Tracy's "Techy" Tidbits: February 2012

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Tech in 20 Elementary Edition

St. Patrick's Day Fun!

Enchanted Learning Activities and More

St. Patrick's Day Project by Jen

Grammaropolis

Wonderopolis

Math is Fun!

Geo Games

Peep and the Big Wide World

Tech in 20 March Edition Elementary

Monday, February 27, 2012

Technology Professional Development

Resource Links for Digital Storytelling:

Animoto for Educators

Flixtime

Domo Animate

Storybird

Lulu.com

Zooburst

Shidonni.com

Kerpoof

Digital Storytelling Live Binder

Fostering Creativity and Innovation with Digital Storytelling Prezi

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Tech Make and Take: Photoslide Shows with On-line Sites

Sites to Use for Creating Photoslide Shows with On-Line Websites:

Photosnack

Animoto for Educators

Flixtime

Photovisi

Roxio Photoshow

Little Bird Tales

Windows Photo Story 3

Frequently Asked Questions for Windows Photo Story 3

Air Pano- 360 Degree Panoramas of the World

AirPano offers dozens of spectacular 360 panoramas of famous landmarks and cities around the world. The AirPano panoramas can be set to auto-play with a music accompaniment or you can navigate the panoramas manually. To find a panorama on AirPano you can browse the listings or search by keyword. There are some beautiful panoramas of The Pyramids of Giza, Victoria Falls, Capetown, South Africa and so many more! If you teach geography or you just want to show your students the world, this is a site to check out.

6 Useful YouTube Channels for History Teachers

I follow a blog, Free Tech 4 Teachers, and on the blog the other day there was a post about quality History channels through YouTube that have U.S. History as well as World History video shorts and historical archived clips. If you're a history teacher, particularly a U.S. History teacher, here are six YouTube channels where you can find some good short video clips to use in your lessons.

Hip Hughes History

Dizzo95

The National Archives and Records Administration

New York Historical Society

World History and Other Stuff

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Read Across America Week is Coming!

NEA’s Read Across America Day is a nationwide reading celebration that takes place annually on March 2—Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Across the country, thousands of schools, libraries, and community centers participate by bringing together kids, teens, and books, and you can too! Incorporate these guides and activities to celebrate reading with young people.

Seussville Educators Printables and Activities

Why Read Seuss and More!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! (Book a day activities)

Seuss-tastic Pinterest Finds Through Teaching Blog Addict

Dr. Seuss Teaching Activities and Lessons

NEA's Read Across America Links

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Come Join Me for February Technology!

Join Me at the Tech Center!

Thursday, February 23rd from 4:00-6:00 p.m. at the Technology Center Tech Lab

Tech "Make and Take": Creating Photoslide Shows Using On-Line Sites

Have you been taking pictures of projects and class parties?Want to advertise your Student of the Month?What about introducing a lesson with pictures to get the students engaged? Bring your pictures, or video and create slide shows using web-based sites like: Photosnack, Blabberize, Flixtime, Photovisi, Roxio Photo Show and much more! Be ready for the next day's lesson with a photoslide show!

Monday, February 27th from 4:00-5:00 p.m. at the Technology Center Tech Lab

Technology Professional Development: Fostering Creativity and Innovation with Digital Storytelling

Most educators recognize the importance of helping students develop their creative and innovative abilities. One way of doing so is through the use of digital storytelling, in which students use digital tools to create and share their own stories. It is an excellent way for students to tell who they are, share their experiences, or reflect on what they’ve learned. We’ll also focus on some of the many web tools available to help make digital storytelling a breeze. Kids love to be creative and share stories about themselves…digital storytelling is the perfect way to let them do it!

If you would like to participate in one or both of the workshops, please email an R.S.V.P. to tracyharris@nixaschools.net

Hope to see you there!

3 Ways to Create Audio Messages for Your Blog or Website

Adding an audio message to your classroom blog or website can be a good way to help deliver important messages to your students and their parents. Having an audio message, even if it's the same as a text announcement, increases the chances that a visitor to your blog will take notice of something important. Adding an audio message to your blog or website is not difficult to do. Here are three great sites to help you incorporate audio messages into your blog or website:

Vocaroo is a free service that allows users to create audio recordings without the need to install any software. You don't even have to create an account to use Vocaroo. All you need to provide is a microphone. Vocaroo provides the embed code for you. You can also download your recording, just look for the download link at the bottom of the page (it's small and easily overlooked).

Audio Pal is a free service that allows you to quickly and easily record audio messages to post your blog or website. You can record your Audio Pal message by phone, through your computer's microphone, or by uploading a recording. Messages are limited to sixty seconds so you must be succinct. When you have a recording with which you're happy, enter your email address and an embed code will be sent to you almost immediately.

Voki for Educators is a service that allows users to create animated audio avatars that they can embed into their wikis, blogs, and websites.

Resources for Teaching and Learning Anatomy and Physiology

For the High School Biology and Anatomy teachers, these next few sites may help out with visualizing how the human body works from the inside.

Healthline Body Maps provides interactive three dimensional models for learning about human anatomy. Body Maps has male and female models. The models have eight layer views, from skin to skeletal, that you can select.

BioDigital Human offers interactive 3D models of human anatomy. You can turn on and off different views according to which body systems you want to view. The models can be rotated 360 degrees and the labels have an audio play-back option. If you are going to use BioDigital Human in your classroom, there are two things to keep in mind. First, the models are 100% anatomically correct. Second, you do need to have your browser updated to the latest version possible to experience all that BioDigital Human has to offer.

In Sponge Lab's Biology Build a Body students construct a human body system-by-system. To build a body students drag and drop into place the organs and bones of a human body. Each organ and bone is accompanied by a description of the purpose of that bone or organ.

Anatomy Arcade is a collection of games about human body systems. The collection is categorized by both body system and game type.

Get Body Smart has number of tutorials and quizzes divided into eight categories of anatomy and physiology. Each category is divided into subcategories where visitors will find quizzes for each topic. The tutorials and quizzes are best suited to use in advanced high school anatomy and physiology courses.

Today is Tebow and Seuss, Of Course!

Today is the day! America's Biggest Storytime, featuring Tim Tebow, reading Green Eggs and Ham will start at 8:00 a.m. CST. This will be the fifth America's Biggest Storytime so it should be a great time to pull up a chair, get the kiddos settled, and listen to a great book!

Friday, February 10, 2012

Tech in 20 Summit Intermediate Edition

Math Sites:

Game Classroom (Great for Communication Arts too!)

Math Live

Manga High

Center of Practice (Mean, Median, Mode and Range)
Bamzooki

Rag to Riches

Landshark Game from Everyday Math

Slider Math

Train Race

Pete's Power Point Station (for power points, kids sites, and additional teacher sites)

Communication Arts:

Context Clues

Context Clue Livebinder

Internet 4 Classrooms (some inference sites as well)

Learning Today Context Clues

Context Clues Classroom Jeopardy

Web 2.0 Tools and Bloom's Taxonomy: How do They Stack Up?

I was reading an interesting article from the Tech and Learning blog about Web 2.0 tools and Bloom's Taxonomy this morning about how certain sites we think may be higher on the Bloom's chart than what they actually are. But my question is.... is it not HOW the site is being applied and NOT just the site? For those of us who use a lot of these sites, this article is a great reinforcement of the above question. It is really worthy to check it out and read!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Tech Academy Level 1 for February

Have you tried Farcebook?

Helpful Web Tools:

Sweet Search

Game Classroom

Tripline

Google Lit Trips

Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers

Blabberize

Photo Slideshows and Digital Storytelling:

Flixtime

Photovisi Photo Collage Maker

Little Bird Tales

Roxio Photo Slideshows

Animoto for Education

Breaking Barriers Essay Contest for Grades 4-8

The Breaking Barriers Essay Contest through Scholastic is a chance for students from all backgrounds in grades 4–8 to share their personal stories and show how they use Jackie Robinson’s values to face their own barriers.
Contest Deadline: February 21, 2012