Tech Tuesday
Sorry for the long delay between posts, but I was becoming a first time daddy! Leonardo Nicholas Provenzano was born on Mother’s Day. He’s an adorable baby boy with the cutest little smile.
I wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who has been supportive of this blog for the past year and a half. I’ve worked very hard to provide the best sources to support the amazing things you do in your classrooms. However, this is going to be my last post.
Keeping up with the blog is a full time job. Reviewing sites and seeing where they would fit took many hours of outside of school and those are now reserved for Baby Leo. I still have my personal blog that will be updated regularly. You can stop by TheNerdyTeacher.com anytime. I’m still a full time English teacher and I want to focus my energy on creating amazing lessons for the kids in my classroom. I will still try to help teachers when I can, but in my current position, I can’t keep the blog going. Below you will find some great sites from friends of mine that share a tremendous amount of resources for the classroom. Please bookmark their site and see what they have to offer. It’s been fun sharing with all of you and hope to be able to do it again.
iLearntechnology.com
This is an awesome site run by one of my bestest friends. Kelly provides wonderful resources for all ages. She is always willing to help teachers with questions and point them in the right direction when needed. She is currently involved with creating a new school in Denver. She is a tech rockstar.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/
Here is a great site run by Richard Byrne. He fills it with tons of great resources for teachers to use in the classroom.
The Daring Librarian
I love this site. It is not for librarians only though. Gwenyth Jones is an awesome person that I will have the pleasure of presenting with this summer in Phildelphia at the national tech conference. She really takes an exciting approach to tech integration and shares amazing resources.
Thanks again for the support!
Friday, May 20, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Tech Tuesday May 3
The Epic Romeo and Juliet Project
After a few months of hardwork and dedication, the collaboration between Van Meter High School and Grosse Pointe has produced an amazing version of Romeo and Juliet that I am happy to share with you.
Grosse Pointe South students wrote, acted, directed and did everything possible to film Acts 1,3 and 5 while the students of Van Meter did the same for Acts 2 and 4. I'm very proud of what they accomplished and wanted to share the final product with all of you.
If you are a South teacher and you recognize any of the student actors, please compliment them. It wasn't easy to get in front of students and act out one of Shakespeare's most famous plays.
Enjoy.
The Epic Romeo and Juliet Project Movie
Smartboard Resources
Thanks to Melissa Edwards and her blog Technology: Figuring Out How The Pieces Fit for finding this resource and sharing it. Thanks Melissa!
Here is a link to some great SmartBoard resources. This is for all grades and covers the ranges of subjects. If you are having trouble finding sites to use on your SmartBoard that will keep your students involved in the lesson. Take a look around these different pages and pick out what you like.
http://livebinders.com/play/play?id=7376
P.S. Livebinders is really awesome and I use it in my classes. The kids like having the information in one place. Check out this post if you are curious about Livebinders.
- Give it a try!
After a few months of hardwork and dedication, the collaboration between Van Meter High School and Grosse Pointe has produced an amazing version of Romeo and Juliet that I am happy to share with you.
Grosse Pointe South students wrote, acted, directed and did everything possible to film Acts 1,3 and 5 while the students of Van Meter did the same for Acts 2 and 4. I'm very proud of what they accomplished and wanted to share the final product with all of you.
If you are a South teacher and you recognize any of the student actors, please compliment them. It wasn't easy to get in front of students and act out one of Shakespeare's most famous plays.
Enjoy.
The Epic Romeo and Juliet Project Movie
Smartboard Resources
Thanks to Melissa Edwards and her blog Technology: Figuring Out How The Pieces Fit for finding this resource and sharing it. Thanks Melissa!
Here is a link to some great SmartBoard resources. This is for all grades and covers the ranges of subjects. If you are having trouble finding sites to use on your SmartBoard that will keep your students involved in the lesson. Take a look around these different pages and pick out what you like.
http://livebinders.com/play/play?id=7376
P.S. Livebinders is really awesome and I use it in my classes. The kids like having the information in one place. Check out this post if you are curious about Livebinders.
- Give it a try!
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Tech Tuesday - April 13
Cool Science Stuff
Cell Biology Animation is a great site for 3D pictures of different aspects of Cellular Biology. Here is a great example of DNA Transcription. These are some great little pieces that could help the visual learners in the classroom.
Science Experiments - This site is filled with wonderful resources for science students and teachers. There are links to research sites, an experiment blog, science videos, and much much more. Take a look around and see what it has to offer.
iLearnTechnology
I wanted to use this Tech Tuesday to give a shout out to an amazing blogger and provide a great resource for all of the non-high school teachers in the district. If you only look at one other blog the rest of the school year, this one needs to be it.This blog needs to be your go to spot for all things Elementary School Tech. There are so many great reviews of sites and tools there have been times I actually wish I taught the little ones just so I could play with these sites. Try not to be overwhelmed by the volume of posts. Just take your time and sift through the different tools and find one that fits you and your class best.
ILearnTechnology is an amazing blog run by Kelly Tenkely (@ktenkely) and it won the 2009 Edublog Award for Educational Technology and Support Blog. The blog is very deserving of the award. Kelly provides a rundown on many different web applications on her blog. Here is a screen shot of a post of hers.
I stumbled upon this cool site and I wanted to share it with all of the teachers out there. We have many students that graduate school and have no use of their fancy graphing calculators in college. Graph It Forward is a great program designed to collect these unused calculators and distribute them to needy students by SAT time on June 5th. Having a graphing calculator can increase a students ACT Math score by as much as 4 points and their SAT score by 70! It seems crazy to think that students are attempting these tests without the tools necessary to be successful.
I think this could be a great project for school clubs/organizations to take up near the end of the school year. There are too many students that take these high stakes tests without calculators. Here is a great way to help many students get great scores on tests and help them get into college. I hope you can help this great group!
Win an iPad2!
You read that correctly. The free conference I am organizing, EdcampDetroit, is giving away 2 iPad2s to those who attend EdcampDetroit! If you decide to present at EdcampDetroit, you actually will have 2 chances to win the iPad2s! The conference is Saturday May 7th and we less than 50 spots left. I want to make sure the people in my district have a shot at these awesome tech tools. Besides the iPads, there is an iPod Nano, classroom subscriptions to wonderful websites like BrainPop and StrataLogica. TechSmith will be giving away copies of Camtasia and other goodies just for attending EdcampDetroit.
The best thing about this conference is that it is FREE! This is a great chance to get together with teachers from around the Metro Detroit area to share ideas and grow as a teachers. We already have a couple of Grosse Pointe teachers registered, but I would love to see more. Once word of the door prizes spread, registration is going to fill up quickly. Here is some of the key info you need about EdcampDetroit.
Excited? Click here to be taken to registration!
Cell Biology Animation is a great site for 3D pictures of different aspects of Cellular Biology. Here is a great example of DNA Transcription. These are some great little pieces that could help the visual learners in the classroom.
Science Experiments - This site is filled with wonderful resources for science students and teachers. There are links to research sites, an experiment blog, science videos, and much much more. Take a look around and see what it has to offer.
iLearnTechnology
I wanted to use this Tech Tuesday to give a shout out to an amazing blogger and provide a great resource for all of the non-high school teachers in the district. If you only look at one other blog the rest of the school year, this one needs to be it.This blog needs to be your go to spot for all things Elementary School Tech. There are so many great reviews of sites and tools there have been times I actually wish I taught the little ones just so I could play with these sites. Try not to be overwhelmed by the volume of posts. Just take your time and sift through the different tools and find one that fits you and your class best.
ILearnTechnology is an amazing blog run by Kelly Tenkely (@ktenkely) and it won the 2009 Edublog Award for Educational Technology and Support Blog. The blog is very deserving of the award. Kelly provides a rundown on many different web applications on her blog. Here is a screen shot of a post of hers.
As you can see, she breaks down each review into What it is, How to integrate and Tips. She does this with her post to not only explain how these tools work, but she offers suggestions on how to use them in the classroom. With some bloggers or tech people, they tell you about a tool, but fail to really tell you how they would or have used it in the classroom. Kelly is not one of those people. She works very hard to post many new and exciting reviews of interesting tools that can add something great to your every day lessons.
Kelly is also an avid tweeter and is always dropping bits of information that I, as well as many others, find very helpful throughout any given day. Every Elementary school teacher interested in integrating more technology should have ILearnTechnology bookmarked on their browser and saved on the desktop. Stop by her site and leave her a comment if you find something helpful or have a question about using the tool in your class. She is one of the friendliest people out there and is great at responding to comments on her posts.
I hope you find this site helpful and I will continue to direct other grade levels to blogs and people that might offer better suggestions and reviews of grade appropriate tech tools.
Graph it Forward
I stumbled upon this cool site and I wanted to share it with all of the teachers out there. We have many students that graduate school and have no use of their fancy graphing calculators in college. Graph It Forward is a great program designed to collect these unused calculators and distribute them to needy students by SAT time on June 5th. Having a graphing calculator can increase a students ACT Math score by as much as 4 points and their SAT score by 70! It seems crazy to think that students are attempting these tests without the tools necessary to be successful.
I think this could be a great project for school clubs/organizations to take up near the end of the school year. There are too many students that take these high stakes tests without calculators. Here is a great way to help many students get great scores on tests and help them get into college. I hope you can help this great group!
Win an iPad2!
You read that correctly. The free conference I am organizing, EdcampDetroit, is giving away 2 iPad2s to those who attend EdcampDetroit! If you decide to present at EdcampDetroit, you actually will have 2 chances to win the iPad2s! The conference is Saturday May 7th and we less than 50 spots left. I want to make sure the people in my district have a shot at these awesome tech tools. Besides the iPads, there is an iPod Nano, classroom subscriptions to wonderful websites like BrainPop and StrataLogica. TechSmith will be giving away copies of Camtasia and other goodies just for attending EdcampDetroit.
The best thing about this conference is that it is FREE! This is a great chance to get together with teachers from around the Metro Detroit area to share ideas and grow as a teachers. We already have a couple of Grosse Pointe teachers registered, but I would love to see more. Once word of the door prizes spread, registration is going to fill up quickly. Here is some of the key info you need about EdcampDetroit.
Excited? Click here to be taken to registration!
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