Friday, February 12, 2010

Quickly Post Student Work with Embedit.in!


I was skimming over Larry Ferlazzo's blog when I came across his post mentioning Embedit.in for posting student content online. This immediately grabbed my attention since it is a question I receive a lot from teachers. Here are the highlights of Embedit.in:
  1. No registration or account is required. Embedit.in asks you to verify who you are through other popular accounts such as Google, Twitter, Wordpress, etc.
  2. Upload a document and receive an embeddable widget code to embed into your website or blog
  3. The widget allows you to scroll to see the document, zoom in, or see it full screen.
  4. You can choose to add annotations over your document before you create your widget
  5. There are privacy settings: choose whether you want the document to be downloaded, saved, or printed
  6. Finally, Embedit.in has built in analytics! Track to see how many people have viewed, saved, or printed your document and where they are from.

This is definitely a website that educators will find helpful as they build websites!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Children's Audio Books Online


Check out the "Stories" section of the AOL Kid's website! They have famous children's books for kids to listen to online. Each word highlights as the narrator reads the story. They have some of the Arthur book series, famous fairy tales, and rhyming books. This would make a great learning center for teachers who still have a computer station in their classrooms. Plug in a headset, listen to the story, and complete a follow-up activity.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

A Ruler, a Protractor, and a Compass, Oh My!


I found s great interactive ruler, protractor, and compass online the other day. The site appears to come from the UK, and has basic tools that would work well on the Promethean board. Click the Compass tool, adjust the size, and draw a circle on the screen. Click the Protractor to measure angles, and the Ruler to measure lines. Use Pencil tool will let you draw straight lines on the workspace while the pen will let you write free form. I like that the ruler actually portrays the 1/2 line accurately. As Promethean users might already know, these tools are also located within ActivInspire, but many teachers have issues with the way the ruler looks in Inspire. It is not the same ruler they expect kids to use in math class, but the ruler on this site provides a good alternative.