Tech Tuesday for December

Sorry for the long delay in the Tech Tuesday posts. It's been a crazy semester and I wanted to make sure I shared the best resources available. Here are some good ones you might like.

NRich

This is a Math site geared toward making Math more engaging with various lessons. They offer games and lessons that work on Interactive Whiteboards. Resources are broken into 4 groups. K-5, 2-8, 5-10 and 11 and 12. Do some digging around to find the lesson that best fit your class.

How to use your Outlook Calendar

Here is a video that shows you some tips and tricks to Microsoft Outlook.



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.

Diigo

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that from my students. Another one I love to hear is, "What do you mean I can't use Wikipedia as a source?" As an English Teacher, I have spent many long hours teaching students how to conduct proper searches on the internet. They should never be able to tell you that they were never taught how to properly cite information or where to look that information up.

With that having been said, sometimes I just want my students to look at a few specific websites for a specific project. I have started using a great site I want to share with you great teachers. The site is called Diigo and it is a bookmarking site.

"Why do I need a bookmarking site?" Well, bookmarking sites are a way for you to save all of those wonderful websites you have found or I have sent you. We all have bookmarks on our computer at home and at school. The problem with saving them on our home and work computers is that we can access what we have on the other computer. Diigo, and similar bookmarking sites, solve this problem.

Bookmarking sites save all of your bookmarks on their site so you can access them from any computer with internet access. If you find a great site at home while working, just bookmark it with Diigo and you will not have to worry about emailing yourself the link. The links are very easy to share with other teachers and even students. There are tons of great things you can do with this wonderful tool.

Highlighting - You can highlight specific information before you bookmark the site. This can save people time when there is to much information to read through and all you want is a few lines.

Sticky Notes - You can places notes on the highlighted areas to remind you of their relevance. There have been too many times where I have bookmarked a site and I could not remember why I saved it a day or so later.

Groups - You can create specific groups and send pages you find to that group only. You can make the group a public group (anyone can join) or a private group (you select who can join). I have used the groups to store specific websites I want different classes to look at. It has cut research time in half for my students on various projects.

Email - You can directly email any site you find to yourself or other teachers. You can create an address book and send the site directly to students or to other teachers in your department.

Teacher Account - You can request to sign up for a Teacher Account from Diigo. This will allow you to sign up students to join your specific groups that you have created. I have a Teacher Account and I plan on using it with my Freshmen for their research project. Goodbye note cards and hello Diigo.

Linking Accounts - Diigo allows you to link your blog and Twitter accounts to your Diigo account. This way, if you bookmark something, it can be posted to you blog and your Twitter. You can set up a your account to post all the bookmarks you have made to your blog. It can be set for a daily, twice daily or weekly. This is a great way to save you time. You can also link your iPhone to Diigo as well. Download the Diigo App and you will have access to anything that you have bookmarked. It might be available for other phones, but you would have to check for that.

The best way to start bookmarking after you create your account is to download the toolbar. It will sit at the top of your browser and you just click the bookmark button when you want to share a website. There are many other great parts of Diigo that you can use. It's best to log on and play around a bit.

Give it a try!

Tech Tuesday November 22

Here are some resources that I thought all of you might find helpful.

Web 2.0 Tools

Here is a great collection of web tools that you could use in your classroom.

iPads in the classroom

Here is a collection of resources on how to utilize iPads in the classroom.

Interactive Websites

This is a great collection of websites that work wonderful on the Smartboard.

Science Interactive Websites

Here are some interactive websites that are for science teachers that work wonderfully on the Smartboard.

Feel free to give these a try and havea wonderful Thanksgiving Break.

One last awesome site. Enjoy.

Tech Tuesday for November 8th

Happy Tech Tuesday everyone. I hope you are all having a great PD day. Here are some things you might find useful.

Superstar Teacher

I met a man while I was at AuthorSpeak2011 last week and we talked about how tough it is for teachers to afford the the little things in class sometimes. Many of us talked with Todd about the way money is spent and how many teachers are fighting for the same scraps as others. Well, Todd Thornton has set up mini grants for teachers all over! Follow the guidelines and you can earn up to $500 for your classroom. Check out the site now before all of the money is gone!

Digital Storytelling Apps

Do you have an iPad and are you looking for apps that will allow you to make fun and exciting stories to share with your students? Well, here is the site you have been looking for. It's a simple Google site that offers a few different apps and explains how they could be used in digital storytelling. See if you can use any of these in your class or at home.

Algebra and Geometry Games

Here is a link to some fun Algebra games. The tabs say Grade 6-8, but this might be useful at the HS level. Take a look and see if these would work in your class or at home with your kids.

Gary's Social Media Count

Here is a very cool graphic that can show you the role Social Media has in the world today. Our students are responsible for much of the content that is being created on the web right now. It's important to keep that in mind as we look for different ways to infuse technology into our classroom. It might not seem important to you, but your students might be ready for something completely different.

- Give it a try!