>I learned about this next site from Larry Ferlazzo's Blog. He Teaches English Language Learners. My thoughts are that this site would be a great resource for not only ESL Students but also any struggling readers.
Here is a quote from Larry's blog:
My own books is a fantastic site for fostering reading skills and thus, English language acquisition. It was created by Anne Pemberton, a retired Special Ed. teacher and she has done a marvelous job.
Students simply chose a story they want to read. Then, they put in their own name and BINGO! The story is all about them! You can print or read on the screen with pictures to support comprehension. Really cool and I suggest students print these out and share their stories. A great way to create a classroom , personalized library!
ENJOY!
Thursday, June 4, 2009
>Create a Digital Story with Grades k-3
>Good Morning,
I came across this excellent resource that was posted on the blog of Kevin Jarrett. It is a digital story tool developed by Carnegie University. It is called My Story Maker.
My StoryMaker is a free, easy-to-use, Flash-based interactive story development platform developed by The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, with the generous support of Carnegie Mellon University and The Grable Foundation. The basic idea is that you start by selecting characters and a goal:
You then are given an editor and a guide to help you build the story.
All you have to do is drag and drop and arrange the objects where you want them. You can add dialogue and pages to your story. Once you build your story you can choose to share your story. This will generate a six-digit number that can be plugged into the Main Site to search for the story. You also have the option to print you story. It prints as a foldable book and can be printed in color. The site does not require any registration. You just visit the site and start your story.
Enjoy!
I came across this excellent resource that was posted on the blog of Kevin Jarrett. It is a digital story tool developed by Carnegie University. It is called My Story Maker.
My StoryMaker is a free, easy-to-use, Flash-based interactive story development platform developed by The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, with the generous support of Carnegie Mellon University and The Grable Foundation. The basic idea is that you start by selecting characters and a goal:
You then are given an editor and a guide to help you build the story.
All you have to do is drag and drop and arrange the objects where you want them. You can add dialogue and pages to your story. Once you build your story you can choose to share your story. This will generate a six-digit number that can be plugged into the Main Site to search for the story. You also have the option to print you story. It prints as a foldable book and can be printed in color. The site does not require any registration. You just visit the site and start your story.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
>Novellinks - A resource for Teaching Novels in Grades 6-12
>I recently was introduced to this site and wanted to share it with everyone. It is Novel links. The site contains an amazing collection of reading strategy resources for most of the popular novels taught in grades 6-12. It also contains a number of resources for literacy units.
Please visit the site and click on Reading Resources.
Novel Links - Click Here
Enjoy!
Please visit the site and click on Reading Resources.
Novel Links - Click Here
Enjoy!
>Google Docs
>Would you like to be able to access your word, powerpoint, excel or pdf files from any computer? Have you ever created a document at home and forgot to bring it with you to work? Would you like to be able to work collaboratively on a document? Would you like your students to collaborate on a powerpoint presentation? Would you like to share a word document or powerpoint presentation with another faculty member and not have to email it or post it in a common shared folder where it could be manipulated?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then you must check out Google Docs. Google Docs is a web based version of MS office. You can create and host word, excel, powerpoint and PDF documents. They are accessible from any computer with an internet connection. You can upload all of your existing office documents. This includes office 2007 docs as of this week!
Google docs also allows you to share your documents with others. It allows multiple users to collaborate on a single document. With its forms features you can create a form that will collect answers/data from individuals.
The best feature is that it is totally free!!! All you need is a google account to get started.
Stay tuned for more details and workshops on Google Docs.
If you answered yes to any of these questions then you must check out Google Docs. Google Docs is a web based version of MS office. You can create and host word, excel, powerpoint and PDF documents. They are accessible from any computer with an internet connection. You can upload all of your existing office documents. This includes office 2007 docs as of this week!
Google docs also allows you to share your documents with others. It allows multiple users to collaborate on a single document. With its forms features you can create a form that will collect answers/data from individuals.
The best feature is that it is totally free!!! All you need is a google account to get started.
Stay tuned for more details and workshops on Google Docs.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
A "Delicious" alternative to Google Search
I have been a member of Delicious for a long time now. I have used it primarily to bookmark all of the great websites I find online. I am a big fan of social bookmarking. However, it has only been within the last year that I really started taking advantage of the "social" aspect of social bookmarking.
For those of you who are not on the social bookmarking wagon yet, here is a short summary. Traditional bookmarking of sites consisted of adding them to your favorites. You can add the site and place it in a folder. While this is helpful it has limitations. The major limitation is that you can only access these favorites from the computer you saved them on. You are also limited in the how you can organize them for retrieval.
Social bookmarking is web based. You can access your boomarked sites from any computer with an internet connection. These services also allow you to add 'tags" to your bookmarks. Tags are keywords that you assign to a bookmark. You use these tags to organize and search your bookmarks. You can bundle your tags to be better organized. This is the equivalent of putting them in folders. By downloading some toolbar buttons you can add and access sites in your delicious account right from your Internet explorer or firefox toolbar.
The most power feature of social bookmarking is the "social" aspect. Delicous and other social boomarking services are a network. You not only have access to sites that you bookmark, but you also have access to sites that other delicious users bookmarked. The service allows you to add members to your network to make it easy to view their bookmarks. You may be interested in this if you know of other users that share the same interests or profession. You do not have to have someone as part of your network to search their bookmarks.
This is the feature that i have only started to really use in the past year. It has replaced about 40% of my Google searches. You can search by tags on the site. The results that are returned will be seperated by 1. sites you bookmarked, 2.S ites your network bookmarked, 3 Sites that users on delicious bookmarked.
A simple search on "smartboard Math" returned hundreds of websites that other delicous users had bookmarked. What a time saver. Instead of sifting through thousands of google results i have list of a couple hundred pre-approved sites. Other users thought these sites were good enough to bookmark. If one of these people are in my network then the validity and relevancy of the result is even stronger.
Planning a trip? A tag search of "rome" and possibly "restaurants" should provide a variety of bookmarked sites. What about "social studies" "lesson plans"?
Every post has a number at the end of it. This is the number of people who also bookmarked this site. By clicking on the number you get to see the usernames of the people. This is a great way to add users to your network that share a common interest.
Delicious has become one of the web2.0 tools that i use everyday. As it grows and my network grows it is becoming even more valuable. I encourage you to check out this resource. I have put together a social bookmarking tutorial page on my wiki. There are printable instructions for using delicious as well as screencast tutorials.
Enjoy
For those of you who are not on the social bookmarking wagon yet, here is a short summary. Traditional bookmarking of sites consisted of adding them to your favorites. You can add the site and place it in a folder. While this is helpful it has limitations. The major limitation is that you can only access these favorites from the computer you saved them on. You are also limited in the how you can organize them for retrieval.
Social bookmarking is web based. You can access your boomarked sites from any computer with an internet connection. These services also allow you to add 'tags" to your bookmarks. Tags are keywords that you assign to a bookmark. You use these tags to organize and search your bookmarks. You can bundle your tags to be better organized. This is the equivalent of putting them in folders. By downloading some toolbar buttons you can add and access sites in your delicious account right from your Internet explorer or firefox toolbar.
The most power feature of social bookmarking is the "social" aspect. Delicous and other social boomarking services are a network. You not only have access to sites that you bookmark, but you also have access to sites that other delicious users bookmarked. The service allows you to add members to your network to make it easy to view their bookmarks. You may be interested in this if you know of other users that share the same interests or profession. You do not have to have someone as part of your network to search their bookmarks.
This is the feature that i have only started to really use in the past year. It has replaced about 40% of my Google searches. You can search by tags on the site. The results that are returned will be seperated by 1. sites you bookmarked, 2.S ites your network bookmarked, 3 Sites that users on delicious bookmarked.
A simple search on "smartboard Math" returned hundreds of websites that other delicous users had bookmarked. What a time saver. Instead of sifting through thousands of google results i have list of a couple hundred pre-approved sites. Other users thought these sites were good enough to bookmark. If one of these people are in my network then the validity and relevancy of the result is even stronger.
Planning a trip? A tag search of "rome" and possibly "restaurants" should provide a variety of bookmarked sites. What about "social studies" "lesson plans"?
Every post has a number at the end of it. This is the number of people who also bookmarked this site. By clicking on the number you get to see the usernames of the people. This is a great way to add users to your network that share a common interest.
Delicious has become one of the web2.0 tools that i use everyday. As it grows and my network grows it is becoming even more valuable. I encourage you to check out this resource. I have put together a social bookmarking tutorial page on my wiki. There are printable instructions for using delicious as well as screencast tutorials.
Enjoy
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
>Math Facts Websites
>I have assembled a list of websites that offer games to practice math facts. I posted these sites on my wiki. The link is Math Facts Websites I you have any recommended additions please add a comment to this blog posting with the name and website address.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Thursday, May 21, 2009
>Create a Booklet
>I came across this site recently. It is called Booklet Creator and can be found at http://bookletcreator.com/
Booklet creator will take any PDF document that you upload to it and convert it to a multipage booklet. You can select the number of pages and size.
This could be a great resource for teachers and PTA's that want to take documents and turn them into booklets for parents.
You can convert documents to PDF format by using adobe acrobat. If you do not have acrobat you can use PRIMO PDF. It is free. http://primopdf.com
Booklet creator will take any PDF document that you upload to it and convert it to a multipage booklet. You can select the number of pages and size.
This could be a great resource for teachers and PTA's that want to take documents and turn them into booklets for parents.
You can convert documents to PDF format by using adobe acrobat. If you do not have acrobat you can use PRIMO PDF. It is free. http://primopdf.com
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