Melanie Fessler

In my previous post about curating the web I mentioned that I rarely Google to find new-to-me sites and apps. One of the places that I do search is the Diigo community for "hot bookmarks." Hemingway was one of the hot bookmarks that I found yesterday.

Hemingway is a free tool designed to help you analyze your writing. Hemingway offers a bunch of information about the passage you've written or copied and pasted into the site. Hemingway highlights the parts of your writing that use passive voice, adverbs, and overly complex sentences. All of those factors are accounted for in generating a general readability score for your passage.

Applications for Education
Hemingway is the kind of tool that I like to have students use before exchanging papers with classmates for peer editing. Hemingway acts as a kind of "virtual peer" before the peer editing process. I would also have students use Hemingway before turning in their final drafts for a grade.

StoryToolz offers a tool similar to Hemingway that you may also want to check out.

I've featured a bunch of countdown timers over the years. This one might be the simplest one yet. As The Next Web reported yesterday, you can now simply type into Google search "set timer" followed by an amount of time and a countdown timer is displayed. An alarm beeps when time is up. You can make the timer appear full screen without advertisements by clicking a little box icon to the right of the timer. You can see this feature in action in the video below.

If you're viewing this in RSS or email, click here if you cannot see the video.

Applications for Education
Whenever I have long blocks of instructional time I like to break it up with short breaks and or timed hands-on activities. One tool that can help to prevent the students and me from stretching the "break times" is to use a countdown timer like this one.

This coming Monday is Presidents' Day in the United States. Here are some Presidents' Day related resources for students in elementary school, middle school, and high school students.

ReadWorks.org has created a collection of eighteen articles and primary source documents about Presidents' Day. The collection is organized according to grade level (K-8) and lexile level. Each article is accompanied by a set of comprehension questions and discussion questions.

The Google Earth Showcase offers a kmz file containing images and links to information about each former President of the United States. You can download the file and launch it in Google Earth or view it here using the Google Earth browser plug-in. The file shows where each president was from, offers an image of each president, provides a link to more information about each president, and shows how many states were in the Union when each president was elected. Google offers the following suggestions for using this file as a part of your Presidents' Day lesson plans.

• Explore the White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and other historical monuments in 3D and have students explain how architecture is used to honor people, concepts and establishments.
• View a 3D model of Valley Forge National Park in Google Earth.
• View a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln and map the areas where slavery ended, as well as the areas that were not initially covered by this executive order.
• Discuss the famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by German American artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze and use the ruler tool in Google Earth to measure the width of the Delaware River.

And here's a fun overview of the US Presidents courtesy of the Animaniacs. The video ends with Bill Clinton so have your students try to make up a rhyming addition to the song to include George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Welcome to a new series of short posts. These posts will be short, timely, and will come between my weekly longer in-depth posts.  Please sign up for 21centuryedtech by email or RSS to follow all engaging posts and follow me on twitter (@mjgormans). Share post with others with  a retweet . Last,  check out how I can provide PD at your school or conference at my booking information page . Until the next post… enjoy!  – Michael Gorman (21centuryedtech)

Compare and Contrast with Diffen

Diffen - What uses in the classroom might you find to compare anything? After-all comparing and contrasting is a 21stcentury skill which would come under Critical thinking. At first you will just want to play and see how it compares. I am sure you will want to put in apples and oranges, cats and dogs, and rain and snow. You may even want to practice a little political comparison. What content area items could your students compare? How about making a lesson. Check out these two additional digital tools that could come in handy from the people at Read Write Think as described in their own words.

Venn Diagram - The Venn Diagram app allows users to compare and contrast information in a visually appealing way. Sounds like a 21st Century Skill useful from fine arts to applied science

Compare & Contrast Map - This interactive graphic organizer helps students develop an outline for one of three types of comparison essays: whole-to-whole, similarities-to-differences, or point-to-point. A link in the introduction to the Comparison and Contrast Guide can give students the chance to get definitions and look at examples before they begin working.

Thank you for joining me on my new short posts and please know that my in-depth posts will  still be coming your way.  Again your retweets, follows on twitter at @mjgormans, and subscriptions (which are free) are appreciated !  - Mike (mjgormans@gmail.com)

On February 14th, we will all celebrate Valentine's Day.  There will be parties, beautiful cards, and lots of sweet treats.

We can also celebrate throughout the week by bringing wonderful online resources, books, and other fun things to our young people in the library, classroom and at home.

I have created the Valentine's Day Symbaloo webmix above and filled it with something for everyone.

A few of these include.....
PBS Kids Happy Valentine's Day....
with so many awesome activities.
Junie B's Valentime Mix-Up from Random House Kids
There are three books for Valentine's Day within our MackinVIA.  I put these into the new Group called "Valentine's Day" of course.  
 We have two wonderful new eBooks from Capstone.....Katie Woo, No Valentine's for Katie and....
Valentine's Day. 
We also have Love, Lola by Diane deGroat from StarWalk KidsMedia in our MackinVIA.

Our students can read these eBooks online, the iPads, and they are great to use with your entire class too.
Our youngest learners have a favorite place to go online.....PebbleGO, four different databases from Capstone.

Within PebbleGo Social Studies, that you can get to underneath "Databases" within MackinVIA, you will find the topic "Holidays."  Included within several holidays, you will find "Valentine's Day."
They will love learning all about Valentine's Day through articles on different topics, videos, and even words being spoken and defined.
We also love using the "Print Activity" within each article in all of the PebbleGO databases.  This one above is the one just for Valentine's Day....a great addition to learning centers, literacy time, and just to have available for drawing and writing when exploring PebbleGO.
One more place to check out within MackinVIA is under "Audio Books" and Tales2Go.  In Tales2Go, our school community have access to over 3,000 audio books....It is like a NetFlix for audio books where anyone can listen to these books, anytime.

You will find Monster Valentine, which they will love!
I always love sharing Symbaloo's and other resources like this for special occasions with our families too.  I share on Facebook, Twitter, emails and newsletters that go home.  By going to the eBooks, databases, websites, and other resources that I mentioned, it can be fun for families.

They can even find places to practice keyboarding and other skills right at home too.

I hope you have a special Valentine's Day week.  Please share other ideas and resources you have too....I can add them to the Symbaloo and share with everyone.

International educator Scot Hoffman is a big believer in the power of curiosity to drive learning. After nearly two decades of teaching around the globe, he also realizes that school isn't always so hospitable to inquiring minds. (As Einstein said, "It's a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.") That's why Hoffman has developed The Curiosity Project, a self-directed learning experience that engages students, parents, and teachers as collaborators in inquiry.

read more

Google Docs Presentation Slides is tool well-suited for use to fuel everyday student driven research  because of the availability of efficient integrated research and writing tools right on the page. 

Teachers can use the tool to design student driven learning experiences that require students to construct knowledge as they create, an idea supported by the Common Core State Standards. (CCSS)

Webinar Resources

Using Google Presentation Slides to Construct Knowledge 
2/4 @ 4:00 PM CST
A free webinar, sponsored by Infinitec

I can’t tell you how many books, CDs (remember when we used those to listen to music?), and DVDs I’ve lent out and never seen again. Who Has What? 2 is an iPad app that could help me keep track of those things from now on. Who Has What? 2 allows me to create an inventory of the things that I lend by taking pictures of them or scanning their barcodes (the barcode function didn’t work as well as I hoped when I tested it). Once an item is in my inventory when I lend it out I just select it on my iPad, enter the name and or email address of the person I’m lending it to, and set a due date for that item. From the iPad I can send due date reminders to the people that I’ve lent my items to.

Who Has What? 2 doesn’t appear to have an efficient way to upload a large inventory list so it’s not a replacement for a school library catalog system. That said, Who Has What? 2 could be a great app to use for keeping track of items that you lend from your classroom.

Who Has What? 2 is currently priced at $0.99

Padlet (formerly known as Wall Wisher) is a tool that has been used by teachers in a variety of ways for years now. I've often used as a collaborative know-want-learn chart and as an exit ticket tool. Padlet works on interactive whiteboards, on iPads and Android tablets, and in the web browser on your laptop. Recently, Padlet announced support for three more languages which brings their total supported languages count to fourteen.

In the guide embedded below I provide step-by-step directions for using Padlet in your classroom. The guide also includes ideas and directions for using Socrative and TodaysMeet. You can download the guide here and view it as embedded below.

Google Makes it Easier to Search for Creative Commons Images
The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

A picture is worth a thousand words and I had a good laugh at the picture below:

If we do not design learning experiences for our students that help them get into that “flow” state, don’t expect technology to keep them engaged or from being distracted.

It is all about how we think, engage, and interact with our students, not about “stuff”.  The “stuff” gives us opportunities to do things that we couldn’t do before, but if we teach the same way we always have, not much will change.

 

Six months ago I shared with you the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection of nearly 400 free art history books. Now the Getty Museum has put more than 250 art books online for anyone to read online and or download. You can find all of these books in the Getty Publications Virtual Library. You can search through the collection by author, keyword, or title. Alternatively, you can simply browse the collections. All of the free books are also available on Google Books. In fact, I've used Google Books to embed one of the books below.


Applications for Education 
The Getty Publications Virtual Library could be a great resource for art teachers and their students. Students who are researching artists and or art movements could consult the collection to find reference materials.

H/T to Open Culture. 

One of the benefits of Instagram that I think gets overlooked by students and teachers is that by Instagramming you're building a library of pictures that you own and can re-use whenever and wherever you want. I find that since I installed Instagram on my phone in 2012 I've taken pictures far more often than I ever did before installing it. These pictures often end up in blog posts and presentations.

Applications for Education
Instagram supports hashtags just like Twitter does. If you want to build a library of pictures with your students ask them to use a hashtag that you all agree to use to share pictures that can be re-used during the course of the semester or year. By doing this you and your students will build a gallery of b-roll pictures and videos. And if Instagram doesn't appeal to you, consider creating some of the other methods I've shared for creating a shared media gallery.

Nature Sound Map provides a wonderful way to explore the soundscape of the natural world. On the Nature Sound Map you will find placemarks containing recordings of nature. The recordings have been added to the project by professional sound recordists. Some of the recordings you will find feature the sounds of just one animal, the sounds of a jungle, sounds of a marsh, sounds of a storm, or sounds of oceans and rivers.

Applications for Education
In science courses the sound map offers a nice way for students to hear the sounds of animals that they're learning about in different regions of the world. In some cases the sound recordings combined with Street View imagery could give students a more complete picture of what it is like to be at ground level in a place.

H/T to Google Maps Mania. 

I've tried a bunch of online timers in the past. Until now Online-Stopwatch.com was my favorite. Yesterday, Peter Vogel introduced me to an online timer that will be my go-to timer from here on. The Teachit Timer is a free online timer that allows you display a countdown timer and a count-up timer on the same screen. The Teachit Timer also allows you to choose an alarm sound.

Applications for Education
Whenever I have long blocks of instructional time I like to break it up with short breaks and or timed hands-on activities. One tool that can help to prevent the students and me from stretching the "break times" is to use a countdown timer like Teachit Timer.

Through Dan Russell's excellent Search ReSearch blog I learned that Google has recently added a potentially helpful new aspect to the search results page. Now when you view your search results page you will see the titles of some sites in gray text next to the URL. When you see that gray text click the little drop-down menu to see a brief summary about the owner of the site. For example, in the screenshot below you will see that when I clicked on the gray link next to Washington Post it opened a bit of information about the Washington Post.

It’s amazing how pen and paper, two inventions dating back to thousands of years ago, have been almost irreplaceable. Until now. Inheriting the best inking feature from the popular Notes Plus app, now with its own automatic palm and wrist rejection, INKredible will make writing on an iPad feel as good as, or even greater than, pen on paper. You have to try it to believe it. It’s incredible!

SIMPLE

INKredible has only ONE single mission: to create an outstanding writing experience on an iPad. It is meant to be distraction-free. In fact most of the time, you will not see any UI controls or buttons, just a blank sheet of paper to write on.

BEAUTIFUL

With more than 3 years of R&D in vector-graphics inking technology, we are confident INKredible – with a sophisticated manipulation of Bezier curves – will make your handwriting look more beautiful than on paper.

Even more specially, it will look good in any resolution, for printing or displaying purposes. Just zoom in and you will see why INKredible is unique among other handwriting apps.

… and, well, PERFECT!

OK, the INKredible writing experience on an iPad might not be perfect, but it is as close to perfection as you can find.

It is FREE. Try it today and see for yourself.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/inkredible/id712303681?mt=8

Related posts:

1. Hauki Deck iPad App for Presentations: Very Good App & FREE
2. Free Printable Paper
3. Paper 53 App: Making Notebooks Beautiful Again

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

See on Scoop.it – Technology in the Classroom , 1:1 Laptops & iPads and MORE

In addition to learning our content and curriculum standards, today’s students also need to be able to do the following effectively: collaborate with one another, synthesize ideas, create content, …

See on jcollierblog.com

Related posts:

1. Your students can make Animated movies and it is easy
2. Dare to Create Culture | Jordan Collier
3. Made To Stick: A Book Every Educator Must Read | Jordan Collier

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I love a good museum. There’s almost nothing as fun as spending time in a really sweet museum. Right?

I earlier posted some of my online museum favorites. Today? Back to the basics with one of my go-to brick and mortar museums and a new favorite.

My go-to?

The Kansas State Historical Society. It’s a great place to visit and it has some awesome online resources as well. I especially like the very cool (and free) Read Kansas cards available online. The Traveling Trunks are also pretty incredible. And for you non-Kansans, these are still useful to you – many of the cards and other resources can be easily adapted to teach US history, geography, and economics.

My new favorite?

The freshly renovated Kansas Capitol Building. After years of work and millions of dollars, the 141 year old building is as shiny as a new penny. It even smells new.

Fresh copper on the dome and throughout the building. Cleaned-up artwork. Refurbished Senate and House chambers. New Visitor Center. New historical displays. The very cool John Brown mural by John Stewart Curry. Ad Astra statue.

Worth every nickel. And last week, several of us got a personal tour of the new digs from Mary Madden,  the KSHS Museum and Education Division Director. Totally. Freaking. Awesome.

Other Capital and KSHS resources:

• Capitol home page
• Online Capitol tour
• Planning a visit
• Capital history
• Guide to the Capitol (PDF)
• Scavenger Hunt (PDF)
• Scavenger Hunt answers (PDF)
• Amelia Earhart Game – Test your knowledge of Amelia Earhart, a famous Kansan.
• Carry A. Nation Game – See how much you know about this famous Kansas reformer.
• Junior Detective Series Game – Track the clues and see if you can solve the mystery.
• Movie Quest – “Real” history is sometimes stretched on television and in the movies. Test your knowledge and see if Hollywood got it right.
• Wheat Game – Every decision you make affects how successful you will be. It’s a gamble farmers take every year. Test your decisions.
• Kansas Symbols Game – How well do you know the Kansas state symbols?

Filed under: archeology, art, artifacts, cool, field trips, museum, primary sources

Thanks to a Tweet from Matt Cutts, the head of the webspam team at Google, I learned that the tool bar in Google Images now includes "usage rights." Now instead of having to open the advanced search menu you can just click the "search tools" menu and select "usage rights" without leaving the search results page. Screenshots of the two steps are included below.

Step 1:

click image for full size

Step 2:

click image for full size

This morning through Google Maps Mania I found a neat little site called MapFight. MapFight lets you select two U.S. states or two countries to quickly see which one is bigger and by how much. The select states or countries are put into overlays to help you see the size difference. MapFight reminded me of a similar, but more robust tool called OverlapMaps.

Overlap Maps is a free service that can be used to quickly compare the size of countries, states, provinces, and some bodies of water. To create a visual comparison of two countries select one country from the "overlap this" menu and select one country from the "onto this" menu. The comparisons you make are displayed on a map. You can make comparisons from different categories.

Applications for Education
MapFight and Overlap Maps could be a good littles tool to help students can perspective of the relative size of places that they study in their geography lessons.

Read Write Think offers a bunch of great web, iOS, and Android applications for students. One of those that I recently learned about from David Kapuler is Read Write Think's Timeline creator. RWT Timline is available as a web app (Flash required), as an Android app, and as an iPad app. All three versions make it easy for students to create timelines for any series of events.

To create a timeline with RWT Timeline students first tap or click along a blank line to add an event. Events can include dates in any format. Each event has room for a brief description and an image. Longer descriptions can be written but they won't appear on the timeline, they'll only appear in the printed notes about the timeline. Students can drag and drop events on their timelines to create appropriate spacing between each event.

Applications for Education
The Android and iPad versions of RWT Timeline support multiple user profiles making it a great choice for classrooms that have more students than tablets. The web version of RWT Timeline also supports multiple users.

The aspect of RWT Timeline that I appreciate the most is the flexibility of date formats. In fact, if you look at the following screenshot of my sample timeline you'll see that I didn't use specific dates at all. The use of RWT Timeline doesn't have to be limited to history courses. Students could use RWT Timeline to create timelines of the plot of a story they've read. Or they could use it to plan the plot line of a story they're planning to write.