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Mathwords - Bruce Simmons
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): vocabulary (236)
In the Classroom
Use this site as a resource when math definitions are needed in class. Share this link on your class website for students to use at home as a resource. Use definitions from the site in math journals and notebooks. Have students investigate specific relevant terms and create multimedia presentations. Challenge students to create a talking avatar using a photo or other image (legally permitted to be reproduced). Have students use the avatars to explain complicated math terms in their own words. Use a site such as Blabberize, reviewed here.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Explore the Cosmos - The Planetary Society
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): inventors and inventions (71), nasa (29), planets (112), space (214)
In the Classroom
Make this site a link on your class web page during a unit on space or all year round. Gifted students and those with a passion for space will find endless discoveries. Include this site as a research source when assigning projects about space or the planets. If you have more able students in upper elementary or middle school, use this site as a differentiated alternative for them to research at a higher level. Inspire students to read in content areas by sharing space-related "current events" articles from this site. These selections would work well on interactive whiteboards for practice using highlighters to find main idea, context clues, and other comprehension skills. No whiteboard? No problem! Use your projector and eMargin, reviewed here, to highlight and annotate as a class. If you assign portions of the site to the entire class, you may need to assign "reading buddies" for weaker readers and they can use eMargin together. Challenge students to narrate space image galleries (search for the blog entry on the "New Flickr collection of historical NASA photos") or design and explain their own devices for space exploration on Thinglink, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Fibonacci Numbers - Dr. Ron Knott
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): puzzles (143)
In the Classroom
Share the site on your interactive whiteboard or projector; then allow students to explore the site on their own or in small groups. Provide the site as a resource to students when studying famous Mathematicians. Present the first portion of the Mathematical Magic to students and challenge them to find out why it works. Provide this link on your class website for additional practice outside of the classroom. Invite students to create highly visual Fibonacci online posters using Canva, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Shipwreck Challenge - Museum of Science, Boston
Grades
6 to 8tag(s): creativity (91), problem solving (225)
In the Classroom
Set up this activity by talking about creative ways to solve problems and using one's imagination, connecting it to what scientists and engineers do. Have your students agree on what parts of the classroom will represent different parts of nature. For example, desks could be trees. Then group students into fours, give them a box of materials, and have them think and then create different survival gear. Debrief the class by having them show their designed gear, explain how and why it would work, and their thought process. Possibly have students summarize their design on a video. Share the videos on a site such as SchoolTube (reviewed here). Then, have other groups respond by suggesting improvements or alternative ideas.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Symbaloo EDU - Symbaloo BV
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): bookmarks (46), curation (35), DAT device agnostic tool (144), gamification (73)
In the Classroom
Be sure to know the URL's of the resources you are planning to share or have them open in other tabs to copy/paste. To share you must be able to copy/paste URLs (web addresses). Have older students create their own webmixes, but this resource is best used as a teacher sharing tool for sharing links, RSS feeds, and other resources for students to use in specific projects or as general course links. If shared with the world, the webmix can be viewed by others and is public.Create a webmix of the most used sites for your class and first demonstrate how the webmix works on a projector or interactive whiteboard if you have special instructions or color coding for its use. Some examples include links to copyright free images, online textbooks, or online tools such as Google Drive/Docs, Google Drawings, Prezi, and more. Link to teacher web pages, webquests, resource sites for your subject, and any other resource that is helpful for students. Consider creating a login for the whole class to update with suggestions from class members. Use this AS your class website. Color code the tiles on a webmix for younger, non-reader, or ESL/ELL students. For example, color each subject differently from the others. Differentiate by color coding varying levels of skills practice at a classroom computer center or to distinguish homework practice sites from in-class sites. Differentiate difficulty levels using the various colors enabling you to list resources for both your learning support students and gifted students and all in between. Use color to organize tools for different projects or individual students. You may want to share Symbaloo EDU with parents at Back to School Night and the color-coding system for differentiation. This will help parents (and students) find what sites are ideal for their levels. Be sure to link or embed your webmix on a computer center in your room for easy access. Share a review site webmix for parents and students to access at home before tests, as well. Team up with other teachers in your subject/grade to create chapter by chapter webmixes for all your students. If you are just starting with Symbaloo, this is a simple way to differentiate, however, Symbaloo now has a Lesson Plans tool (also called Learning Paths), reviewed here, to help you differentiate for individual or groups of students.
Challenge your gifted students to curate and collaborate on their own webmixes as a curriculum extension activity on topics such as climate change or pros and cons of genetically engineered food. They can use color coding to sort sites by bias (or neutrality) as well as to group subtopics under the overall theme. Use the student-made webmixes with other students to raise the overall level of discussion in your class or as an extra credit challenge. If you embed the webmix in a class wiki, all students can respond with questions and comments for the gifted students to moderate and reply, creating a student-led community of learners.
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The 50 Worst Inventions - Time Magazine
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): inventors and inventions (71)
In the Classroom
Challenge students to create a list of useless inventions or to invent one of their own. Display the slide show on your interactive whiteboard or projector and discuss if students agree with a product's placement on the list. Generate a list of characteristics that would keep an invention OFF this list! Have students create commercials advertising their new product (or the one they researched). Enhance learning by challenging students to create a video commercial. Modify classroom technology use by usingFlexClip, reviewed here. FlexClip is designed to allow you to create short animated or explainer videos to share on YouTube and other social media sites. Share using a site such as SchoolTube, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Anne Frank in the World - Utah Education Network
Grades
3 to 12tag(s): anne frank (10), holocaust (41), jews (23), nazis (8), remembrance day (5), women (138), world war 2 (151)
In the Classroom
Use the activities and resources on this site to help students connect global and individual events, and realize that a positive attitude is possible despite terrible misfortune. Use the online resources to help you select the topics, activities, and articles that center around the themes you want to emphasize as a preview or follow up to reading The Diary of Anne Frank. Let the students collect and save their information on a class set of computers, (groups of three students work well.) Work toward one or several of the suggested final products, such as creating a wall poster, collage, or mosaic by using one of the online tools reviewed by TeachersFirst. Have students create an interactive online poster using Adobe Creative Cloud Express for Education, reviewed here. Challenge students to use Mosaic Maker, reviewed here. You might want to start by having students brainstorm a list of past or present acts of discrimination of which they are aware. Develop their brainstorming list on an interactive whiteboard or projector using bubbl.us, reviewed here, and ask students to think about and associate feelings of the victims of these acts. How might those feelings look in graphic form? Have each student or groups of students choose one example from the list, along with a few words about the feelings that accompany the acts of discrimination, and select online images that reflect those emotions. When students express their feelings onto visual media, it helps them relate to what Anne did by writing in her diary. For more adventurous technology users, all individual or group work can be merged to create an online scrapbook that can be shared with the entire class and families, using Smilebox, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Library of Congress Read.gov - Library of Congress
Grades
K to 12A special feature of the site is an exclusive story, called "The Exquisite Corpse Adventure." The Exquisite Corpse was a game in which someone would start a story, fold over their part, and the next person would add to the story and on it would go until the last person ended the story. For this Exquisite Corpse, Jon Scieszka started the story and passed it on to Katherine Patterson, who passed it on . . . and so it goes for 18 episodes. The entire story took a year to write to the finish.
tag(s): authors (105), digital storytelling (144), writing (317)
In the Classroom
Check out "The Exquisite Corpse Adventure" and have students listen to the stories. As a challenge ask students to look at the differences in writing style for each of the authors. Project a chart about the plot and the writing style on your interactive whiteboard or projector, and have students list the differences and similarities in writing style. Another idea for an activity is to have the students read the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling (not found on this site) and then have them read the very touching national contest winner letter to the author about his poem found here. Students could then write their own letters to an author of a favorite book or poem. Extend student learning and have students create podcasts to read their letters to the authors using a site such as podOmatic, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Green Revolution - National Science Foundation
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): conservation (86), environment (238)
In the Classroom
Use these videos as a great introduction to green energy and replacements to fossil fuels. Share the videos on your interactive whiteboard or projector. After showing a video, have students research the use of the various green energies around the country and the world. Research energy use and especially the difference between residential and commercial demand. Have cooperative learning groups view one of the videos and complete some basic research on the topic. Have the groups create a multimedia presentation to share their findings. Challenge students to narrate a picture using a tool such as ThingLink, reviewed here. Be sure your students check out the City Car. Research the various types of green designs on cars to find the advantages and disadvantages of each. Great discussions, projects, and research are all possible through use of these videos.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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National Underground Railroad Freedom Center - National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): genealogy (8), slavery (76), underground railroad (12)
In the Classroom
Use the lesson plans (found under Learn and Educator Resources) in your own preparation, and make this site available to students who are doing research on the Underground Railroad. If your class is doing any family tree research as a part of a discussion on immigration, this site may be useful to students who have ancestors who were enslaved. Have students create a family tree using an online tool such as Family Tree Creator, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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You Decide: Challenge Your Assumptions - WQED
Grades
9 to 12tag(s): politics (113)
In the Classroom
Divide students into cooperative learning groups to explore the site. Have them choose a topic to explore and debate and then take turns using the resources provided to help build their arguments. A terrific component of this site is the ability to embed a widget into your classroom website that takes students directly to the site and one of its decision-making activities. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed that makes the widget update regularly. There is an archive of previous debates to explore. This site includes a forum/discussion board. Determine whether students may do this under your school's policies and whether forum submissions may display student names or initials. Then spell out both permissible use and consequences before you send students to this site. Some teachers obtain parent permission for students to participate in such a site. You may want to participate in the forum/discussion board as a class, using your own login.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Abduzeedo - Fabio Sasso
Grades
6 to 12General Tips and Reminders: There are ads along the top center that may interfere with the sites content. Be sure to thoroughly review the site before using it with students.
tag(s): design (79)
In the Classroom
Teachers of design tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator will want to take advantage of the site's free web tutorials. The systematic directions are perfect to use on an interactive whiteboard for whole class instruction. Create a resource library full of links to Abduzeedo's design tutorials for students to practice with both in and outside of class.To show what they have learned from this site, challenge students to create an online graphic to share using Adobe Creative Cloud Express for Education, reviewed here, or Genially, reviewed here. Art teachers may want to take advantage of the sponsored ads on the right side of the page. These can lead to wonderful additional sites such as the "art house co-op" that is full of global art projects such as the "Sketch Book Project." Some of the other links contain valuable excursions, but could lead to inappropriate material.Obtain parent permission before posting any student work on this sharing site. There is also an accompanying app for Mac users available for free on iTunes.
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Basic Mathematics - Jetser Carasco
Grades
K to 8In the Classroom
Assign students topics to teach to classmates. Have students use these sequential instructions as an outline or starting point for how to teach a topic. Students can create multimedia presentations to help their classmates learn. Have your students create an interactive online poster using Lucidpress, reviewed here. Challenge students to create a video and share using a site such as SchoolTube, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Calculator Soup - Edward Furey and Southborough Website Design
Grades
K to 12tag(s): calculators (37)
In the Classroom
Find exactly the calculator you need for students to operate on the interactive whiteboard or at computers. As an enrichment project, have students select a calculator and design problems to use it. Students can share their problems with classmates and be exposed to various types of math problems and calculators. Challenge students to create a video to "advertise" a certain calculator and share using a site such as SchoolTube (reviewed here).Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Popular Science - Bonnier Corporation
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): machines (14), simple machines (17)
In the Classroom
Use the gadget portion of the site as a launch for student created machines. Look at some newly created products as a class on the interactive whiteboard or projector, and then have students design their own machine that would be marketable to current buyers or potential future buyers. Have students take a picture of their creation. Challenge students to narrate the picture using a tool such as ThinkLink, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Khan Academy - Sal Khan
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): atoms (42), cells (81), energy (130), functions (52), homework (32), matter (46), molecules (42), photosynthesis (20), respiration (10), structures (18)
In the Classroom
Share the site with your students in order to access at home for homework help. List this link on your class website. If you are unable to view this site on student computers but You Tube is unblocked for teachers, consider using a projector or interactive whiteboard to show to the whole class. Use your google account to log in once you click on the exercises link. From there, find access to exercises that students can complete that are related to each video. Encourage students to share links to specific videos they find helpful on a "Video Reviews" (yes, that is a pun) page of your class wiki. For a very real challenge, have students create their own simple review videos in the Khan Academy style using FlexClip, reviewed here. FlexClip is designed to allow you to create short animated or explainer videos to share on YouTube and other social media sites, then, upload to SchoolTube, TeacherTube, or YouTube, whichever works best in your school. Embed them on your class wiki for a year-to-year student-made study guide!Comments
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The Poetry Archive - The Poetry Archive Panel
Grades
K to 12tag(s): poetry (190)
In the Classroom
Enrich and enliven your poetry lessons with recordings and videos of some of the world's best loved poets. One of teachers many frustrations, when trying to inspire students to fall in love with poetry, is not being able to call up the voices of earlier poets. Listening to the poet himself has a magical effect in the classroom and makes the very experience that it describes come alive. Start by projecting the poem on your white board while listening to the recording and then ask students to pick out, highlight, and display words or phrases that appealed to them. Introduce various poetic forms and demonstrate how the sound of a poem is as crucial to its meaning as the printed words on the page. Explore, connect, and make new discoveries for themes you are studying. Have students respond to the power and energy of poetic language and appreciate the beauty of the sounds and images, then move towards an analysis of the underlying meaning. Challenge students to try some creative writing that goes beyond the literal meaning and resonates their "voice." Not studying poetry during April (Poetry Month)? Play a quick Poetry Break from this site as a class starter or bonus moment after finishing a quiz. Make your own class poetry archive by having students create PowerPoint images of their own poems and read them aloud with PowerPoint Online, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Constitutionfacts.com - Oak Hill Publishing
Grades
K to 12tag(s): bill of rights (28)
In the Classroom
This is a great site for both introducing and reinforcing topics about the Constitution. Teachers can print out crosswords puzzles for a "What Do I Know" activity. Students could find out which founding father they are in the interactive portion (under IQ Challenges) and create a multimedia project on the result. Challenge students to use Image Annotator, reviewed here. Image Annotator site allows you to add text and links to a picture. Challenge students to find a photo (legally permitted to be reproduced), and then narrate the photo. What a new twist to an oral report! Students could create a Photostory on their own version of the Story of Fourth of July. The possibilities are endless. For fun, teachers can present the Real or Fake Quiz on the projector or interactive whiteboard as whole class instruction or have discussions after each answer.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Forward Thinking Museum - Joy of Giving Something, INC
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): artists (78), design (79), graphic design (48), photography (118), visual thinking (7)
In the Classroom
This website is useful for teaching the arts and to challenge your students higher level thinking skills. For example, quotations from history, literature, or philosophy synthesize with evocative images. The pairing of quotations with art provides teachers with an engaging way to initiate student discussion and debate. This is an excellent way to demonstrate how the visual arts can overcome language barriers and ignite thought. A new developing feature is on-line workshops free to all public schools.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Caves at Lascaux - French Ministry of Culture
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): caves (6), europe (75), france (37), maps (207), painting (55)
In the Classroom
Introduce this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Since many of the functions work on mouse-over -- not click -- you may want to use a human being to operate the actual computer mouse, since many whiteboards do not "know" where you are mousing until you click! Then have students explore this site independently or in small groups. This is a great addition to French or Art class. Challenge students in your class to narrate an image orally in French as they present it on the big screen or have them create their own narrated "cave paintings" using a tool such as ThingLink, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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