Teaching Hurricane Sandy

Teaching Hurricane Sandy: Ideas and Resources

By THE LEARNING NETWORK

14 Open Resources For High School

 From Education Week's blogs > Vander Ark on Innovation

 Science and Mathematics

1. CK12.org is a pioneer in open resources providing secondary math and science Flexbooks includingFlexmath content originally developed at Leadership Public Schools.
2. National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) provides an online library of OER high school and AP courses at HippoCampus.org. You'll find solid courseware available in modules with voice over text. It is easy to create media playlists, find track high-trending learning materials, and share learning content with students.
   Find their next gen content at NROCmath.org including a great Hewlett Foundation-funded open Algebra 1 course and a developmental math sequence.
3. Educurious is Gates-funded OER and project-based learning (PBL) curriculum designed to align with Common Core State Standards.
4. Khan Academy has a library of more than 3,000 math, science, and history lessons delivered in easy-to-understand videos.

Comprehensive Modular Resources

5. The Gateway to 21st Century Skills is one of the oldest repositories of education resources online, providing a variety of activities, lessons plans, projects, and assessments.
6. Curriki.org is a big library of shared courses and content.
7. OERcommons.org offers free-to-use teaching and learning content and a long list of content providers.

Grade-Level Collections

8. Gooru Learning curates the Web's best resources, compiling them into collections and attaching quizzes.
9. Power My Learning provides math, Language Arts, science, social studies, art/music, computer programing, and more educational activities for parents and teachers.

History

10. Big History Project is a Gates-funded thematic interdisciplinary project.
11. Muzzylane transforms history into a game.

Mostly Higher Education

12. Connexions provides a platform for learning modules and content creation that can be compiled into courses, books, reports, and more.
13. Open Courseware Consortium provides free and open college- and university-level educational materials online, anytime.
14. The Saylor Foundation provides free and open college-level courses to students without registrations or fees. Several districts are using Saylor.org courses in high school. Watch for more Common Core aligned resources.

Additional Free Resources

15. Google in Education and Google Course Builder provide great professional dvelopment and learning resources for educators to create and collaborate in the classroom.
16. iTunesU has tons of mostly post-sec content.
17. YouTube EDU has more than 1,000 educational channels.
18. PBS LearningMedia provides tens of thousands of digital resources for educators and is especially valuable to the flipped classroom.
19. National Geographic has a longstanding reputation of supporting learning with valuable multimedia resources for any classroom.

LearnZillion: High quality lessons you can use today for free!

Amazing teachers, amazing Common Core lessons Created by teachers.   High quality lessons you can use today - for free in Math and  ELA .  Just Sign up for a free account.

• Lesson videos for teachers and students to watch online and on mobile devices
• Lesson slides that teachers can download for projectors or interactive whiteboards
• Lesson commentary that provides insights for teachers about each lesson and aTeacher calendar to schedule your lessons

Word Puzzles for Students and Teachers

ArmoredPenguin.com. This site contains a number of resources that various people (including educators and students) can use to make puzzles of various types.

The Solution to Reading Comprehension

ReadWorks provides over 1,000 non-fiction reading passages with question sets to support reading activities. It is free to register.  ReadWorks is searchable by grade level,  shows the lexile level of the passages and is aligned o the Common Core.

KEEPVID: download streaming videos

Now you no longer need your browser to download a YouTube video. Just enter a search keyword or URL(s) into VDownloader and convert one or multiple of videos at once into any format, with a single mouse click!

Search inside 28814 video lectures and talks

Lecture webcasts are readily available on the Internet. These class lectures, and Webcasts routinely combine presentation slides with either a synchronized audio stream (i.e., podcast) or an audio/video stream. Conventional web search engines retrieve this content only if you include "webcast" or "lecture" among your search terms, or search a website that specifically organizes lecture content. But users, particularly students, want to find the place in a lecture when an instructor covers a specific topic. Answering these queries requires a search engine that can search within the webcast to identify important keywords. TalkMiner can do this.

Flash Card Flash

Find flashcards from the best flashcard sites. Flashcard Flash searches twenty-seven flashcard services to find flashcard sets that match your terms. When you find a set of flashcards you may have to register on the host site to use those cards, but searching using Flashcard Flash does not require any registration.  Students can use the service to find flashcards that will help them prepare for  tests.

Download Sound Effects from Sound Clips

 SoundCli.ps is a gallery of free sounds that just learned about from Stephen Ransom. SoundCli.ps is a community-powered site on which you can upload sounds to share and download sounds shared by others. I was able to download sounds without registering on the site. To upload sounds you do need to register on the site. The video below gives a short overview of the site. Remind students that they should credit the source of the sounds that they download and use in their projects.

This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers

QR Codes Explained and Ideas for Classroom Use

Yesterday I attended a meeting at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, led by Joy Weiner, who shared some of the exciting technologies that are currently being used in the museum, including QR codes, audio feeds, exhibits on the web and video conferencing opportunities. The QR codes are linked to websites, slides and digital handouts.  The patrons can then scan the QR codes with their phones, ipad or ipods and have instant access to the resources and information about the artist, historical time period, materials or politics surrounding the exhibits they are viewing.
So What are QR codes and how can they be used in education, fellow blogger Richard Byrne in his Free technology for teachers has this information:

“One of the resources that I occasionally use to explain QR codes is a commercially licensed copy of QR Codes Explained by Common Craft (disclosure: I have an in-kind business relationship with Common Craft).  After showing the video the next resource in my list is Russel Tarr's QR Code Treasure Hunt Generator. The QR Code Treasure Hunt Generator will walk you through each step of creating QR codes for use in your classroom. The QR Code Treasure Hunt Generator also offers some examples of using QR code treasure hunts in classroom.”

The following posts have more ideas about using QR codes in schools:
Interactive Bulletin Boards
QR Codes in the Classroom
QRPedia - QR Codes for Wikipedia Entries
Assign QR Codes to Your Documents
Create a Mobile Language Lesson With QR Voice
Tom Barrett's Interesting Ways to Use QR Codes

YouTube Channels Not Named Khan Offering Math Lessons

WowMath.org is developed by high school mathematics teacher Bradley Robb. His YouTube channel has more than six hundred videos covering topics in Algebra and Calculus. You can access the videos on a mobile version of WowMath too.

Numberphile is a neat YouTube channel about fun number facts. There are currently thirty-three videos in the Numberphile collection. The videos cover things like 998,001 and its Mysterious Recurring Decimals, Pi and Bouncing Balls, and 1 and Prime Numbers. I've embedded Pi and Bouncing Balls below.

Bright Storm is an online tutoring service. On their YouTube channel Bright Storm provides hundreds of videos for Algebra I, Algebra II, Trigonometry, Precalculus, and Calculus. Bright Storm also offers some SAT and ACT prep videos.

Ten Marks is another online tutoring service that offers mathematics tutorial videos on their site as well as on their YouTube channel. Some of the lessons in their playlists include lessons on units of measurement, decimals, fractions, probability, area and perimeter, and factoring.

Math Class With Mr. V features seven playlists made by a mathematics teacher teaching lessons on basic mathematics, geometry, and algebra. In all there are more than 300 video lessons. Like most mathematics tutorials on YouTube, Math Class With Mr. V uses a whiteboard to demonstrate how to solve problems.

The Open University is one of my go-to YouTube channel for all things academic. A quick search on The Open University reveals seven playlists that include lessons in mathematics. The lessons that you will find in these playlists are more theoretical than they are "how to" lessons.

Yay Math! features an excited teacher teaching mathematics lessons to his students. The videos capture just the teacher and his whiteboard with some feedback from students. The videos cover topics in Algebra and Geometry. You can check out the Yay Math! companion website to learn more about Robert Ahdoot, the teacher featured in the videos.

Thanks to three helpful readers I learned of three more good YouTube channels offering mathematics tutorials. Then I reminded myself that The New Boston which is primarily a channel for computer science lessons also has some good playlists of geometry, algebra, and basic mathematics lessons

James Gubbins commented on Monday's list with the suggestion of adding Hurley Calculus to the list. Hurley Calculus, as the name implies, provides lessons on calculus. There are currently 73 videos in the Hurley Calculus channel.
Math Doctor Bob's YouTube channel was suggested by a reader using the Disqus ID Npisenti. Math Doctor Bob offers nearly 700 video lessons on statistics, algebra I and II, calculus, geometry, and much more. The lessons feature Doctor Bob giving the lesson in front of a whiteboard so you see him and don't just hear his lessons.

Patrick JMT was suggested by Robert Borgersen who wrote, "Patrick JMT is HUGE, and equally good, if not better in some places, than Khan." Patrick JMT doesn't cover as many topics as Khan or Math Doctor Bob, but the videos are equally solid. 

re-posted from Free Technology for Teachers by Ricard Byrne

Learn What Is In Your Food From The Museum of Science and Industry

Would You Eat That? Learn What Is In Your Food

The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago recently released a new game designed to promote awareness of the ingredients in common foods. Would You Eat That? presents a food and a list of ten ingredients that you might not expect to find in that food. To play the game you have to correctly identify which four of those ten ingredients is in your food. When I tried the game with a packet of hot cocoa and a bag of dog food, I was surprised at a couple of the ingredients. 

Applications for Education
Playing Would You Eat That? brought to mind Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. While the ingredients in the foods in Would You Eat That? aren't as disturbing as what Sinclair discovered, there are still some surprises. Playing the game could teach students about ingredients and what function they perform in creating a tasty food.

re-posted from Free Technology for Teachers by Ricard Byrne

Poll Everywhere: Students can text answers from their phones

students can text answers from their phones to questions posed on a PowerPoint and it gives feedback in the form of a chart.  This can be used with an intro to a unit asking questions to start discussions, or as a review to test retention of the lesson.  (It is free with classes under 40) 
Thanks to Linda Barrett from the Health/PE Department for the link!

Qwiki - interactive search engine

Explore 3,000,000 topics in a format perfect for the iPad: learn about what's near you, across the world - and everything in between. Labeled "a seed that will blossom into an Internet wonder" by the NY Times, Qwiki combines thousands of sources to present concise, interactive summaries of millions of people, places and things in an experience optimized for the iPad. Explore topics by searching or browse a worldwide map highlighting landmarks, monuments, cities, towns, and more.

Numberphile - Videos About Curious Number Facts

Numberphile is a neat YouTube channel about fun number facts. There are currently thirty-three videos in the Numberphile collection. The videos cover things like 998,001 and its Mysterious Recurring Decimals, Pi and Bouncing Balls, and 1 and Prime Numbers. Numberphile's videos could be a fun way for students to explore and learn some fun facts about numbers. A fun number fact could be the "hook" to get that student interested in an aspect of mathematics.

This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers.

Search a Variety of Categories on Google

A great page to start your search that breaks down many of the types of searches on Google into separate search boxes; good way to demonstrate to students the many things one can search on Google
re-posted from  Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators on Discovery Education

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM)

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments.

Stocks, Dividends, and Inflation Explained in Under Two Minutes

a great collection of short video explanations of important topics in economics. Investopedia has a great YouTube channel in which they explain in two minutes or less concepts like inflation, stocks, and dividends.

This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers

Watch, Know, Learn

WatchKnowLearn

What is WatchKnowLearn?

Imagine hundreds of thousands of great short videos, and other media, explaining every topic taught to school kids. Imagine them rated and sorted into a giant Directory, making them simple to find. WatchKnowLearn is a non-profit online community devoted to this goal.

Math Playground

Math PlaygroundHere is a site for comparing fractions- it teaches students how to do it then they can practice interactively.

Thanks to Paul Mueller for the link!

February Teacher Update From Scholastic - February Themes

President's Day

Valentine's Day

Black History Month

Book Reviews for Kids, By Kids

Scholastic has a great service called Share What You Read that students can use to create and read book reviews online. Scholastic provides a simple form on which students can write and submit their book reviews. Students do not have to create an account to use the book review service.

Scholastic's Share What You Read service is very easy for students to use and for teachers to incorporate into the classroom. The advantage of using the Scholastic service over a creating a wiki for the class is that the Scholastic service saves teachers time. The Scholastic service does not require users to create an account prior to writing a review. In fact, the only information they ever ask for is the student's first name, grade, and state.
This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers