19 Pencils

19 pencils is a great web site for teachers. I have been playing round with it for quite a while now. It is free to join and has tools and resources for the classroom in one site.

A parent volunteering in his child's class saw that a site like this would be very useful for teachers (after seeing teachers with URLs written on scraps of paper for example - how many times have I done that only to lose it).

The Team at 19 pencils says this about themselves:

We are not just parents who want to provide tools for teachers but we're also seasoned Silicon Valley technology veterans with more than 15 years experience and we want to help you in the classroom.
 
We've built award-winning products with Fortune 500 companies. We believe that teachers and classrooms deserve more and we want to help.

 

On this site you can find educational resources, creat online quizzes, and bookmark sites for students for your students.  Teachers create student accounts for access.



Power My Learning

Power My Learning is a portal to games, activities, videos etc for children. The site is free and sorts the content by American grades as well as by subject matter; math, language arts, science, art & music, computer programming, using technology and your life.

The Power My Learning web site details (below) what a free account gives you access to.

A free account grants access to a world of smart and engaging resources…

• 1,000+ thoroughly vetted academic games, interactive simulations, and videos

• Easy-to-find activities tagged by subject, grade, and Common Core Standards

• “Playlist” feature to sequence activities and individualize learning by student or class

• Lesson plans to incorporate activities into instruction

• Detailed reports for teachers, parents, and students

• Badges and Playpoints to reward student usage

• Flexible platform that can be used in school, after-school, at home, or anywhere in between

There are many 'How to' guides available in the Educators section including such things as creating a class, assigning a playlist (check them out).

Before being able to use the site, children must register; and if they are under 13, they must provide an email from their parent or guardian. A parent can also sign up; then the site is able to provide usage reports so parents can see what kind of things their children are exploring. 

Children earn points by exploring the learning games, simulations and videos. They can also say how good something is by voting on the material that they just played. If they like an activity, the site offers up suggestions for others activities that are similar.

A great site to use in the classroom 

Spreadsheets

Just after I said about spreadsheets being used to track Olympic medals I find that Google has been updating Google Doc spreadsheets.

 It has added ‘protected ranges’ to the documents, allowing designated sections of spreadsheets to be locked down to prevent other users editing the content held there.
This is actually a very useful and necessary feature for Docs users, as it can be a real pain going back over things when small edits or erroneous changes are made and need fixing.
From: The Next Web


You can also find A Step Guide to Protected Ranges in Google Spreadsheets which is a slide show which clearly shows you what to do.

Olympic games

We are so pleased with the way our team has performed in London. From a small country we are doing very well - 3 golds.

This is where the Internet comes into its own in the classroom - instant news, videos, graphics all there ready for the children to find and report about. The news links are outstanding and having the videos as well for the class to see is just so wonderful.

Children can also use a spreadsheet (dare I say it) to keep a medal tally and then make graphs to depict the data.

3 D printers

I find these fascinating; it is like the TV shows (animated) about the future.

I wonder how long before some of these become more available and what we will be able to do with them.

181 Google tricks

181 Google tricks to save you time in school is an article that has been written by some staff writers on the Online Colleges web site. These are quick and simple to go through and there are probably ones there that you were unaware of - have a look and see...

Learning in a digital age: Myth and reality

Steve Wheeler has just uploaded a slideshow he used in a  keynote speech to the eLearning 2.0 Conference, held at Brunel University, London on 8 June 2012. Some of the slides have been annotated for additional clarity and explanation.

Some interesting ideas to enable teachers to reflect on their own philosophies and practice. 

Learning in a digital age: Myth and reality

View more PowerPoint from Steve Wheeler

Google Knowledge Graph

Google Knowledge Graph is being launched to enable you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about, for example landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art to instantly get information that’s relevant to your query.





This will mean that students and teachers will find information more quickly as well as giving better results and information.

Thomas Suarez: A 12-year-old app developer

I have been watching a young boy (aged 12) talking about developing an app.  For his age not only is he incredibly gifted but what a self assured speaker he is, most adults would not be able to speak to an audience with the confidence he shows.

I was also very interested in comments posted on the site relating to this video, while most are full of admiration for Thomas there are a few people who don't seem to be able to resist making derogatory statements - the tall poppy syndrome. Let's all nurture these kids, they are inspiring.

Teachers - encourage don't hold back...

Dvolver Moviemaker

A fun little web 2 tool is Dvolver Moviemaker where the user creates a small movie in the matter of minutes.

The user selects a background and a sky, then selecting characters, adding the conversation (comic book balloons), music and titles. You are then able to email the link to others.

This could be used to teach about direct speech with English grammar as well as many other ways.

I did make a movie and used the embed html to add to this web site and although it shows in the editing view it does not come up quickly in the published view so I deleted it.