Subscribe to RSSArchive for March, 2009:
Episode 51
Science Buddies
Science fair project ideas, answers and tools, including a project guide – asks questions on grade level, interests, abilities, limitations and then gives project ideas for kids to use. Ask an expert feature and parent and teacher resources!
CL1P.net – The Internet Clipboard
Copy and paste between computers – text, images, files, links. No sign up or login. Quick way to share a file with a class, but no password protection.
Classical Comics
Classical literature in comic form, but wait there’s more! Text is written ways–original and unabridged, plain text (modernized version of the original), and quick text (simplified dialog). There’s also a version without text, so that students can come up with their own translations. Check out the free versions available for download!
DOGONews
DOGONews is an online news and web resource for elementary school children, aged 5-10 and a publishing platform for aspiring reporters ages 9-15. Current events on 3-D globe, directory of kid friendly links, resources for kids, teachers and parents
EcoKids
Environmental resources for students and educators. Lesson plans, printables, and other resources for teachers. Activities and games for kids.
MacHeist
MacHeist’s missions are an opportunity for our members to live out some of those secret agent fantasies, including mission briefings, simulated web espionage, and a storyline packed with tech-mystery intrigue, while earning free Mac software.
Today’s Meet
A real-time backchannel with 140 characters like Twitter/Plurk, but created only for a specific topic/event. Room deletes after a set period of time. Password protection coming soon.
Visual Representation of Bloom’s
Attempt at interpreting Bloom’s taxonomy using 21st century tools. There are various Web 2.0 icons on Blooms hierarchy – still a work in progress and needing input.
iFaves
- Kindle for iPhone
Amazon’s application for the iPhone gives users access to its Kindle store of electronic books without the need to purchase a Kindle or Kindle 2 electronic book reader. The e-books are formatted to the iPhone’s smaller display, and pages can be “turned” with a finger flick to the left or right. - TED
TED app for iPod touch/iPhone allows users to listen to audio and video published from TED. Search, bookmark, and share features
Augmented Reality
A post in iLearnTechnology.com pointed me to GE Smart Grid Augmented Reality where after the time it took to print a sheet of paper and launch my web cam, I sat slack-jawed staring at the screen. If you haven’t seen it already – go! Follow the link. I’ll wait. Okay, if you didn’t want to go and would rather I try to not-possibly-do-it-justice, basically you hold a paper in front of your webcam and on screen you see yourself holding said paper and all of a sudden a 3-D image of land and wind turbines or solar panels (depending on which of the two links you use) unfolds out of the icon on your paper. And as you tilt your paper different angles, you see the hologram twist and rotate so that you can look around in a good 180 degrees. It’s amazing.
I was pretty sure my tech club kids (26 fourth and fifth graders) would be pretty impressed as well. What I didn’t expect was how far they’d take this. I had more than this one site planned for our meeting and in hindsight I wish I’d thrown the rest of my schedule out of the window, because we really could have spent the entire hour on this site. And it wasn’t about wind turbines and solar energy. After the few minutes of watching the image unfold and fold over and over, we started brainstorming other ways of using this technology in education. My kids came up with the following, which they insisted I email GE and tell them they should do for us – cheeky kids!
- show land formations
- watch the water cycle
- see different parts of the body working
- wind erosion
Honestly they had more and I can’t remember them all. Please don’t tell them! But what was even more impressive than the ideas they were coming up with was the science experiment they turned the whole site into. “Mrs. Adam! Does it have to be printed? Can we just DRAW that symbol?” “Can it be another color?” “Can it be larger or smaller?” “Can it be a mirror image?” We learned that you can draw the symbol, at least if you trace it and color it with black crayon – but you don’t have to have it very smooth. And red crayon doesn’t work at all. And a mirror image works but you have to hold it sideways because the sun needs to be on the upper right when looking into the webcam or else it shows it sideways. We didn’t try other sizes but most of the kids decided it would probably work because it worked no matter how far or how close the picture was to the camera so it was seeing it bigger or smaller anyway. And we figured it wouldn’t work multicolored either because it didn’t work with red. But there were so many other ideas we didn’t try out because I really did have more planned for them. I asked them to brainstorm more classroom connections and come up with more experiments to try and we would return to the site after spring break. I was absolutely tickled with how far they took what was supposed to be a really quick “look how cool!”
Since that day, I was listening to Buzz Out Loud Episode 927, and they mentioned a NY Times article about 3-D baseball cards! It’s the same technology! For baseball cards! You can watch your favorite player actually PLAY! Or… well… a cartoonish version of him. But still. They have a video there. Go look! I’ll wait. Isn’t it awesome?! So I didn’t get a chance to tell my kids about this site. The cards come out Monday and since it’s my spring break, I think I’ll go to the local hobby shops and see if I can find any. If they’re not too expensive, I may buy enough for my students. I’m betting I only get a few to show. But I’m so excited!
So thanks, Kelly, for featuring this site!
The golden episode…yup #50!
Episode 50-Links that make us think…
Resources
- Jeopardy Labs - Allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world.
- TikaTok – Imagine a story, create a book.
- Kinetic City – Amazing collection of games, science experiments, and projects. Beat the bugs and set things right.
- JayCut – Online video editing.
- Edmodo – Edmodo is a private microblogging platform that teachers and students can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, assignments, and events to each other.
- All About Explorers – All About Explorers was developed by a group of teachers as a means of teaching students about the Internet. Because we wanted to make a point about finding useless information even in a site which looked at first to be fairly well put together, all of the Explorer biographies here are fictional. While many of the facts are true or based on truth, many inaccuracies, lies, and even downright absurdity are mixed in indiscriminately. As such, it is important that you do not use this site as a source of reference for your own research! Follow @explorers on Twitter.
- In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update – NY Times article about how the job of librarians is changing in the digital age.
Faves
- Mancala FS5 ($FREE) – strategic thinking board game gone global (website).
- ABC Animals ($2.99) – ABC Animals provides a wonderful set of interactive flashcards that aid in teaching young children to recognize, say and print English alphabet letters (website).