SweetSearch: A New Alternative to Google.

With several hundred million search queries each day, Google is the undisputed leader in search engines. There's a reason why "google" is widely used as a verb! But for many types of Internet searches, especially for students, Google is not always the best choice. I recommend several alternatives for students, including several which are actually customized google search engines designed for kids: www.askkids.com, www.kidrex.org, www.gogooligans.com, and www.kidsclick.org.

Now there's another promising alternative to Google. SweetSearch was created to address the reality that most students cannot effectively conduct online research. Results from a Google search are simply too overwheming, and often not educationally appropriate. SweetSearch (which is a customized version of Google) can help kids find better information more quickly, and will return only content that has been researched, evaluated, and approved by a team of researchers, teachers, and librarians. I tried searching a few topics and was impressed with the quality and organization of the results. There are several neat features, inlcuding SweetSearch Biographies, which includes profiles of over 1,000 famous people. A word of caution, however: before conducting a search lesson with young students, I strongly recommend testing the search results first. Even search engines designed for children can yield unexpected, and possibly undesirable, results!

Learning to Change-Changing to Learn

"If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow."
~ John Dewey

I'm the first to admit that keeping up with and learning emerging technologies can be overwhelming, but the alternative is worse. It's the responsibility of all educators to prepare students for the future, and in the 21st century, that means providng opportunities for digital learning. This video is a helpful reminder of why we need to provide our students with a learning environment that resembles-prepares them for-the real world.

Random Name Picker: The Fruit Machine

ClassTools.net offers this neat tool for randomly selecting student names or words. It's fully editable, and plays interactively--including sound effects--so that you can use it with your interactive whiteboard. The fact that it's web-based means you don't have to download anything to your computer, and you can access it from anywhere.

SMART Notebook Express

SMART Notebook Express is a free online utility that provides a way to view, save, and interact with SMART Notebook files, even if you don't have a SMARTBoard in your classroom, or a licensed version of SMART Notebook Software. This is a great solution for school districts that have mutliple platforms for interactive whiteboards. Educators can now easily and freely share files online, or, if not freqently connected to the Internet, download a free version of SMART Notebook Express to their own computer. With just a computer and a projector teachers can display SMART Notebook files that were previously only accessible to classrooms equipped with a SMARTBoard. Best of all, SMART Notebook Express allows educators to access and download the extensive library of lessons available on SMART Exchange. While not all features of the lessons will work with Notebook Express, the ability to share SMART lessons across multiple platforms and without a significant investment in interactive whiteboard technologies is a tremendous benefit. Click here to begin opening and creating your own Notebook files.

Digital Storytelling

Given the clear fact that the number of resources for digital storytelling has significantly increased since just a year ago, I have to conclude that the idea of using digital storytelling in education has blossomed. As instructional technology blogger and guru Wes Fryer notes, "one of the best ways to enhance student learning, boost student achievement, and improve student engagement is to incorporate digital storytelling as an instructional strategy."

I have seen first-hand how digital storytelling can motivate and students and allow them to demonstrate knowledge, develop critical thinking skills, and improve their digital literacy skills. Like Wes Fryer, I believe VoiceThread is a terrific platform for digital storytelling in eductioan. See my previous blog post for an overview of VoiceThread. Then I strongly recommend that you register for your own VoiceThread account and start your own digital story.

Read this Edutopia article to learn more about the benefits of digital story:Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

VoiceThread is an ideal way for teachers and students to create and participate in digital storytelling. This simple VoiceThread file will give you a basic idea of how VoiceThread works. Little Bird Tales is another favorite digital storytelling forum which is ideal for younger students. Wordle can be a simple but powerful way to tell a "story" with words. Simply type or copy and paste words into the Wordle screen to create a Word Cloud that can be saved to the Wordle library, dowloaded as an image file, and/or printed to use as a poster, book report cover, or however you want to tell your digital story.

Planning a Digital Storytelling Project
Detailed suggestions for planning a digital storytelling project in your classroom are available online, including this guidebook published by Simmons College.
Alaskan-based educator and author Dr. Jason Ohler very generously shares his excellent resources for digital storytelling, including story mapping. Checkout his website for guidelines on preparing a digital storytelling project in your classroom.

You may want your students to develop a storyboard to help them organize ideas, images, text, and and other elements. You can use Word to create a storyboard template by following these instructions.

Google: So Much More Than a Search Engine

So popular that it has entered our lexicon as a verb, Google is what most people use when searching the Internet. Although I recommend more kid-friendly search engines and search directories for elementary school students (AskKids and KidsClick are just a few), the gurus at Google Labs are continually developing tools that go beyond searching to suppoort 21st century learning for schools. Here are some of my favorites:

Google Translate
Instantly translate text and files between over 50 languages.

Picnik
Free, fast, easy, and fun online photo editing.

Google Earth
Download for an online classroom globe that brings world geograpy to life. Spin the globe, go to exact addresses, search locations with keywords or latitude and longitude, look at landmarks and buildings in 3-D, add your own placemarkers, measure distances....and the list goes on. Students become world travelers when you send them on a virtual field trip, or, as I did, a scavenger hunt to find historical landmarks. Download Google Lit Trips for making meaningful geographic connections to literature.

Google Sketchup
This powerful tool can also be freely downloaded to any computer. Although it provides complex 3-day modeling, I have seen students easily master its features with some minimal instruction and permision to "go ahead and try it."

Google Docs
Google's online documents, presentations, and spreadsheets offer numerous applications for education. Students with Google accounts can collaborate can collaborate on a single document, exchanging ideas and information and easily editing each others' work. The Google Docs Forms provide a great way for teachers to create and share online assessments.
If you don't yet have a google account, you should get one soon, and consider creating a customized iGoogle page. The applications I mentioned here represent just a fraction of the many free Google tools that can be integrated into classroom lessons. Once you start exploring Google, you're bound to find more.

Shift Happens 2010: Did You Know?

Like the original Shift Happens, produced in 2008, this version relays the challenges of our increasingly global and technologcial, and questions what we can and should be doing to prepare our children for the future. All of the Shift Happens/Did You Know videos are worth watching, and are widely available on the web. I found the 2009 version, which is also posted on this blog, especially compelling because of its focus on hand-held devices, a trend has exploded with the introduction of Apple's iPad.

Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms | Video on TED.com

Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms | Video on TED.com
This is a thought-provoking and entertaining animation of Sir Ken Robinson's talk on the current state of public education, and the urgent need for a radical shift from the old model to one that inspires 21st century learners. In under 12 minutes, Robinson conveys an important message for everyone invested in educating today's children. I believe technology and web 2.0 tools can help support Robinson's push for more creativity and project-based lessons in schools.

Digital Storytelling for Young Students

Here's a Web 2.0 tool that's ideal for younger students to create digital storytelling projects. Little Bird Tales is almost too good to be true. It's completely free, and free of advertisements. Your students can upload their own artwork and or photos, and record their voices to create online audio-visual books that can be easily shared, and don't waste paper or printer ink. My favorite aspect of digital story telling is the validation students feel when their work is so professionally--and digitally--published.

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.