RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are great ways to keep up to date on information from various sites and sources. They stream information live to your own personally built lists so that we have a collection of updated information on topics that interest ourselves. Commoncraft videos have a great video explaining more on RSS feeds.

The real question is, how do I display this information in a way that could engage my students in discussion or activities? The way to accomplish this is to display these feeds for your students to see, either on your website, or within Moodle. just by copying the RSS feed link. For example, CBC has a great set of feeds, so we copy the one that we want (ie. http://rss.cbc.ca/lineup/topstories.xml)

Websites like www.surfingwaves.com allow us to quickly and easily create widgets to display this information by creating HTML code that we can copy and then paste into our online spaces.

The only down side to using an RSS feed is that you have no control over what content is posted by those sites, so please be cautious and use only reputable sources for your RSS feeds.

You Tube Channel for Teachers

YouTube has just created a channel for teachers!  Visit http://www.youtube.com/teachers for tips on effective use of YouTube in classrooms, how to create your own YouTube channel for your students to access, video production tips, YouTube privacy information, and more!

Classroom Assessment on Your iPad!

Do you have a personal iPad that you're hoping to use in innovative ways in your classroom?  Now you can use your iPad to manage and track your students' progress this year with a great new app called Markbook.

Markbook is a class management tool that many schools have purchased for teacher use on the school network.  Markbook allows tracking of student assessments, creation of seating plans, and much more.

Now the makers of Markbook have announced that their iPad app is free for educators until September 30.  Visit the App Store on your iPad and type "markbook" into the search bar.  In seconds, you will have a fully functional classroom management system on your iPad, with free updates for this entire school year.

Contact your school's site administrator and/or principal for more information about school based purchases of Markbook to install on your school network.

Take Your Class on a Virtual Art Gallery Field Trip with Google Art Project

Teaching art has never been more powerful or interactive.  The Google Art Project is an absolutely incredible resource.  Using street view technology and incredible high resolution imagery, students can virtually tour many of the most famous art galleries around the world, explore famous art works right down to cracks and brush stroke details, learn about famous art works and artists, and much more!  If you're an art teacher, you must explore the Google Art Project with your students.  Incredible!!

Teach Circuitry With PlayDough

We're always on the look out for creative new ways to teach kids complex concepts in a simpler way.  Watch the above video to see how 2 different types of play dough can be used to create simple electrical circuits.  This would be a fantastic, fun, and powerful learning activity in junior and intermediate science classes.  Try it out today!

Team Brainstorming

We have often demonstrated Wallwisher as a great way to do team or class brainstorming.  This site is very easy to set up and does not require any student data to use with your class - you just set up your wall, give the kids the url, and they can start adding notes.

There are number of other apps that allow shared sticky notes, brainstorming and organization in a similar vein to Wallwisher.  Try checking out Primary Wall or Scrubmlr - with a simple url students can add notes, and the notes can be moved around and re-organized.

Have any of you used similar types of applications?

SMART Search Engine

Google Custom Search allows anyone to create a custom search engine - this is similar to adding advanced search options when you perform a Google Search.

A fantastic resource I just came across on Free Technology for Teachers is the SMART Notebook Custom Search.  By using this custom search you can do a keyword search to pull SMART Notebook lessons from a number of sites besides the usual SMART Exchange.

Google Street View Just Keeps Getting Better

Google's amazing Street View just keeps getting better and better.  Use this in your classroom to take students on virtual field trips anywhere in the world with incredible 360 degree panoramic views.  Imagery from inside the Colosseum in Rome is newly available in street view, as are a variety of other World Landmarks including the C.N. Tower, Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and many more.  You can even ski the slopes of Whistler through Street View.

One of my personal favourites is Stonehenge, where it is actually possible to get the 360 degree view from inside the circle that you can't even get if you visit in person!

You can also visit the Street view home page to teach your students how Google creates the Street View images.

All you need is a data projector connected to one of your classroom computers to open up a world of possibilities to your students using Google Street View.

Compare Front Pages from Around the World

The Newseum in Washington D.C. is one of Education Officer Tim Ralph's favourite places in the world, and well worth a visit if you're ever in Washington.  But their website is also an incredible tool for classroom use.  If you discuss current events with your students, you have to check out the Newseum's Today's Front Pages map.

This amazing tool displays interactive maps, organized by continent.  Hover over any of the yellow dots, and you see a thumbnail of the current day's newspaper front page from that city.  Click on the thumbnail to view a larger image or a readable pdf of the front page, as well as a live link to the full website of that newspaper.

This is an incredible tool which could be used by students during independent reading, for group research, or for whole group instruction.  Imagine comparing and contrasting how newspapers around the world report on the same news topics.

Check out Today's Front Page soon;  you and your students will love it

Today's Meet - Back Channeling in the Classroom

Today's Meet is a great online tool that allows teachers to instantly create a discussion room. There is no registration process either for teachers and students, which makes this a great "spur of the moment" classroom tool. You can give the URL of the room you create to students, who can enter the room by typing in their first name.  You now have a simple online shared space where students can ask and answer questions during lessons, engaging in the powerful tool of backchanneling.  Give it a try  .... it literally takes 10 seconds to set up a room!  You and your students will love it!

Safety Mode: Giving You More Control on YouTube

Thanks to one of our astute Site Administrators for passing along this tip for teachers using YouTube in their classroom. Hopefully by now you have had the chance to see our tips and tricks for classroom use of YouTube, which talks about making sure the video is on full screen to avoid the possibility of inappropriate comments or related videos being shown to students. If you'd like, you can create a YouTube account and log in to turn on "safety mode".

Click on the link below for more details.
Official Google Blog: Safety Mode: giving you more control on YouTube

Google Reader - Organize Your Online Reading

Google Reader is a great way organize your online reading.  You can subscribe to receive regular updates from websites and blogs of interest to you on one Google Reader page.  Set this page as your home page, and you never need to remember to go check those favourite websites to see what's new.  Instead, updates will appear automatically in your Reader.  You can even bookmark, tag, save, and organize posts within the Reader.  Here's how to get started:

1.  Create a Google Account for yourself if you don't already have one.  If you use Gmail or other Google services, you will already have an account.

2.  Go to http://www.google.com/reader logging in using the Google Account created in the previous step.

3.  In Google Reader, click on "Add a Subscription" to get started.  Here you can paste in a website address that you want to subscribe to, or search by topic.  Paste in our http://6easyclicks.blogspot.com/ address as your first subscription to get started!

You'll find this a valuable one-stop way to keep up with your online reading on any topics of interest to you. Click here to watch a more detailed video tutorial about using Google Reader.

A Laugh at Your Expense

I heard this great story on the weekend that I had to share on here. A good friend of mine (Let's call him Eddy) went to a comedy club on the weekend. He was 'fortunate' enough to get a table close to the front. The show began and was very entertaining.

The cast started a new skit part way through the performance and the two main characters were named 'Eddy' and 'Susan' (Eddy's sister's name). Eddy thought that it was a funny coincidence and thought little more of it. As the skit progressed, the Eddy character on stage started speaking about his love of Golf, and all of the organizations that he belonged to, which matched exactly with real 'Eddy's' life.

Cool Text

Sometimes we learn about the latest and greatest just from listening to students.  The other day I was working with a group of students on a design project, and one of the students showed me Cool Text. This amazing graphics generator allows you to make custom logos or buttons for your website or projects.  You can enter in your own text, change the style, font and colour of the design, then it generates a downloadable image for you.  If I'd known about this a few weeks ago, our blog logo could have looked like this:

or this:

or this:

How much fun is that?  Do you know of any other graphic generators that would be worth checking out?

MindMapping

I was asked to offer a PD session next month on MindMapping software that students could use in their brainstorming process. My initial thought was to introduce the software that is available on our Board's image. Then it occurred to me, why not check out online alternatives? That way students could access the software from home and school.

One quick Google search later, I came across bubbl.us, a free online mindmapping website. If you sign up for a free account, you can store up to 3 mindmaps (you can create as many as you'd like, but only 3 can be saved online). Any mindmaps created can be savee as a .jpg or .png image for download.

Does anyone else have good Mindmapping software or websites that are worth a try?

What is this Google of which you speak?

We actually had a conversation like that the other day in the office!  We were talking about measuring the distance of our commutes, and I commented that I would clock it on the odometer on my way home - it took me a few seconds to shout out, "I could use Google!"

Sometimes we forget to use tools that have become second nature to us in our teaching - so how have you embraced Google?

One of my favourite teachable aspects of Google Maps is using Google Street View to do community walks or visit historical landmarks.

View Larger Map

How are you using Google in your classroom?

The Door That's Not Locked

 Many of us find ourselves looking for resources to try and understand the tools today's kids are using so that we can teach them safe and effective use of these tools.  A number of schools are starting to open the conversation with parents about their children's use of the internet and the impact that has on the school culture.

Wallwisher - A Virtual Bulletin Board for Your Classroom

Wallwisher is a free online application that allows you to instantly create an  online bulleting board.  You can share the customized URL you create with your students, who can then post text and links to images on the wall.  This is a great way to add instant online collaboration to your lessons.  Imagine your students responding on a class Wall to a read aloud, adding new vocabulary to a Wall as part of a literature circle, brainstorming as a pre-writing activity, and much more!  Add your own ideas for using Wallwisher to our 6 Easy Clicks Wall.

Interactive Lessons Using Technology

Over the past year, I’ve seen a multitude of creative solutions on how to get the one laptop and projector in the room involving students during a lesson. The old way of getting kids involved had them coming up to the blackboard or overhead to demonstrate a skill. With wireless technology as readily available as it is now, we’re able to accomplish the same task without the distractions of having students leave their desks (if that’s your preference).

The most prevalent and easy to use way to get the students interacting is to pass them a wireless keyboard and/or mouse (about $60 for the one that we suggest) and have them interact with the website, or program of your choice. Another option is to invest in a wireless tablet such as an eInstruction Mobi. Recently, I purchased an Ultra Mini Keyboard from eBay that I’m quite happy with.

Podcasting in Kindergarten!

I was recently at Waverly P.S. visiting a Kindergarten classroom and was amazed by the innovative and exciting ways that teacher Monica Cheung is using Audacity for podcasting with her kindergarten students.  Visit Miss Cheung and Mrs. Leslie's Super Awesome Kindergarten Page to listen to podcasts of the students describing their learning at classroom centres, reciting poems, responding to stories, and much more!  Imagine the powerful ways parents can be engaged in their children's learning by listening to these wonderful student podcasts.

Primary Story Writing With Storybird!

Storybird is another great online application that has a teacher dashboard that allows teachers to create a class and monitor student accounts in a similar way to BitStrips and KidBlog.

Storybird allows children to select from preset art libraries and write stories to to match the illustrations.  The finished "storybirds" are beautiful picture book versions of the students' original stories that can be read online in an engaging full screen book format.  Students can also invite classmates as collaborators on their stories, and read the published stories of their classmates.

Your primary students will love creating stories in this engaging online format.  Get started here by creating a teacher account and adding students.

Start Blogging As Early As Grade 1

In today's world, it can be argued that writing for an online audience is an entirely new form of writing that students need to be exposed to from an early age.

KidBlog is the perfect platform to introduce young primary and junior students to the concept of blogging. Teachers can quickly add students to a class, using an easy to use teacher dashboard that is very similar to Bit Strips. Within this dashboard, teachers can set access levels and turn comment moderation on or off. This allows the teacher to create a protected class blog that can only be viewed by students, with comments that are only visibile upon teacher approval.

Microblogging

Many of our kids are excited about using social media in their own lives.  Can we leverage the appeal of 140 character thoughts in our classroom?  You be the judge - Twiducate allows teachers to create a class of students and have the students communicate in a Twitter-type style.