Deb Norton Tech

This digital storytelling site looks like a great one for students.  I love that students can use their own art work or imported pictures to create the story.  The other neat feature is that students can record their own voice to go with the story. Watch the video to learn more:

Photovisi is a site for making photo collages.  It is as simple as three steps.   #1 choose a collage #2 add photos #3 download the collage to your computer This year our students are going to have ePortfolios and Photovisi will be a neat way to illustrate a project or event.

Communicating Ideas using Posters, Newspapers, and Comics   is a fabulous interactive resource for students. Each interactive teaches about its subject through a neat little animated cartoon and when finished students can use the site’s tools to create their own (poster, newspaper,or comic). I like how the interactive teaches students about the parts of a movie poster, newspaper or comic.  The final product can be printed.   Students cannot save their work. Thank you to KB Konnected for sharing this site.

Remember the magazine Highlights for Kids?     Well, they now have a website.  HighlightsKids.com is a great place for kids to learn, play and explore.  The online version is really fun.  There are Hidden Pictures, Fun Finder, Games and Giggles, Express Yourself, and much more.  I have always been a fan of the Hidden Pictures section.  We plan to use this website this week with our students for bell work.  Check out HighlightsKids.com!

This site comes to me from my colleague, Jen Erickson.  Free Rice is a site where students can answer trivia questions in the areas of English vocabulary, foreign languages, humanities, geography, math and chemistry.   Here's the neat part; for every correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program.  If the student answers incorrectly, the question will be repeated for another chance.  Each time a question is answered correctly, you are shown how much rice you have donated.  The more answers you get correct, the more difficult the questions get.  If you get answers incorrect, the game gets easier.   Check out Free Rice and share it with your students. I would like to thank Jen for sharing this neat site!

Graas is a site that allows you to type a message and then copy a link to share that message with others.  Once you have typed your message, you can change the style, font, background and colors.  I'm sure there are many ways to use Graas with students.   I think it would be neat to have students type a message like this one  click here and then email it to their parents.  This would be a fun way to announce an accomplishment.   Students could also send messages to their classmates or to teachers announcing something special such as this one .  Can you think of other ways to use Graas with your students?  Please share.

Click here for an interactive site that would work great on your Smart Board.  This site is very visual and animated.  I like that there is a ruler to visualize numbers as well as the base ten blocks.  It will help with teaching place value as well. from Learningbox.com

To help our students with organizing their writing I searched my Delicious bookmarks and found several sites that offer graphic organizers that can be downloaded.   Click here Click here Click here Click here Click here (Includes Teaching notes! ) Click here for Readwritethink.org online organizers. We've successfully used some of these with students in the past.   READING ORGANIZERS Many graphic organizers apply to reading comprehension as well as writing. Click here for a really good collection of reading comprehension graphic organizers. (If you know of any other sites that offer graphic organizers, please share.)

The Differentiator is a really nice site for using Bloom's Taxonomy to choose activities for students.   First you choose the thinking skill, then add the content, resources, product and number in each group.  I tried this several times and here are some of the differentiated activities the Differentiator came up with: I suggest giving the Differentiator a try here !

Would you like a way to discover more about your students?  Check out this multiple intelligence survey .  Students answer 4 sets of 10 questions each for a total of 40 questions.  When they are finished with the survey students can print out their results.  (Printers are not currently working on student computers at MPES)  Students can also copy the results code to go back and retrieve their chart at a later date.

Watch this video to see the newest feature for Prezi: templates!