The Rearview Mirror 5-31-2014

For those of you who may have missed an EDge21 featured post or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

 

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 Monday

NO POST

Tuesday

BrainPOP Educators presents tips, tools, and resources to excite and support anyone who educates young people.

Wednesday

One Hen provides educators with flexible curriculum resources designed to help students develop financial responsibility, personal initiative, global awareness, and giving back.

Thursday

Writing@CSU is an open-access website supported by Colorado State University to provide resources to writers and teachers.

Featured 5-29-2014: Writing@CSU

 

Writing@CSU is an open-access website supported by Colorado State University to provide resources to writers and teachers.

 

Writing@CSU provides access to the largest collection of web-based resources for writers and writing teachers. These materials, from more than 300 contributors, support instruction in a wide range of writing processes and genres.

 

The Writing@CSU website and the larger Writing Studio Project are designed to help writers by supplying an interactive, online space that simulates a well-run workshop featuring:

• Timely advice from teachers
• Feedback from other writers
• Helpful examples and demonstrations
• Access to tools that can help you write effectively

The Studio supports writing classes with a course management system that includes most of the tools found in commercial systems, as well as wikis, ePortfolios, blogs, and other tools that support the learning and teaching of writing.

 

 

The blogs, wikis, and ePortfolio tools can be used within courses or on their own. Depending on your preferences, your work can be completely private, shared with selected people, or open to the public.

 

Writing@CSU accounts are free and give you a personal online space where you can compose and save your work.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-28-2014: One Hen

One Hen provides educators with flexible curriculum resources designed to help students develop financial responsibility, personal initiative, global awareness, and giving back.

The motivation for One Hen comes from the children’s book, One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference. A young Ghanaian boy named Kojo who uses a small loan to buy one hen, which in turn lays eggs and hatches more hens, until he eventually becomes the largest chicken farmer in the country.

 

One Hen challenges kids in grades K-8 through a series of interactive lesson plans, an engaging storybook, and a website of games and activities. Teams of students face the challenges of running their own real-world small businesses. With the profits they earn, they repay their loans and make a donation to a non-profit organization of their choice, helping to meet a local or global need.

 

 

In the process, the young entrepreneurs learn necessary skills in business math, personal financial literacy, and social entrepreneurship.

 

One Hen is a non-profit organization whose mission is to "empower all kids to become social entrepreneurs who make a difference for themselves and the world.”

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-27-2014: BrainPOP Educators

 

BrainPOP Educators presents tips, tools, and resources to excite and support anyone who educates young people.

 

BrainPOP offers animated educational movies, quizzes, games, activities, and other resources for students in grades 3-12, covering more than 750 topics in the areas of Science, Math, English, Social Studies, Health, Technology, and Arts & Music. The movies are supplemented with resources including a quiz, activities, related games, a timeline, and a selection of high-interest reading.

 

 

On BrainPOP Educators you’ll find resources including lesson plans, calendars of events, and creative suggestions for using BrainPOP in the classroom. It also includes a blog that announces new BrainPOP features, hosts guest bloggers, and follows current events from the world of educational technology. 

 

 

A database, searchable by standard, subject and grade level, correlates BrainPOP topics and games to Common Core math and English standards is available. The database also allows you to correlate BrainPOP movies with curriculum standards from individual states and Canadian provinces.

 

 See an overview of BrainPOP Educators

 

BrainPOP Educators offers a variety of training resources including outlines for giving workshops, handouts, and webinars.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

The Rearview Mirror 5-24-2014

For those of you who may have missed an EDge21 featured post or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

 

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Monday

Classroom is a new, free tool coming to Google Apps for Education that helps teachers easily and quickly create and organize assignments, provide feedback, and communicate with their classes.

Tuesday

Amazon School Lists is a new way for K-12 teachers to create and share online back-to-school supply lists with parents.

Wednesday

ChalkUp is a student engagement platform designed to foster real-time school-work collaboration, learning, and studying, ChalkUp enables students to ask questions, discuss and share interesting educational content, and work with each other.

Thursday

The Math Open Reference Project is free, interactive math textbook on the web covering high-school geometry.

Plus 5-23-2014: Explain Everything

 

Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere.

 

 

Use Explain Everything to create slides, draw in any color, add shapes, add text, and use a laser pointer. Rotate, move, scale, copy, paste, clone, and lock any object added to the stage.

 

You can also add new or existing photos and videos. Import many types of files from Evernote, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive,email, and more. Export MP4 video, PDF documents, YouTube video, or XPLX project files.

 

 

No account is necessary to use Explain Everything and share creations.

 

 See a video overview of Explain Everything

 

The iOS version requires an iPad running iOS 5.1.1 or higher. The Android version requires version 4.0.3 and up.

 

Note: There are some functional differences between the iOS and Android versions.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-22-2014: The Math Open Reference Project

 

The Math Open Reference Project is free, interactive math textbook on the web covering high-school geometry.

 

 

The Math Open Reference Project has the goal of providing high-quality digital content free of charge to the end user, while providing numerous benefits over paper textbooks:

• Accessible anywhere, any time.
• Interactive, interesting experience.
• Hyperlinks promote exploration and easy lookup.
• Use the search to look up a word or term.
• Interactive quizzes with instant feedback.
• Lower cost.
• Less weight.

Using interactive tools and compelling animations, The Math Open Reference Project provides an engaging way to learn and explore the subject. A vast library of virtual manipulatives can be used to demonstrate concepts using a computer, projector, and whiteboard. Students can use the same manipulatives themselves outside the classroom.

 

 

The Math Open Reference Project meets the NCTM standards for content and is aligned with the Common Core standards, but also has the potential to adapt to and comply with the standards for every state.

 

The Math Open Reference Project will work with most popular browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. The interactive illustrations use Java and/or Flash, so these plug-ins must be installed on the user's computer.

 

The copyright and license agreement permit any printing for non-commercial use, useful for class handouts.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-21-2014: ChalkUp

 

ChalkUp is a student engagement platform designed to foster real-time school-work collaboration, learning, and studying, ChalkUp enables students to ask questions, discuss and share interesting educational content, and work with each other.

 

Dashboard is a real-time feed where you can comment on discussions, submit assignments, and even view files. Chalkup keeps all assignments, quizzes, and tests in one place.

 

Assignments can be delivered to students quickly and in real-time. Drag-and-drop a document from your computer or use one that you have stored on Google Drive or Google Apps for Education. Create folders, rename files to be organized.

 

Students can turn in assignments as easily as dragging-and-dropping, uploading as many files as necessary. Annotate and grade uploaded file submissions right inside ChalkUp. Personalize feedback with a quick note.

 

 

Messaging lets the people in your class chat in real-time and share files with each other. Teachers can send messages to students to clarify, remind, and keep them engaged. Chalkup uses 256-bit AES encryption to make sure your messages are safe.

 

The free version of ChalkUp provides 1 GB of storage per class with a file size limit of 25 MB, and all the core features including integrated flashcards.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-20-2014: Amazon School Lists

 

Amazon School Lists is a new way for K-12 teachers to create and share online back-to-school supply lists with parents.

 

By using Amazon School Lists teachers will have more students better prepared from the first day of school and throughout the year.  A teacher creates student supply lists for his/her classes, posts them to the Amazon School Lists website, then sends parents an email with a link to the list. 

 

The School List form includes the option for teachers to comment on each item. For example, you can add a note that indicates a particular color marker may be needed, or that similar items can be acceptable.

 

Amazon School Lists lets K-12 parents know exactly what school supplies their children will need for class. They can view and purchase supplies from their children's own teacher's lists or suggested grade-level lists. Parents can view and shop directly from the list or print the list to take shopping.

 

 

Teachers may begin creating Amazon School Lists for fall 2014 back-to-school preparation immediately. Parents will be able to access school lists right now as well. At the end of a term, the supply lists for that term will be disabled. To re-use a list, a teacher can re-save the list with a new name and the new term date.

 

Note: Only registered Amazon customers can create or use School Lists.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-19-2014: Google Classroom

 

Classroom is a new, free tool coming to Google Apps for Education that helps teachers easily and quickly create and organize assignments, provide feedback, and communicate with their classes.

 

By integrating Google Docs, Drive, and Gmail, Classroom can help teachers manage assignments quickly and easily, and communicate with their students more efficiently and effectively. Classroom lets teachers make announcements and pose questions online.

 

Students using Classroom are able to better organize their work, complete and submit assignments, and interact directly with their teachers and peers. Drive folders are automatically created for each assignment and for each student. Students can readily see what assignments are due on an assignments page.

 

 Watch Previewing a new Classroom by Google

 

Classroom contains no ads, does not use your content or student data for advertising purposes, and is free for schools.

 

 

A limited number of educators are being invited to try Classroom. Teachers can apply for a preview. By September, Classroom will be available to any school using Google Apps for Education.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

The Rearview Mirror 5-17-2014

For those of you who may have missed an EDge21 featured post or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

 

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 Monday

EverySlide involves students by making it possible to integrate open-ended questions and polls in the same slides you are already using.

Tuesday

ReadWorks is a national non-profit organization that provides free, research-based, Common Core-aligned reading comprehension curriculum.

Wednesday

ReMarkable is a free iPad app that offers students an easy way to submit digital documents in many formats to teachers and professors for marking.

Thursday

Offering science teachers free access to the best hands-on, classroom-tested, lessons is the pursuit of MyScienceBox.

Featured 5-15-2014: My Science Box

 

Offering science teachers free access to the best hands-on, classroom-tested, lessons is the pursuit of MyScienceBox.

 

The My Science Box teaching boxes provide everything you need to teach a 4-6 week middle school science unit: lesson plans, assessments, field trip planning materials, resources, and tips.

 

Over three months of lessons include classroom activities, labs and projects, field trips and outdoor activities, computer activities, and more. The 'printer friendly version' button at the bottom of any page generates a printable version of any lesson plan or even a complete teaching box. 

 

 

Registered users can post comments for other teachers to view or leave feedback.

 

Irene Salter developed and tested the MyScienceBox curriculum units in her own middle school classroom. Included are teaching boxes and individual lessons created by other teachers.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-14-2014: ReMarkable

 

ReMarkable is a free iPad app that offers students an easy way to submit digital documents in many formats to teachers and professors for marking. 

 

The concept of ReMarkble is functional and practical for both students and teachers. Upon signing up, teachers get a unique email address that will be used by students to submit all work directly to the app. All assignments go directly into ReMarkable where educators mark all the work within the app.

 

ReMarkable accepts many document types including .docx, .pptx, .xls, .jpg, .gif, .pdf, and more.

 

The annotation tools are very intuitive and were designed with the needs of teachers marking student documents in mind.  The features of ReMarkable were reviewed by a panel of educators.

A customizable folder system gives teachers the ability to control and organize submitted files. Move, copy, and upload all files to various folders or to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.

 

 Watch ReMarkable’s Kickstarter video

 

ReMarkable gives teachers the convenience of accepting and marking papers anytime from anywhere.  Teachers will no longer have to carry home loads of papers to mark, all that's needed is an iPad running iOS 6.0+.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-13-2014: ReadWorks

 

ReadWorks is a national non-profit organization that provides free, research-based, Common Core-aligned reading comprehension curriculum.

ReadWorks supplies units, lessons, and authentic, leveled non-fiction and literary passages directly to educators online to be shared broadly.The curriculum is based on the most highly regarded, proven research on reading instruction, and includes:

• Informational and literary passages and question sets for grades K-8
• Skill and Strategy lesson units for grades K-4
• Comprehension (close reading) units for grades K-5
• Novel study units for grades 5-6

ReadWorks is committed to "solving the nation's reading comprehension crisis by giving teachers the research-proven tools and support they need to improve the academic achievement of their students."

 

 

 View Intro to ReadWorks

 

The ReadWorks curriculum is aligned to the Common Core State Standards, the standards of all 50 states, and to top core reading programs. Each lesson page lists the standards that a specific lesson aligns to on the Standards Alignment tab. You can also edit your profile to automatically show the standards alignment for your state and grade.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-12-2014: EverySlide

 

EverySlide involves students by making it possible to integrate open-ended questions and polls in the same slides you are already using.

 

A free EverySlide educator license can make your classroom more interactive:

• Re-use existing slides
• More engaged students
• Know what students are thinking
• Generate class reports
• Instant polls and word clouds
• Students use their own devices

Upload a presentation created in PowerPoint or Keynote to EverySlide and press ‘present'. A unique registration link will be generated that your class can use to join your slideshow using any device they happen to have.

 

 

Ask a question or run an instant poll. After the presentation, you can review students’ interactions online or download their details and answers as a spreadsheet. You can leave a copy of your slides on participants’ devices.

 

 Watch an overview of EverySlide

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

The Rearview Mirror 5-10-2014

For those of you who may have missed an EDge21 featured post or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

 

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 Monday

eduCanon is an online learning tool that can be used to build and share interactive video lessons transforming passive content into an active experience for students.

Tuesday

Learn how to program Android mobile apphttp://www.educanon.com/aboutuss using MIT's App Inventor at AppInventor.org. An on-line book and video lessons walk you through the creation of successively more complex apps.

Wednesday

Upper-elementary and middle school students can help one another practice word problems and apply math to real life using the collaborative learning platform, Shooloo, which means “Number Joy” in Chinese.

Thursday

Used in the teaching of English and Language Arts, Booktrack Classroom is a new, free technology that enables students to read stories and texts accompanied by a movie-style soundtrack.

Extra 5-9-2014: Bing Classroom

Bing in the Classroom gives US K-12 schools the choice of ad-free search, so students have a safer, more private online environment.

When a district signs up for Bing in the Classroom:

• All the ads are removed from search results.
• SafeSearch with strict filtering to help keep out adult content is turned on.
• Enhanced privacy settings prevent use of search data for personalized ad profiles.

When a district signs up for Bing in the Classroom, Microsoft agrees to a publically available Terms of Service that lists in detail exactly how the program works and their commitment to students.

 Watch Bing in the Classroom Now Available to All Schools in the US

Your district must be registered by a district-level administrator for ad-free search to receive Bing in the Classroom.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-8-2014: Booktrack Classroom

 

 

Used in the teaching of English and Language Arts, Booktrack Classroom is a new, free technology that enables students to read stories and texts accompanied by a movie-style soundtrack.

 

Integrated with Common Core standards, the easy-to-use Booktrack Classroom technology can improve student reading and writing abilities. New York University and The University of Auckland have conducted studies which show that Booktrack increases reading comprehension scores and student engagement.

 

Booktrack can be used on both an individual basis as well as in group learning exercises. Here are some examples of ways it can be used:

• Narrative Writing – Students can add music and audio to their original stories.
• Informative and Explanatory Writing – Students write essays and articles selecting suitable audio to clarify their text.
• Literature Study – Students can gain insight and increased understanding of the text by creating their own soundtracks for novels, stories, and plays.
• Read-Alouds – Teacher and student led read-alouds are enhanced through the addition of sound and music to the chapter or act being presented.

Booktrack Classroom can foster digital literacy and creative thinking among students while developing multiple learning objectives. 

 

 

 View a short intro to Booktrack Classroom

 

Booktrack Classroom also hosts a library of free lesson plans for K-12 students, covering a variety of subjects and learning outcomes. All lesson plans have been created by professional teachers.

 

 There are free Booktrack mobile apps for both Android and iOS devices.

  

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0