Saturday, April 24, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
BP9_2010043_Web2.0Tool3
Are your students tired of the old fashion way to study spelling? Try Spellingcity.com, an online tool that helps students study their spelling words. Spellingcity.com has many activities and games that students can use to practice their spelling words. Students can work on spelling, word meaning and writing and all the activities revolve around their spelling list. Some of the spelling activities are: Hang Mouse, Unscramble, Audio Word Match and Missing Letter. To practice word meanings students can play Match It! Which Word? Sentence Unscramble and Crossword. Teachers can sign up for a free account and create spelling lists or they can pull from lists that teachers have already published. Even if a teacher does not have an account, their students can go to spellingcity.com and type in their words, be quizzed and do some of the activities. Kids of all ages will enjoy spellingcity.com because they do not feel like they are ‘studying,’ they think they are playing.
On Tuesday I assigned my students 2 Spellingcity.com activities for homework and most of them told me they did 4 or 5. When we use the computers and they finish early, they are asking if they can go to Spellingcity.com and practice their spelling. This is a very foreign concept to me, because most of the time students whine and complain if they have to do any type of activity that involves the dreaded spelling words. If students have headphones they can plug them into the computer and Spellingcity.com will give them the spelling test, it will also grade it, what a bonus! Give Spellingcity.com a try, sign up, add your spelling list and see what your students think.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
BP5_2010042_Web2.0Tool2
eyePlorer.com, The Graphical Knowledge Engine
Students can get so involved with eyePlorer that they just may lose track of time. After all the serious work of researching school topics such as Math, Science, History and Language Arts, they will probably want to find out more about subjects of their own interests.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
BP4_2020041_Web2.0Tools
The days of carrying stacks of flashcards are over, I’d like to introduce you to Cramberry a web 2.0 tool that can make studying a little less painful and can help keep students flashcards organized. Cramberry is an online tool, where students log in to their account and can make up to 30 flashcards a day. Student can choose which set they would like to study. Cramberry creates a studying schedule for the student based on their progress for each card. It keeps track of how many cards the student gets correct by giving them options that they ‘click’ on once the flash card is presented. There are four different choices when answering, from not knowing the answer to getting it correct (perfect). Each time a card is missed it is put back into the ‘deck’. “Cramberry tracks the students progress and tells them when to study each card, reducing wasted effort and letting them focus on studying.” (Cramberry) Students can also choose from flashcards that other users have made and share their own sets with other users. The flash card screen is very basic so that it is not distracting and helps students focus on learning. Another nice thing about Cramberry is that students can print up a list of terms and take it with them if they are on the go. If they have an iPhone or iTouch they can download the Cramberry application and have their cards with them at all times.
BP3_2020041_RSSFeeds
The five blogs I chose relate to my career as an 8th grade Math, Language Arts and Character Development teacher.
1. Experiments in Math Classes – This is to keep me up to date on new and exciting ideas in Math, it is also part of TeacherLingo, which is a community that connects teachers.
2. Wild About Math – All things Math, this will keep me up to date on new trends and fresh ideas.
3. Technology Blog – The latest tips and information for teachers.
4. Home Page Highlights (NCTM blog) As a math teacher, this will help me keep up with the latest and greatest standards and news.
5. EthicsPost – This is Corey Ciocchetti’s blog, his topics discuss ethics, morals and values that I can apply into my “Success” class (character development) and my own life.
BP2_2010041_EduUses4Blogs
Blogging has quickly become the latest and greatest way to share personal opinions, with the ever-changing trends in education; a new movement is upon us, using blogs to further and foster learning. “A blog is a personal website that has content organized like a journal or a diary. Each entry is dated, and displayed on the web page in reverse chronological order, with recent entries at the top.” (Downes, 2009, para. 1)
Blogging is an excellent way for students to improve on writing, reading and critical thinking skills. It can also help the child that is shy and does not like to take part in class discussions, but has meaningful and worthwhile information to give to the lesson. If a student is able to blog their responses and not actually have to say with that are thinking out loud they might be more willing to “participate”. Blogging is another way to open up the line of communication and help enhance a student’s self confidence They will be encouraged to do their clearly express themselves because “blogging gives students a genuine and potentially worldwide audience for their work. Having such an audience can result in feedback and greatly increase student motivation to do their best work” (Downes, 2009, para. 9)
However, Downes suggests that “teachers lead by example” and should set up their own blogs to model the correct way to blog. The easiest way to do this is to start by posting assignments; this will encourage students to frequently check the blog. The next step would be to model how to appropriately respond to blogs.
Finally, blogging can be a great tool for the classroom because it helps to encourage participation, classroom management, peer interaction and critical thinking skills.
