Last Week of School and my Sanity

I teach music at my school so I am in the crazies of December with a Christmas program coming up. We were supposed to have it last Tuesday (Dec 10th) but with the icy weather we moved it to Monday (Dec 16th). So I have been trying to keep my sanity while doing the last bit of rehearsals, etc for the program. However, I do have classes that are not in the program so what to do with them? Well I had some of them bring their netbooks to class and I showed them my favorite Christmas fun things to do. Here is a short list of my favorites:

 Make-a-Flake - definitely one of my favorites. Do you know how many kids do NOT know how to cut out a paper snowflake? It really is sad. This is a virtual one but you can save the image, send it, share it and you can probably create fancier snowflakes than you could in real life. Very fun to see what your "cuts" will create. (and not paper scraps on the floor!) This would be a fun activity to do with students and then make the actual paper ones. I actually like to do "snow" activities in January since there are plenty of Christmas things to do in December. And in Texas we tend to get our actual snow in January or February.

Virtual Cookies? Here are two sites.
Old Fashioned Christmas from Theoworlds.com. I like the simplicity of this one. You can email it, get the link, get the code to embed but there is not an easy way to exit and go to the beginning other than to reload the page. Still fun.

Get your own! | More Flash Toys from TheoWorlds.com

From Sprint there is SprintSweets and the Gingerbread Man with Everything. Save it, share it, send it. Decorate with icing and candies. Easy to start over but you can't just undo a step. It is all the way back to the beginning if you mess up and want to fix it. I do like how he is on the little cookie sheet though! Cute!

Decorate a Christmas Tree Cute, simple drag and drop, can add snowfall. Save or print image. This does have ads though (boo!). The way this image comes out you could photo edit and add your own message on the right side of the tree.

Christmas Tree I like this one. No ads. Simple drag and drop. No save or share but you could snip it. Turn off the lights and the fireplace and tree glow. Nice for the Smart Board. Reload page to do again. 

From Castle Arcana there are other links like Build a Snowman, Musical Christmas Tree, or how about The Christmas Carol for Guinea Pigs. Okay, maybe not?

One hint to searching for fun to do on the Smart Board is to search with the word "interactive". You will find more that will work on your interactive whiteboard. There are lots of Smart Board lessons for Christmas fun also out there. You won't be at a loss for things to do during this last week before the Christmas break.

Have fun!

Vocabulary Tests online

VocabTest.com is a wonderful resource for assessing or practicing SAT vocabulary. A colleague of mine and expert Literature teacher, Jennifer Borth, uses this site for her students. She uses the Vocabulary Workshop Book Levels. Students are able to take a variety of tests using the vocabulary words from the book they are using. When finished, they can email the results to their teacher or they can print out the results. The tests are date and time stamped and show which words were correct and those marked wrong thus helping both the student and teacher know where help is needed.

VOCABUZZ! is a new vocabulary game students can play against one another. They score more points if they are the first to get the answer correct. But they don't know if they beat their opponent until the clock runs out.





This site is truly teacher and student tested and they love it. It has made what could be a dull study to engaging and fun. Gold star for this site!✩


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Postscript to Puffin, iPads and eBooks at my school. Sad to say that the eBooks did not work, even with Puffin. I ended up downloading a section from the eBook, putting it in my Dropbox and then opening it up on the iPad. Flash components do not work but you can at least read it and no heavy text book to carry around. Our students should be able to do the same by using their eBackpack in lieu of Dropbox.

Smarty Games

Saw this in my Google Reader just a bit a go and had to re-post here. Smarty Games interactive site with educational games like math, counting, money, reading and time. What caught my eye on the original post, InTech Insights, was that Smarty Games is free of ads. So many sites unfortunately are overrun with ads, some of which you would really rather your students never saw. Even the most innocuous ad is distracting for most students. The games are a simple design, but will give your students some extra practice.

Fresh Ideas from TCEA

I am just back from two fabulous conferences. The first was the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) conference in Austin, Texas. This was followed in quick order at the end of the week by the Texas Music Educators Association conference in lovely San Antonio, Texas. It was a whirlwind of a week and my mind is reeling from all the information I tried to stuff into my notes and my brain. I will begin with TCEA.

One of my goals at TCEA was to learn more about integrating the iPad in the classroom. Not just using apps for drill and kill, although those certainly have their place and there are wonderful apps out there to help students practice what they learn in games and the like. What I wanted to see was how to use the iPad and it's many apps to create lessons and products. I must commend two amazing educators, Lisa Johnson and her partner in crime, Yolanda Barker. They are the authors of a FREE book in iBooks called Hot Apps 4 HOTS. (HOTS = Higher Order Thinking Skills)

This was used for their session at TCEA and showed how apps can be used to create products and be used in lessons. Their book is set up following the different levels of Blooms with an activity including, task, apps used, directions and other resources. Even if you do not use their ideas, perhaps it will give some thought about other ways to use apps in the classroom. Lisa and Yolanda can be found on their Appy Hour radio podcast at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/search/appy-hours-4-you/

Lisa also has great tips on her blog Techchef4u. Their session probably had the most impact on me. I have shared with many teachers at my school and their ideas on how to use in their own classes is very exciting. Made my trip to Austin worthwhile!

Of course a highlight to TCEA, was being able to co-present with Carol Mayo on Mouse Mischief. Mouse Mischief (MM) has been called the "poor man's clicker" but we like to call it the "alternative student response system". Sounds fancy, doesn't it? MM is a free download from Microsoft that works through PowerPoint. Using wireless mice, it enables you to create interactive lessons in PPT where your students can work either answering individually or as a team. You don't have all the bells and whistles that you would with the popular clicker systems but for formative assessment on the quick, easy and inexpensive, this might be your answer. You can find information at Carol's site Hold the Mayo

There were many sessions that I attended and will address another great one in a subsequent posting about making book trailers.

2012 and History

Happy New Year and welcome to 2012!
Though it may be a bit cliche to write a post on the first day of the new year, I thought it might encourage me to keep at it throughout the year. The coming months look to be very busy. I will attend a Project Based Learning 3 day workshop in Tyler next week. I expect to return with great ideas to write about. February brings two conferences back to back. The Texas Computer Educator Association in Austin followed (during the same week) by the Texas Music Educators Association. They both are chock full of ways to refresh your teaching. And finally March will take me to the Music EdVentures conference in Vancouver. Should be a very interesting start to the year.

I thought about what sort of education link/post I would provide today and I decided to use a bit of history. I have shared this website with my teachers but I don't think anyone has used it yet. If I taught in a regular classroom I would have jumped on this one. The History Chef  is a fabulous website that brings you our American presidents and the foods of their time, particularly focusing on their favorite foods. The author of this site, Suzy Evans, J.D., Ph. D., began this site to encourage parents and their children to cook together and learn about history at the same time. Her stories and recipes are a fun and engaging way to explore our American history. So I encourage you to explore her site and perhaps share some cooking with your students.