The benefits of student blogging

image courtesy of flickr This year I have been able to work with several classes to learn about blogging. It has been exciting to see the students eager to write and express themselves. I have seen a lot of benefits of students blogging. It has increased their writing, given them a voice, and provided some powerful benefits. In particular, I worked with a 2nd grade class to help develop their...

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Finding free images for your classroom

image courtesy of Creative Commons In today's digital world students are creating many projects that include images and videos gathered from various web resources. It is important that you and your students are not violating anyone's copyright. The best way to do this is to search for images and videos in the public domain. Unfortunately most people go straight to Google Images and grab...

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Awesome iPad App: Book Creator

image courtesy of Red Jumper One of my favorite iPad apps is Book Creator by Red Jumper. This app is so easy to use that even kindergarteners can create stories with it. Yet it's so powerful that secondary students can use it to publish multimedia ebooks. It can be used in any subject area with any grade level. Publishing for students has never been easier!  The free version of Book Creator...

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Kidblog: Archiving classes

It's the end of the school year and time to clean up your class blogs! If you use Kidblog, the process is very easy. If you want to stop activity on your blog then you need to either archive or delete the classes. Archiving your class blog is a process that lets you stop any activity on your blog and "freeze" it in place. Students will not be able to post or comment any more. When...

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Critically Evaluating Websites

I was working with a 5th grade class on a #mysteryskype to find a class in Delaware. The students already know to search Google for usable maps that show them counties, cities, and roads. They had done this many times before with success. In this particular case, though, they ran into trouble with maps that didn't match data. It made for some very interesting discussions between the students about...

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Awesome iPad App: Tell About This

For the last several months I've been working with Ms. Blackwell's kindergarten class to help them become familiar with their class set of iPads and the apps installed on them. I'm only able to stop in once every two weeks, but we've become fast friends and have a lot of fun! We've created stories together, made screen casts to share our math knowledge, and explored a variety of ways to take pictures...

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Formative Assessment Toolbox

image courtesy of Humorist John P Wood Teachers use assessments all the time throughtout their instruction. Typically this is done to measure how much students have learned up to a particular point in time. This is what we call "assessment of learning", or a measurement of what students know compared to state or district standards. Although these types of assessments are important, teachers should...

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Formative Assessment Toolbox: Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is a formative response system that teachers can use to solicit feedback, ask open ended questions, and generate polls. Students can respond using any cell phone with text messaging capability or via a simple web form on a tablet or computer. Answers are displayed in real time graph form.  Educators can create unlimited polls for free, but each poll can have only 40 responses....

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Formative Assessment Toolbox: Kahoot

Kahoot is a free game-based formative response system. The teacher displays the questions on a screen and students answer them through any web browser on any device (tablet, smartphone, laptop). It is highly engaging and provides immediate feedback to students and formative assessment data for teachers. Kahoot is a free web based app. Teachers and students create accounts at getkahoot.com. There...

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Kidblog tutorials

Kidblog has switched over to a new platform as of May 1. You can read more about their announcement and watch a demo on their blog. I love the new look and functionality. They claim that it is easier to use and more student centered. I have to agree - there is much to like about the new layout and features. Student Centered My favorite new feature is the student centered approach to blogging....

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