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The HTML5 Gendered Advertising Remixer - Jonathan McIntosh
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): advertising (26), consumers (14), media literacy (109), psychology (65), sociology (23), women (151)
In the Classroom
One of the truisms about analyzing culture is that it is difficult to see the impact of cultural norms and practices from the inside. Students will probably agree that advertising targets boys differently than girls, but they may have serious difficulty considering what impact it has had on them. This site may help them see the subtle messages in advertising, and how those messages constrain or empower them. Project the mashups on an interactive whiteboard and then ask students how the audio changes the message on the video portion. Reverse the two and ask the same question. What does this say about the girls' gender roles? What does this say about boys' gender roles? What does this say about the impact of play on learning adult roles? Have student groups create digital "collections" of examples of gender-targeted ads using a tool such as Evernote (reviewed herehttp://www.teachersfirst.com/single.cfm?id=10550) or turn them into mosaics of ad images using Mosaic Maker (reviewed here). Note: Since students are specifically studying advertising and critiquing the ads, it would not be a copyright violation to add images as part of a media project to illustrate gender targeting.Spreaker - Spreaker Online Radio
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): communication (129), podcasts (110), radio (20)
In the Classroom
Enjoy a live radio show from your classroom! Publish written pieces of writing, science reports, social studies reports, and any other reports you would like to share. Create a New Book or Book Review podcast for the media center. Link to your podcast URL on your class website. Publish directions to projects, explanations for difficult concepts, or even a radio show of you reading your favorite books for your students. Have upper elementary students take turns reading aloud for a podcast aimed at little reading buddies in kindergarten. Allow students to podcast to "pen pals" in faraway places. Record your school choir, orchestra group, poetry club, or drama club doing their best work or dramatic readings of Shakespeare soliloquies. Take your school newspaper to a new level with recorded radio articles. Be sure to include interviews with students, teachers, principals, parents, authors, artists, and almost anyone. In younger grades, use to save an audio portfolio of reading fluency, expression, or to aid with running records or even include writing. Be sure do this regularly throughout the year to analyze growth. Have fun at Halloween with your Halloween station filled with favorite spooky stories! Welcome your students to a new school year by sending them your message. Create messages for classmates who move away. Bring your foreign language classes an extra resource of your pronunciations whenever they need more practice. ESL/ELL, special education classes can often benefit from the extra explanations, practice, and elaborated instructions given at their own pace. The possibilities are endless! The site itself is a "web 2.0," social networking style site, so some schools may have it blocked. Ask about unblocking just YOUR teacher account so you can have students access it while at school and under your supervision.Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
Now I See! Infographics as content scaffold and creative, formative assessment - TeachersFirst: Candace Hackett Shively and Louise Maine
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): infographics (56)
In the Classroom
Read through this professional tutorial if you have even considered trying infographics with your students. You will find just the encouragement you need. Mark this one in your Favorites and share the many examples with your students, including student-created examples from a ninth grade class, as you launch your own infographics projects. Let your students "show what they know" in a new way.Venngage - Venngage
Grades
7 to 12tag(s): data (151), infographics (56), posters (43), vocabulary (238)
In the Classroom
Consider creating Infographics of material learned in class and for better understanding and connection with other topics and the "real world." Make curriculum content more real with infographics that students can relate to. Have students create their own infographics with this site to display what they have learned from a unit of study, how vocabulary words are related to the unit content, or as a review before a test. It could even be a replacement for the test! Connect data found on the Internet to information needed to understand that data. (Consider looking at different ways to show the data which can generate bias.) Use your interactive whiteboard or projector to allow student groups to present an Infographic about a book they've read, related news article, etc. Create Infographics about events such as Earth Day, D-Day, Take Your Child to Work Day, and other observances.Infographics Resources - TeachersFirst
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): infographics (56)
In the Classroom
Join the21st century trend of infographics as a way to share a lot of information, quantitative data, and relationships in a compact but effective visual space. Help students learn and construct meaning using infographics. Share this collection on your class web page as a starting point for students.Infographic of Infographics - Ivan Cash
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): graphic design (49), infographics (56)
In the Classroom
If you are assigning students to create infographics, this is a must-share. Have students explore this in small groups then find examples of the trend they find most interesting. Share their finds on a projector or interactive whiteboard. Better yet, share them on your class wiki so students can refer back to these ideas when they are "stuck" working on their own visual products. Art teachers can use this as an entry point into a graphic design unit. Reading teachers can use this to help students interpret and analyze the graphics that often accompany informational texts.edublogs - edublogs.org
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): blogs (65), communication (129), writing (324)
In the Classroom
Save this site as a favorite for all of your blogging needs. Find very informative instructions on blogging, and follow the student blogging challenge lesson plans. Use this tool easily in your Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) classroom since all students will be able to access it for free, no matter what device they have. Peruse through the various subjects and discover how other teachers use blogging in their classrooms. Using the given PDFs on blogging start up, parent guidelines, incorporating into subject areas, and adapt to make them suitable for you. Look at a variety of examples to help devise your own unique style to meet your students' needs.Edge Features:
Includes an education-only area for teachers and students
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
Includes teacher tools for registering and/or monitoring students
NetSmartzKids - National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Grades
K to 8tag(s): computers (109), internet safety (114)
In the Classroom
Use this site to reinforce and teach Internet safety rules. Use Padlet, reviewed here, to engage students and brainstorm with the class what they know about Internet safety. Then start sharing the different videos and activities with the class or in stations. As students finish a video or activity, have them add what they learned in a different column on your class Padlet. NetSmartzKids is a great site to share on your class wiki, blog, or website for families to peruse together. At the end of your Internet safety unit, enhance student learning by creating a Gravity, reviewed here video asking studens what lessons they learned that they didn't know before or that surprized them. Gravity provides a tool for video responses to a question along with comments from peers.Book TV - National Cable Satellite Corporation & C-SPAN
Grades
6 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): biographies (94), independent reading (81), interviews (17), politics (118)
In the Classroom
Use the online resources from this website to accompany your nonfiction literature. This collection is particularly useful when reading about historical figures. Make books and authors come alive for your students by accessing and projecting videos on your interactive whiteboard and sharing "Book Notes," biographies, and more. Lure students into independent reading by allowing them to explore the videos and find a book they might enjoy reading. After viewing a program or reading a book, have students share their opinions in a multimedia presentation using one of the many TeachersFirst Edge tools reviewed here. Some tool suggestions are (click on the tool name to access the review): Adobe Creative Cloud Express for Education, Vevox, Animatron, Renderforest, and Canva Inforgraphic Maker.TED - TED staff
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
If you are looking for a clearinghouse that offers free inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, this ever-evolving site is perfect for engaging your students with digital videos of the global issues facing our world today. Use your projector or interactive whiteboard to project videos. Watch your students' enthusiastic reactions in science, social studies, or English classrooms as they view a TED video and then follow-up with a debate on the future or the impact of technology on society, or use them as a springboard for interesting writing prompts or to spark a discussion connected with a unit of study. Challenge students to do a compare/contrast activity using an online Venn Diagram tool (reviewed here). Most of the videos are less than twenty minutes, which makes it real doable to embed in a one-period class lesson.NOVA Body and Brain - NOVA/PBS
Grades
3 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): carbon dioxide (9), carbon footprint (5), earth (184), environment (252), human body (93), nuclear energy (20), nutrition (140), solar energy (35), space (223)
In the Classroom
Discover some terrific lessons about a variety of topics. For example, under Environment find a great lesson for Capturing Carbon: Where Do We Put It? Find background information to understand the material and questions for discussion that can be used with your class. Find additional resources along the side.American Indian Response to Environmental Changes - National Museum of the American Indian
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): environment (252), native americans (109), natural resources (37)
In the Classroom
Project this site on an interactive whiteboard and watch the videos on each of the tribes. If you have laptops available, have students navigate on their own. Have the class take the included interactive quizzes to see what they've learned. Group students and have each group read about a different tribe. Then using the online story project planner, have students create a presentation about their tribe that can be uploaded to the site. Be sure to visit the teacher area for lesson plans, links and other resources.The Learning Network - The New York Times Company
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): news (228), vocabulary (238), writing prompts (61)
In the Classroom
Share this site on your class web page for students to find challenges or activities. Substitute teachers can always find an appropriate current events or vocabulary/writing activity if there are no lesson plans. English, social studies, and gifted teachers will want to explore the many lesson ideas that draw on current news stories. Find many prompts for student opinion blogs at this site. If you are beginning the process of integrating technology, replace pen and paper and have students create blogs sharing their learning and understanding using Weebly, reviewed here. This blog creator requires no registration.Algalita - Plastic Ocean Pollution - Algalita Marine Research Foundation
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): environment (252), oceans (149), plastics (4), pollution (53)
In the Classroom
Use your interactive whiteboard or projector to introduce this site. Use the Trash Tracker lesson as is or adapt for your own use. Consider having students work in groups of four, and have each group explore a different expedition (listed by year and selected by you). Have the small groups of students investigate the first several days of the selected expedition together. After that, have pairs take notes about what they learn, using Memo Notepad, reviewed here, then have partners compare notes for the days they investigated. Once they've investigated their expedition, remix the groups so you have one student from each of the different expeditions together. Have them share information and determine what was alike and different for each year. Use a graphic organizer or mind mapping tool such as WiseMapping, reviewed here, to help students keep track of the information. Once done have students access the additional resources pages (the blogs will often have more information for the expeditions), and look at the maps. Older students may want to investigate information about careers related to GIS, Conservation, and Marine Biology by using the link at the bottom of the page.Chartle - Zygomatic
Grades
6 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): charts and graphs (171), data (151)
In the Classroom
You will want to play with this tool before using it in class. Use it anywhere numerical data is collected and is best shown in a chart. Collect data in a science, survey, or math class and display it using different graphs to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using each graph type. Use for quick creation and sharing of created graphs. Create charts together easily on an interactive whiteboard when introducing the different types. Have students operate the board while others offer instructions on what to do next. Use graphs to portray different sets of data about a topic in a new and unique way. Use this tool to create graphs and charts for presentations and reports. Make quick charts students can share with others such as "How I spend my time" and "Places I have visited." During political campaign seasons, create charts to visualize better what the pollsters are saying.Digg.com - Digg Inc.
Grades
7 to 12tag(s): debate (42), news (228), social networking (61)
In the Classroom
Try using Digg as a warmup Internet activity in the beginning of the school year by having older students sign up for their own account. Have them scan and read as part of current events teaching. The articles can be controversial which provides a great place to start debates. Are you beginning to integrate technology into your classroom? Use a tool such as WeJIT, or if you are a more experienced technology user try Virtual Debate, which has online examples and resources for conducting virtual debates, to formalize a debate topic. Digg also provides an excellent resource for research. Have students make a multimedia presentation using Genial.ly. Genial.ly allows you to add polls, videos, embeds, web links, PowerPoint, PDFs, and you can create a variety of formats like interactive posters, images, infographics, charts, presentations, and more.World Science - World Science
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): animal homes (57), animals (294), diseases (66), genetics (80), news (228), planets (113)
In the Classroom
World Science empowers your students to recognize that they too can ask questions, and they too can understand the latest science questions and answers. Inspire thinkers to find questions and seek answers. Set as your home page and always captivate your students. Use as a reference site to add the latest science news. Subscribe and send to each of your students emails. Reinforce the scientific method in everyday research. Have your classes create their own science news on your website. This is an excellent site for inspiring critical thinking skills and creative thinking. Be sure to include this site as part of your current events and curriculum in gifted and advanced classes.SoundCloud - SoundCloud Ltd.
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): creative writing (124), descriptive writing (42), expository writing (31), songs (46), sound (72), sounds (43)
In the Classroom
Add the dimension of sound into your language arts classes with SoundCloud! Turn written stories or poetry into works of spoken art. Use SoundCloud recordings of places such as; the city, the forest, the beach, or a cafeteria to bring settings to life. Make and share audio writing prompts. Challenge students to create their own story using sounds. Add sound into projects such as webquests, PowerPoints, podcasts, or blogging to hear the results! Emphasize important messages to your parent or student emails using sound. What a practical solution for ENL/ELL learners. Record and share poetry readings during Poetry Month. Save quarterly recordings of speech articulation students s they can hear their own progress (and you can share it with parents). Check school policies, of course, before uploading any student recordings to the web. Instrumental music teachers can share clips of musical pieces for students to emulate during at-home practice.Edge Features:
Includes an education-only area for teachers and students
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
Requires download/installation of software
IndyKids - IndyKids
Grades
3 to 8tag(s): creative writing (124), expository writing (31), journalism (74), persuasive writing (58), writing (324)
In the Classroom
Share this site with students and have students choose an article to read, summarize, or expand upon. After reading articles on the site, have students choose a current topic that interests them and have them write an article as practice of informational writing. In science or social studies, study the newspaper format as students write articles reporting on scientific discoveries or famous people. Use the format of this newsletter as a resource for extending learning and creating and publishing your own classroom newsletter online. During newspapers in education month, use this site to find accessible articles for any age. Create a newspaper using a site such as Printing Press,reviewed here).Infographics Archive - Infographics Archive
Grades
7 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): charts and graphs (171), data (151), graphic design (49), infographics (56)