Learning With Lucie

Friday Five: Organization and Presentation Tools

Sometimes as teachers we are so busy looking for the perfect resource for our students, that we forget to take care of ourselves. By nature, teachers are caretakers and we do often take care of others needs before our own. This week, I was at a face to face meeting with a regional group of tech integrators where we spent some time sharing some tech tools that help us be more successful at our job. I couldn't wait to go home and try some of them and have picked the top 5 I learned about today to share as this week's Friday Five (plus one more cool tool that is coming out of beta this week). And best of all, these tools will not only help you as a teacher, they are great tools for students, too.

1. http://mail.google.com/mail/help/tasks/

If you have not discovered Google Tasks, you should visit the Gmail Lab (under Settings) to turn of TASKS. When you read an email that includes a new item for your to do list, or important information needed to complete that tasks, just click on the Label button to assign this email to a task. Your tasks list will now contain items that are linked to any email related to that tasks. And the most satisfying part is being able to check off the tasks as you complete them. Learn more about how to use the Tasks feature in Gmail or on your mobile device in Google's Help Section.

2. http://www.sticky-notes.net/
 

Whether you use a ToDo list such as Gmail's Tasks or other program to stay organized, there is something about a Sticky Note that helps us with priorities. This little gem is the pefect tool to keep certain items on your radar anytime.

3. http://jingproject.com/

A very helpful program that can be used to make screen captures as still pictures or short 5 minute videos. A picture is worth a thousand words and taking a picture of what is on your computer screen and being able to add lines, arrows, highlights, and additional text really helps increase understanding or provides assessment documentation in digital format. I have know some students who encourage students to take a screenshot of their work on a popular math game as evidence of learning. I use this tool all the time to create tutorials for students and colleagues. I've even seen some educators document a tech error using Jing and attach it to a help ticket. For $14.95 a year you can go pro which allows the movies to be saved in mp4 format and also saves the videos in smaller file format. This comes in handy when using Jing to gather assessment artifacts.

4. http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

If you want a similar tool that does not require you to install a program, try Screencast O matic.

This tool allows you to create a video of your screen (screencast) without requiring you to install anything. The product is in beta right now.

5. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

Zoom It is a very small utility that you can install on your computer or keep on a flash drive that will allow you to ZOOM in to any part of your screen at the stroke of a key. Those with Apple computers have had this ability for a while; PC users can now enjoy this capability with Zoom It. We have also been providing it to visually impaired students to facilitate their use of computers. There are tools that provide more features for work stations used by visually impaired students, but this handy program on a thumb drive gives them the flexibility of zooming in when using other computers.

6. http://prezi.com/

And for an even more spectacular zooming experience, you need to try Prezi. And starting April 5, you'll get a chance since Prezi goes out of private beta and will be available for you to try the free version of sign up for a Pro account. It allows you to fly around a map of an image, scrreen shot, and even videos. You can click on an image to zoom in on it or use the mouse to fly around to show different perspective (from big picture to minute details).
 
 
Enjoy these tools. Model how to use them effectively for teaching and learning for your peers and students.

Friday Five - Inauguration Web Sites for Classroom Teachers and Kids

This week's Friday Five expand on those with interactive sites aimed at classroom teachers and students relating to the Inauguration.

Inauguration  2009 (and related  Web Sites for Educators and Students )

1.  http://web.me.com/elemenous/NKO_Inauguration/NKO_Inauguration_Celebration.html

Looking for some Writing Prompts relating to the Inauguration.  Check

out the blog part of this website from a Middle School near Barack

Obama's Chicago Home.   I can help your class participate in a safe

way.

2. http://americanhistory.si.edu/presidency/5a2b.html

All the Presidents's Children – A short trivia game about children who

have lived in the White House.

I overhead some of our student's talking about this very topic in the

hall this week."Whose dog was a gift from the Soviet premier? Whose nickname was

Dynamo? Discover fun facts about past presidents' children with this

interactive activity from Smithsonian's National Museum of American

History."3.http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/factsandfirsts/index.cfm

Video (So Help Me God)

Along with a fun list of "first and facts" regarding Past Inauguration

4. The American Presidency – A Glorious Burden

An online exhibit from the Smithsonian (great demonstration of a timeline)

Click on Site MAP (first)  to get a quick overview of everything on this site.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/PRESIDENCY/home.html

5.http://thinkfinity.com/Inauguration.aspxA whole collection of websites (some recycled from the Election

Collection) organized for educators, parents, students, and after

school program. '

(Including some of the ones listed below)

-------------------------------------------------------

http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/politics/index.cfm

For Science Class:

President-elect Barack Obama has said he would like to make the White

House more of the "People's House" again by inviting guests to the

White House to discuss many different issues, including science.Which science topic would you like to see discussed at the White House?

Vote now!

http://readwritethink.org/calendar/calendar_day.asp?id=726

Read Write Think collection of Lesson Plans and Activities that can be

used or related to the Election of Barack Obama

Understanding the Issues

The candidates might disagree on the solutions, but they both agree on

the country's most pressing issues. Learn more with Thinkfinity

resources.The Economy

National Budget Simulation Lesson from EconEdLink

Interactive Simulation of National Budget from NCEEThe Environment

The Human Footprint website from National Geographic

http://foundation.verizon.com/about/press/newstory_verizon_lroom.shtml

Curated and hosted by Museum of the Moving Image, The Living Room

Candidate offers more than 300 commercials from every presidential

race since the start of television campaign advertising in 1952. The

redesign and relaunch of The Living Room Candidate website are made

possible through a $435,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation.Lessons

National Budget Simulation (EconEdLink)

The Economics of Voting: What Do You Mean My Vote Doesn't Count? (EconEdLink)

Propaganda Techniques in Literature and Online Political Ads (ReadWriteThink)

Getting Into the Electoral College (Illuminations)

The Art of Democracy (ARTSEDGE)

Where Were the US Presidents Born? (Xpeditions)

Science and Elections (Science NetLinks)

Will the Best Candidate Win? (Illuminations)

Electing America's President (EDSITEment)

Vote for Me! Developing, Writing, and Evaluating Persuasive Speeches

(ReadWriteThink)Voting! What's It All About? (ReadWriteThink)

Interactive Exhibits & Simulations

National Budget Interactive Simulation (EconEdLink)The Machinery of Democracy

(Smithsonian's History Explorer)The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden (Smithsonian's History Explorer)

Multimedia Resources

Human Footprint (Xpeditions)All About Elections from the Chatting About Books Podcast Series

(ReadWriteThink)News for You Online Newspaper (ProLiteracy)

Activities

Election Day Activity (ReadWriteThink)

Letters to the Next President (National Writing Project) (ReadWriteThink)

Bonus Site:

And to keep really current, check out:

http://twitter.com/Inauguration_DC

Friday Five - Inauguration Web Sites

This weeks Friday Five comes from Patricia Aigner from Rutland School District, submitted through Vermont's School IT List Serv

1.  http://inaugurationday2009.com/broadcast.html

2. This is from the NPS:

http://www.nps.gov/whho/historyculture/inaugural_events.htm

3. From the Senate:

http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/factsandfirsts/index.cfm

 

4. http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/index.cfm  video of Reagan,

Kennedy and other historical inauguration facts

 5.  From the District of Columbia:

http://inauguration.dc.gov/index.asp

 

6. Library of Congress

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pihome.html

Friday Five - Inspiring Ted Talks For Educators

I thought we could all start the new year with Inspiration, so this week's Friday Five brings you inspiring words from the T.E.D. Conference archives.

For those of you who are wondering WHAT is TED.   Check out:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/pages/view/id/5

These range from 3 minutes to 20 minutes each.  I

tried to pick some that speak to my passion as an educator as

introduction to the TED conference.

1.  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for

creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines)

creativity.

2.  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html

Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, spells out 5 dangerous

things you should let your kids do. From TED University 2007.

3. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_st_john_s_8_secrets_of_success.html

Why do people succeed? Is it because they're smart? Or are they just

lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews

into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.

(Great one to share with students)

4. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html

Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and

helping us all realize our untapped love for it -- and by extension,

our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new

connections.   (Can be applied to any educator's passion)

5. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school.html

Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED

community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools.

With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia

tutoring center inspired others around the world to open--

Friday Five - Graphing Tools

This week's Friday Five is filled with tutorials and tools for turning

data into graphs for both the primary classrooms and advanced data

users along with this Bonus Link.

Bonus Link:  5 lesson series covering several mathematics concepts

relating to data and graphs

http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?ID=U151

Along with some tools you can use for these and other lessons that

include charting data

1.  http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=63

Very basic bar graphs maker

2.http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspxThis graphing tools is a Kid friendly web interface for creating

different types of graphs (pies, line, bars, columns, etc)

3.  http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/applets/controller/query/query.htm?qt=chart&lang=en

The popular virtual manipulative site has many tools and related

activities for turning data into graphs

4.  http://www.fgcu.edu/Support/office2000/excel/charts.htmlThe most common way to create graphs is to use spreadsheet's chart tools.

These tutorials cover how to do this using Microsoft Excel

5.  http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/charts/

For those of you who use Open Source Tools - Open Office CALC is the

equivalent of Microsoft Excel.  It's graphing features were a little

cumbersome until version 2.4 and 3.0.  This site has some tips and

tutorials from Solveig Hauglaud

Friday Five - Legal Music Your Students Can Use

This week's Friday Five will benefit any of you who have students who

use music in their school projects.

1. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Comics

This is a must have comic  to help you and your understanding of

copyright and the NEW creative commons license will does allow you and

your students to use photos, music,  and other materials besides

copyrighted materials in their presenation.

2. http://edtechgoldrush.blogspot.com/2008/09/multimedia-and-music-remix-reuse.html

Nice short blog post on sites to use for remixing music for project.

3.  http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/fair_use_in_online_video/

The Center for Social Media makes the case for remix and reuse of

copyright-protected media in their publication "Code of Best Practices

in Fair Use for Online Video."

4.  http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-resources.html

Royalty Free Music section provides you with the resources you need to

complete a variety of educational, personal, and non-profit projects.   Make sure you are on the FREE page.  Some of the music is royalty free, but you have to buy the rights.  They do have ONE free page that they use to rotate free music in and out of.  Recently, we've had to log in to do it, so we created one school log in that we share with classes that need 'quick and easy' free music.  We find this a good starting point when you need music  quickly initially.  Later the kids can explore other sites.

5. Other sites with music you and your students can use legally.   (You

can do a Google Search for any of these and more.

Freesound   http://www.freesound.org/

Soundsnap http://www.soundsnap.com/

Free-Loops http://www.freeloops.com/   http://free-loops.com/

Looperman http://www.looperman.com/

Glooped http://www.glooped.com/

iBeat http://ibeat.org/

Samplenet http://www.samplenet.co.uk/

Ccmixer  http://ccmixter.org/

Friday Five - Thanksgiving Theme

Sorry  I forgot to post last week's Friday Five on Friday,  but the

wealth of resources you will find on this first website will make it

worth your wait!

1. http://www.midgefrazel.net/wqthanks.html

There are two major Web pages filled with Thanksgiving Resources.

Incredible collection.

Each part contains resources for the history of the Pilgrims,

primary resource materials, Thanksgiving facts and myths plus plenty

of activities to use in all classrooms. Don't miss the Web

presentation and WebQuest in Part 1 to get your adventure off to a

good start!The next 3 sites are all from the Library of Congress.  If you have

not discovered the wealth of information available to you through this

site, this is a perfect time to explore it.

2. http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/thanks/thanks.html

Thanksgiving in American Memory including a Thanksgiving Timeline from

the Library of Congress

3. http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/thanksgiving/timeline/1939.html

4. http://memory.loc.gov/learn/start/index.html

Library of Congress Learning MaterialsThe Learning Page is designed to help educators use the American

Memory Collections to teach history and culture. It offers tips and

tricks, definitions and rationale for using primary sources,

activities, discussions, lesson plans and suggestions for using the

collections in classroom curriculum

5. .The last Friday Five is a place to get some specific Thankgiving

related Clipart and Templates for Microsoft Office.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/HA102415181033.aspx#16

Thanksgiving Clipart and Templates (Recipe Cards, etc)

Friday Five - Collecting Clip Art

Friday Five (+)

Are you looking for "just the right" piece of clipart to dress up your

school project.  Here are some clipart or clickart sites. And since I

don't have plans to post next Friday -  I'll double the reources this

week with a Friday "10".

1. http://pics.tech4learning.com/

Pics4Learning - While the material in this collection of clip art and

photographs from Tech4Learning are copyrighted under the traditional

system, the creators of the material have released them for use by

students in their class projects.

2. http://www.clker.com/

online royalty free clipart

3. http://classroomclipart.com/

Classroom Clipart (has ads)

4. http://www.wpclipart.com/browse.html

clipart and photos

5. http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/new.html

great clipart for teachers

6. http://holidays.kaboose.com/thanks-clipart.html

cliparts and more (advertisements)

7. http://www.teacherfiles.com/clip_art.htm

free educational clipart

8. http://www.unites.org/html/resource/knowledge/13clipart.htm

a list of sites that have free art work (click art or clipart)

9. http://www.barrysclipart.com/

been around for a long time (lots of clipart, but now includes ads to

other sites)

10. http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=013097366078944830717%3Atsojriz_t1a

a Google Coop search engines that searches clipart sites

Friday Five - Photo's You Can Use

This week's Friday Five features Photo Collections

Did you now that Google and LIFE magazine have joined forces to make available millions of photographs from the Life photo archive collection (from 1750 to today). Check it out at

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

What a wonderful historical collection that you can use in your classroom or for personal enjoyment. Just make sure to follow fair use and respect copyright as you use these pictures in your curriculum.

For FREE pictures you and your students can use check out this week's Friday Five (plus 2 bonus sites)

(Photo collections you and your students can use more freely)

Please do not allow students to sign up for an account on these sites and use these sites only while supervising students. Most of these sites allow you to save low resolution copies of these for use in noncommercial projects such as school projects. Teach your students how to give photocredit for every photo they use.

Although our school does use a filter to reduce the chances of students stumbling across inappropriate images, filters are not foolproof and no substitute for supervision and educating students on how to respond when they come across pictures that make them uncomfortable. The world outside of school is “not” filtered and our students need us to prepare them to be digital citizen in a networked connected digital world.

• http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons

Flickr: Creative Commons  

Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license. Creative Commons is an alternative to copyright that encourages the photos to be used for creative pursuits.

• http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm

  FlickrStorm. A Cool Tool to search for Flickr Images  

  FlickrStorm is a better search for Flickr! Use the advanced search to find only Creative Commons Image; add them to a 'tray' and download them all at once as a photoset. You can even find related and more relevant images.

• http://www.everystockphoto.com/

  everystockphoto - searching free photos  

  A search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo's license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos.

• http://www.sxc.hu/

  stock.xchng - the leading free stock photography site  

  SXC is a friendly community of photography addicts who generously offer their works to those who need them free of charge.

• http://www.dreamstime.com/free-photos

  Dreamstime - Download Free Stock Images and Photos  

  Welcome to the free section of Dreamstime! Not all pictures on this site are free. Be careful to only draw from the free section if you want rights to use the images.

• http://www.morguefile.com/

  morguefile.com Where photo reference lives.  

  The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits.

• http://www.stockvault.net/about_us.php

  Stockvault.net  

  For years Stockvault.net has catered it\'s visitors with free imagery, \"ready to use\" web layouts and logos and helped those who don\'t have the means to turn to the royalty free agencies.

Friday Five - Healthy Kids

To all of you who work so hard at creating healthy kids in all

domains,  here is a list of sites with health related resources.

1. Taking Notes on Global Health

Students chart facts about global health.

http://etgredirect.1105web.com/redirect.aspx?id=74

2. LearntoBeHealthy.org

This online health science learning site is designed to help educators

communicate important health concepts to children K-6.

http://www.learntobehealthy.org/

3. KidsHealth

Timely topics that relate directly to health and quality of life. The

section for each age group provides different, appropriate

information.

http://kidshealth.org

4. PE Central: Health Lessons

A large number of Health lesson ideas for you to use in your Health

education program.

http://pecentral.com/lessonideas/searchresults.asp?category=58

5. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Kids' Pages

Help kids make the connection between the environment and their health.

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/home.htm

6. edHelper: Health Theme Units

Directory of Health lesson plans on topics including: Alcohol,

Circulatory System, Digestive System, Disabilities, Drugs, Hygiene,

Nutrition, The Five Senses, and more!

http://www.edhelper.com/Health.htm

7. National Center for Health Education: Growing Healthy

Features planned, sequential curriculum and activities that provide a

sound framework for a comprehensive health education program.

http://www.nche.org/growinghealthy_gradespecific.htm

8. McKinley Health Center - Handout By Topic

Browse and print out their collection of over 300 Health Information Handouts.

http://www.mckinley.uiuc.edu/Handouts/list%20by%20topics.html