Simple Timer to Get Things Done

I am a big fan of using timers in the classroom to keep students on track and motivated. I use a timer to get class started and take us through our set-up routine and will also use one so that we don’t get bogged down working on one particular problem for too long. I will also use one for small group work in order to keep groups on task and accountable for producing the desired product by the deadline.
Focus Booster Live is both a web application and a desktop application that runs in Adobe Air. It offers a variable countdown followed by a variable period of rest. You could easily make this a warning bell and a final deadline. Very simple program but allow me to save you a few moments of frustration… Click the little “i” in the upper right corner to change the options. I looked for a way to do this for quite a while assuming that little “i” was for help! Give it a whirl and let me know what you think or what you use to help keep track of time in your classroom.

Grammar Girl To The Rescue

The other day I was working on a document when I had a question about whether to use “effect” or “affect.” Turning, as we all do from time to time, to that great friend Google I discovered the site Grammar Girl and the wealth of information present there. Each article is in podcast and written form with each having usefulness in the classroom. From serious topics like “Commas with Participial Phrases” to less serious topics like “Is ‘Conversate’ A Word?” there is a great deal here to help both teachers and students alike.

Grammar Girl

10 Reasons Your Educators Are Resisting Your Change Initiative

The blog Dangerously Irrelevant recently posted this very interesting and timely article on the reasons that change is resisted. Taken from IBM's Online Change Toolkit the article lists a collection of very good reasons. Definately worth a read!

Dangerously Irrelevant: 10 Reasons Your Educators (Employees) Are Resisting Your Change Initiative

View Reading Level in Google Search Results

Working with students on reading in the content area has been an important concept in education for some time, but seems to have increased importance recently. Being able to find web resources for students that are at an appropriate reading level is easier now that Google has included reading levels in their advanced search results. You may choose to limit your search to only one level or tag all results with the level of that page. Now you will instantly know whether that site you want your students to use will be understandable or far beyond their ability to comprehend. Google only provides three levels so fine adjustments in reading level are not possible, but at least you can get your choices of web resources in the right neighborhood. To view a brief how-to video describing how to use the reading level option in Google view the video below.

The British Museum WebQuests

The site Free Technology for Teachers recently posted about The British Museum and utilizing its terrific resources for completing WebQuests. For those unfamiliar, the site WebQuest.org defines a WebQuest as "an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. The model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University in February, 1995 with early input from SDSU/Pacific Bell Fellow Tom March, the Educational Technology staff at San Diego Unified School District, and waves of participants each summer at the Teach the Teachers Consortium." Free Technology for Teachers author Richard Byrne provides several WebQuests he has written using The British Museum. Check them out and use them in your classroom or as a springboard for creating your own.

The British Museum
Richard Byrne British Museum WebQuests

Electronic Anatomy Coloring Book

Here is a way for students to learn anatomical structures through electronic coloring and a quiz-like labeling system. The site presents various systems and then breaks them down into smaller parts for coloring and labeling. Students choose colors and when they click on an area it is filled with the color and the site triggers a multiple choice labeling exercise that will guide them to the correct choice. Final documents can be printed. Note that the site requires the Adobe Shockwave Plugin.

Body Spectrum Electronic Anatomy Coloring Book

Biological Animations

Here is a terrific website containing numerous flash animations of biological functions that would be very helpful in illustrating these concepts for students. Although the pictures in the gallery below are static the actual presentations on the website are animations. These animations appear to be created by John L.Giannini of the St. Olaf College Biology Department.

Biological Animations

Sixty Symbols

Here is a terrific website that tells the story behind the symbols of physics and astronomy. Each of the symbols is linked to a video explanation. The information and videos are created by experts at The University of Nottingham. The site self-describes itself thusly: "Sixty Symbols is a collection of videos about physics and astronomy presented by experts from The University of Nottingham. They aren't lessons or lectures - and this site has never tried to be an online reference book. The films are just fun chats with men and women who love their subject and know a lot about it!" Definitely worth a look.

Sixty Symbols

Assess and Visualize Multiple Intelligences

Have is an outstanding tool for easily assessing the intelligences of your students. The site asks them a series of questions and once answered provides a visual representation of their preferred intelligences. (See example in the gallery below) The site also provides a "secret code" for each test taker that allows for the regeneration of that individual's chart. It also allows a teacher to create a graph of students in a particular grouping by entering the codes of the desired students. If you are in a 1:1 school students can quickly take the assessment in class and then send you their code. Copy and paste them into the site a visual representation of your group's intelligences appears before you. You can also simply enter one student's code to regenerate their graph. This might be helpful knowledge for adapting instruction for struggling students.  This site is a most terrific tool for helping to differentiate instruction.

Birmingham Grid for Learning Multiple Intelligences

Google Art Project

Google has unveiled a new site called Google Art Project that uses its Street View technology to offer tours of several major art museums. Within the site there are over 1,000 pieces of art from 385 different artists captured at 17 different museums. In addition to the ability to walk through each gallery the site also lets you view exceptionally detailed images of several pieces of art from within each gallery. Each of the images is zoomable allowing you to see exceptional detail. There are also some images captured with what has been called "gigapixel" technology which has been said to reveal details that cannot be seen by the naked eye.

Google Art Project

Yad Vashem's Holocaust Photo Archive

In honor of UN International Holocaust Remembrance Day Google partnered with Yad Vashem, a Jerusalem-based center devoted to Holocaust remembrance, to create a digital archive of the organization's photo archives. There exist within its pages 138,327 photos arranged into albums. You will find full resolution images of families, towns, soldiers and the atrocities committed during the Holocaust. This site contains a wealth of images that will help to make the events of the Holocaust and World War II real for students, to help put a human face on the events that transpired, and to help enrich lessons and engage students in remembering and learning from the Holocaust's victims.

Yad Vashem Photo Archive

Visuwords Graphical Dictionary

A strong vocabulary is so important for our students and the Visuwords site provides a fun way to find definitions but includes so much more. When you search for a word the screen is populated with the word and numerous other "bubbles" which provide the word's relationships to other words. Opposites, synonyms, words with similar meanings all pop into view. Hover your mouse over any word and the definition appears. You can drag the chart around to reposition it and explore complexly related words. Using the random word function is a fun way to discover new words and how they might relate to a word already in one's vocabulary. It is making these connections to existing knowledge that we all know helps cement knowledge. Check out the screen shots below or just surf on over to Visuwords.com and start exploring.

Digital JFK

As educators we know the importance of using primary sources when conducting research, and yet for our students it is often the first hits in a Google search that are the ones used for their work. The Internet continues to bring an increasing number of primary resources right to the desktops of anyone with a computer and web connection. Today saw the addition of yet another collection of primary sources to which our students can turn as they seek information.

NPR reported today on an announcement by the Kennedy Library and the National Archives that all of President John F. Kennedy's important speeches, papers, and recordings have been digitized and are now available online at www.jfklibrary.org. According to NPR there are "more than 200,000 pages of speeches and notes, hundreds of reels of audio tape, and more than 1,000 recorded phone conversations." From his days as President-Elect, to the inauguration, Cuban Missile Crisis, and his unfortunate early death at the hands of an assassin, documentation is available on all of it.

So far I've examined the drafts of his inaugural address, photos of his arrival in Dallas, TX on that fateful November day in 1963, and listened to several phone conversations and speeches. This would be a terrific resource for students as they study the world during the JFK presidency, as you seek to teach them about primary sources, or even to study the writing process of a gifted public speaker. The possibilities are tremendous and exciting!

Looking for more primary sources? Check out these sites:

Library of Congress American Memory
Documenting the American South
National Archives and Records Administration
Smithsonian Institution