Safe Student Blogging at Kidblog.org

Check this out! I ran across this site through my Twitter account yesterday. Kidblog is a site that looks to be a solution to classroom teachers who want their students to have their own individual blog, but don't want to have to deal with the student email addresses tied to the accounts, especially in elementary and middle schools. It's FREE and it allows teachers to create an account (with an email address), add classes and students. When a student is added, the child has access to their own private blog that is accessible though a username and password assigned by the teacher. No email addresses or private information is needed! The student blogs can be completely locked down so that class members can login and view the posts and comments on them, but the posts will remain hidden to the public. Teachers have the option to approve comments AND posts before they are added to the student blogs. Also, teachers can comment on student blog posts and make it private so that only the author of the post can read it. This is perfect for teachers who want to leave feedback on the writing process directly on the blog! There are more things that this site can do, but these are my favorite features!

Create Jeopardy Games Fast and Easy!

Jeopardy Labs is a website that has an amazing Jeopardy game builder. It was built by Matt Johnson, an undergraduate students at Washington State University. His website allows you to build interactive Jeopardy games without PowerPoint and it is MUCH easier than PowerPoint. You do not even need to create an account in order to build your game. As Matt explains on his website: "When you save your template, you are given a URL to play the template. Something like jeopardylabs.com/play/your-title. You are also given a URL to edit the template, something like jeopardylabs.com/edit/your-title. Just type that into your browser when you want to edit."

Creating a game is super easy. Simply click on a category and type in the word to describe your category. Then click on a question with a point value. You will be given a screen where you can enter the question and the answer. Jeopardy labs puts it together to make it pretty. When you are ready to play the game, you can enter in the points of each team manually into the site before proceeding to the next question. Easy! I don't usually recommend Jeopardy because of the time it takes to create within PowerPoint, but this site takes care of that!

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!

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.

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.

60 Second Recap: Like Cliff Notes, but in Video Format!

Secondary English students will be delighted to find this new resource called 60 Second Recap.

What is 60 Second Recap? According to the site, they want to "help teens (yes, teens of all ages!) engage with literature. We want to help them see it not as some chore to be endured, but as -- dare we say it? -- the gift of a lifetime. How? Through the language of our time -- the language of video. Video that's focused, engaging, informative ... and short enough to hold just about anyone's attention."

Users will find videos on major works of literature here broken down by chapter, in 60 second increments. Need an overview? They have it in 60 seconds. Need chapter one? They have it in 60 seconds. You get the idea. Novels such as Fahrenheit 451, Of Mice and Men, Animal Farm, Jane Eyre, Lord of the Flies, and Hamlet are featured.

In addition, the site also gives students tips on how to write papers so as "not to bore your teachers". That's something everyone can appreciate!

As of right now, the site is free. You can sign in if you want to post a question or leave a comment, but if you just want to view the videos, it's free. I hope that it stays that way...

Behold: The LiveScribe Pen has Educational Applications

I recently received a LiveScribe pen for demo through work. Shortly after, the vendor came out to show how this pen could be used on a basic level, and how it could integrate into a classroom setting.

What is a Livescribe pen? The pen contains a small camera to record your movements as you write on special dot paper. The dots are almost invisible to the naked eye. You can purchase notebooks, notepads, and journals for your pen, as long as you don't duplicate the notebooks. For example, if you already bought and used "notebook one", don't purchase another "notebook one" unless you want to overwrite all of your previous work. Each notepad has different dot paper that the camera records. You can also print out extra dot paper from the LiveScribe website if you like. Within the dot paper, there are small controls that are embedded into the page: most notably: record and stop.

This is how it works:

1. Click record on your page during a lecture or presentation.
2. Start using your pen and notebook to write notes during the lecture
3. Click stop when you are finished.
4. If you "tap" any of the words you wrote during the lecture, you will hear what was being said in the room at that point in your notes.

No - the pen does not "speak" your written notes. It is not text-to-speech. No - the pen does not turn your messy handwriting into digital print (handwriting recognition). But imagine - you don't have to worry about writing EVERYTHING down during lectures anymore! For example, what if you decided just to write the main ideas and record the rest of the "details" using the pen? It would save your fingers from endless scribbling during class, and you will have captured everything you need to study. Upload your audio and notes to your computer so you can play the audio back on the computer instead of just through earbuds. Click a button to upload these notes online, get a URL to your recorded notes, and share your notes with colleagues, friends, or guests.

So how could this be used in the classroom? Think of all of the ways this pen could be used in the primary classroom.

1. Talking Books: Make your own living books! Glue a small piece of dot paper on a story book, draw a dot on the page as you record your voice reading the text on the page, and voila! Now students who have difficulty reading can listen to the book and follow along without an assistant.
2. Talking Word Walls: Ever have kids write the wrong word down even if they used your word wall as reference? Now record your voice saying the word on the bulletin board. When kids click the word, they will hear the word being read out loud. It takes the guesswork out of "which word do I need?
3. Singing Notebook: embed songs all in once place - in your notebook
4. Running Records: Record kids reading for fluency for playback for parent conferences or so you can code the passage more accurately later in the day.
5. ELL Vocab: Do you teach English as a Second Language students? Do you have objects labeled all over the room? Use the pen to record your voice on each label, so kids can hear the word instead of just see the word. Great for pronunciation practice!
6. Make up spelling tests: Absent kids take a spelling test with the pen, instead of you.

Do you want to see more ideas? Check out this wiki for amazing screencasts and ideas.