. If your students have their own blogs, they can go right there. One thing you will NOT end up with is a whole bunch of same-same generic time lines. All of them will be unique interpretations of a particular student's understanding and connections of that time.

Here is a time line tool called TimeRime. TimeRime is a nice "starter" time line, in that it looks a lot like what we expect time lines to look like - a line with spaced out increments. BUT TimeRime brings more to the table, like the ability to add pictures and pop-out information. Here's an example of a time line made on TimeRime about the history of immigration (scroll along the bottom)...


Xtimeline is another fun time line tool that is similar to TimeRime - kids can incorporate images and more pop-up information into their time line. A cool feature of xtimeline is viewing it as a scrolling time line by moving the cursor along the bottom - when you click on an event a slide can pop up with more information and pictures. This is an xtimeline of the history of Coca Cola (scroll along the bottom)...



Finally, the rock star of online time line tools - Capzles! Capzles is by far the most creative of the 3 tools presented in this post. Students can choose a background for their time line, build the time line with information, pictures, and NARRATION! Yes - that's what I said - students can record music, text, or their very own voices to guide and narrate this slideshow/timeline. Here's a great one about Paul Revere - it is the history of events in Boston involving Paul Revere. The background is an old map of the area, and the time line pictures and events are guided by a voice narration reading of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere". Soooooo many possibilities with this! (Click HERE to see this one).

So let's change up those old boring time lines - make them what we always intended them to be - a learning tool created by students that presents their unique point of view of a history.