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Mosaic Maker - Big Huge Labs
Grades
6 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): back to school (57), book reports (26), collages (17)
In the Classroom
For security and safety, be sure to instruct students about copyright laws regarding the use of photos from the World Wide Web, and follow your school's internet security policies for use of social networking sites, such as Facebook and Flickr albums that are available from this web page. Students can use this tool to organize photos and images for numerous creative photo projects, such as report covers, to illustrate their interpretation of a theme, to analyze a character's traits, or to visually represent a topic or concept. For adventurous technology users, try pairing the Mosaic Maker together with another one of Big Huge Labs free photo projects, such as The CD Cover Maker, reviewed here for designing an amazing way to "package" a book report, research project, or other assignment. In lower grades, use mosaic maker for teacher-made collages of words that start with a certain letter or of animal classifications and hang them on bulletin boards for students to guess. Check out the Big Huge Labs educator account. Easily pre-register students to avoid creating logins, view and download their creations, and view the site advertisement free. You will find information about the Educator Account here.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Oil Spill Resources - TeachersFirst
Grades
3 to 12tag(s): disasters (35), environment (248), oil (20), oil spill (14)
In the Classroom
Use these resources together with your class to help students find ways they can contribute to a greater good after such a devastating event spreads across the news. Extend the opportunity to teach about persuasive writing (letters to legislators or the editor), careers in environmental science, and more.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Common Core State Standards - Common Core State Standards Initiative Team
Grades
K to 12Visit this website to find out exactly what the national K-12 standards are for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science and technology, as well as mathematics, and to find out if your state is one many states (at the time of this review) that have already committed to adopt the Common Core State Standards. Watch videos and the recorded webinar, and read about the key points and rigorous curriculum standards, including the content and skills related to the use of media and technology for critical analysis and production.
tag(s): commoncore (63)
In the Classroom
Take a look at exemplars and sample performance tasks and students' writing to consider how you can integrate these ideas into your own planning to prepare students for the growing challenges of today's world. You can also sign up to receive updates via email. For more information about the Common Core and implementing it in your classes, see TeachersFirst's Common Core: The Fuss Over Non-Fiction, a Q/A article for elementary teachers, and TeachersFirst's resources tagged Common Core for many helpful sites.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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September 11 Teacher Awards - Tribute World Trade Center Organization
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use these award-winning ideas to commemorate September 11 in a lesson to demonstrate unity or build worldwide understanding. Use the concepts as a springboard to a collaborative project. Ideas vary from sending chains of origami cranes as a wish for peace, composing and singing a song for unity with an online tool such as Zeemaps, writing letters to local politicians, creating poems and transforming them into digital videos or multimedia presentations using Adobe Express for Education, or taking responsibility for the environment while creating a sense of community by planting gardens. Choose from many ways to inspire students to recognize the importance of September 11 and to involve them in working together to become a more tolerant society. You might be so amazed with the results that you will want to submit your students' projects to be considered for next year's Tribute Center September 11th Teacher Awards. The annual award ceremony takes place on February 26, to commemorate the 1993 first attack on the World Trade Center.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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September 11 Timeline of Events - Tribute World Trade Center Organization
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Display this pictorial interactive September 11th timeline of the attack on the World Trade Center on your classroom projector or interactive whiteboard. After reading real accounts of what happened, have students work with a partner to create podcasts (news broadcasts, mock interviews with survivors and others involved, or even a student perspective of how that day changed the United States forever). Have students create podcasts using a site such as Acast, reviewed here. Alternatively, have them annotate an image using Image Annotator, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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September 11 Resources - TeachersFirst
Grades
2 to 12In the Classroom
Include one or more of these sites as your observe September 11 in your classroom or make the link available on your class web site for students who ask about the events of this pivotal day. You will find many specific project or class activity ideas within the reviews themselves.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Tar Heel Reader - University of North Caroline
Grades
K to 12** This site does contain some materials NOT suitable for all classrooms. Be sure to read the "rating" system, and contribute your own opinions (as the ratings are only as reliable as the pool of contributing voters). Books rated 'E' are meant for everyone, but a 'C' means to use caution, as it may not be proper material for some. Determine what titles are suitable and save them to the favorites file for students to access.
tag(s): audbk (25), audint (12), audio books (42), audtxt (19), book lists (167), digital storytelling (182), literacy (122), writing (309)
In the Classroom
Increase your big book collection ten fold by projecting Tar Heel Readers onto an interactive whiteboard or projector. Use interactive shared reading lessons to strengthen student recognition of common sight words, concepts of print, decoding skills, and use syntax cues and unlock the meaning of text. Ask students to circle known sight words, count the number of words in a sentence, trace capital letters, or point to the first letter of a word during a choral read. Help ESL/ELL students by creating books out of photos from class field trips, events, or experiments. Integrate text that uses key vocabulary words and creates reading materials that are both relevant to grade level curricular standards and match your student's readability level. All books you publish on the web site are public domain and available to all other users. Be sure to get parent permission before publishing student books on-line. In order to create a book, users will need to register. Unfortunately, this requires users to email gb@cs.unc.edu to request of an invitation code. With this code, simply create a username, submit your name, and email address. Set up a single teacher account and have all the students use that login to avoid safety concerns. Be sure to include this site on your class web page for students to access both in and outside of class for further reading practice.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Wikimedia Commons - Wkimedia Foundation
Grades
K to 12tag(s): creative commons (29)
In the Classroom
Address the needs of the visual learner and include media files as part of the research process. Wikipedia Commons offers students a way to understand content through images, audio, and video. Give students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge by narrating a slideshow of images from Wikimedia Commons or creating multimedia presentations on a site such as Lucidpress. These free media files will also help ENL/ESL teachers explain concepts and key vocabulary. This site is a valuable resource for imagery useful for creating presentations, lectures, digital stories, reports, or for inclusion on a class website. Students learning a foreign language may benefit from using Wikipedia Commons to learn more about the culture and lifestyle of the country whose language they are studying.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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UVic's Language Teaching Clipart Library - University of Victoria
Grades
K to 12tag(s): spanish (114)
In the Classroom
Create non-verbal task cards or visual directions for assignments with graphics from this library collection. Download imagery from a variety of different categories and create an interactive whiteboard or projector sorting activity. Have students decide what images have in common and then sort them into groups. Use online graphic organizers from sites such as Webspiration reviewed here. to sort clip art. The images are also excellent to design language-teaching flashcards, game cards, illustrate songs, add to worksheets or include on class websites.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Quiznator - Quiznator
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): worksheets (70)
In the Classroom
Upload your test questions during the summer and feel free to add more as your school year progresses, but use this tool to save a bundle of time on test and quiz creation. Put your worksheet or activity sheet questions into the program and use the questions on quizzes.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Lit Tunes - Corndancer
Grades
5 to 12tag(s): literature (214)
In the Classroom
Use the list to find literature you can use in your classroom. You may want to choose short stories or poems and their music so students will get the idea of how music and literature can fit together. Then have students choose appropriate contemporary music for an independent reading novel presentation or report. Have students figure out how they would divide up the book into sections. Then select a piece of (school appropriate) music that they think captures the feel or tone of each section. They record the pieces and possibly do voice-overs explaining what is happening in the novel during the piece of music and why they felt this piece of music fits the section of the novel. As a choice, students could use "podOmatic" to create podcasts. Or have students create ThingLink. Be sure to PLAY the music out loud as the student is talking. If you want students to "mix" or create music with their own computer, check out Soundtrap. You may wish to take that a bit further and challenge students to record a song using a tool such as UJAM, where you simply record your voice (even talking and not singing!). UJAM is free and synchronizes your voice and its speed to a variety of different background music options.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Pullfolio - pullfolio.com
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): flickr (2), images (275), photography (136)
In the Classroom
Users must be able to add pictures to a set on flickr or use a specific tag for particular pictures. Be sure to choose your username carefully as it becomes part of the url of your portfolio. Follow the directions to identify your flickr account with Pullfolio.Have students create their own pullfolio, but why not create a class pullfolio that showcases student work? If using as a class pullfolio, pictures will not be attributed to the individual students. Create some way of identifying pictures to various students. Require students to tag their pictures with their initials as well or create a comment with their initials in the picture's description.
This tool would be a great asset to a photography or art class but can be used in any subject area. Create a pullfolio of pictures that showcase life around us, or in a Math class to show various Math functions in man made structures and nature. Use this site to take your geography class around the world (virtually). Have students create presentations in any subject area and narrate the pictures rather than doing a traditional oral report. Speech and language on lower grades or ESL/ELL teachers could create pullfolios for vocabulary development, tagging them for positions, feelings, etc. Involve students in taking the pictures, then share the resulting pullfolios for them to practice their new words.
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One Day on Earth: 10.10.10 - Kyle Ruddick
Grades
1 to 12tag(s): diversity (61)
In the Classroom
Use your projector or interactive whiteboard to show the students the introductory video and the brainstorming slides. This project is the perfect opportunity to bring out student's talents! Those who have good organizational skill can create the storyboard or illustrated timeline for the project. Help them find an interactive timeline tool that can include images, text, and collaboration. Those who draw well can help with the storyboard or illustrated timeline art and help design titles and transitions for the project. Your more advanced technology students can create a website for storing and displaying the content. A wiki would be great tool to use as website to help students stay organized and to collaborate! Not familiar with wikis? Check out the Teachers First's Wiki Walk-Through. Students should submit their work without identifiable names according to your school policy. Of course, you will want written parent permission before submitting student work to this online documentary. You don't have to create anything. You can still apply for the toolkit, use your projector to show the introductory video, and use the interactive map on the home page of One Day on Earth to find out where information will be coming from. You and your students then choose a place that will be submitting to the project and go to the 100 People project, to see a little about the people of that area. This should elicit a rich discussion about diversity and possibly predictions about the type of information that will be submitted for the One Day on Earth project or what other communities that did not participate might have included.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Building Schoolwide Literacy With Free Web 2.0 Tools: A Grade by Grade Elementary Model - TeachersFirst
Grades
K to 8In the Classroom
Explore the tools and project suggestions by grade for your individual use as a teacher or work together with others in your school to build literacy across all subjects and grades by systematically adopting and repeatedly using a fixed collection of tools so students master the tool skills as an aside to reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Try the practical suggestions for implementing this model in your school or grade level team.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Web Resizer - webresizer.com
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): images (275), noregistration (74)
In the Classroom
Provide the link to this site for students to use in altering and resizing images for use in presentations and online applications. Be sure students understand the file size needed for the various sites that are used in class.Comments
Use this all the time. Easy to use and SO helpful. You can use online, don't have to download.Frances, CT, Grades: 6 - 8
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Soft Schools - Soft Schools
Grades
K to 8This site includes advertising.
tag(s): calculators (39), grammar (142), quiz (58), quizzes (82)
In the Classroom
Save this site in your favorites on classroom computers and use it as a center. Use this site on a projector or interactive whiteboard to discuss and informally assess prior knowledge prior to introducing a unit. Use it as a cumulative assessment by having students independently take a quiz and then print the results. Students can complete the quizzes and games independently or with a partner. After assessing students, create worksheets for students who may need more practice. Be sure to list this link on your class website for students to use both in and out of the classroom. Find a variety of calculators including windchill, cube root, and more.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Fun with Spot - Fredrick Warne
Grades
K to 2In the Classroom
Introduce this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Then have students explore this site independently. Make a shortcut to this site on classroom computers and use it as a center to build literacy skills. Study Spot story elements and then create Spot adventures using an interactive whiteboard or projector. Advanced readers and technology users could create stories independently. This is an ideal site to share with families on your class website.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Squigly's Playhouse - Barb Willner
Grades
K to 5This site includes advertising.
tag(s): crafts (105), holidays (292), seasons (59), writing (309)
In the Classroom
Have students check out the book reviews in the Writing Corner. Discuss which reviews are helpful and then have students write quality reviews to post onto the website. Complete one of the story frameworks with students. Using an interactive whiteboard or projector, have students add more detail or experiment with sentence structure and vocabulary. Students can then follow this process individually to develop revision skills.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Goofram - goofram.com
Grades
K to 12tag(s): resources (79), search engines (43)
In the Classroom
This site is very simple to use. Simply type in the term you are searching and click "search."This site is as safe as any other search engine. Just be sure students are aware of the consequences of misusing the search engine.
Use Goofram the next time that you use search in your classes. Discuss the difference between each side of the screen where both parts appear. What is the advantage of Wolfram Alpha vs. Google? Use this site as you discuss how to search and use materials on the web. Practice showing different searches and aspects of the searches that are useful. Challenge students to use these sites for individual research projects.
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Signed Stories
Grades
K to 5tag(s): audbk (25), audint (12), audio books (42), audtxt (19), sign language (16)
In the Classroom
Use stories on the interactive whiteboard or projector to teach story elements - pause as the story is read to allow students to retell details to the stopping point then make predictions of what will happen next. Help students understand disabilities and adaptations to disabilities through watching the stories being told in sign language. This is also a great resource for students with deaf/hearing impaired parents or students/teachers trying to learn or practice sign language. In sign language classes, consider creating your own signed story videos for children's books using a tool like Adobe Express Video Maker, reviewed here, and share them with a tool such as TeacherTube, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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