Great Links to Web 2.0 Tools

Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog is a great blog with tons of resources. This post gives tons of Digital Storytelling tools. Sometimes POwerPoint is just not enough to get the message across. There are many great links here that you can use for lessons or direct student to use for projects. Check this link out and see what you might be able to use in class.

Great Resources

Here is a link to Jefferson Middle School that has orgainzed many, many great Web 2.0 Tools. They are broken up into many different catergories including: Presentations, Video, Creativity, Slideshows, Writing, and many more. If you are looking for different ways for students to incorporate new tech into their work, here is a great place for them to start. Spread the word, this is a great tool for all students and teachers.

- Give it a try!

A Little Something for the Art Teachers

Here are some great art sites I found while reading a great blog by @2sparkley. It's called Bits and Pieces Place. It has a bunch of great resources for all subjects and grade levels. I wanted to point out one set of resources for the Art Teachers because they often get left out of the Teacher Tech stuff because good stuff is hard to come by. Fun Art Sites is a great post that lists some art sites that you can use with your SmartBoard.

• Learn from Cezanne
• A Pointilism Practice Page
• Surreal Painter
• Animal Mix-up (This looks like crazy fun!)

Those are just a few of the sites she has put together for Art Teachers to use in the classroom. Stop by her page and take a look around. Drop her a comment if you find anything useful. She would really appreciate it.

- Give it a try!

Common PowerPoint Mistakes

Thanks to Tech 221 for the find and the share.



Life After Death PowerPoint from EMT Media on Vimeo.

This is too funny. How many students or teachers do you know that do some of these things. 

Math Help!

As a person who has struggled with Math his entire life, I can appreciate the frustration some students have as they try and grasp the math. I remember Math Blaster being very helpful as I struggled with all sorts of math problems and it made Math fun and interesting. I moved away from using the computer as a means to help e with my Math and I'm not sure why. There are many great sites out there that students can use to help them with their Math skills. One great site that does more than just provide answers to students is WebMath.com

WebMath is part of Discovery Education which offers help for many disciplines. According to WebMath,

"Webmath is not a database of questions and answers, or an online math testing site. Webmath is a math-help web site that generates answers to specific math questions, as entered by a user of the site, at any particular moment."

Answers to problems are given in real time. The steps used to solve the problem are also given to show students how the answer was reached. The process is important to solving the problem and the website makes sure the students sees the process when it provides the answer. 

WebMath offers Math help on many different parts of the Math world.

WebMath also offers a quick pull down menu so students can jump to specific content area they are having trouble understanding. 

The slide down menu offers help for graphing, fractions, calculus, geometry, radicals, ratios, and all other things Math related. 

I'm sure many teachers out there think that students will just use this to get the answers without doing the work. Well, that might be the case for some students. However, even those students will be practicing the process as they copy down the steps to the answers. So even if they are just copying, they are seeing the process over and over again. That type of practice can lead to learning even if they realize it or not. Also, other students will use the site to help them learn how to solve the problems instead of just looking for the answer. 

This is a site you can share with your entire class or just a few of your struggling learners to help them work on Math when they are at home and have nowhere else to turn. 

- Give it a try!

iNudge - Make Beautiful Music

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  iNudge.net

Here is an interesting site for the Music Teacher in the district. You can create you music with this free device. Here are some of the things you can do on iNudge.

• * Select 1 of 8 different Sound Patterns from the small Matrixes icons on the right.
  * Use your mouse to draw notes on each 16 Step Matrix.
  * For each Pattern, adjust Volume, Mute, Clear, or set Audio Pan from Left to Right.
  * Click on the Tempo numbers and click up or down to change the overall Tempo.
  * Get & Share allows you to Send Mail, Get Link, Get Embed code or Spread in communities.
  * Use the Feedback Forum to tell us what you think, leave your comments or make suggestions.

This could be a fun site to have music students play with or little children to use to learn about notes. Play around with it and see what you can so with it.

-Give it a try!