February 15

Digital Scrapbooking

Whether you are studying famous Americans, characters in a book or a location, Scholastic’s Scrapbook is perfect.

Upon entering the site, the student will be asked to type the title of the book and the character. If you were studying a famous American, you would type in the time period he/she was alive or the name of a battle that he was a leader in.

The next screen will have two sides. On the left is a drawing area. It offers options for humans and animals. The animal options are dogs, pigs, mice, a cricket, fish, a mole, horses, cats, a dragon, a monkey, a bull, a rabbit, a giraffe, an owl, a dinosaur, a turtle, or a gorilla. These images are as is and do not offer an option for additional accessories.

The human images offer more variability. You can change skin color, hair, eyes, nose, mouth and clothes. The completed picture is of the shoulders and head.

On the right side of the screen is a table where students can type in various things regarding this person. Using the arrows, you can scroll through the options that are 10 Words to describe the character, details about their appearance, facts about their personality, challenges faced and accomplishments. Each line holds 60 characters where the students can type ideas or complete sentences.

There is also an option to print out a blank scrapbook page if you want them to draw their own picture. Scholastic has created a teacher guide with lesson plans and ideas for use of the scrapbook with various grade levels that can be found in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

How can you use this in a classroom?

  • character study in different forms of media
  • famous Americans, artists, historians
  • analyzing historical and current structures
  • whole group or on an interactive white board
  • independently on student computers

 

Category: interactive white boards, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies | LEAVE A COMMENT
January 18

Word Up!

Wordle is a neat way to display a student’s writing in a different way. It may not be a paragraph or have any punctuation, in fact it may not even have a sentence. It will be filled with many, many words.

What it will be is text presented in an artistic way.  The text can be adjusted by color pallete, layout and font. Once the words are placed in the window, they can be adjusted as many times as you want. The size of the word depends on the use of it. Looking at the Declaration of Independence below, government is the largest word because it has been used the most. The smaller words are used less frequently. If you were to type the words in yourself, you would type one word several more times than other words to make sure it was larger.

Another example that is similar to Wordle is Tagxedo. Tagxedo offers the same features as Wordle. It also allows the creator to select from various shapes, which will enhance the presentation of the text. Once created, if you roll over the words they become hyperlinks. Clicking on them will take you to a website where you will find more information. (This feature is only available while in the site. Once it is saved as an image, you cannot click on the words.) Below is the same text as above, The Declaration of Independence, but presented in a shape.

 

How can you use this in the classroom:

  • create list of traits about a character
  • description of vocabulary word
  • words used in a Science or Social Studies unit
  • synonyms or antonyms
  • historical documents
  • back to school activity
  • book reviews

 

 

 

 

Category: interactive white boards, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies | LEAVE A COMMENT
December 15

Chatting in the Classroom

Social networking and online chatting are part of our everyday lives. It is our responsibility to teach our children how to use these tools responsibly and respectfully. The challenge falls when the well known social networking sites are blocked in schools, which is done with the best interest of the child in mind.

How do we overcome this hurdle? http://todaysmeet.com allows this to happen. The students are able to create a room in 30 seconds and share it with one, or more, members of the class. From here, all members will join the room and begin chatting. Once the students are comfortable doing this in one location, consider chatting with another classroom, local school or across borders.

Possible uses in the classroom:

  • digital citizenship
  • book reviews/group
  • historical decisions that affected countries
  • discussion on solving Math problems
  • impact of online chatting
  • proper use of grammatical skills through conversation
  • proper use of written tone

There is the concern of keeping a record of this type of conversation. TodaysMeet offers the ability for all transcripts to be printed. Simply scroll to the bottom of the screen and select Transcript. A new window will open where a document will display the entire conversation. (It may be on more than one page.)

Below is a list of ways that this site was used in the classroom:

 

Category: Language Arts, Science, Social Studies | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 21

Composing online

Do you need ideas for your students to compose online? Sure, you can open up a blank document and give them a topic to type-but what if you make it a bit more exciting the same ol’ thing?

With the holidays approaching, ask your students to write a postcard to your family from the perspective of an object. For example, ask them to write it from the mind of a turkey, pumpkin or cranberry. Other options could include the football, football helmet, chair, table or floor. Talk to the students and see what else they can come up with.

To complete this exercise, open up Publisher and select Postcard. Select one of the many templates if you want to keep it uniform or have the students choose their own. Explain where to add the text, how to add a picture and how to fill in the address section. (Remind them that this isn’t going to be mailed and they can create their own address.)

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October 14

Paint a Picture in my Mind

Johnny comes up to your desk and has written sentences. They all have proper sentence structure, but they don’t paint a picture in the mind of the reader. You explain to Johnny that he should add more colorful and descriptive words. It all sounds good, but what if you had a website to show what it would look like.
Now there is one…


Telescopic Text is a great site. Using the image above, the sentence starts with three words. On the web-site, you can click on a word to expand the sentence. The example above shows one sentence and how it has expanded from three words to seven words. The original sentence has now been developed into a more descriptive sentence.
When using this with your class, you will need to create an account and all students will use it. Their sentences can
be saved here. To get started, click on telescopictext.org in the bottom right hand corner of the page. The next page contains a paragraph with underlined words. When you click on one of the underlined words, you will receive directions on how to use the site.

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