Kelly Tenkely of iLearn Technology blog has a good post about Angry Birds and Math Class
Yesterday instead of dutifully writing a blog post, I was having fun building catapults with kids. I was playing with a transdisciplinary lesson using Angry Birds as my inspiration. Yes, you read correctly-Angry Birds.
It doesn’t seem to matter what age group or demographic that I talk to, kids (and adults) everywhere are fans of Angry Birds. As I was playing around with Angry Birds (yep I’m a fan too), I started thinking about all of the learning that could be happening. I have watched a two year old tell an older sister that “you have to pull down to go up higher”. I have watched as kids master this game through trial and error. Being the teacher that I am, I started dreaming up a transdisciplinary lesson with Angry Birds as the base.
Read the full article: CLICK HERE
Thank so much to Michael Zimmer of In Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness for sharing the links below on his blog this morning. Michael does a Weekly Core Subjects list and it is always rich with websites to explore. I always feel the need to share his resources with my students and readers. So thank you Michael for being such a powerful resource.
Newspaper Blackout. Students take a newspaper and black out all the words to create a story, poem, quote, or whatever. What a neat activity for English teachers. The link will take you to a “blog,” but in reality, this would be a neat classroom notebook to create. I could see this same format being used in other subjects when wanting to find the most important parts of an article/story. Great ideas Michael, and as a former journalism teacher, I love it.
Cummings Study Guides provides various study guides for Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and various other types of literature. There is a vast index worth checking out.
Capitonyms is a word whose meaning changes based on whether or not it is capitalized. .
The Basics of APA Style is a web-based slide presentation that also includes voice over. It does a good job of explaining APA formatting.
“The Favorite Poem Project is dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project shortly after the Library of Congress appointed him to the post in 1997.”
Knowing Poe is an interactive website designed to share about Poe the Person, Poe the Write, and Poe’s Library.
Check out the Math, Social Studies and Science resources, Click Here
Combine science, inquiry, creativity and technology with our Science Resource Kits!
Your students will love exploring content and showing what they know about science through text, images, illustrated diagrams, and more. Tech4Learning has developed elementary and secondary science resource kits to help you get started.
Elementary Science Resource Kit
The Elementary Resource Kit will help you engage students in science. The kit includes:
· articles on using animation and multimedia to engage learners in science,
· high-level lessons plans on science topics like planets and inventions,
· exciting student samples!
Download the Elementary Science Resource Kit
Secondary Science Resource Kit
The Secondary Science Resource Kit includes a similar range of articles, lesson plans, and samples, but is specifically designed to reflect the needs of teaching secondary science students.
Download the Secondary Science Resource Kit
The Tech4Learning Team
info@tech4learning.com
Help your classrooms explore authentic, real-world problems and issues through the Google Science Fair.
The Google Science Fair is the world’s first global online science competition dedicated to students ages 13-18. This is a collaborative effort between Google, CERN, the LEGO group, National Geographic, and Scientific American to celebrate the brightest young minds of today, as well as to encourage students to immerse themselves into the world of science.
Here’s how your students can enter:
- Go to www.google.com/sciencefair and sign up, as either individuals or teams of up to three.
- We’ll email their parent(s) or guardian(s), who must consent in order for them to enter.
- All entrants should review the contest rules and FAQs.
- Then they’ll create their projects (our online resources can help) and submit them online by April 4th, 2011. Simple as that!
Rat Dissection for the iPad.
Students can experience a virtual dissection of a rat. Just like the award-winning app, Frog Dissection, Rat Dissection for the iPad has been designed for middle and high school students. The content for the app has been validated by subject matter experts to ensure accuracy. It’s a great substitute for the real thing and will fit perfectly in the science curriculum.
The app walks you through a series of steps on how to dissect a rat. All you have to do is to simply follow the written instructions along with voice-over to dissect and explore the rat’s internal organs. Besides a virtual chloroformed specimen, Rat Dissection comes with all the dissection tools. The organs are all presented as 3D images. Users can tap on the individual organs to see what they look like from different angles. Detailed information on the organs is provided to help the student learn about their structure and function.
Key Features:
•Vivid 3D images of rat’s internal organs
•Step-by-step instructions with voice over
•Accurate simulation of the wet lab dissection procedure
•Content validation by subject matter experts
$3.99 in the iTunes store
Not convinced? The following are some schools that are either considering the use of Frog Dissection or are using it in the classroom now.
- Pikes Peak Prep, Colorado http://www.gazette.com/articles/charter-104737-school-students.html
- A.D. Rundle Middle School, Chillawack, Canada http://www.chilliwacktimes.com/technology/ropos+innovation/4009103/story.html
- Durham Public Schools http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/12/18/869111/ipads-make-inroads-in-triangle.html
- Lake County schools technology http://www.towndigger.com/life-and-family/youth-corner/8691-new-technology-transforming-science-classes
Google Body is a detailed 3D model of the human body. You can peel back anatomical layers, zoom in, click to identify anatomy, or search for muscles, organs, bones and more. You can also share the exact scene you are viewing by copying and pasting the URL.
This is an amazing virtual anatomy system. 3-dimensional views of all human organ systems. Zoom through the body . Use the label layer to learn anatomical vocabulary. Stunning graphics. A free virtual tour of the body.
This is a beta offering and you need a Web browser that supports WebGL. This means Google Chrome or Firefox 4 beta. Delicious users: Let me warn you about Firefox 4 beta. You Delicious buttons on the browser vanish. So I suggest using Chrome for this.
Wow, Awesome Library organizes the Web with 37,000 carefully reviewed resources, including the top 5 percent in education. This is a really cool site and worth checking out.
http://www.awesomelibrary.org/
English/Language Arts
50 Places to Find Free Books Online is a list of sites where students and teachers can find books online. For schools with a 1:1 programs in place, these types of sites are great additions to the curriculum and becoming a necessity in tight budget times.
Wordfaire it’s a free live blogging platform that anyone can use…….writing/blogging/publishing platform. The site advertises that as you write, it is published to the web. There is no waiting for the post to appear.
Mathematics
WOW Math is a personal teacher website for a math teacher who teaches Algebra 1 and 2, as well as AP Calculus. He has aYouTube videos as well on his personal YouTube channel with hundreds of math videos.
InterMath is a professional development effort designed to support teachers in becoming better mathematics educators. It focuses on building teachers’ mathematical content knowledge through mathematical investigations that are supported by technology. InterMath includes a workshop component and materials to support instructors.
Science
The Institute of Physics has a great YouTube channel of videos to share in physics classrooms. Easy and free access to online video is a game changer for the classroom.
Sun Motions is a Flash based interactive that allows users to see the angle of the sun from months, latitudes, and times of day. You can play an animation of the motion of the sun as well to help students see how the sun acts through certain time periods.
Explore Biology is a resource for teachers of high school biology and especially AP Biology. lecture notes, blogs, handouts, activities, labs.
Planet Foss is a Science Photo Sharing site. iLearn Technology blog has a great write up about the site.
2011 is the International Year of Chemistry has excellent resources for Chemistry teachers.
Social Studies
The History Teachers Channel on YouTube takes popular songs and changes the lyrics to teach various content in history.
THIS DAY from Nikon provides an image from history for the day you visit from various years in history. Free Technology for Teachers had a post about this site. Very informative.
Miscellaneous
PsykoPaint is a web based software that allows you to create and paint amazing art from photographs. Wow, this is just very cool.
DrawIsland is a free online version of Microsoft Paint. Easy to use.
Graphic Organizers.If you need a good online graphic organizer tool, here is a list of 30 to choose from.
Thanks to The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness by Michael Zimmer for sharing these resources on his blog.
by Kevin Zimmer, The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness Kevin has a great selection of resources for Core Subjects. Check them out.
Math Web Based Resources – General, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, and Trigonometry
English Web Based Resources – General, Reading, Writing, British Literature, and American Literature
Social Studies Web Based Resources – General, History, Government, Economics, and Geography
Science Web Based Resources – General, Earth-Space Science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Anatomy
Electives Web Based Resources – Foreign Language, Special Education, Art, Agriculture, Business/Marketing, PE/Health, Music, Practical LivingCroe Subject Resources
English
TES English provides and publishes printable and editable teaching resources, worksheets, lesson plans and ton of resources for secondary English teachers.
Paper Rater or Paper Grader paste your paper into the site. The software provides detailed reports of word choice, grammar, spelling errors, and more. No sign up is necessary and it will be “graded” in real time.
Mathematics
Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 has a graphing calculator that plots in 2D & 3D, step-by-step equation solving, and useful tools to help students with math and science studies. It is down-loadable software for students.
Math247 provides links and resources to various math screencasts and math videos. There are videos for all ages and grades and several are submitted by students.
Touch Trigonometry a simple Flash product that hopes to help math learners of all ages get an intuitive understanding of trigonometry. It aims to do that by letting you just play with the trig functions, with no buttons to get in the way.
Science
Homespun Science Tunes The following songs are parodies. I grabbed the musical nature of the song and created my own lyrics. They are all created for guitar….acoustic, electric….you name it. In my classroom, I have a “Guitar of Science” for playing such tunes. Sometimes students like to sing along and sometimes they don’t, but they are always smiling….and learning scientific concepts along the way. A couple of these song were written with the help of another science teacher Mr. Youngs. By writing and singing these tunes, I hope that I’ve struck a different “chord” in the students’ brains to help the realize there are many ways to learn new things!
The Virtual Lab from the ChemCollective provides interactive science experiments that will go through the steps of various science experiments.
Practical Biology provides teachers of biology at all levels with experiments that demonstrate a wide range of biological concepts and processes. Each practical may be used alone or as a starting-point for open-ended investigations or enhancement activities, such as clubs or open-day events.
Practical Physics is a website for teachers enabling them to share their skills and experience of making experiments work in the classroom.
Practical Chemistry is a website that provides all teachers of chemistry with a wide range of experiments to illustrate concepts or processes, as starting-points for investigations and for enhancement activities.
Physics Demonstration Films from the National STEM Centre provides 8 videos explaining various physics concepts.
Open Science Resources is an educational community that provides various resources for teachers. You will have to sign up for an account before being allowed access, but once you have an account you will be able to visit the repository which includes numerous educational materials (images of exhibits and scientific instruments, animations, videos, lesson plans, student projects and educational pathways with guidelines for interactive museum visit experiences).
Social Studies
An interesting video on the reading of the Gettysburg Address. Worth sharing with students, because the reader does it with some passion.
From the New York Times is an interesting “Times Machine” where you can have access to New York Times newspapers from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel.
Thanks to Kevin Zimmer for sharing these resources.
What’s on the Web
Language Arts
1.) WordNet:
WordNet® is a large lexical database of English. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are interlinked by means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. The resulting network of meaningfully related words and concepts can be navigated with the browser. WordNet is also freely and publicly available for download. WordNet’s structure makes it a useful tool for computational linguistics and natural language processing.
2.) NounProject The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world’s visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way. The symbols on this site are and always will remain free. We believe symbols can not be effectively shared with the world if they are not free. Everyone likes simplicity. We want you to be able to come to our site and effortlessly find and obtain what you are looking for. Simple as that.
3.) The English Room: 30 Days of Poetry is a collection of lessons and student activities creating a great unit on Poetry. A great resource for English teachers.
You can write poetry! Students just like you in middle and high schools have used these lessons for several years. They have had poems published in national anthologies and several were invited to read the works they created from these lessons at the 1997 Great Basin Book Festival in Reno, Nevada.
The Day number is your link to the lessons. Each lesson gives you a format to follow and student examples. In many cases your teacher will direct you to write more than one poem in a lesson. This gives you an opportunity to use the form and, most often, create an even better poem in doing so.
4.) Biblio Bouts The idea is to create a competition between students to find the best possible resources through research. Play the BiblioBouts online game to learn the process of finding high quality information while you complete your assignments. At the end of the game, you will have a high quality bibliography or list of research sources you can use for your assignment. You can continue to use these research skills in the rest of your college coursework.
Mathematics
1.) Archimy is a service for drawing graphs of all types of functions. With Archimy, you will draw the graph of any function and form. There is a text-box to input the fuction. The graphs can be both 2D and 3D. You can define a graph by specifying the formula for the coordinates x,y,z.
- The syntax does not differentiate between commands written with lowercase and uppercase letters.
- You can type commands in one line using “;” as a delimiter
- Use the “#” character for comments
2.) XtraMath is an option for learning basic mathematics. The site is designed to help students, teachers, and parents. There are six videos on the front page that will help you learn how to utilize the service. XtraMath is completely free.
Science
1.) The Surfing Scientist
The Surfing Scientist is really Ruben Meerman. Ruben takes liquid nitrogen, balloons and the laws of physics and does science shows for kids at schools in NSW and QLD (and hopefully soon in other states). He has an arsenal of science tricks up his sleave – check out the tricks and the lesson plans for teachers.
2.) Are you interested in weather? Check out NOAA. They have a great Education Resources section for helping teach about earth and weather. Worth checking out.
3.) MEDtropolis a site for studying the human body, virtually. In English and Spanish. Four sections: The Human Brain, Skeleton, Human Heart, and Digestive Track.
4.) eSkeletons provides an interactive environment in which to examine and learn about skeletal anatomy. The purpose of this site is to enable you to view the bones of both human and non-human primates and to gather information about them from our osteology database.
5.) I have written ab out it before, but it warrants mentioning again. The Google Global Science Fair where students and teachers can get involved in sharing science experiments and other projects.
Social Studies
1.) Howard Zinn was a popular historian who also wrote the book “A People’s History of the United States
2.) Not Even Past Not Even Past provides dynamic, accessible, short articles on every field of History. Founded in 2010 and developed by the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, Not Even Past speaks to everyone interested in the past and in the ways the past lives on in the present.
3.) Primary Access is a suite of free online tools that allows students and teachers to use primary source documents to complete meaningful and compelling learning activities with digital movies, storyboards, rebus stories and other online tools.
4.) TED Talks for Social Studies Teachers. An amazing slidshow with resources from TedTalks that would be usfule to a Social Studies teacher.
5.) Our Changing World is a interactive site for showcasing various data for every country around the world. The physical aspect of all the countries change as the data changes.
A few more
1.) Top Documentary Films good site for finding films in all curriculum areas. All the films are free and available online.
2.) Education Podcast from Podcast.com Education podcasts from universities, colleges, students, teachers — everyone who uses podcasting to learn and to teach others. We’re all life-long learners, aren’t we? Even some of the littlest ones in k-12 schools are podcasting. Be transported back to your elementary days…if only this technology were available then.
3.) There are tons of ways to make games, but with the new computer on Jeopardy, this might prove useful. Custom Flash Jeopardy Maker allows you to create a Flash based version of a Jeopardy game which is great for review.
Thanks to Michael Zimmer for sharing these resources at In Pursuit of Technology Happiness.
Teacher Resources for Google Science Fair
At Google, the only thing we love as much as science is science education. We want to celebrate young scientific talent and engage students who might not yet be engaged with science. So, in partnership with CERN, the LEGO Group, National Geographic, and Scientific American we’ve created an exciting new global science competition, the Google Science Fair. Students all over the world who are between the ages of 13 and 18 are eligible to enter this competition and compete for prizes including once-in-a-lifetime experiences, internships and scholarships.
We’ll be accepting submissions from 11 January to 4 April 2011. Students who make it to the finalist stage will be invited with a parent or guardian to our celebratory event at Google headquarters in California in July, where they’ll be able to showcase their project and meet some of the brightest minds in science today. We will select and announce our winner at this event.
Why Google Science Fair?
- Digital — Students are immersed in a digital world and can be thought of as digital natives. Why not have them investigate, evaluate, analyze, synthesize, and publish their results using an electronic medium that is relevant for them? It is a cost–saving and greener alternative.
- Global — This program’s reach goes far beyond that of any school site, district, region, or even state. Be among the schools around the world that will be sharing students’ findings with each other.
- Collaborative — Google tools are all made to be collaborative whether students (and teachers) are in the same classroom or across the Atlantic. Students have the ability to work together anywhere, anytime to investigate a topic or question of interest.
Google provides resources, tools, and productive, web-based applications that are free to use and access for yourself, your students, and your school!
Get all the details, CLICK HERE
Travel Through Time is a product of 3M and Discovery Channel. It is an interactive trip exploring the everyday things we use like scotch tape to insulation and the science behind it. This site would be a great for any content area. I can see myself using it in a language arts classrooms as story starters or writing prompts. And it is a no-brainer in a history classroom or science classroom. It is very simple, but also very powerful. Check it out!
A junior-high school teacher in Illinois is singing science lessons set to popular music and posting the recorded lessons on YouTube. Doug Edmonds rewrites the lyrics to popular songs such as ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” with lessons on chemical bonds and other science concepts. He also holds diagrams and flash cards to accompany the songs. “If I’m ever struggling on a quiz, I’ll just sort of sing them to myself,” one student said. “People are going around singing them in the hallways. They’re actually really catchy.” TribLocal.com (Chicago)/Northbrook, Ill.
Science Direct is provides articles and information related to all things science. Create an account so you can save your favorite articles and journal entries.
Science NetLinks K-12 educators has lessons, resources, tools and other activities that are standards-based internet experiences for students. Worth a look around for science resources.
We Choose the Moon Flash-based interactive recreation to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11. Great interactive experience, but takes time to load.
HubbleSite is dedicated to everything that has to do with the Hubble Space Telescope. Numerous galleries of amazing images and will get students thinking about Space.
Cells Alive is a site for science teachers that brings the study of cells to life. There are several interactives and galleries to investigate cells.
Science Simulations from PhET from the University of Colorado. There are also several great interactives and simulations for the science. Categorized by subject matter.
Iknowthat.com – High energy, engaging games in math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, The Arts, and thinking games all to be found here either by subject or grade level.
Into the Book – a reading comprehension resource for K-4 students and teachers. We focus on eight research-based strategies: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing. Your class can watch our engaging 15-minute videos, and try the online interactive activities.
Behind the Lesson provides teachers with information and teaching resources for each strategy. Watch our 10-minute professional development videos, and explore the Web site for lesson plans, video and audio clips, downloads, and more.
Math Baseball – FunBrain.com, an award-winning interactive learning and “edutainment Web site” links K-8 children, parents, and teachers together with its fun math baseball game that you can play by yourself or with friends. It gives you a choice of math problems and the level you want to practice. Click on the Games icon for other games available through their site, some going up to grade 12, age seventeen.
Hippocampus.com – At this incredible site, you can find ready-made presentations and lessons for the your high school course or create your own mini-site for your students.
CELLS alive! – High resolution electron microscopy and slick animations demonstrate the mechanics of HIV infection, allergy and mite interactions, how antibodies are made, bacterial motility, ulcer-causing bacteria, how lymphocytes kill infected cells, etc. Video clips require QuickTime or AVI.
Two wiki’s with very well organized and extensive lists of interactive websites.
One of my students, Jessica Moravec, shared this cool Math and Science interactive site with me.
“You can find over 200 Jams on topics like The Universe , listen to songs about Landforms , and test yourself on concepts like Range .”
Check it out: http://studyjams.scholastic.com
I read Dan Meyer’s blog on a regular basis and today Dan shared the link to the Google lessons for Exploring Computational Thinking through the use of Python programming. I am not a programmer, so Python programming means nothing. Dan Meyer worked on the project. Exploring Computational Thinking is a series of lessons for designed to help middle school and high school students explore mathematics and science concepts.
This looks like a great list of lessons to implement in the classroom.
Preserve and Protect the Environment
The 2011 SeaWorld/Busch Gardens Environmental Excellence Awards recognize the outstanding efforts of students and teachers across the country who are working at the grassroots level to protect and preserve the environment. The award consists of $10,000 to the winning project; an all-expenses-paid trip for three students and one adult leader to a SeaWorld or Busch Gardens park for a special awards event; 100 T-shirts to share with school and community partners; award trophy and participation certificate for the project leader. All U.S. K–12 schools working to protect the environment at the grassroots level are eligible for the award.
Deadline: December 10, 2010
Click Here for More Information
Plus magazine opens a door to the world of maths, with all its beauty and applications, by providing articles from the top mathematicians and science writers on topics as diverse as art, medicine, cosmology and sport. You can read the latest mathematical news on the site every week, browse our blog, listen to our podcasts and subscribe to our fortnightly email newsletter.
It’s ten years since the first draft of the human genome was published and Plus is joining in the celebrations with a package on the maths of genes. We try and solve the genome puzzle, model cell suicide, and find out why DNA evidence in court isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Genes aside, we assess small but lethal risks, create some fractal music, encounter a two box paradox, and find out how to win with coins and cards.
Check it out HERE
