10 Sites to Bring New Media into Your Classroom Quickly

From NEA Today Winter 2013

Wordle   Visual Representation of Ideas   Wordle.net
Prezi     Fun slide transitions with Powerpoints       Prezi.com
Teacher Tube  classroom approved videos     Teacher Tube.com
Quora  post questions and other members debate answers  Quora.com
Poll Daddy quick survey and polling tool  Polldaddy.com
Think Link   turn a picture into a visually appealing cluster of links.  Tag people in photo and link to article about them, or cover an infrographic in links for further informer. Post of class webpage. ThinkLink.com
Dipity  Create visually appealing interactive timelines. Each even can have an image, and a link to more information. Users can scroll through the timeline and click on the events that interest them. Dipity.com
Skitch  Language teachers might this easy photo editing project useful. Load a photo and have the student label everything in it with correct word. Evernote.com Skitch
Wordpress  a web page site for students and teachers Wordpress.org

Good Reads, Shelfari, LibraryThing - Social Network Sites About Books

Social Network Book Sites are great place to create your own libraries of books you have read, you plan to read and much more.  Check them out, explore similarities and differences, create your own library, connect with others, and check out other features. 

Good Reads   Great place to create book shelves, book reviews, rate books and more - such as creating a collection of quotes from your favorite authors. Use a key word search for favorite quotes. Publish some of your own writing. 

Read About a Principal Using Good Reads
 

Compare Good Reads, Shelfari, and Librarything

How to Add a Good Read Gadget to Your Blog

How to Add a Shelfari WIdget to Your Blog

How to Add Shelfari Widget to Google Site  (Jing Video)

English Teacher Using Good Reads in Her Class

A Librarian Provides Her Take on Good Reads Uses With Students

Social Medias Best Kept Secret Good Reads

Six Ways to Use Good Reads in the Classroom

Good Reads in the Classroom

What about free music?   See 

1. Musicloops.com I generally go here first. Well organized. Listen to the quality of the Pachelbel Canon: Musicloops  Pachelbel Canon /
2. Music Bakery.com Terrific collection – very wide range
3. Premiumbeat.com Equally good
4. Beatsuite.com Marvellous collection – all styles
5. Soundrangers.com – more oriented to sound effects but also great music.
6. A small free source Free-loops.com (There are many free small samples like this all over the net.)

Free Images - Creative Commons

It is not legal and copyright laws apply to images used from the internet.   For free - creative commons images - no permissions, no legal issues see

Searching Images Google - Using only Common Acceptable Images

Every Stock Photo Search - Free Photos

Photopin.com

Morgue File.com Photos

Pics4Learning.Com

Public Domain Images - Free

Clippix Free Stock Photos (USF)

Stockxchnge

Dreamstime Free Photos

Microsoft Office Images   Need to avoid the clip art and animated images for Professional Blog Site.

Kozzi.com

Free Range Stock

RBG Stock Photos Free

Free Images Royalty Free Stock

Even more....

 
9 Places to Find Creative Commons Photos

 

Teaching Ideas : Using Images

Coolcatteacher Blog  Teach This Lesson Plans

Gadgets and Widgets for Blogs

RECOMMENDED GADGETS FOR YOUR BLOG

• TEXT   I recommend you make a text gadget with a photo of you, basic information. 
• BLOG LIST  --   display you favorite list of blogs about children’s literature (starting point, use the recommended children’s lit blogger I provided.
• LINK LIST --- create alist of best websites for supporting children’s literature.
• LABELS    By using labels, you create an index of the topics for your posts.
• SEARCH BOX  --  this would allow viewers to search your site for specific words in posts.
• SLIDE SHOW   Use some special photos of you teaching, your reading, special books – use covers for photos
• Remember to add gadget you go to template select the area of the page, choose add gadget.      Notice on the left margin it list basics   THERE ARE 27.    Go to MORE GADGETS you will see there are 1174!   Check them out.     SOME TO CHECK ARE BELOW;   PS  I would avoid gadgets like funny quotes, fish swimming on the page, - less formal for a teacher site.
• Additional gadgets include
• Amazon MP3 Clips
• Flickr photo strEam – Flickr is one of my favorite websites to use with photos
• PICASA PHOTO STREAM  -  My first favorite for photos.
• PDF Man --   just saw this one, have not tried it – but think it should be a Great One.   You could add your PDF files – Author Study and Annotated Bib to your Blog Site!    (I only made it through 300, you can check even more.)

RECOMMENDED WIDGETS FOR YOUR BLOG 

Good Reads   How to Add Goodreads Widget to Your Blog
Shelfari  How to add Shelfari Widget to Your Blog

Where to get Widgets

1. WidgetBox.com – The definite go-to place to find and build your own widgets.
2. SpringWidgets.com – Another great source for widgets from many of your favorite sites on the web. User reviews and comments help you find the perfect widget for your blog.
3. Widgipedia.com – Like the two sites above, wigipedia is a huge and growing collections of widgets of all types and sizes.

Glogster

Glogster Planning Sheet (Google doc)

Glogster is a great place to published items on the web.   It is a very creative tool for teachers and students.

See some resources

Glogster in the Classroom

A Teacher Blog - Using Glogster

Tutorial for Glogster, Voicethread and Prezi

A Teacher's Perspective on Using Glogster

Glogster Directions (Google Doc)

Wordle, Tagxedo, Tagul and other Word Clouds

Many of us know about Wordle - a great place to create Word Clouds that can be used in a variety of ways.  See the following sites in working with Wordle.

 Wordle - Click to See Web 2.0 Wordle

Tips World Cloud - Wordle

Top Ten Sites Like Wordle

45 Ways to Use Wordle In Class

4 Wordle Alternatives - Explained and Compared

Using Tagxedo in the Classroom (Wiki)

Create a Tagul World Cloud for your Blog from S. Hendy

Blogger How to # 6: Adjusting Design and Look

Changing the Appearance of Your Blog

Go to Design, Templates, Customize to change features of your blog.  You can change each element - background colors, fonts for each part of the blog and much more.  Check it out.  

Glogster Book Trailer

Glogster - Web 2.0

Source: karenogen.edu.glogster.com via Sue on Pinterest

Web 2.0 Tools Posted on Glogster

See choices of Web 2.0 Tools that link directly to the Tool Site. Displayed using Glogster!

Super Book For Educators Web 2.0 applications

 This is a must see for innovation ideas and Web 2.0 tools!  



Super book of Web Tool For Educators.

How to Change Navigation on Google Site

 Check out this step by step guide for changing navigation on your site. 

How to Change Navigation on Your Google Site

The Top Emerging Technologies, Trends and Challenges in Teaching and Learning

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The Top Emerging Technologies, Trends, and Challenges that will have a major impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in pre-college education over the next five years  K-12 Edition.  2012   For full report see Horizon Report K-12 (2012_

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

Cloud Computing

Collaborative Environments

Mobiles and Apps

Tablet Computing

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

Digital Identity

Game-Based Learning

Learning Analytics

Personal Learning Environments

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

Augmented Reality

Natural User Interfaces

Semantic Applications

Tools for Assessing 21st Century Learning Skills

Google Docs for Teachers 2012 by richardbyrne

WEBSITE DESIGN MOST COMMON MISTAKES

COMMON MISTAKES WITH WEB DESIGN

1.     Too much white space.

2.     The site mixes text colors on the page.

3.     The site mixes text sizes on the page or has different fonts.

4.     The text is centered after inserting a headline.   Needs to be justified.

5.      The site does not use black text.

6.     Underlined text is not a link.   (Book titles need to be italicized.)

7.     Contact information is not available.

8.      There is no site map or search engine.

9.      Headings are capitalized.

10.   Paragraphs have too much text.

11.   The site has three or more fonts styles on a page

12.   We don’t use heading to break up text.

13.   We don’t use bullets to highlight organize information.

14.   We don’t spellcheck content of the pages.

15.   The home page does not inform visitors of the content.

16.   The site is difficult to read because the text is too large and pages text is not consistent from page to page.

17.  There is too much or too little text on a page.  

18.  Links are not named – instead readers see http://  addresses.

19.  Photos or graphics are large files and take a long time to open. Or photos are distorted because they have be resized improperly.

20.   Sites include animated gifs. 

21.   The sites navigation is inconsistent or unclear.

22.   The content is not organized.

23.   Wrong font choices :  Best choices:  Arial, Helvetica, Verdana [Helvetica comes standard with Apple, and Arial for Microsoft] Why?  Because they are free, mostly come standard, are very legible at small sizes and are visually similar in appearance, spacing etc. So, you can trust your layout will look relatively similar cross platform and browser.

Recommendation highlights  from Fast Pivot.com and Webpages That Suck.com

FONTS FOR WEBPAGES

It's not a good idea to get creative with fonts on your Web pages. If you stick to the three specs above, or something quite similar, your pages will look equally good for all your users, regardless of the operating system they use.

For the body text on the Web page (e.g. photo captions, navigation links, the main text), choose a classification. The standard choice is sans-serif because it is the easiest to read on a computer screen (while serif is easiest to read in printed material).

ARIAL AND VERDANA

1. Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, Arial
   Helvetica was created by Swiss designers 50 years ago, Helvetica is one of the most widely used sans-serif typefaces. Many well-known companies like American Airlines, Lufthansa, Toyota chose this font in their branding. There were so many variations of Helvetica that in 1983 Linotype released Helvetica Neue by redrawing the entire Helvetica family in a more structurally organized fashion. Many consider Arial, designed almost 30 years after Helvetica, to be a cheap imitation of Helvetica. But it turns out that Arial has more similarities with Univers than Helvetica.
   
   
2. Verdana was designed specifically for Microsoft in 1996 with a purpose of being readable at small sizes on a screen. The absence of serifs, wide proportions and loose letter-spacing make this font extremely legible for web sites.
   

1.    If you have no idea about fonts, how they translate to your web page, or how they will affect your visitors, then you should definitely stick with a san serif font. The reason for this is that these fonts are the most legible and provide the best readability for visitors in a low resolution atmosphere. Don’t take risks with your fonts, go generic and use a sans serif font. Your visitors will thank you for it and your sales will not suffer from it.

2.    Simple is Safe    Again, don’t let yourself get carried away with your fonts and designs. Instead, keep the thought in mind that simple is safe. If you want to be bold and brazen in your website design then don’t take that route with your fonts. Keep it simple, basic, and easy to read, and you will benefit significantly more than if you try to mix it up.

ADDING AND USING IMAGES ON SITES

Explanation of Google Search for Images to use that are not copyright protected.
Google Search for Creative Commons Images (text) 


You Tube Tutorial Google Search for Images Creative Commons

Warning:    Logos from Colleges and Universities are copyright protected.   You may not use the FGCU logo on sites. 



Richard Byrne Free Tech for Teachers:Everystock photos 9 Place to Fine Creative Commons Images http://photopin.com/

Royalty Free Images for Teachers http://creatinglifelonglearners.com/?p=69 http://www.morguefile.com/archive Search terms - children reading, books, class, technology, reading, writing, http://www.edupic.net/lang_pics.htm http://www.pics4learning.com/ http://etc.usf.edu/clippix/ http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic98.htm

Preparing Today's Kids For Tomorrow Jim Burke

MRA 2011 Keynote Preparing Today's Kids for Tomorrow's World from Jim Burke

Google Site Webinar

Google Site Webinar Iowa Education Agency -- (One Hour)

What Should Tomorrow's Classroom Look Like?

Excerpt from Digitally Speaking.pbworks.com (two middle school teachers)

What will our world look like in 2020?

• more diversified population
• higher tech and more evenly distributed
• intellectual capacity more distributed
• continuing issues with war, famine and environmental issues
• Local economy will be more urban, strong, high tech, more dense and cosmopolitan.
• greater competition from around the world
• ease of travel between countries, more mobile, “blurred country borders”
• live longer, more healthy, work longer
• speaking and communicating in a language other than English
• economy more service industry related
• more well-rounded culture
• Technology is key to society.  Current training is not sufficient.
• We could lose our economic edge.

What will a world-class, globally-competitive graduate need to know and be able to do?

• continue skill acquisition (lifelong)
• ability to communicate, strong interpersonal communications skills, reach out to diverse populations
• critical thinking skills, ability to validate information
• higher level thinkers, ability to work as a team
• understand what the “global economy” is and how it is going to impact students
• ability to bring disparate subjects together to understand the system (knowledge integration)
• sound basic liberal arts education (foundation)
• collaborate in a multi-cultural environment; global teaming
• higher proficiency in a specialized area, ability to adapt
• multi-cultural fluency (language, culture, history and government)
• having the capacity to think about other cultures and how they live

 (Wake Education Partnership, "2008 Education Forum Results." E-mail to 'author'.28 Feb 2008.)

Translating Tomorrow into Today’s Classroom:

Easily the greatest struggle that educators face in today's day and age is properly preparing students for a future that is poorly defined yet rapidly changing and increasingly borderless.  While most educators, parents and business leaders know that something must change, we often struggle to imagine what those changes might look like. 

Thankfully, leading thinkers on teaching and learning are beginning to tackle this question in a very structured and systematic way.  In a 2008 post on his blog, (http://tinyurl.com/2pus42) Will Richardson---widely recognized as one of America's most progressive educational thinkers---worked to define the kinds of skills that would be necessary for students to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world.  He wrote:

Our kids’ futures will require them to be:

• Networked–They’ll need an “outboard brain.”
• More collaborative–They are going to need to work closely with people to co-create information.
• More globally aware–Those collaborators may be anywhere in the world.
• Less dependent on paper–Right now, we are still paper training our kids.
• More active–In just about every sense of the word. Physically. Socially. Politically.
• Fluent in creating and consuming hypertext–Basic reading and writing skills will not suffice.
• More connected–To their communities, to their environments, to the world.
• Editors of information–Something we should have been teaching them all along but is even more important now.

See How Teachers Are Using Blogs and Check out the Challenge of Edublog

Edublogs - class blog sites

Edmodo -- Tutorials and How Teachers Use Them

Edmodo Tutorial

15 Things Teachers Can Do With Edmodo

Five Simple Ways to Use Edmodo

Want to Try Out a Wiki with Student? Want to Create a Wiki that Provides Tutorials for Others?

A great place to start to understand and use Wiki's. 
Teacher Training Video PB Wiki

Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers

Top Sites for All Web 2.0 Apps

Go2web20.net

Media Specialist Guide to Web 2.0 

 Cool Tools for Schools Wiki Spaces

Back to School with Web 2.0

EducationWebCloudBlogspot

Educators Technology.com Teacher Tools

Web 2.0 Mindmaps

 A Must See   integrates mindmapping with websites, videos, journals, quizzes on topics and more! 

Instagrok