Have You Checked the Teaching Channel Recently?

An excellent place to find videos to use in your teaching and for your own professional development is The Teaching Channel. 

Check the site now, but also bookmark it so you remember to go back to it. You will find videos characterized by discipline as well as by more global areas. You will also find a Teacher page with loads of resources.

Here is a quick glance of the table of contents for the video collection by subjects, grades, topics.

Explore the site to see what it offers, and let us know what you think of this educational resource.

101 Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers

image: http://www.goedonline.com/101-web-tools-for-teachers

This list with descriptions and links of 101 Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers will be worth looking through to familiarize yourself with some possible tools to use in the classroom. Some will be completely new to you, whereas others might ring a bell or be ones you have tried. Look through the list and see what sounds exciting to you. If you find ones of interest, let us know what you think of them and how you might use them in your teaching. Even if you can't find something of immediate interest to you now, bookmark or save the page some other way for future reference. There is a wealth of ideas offered for use now or in the future.

47 Alternatives to Using YouTube in the Classroom

Image from Bryne's blog 

As many of you know, I'm a fan of Richard Byrnes's blog, Free Technology for Teachers. He recently updated his information on alternatives to YouTube. Who can complain with 47 alternatives to YouTube? If your school does not allow YouTube or you are simply looking for a host of video resources for enriching classroom teaching or your own professional development, take some time to explore the wealth of resources offered in the Byrne's blog post 47 Alternatives to Using YouTube in the Classroom. Be sure to post back here what you find most valuable among the 47 resources. Some are probably ones you have already used, but others are likely to be new, especially with 47 choices offered.

By the way, if you have not already bookmarked or saved as a favorite Byrne's blog, now might be the time to do so. He often updates his blog with excellent resources for educators. Explore what he already has on the blog as well as follow the blog as he posts new information. If you are on Twitter, you can follow Byrnes at @rmbyrne.

LiveBinders: Resourceful Web 2.0 Tool

LiveBinder is a tool for organizing your favorite websites by categories. You can create a LiveBinder on any area of interest. Once you set up a LiveBinder, you select categories, and within each category, you create links to resources within that category. A LiveBinder can be an excellent teaching tool for directing students to specific websites for a unit of study.

Image: ericnvntr's photostream flickr

An advantage of opening a LiveBinder account is that you can also store other teachers' and professionals' LiveBinders in your account, in what is called your "Shelves."

Here is an example of one LiveBinder I found recently and added to my shelf: Technology in Education.

How can you envision using LiveBinder in your teaching? If you have an opportunity, search for some LiveBinders, and let us know what you find. Have you heard of teachers or library media specialists setting up LiveBinders for classroom or school implementation?

Technology Tools For Teaching & Learning

image: westtennessewritingproject.com

I am posting a link to a web page with categorized tools to help teachers find the right match of online tools for their students related to curricular and student needs. Surely, in looking through this list, you will find one or more sites of interest. This web page might be one you want to bookmark, save as a favorite, or add to a social bookmarking site you maintain such as Diigo or Delicious.

Technology Tools for Teaching and Learning

Once you skim through the list and check the sites, let us know which sites you use, would like to use, or would like to investigate further, and possibly why you selected these specific sites.

Why Should Educators Use Twitter

In this video a colleague whom I follow on Twitter, Justin Tarte, shares what educators, particularly teachers, can gain from using Twitter. I invite you to take a look, and if you want an introduction to Twitter, just let me know. If you are already on Twitter, Justin provides a list of educators to follow and explains what their contributions are.

Top 50 School Technology Blogs

This list of Top 50 School Technology Blogs will surely contain some that will pique your interest. Among them are iLearning Technology and the Cool Cat Teacher Blog. With 50 listed, you will definitely find some blogs of value to you professionally. After checking the list and browsing a few of the blogs, let us know which of the blogs appeal to you and why.
If you have other favorite blogs, let us know and leave a link

One of the Best Web 2.0 Tools: Evernote

Image from macthemes.net

Want to take notes, capture pictures, do some writing, and be able to access all of your saved work from any computer. You don't need a portable drive. You can save it all with Evernote. In fact, this blog post was  saved in Evernote, and I just copied and pasted it here. Evernote is fast becoming my favorite Web 2.0 tool.

Wondering how to use Evernotes, check "10 Evernote Tips for School: Education Series" and also "10 Tips for Using Evernote."

Here's more information "The Many Purposes of Evernote."

Evernote. also works on your smartphone. Can't go wrong! Can access anything you save from just about anywhere on the Net. If you have not tried Evernote., try it today.

50 Sites in 60 Seconds

50 Sites in 60 seconds is a not-to-be-missed slide presentation of excellent websites to use for integrating technology tools into your teaching. Go through the slide presentation, and note which sites you know and which you want to check out. There's plenty here to keep you busy and to give you excellent ideas for sprucing up your teaching. With the summer coming, it's an excellent time to play, explore and think about what new tools you want to integrate into your teaching and how you might use them to spark student engagement and learning. Enjoy, and let us know what you find. Post a comment.

Resources for Teachers

The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness blog maintained by a secondary teacher contains four excellent blog posts that list a plethora of resources by subject area. In all cases, descriptions of the resources are given with hyperlinks to immediately access them. The resources available apply to  teachers grades K-16. You can spend hours exploring all the resources offered. Take a look at one of the pages to find a long list of possible sources applicable to teaching and learning.

Resources for English

Here you will find general resources as well as resources on Writing, Reading, American Literature, and British Literature.

Mathematics Resources

Gives about 40 general resources followed by resources for the areas of algebra, geometry, calculus, and trigonometry.

Science Resources

General resources followed by resources categorized as earth-space, biology, chemistry, and physics.

Social Studies Resources

Categories resources by history, geography, economics, and arts/humanities.

In total, the resources available from these blogs should keep high school and middle school teachers happy with the quick access to a variety of valuable resources for integrating technology into their teaching. Let us know which resources you find particularly helpful to your teaching.

Top 10 Web Tools for Educators, from Harvard Education Letter

For setting up websites to keep students current, Google Sites and Weebly are listed as the top tools.  Edmodo ranks at the top for posting assignments and other notices and for students to upload work and communicate with peers (see image to the right).

Wikispaces remains a popular tool for students to collaborate in creating web pages.

To set up forums, Chatzy or TodaysMeet allow students to collaborate in real time.  Twitter is not only catching on for microblogging, but is one of the fastest growing social networking sites, outpacing Facebook according to some sources.  Vocaroo and Voki record voices and other sounds for embedding in \web pagesn and the like.  Poll Everywhere is used to gather students' opinions.

For more information on these tools, check the Harvard Education page, Top 10 Tools for Educators. Let us know which of these tools are you use and how students respond. Which tools would you like to try and why?

Reminder: Free Technology for Teachers

If you have not already bookmarked or created a feed to Free Technology for Teachers, which describes free to use online sites, offers free lesson plans, and categorizes access by an index of subject areas, such as science, math, and so forth, it is time that you have. This is a site worth checking regularly, and it has over 25,000 readers, not surprisingly! New posts appear almost daily. Educators find this site an indispensable resource. Once you have time to explore, let us know what you find of value.

Free Technology for Teacher is maintained by Richard Byrne, and his site has won numerous awards. If you don't find what you are looking for the first time around, check back later. This is not the first time I have posted a blog about Free Technology for Teachers. Just wanted to post another reminder about a blog chock full of resources.

Image credit: banner on Free Technology for Teachers

Twitter Tweets Archived with Library of Congress

Even if you don't tweet on Twitter and therefore don't need to worry about your 140-character pearls of wisdom, The Library of Congress archives Twitter Tweets, maintaining an electronic record of Twitter's content. The Library of Congress blog explains the archive: How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive. Using the archive can be a valuable source of information, but what about privacy rights? Take a look at the blog posting How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive, and reflect on what it means for the Library of Congress to maintain this archive. Moreover, what might be the value of the archive in the school setting? Do you think students using Twitter realize an archive of their Tweets exists with the Library of Congress? Does it matter to them to know their pearls could be archived? What about maintaining historical records of tweets? How might this archive be of value in the school setting? When referencing the blog posting, also take some time to read comments posted by others to gain a perspective on how others are reacting.

Image from: How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive

School Filtering Programs

I found this slide show, Strategies for Fighting Internet Filtering on tips for how to address the issue of schools blocking specific Internet sites. For those teaching K-12, blocking sites creates problems when we know specific sites sponsor information that would be of value to our students. The slide show offers some suggestions of how to address the issue and ways in which teachers can teach responsible use of online sources. If you prefer you can view the presentation here instead of clicking on the link Strategies for Fighting Internet Filtering to view the presentation at the slideshare website.

Strategies for Fighting Internet Filtering

View more presentations from Buffy Hamilton.

Rapping in the Students with Video and Collaborating Writing

The Free Technology for Teachers blog featured a story about a high school teaching using two resources to ignite reluctant learners.

The first, The Week in Rap, is an online video set to rap music that reviews in a few brief minutes major events of the week. For students who don't keep current of world events, this is an excellent means to introduce them to world events and to promote in-class discussions.

Take some time to view a recent The Week in Rap video. Remember the old days when we sent students to school editions of Time or Newsweek magazines to stimulate discussions of current events. Students using The Week in Rap get a glimpse into world events in a matter of minutes, but can also replay the video and read its text to facilitate further reflection.

The other tool, Etherpad, is an online synchronous writing environment conducive to a social constructivist approach to learning, as students use the tools to collaborate and create texts. The additions each writer, at his or her own computer, makes appear on the screen as one text forms. This tool has applicability for a range of learners. Try it out with a friend or colleague.

Let us know what you think of these free tools to use in the classroom.

To learn about the high school teacher who used these two tools with her students, check on the Free Technology for Teachers blog, the posting for Monday, February 15, 2010: Using Technology to Find Students.

Online Professional Development

I'm posting links to blogs, nings, and podcasts sponsored by the professional organizations in K-12 disciplines. Use the post a "Comment" feature to add to the list, and I will edit this Blog to include your addition. Also, post a "Comment" to let us know how professional blogs and nings contribute to your professionally development extend your repository of teaching ideas.

National Council of Teachers of English Blog
National Council of Teachers of English Ning
National Teachers of Science Association Podcasts
National Council of Teachers of Science Blog
National Council of Teachers of Social Studies Blog
National Council for Social Studies Ning

Also but not blogs or nings:
National Council of Teachers of Math (Middle School Resources)
National Council of Teachers of Math (High School Resources)
National Council of Teachers of Math (Illuminations)

Image from anniesullivan.org

The Science Behind the Olympics

The upcoming Olympics presents an opportunity for engaging science lessons. Check out this page on Science NetLinks: The Science Behind the Olympics. While at the Science NetLinks, all check its Lesson Plan Ideas Matrix for plans arranged by grade level and subject area. There is also a Resource Index, which includes links related to the teaching of both math and science. If you explore the site, ScienceNetLinks, let us know what you think and what helpful information you find there for your teaching or general interest. Image from: http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/about.php