Saturday, March 08, 2008

CUE 2008 Internet Resoursarama

Attendees at this presentation get a chance to win a 1 year free subscription to BrainPop. You have to fill out an evaluation and be there during the drawing :)

Great Educational Sites (K-3):

Starfall is primarily designed for first grade, but can be used for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and second grade. It has a major focus on letter/sound recognition, and first grade phonics skills. The format is fun for your students and they can print out a worksheet for more practice with the skill they worked on.


Little Fingers is a on-line software company, meaning none of their software is on CD, you have to purchase and download it. They have all kinds of language arts and math games for elementary students. They also have free online games for preschool through 4th grade.





The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives (NLVM) is an NSF supported project that began in 1999 to develop a library of uniquely interactive, web-based virtual manipulatives or concept tutorials, mostly in the form of Java applets, (like you care about that) for mathematics instruction (Pre-K-12th grade). It's a free online source and has a free download trial desktop version. You can also click on links to have a Spanish version or French version.


Story Place is a site with games and read alouds organized by themes. Click on other themes to see the long list of titles. This site is easily navigated by your students.




Count Us In has 15 Math games for little ones covering counting to measuring and everything in between. Each game is designed to help children understand basic concepts in mathematics. All of these games require the Flash 5 Player or higher to work online.


Gamequarium is a site with lots of links to games for all subjects and the links are lots of fun for your studens (and they're learning, too)! It's organized by K-2 to 3-5. It links to lots of other sites, mostly all good.


Storyline on-line is a free online video streaming program featuring members of the Screen Actors Guild reading stories aloud. They talk about the stories and how children can get the book. It also has printable activities that go along with the stories.


Fun Brain is a site first graders love. It's engaging and they like to navigate on their own.




PBS Kids- Between the Lions has great short videos on phonics rules and letter sounds. The PBS site has lots of pages with their TV characters themes. There's lots of printable activities as well.




Computer Centers This is a teacher created managed site, that has links for students to work on the current skill in the first grade N-MUSD pacing plan. It's updated for each Houghton Mifflin reading theme and is easily navigated by students while directing them to a limited area of links. It links to a kinder centers page and a second grade page.


HMTech Wikispaces is a site designed for those teachers that think teaching Houghton Mifflin is too all consuming to have time to integrate technology or teachers that feel their classrooms have been conquered by the worksheet. We hope to change your mind and give you hope. This site has been made by teachers that use technology daily to motivate and engage students in authentic learning, differentiate instruction, integrate many standards into one lesson and like to have FUN!:) It IS a work in progress. Please, please add ideas!


Brainormous created by Aaron Turner, a flash script writer, is a web site with games for learning number facts. It focuses on third grade multiplication skills, using a solar system theme. Students go on missions to objects in the solar system and to get their fuel for each trip they need to do math facts. The faster and more correct they are they get more fuel. It also has addition and subtraction games that can be used at lower grades and of course for higher grade students who haven't mastered their addition, subtraction or multiplication facts. You can play free on line or download the software at a very low price. If you can it's always good to pay the creator for his/her time and effort to create these cool things for our students to use.

BrainPop is a library of short videos on everything from the Underground Railroad to the atomic model to Shakespeare. It has Interactive quizzes for assessment and enrichment materials like experiments and creative activities ideas to supplement the movies. Topics are aligned with state and national education standards and searchable by state standards. They're also by subject area; Science, Math, English, Social Studies, Health, Technology and Arts and Music. Right now the library consists of more than 600 movies for grades 3-12 and they are constantly expanding. All the videos are closed-captioned. Many are also available in Spanish at es.brainpop.com. The videos are hosted by an orange robot named Moby and his bubby Tim.

You can get a 30 day free trial with the access code PALM2008, but you have to activate it by March 21st.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

OC CUE Tech Festival: Web Resources for Primary Grades

Finding resources on the web that are specific to your grade level and to the skills and strategies you are teaching on any given day is not easy. You may be looking for material to help you teach or a site that gives your students independent practice in the skill of the day. Sites that offer interactive activities to reinforce the skills your students are learning and that require only a small amount of your time for instruction are the ideal.
Our vision was and still is to create a collaborative site with links to interactive sites - students can use independently, project sites that incorporate 21st Century skills and links to downloadable lesson presentations for teachers; all pretested by teachers, and that support our curriculum standards.
Before you get into checking out web sites, you should have a social book marking account. Furl is one source for social book marking. Once you set up an account you can book mark sites no matter whose computer you're on. All the bookmarks are kept on an on-line site you send them to. If you don't already have a social bookmarking account you can set up one with Furl.net, then you're ready to check out some resource sites. If you're not on your own computer use the link http://www.furl.net/doc/get_started to get back into your account and set up the furl button link on your own computer later. Use the get started link and log in (top right) using your user name and password (that you hopefully wrote down).
Our first site hmtech.wikispaces.com is a wiki that has links for each week in our K-3 HM Reading Themes. Right now this is just a K-3 site but, the great thing about wikispaces is that any one can post to the site and we're hoping some teachers of other grades who have created presentations or used links will post links to their work for other teachers to use on the site.

At the time we created this site there was little online support from HM. But other groups were also gathering materials and links. Two good examples of these collaborations are Santa Maria-Bonita School District
and YAHOO WEB GROUPS
These are groups you can join and download files or contribute files that support using HM. Some groups can be joined immediately and others have a moderator who reviews your application before they email you that you've been accepted. To join a group you must first open a free account at my.yahoo.com or click on one of the group links below and click on sign up on the top left. After you have your verification email you can go to groups.yahoo. and find your group under "Find a Group" or click on one of the group links below and then click on sign in.

hm_kinder

5TH GRADE GROUP

HM SHARING ALL GRADES

HM SHARING 1ST GRADE

HM SHARING 2ND GRADE


HM CHAT
This is a chat group, started in Missouri, who posts times for future chats. This group is intended for use by teachers, specialists, and administrators using Houghton Mifflin Reading programs. It is a forum for educators to share ideas, discuss strategies, and ask questions of each other about using these programs to their fullest potential.

Once we got our site going we thought what we really needed was a site with links and presentations not just for reading but for all our curriculum and techtips.wikispaces.com came into being.


Computer Centers are links for students to use during UA or other practice time.

There's more! Check out the posts
Tons of Resources
from Gail Lovely (NECC 2006)
Visual Literacy Resources from Lynell Burmark( NECC 2006)
Primary Source Materials from Kathy Schrock (NECC 2006)

At the NECC 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia, the Teacher Tube(a great teacher resource) execs were recruiting and offered me suggestions on how to get my site funded. They are looking for teacher created videos to share with other teachers. Just a sample: