Free online resources for students

This website has a list (and explanation) of a bunch of websites that are kid-friendly. I haven't really looked through the list yet but thought I would share it. From a glance, they seem pretty good.

Free online resources for educators

You ever have that moment when you realized that you somehow forgot to plan your next lesson (life happens)? Or when you're just at a loss for an activity because the kids need more practice with the vocabulary because you're sick of doing the same thing? Or you need an easy sub plan that's NOT a worksheet? Then check out this website! It works for any language because you type in the words but it has all the templates, pictures, and directions for game boards, dominoes, bingo, crosswords, word searches, etc (yes I realize some of those are worksheets, but not most of them!). This list is endless! I just stumbled upon this website this morning and immediately book marked it for the future. I hope you find it as useful as I do!

I have a challenge for you...

Donors Choose is a great organization that allows you to connect to classrooms in need by donating money through their online charity. Teachers post requests for money to buy school supplies or to start enrichment programs, or even go on study abroad trips with their students. Gracious people donate their money and the students benefit enormously! I haven't posted any requests but some of my friends at charter schools have and it has really helped them to be able to provide a quality education for their students. I have donated before, and this is how.

I was on a search for technology useful to the classroom when I came across education.skype.com (see this previous blog post for more information). The really neat thing was that after I signed up, skype gave me a $25 credit to use on donors choose! How awesome is that? So I searched through all the different projects and chose to sponsor a study-abroad trip for a group of students to go to Costa Rica. I'd rather go on the trip than just donate (who wouldn't) but I'm so happy I'm able to help them enrich their Spanish experience. There are so many different types of projects from which to choose. It was a very difficult, yet fun, decision. And good news! The project just became fully funded as of 5 hours ago! Yay!

Here's my challenge to anyone who reads this blog. I challenge you to make a positive difference in someone's education.There are three different ways to accomplish this challenge. Option 1) If you have a skype account, sign up for education.skype.com. You don't have to plan on using it; you don't even have to be a teacher. Just sign up so that you can get the credit and then DONATE to Donors choose! Option 2) If you don't have a skype account, sign up for that first, then continue for directions under option 1. Option 3) Donate your own money! All the projects on this website are for a really great cause and all of these kids deserve our support. So now the question isn't whether or not you'll accept my challenge... the question is, to which project will you donate?

Online pop-up books

I was having difficulties trying to come up with a fun and different way to introduce vocabulary to my students. I've read books, although most times those don't quite align with what I want to teach. In those cases, I've created my own "books" using power point and prezi (check out this post about prezi). I've shown little video clips and made my own (using xtranormal... read this post for more information). I've shown big, printed-off clip-art pictures and matched the pictures to labels. I've used props, like classroom objects or stuffed animals, and had the kids pass the objects around the class. I've done all these ways many times before during this year and I wanted something new for my 3rd graders unit on school subjects. I wanted something different but didn't know what to do...


Luckily, the technology person at my school just showed me this awesome new website a few weeks ago. It's this awesome website called Zoo Burst that allows you to make online pop-up books! It's different, it's fun, and it's easy to make! You can sign up for a free account (which I did) which has plenty of options for characters, backgrounds, and extra props. If you pay for an account (which the technology person did) then it also comes with a voice feature. I think if I worked with students that had and brought their laptops with them to every class, paying for this service would be totally worth it. I can just imagine students creating their own children's story and recording themselves telling the story. What a great oral assessment! However, my students don't have their own laptops, so I just signed up for the free version. It's very simple to create the scenes; you can upload your own pictures or use their clipart for characters, props, and background. Each character can say whatever you want it to, and there is also a narration caption for the page itself. There is a limit of 10 pages (may be more for the paid version, I'm not sure) and I found that to be plenty. Here is my example.


You're probably wondering what my students thought. Well, they loved it! They smiled and giggled every time a new character popped up and even started reading some of the words themselves. It made for a fun and interactive lesson. We read it through once while I asked them questions in Spanish about the content of the book (Do you use a calculator in math? Do you run in music class?). The second time reading, I asked them who taught each subject and gave ridiculous examples to help them understand what I was asking. All in all, it was a very successful and engaging day.

"Making the Most With What You've Got"

While reading this season's issue of One Day (TFA's alum magazine), I came across a really fantastic article called "Ed Tech 101: Making the Most With What You've Got" by Lewis Leiboh. One of the reasons I like this article so much is that it doesn't just name different ways to use technology in the classroom; it not only explains how to use these tools and gives examples, but also says what you need to be successful.

The first part of the article "Skype's the Limit" talks about different ways to use video chat. Leiboh suggests video chatting with "the author of a book... an expert scientist... a classroom from another community or country... a friend or professor... join a college class." I bolded my favorite because I've had this idea before. I just don't know where to get started. He suggests going to http://education.skype.com/ for project ideas. I did a little searching and found tons of people reaching out! This is a great way to get started with connections. I don't think I'll do anything this year but I look forward to incorporating Skype in my future classrooms. My eventual goal is to establish a relationship with one or two teachers and maintain that relationship throughout the years. That way, our students are always receiving this great experience and the other teacher(s) and I are perfecting the project each year. In addition to a laptops with webcam (or perhaps ipads) and speakers, a projector, and a videochat service that Leiboh recommends using, I would also suggest an activity of some sort so that the kids have an idea of what they should be doing while talking. This will help deter any awkward silences that may arise if you just want the kids to talk about whatever. As relationships and language skills develop, I think it'd be a great idea to just have conversations every now and then, and have the students write about what they said after the conversations.

The second part of the article is "Get Your Head in the Cloud." This one talks a lot about using class websites and eliminating the use of paper. This not only helps absent students and families stay in touch but also allows students to go back and review something if they need a little extra support. Leiboh suggests using "tools like Google Sites... [and] edmodo.com [which is] a private classroom social network."I don't really have experience with this and don't have the time with my 27-minute elementary classes, but think it is a great idea for a high school or middle school, especially if there is a 1-1 laptop ratio.

The last part of the article "Go Island Hopping" I love, mostly because I love stations. And I love how Leiboh calls them islands instead of stations... it's just so much more whimsical. I struggle with stations in my short time period, but have still made it work. Leiboh has a whole week of lesson plans for stations that goes as follows:

Monday: Whole group lesson, no islands
Tuesday-Thursday: 3 stations=1 station/day - the stations are 1) "instruction island" with is a small group with the teacher; 2) "independence island" which is 2 smaller groups for independent practice exercises and 3) "study island" where students use online tools at their own pace to master the content. You could change the study island sessions to include any online tool that you want, not just Leiboh's suggestion.
Friday: Wrap-up and quiz

He doesn't use the islands every week but it does break it up. Other ideas for islands include "watch instructional videos, practice fluency by having students record themselves reading out loud [and] complete group activities using a SmartBoard." I think these are all great ideas and there are so many more great ideas out there as well. This can be adapted for any age or grade level. Maybe one of the islands could even be FaceTime with another class and combine the first and third part of this article!

Keeping Families Informed

A couple of weeks ago, my school district had a professional development all about technology. Many of my colleagues were telling me that most professional developments in the past have been a waste of time and just not very useful. So, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this session was quite unlike the sessions from the past. We had a fantastic speaker, Steve Dembo, from Discovery Education. His life is technology, specifically technology in education but also in his family. He showed us multiple ways that his young child is using education in his every day life. Just doing a quick google search of Mr. Dembo shows how he takes advantage of every technology tool available. 


My favorite tool about which Steve Dembo told us was a different blogging website, posterous.com. This blog site is especially easy to use because of it's email-to-post feature. If you are fortunate enough to have an iphone, ipad, or other such tablet device, you can immediately transfer videos/pictures straight from your device to your blog. Sending a quick email with the attached picture and whatever you want to say in your post will automatically update your blog. I am fortunate to have an ipad at school but I've been struggling to figure out how to incorporate the use of one ipad into my class of 20+ students. I've been able to use the ipad when I do stations because then it allows only 4 students to work with it at a time, which is much easier for sharing purposes. However, now I use the ipad every day. (Granted, it's me that is using the ipad and not the students which is still something I am working on. However, this is a start for at least someone putting the ipad to good use.) I take pictures and videos of activities in my classes and immediately upload them to my blog spanishatlbes.posterous.com. This blog is for parents and families of my students and I included its url in the trimester newsletter I recently sent home. I wasn't sure how many people would view the blog, but each post has an average number of about 65 views. I'm so pleased with this result! I hope to create a blog for each of my future classrooms because it is a great and easy way to keep families informed about what is going on in the classroom. 

But they're talking so fast!

One of the things that our consultant is teaching the foreign language team at my school is to start every unit plan with a "hook" - something super interesting that it can't help but get the students engaged and ready to learn about the next unit. Some examples of "hooks" are books, songs, pictures (not the flashcard kind though), and short video clips. Most of my experience is with books but I decided to branch out and use some video clips for my next units with 5th grade (Help! I don't feel well) and 4th grade (Let's play sports!). Surprisingly enough (well, not really) there aren't really any video clips already out there on the internet that I could use with my students so I decided to create my own. I used two different websites: xtranormal and goanimate. I found out about xtranormal from my mother actually (thanks mom!) because she used it in one of her graduate courses to become a principal. I'll talk about this website first. 


Here is the first video I made about a doctor's office using xtranormal. It's fairly easy to use. The main idea is that you just type what you want the characters to say and then they'll say it. However, if you want your characters to move, walk, look at each other, look at the camera... that takes more time. All those little details can be fairly time consuming depending on how intricate you want your video to be. It gets easier with practice, I promise. The website itself allows a max of 2 characters per video. However, if you download the desktop version (which I did) you can have as many characters as you want. The desktop version is pretty much the same. You still need to be connected to the internet to use it but otherwise it's very similar. The only other con to this website is that you have to "pay" for each new character and each new scene that you use with points. There are a couple ways to earn points. You can just buy thousands of points with a credit card. You can also earn points for free, but I haven't been able to figure this one out. There is an educator monthly package discount if you feel like you'll use it all the time. Also, with this educator discount you can provide "tokens" to your students so they can use it for free. There is also a business package but I'm not really sure what that does because I didn't look at it. I just used the free version, which starts you off with so many points to buy your characters and settings. So my video is kind of boring but if I want to use it more in the future, then I'll think about buying. When you are finished, this video downloads to an .avi file so you need windows media player (or an .avi converter program for Macs) in order to view the program. 


The other website is goanimate. This is so quick and so easy to use because you literally choose your scene, type your lines (10 max for the free version), and hit publish! The catch? You can't really choose your own characters or settings (or at least, I haven't been able to figure that out). You have to choose one of their presets. But since I wanted to talk about sports and March madness is going on right now, I was all set. Here's my video. This one took probably 5 minutes to create. 


During the actual teaching of the video, we watched it straight thru one time. At the end, I mostly heard "They talked so fast!" among the whispers of my students. Then we took a break and did some TPR with vocabulary both in the video and just about the content in general (body parts for 5th grade, sports for 4th grade). After this break, we watched the video again. A few students did ask to watch in English, which I obviously denied (it's SPANISH class...) but most students were excited to figure out more of the video. This time, I stopped the video every now and then and asked some clarification questions. Yes, unfortunately, I did make them translation questions but in the future I plan to try and keep even their answers in Spanish. By the second time around though, they were understanding quite a bit and could answer most of my questions! They loved the videos and I think the videos definitely "hooked" the classes in!

The monster eats everything!

This post isn't about anything that I recently taught. In fact, this post is about a lesson I taught way back in October... around Halloween. But really, it's about a technology tool that I used in that lesson. My third graders learned all about monsters and their facial features during the month of October. For the final project, they had to create their own monster, write descriptive sentences about their monster, and present it to the class. All the final products when into a class book which I bound and put in our classroom library. The students LOVE seeing their work in book form and LOVE to read books by other classes. Facial features were a brand new topic to my third graders. They had already had words for eyes and nose, but didn't know how to say eyebrows, teeth, etc. I wanted a fun way to introduce these new vocabulary words without just using flashcards. One thing that I learned both from my professor and Helena Curtain is that stories with lots of pictures are a great way to introduce to new vocabulary and engage your class. I couldn't find a story that taught exactly what I wanted my kids to learn, so I wrote my own! Instead of doing a simple word document or power point to create my pages, I decided to create a prezi. (I'll provide the link to see my prezi at the end after explaining what prezi is all about.)


Prezis ("The Zooming Presentation[s]") are basically the new form of powerpoint. They allow you to zoom in and out, view at different angles, and just make power points that much more fun. My mother (who used to be a middle school science teacher and is now principal of that school - Go Mom!) taught me this tool and I have used it for so many slideshows, presentations, and my own stories since then. Prezi is great because it allows you to make the presentation so much more fun and engaging than just a regular powerpoint. It is also super simple to use. There are lots of tutorials on the website that teach you all sorts of cool tricks to make your presentation even cooler. The best part? It's free! Now, you can choose to pay for an option that allows you to do more (Check out the different options here) but I have found the free version to be exactly what I need. I guess the next option up is also free for students and teachers, but I haven't explored that yet. If someone does, please let me know what you think!


Since I teach elementary school, I, as the teacher, am typically the only one creating presentations. However, this would be a great tool for students to use as they get older. Like I've said, it's just like power point... only way cooler. There are some high school teachers in my district who use it with their students, and from what I've heard, the students are more animated about creating slideshows using prezi than just power point. 


Finally... as promised... my prezi about monsters! Enjoy!