Tech Tuesday - Feb 1

Storybook Web

Storybook Web is great collection of activities for young children aged 5-8. The site uses popular stories by authors Scoular Anderson, Debi Glioro, Mairi Hedderwick and Frank Rodgers. There are many interactive activities that teachers can do with their students as they watch and listen to authors read parts of their books and answer questions on how they are inspired to write. The site has writing activities for students that really allows them to connect to the story and the author.

Storybook Web is a great site for teachers to use with students to support their love of reading and writing. More and more computer sites are becoming interactive because kids want to play and learn at the same time. Storybook Web does a great job of combining these two elements into one site. This site is worth saving in your bookmarks for hours of reading fun with with students.

Thanks to iLearnTechnology for the find. 

Chemistry Livebinder

Here is a Chemistry Livebinder from my friend Kelly. She runs an amazing site called iLearnTechnology.This Livebinder is filled with videos, multiple periodic tables, links to various chemistry simulations, chemistry websites and chemistry games. I think this is a great site for Chemistry teachers looking to integrate more technology in their class on on their website. Their are many resources on here that students could find useful.

Mr. Thorne Does Phonics

This is a fun site that helps students with Phonics using videos created by Mr. Thorne. The videos focus on grammar, vowel sounds, consonant sounds, alternative sounds and spellings and much more. I think this is a fun site that would be wonderful for younger students learning to read. These videos could be incorporated to the classroom once or twice a week to change up the normal lessons. See how you could use Mr. Thorne Does Phonics in your classroom.

Edcamp Detroit

Last May, a bunch of teachers organized an event called #edcampPhilly. The event was an unconference. The cool thing about an unconference is that all of the sessions are run by the people who show up. The schedule is loose to allow people to talk about whatever they want. #edcampPhilly was a huge success and edcamps started to appear all over the country. I attended one in New York City and Kansas City to see how they worked and meet some friends that I've been working with online for a few months. After seeing how they operated, I'm proud to announce that #edcampDetroit is open for registration! After tons of planning and organziation, we have a location (Wayne State University's College of Education), a date (Saturday May 7), Sponsors (Click the link to see. More are being added every day) and a price (Free!).

I have spent a ton of time this past year attending conferences and learning many great things. Despite some of the awesome sessions I attended, I always seemed to learn the most from talking and sharing with other teachers around me. The purpose of an edcampis to connect the teachers directly. Teachers have so many great ideas and practices, but they are not often given a chance to share them with others in their own school. Edcamp is a way to bring these teachers with great ideas together from all over to help the students in the classroom.

I would love to see a strong showing from my District at this event. I think I teach in one of the best districts in the country and would love to show everyone the amazign things that our teachers do each and every day. This conference is not a tech conference! This conference is about sharing ideas that work. Best practices for teaching various subject matter. Administrations isues could be addressed. There are countless topics and many conversations that can be had because we all work so hard at our jobs and it would be just greedy not to share with other teachers eager to learn.

We are limited in space (250 Max), so please click here to register. Space is filling up and will get jammed after we spread the word in March at MACUL, so sign up sooner than later. Maybe our district would even give us conference or workshop hours for attending (cough cough hint hint). Please pass this conferecne along to any other teachers you might now. A ton of work goes into putting on a free conference and I would love to share it with some of the best teachers I know. Thanks in advance.

Here is a video #edcampPhilly put together that does a nice job explaining #edcamp.

Ed Camp from True Life Media on Vimeo.

Tech Tuesday for 1/18

Hello everyone! I hope this post find you doing well. I have a whole bunch of great posts to share with you and some interesting conferences you might want to put on your calendar. I'll start with the conferences first.

MACUL (Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning)

This the state's educational technology conference. If you are a teacher/tech person, this is the place to be. If you want to know more about using tech in the classroom, this is the place to be. You can download the brochure here for more information. The conference takes place at Cobo Center in Detroit this year and takes place on Thursday and Friday March 17 & 18. Here is how the pricing works:

I think this is a great chance for teacher interested in adding more technology into the classroom to get some hands-on experience with teachers who regularly use tech in their own classes.

There is an added bonus to come and see me present as well. (Shameless plug) I'll be presenting on Thursday (Knocking Down Walls: Connecting Students with Blogging) and Friday (Personal Learning Networks (PLNs): Connecting Teachers Worldwide. Take a look at the brochure and you will see many gret presentations by teachers that use them every day. I would love to see at least one person from each building attend this conference so we can move forward as a district with technology integration across the board.

If you have any questions, please let me know and I will be happy to answer them.

Edcamp Detroit

Last May, a bunch of teachers organized an event called #edcampPhilly. The event was an unconference. The cool thing about an unconference is that all of the sessions are run by the people who show up. The schedule is loose to allow people to talk about whatever they want. #edcampPhilly was a huge success and edcamps started to appear all over the country. I attended one in New York City and Kansas City to see how they worked and meet some friends that I've been working with online for a few months. After seeing how they operated, I'm proud to announce that #edcampDetroit is open for registration! After tons of planning and organziation, we have a location (Wayne State University's College of Education), a date (Saturday May 7), Sponsors (Click the link to see. More are being added every day) and a price (Free!).

I have spent a ton of time this past year attending conferences and learning many great things. Despite some of the awesome sessions I attended, I always seemed to learn the most from talking and sharing with other teachers around me. The purpose of an edcampis to connect the teachers directly. Teachers have so many great ideas and practices, but they are not often given a chance to share them with others in their own school. Edcamp is a way to bring these teachers with great ideas together from all over to help the students in the classroom.

I would love to see a strong showing from my District at this event. I think I teach in one of the best districts in the country and would love to show everyone the amazign things that our teachers do each and every day. This conference is not a tech conference! This conference is about sharing ideas that work. Best practices for teaching various subject matter. Administrations isues could be addressed. There are countless topics and many conversations that can be had because we all work so hard at our jobs and it would be just greedy not to share with other teachers eager to learn.

We are limited in space (250 Max), so please click here to register. Space is filling up and will get jammed after we spread the word in March at MACUL, so sign up sooner than later. Maybe our district would even give us conference or workshop hours for attending (cough cough hint hint). Please pass this conferecne along to any other teachers you might now. A ton of work goes into putting on a free conference and I would love to share it with some of the best teachers I know. Thanks in advance.

Here is a video #edcampPhilly put together that does a nice job explaining #edcamp.

Ed Camp from True Life Media on Vimeo.

Let's Crate!

Do you ever want to share large files with students or other teachers, but you can't get them on email because they are so big? Well, Let's Crate solves that problem. This site is a very simple to use and could save a teacher time in the long run. Often, some files are too big to upload to the school site or students request the power point used in class. Instead of emailing a student here an there, Let's Crate allows you to upload the power point (50MB Max) and it gives you a link you can share with anyone you want.

I plan to use this for some of the Notebook software I use when giving notes in class. Now, I can just use Let's Crate to share all of the big files and post the links on the website. This is also great because the school's servers will not be burdened with excess work that will slow them down for everyone. You will want to give this site a try if you have many large files you want to share with students or other teachers in the district. It is worth checking out.

History Pin

History Pin is an exciting photo based site that allows users to upload pictures to a map and provide details in the picture. Pictures are uploaded from all over the world. Older pictures can be viewed overlapped with what the areas look like today. I envision a very fin project where students take pictures of their community and post them on the site then view what the various areas looked like many years ago. It is a great way to connect students to local history in way beyond just looking at pictures in a textbook. Here is a video from History Pin that explains the site in more detail.

Times Machine

This could be such a fun tool in class. Times Machine is a full collection of the New York Times dating back to 1851. Students can research any date they want and share their findings with the class. Important events in history could be discussed by reading the newspaper itself. Students could research events that happened on their birthday and compare them with others. Classes could review the difference in print ads from various decades and create their own. There are so many possibilities for this site in the classroom it would be a waste not to take a look around.

Macaulay Library

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has compiled the largest collection of animal sounds and videos online. This can be a great site to share with students who are researching various animals for a class project or it can be used by classroom teachers to spice up their lessons with actual animals sounds and video. This is a wonderful site that teachers can have fun with and students can learn from. 

Here are a few examples:

Striped Skunk Video and Sounds

American Black Bear Video and Sounds

Northern Fur Seal Video and Sounds

These are just a few of the many great videos and sounds collected by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Take a minute a see what types of video and sounds you could use for your classroom.

I hope you find these links helpful to you and your students. There are tons  of great resources out there and I will keep looking for them and sharing them with all of you. If there is anything in particular that you are looking for, please send me an email and I will see what I can find.

Give it a try!

Free Rice Rules!

Free Rice is an amazing site that is free for everyone and helps people in need. Free Rice is a non-profit organization run by the United Nations World Food Program. Their website, FreeRice.com, says they have two goals:

1. Provide education to everyone for free.

2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

For every question a person gets correct, the site donates 10 grains of rice through the World Food Program to help end world hunger. They have different categories to test student knowledge. They have Art, Chemistry, Foreign Language (French, German, Italian and Spanish), Math (Pre-Algebra and the Multiplication Table), Geography and Language Arts. This is a great thing for students to do at home instead of staring at Facebook or playing mindless computer games. Kids can form groups and see their rankings compared to other groups around the world.

Free Rice could be set up to have different classes in the same building as a group and they could compete against each other over a set amount of time with the class with the most grain accumulated winning a prize. This could work had as a great school fundraiser where students can compete, help others in need and, most of all, reinforce basic concepts in various subjects.

Tech Tuesday January 4

Happy Tech Tuesday in the New Year!

I hope everyone had a great two weeks away from school and are ready to tackle the New Year with excitement! I have some nice things to share with you this week, so take a second and see what I have for you.
Thanks to everyone that voted for TheNerdyTeacher.com. I ended up winning 2nd runner up in the best new blog category. It really means a ton to me that many of you took the time to vote for me. Thanks again!

Free Conference!

Here is a great conference opportunity for new teachers in the district. I’ll be presenting on mentoring later in the night, but the rest of the day is filled with great information that all teachers could learn something from. Here is a summary of the event from my friend Kelly Tenkely who runs iLearntechnology.com.

Everyone could use FREE professional development. As an organizer of the Reform Symposium, I wanted to personally invite you all to our annual Reform Symposium Conference for New Teachers (but don’t be fooled, it is really for ALL teachers), which will take place on Saturday, January 8th, 2011. You can attend this worldwide conference from the comfort of your home or anywhere you have Internet access. We have some of the best educational speakers in the world involved. This conference provides you the opportunity to connect with educators and professionals in the field of education worldwide. Over 2400 educators from 59 countries attended our last conference in July. This year we will focus on interactive presentations that help teachers with creating engaging classrooms and lessons, building relationships with students, improving literacy, working with interactive whiteboards, and much more. This year we look forward to 2 keynote speakers, 18 presentations, and open discussion on classroom management, a panel discussion on parental engagement, a mentor program, and an open lab for hands-on support in helping you continue your professional development in online educator communities. You have never attended a conference quite like this one! Join us for one session or multiples.

The Reform Symposium virtual conference has opportunities for continuing education credits, connections with educators around the world, an amazing lineup of raffle prizes (including prizes to EVERY educator who registers for the conference), and fantastic keynotes and presenters.

Check out the Reform Symposium website here or view the brochure here.

Build a Snowman

Here is just a silly little site that will work great on a Smartboard. Build a Snowman from HighlightsKids.com is a fun and interactive Snowman Builder. You can change every aspect of the scene and even add props you can place anywhere in the picture. Here is a silly one I created.

(Editor's Note: The Snowman appears on my home computer, but not at school.)

Think about all of the snowmen you can create with the kids in your classroom or at home. You have the option to print each snowman created, which is nice if you want students to share the snowmen with their family at home.

Top Ten EdTech Tools of 2010

My friend took my idea of a top ten list for tech tools so I wanted to share it with you. I have used most of these and highly suggest that you try some of them in the new year. You can find his complete post at The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness Mr. Zimmer provides a complete rundown of each tool and links to previous posts on how to use them in the classroom.

Google Year in Review

This is just a cool video recapping the year according to Google.

Again, I hope everyone had a wonderful break and I will see you in a couple of weeks with more goodies for you and your classroom.

Give it a try!