Helping out others with technology

Ever thought to yourself "I really wish that I could support my friends/colleagues/parents in using technology", but know that you don't have time to walk them through every detail on how to perform certain tasks (ie. copy & pasting). Well, you're in luck. With Google's Teach Parents Tech, you can now take a very few minutes to send helpful videos to walk them through a wide variety of tasks from changing your screensaver to re-sizing pictures.

Have Your Students Create Websites

Weebly for Education is a great online tool, which you can use to allow your students to create websites about any topic they've been researching.  Much like Bit Strips, Weebly for Education allows teachers to create student accounts and manage permission levels.  Students do not require an email address, and do not have to create their own accounts.

Once you have created student accounts (a 2 minute task for a class of 25) and provided your students with their login information, students can access their account at http://students.weebly.com/.  Here, students can create visually appealing websites in an extremely easy to use, drag and drop interface.  Students can add up to 5 pages on their website (unlimited pages if you upgrade to Weebly Pro), upload pictures and files, embed flash video files, and more!

Have students demonstrate their learning by creating and publishing their own website using Weebly!

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.

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!!

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

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

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.

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.

Student Websites

We're always on the lookout for software to support student website creation, without having to worry about student emails or personal details being stored on outside servers.  Weebly offers an educational site allowing teachers to create class IDs without using student personal info.  Try creating your class using your students' first names and last initials.

Once in Weebly, students can easily create rich web pages through drag and drop features and an incredibly user friendly interface.

Go ahead and give it a try with your class...let us know what you think!