SYNC ~ YA Literature into Your Earphones

Sync Posters May30

10 Creative Ways to Use Google Tools to Maximize Learning

     Another great post from Edutech for Teachers today comes from an Edudemic article entitled:

 10 Creative Ways to Use Google Tools to Maximize Learning. 

Click the link and check it out. 

Five Ways to Digitally Celebrate Your Students' Year

     From the fantastic blog called Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne comes an article that seems perfect for the end of the year:

Five Ways to Digitally Celebrate Your Students' Year

15 Education Leaders to Follow on Twitter

     From a short blurb in eSchool News this morning and for those of you who are "tweeters":

15 Education Leaders to Follow on Twitter

     More from eSchool news today:

New additions to PBS LearningMedia cover the Constitution, Shakespeare, and more

"PBS LearningMedia has added new content to its free repository of digital teaching materials, which now includes more than 30,000 resources, PBS says" (eSchool News).

27 Places for Free Texbooks

     This morning, I as was checking into the several places I check each day, and I came across some more great information from Edutech ~ an outstanding blog that is always finding and posting information about good tech resources for educators.

 27 Places for Free Textbooks

     The article is from Gizmo's Freeware: The Best freeware Reviewed and Rated.

Edcanvas ~ A Great Web Tool for Teaching!

     While reading through posts from Edutech, I came across a web tool called Edcanvas ~ "the one place to orgranize, present, and share knowledge". It is a quick curation tool and it is SO EASY TO USE.  I think teachers will love it. Check it out. 

EdCanvas

     There is a very short tutorial that you can watch.  It is only 30 seconds long.   How to create a canvas in 30 seconds
     Below is another tutorial that is about six minutes long and well worth watching to get the feel for how this works.

     Here is a link to a quick canvas I made on web tools. I could have chosen dolphins, the American Revolution, or Greek myths.  Any topic for which you want to pull together digital media would work well. Give it a try.  :)

Web Tools with Edcanvas

     

Answer Garden

     AnswerGarden is new web tool that is great for online brainstorming, getting feedback, or even conducting a survey.

    From Edutech for Teachers: Cool Tools for the 21st Century Classroom: 
   "Need a digital scribble space? Then be sure to experiment with AnswerGarden, a web-based polling/survey tool that allows users to create and publish a question. Once visitors submit answers, they are immediately displayed as tags in a basic word cloud. Data can also be exported to Wordle or Tagxedo to create a more visually appealing word cloud. What’s more—a QR code is generated for each AnswerGarden. How cool is that?"

2nd Grade Research for Earth Week

    We celebrated Earth Week this week. One of the themes was oceans.  Each class had an animal on which they focused.  Some groups came to the library to do research. The second grade used PebbleGo Animals to find out out seahorses.  One of the things they wrote was their favorite thing about a seahorse.  I made a "padlet" with their information, spelling un-corrected.  :)  They did great work.

2nd Grades Favorite Thing about Seahorses  

     Padlet was formerly called Wallwisher. It is a great little web tool for posting sticky note-like information quickly. The basic service is free.  It worked well for a quick way to display some of the kids' information. Like Wallwisher, it can be shared and used for collaboration.  :)  Hurray, I say!

Digital Footprint

     There is a lot of discussion about "your digital footprint".  This article talks about five types of tracking/monitoring you might not realize goes on. Take a look. It's interesting!


      5 Places to Look for Your Digital Footprint

Primary Sources

   
        The Digital Shift recently posted an article from School Library Journal written by Richard Byrne, a high school social studies teacher. The article has some great web sites on primary sources and using those documents in the classroom.  I think it would be fun to use these sites for a project or two.  Here is the link to the article, where four sites are reviewed:  "Getting Kids Engaged with Primary Sources | Cool Tools" . Take a look. 
     

Good Stuff

Have You Seen These Websites?

• Arkive: 

It contains information about endangered animals. These entries are wikis, but once they 

have been vetted, their status will state this (so you can get into explaining authoritative 

sources). The site is searchable by animal, age of students, eco region, endangered status, 

etc. Photos and videos accompany most entries.

• Docsteach: 

This site “brings history to life” by pairing primary source documents from the National 

Archives with lesson plans. Teachers can create their own original activities or use 

activities developed by others. Activities are browsable by historical era, historical thinking 

skill or tool.

• Iwitness: 

This video library, co-sponsored by the Shoah Foundation, contains more than 1,000 video 

testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. Videos are searchable by 

subject area (such as Bystanders, Forced Labor, and Ghetto Life). Activities on the site 

are searchable by subject area, standards addressed, and length of time needed to 

complete activity.

Library Musings Take One

     The library has a website, separate pages for our two OPACs, and a Facebook page. Yet, I am still not reaching the users I want to reach.  I have thought about how best to do this.  Maybe a blog is the way.  Who knows?  But, I am going to give it a try.

     I will post resources for staff and students. I will have links that I hope our school community will find useful.  I would be happy to get some feedback. So, if this works, feel free to let me know what you think.