Great Valentine's Day Sites

Read the following blog post by Larry Ferlazzo: The Best Sites To Learn About Valentine's Day. These sites are great for your ELL students as well.
http://bit.ly/a27Du4

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Flash Review Game for IWB's

Check out the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Flash review game generator: http://www.superteachertools.com/millionaire/

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Project Giddy Up

ESC 2 is inviting school districts to follow one of their very own, Janet Dickerson, on the 2011 South Texas Trail Riders journey through region 2 and beyond. Janet will create a virtual classroom experience linking 21^st century technology and media rich tools to share a world of cowboys, horses, buggies, and general frontier life with your students.

Take a look at the Project Giddy Up blog to find out how your students can submitt a written or video challenge.

Possible Snow in South Texas...Again!

After watching the weather report tonight, I am excited to find out that we MAY have snow again in South Texas. This would be a wonderful experience for our students who have never seen snow. Teachers, have your digital cameras and Flips fully charged and on stand-by. This will be a wonderful opportunity for students to go outdoors and take some pictures and create a  digital story. Students can also use the Flip to videotape a weather forecast.

See you in the snow...hopefully!

Tagxedo

                                                                

Many teachers have found Wordle to be an amazing tool. Students really enjoy using Wordle. Well, if you like Wordle, you are going to LOVE Tagxedo. Tagxedo  has a gallery of ready made images that you can view or just jump in and create your own. Take a minute to explore this site, but chances are you will be there awhile.

What is it?

Tagxedo is a tag cloud creator. It turns words, famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, or letters into an artful tag cloud such as the image above. Can you guess who it is?

Integration Ideas:

Book Review

Include Tag Cloud with Biopoem

Self Portrait

Add Pizzazz to Presentations 

Check out 101 Ways to Use Tagxedo to explore many more ideas.

Lucy Prochazka at Magee Elementary is the winner. She was the first to answer the questions on Tuesday's post. You will be recieving a 2GB Flash Drive. The tool that was highlighted in the 3rd Six Weeks CSCOPE newsletter was Live Binders. Good Job Lucy!

Keep checking the blog. I'm thinking I should start a Freebie Friday.

CSCOPE Newsletters

Take a look at the newsletters below. These CSCOPE newsletters contain some beneficial tips and tools for teachers and administrators. One article in the 3rd Six Weeks newsletter talks about how binders can be inefficient. If you print CSCOPE and keep it in a huge binder stacked on a shelf, this article is for you.

To replace those clunky binders, the article suggests a certain tool to be used instead. The first Calallen teacher to tell me what tool is highlighted in this article, and how it can be more efficient will win a prize. You can post your comment here or email me. Good luck!

1st Six Weeks
2nd Six Weeks
3rd Six Weeks

Many Thanks to Calallen Teachers

You are awesome! Technology integration is taking place everywhere. Teachers are working very hard to seamlessly integrate technology into their lessons. You are doing a great job!

Shahi

Shahi: A mashup of Wiktionary (a Wikipedia type dictionary) and Flickr. This visual dictionary is an excellent way for students to find definitions and get a visual of the word. Students can choose where they want the images to come from. Their choices are Flickr, Google, or Yahoo. My favorite is Flickr.

Integration Ideas: Visual dictionaries are great, but especially useful for your visual learners. Use as a dictionary dictionary or to teach your students parts of speech. Pictures acompany the definitions, therefore students can “see” that a verb is an action word. Use Shahi as the base for a part of speech game with the whole class and a projector. Choose a word from your reading or spelling list and have students guess the part of speech based on the pictures. This is a great way for students to learn the parts of speech through inquiry and problem solving. This is also a great tool for your ELL students. Bookmark Shahi on your classroom computers as a resource during reading/writing time. Look up a spelling word and have students write in their journal about one of the accompanying pictures. A great writing prompt site. Science teachers, Shahi would also be beneficial in the science classroom. Students can look up difficult words or concepts and quickly have a visual representation to aid in understanding. In social studies, students could search places and get a collection of images that will provide them with additional insight into the place.

D.A.T.E Grant Surveys

Grades 3-5 Technology Survey

Become a tech-savvy educator: Discover the resources to get you there

Want to be a tech-savvy teacher? Are you already a tech-savvy teacher and would like some additional ideas to liven up a lesson? Click the link below to watch a 1-hour webinar which provides many useful resources. This is a prerecorded session offered though eschool news. If you haven't gone through eschool news, I suggest you add it to your list of favorites. There is so much there to explore!
Become a tech-savvy educator: Discover the resources to get you there

Do you have AverMedia tools?

If you have an AverMedia document camera and/or AverPens, please take advantage of these prerecorded webinars from AVerMedia trainers. They do a great job of demonstrating how all these tools work together to create some fantastic lessons. Do you want to interact with the trainers? All you have to do is sign up for an upcoming webinar. There are various dates and times to choose from. It's all free!!!

Spell with Flickr

 

So here is a cool tool. You and your students can spell words with flickr. Just type in a word and press enter. Words are created with pictures for letters. This would be a great way to go over those spelling words your students dread. You can also use this to create a heading for your blog, wiki, or website. Click here to start creating.

Claymation

Last Friday, we had teachers from Calallen and Odem/Edroy ISD attend the claymation training at the education service center. Once we got started, we had so much fun putting these clay figures into action. I hope to have a repeat of this training sometime during the school year in Calallen. I want to thank these teachers for taking the time out of their summer vacation for attending. It is great to work with such awesome teachers!

Mimio Training at East Elementary

There were 14 Calallen teachers from the elementary and middle school campuses that showed up for today's Mimio training. These teachers sacrificed a day of their summer vacation to come in and learn some new tricks with Mimio tools. Hats off to all of you!!! Your dedication is much appreciated.  I hope to see the same turnout for tomorrow's claymation training. I would also like to thank Mrs. Parker (East principal) for allowing us to use the computer lab. Thanks to all!!!

T3 Technology Tools

So many technology tools that were ordered by Calallen teachers have arrived. I have to thank David Ebert for doing such a great job. I didn't realize there was so much to do. He stayed on top of everything. It was not an easy task. Thanks David!!! 

We are sorting items and will soon be delivering so that teachers can have their tools at the start of the new school year. I can't wait to see all this stuff in action. Of course, training will follow. This is an exciting time for Calallen ISD!

Web 2.0 Tools Galore

Are you looking for a certain online tool to integrate into your lesson? Well, if I don't have it listed on the blog, then take a look at Web 2.0 Directory or GO2WEB20. My favorite of the two is GO2WEB20. All the tools and applications are listed on one page and each is accompanied by a short description when you mouse over them. Web 2.0 Directory has over 1200 sites which have been put into 50 categories, making it a bit easier to find what you're looking for. Have fun exploring!  

                                                            Image via CrunchBase

Image and Text Generators

Online image and text generators are great if you want to add some pizzazz to your blog, wiki, or website. Remember, if you want your students to be drawn to your site, it is always a good idea to add some eye candy. That will keep them coming back. It is also likely to draw in the parents too. For the chalkboard above, I used addletters. but there are many others to choose from. Many students are already used to using these image generators on MySpace and Facebook. So, if you plan on your students creating their own blog, wiki, or website, this would be a great motivator. They love this stuff!

I have listed some, but there are so many more on the Web. Let me know if you have a favorite not listed below. Have fun!!!

Page Plugins

Chalk Board Letters

Comic Strip Generator

Cool Text

Tiny Tags on Wig Flip

Street Signs on Wig Flip

Wig Flip - They also have speech bubbles, sticky notes and more.

Image Chef Word Mosaic

Mosaic Generator - Very Cool...must see this!

Shape Collage

Typo Generator

Wordle

Don't have PowerPoint or iPhoto for a Presentation...Don't Worry

Tired of PowerPoint or you just want to try something new. In the article, "Top 10 Sites for Creating Slide Shows" David Kapuler lists his top 10 sites to create an out of this world presentation. Visit the sites below and let us know which is your favorite. If you know of one not listed here, please share it with the rest of us.

1. Kizoa - Creates slide shows with a variety of music, effects, and transitions.
2. Shwup - Create private collaborative slide shows that allow comments.
3. Photo Peach - Create quizzes in your slide show with multiple choice questions.
4. Animoto - Very popular site with free all-access pass for educators and my favorite.
5. Slideroll - Can also make private and allow comments.
6. Flixtime - Uploads photos and select audio and transitions. Then you can embed the code onto a blog, wiki, or website.
8. PhotoSnack - Drag & drop interface.
9. Pho.to - Create flash based slide shows and get an embed code to put on your blog, wiki, or website.
10. Vuvox - Create eye-catching multimedia slide shows.

Slideshare is a site that is not on the list, but very useful. If you already have a PowerPoint presentation, Slideshare allows you to upload and share it.

Generation Yes and Podcasting

Generation Yes is a program which allows students in grades 6-9 to help teachers use technology in the classroom. Students help with lesson planning and provide tech support. Students are building technology and leadership skills, and creating a school-wide llaborative learning community. This curriculum is not free, but GenYes does offer free resources such as this Podcasting How-To. This pdf may come in handy for those of you who ordered iPods through the T3 Grant.

 

 

Image via Wikipedia