Spelling City

SpellingCity.com is a free website that supprts learning and teaching spelling in an efficient, fun, and interactive way. Teachers can enter or upload spelling lists, and students can login to learn by both seeing and hearing the words, take practice spelling tests, and play games that reinforce correct spelling and word meanings. 

Spelling City is remarkably easy to use, and provides many excellent resources, including printable worksheets, popular and literature-based spelling lists, and sentence and paragraph writing activities.  Best of all, it's web-based, so once you create your spelling lists, they are there for you and your students to access for years to come.  Here's a quick video overview.  I encourage you to check out Spelling City soon!

Ten Marks and other Online Math Resources

Here is a new online math tutoring service designed to supplement classroom instruction. Teachers can sign up for this free resource,assign math practice problems to students, and track their progress. If a student gets stuck on a problem he or she can open a tutorial for help. Ten Marks provides teachers with the option to CC parents on the assignments sent to students. The online curriculum provided by Ten Marks can be aligned to state standards. And did I mention that it's free?


Other web-base math resources that can help students practice their math facts both at school and at home include:
Arcademic Skill Builders
Math Baseball
Sheppard Software
Math Playground
CramWeb

Get Ready to Integrate!

This article in Education World offers 10 tips for integrating technology in your classroom. Developed by members of the Education World "Tech Team," there's some good advice here for teachers with goals for introducing technology in their classrooms during the school year.  My personal tip is to to take a chance.  Technology can be unpredictable, which is exactly what most teachers want to avoid.  But if you are willing try out a new technology, and let the students work along with you when there are unexpected glitches, you may find that the reward is worth the risk. 

Education World's Tips for Tech Integration
10. Gain perspective.
9. Get organized.
8. Take a course.
7. Network with peers.
6. Explore the literature.
5. Experiment with software.
4. Install timesaving technology.
3. Create a classroom climate.2. Punch up existing lessons.
1. Prepare something new.

Saving Your Favorites on the Web

While the Favorites Tool is a quick and easy way to save websites that you wish to visit later, it’s not ideal if your computer drive fails, or even if you want to access from home a favorite site saved on your computer at school. If you have ever wished that you could get to your favorites list from multiple locations, or if you want an easy way to organize, tag, or share your favorites with colleagues, you should consider signing up for a social bookmarking site. I use Delicious, and have really appreciated the expanded features it provides. Every teacher I’ve introduced to social bookmarking enthusiastically agrees…it’s one of the most useful and easy-to-learn web 2.0 tools, and the best way to store and find web-based information.


Basically, social bookmarking provides the ability to tag any website, and save it to the World Wide Web. You can assign multiple tags to your bookmarks, so they organized by categories, making it a snap to search for and find the sites when you want them. Once our bookmarks are online, you can easily share with friends or fellow teachers, and also search and view what others are tagging to discover popular, recently added, or specific categories of bookmarks.

Two of the most currently popular social bookmarking sites are Delicious and Diigo. Here’s a video that explains the basics of social bookmarking and demonstrates Delicious, and another video that offers an introduction to Diigo.

If you’re still not convinced, or prefer to continue using Internet Explorer’s Favorites Tool, you may benefit from this Ehow article, which describes how to organize your Favorites list alphabetically so that the bookmarks saved on your computer are easier to find.

Glogster EDU

Glogster Edu is a terrific platform for creating multimedia collages.  Because Glogs are basically online posters, Glogster is an ideal resource for easily moving from a traditional classroom assignment (old-fashioncard cardboard posters) to a new 21st century technology that will excite and engage students.

Glogster Edu eliminates any questionable content that might be found on the original Glogster platform, and provides teachers with a virtual classroom space in which they can manage the accounts of up to 200 students. Students can use Glogster tools, web-based content, and their own video, photo, or audio content to create informative and original glogs on any topic. The possibilities for learning and creativity  are endless! Glogster Edu has also partnered with another of my favorite technology integration resources, VoiceThread, to allow integration of VoiceThread content in Glogs.

Once you register for a free basic glogster account, you can search for glogs by category and mark any of them as favorites for future use.  There are many glogs, created by both students and teachers, that are publicly available and potentially useful for classroom lessons.  A sample glog that I created for a workshop I taught this summer is here.  You'll notice that I've included video and photo images, and several interactive links.

Glogster is easy to learn, and easy to use.  Here's a tutorial that covers the basics for getting started with your own teacher account:

Trends in Educational Technology

We are quickly becoming part of the global learning movement.  This blog is intended to provide a forum for sharing and learning about web 2.0 technologies and other trends that are revolutionizing classroom instruction. 

While our students and schools are becoming increasingly wired, technology alone can't help children learn. They need the guidance of talented and dedicated teachers who integrate technologies into their lessons.  This space will allow all of us to become proficient in the technologies that can enhance learning, and share what we learn with fellow educators.  Please contribute your experiences and feedback as together we learn to seamlessly integrate instuctional technologies in the classroom.

100 Inspiring Ways to Use Social Media in the Classroom

In an amazingly short amount of time, social media sites like Facebook have evolved from fun ways to connect with others to powerful tools for business and education. Social media provides many new and exciting opportunities for students to learn. This list from Online University is sure to spark some educational ideas for your classroom.

Guess What? Kids don't e-mail anymore....

With more than 400 million Facebook users, and the number increasing exponentially, social media represents a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. Other statistics that educators must consider include:

• Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
• 96% of them have joined a social network
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.

Clearly Social Media is not a fad. According to a new Nielson report, social networking has overtaken personal e-mail as the 4th most popular online sector in the world. The implications for education are enormous. Still not convinced? Watch this Social Media Revolution Video for even more statistics.

Flip Videos in the Classroom

Thanks to online collaboration, teachers all over the world are brainstorming ways to use pocket video cameras like Flip in the classroom. Here's a slide show that shares just some of those ideas.

Improve your memory with Headmagnet

What a cool idea! Headmagnet is a free website with tools for helping you to remember, whether vocabulary words, event dates, quotes, birthdays, even names and faces. Students can use headmagnet to create their own flashcards and share flashcards with friends. They can also browse public galleries of flashcards. Study lists can be saved and tracked, and there are mutliple study mode options. . Headmagnet is also a great resource for anyone looking for help remembering anything. Check it out at www.headmagnet.com.

VoiceThread for Education

VoiceThread offers amazing opportunities for educational technology by allowing students and teachers to create, comment, and collaborate with digital storytelling and online multimedia projects. The possibilities are endless!