August Squeeze! Socratve and LiveBinder

I did this! Not such a slacker, eh?

 I seriously though about this being the last day of August and if I wasn't going to be a total slacker I better get a post in. So pathetic!

But- I do have two good tools that if I did not mention before they certainly deserve a closer look. Let's start with Socrative. Awesome FREE Web 2.0 tool. Create a free account and your students are able to log in either through the web or the iPad app with no account necessary from them. Once there you can use Socrative for review questions, exit tickets, test, and more. Socrative is especially helpful for formative assessment because it makes the checking quick and easy. There are games to play with any of your tests or quizzes. My students loved the Space Race. If your students have access to computers or iPads on a regular basis you may find this a regular part of your lessons. 

The other web based tool that I finally used to create and share with people is LiveBinder. LiveBinder is exactly what it sounds like- a binder, with tabs and everything. What I used it for was a professional development session my principal requested I help him put together. He gave me two videos he wanted us to view and a series of questions to answer. The challenge was how could I put this all together online and keep it all in one place? LiveBinder to the rescue! 

What I discovered was that by using the tabs and inserting the different content choices I could put videos on a page and have sub tabs underneath each main tab containing a question to answer. I then inserted a Padlet (another great web tool) right on the page. All the teachers had to do was read, click, type and they were done. So simple! I also love the option to make the binder private and require a passcode to enter. This made our PD just for our school.

My principal was happy, I was thrilled and I think the teachers found it easy also.

I have been at workshops where a leader has used LiveBinders to organize the details of the workshop but I had never used it to create something for someone to actually use. So....Go check out LiveBinders. There are many great public binders that might be helpful for your own use. But do think about how you might be able to use this for your students.

WatchKnowLearn and Reading Bear

Avoiding what I should be doing, I was looking through my reader and Larry Ferlazzo's post about phonics caught my eye. He happens to mention a site called Reading Bear.  I went to view the Reading Bear site and was quite impressed. This is a great resource for teaching phonics. Their site says they have over "1200 vocabulary items and 50 presentations". If you read the About Us section of Reading Bear you will find that this site is completely free and funds are provided by a Memphis area donor who wishes to remain anonymous. I am amazed and truly grateful as a teacher that something like this is out there for teachers and free. You do not have to create an account to use the site. If you choose to do so, you will be able to save scores and progress. Teachers can also make accounts for their students. Excellent site. Do, do, do take a look!

And to top it off.....as I scrolled to the bottom of the page to find out more I saw that it comes from WatchKnowLearn.org. Another WOW for my day! WatchKnowLearn is free educational videos in a very nicely organized way. Music alone has 889 videos. Over 7,000 in the History category. You may have found many of the videos they have listed but to have everything organized all in one place is pretty cool. The videos come from all different sources but are considered kid safe for ages 1 - 18.

Again, this site is done by some very generous people. Generous with time and money and the belief that everyone should have the opportunity to learn. Thank you to these folks and others like them that have made educating others their mission in life. And thank you Larry Ferlazzo who leads me to so many wonderful sites.

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.

Vocaroo - online audio recording

Our STAR Camp, a tech camp for teachers, begins tomorrow. We will be focusing most of our time on the web tool Voicethread, which I will discuss in another post. But we will also be giving teachers a list of web 2.0 tools to evaluate and create a Voicethread about them. So I am sitting here this evening looking at a list of sites and adding more to the list. I came across Vocaroo during my search.

Pretty nice site. I remember seeing this site one other time but I clearly had forgotten about it. Vocaroo lets you record audio online, save it, download it, even get a QR code linked to it. I was quite impressed. There is no time limit in recording but they do state that internet interruptions could easily affect your recording time.

QR code for my Vocaroo

I was considering the possible classroom uses and I really could have used this site last school year. I had recorded some first graders reading and wanted a safe place to put their voices and share with their parents. I couldn't find anything and didn't do anything with the recordings. If I had remembered Vocaroo, I would have recorded them here, gotten the QR code and sent it to their parents to listen to. That would have been pretty cool. Still may do this since I still have the recordings.

Vocaroo is worth exploring. I am looking for other audio recording sites that are free to use. Preferably something that would let me record and distribute securely.

Weebly

I was first introduced to Weebly a few years ago while I was working on my master's degree. I didn't see anything special and to be honest with you, I really didn't spend much time with it. I have since rediscovered Weebly and am thoroughly impressed with the updates and features.
Here is a link to a site I made just playing with some of the things available: Adventures with Rose

One of the nicest things about working with Weebly is the ease of adding elements. A simple drag and drop adds an element and the directions to upload pictures or add text is very easy to do. I did not find changing, adding, rearranging elements to be frustrating at all. With the free account, you do have some limitations and this is the one thing that does frustrate me. For instance, you are not able to upload videos. Now you can link or embed them if they are hosted on YouTube, TeacherTube or Vimeo. All fine and good, but I really wish you could upload even short videos without upgrading to the Pro account. I guess that is one of the trade offs you make for all the other really cool things about it. Audio is also only under the Pro account.

Getting a Pro account is pretty easy though and if you can get 5 teachers to sign up using your reference code you are upgraded to Pro for free. Not a bad deal and actually the price for the Pro is very reasonable. Now why go to Pro? Well you get more student accounts. And this is where Weebly really has a nice advantage over other websites. You can created classes and each student can create their own website. You can make the class sites public or private that can only be accessed with a password. What a great place for your students to publish their writings or create a digital portfolio. But you also don't have to worry about strangers lurking about your classes websites. No email address is needed for the student accounts. If your students are under 13 you do need to get parent permission to use the site. There are many sample blogging parent consent letters out on the web, so look around and adapt one for your situation. And hey, if you now think you want to try it, and you are feeling generous, why not use this link and help me get that Pro account? http://education.weebly.com/referral.php?oTOXFMo3ZIAb897n

So will I switch and use Weebly with my students? I will probably try this with at least one class. I am moving to a new school and they will be BYOD in the coming school year. This could be just the thing to make my class ROCK!

Summer is for exploring

So here I am, once again exploring websites. I have a habit of looking for one and thing and finding many other things that are even closely related to what I was originally looking for. Isn't that how all the famous discoveries happen? By accident? Remember though, with any site, you should always preview and look for anything that would not be suitable for your students.

 iFakeText
Fun site that lets you create a fake iPhone text conversation. The one on the left is a conversation between my dogs. Your students could use this web tool to create conversations between any two people or animals or anything you like. Such as 2 different shapes. No account needed and no mention of under age 13 use not permitted. The site does contain adds.

Newspaper Clip Generator
Create what looks like a newspaper clip. You choose the paper's name, headline, date and write a brief "article".  Once generated, there is a download link for your image. You can't direct link to the image and the images are deleted from their servers after a short time. It is recommended that you do not use real names of people or newspapers. There nothing in their privacy about use by under age 13 and there are no accounts created. Drawback: The site is not independent of other generators and they may not be appropriate for your students.

Copy Paste Character  ♬ ☺
Looking for a special character? ✿ This neat little site lets you copy a character by just clicking, go to where you want it and paste. Simple. ✯ And if you use a Mac, there are also emoji 🐶 to use. If you prefer the html code for the symbol that is available also. ☠ Fun! No account is necessary to use this website. I do not see any other issues you may have with your students, whatever their ages.

July- Time to explore- PhotoFunia

I was looking at a blog that I bookmarked a long time ago called Techno Constructivist by Carl Anderson, a teacher from Minnesota. Way back in January 2010 he made a post with a list of sites that were, at the time, safe for kids to use. The sites had no age restriction, required no accounts and could be used freely without violating COPA. So I started perusing the list and, as I would expect, have found that some of the sites have changed. We all have seen sites that start free and end up with those special subscriptions that have all the cool stuff.

Well here is one on the list that I like, PhotoFunia. This is a free online photo editing site. No account needed to play, but they do have a statement about the site is intended for over the age of 13. There are so many options of how you can use your picture. I decided to use one called Big Painting.

Now tell me that isn't cool! I could play for hours on this site transforming my image to all sorts of things. There are tabs for Effects, Labs and Filters. All have a variety of fun effects. Of course I had to do another. Here is the same pic but with the Lego effect.

So much fun! There is also an app for your smartphone.This site would give your students many options to explore. Again, remember the age 13 clause. As an art teacher, this site would give an opportunity to discuss how each technique gives the picture a different feeling. The lighting, intensity of the colors, illusion of texture would all be points to discuss. Go check out PhotoFunia and have some fun with your photos.

ISTE 2012 and new discoveries

This time last year I attended my first ISTE conference held in Philadelphia. It was pretty amazing and there was soooo much to see and learn. I loved it and it would have been great to attend ISTE last week. Next year it will be in San Antonio so I will definitely be attending that one. Very excited!

So I spent the day perusing twitter looking at all the #ISTE2012 tweets. I knew this would be a good way to see what was trending and grab some links, etc from those who were there. A few years ago I did the same thing with TCEA following it virtually. Not quite the same experience but I was still able to learn many new things. I also went throughout the ISTE 2012 program online and looked at the listed sessions to see which had links posted or handouts. I was able to gather quite a list and put it all in a Google doc to access later. I haven't spent much time exploring all the links but here are two that I like.

When Picnik went away, I was looking for a similar online photo editing site that was free, of course. I wrote about one I found called Fotoflexor. Really like it and would definitely recommend it. I have come across another that looks and behaves much like Picnik did. This one is called iPiccy. Very easy to navigate the site and if you were a Picnik user you will find it very user friendly. It had nearly all the same tools and free. So now there are two great options for online photo editing.

http://www.smore.com

The next site I looked at is called Smore. It is still in beta but you can try it now. You can make some pretty cool flyers/posters and share or link. Here is one I created about my pretty pup, Rose. Once you have created an account and make your flyer, there is a settings selection so you can make your flyer private. You can also keep your "profile badge" off so it cannot be seen. Features like this make it a promising web tool for students to use. The site offers templates to use or create your own. Choices for styles, backgrounds, colors, and fonts. Short learning curve and nice looking when finished. Go take a look at Smore where you can "design beautiful online flyers and publish instantly".

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.

Snow anyone?

I just finished my recent post, but I had to add this site: Popular Front Snowdays. Here you can make your own snowflake and send it to a friend via email. You can add their banner to your site and just generally have fun with snow! Who doesn't like cutting out paper snowflakes?

One year I had my students make paper snowflakes to decorate my classroom. I was very surprised though at how many of them had never made them before. A higher percentage than I would have guessed.

***Update on the Snowflake making*** One of the teachers at my school had her students create a snowflake, print it in a greeting card format and write a Christmas greeting to one of the teachers in our school.  Teachers could also use the same idea but have students write cards to people in nursing homes or hospitals.

Or how about decorating a virtual gingerbread man? Sprint Sweets- Very cute. Both of these sites would be fun on a Smart Board.

Perhaps you would like to make your dog or cat sing Christmas songs? Then head on over to Critter Carols from Petcentric. Here is one I made with my pup, Rose.

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!

Howling Halloween

So I am trying out the iPhone app for Blogger on my iPad. My thinking is maybe I can make more posts and stay current. I'm not sure if this is the best way to do this but it is certainly worth a try. I guess this is my test post.

Halloween Links:
Larry Ferlazzo is an amazing educator and his blog is one of my very favorites. I know I have mentioned him before and will continue to remind people whenever I can. A nice feature of his sites is the collection of the "best of" lists. A very extensive list of the best sites for just about anything you are looking for. I'm going to try and post a link here and not sure what it will look like but here is a link to his Halloween resources. http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/05/the-best-websites-for-learning-about-halloween/
Be sure to look for the virtual pumpkin carving sites. They are great to use on a SmartBoard.

Happy Halloween!

September and bad blogging

It's September. Not the first of the month but pretty much half way through the month. I have been trying so hard to be a good blogger. A friend of mine told me that I needed to keep plugging away even if I only make one post a month. My goal was once a week and we can see that didn't happen. So at the very least I am going for once a month. Have to think positive though that I will make more posts. I'm trying. Okay enough whining....

Two interesting tools today. I was looking at a really wonderful wikispace called Cool Tools for Schools. Very nice collection of web 2.0 tools to use. Among the larger list of links I tried one called Quikmaps. I really liked it. Whenever I talk about musicians or composers in my music class I always like to show where they lived and traveled. It's hard to talk about Germany if the students have no clue where it is in relationship to where they live. Besides the fact that I just love maps! Right now we are listening to college fight songs in my music classes and I created a map showing where our school is and where the two colleges we have listened to are located. This link will take you to the map I created. You can add markers, text and save the map. You can use a variety of maps such as Yahoo, Google or Bing. I chose a Google Map. Very user friendly. You need an account but you do not need an email to get a free account. It is in beta but definitely worth a look.

You have seen this (to your left) before probably. I know I have. In fact I think I remember seeing them before I ever saw the gaining popularity QR code (on your right). This is a Microsoft Tag. You will need a Windows Live ID to create a free account but they are as simple to create as QR Codes. I don't know which will be most popular. You can get QR code readers and Tag readers for your smart phones. It seems I've seen more QR that Tags. But Microsoft has a pretty large footprint so who knows. So scan this with your Tag Reader app and it will take you to my school music wikispace. Download a QR reader app and try this QR code. One the quickest sites to create a QR code is Kaywa. Either way using these in the classroom would be a new way to engage your students.

Digital Storytelling

I happened to see a link on Facebook saying that the DEN Summer School archives were available. There was a lot of information about digital storytelling. I looked at a list of sites and came across TripWow. Very fun and makes a pretty cool travel video from your pictures. I played with it a bit and used some pics from my trip up north. Kind of reminds me of animoto but with a geographical twist. See for yourself:

Summer Trip to Pennsylvania Slideshow: Mary’s trip from Red Oak, Texas, United States to 8 cities Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Indiana, Pottstown and Ambridge was created by TripAdvisor. See another United States slideshow. Create a free slideshow with music from your travel photos.

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.

June

I'm really trying. I think about writing all the time but I guess that doesn't get the words on the page does it? Well I keep coming back and when I do I try to bring something to share.
We started our third year for our Teacher Tech Camp in the diocese. Today seemed to go well. I don't think we lost anyone. We introduced them to Rubistar. Rubistar is part of 4teachers.org and you can create or find some wonderful rubrics to use. I really love rubrics and this site makes it super easy to make them.
We also shared what we called "talking tools". There was Voki and Blabberize. Both seemed well liked, especially Voki. And we made everyone create a wikispace to use in their classrooms. I worry about this one because we had them all create a K-12 account but they need to verify their emails to go on. I am afraid most of them won't remember to do that. We will know tomorrow when we try to embed something in their wiki. Hmmmm....
Okay, one more cool thing. I have been playing with the magazine covers on BigHugeLabs.com. Fun fun fun! We got a new golden retriever recently so I used a really cute picture of her and created a cover. Again, another fun site.

Out like a Lion and a little Mouse Mischief

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dtchristner/

I seem to recall a phrase that if March comes in like a lamb it goes out like a lion. Not really lion-like weather but it is a rather chilly end to the month here. Feels more like fall than heralding in the warm Texas spring.

Remember that commercial where the man hits the end of the internet? I feel a bit like that today. I attended a really nice tech conference on Saturday and, other than one very cool thing (which I will review here shortly), I really didn't walk away with anything that earth shattering. Makes you think if now that we have all these amazing web 2.0 tools, just how are we going to use them that is different from all the other ways? A definite challenge. I'm weary of hearing about how "fun Wordle is" (and it is!), or "use Wallwisher as an exit ticket from your class" (would love to but it is blocked at our school) or "everyone knows about wikis"(I know, I have one!). So now what? Our challenge is take these great web tools and get our kids to do something wonderful. I still think we are too focused on teacher centered use of these tools and not enough on what can you do with your students.

Okay- so the really cool idea I did learn about:
Mouse Mischief
This is a free download from Microsoft. All you need are wireless mice and the software. Now there are a few conditions and you'll need to read about this on their site, but if you have ever wanted to use the clicker response systems in your classroom, well, well now is your chance. Someone put it as the economical clicker response system (or the poor man's crs!). One of the presenters was a first grade teacher from our diocese and her students absolutely love using Mouse Mischief. They can be used individually or as team response. So even if you can't afford enough wireless mice for a whole class set, you can buy enough to make teams and that would cut your costs considerably. Looks like a very do-able thing to do. I think I am going to recommend this to our teams at my school. I suggest if you are reading this you take a look too!

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?