Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

This easy to use calculator estimates the number of calories needed to gain, maintain, or lose weight. Simply input age, weight, height, exercise level, and gender to receive an estimate of daily calorie needs to maintain current weight. Information is given to help with losing or gaining weight. Other informative links on the site offer diet and exercise advice for beginners as well as articles about nutrition and exercise. Be careful: some links are advertisements. Be sure to check out the diet tools link that offers many other calculators for health, body fat and density, healthy weight range, and more. This same link also offers information about vitamins and minerals and healthy recipes. Be sure to preview the comments at the bottom of the site, as some may be inappropriate to share with younger students.

tag(s): fitness (39), nutrition (140)

Meet the "Scrub Club" on this fun and interactive website where using proper hygiene is a must to prevent everyday bacteria from making you sick. Created by the NSF International, there are downloadable games, webisodes, and even a story about hand sanitizer. Try interactives that teach about how to keep bacteria and other germs at bay.

tag(s): bacteria (21)

Use the Flubaroo add-on tool with Google docs for an easy way to create self grading documents and forms. Be sure to check out their 3 minute demo video and overview links to understand how easy it is to use. Flubaroo provides easy to use step by step directions. Use this tool for multiple choice type answers for an easy way to receive feedback. Students easily see their responses to the questions when grades are emailed providing feedback.

tag(s): assessment (146), quiz (66), quizzes (90)

Don't ever be caught with a loss for words again! Phrase up is an interactive website that helps you fill in the blank when your mind goes blank! Type in an incomplete phrase, and options are provided for finishing your thought or sentence. Parts of speech, definitions, sentence examples, as well as translations are included. While the sentence generator does provide creative results, occasionally examples are for a more mature user.

tag(s): figurative language (18), vocabulary (242)

The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation offers this site as a way to explore and learn how to play. The site includes opportunities for play that develops visual thinking, problem solving, exploration, and collaboration. You can also create your own doodles to help develop creative thinking and invention. Find a multitude of ideas for students to investigate and create from designing an all-terrain wheelchair, inventing a toy, to redesigning the shopping cart or creating a solared-powered invention. Scroll down the page to find "Story Tags." There is a link to Women inventor's stories, which ncludes the stories of some male intventors, too! Read about little known and well known inventors such as Stephanie Kwolek (Kevlar) and Alexander Bell (telephone). Each story includes background on the inventor and information on how their idea developed. Several videos are included demonstrating play activities and skills developed through play and the use of common toys.

tag(s): biographies (95), collaboration (94), creativity (87), design (79), inventors and inventions (80), problem solving (233)

Check Teachers First reviews for specific fun and creative tools from this expansive site. As Big Huge Labs continues to add to their offerings, be sure to check back to the main page of the site to find what is new. For now check out the Trading Card Maker, reviewed here, the CD Cover Maker, reviewed here, The Big Huge Thesaurus, reviewed here, Mosaic Maker, reviewed here, Magazine Cover Maker, reviewed here, Guess the Title, reviewed here, Captioner, reviewed here, Map Maker, reviewed here, Movie Poster, Badge Maker, Billboard, and Calender. In addition they have many photo editing/photo enchancing tools: Bead Art, Jigsaw, FX, Mat, Wallpaper, Cube, Lolcat Generator, Framer, Color Palette, Pocket Album Hockneyizer, Photobooth, and Pop Art Poster. Some of these tools are more suitable for play, but if you are beginning the process of integrating technology, these will be engaging to your students. Take time to look over some of these tools before sharing the site with students. Big Huge labs also has some other free services you may want to use such as a ranked list of the Top 100 Digital Camera Makers and Models that is updated weekly. There is also Scout to help you find your photos on Flickr Explore, Random Photo Browser, On Black, Sunset, Favorite Surfer, Flicker DNA, Photo Fortune, Profile Widget, and Writer, reviewed here.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): collages (17), editing (93), images (265), maps (225), multimedia (54), photography (132), posters (43), thesaurus (22)

Peruse this community database of shared bird sounds from the entire world. Listen from the collection of approximately 67,000 calls and songs from 7147 birds. Listen to the sounds that account for 67.4 percent of all the bird species on the Earth! These sounds are recorded mostly by professionals and site users classify and identify the sounds and songs to create a marvelous collection of the world's first musicians. Play the sounds on the site or download for free as they are creative common licensed. Perusing the archive, it's hard not to be impressed by the myriads of sounds, whether beautiful or grating, that birds can produce. And, while they might not be eligible to win any Grammys, at least you can download them for free from the Internet without having to worry about anti-piracy laws. Be sure to read the comments before sharing this site with students, as some may not be appropriate. At this time of this review, all were fine.

tag(s): birds (46)

View real time celestial positions with this 3D interactive model of space. Move through space and change your orientation as you move through. Double click on a planet to visit it. Use the Panoramic and Geocentric views for a different perspective (find these in the tools along the left hand side of the screen.) Use the planets distance calculator to understand the actual distances between them. Move forward and back in time to view movements of planets and other objects.

tag(s): space (220)

This site contains how-to videos for kids. Topics include science, paper airplanes, cooking, origami, cartooning, puppets, music, dance, math, and holidays. A summary next to the activity title gives the appropriate level, the number of views, and a starred evaluation of the demonstration. Craft ideas and demos finish up the educational portion of the offerings. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.

tag(s): air (100), comics and cartoons (55), cooking (33), dance (33), easter (10), origami (14), preK (282), thanksgiving (24)

This website provides information and practice on using interactive whiteboards in the classroom. All activities are geared toward SmartBoards but can be used with any brand of interactive whiteboard. Practice activities are provided for exploration of what is available to use on whiteboards at all classroom levels from elementary to high school and is also categorized by subject. The homepage offers a list of all topic areas included. After exploration, participants follow the workshop ideas which provide ideas for using interactive whiteboards in the classroom. Information is provided on using the SmartBoard - this is more specific to this brand but may be helpful for users of other brands. Many of the activities could be completed on laptops, rather than interactive whiteboards.

tag(s): iwb (31)

Penzu offers a FREE service to write journals or diaries online with exceptional privacy options. As an added benefit, you can add images or your own artwork as illustrations. There is a very short demo video on the home page. On Penzu you can keep everything completely private or share selective posts by email or URL. Perhaps share selections on a class wiki page? Don't have a wiki? See the TeachersFirst Wiki Walk-Through for practical management and safety tips for a class wiki. Note: Premium service is available, but this review is for the free version.

tag(s): communication (130), DAT device agnostic tool (146), journals (16), writing (326)

eGFI Online Magazine is great nonfiction reading in science and math. It is completely portable as it is online. It can be shared to your Delicious or Diigo site or other social networking sites. Use this site to enhance cross curricular teaching and learning of reading and interpreting nonfiction text. Plus, this is current and exciting stuff to read for students who are even vaguely interested in science. There are also video links throughout the magazine connecting the text to different, relevant videos. There are lesson plans and activities for grades K-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Some of the recent entries (at the time of this review) included the topics of velocity, Earth Day, robots, sports physics,

tag(s): engineering (137), tornadoes (14), watersheds (8)

This word cloud generator is made specifically for children. This site takes any text and creates a "word cloud" (graphical display) of the words in a passage of text. The most frequent words appear larger. Paste in any passage or grouping of text to create a word cloud of the text. Students can choose their own colors, type of display, font, and the final cloud can be printed or saved.

tag(s): speech (69), vocabulary (242), word choice (14), word clouds (13)

Weebly is an easy, free website creator with tons of features for you to choose from. The easy, "drag and drop" elements allow even novice technology users to create their own website. Besides the basic "drag and drop" features for the title, text, text with a picture, etc., the free version allows you to use cool items: photo gallery, slide show, YouTube videos, Google Maps, an assignment form, and lots more. They promise that the free service will remain 100% feature-packed.

tag(s): blogs (67), communication (130), portfolios (24), writing (326)

Post-it Teachers has a teacher page written by teachers for teachers, all using the little sticky notes that we cannot imagine our lives without. They are used in thousands of ways; they are not just for bookmarks anymore! This web site is an activity center for using Post-its in all subjects and grade levels. Each activity is complete with estimated time needed, objectives, description, easy-to-follow steps, and even assessments, at-home activities, and lesson extension ideas. Search by grade level (K-8, or ESL) and topic (art, classroom management, history, language arts, reading & writing, music, math, science, special education, learning activities & templates). Or you are able to search by teaching technique (K-W-L, cluster mapping, questioning strategy, storymap, timeline, Venn diagram, and several others).

tag(s): classroom management (119)

This very simple tool allows you to show how the earth's rotation affects daylight. By viewing different time zones, latitude, and longitude you can see where it is day and night. The site does allow you to zoom in slightly, but not too close. There are many "custom" viewing options for current cloud cover, IR imagery, and much more.

tag(s): earth (183), globe (12), iwb (31), maps (225), seasons (37), weather (161)

This web page consists of an adaptable lesson plan and information that is chock full of creative, interactive, practical, ready to use activities based upon the discovery and usefulness of the kite. There are interdisciplinary projects including art/history, science, geography, language arts, and math that are fun for students of all age ages. Spring, or any season, is the perfect time to introduce your students to the fascinating world of kites. At the time of this review, two of the links were no longer active. However there are many useful links that make this site a worthwhile tool!

tag(s): crafts (74), seasons (37)

Several familiar "games" are offered with an animal twist: Penguin Quest, Zoodoku, Super Trivia, Crossword, Bedazzled, and Matching. This site, created by Minnesota Zoo, also has links for teachers under "Education."

tag(s): animals (293), logic (161), puzzles (150)

Todoist is a simple, task manager. With the free account you will have access to 5 personal projects, one week activity history, integration of a built in calendar and email, and more. Set up free accounts in minutes with email. The intro and support videos reside on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.

tag(s): calendars (37), DAT device agnostic tool (146), organizational skills (88)

This is an extensive collection of ready to go, teacher-made SMART Notebook activities. This collection covers all grade levels and subject areas. Click Elementary, Middle School, Jr. High, or High School to find the many (MANY) resources). The topics vary greatly and the quantity is impressive. You must have Smart Board software installed on your computer to open these files. Some files will work using the SMART Notebook Express online viewer available here. (Download the notebook file from Longwood's collection to your desktop and then upload to SMART Notebook Express site.)