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!✩


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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.

End of Summer and TED radio

School has begun and the race has started and here I am entering the last week of August. Where did the month go? I finished my first week of school last week. I am teaching in a new school this year and if the rest of the year goes like the first week I will be a very happy camper! Wonderful place to be!

I haven't spent much time perusing finds and such but I did hear something interesting today as I was driving about. I hope that if you are reading this you are familiar with TED talks. As described on the site "Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world." You will find talks by notable people such as Sir Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink and Steve Jobs. There are so many fascinating talks that will        truly stimulate your mind.

Again, as I said, driving in my car today listening to my local public radio station, KERA, and to my surprise I found myself listening to TED radio. Yippee! This really was a nice surprise. I'm not sure if I really knew there was TED radio, but now that I do, I will most definitely be listening to the shows. There are archived shows on their website and I have link to one that seemed appropriate for the start of a new school year. Building a Better Classroom Enjoy!

End of the School Year musings and Social Bookmarking

So the end of this school year is fast approaching. I always feel like I have more to say than I have time to say it in. There have been some frustrating moments in the year but also many exciting happenings. I was evaluating how our technology has improved at my school. I recently sent a survey out to the teachers inquiring what form of technology did they integrate in their lessons. It was a commendable list of things ranging from Edmodo (a very popular choice) to presentation tools like Prezi and Glogster. This list was quite encouraging especially remembering how little teachers would use in the past. So this is a step in the right direction.

One of the questions I asked was what technology infused projects or assignments were given to students. Here is where we lack. Outside of Microsoft Word (which technically is using technology), the list was quite short. This area is where we need to focus in the year ahead. I love walking down our school halls and seeing all the wonderful posters, book reports and models but I often wonder how teachers can branch out and encourage their students to do the same assignments but in another way other than using a poster board. A challenge indeed.

Perhaps in getting teachers to use some simple tools, they can see how these tools can also help their students. One such tool would be to create and organize internet bookmarks. Very simple yet very productive. My personal favorite is Delicious. I would have to say that 99% of my bookmarks are here. I have begun using the stacks feature to create groupings of links. This has been especially helpful when teachers ask me to find links for their students. A science teacher at my school has asked me many times for links to topics that her students are studying. I find and create stacks, send her the link, which she shares with her students. I am told the students try to finish their work so they can go explore the links. Lifelong learners in the making. My stacks are not particularly large and sometimes it is tricky finding interactive features. Nonetheless, it adds to their learning experience. Here is a link to a stack I put together for her class when they were studying geology.

Some thoughts about Delicious that you should consider: First of all Delicious is a "social bookmarking site" and could likely be blocked at your school because of the "social" nature. In the site you are able to search the community's links so doing a search might turn up some links that you don't want your students to be exploring. Secondly, in the terms of use, Delicious does state that their site in not intended for those under the age of 13. If your student population is mostly under this age you might consider some alternative bookmarking sites.

This list contains some great for teachers and adults but some not so great for the under 13 crowd:
Live Binders- Terms of use state that you must be 13 to register for an account and there are public binders that are easily accessible. So- good for teachers- not so good for under 13
Diigo- now this is a social bookmarking site that initially I did not like. It just did not seem user friendly. Too many options? However, looking back at it I see they now offer an education account. So Diigo now looks very promising for classroom use. I'll have to play more with this education account and post about it later.

ThingLink

I have admitted I am not much for Twitter, but I will have to go on and reTweet this link out. I read about ThingLink on two different websites this morning so I had to check it out. ThingLink is great! I see so much use for the classroom, whether by a teacher and students or teacher alone. You do need an email to use, but I have not seen a Privacy Policy nor do I see anything in Terms of Service about under age 13. Someone correct me if you do, please.

Basically, ThingLink lets you upload pictures and tag them. You can then share with a link or embed the image. I created one and then put it on my class wiki. One of the tags in the image is a link to a website with more information for my students. This would be great to use in foreign language classes labeling things with the translations. Anything where you could label something- maps, artwork, parts of speech, the list is endless. Love it! Here is an example on the parts of speech.


Richard Byrne apparently talked about this a month ago (how did I miss it?!) and has a great tutorial/video about creating the images. Larry Ferlazzo also makes a post on ThingLink.

Definitely a site worth exploring. Below is the one I created for my class wiki.

Blooms Taxonomy

While looking at my Google Reader this morning, I was perusing Larry Ferlazzo's post about the Seinfeld video on YouTube on Bloom's Taxonomy. Very funny :-) YouTube always gives you a list of video suggestions similar to the one you are viewing. Not sure how many links in I went but came across this one:

It might not reflect the updated version of Bloom's for the 21st century but the SmartNotebook game idea is great and others might find it a useful resource. I did a quick search in SmartExchange hoping to find her lesson but haven't found it yet. However, there are some other lessons there using Bloom's that might be helpful. Remember you have to create an account to download a Smart Notebook lesson from this site.

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.

Virtual Museums

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/12/5-interesting-virtual-museums-and.html?m=1

This link is an a post from December on Free Technology for Teachers. I have recommended this site before and again I must reiterate what a fabulous resource it is for teachers.

Richard Byrne provides links to just about anything under the sun to use in the classroom. This link to virtual museums is definitely a keeper. He posted this on Twitter the other day and it caught my eye. I think virtual museums give your students that first hand look at authentic items. With budget cuts everywhere, field trips are not high on the priority list. Please checks these out.

Happy Pi Day!

In celebration of Pi Day, McGraw Hill Education is offering 5 math apps free of charge through March 14. The apps are:

• Addition Top-It
• Equivalent Fractions
• Beat the Computer Multiplication
• Monster Squeeze
• Divisibility Dash

Motivation low but have a happy Pi Day. Be sure to check out http://www.teachpi.org/ for fun ways to celebrate.

Musical Fresh Ideas from TMEA for the iPad

Post #2 today is all music related technology. I attended the Texas Music Educators Conference in San Antonio recently and although most of the conference sessions for elementary are geared toward singing, dancing, playing instruments, there were a few that talked about iPads in the music classroom. After attending TMEA, I realize I need to be presenting there about integrating the iPad in the classroom. Ah well, another post for another day.

Back to my TMEA ideas. One of the sessions I attended was led by Dr. Lynn Basinger. This would have been really great if I could have just sat down to dinner or lunch with her and shared ideas back and forth. But it was a good session and I have some new apps to try. I'm big on free apps so most of what I mention here will be free.

JoyTunes Recorder Master (apparently only for iPad2)
I downloaded this on my iPad and found it fun but a bit challenging to play. Pretty cool but I do like my successes to come quicker and I was ready to quit after the second game! I tend to get frustrated easily with video game but I think kids would find it fun and easy to play. They seem to have more patience than I do!

Pluto Learns Piano HD is an app for both iPad and iPhone. Cute little app for note recognition. And it's FREE.










She mentioned some other apps I would like to try, but they are paid apps and I don't have the freedom to purchase apps on my iPad (it belongs to the school). But here are a few that intrigued me:

The History of Jazz looks really cool and the price really is good. Looks worth the purchase.

The one app I would really love to buy and try, but it lists for $14.99 is Notion. Dr. Basinger said that this app is the closest she has found to a good notation app. Would really like to see this one in action and know more about it.








Here is a link to Dr. Basinger's blog for iPads4MusicEd. She welcomes your thoughts on apps and the use of iPads in the music classroom.

Music Tech Ideas

Well it is a good thing this is not Twitter because I am worse at "tweeting" than I am at blogging. It seems I am always apologizing for my lack of posts. I would love to be one of those weekly writers but it never seems to happen. I promise this will be the last time I whine about never posting! Moving on-

I will be away from my classroom and wanted to leave some assignments for them using technology. It is always nice when I can send them to the tech lab and they can work on something that doesn't require a sub to monitor too closely. Many of our teachers use Edmodo as an extension of their classroom and students regularly turn in assignments through their class pages. Edmodo is often called "Facebook for the classroom" and that is a pretty good description.

My junior high students will be using it while I am gone. They will all be logging into their Edmodo account where they will find their assignments. Once there the sixth graders have a link to the Rhythm Trainer. Rhythm Trainer is a fantastic site by John Blank created as part of his masters project while at VanderCook College of Music. The site lets you practice hearing rhythm patterns in two different ways. There are options for tempo and a variety of notations to choose from. One of my favorite parts is that my students can email me their results. When I get the email, it tells me their name, how many correct, how many wrong and the best part....how much time they spent doing it. Great for when you aren't there and wonder if they are really doing what they should be doing.

My seventh grade students will be working in Jam Studio. Jam Studio pretty much helps you write a song. You have the option to choose your chords, tempo, meter (4/4 and 3/4) and all of the instrumentation. Very fun and they enjoyed using it.

The eighth grade has a bit more complicated assignment. After signing in to Edmodo, they will access 4 links. The first will take them to a Google Site (You are welcome to take a look) that I created to help them discover some things about musical form. They also have links to two Google Forms where they will answer questions as they go along. I will be curious to see how they handle all of it. Sometimes they are very focused and receptive to using so much technology and other times they act like they've never seen a computer before!

Please be sure to share these marvelous sites with your music teachers. They are all easy to use and your students will enjoy infusing a bit of music technology in their learning.

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.

E-books or not E-books

Consider the push by many school districts and higher education to the use of E-books. They certainly seem to be convenient and most definitely make for a lighter load to carry from class to class. But are e-books really the answer to transitioning a tool used in the classroom? Mind you, I do own both and i-Pad and I recently took over my husband's Nook Color when he got his own i-Pad. I have enjoyed using the Nook. However, like most of us, I have bookshelves full of wonderful books I have read over the years. I am not one of those people, though, that keep every book I have ever read and enjoyed. I only keep those books that have carved a special place in my heart and have given me a satisfying learning experience, skills or spiritual.

There was a conversation in my household lately about the value or desire to use e-books. Those living in my house include college age children who did not use e-books while in high school. Their high school now uses mostly e-books for the many reasons that one would think. This particular school (Bishop Dunne Catholic High School) has gone to a BYOD environment and is a wireless facility. Some of the reasons they use e-books are as follows:

• more interactive with Smart Boards
• cost effective
• "green"
• easily accessible anywhere
• easily search the book for terms, etc
• generally more interactive letting students check online dictionaries, glossaries, etc.

You can read their posting on their website here where they explained the switch to students and their families.

As you read this list, you most likely think these are excellent reasons for making a change to e-books. As a parent who paid many dollars for print books that were never used again, or those we could not sell because a new edition came out, I can appreciate the cost effective reasons for using e-books. My children however have very different feelings and I agree with many of their thoughts.

I do not believe that my thinking or theirs stems from the fact that we grew up with paper print books. I believe there are very valid reasons for using print books over e-books. Personally I love holding a book. We talk about teaching students with "hands on activities" and why? Because we like to touch things. We like to manipulate them. We like to feel we have some control over where the "thing" goes or what it does. It really does give us a sense of control. Opening a book, turning the pages, even restraining ourselves from not looking at the ending, gives us decision controls. These were some of the thoughts my own family expressed at why they preferred print books.

Another was concerning notating and highlighting in a book. I pointed out that you could do something akin to that with an e-book but they didn't like the way it was done. It doesn't replicate how they would like. I wonder though if they used it enough they would become accustomed to the method and more accepting of it's intricacies? I admit that my only use for an e-book so far has been for personal reading, newspapers and magazines. I have not used an e-book for education and so I feel that I do not have the same sense that my children do on their use as an educational tool. Perhaps I would feel differently if I actually had to use an e-book for a course that I was taking or teaching.

As the discussion wore on, it really came down to just plain holding the book in your hands. There is something more personal and connected when you can feel the texture of the paper, the cover, the physical act of turning pages and the final satisfying turn of the last page to close the book when you have finished. I will continue to buy print books. I will also continue to buy e-books. I see merit with both but time will tell if society will ever fully embrace e-books or let go of print.

On a side note, as I was researching others' opinions of the use of e-books, I came across a good posting from June 3, 2011 by John C. Abell, New York Bureau Chief at Wired.com. He writes 5 Reasons Why E-Books Aren't There Yet and perhaps will give you some points to ponder.

Differentiation giggle

I was looking at my Google Reader this morning (if you don't use Google Reader I highly recommend it!) and saw Larry Ferlazzo's post. He mentions adding a new video to his Collection of the Best Laugh while you Cry Videos. This one was on testing but I decided to go to the list of videos and saw the following on differentiation. Differentiation is certainly one of the newest buzz words in education but good teachers have been doing this in their classrooms for many years. So this video caused me to chuckle and smile thinking of my colleagues' reactions which would have included heads nodding and shaking in agreement. I feel many of you would react the same. Enjoy:





Here is my education link for the day:
Grammar Girl as described on her page "Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing". Her posts as podcasts can also be read. This site would be helpful for students and teachers alike.

Thanksgiving? Nope, moving on.

It seems I have missed November. I can't even sneak in a post and pretend I was doing my monthly post. Oh well...it was a good month though. Passed very quickly. I have a Christmas program coming up that has really taken up most of my energy. It is an annual thing at my school but it always takes more work than I remember each year. I work with first through fifth graders that will sing a variety of songs. I have 8th grade students that will be playing handbells. They have proved to be more challenging than in previous years. Guitar students and a small vocal ensemble have a few things to perform also. So you can see that I am a bit preoccupied.

Biggest news- got a mac book pro! Loving it. Using it now. Beautiful screen. Nice keyboard. Easy to navigate.  I really do like using it. Have much to learn about it and how to utilize everything it is able to do better than a pc.

So on to my things to share- 

I recently assisted our reading specialist at our school to present a parent workshop about emergent readers. It was a very good workshop and the parents really appreciated the information. We worked to get her a wikispace up and running, hopefully to help her parents find resources. MissVercilloReading will be a place where she can keep her parents informed. One of the first links we included was to the site Starfall. A favorite site of all the primary teachers at my school, Starfall offers visitors phonics, ABC's, books to read and be read to plus calendars, games and so many wonderful interactives. It really is time well spent exploring. 

One other thing I would like to share is if you are a fan of twitter, you should follow TCEA (Texas Computer Educator Association).  I was reminded by a colleague who has taken up tweeting, that TCEA makes a tweet each day about free apps. They frequently mention great educational websites also. I have tried to make it a part of my routine to check twitter each day to see what the offerings are for the day. Even if you don't twitter, you can still look them up to see what recommendations they may have. 

December looks to be a flurry. Literally. Busy weeks ahead. Stay warm and make good choices!

STAR Camp

Tomorrow is the first day of the Dallas Diocesan Teacher Tech Camp. We call it STAR Camp for Stellar Teachers Aquiring Resources. This is our 3rd year and I have helped teach at each camp. The camp is a wonderful opportunity for teachers to learn about ways to integrate technology in their lessons. We have had some fantastic teachers come through and it is so exciting to see them work so hard. They are always enthusiastic and eager to learn about a tool that will help them engage their students in new and exciting ways. I am so excited and I love it!

So my link for today is the link to our STAR Camp wikispace. It is loaded with lots of information and links. It would be a great resource for anyone looking for tips and guides. Plus there is a link to our Delicious bookmarks. So check it out and maybe find something new.

October 2010

I have not been very good at making posts recently. It seems once school starts my life spins on super fast speed. Christmas program is fast approaching, TMEA and TCEA are in February. Catholic Schools week before that and then it will be Young Authors Day, Art Fest and Graduation.

So here is my link for today- just saw this one and think it is valuable. This comes from one of my daily reads Free Technology for Teachers. If you don't already read this blog you definitely need to bookmark it. Richard Byrne offers more ideas and links than you can imagine. Wonderful, wonderful resource for teachers. In a recent post he shares the link to Open Educational Resources. It is "a place for educators to post lessons and lesson materials that others can use. There are thousands of lessons organized by content area and grade level. After you've made your initial selections of content area and grade level you can refine your search by lesson type, material, media format, and usage rights." (Byrne)

As a fine arts teacher, I naturally look at the lessons for that area. It is common for lesson plan sites to not have many fine arts lessons that I find workable. However, at OER I was able to find a number of lessons that really are nice. The ease of search makes OER a new favorite of mine. I highly recommend this site and thank Richard Byrne for sharing this link.

Pick Six

I was reading a new friend's (Tim Holt) Plurk post today which led me to his blog Intended Consequences v 2.0. In it he discusses a story he heard about women choosing only 6 outfits to work with and so on. But the idea was to simplify your choices. So he offered the challenge of what would be the six essential web sites you would use for a week. He extended the challenge to also ask what 2 electronic gadgets would you choose for the week. He made some interesting comments in this post in that there is so many web tools for educators to use that often we are overwhelmed and paralized by the profuse offerings available. I couldn't agree more with this thought. It can become so frustrating when discovering all that is there you tend to feel like the kid at Baskin Robbins that really just wanted chocolate but finds the other 29 flavors equally enticing and what to do?

So given this challenge, what six websites would I have to have for a week? Let me try this:
1. my email
2. plurk or facebook? tough one there...(social networking)
3. It really isn't fair to pick my google reader is it? Although it does streamline my reading. (ed blogs)
4. kxas.com (news)
5.
6.
wow, so I really could live without alot.
Choosing two gadgets, much easier:
1. cell phone
2. laptop
I don't have many gadgets so that narrows my list quickly.
Well it certainly is a lesson in using less. The harder question I would have is as a teacher to select the short list of must have websites to help be more productive in the classroom. So here it it:
1. Edmodo (where my students and I live)
2. Voicethread
3. Podomatic
4. Wikispaces

So how would you answer these questions?