After a discussion via Twitter with Room214 I’ve started a Google Presentation about using a document camera.

How do you use a document camera?
If you are interested in contributing, you can add comments to this post or contact me via email and I’ll add you as a contributor.

Welcome to Five for Friday for January 25, 2008

Rubrics provide an easy way for students and teachers to assess their projects and presentations. But, they take time to make. Rubistar (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php) makes them much easier to create. Rubrics can be created for ten different categories. The categories include: oral projects, reading, multimedia, art, math, work skills, writing, science, products and music. If you register you can save and edit your rubrics online as well. Registration is free. Creating a rubric is as simple as choosing from drop down menus for your categories. For example: Capitalization and Punctuation. When you do that it fills in the descriptors on a four point scale. If you don’t want to create your own rubric, you can search for one from their vast collection.

Voice Thread (http://voicethread.com/#home) is a an powerful online presentation tool that allows viewers to leave comments on each slide. Here’s an example created by a second grade class about Martin Luther King Jr. http://voicethread.com/#u18557.b39698.i214141 In this example the students are commenting on a quote from Martin Luther King.

Here is an amazing classroom website Mr. Coley.com (http://www2.murrieta.k12.ca.us/tovashal/bcoley/index.htm) It has everything from a student written log of the school day to studycasts, which are podcasts of study guides for upcoming tests. Student work is featured throughout, with parental permission of course. Handouts for different subject areas are available online. Check out the literature circle job handouts (http://www2.murrieta.k12.ca.us/tovashal/bcoley/litcircles.htm) for some excellent ideas to use with cooperative groups.

Read Write Think is brought to you by a partnership between the International Reading Association (http://www.reading.org) and the National Council of Teachers of English (http://www.ncte.org/) and bring to you resources of the highest quality for teaching reading and language arts. There are lessons, web resources and student materials. The student materials are a collection of online activities such as a book cover creator which allows a student to type and design a book cover. The web gallery is a list of selected resources from the web. It is searchable by grade band.

The last resource for the week is the blog “Teaching in the 408” . This blog is the work of reading and writing teacher who works with ELL and Special Education students. Recently he has been posting some excellent strategies regarding before, during and after reading. Here’s a link to the first post in the series. http://roomd2.blogspot.com/2008/01/be-molotov-cocktail-before-strategies.html

This morning I was following Twitter when Riptide Furse sent out a link to this site which showed a zen-like error message. I thought it was funny and sent a reply with a Haiku I had originally saw at a presentation by Ladd Skelly a few years ago.

Serious Error
All Shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen.Mind.Both are blank

Apparently Salon.com hosted a contest around 1998 looking for Haiku style error messages. They received entries from over 200 people with many people submitting multiple entries. The winners were:

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

– David Dixon

Everything is gone;
Your life’s work has been destroyed.
Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?

– David Carlson

Here’s an honorable mention

I’m sorry, there’s — um –
insufficient — what’s-it-called?
The term eludes me …

– Owen Mathews

If you want to see more check out the following links:

From Salon.com- The 21st Challenge
From StrangePlaces.net- Haiku Error Messages
From FunnyPoetry.com- Haiku Error Messages
From ariel.com- Haiku Error Messages

This is not the usual post for me. I’d like to spread the word on an important issue (far more important than say third hour English), global climate change. Check out this video for more information. I got the video from a blog posted on Chris Lehman’s Blog-Practical Theory- http://www.practicaltheory.org/serendipity/index.php?/archives/924-How-It-All-Ends.html

Check it out and pass it on!

If you want to see more videos from Greg. Check out his YouTube page:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=wonderingmind42

Special thanks to Chris Lehman and Alec Couros from the Twitter network.

Welcome to Five for Friday for January 18, 2008

Here’s a search engine for students I like http://kids.quintura.com/ . In addition to the typical search box, it has a search cloud floating above. This cloud contains terms that are related to the topic. For example: on a search for Egypt, the following was in the cloud: kings, queens and pharaohs; hieroglyphics, maps, countries,etc… This will help students find ideas that are related to their topic.

If you are looking for a collection of educational websites check out Blue Web’n (http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/bluewebn/index.cfm). Brought to you by the AT& T Knowledge Network, it provides sites organized by content areas, subject areas and grade level. It doesn’t attempt to list all of the educational sites, instead it handpicks the best sites. Five to ten are added every month and you can get updates sent to your email.

Also on the AT&T Knowledge Network is Filamentality (http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/). This is an easy, structured tool to help you create online activities. There are five types of activities that you can create. Hotlists, scrapbooks, hunts, samplers and webquests are all activities you can create on Filamentality.

Math Playground (http://www.mathplayground.com/computation.html) is a place for students to practice all different types of math problems. From basic computation to word problems there are plenty of activities to choose from. These activities require the Flash player to play. This site was created by Colleen King and has received many awards.

Speaking of math, here’s a site to send kids to if they need a refresher on a math term. A Math’s Dictionary for Kids 2007 (http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/jeather/maths/dictionary.html) has an extensive dictionary of math terms. Many of the math terms have interactive activities to go with them.

Bonus: One of my readers, Travis, sent me a link to a mixbook he created about MLK. Check it out! http://www.mixbook.com/books?bid=45403. Mixbook is a site that allows you to create online photobooks.

Welcome to Five for Friday for January 11, 2008

With the Martin Luther King holiday coming up I thought I’d find a site with resources about this important leader. MLK Online (http://mlkonline.net) contains many resources about Martin Luther King. There is a biography page that includes some quick facts and a longer narrative about his life. There is a collection of resources about his “I Have A Dream” speech. It includes video, text, and five different audio files. The audio files include the complete speech in MP3 and real audio format, and three small clips as well. Unfortunately the picture section does not seem to be working.

A site to avoid would be martinlutherking.org. This site is hosted by a white supremacist group. Unfortunately it will come up as one of the top links when you use google. If you want your students to find out more about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. you would be better off giving them a list of links to use.

If you are looking for lesson plans for Art, head to Artsonia. (http://www.artsonia.com/teachers/lessonplans/) Lesson plans are organized by grade level and include lists of the supplies you will need. Examples of artwork from students are included as well. In addition there is an online store that allows you to upload student art. The artwork can be then used to decorate items from keychains to cutting boards. Schools earn 15% when parents purchase these products.

Another excellent site for Art is the social network “Art Snacks” (http://www.artsnacks.org). Art Snacks is a social network with the goal of promoting art and art education. There are videos that show the artist drawing a wide variety of shapes. There also many members willing to share their techniques and ideas. Just like many social networks you can create a page of your own and post your own artwork and photos.

Here’s a site for pictures students can use in their projects. Pics4Learning (http://www.pics4learning.com/) has established a collection of photographs about a wide variety of topics. All of the pictures are copyright free and the site was developed by tech4learning.com.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the man who was the first to climb Mt. Everest, passed away yesterday at the age of 88. Scholastic has a collection of resources about Sir. Edmund Hillary and his story. There is a large collection of resources including: a photo history, text of an interview with him, a profile of Tenzing Norgay ( his sherpa who climbed Mt. Everest with him and much more. Check out “My Story: I was the first to Conquer Everest” (http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/hillary/index.htm)

Here’s a bonus site for you. Check out the Librarians’ Internet Index The site is a collection of sites collected by librarians. They put out a Thursday newsletter that lists 20-30 sites about wide range of current interest. You can subscribe to that here.

Greetings and welcome to Five for Friday. I hope to start posting more regularly here with sites, tips or tools about technology and teaching.

Just like Free Rice (www.freerice.com), allows students to build their vocabulary skills Spelling City (www.spellingcity.com) will allow them to improve their spelling skills. Students may enter their spelling words and choose three different types of activities: Test Me, Teach Me or Play a Game. Teachers can register and post their spelling lists on the site so that students don’t have to enter their own words.

If you make small booklets with your students here is a tool for you. It is a booklet stapler and is available from Amazon for only 8$
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000KICA7S/ref=nosim/kkorg-20

With conference time coming up soon check out these links for information about Student Led Conferencing.
http://del.icio.us/techicebreaker/StudentLedConf

Are you looking for an easy way to keep track of the cool web sites you find for school? Are you looking for an easy way to share them with your fellow teachers? Are you looking to expand your network? Check out del.icio.us! http://del.icio.us/ Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that allows you to bookmark sites and save them online. You can also give sites tags which are a way of labeling sites so that you can categorize them according to your needs. The links for Student Led Conferencing came from my del.icio.us account. There is also a search feature that will allow you to search for topics of interest that other users have already tagged. As you meet other educators or view their links you can also add them to your network. This gives you access to their bookmarks in their del.icio.us account.

Here is a site that is becoming one of my favorite blogs for education resources. In fact it is where I heard of Spelling City.com
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/ This site provides many resources for all sorts of school subjects specializing in ELL or ESL students.