Melanie Fessler

The digital landscape that you and your kids have to navigate has exploded. Mobile technology, apps, instant access, digital content. The stuff is everywhere. And all of the stuff is changing how we do school.

But sometimes it feels like there is just too much. Sometimes it’s easier to just throw up our hands and try to ignore everything out there. How do we sort through all of it? We need unbiased and relevant information that can help us find the best of what we’re looking for.

And now there’s help. Enter Graphite, a free tool designed just for educators.

Graphite is a service from nonprofit Common Sense Media designed to help preK-12 educators discover, use, and share the best apps, games, websites, and digital content for their students by providing unbiased, rigorous ratings and practical insights from our active community of teachers.

You can trust Common Sense Media. It is the largest, independent nonprofit organization committed to helping kids, teachers, and families manage media and technology in life and learning. Their technology education curriculum is being used in more than 55,000 schools across the U.S.

Graphite was built by teachers for teachers. Their team of professional educators –- early childhood development experts, doctorates in education, and teachers with hands-on classroom experience –- rates each website, game, and app on Graphite based on our detailed rubric. Every product on Graphite is rigorously reviewed to dig deeper into what and how your students will learn with it.

Graphite makes it easy for teachers to find the best digital learning tools by presenting them with independent ratings and reviews based on rigorous rubric that evaluates learning potential. The site couples in-depth analysis of ed-tech products with insights from teachers on how best to use them in a classroom. Reading a review on the site is like listening to advice from a valued mentor with deep experience leveraging technology in the classroom.

You start with a ton of apps, software, and websites. Use the filters located at the top to narrow down what you see.

Once you get a decent list, clicking on the individual items brings up a detailed review of that item. Each review is tagged with a wide range of keywords allowing you to expand your search. You get screenshots, related items, teacher field notes, and detailed suggestions for classroom use.

You can also do a keyword search that brings up tons of results. Don’t like the filter / keyword search options? Take advantage of the Pinterest-like action in Graphite. Logged-in users create their own boards of their favorites – you get access to these boards. And as a logged-in user yourself, you can create your own fav boards, making it easy to find your stuff.

Need more reason to use Graphite? Check out their video.

Filed under: 21st century skills, apps, digital literacy, droid, handhelds, ipad, lesson plans, technology integration, Web 2.0, web sites

As we’ve worked with veterans and their family members on projects like Map The Fallen and VetNet, we’ve heard many amazing stories and seen how helpful storytelling can be. So we thought it might be useful to make a very simple storytelling tool. One hallway conversation led to a joint project between the Google Creative Lab and Google Earth Outreach, and today, in honor of Veterans Day, we’re excited to share Tour Builder—a simple tool for recording and sharing stories on a map.

Though originally inspired by veterans, we quickly realized that Tour Builder has the potential be a simple, useful tool for any aspiring storyteller. You could be a high school history teacher explaining the geography of the Revolutionary War, a musician updating your fans from the road, or a grandmother who wants to share her family’s story of service in WWII.
Creating a tour is easy: give it a name, add an introduction photo and a quick description. Then search the map for where your story begins and drop a placemark. Describe each place and embed photos & videos as you guide people through your story. You can dive into Street View or pick the perfect 3D view to show off your adventure.

For inspiration, just download Google Earth and explore our Gallery, which showcases some incredible journeys that have already been created using Tour Builder:

• Elizabeth O’Herrin’s story of service in the Air National Guard from Wisconsin to Afghanistan and back.
• The veterans of Team Rubicon who deploy emergency response teams following natural disasters like the Haiti earthquake
• Dr. Jane Goodall's multi-generational saga of the chimpanzee “G Family” and how her Institute is protecting endangered chimpanzees with high-tech tools
• BRAC’s efforts spreading anti-poverty solutions in 11 countries through the 100,000+ people they employ worldwide.

We invite you to try Tour Builder, and share your memories and stories with the people you love. Let us know what you think—we’d love to hear your ideas and feedback at tourbuilder-team@google.com for how Tour Builder could be a better storytelling tool and we’d love to see your tours.

Happy Veterans Day and thank you to all of the service members and military families, past and present, whose stories of service, patriotism, survival and achievement inspire us all.

Posted by Sean Askay, Google Earth Outreach, and Carrie Laureno, Google Creative Lab & Google Veterans Network

Nov. 12th @4:00 PM CST

As an instructional technology facilitator my goal is to weave together digital tools to design engaging, interactive learning experiences that support all learners and encourage higher order thinking. Of course, in order to be useful for teachers, these learning experiences need to be aligned to standards, initiatives and hot edtech topics.


ThingLink is one of the most frequently used tools in my digital toolkit because it is flexible, user friendly, and it can be used to help me meet my goals. I believe ThingLink allows me to create whatever I can possibly imagine! 

What is ThingLink?

A Few Ways to Use ThingLink

Resources for Using ThingLink 

This blog is filled with examples and ideas for using ThingLink for teaching and learning. In addition to a few dedicated posts you will find that ThingLink is woven into many different ideas and examples I have shared. Beyond that, please visit my ThingLink Toolkit. The toolkit is a comprehensive collection of resources to help teachers and students successfully use ThingLink for teaching and learning. There you will find many examples and quite a few tutorials to get you started.

If you are a Simple K12 member, I invite you to attend the webinar I am hosting on Tuesday, November 12th for 30 minutes of learning, live and worldwide! 

SAMR: Design a Flexible Toolkit

Create Interactive Multimedia Graphics for Teaching & Learning 

November 12th

3:00-3:30 PM CST

Sponsored by SimpleK12

Sign Up

Registration is open to members

                   
By opening up the Padlet from the first grade Symbaloo, the students were able to get to the Padlet easily and add their very own message.

Messages that hold thanks and honesty from a few of our youngest learners at Van Meter.

Thank you Veterans.  For today is your day!

A week ago on Friday, November 1, I started a new job as the grade 4-5 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) teacher at Independence Elementary in Yukon, Oklahoma. (@iesSTEM) I was hired to replace a long term sub who started the school year when the previous STEM teacher (a friend of mine I worked with the past two years) had to resign for medical reasons. While I certainly have a lot of different thoughts and feelings about this “new season” of life and the changes/transitions it brings, there are at least fifteen different reasons I’m thrilled to be back in the classroom as a full-time elementary teacher in Yukon Public Schools.

1. Yukon Has Great Teachers

The people we work with on a daily basis can have a tremendous, cumulative effect on our lives. When you work with great people who love what they do and have fun at the same time, time flies. The past two years, I’ve been blessed to be able to work with many of the teachers, librarians, principals, and administrative staff members in Yukon Public Schools, and it has been an extremely energizing experience. The chance to continue working with fantastic educators in Yukon on a full-time basis is the number one reason I’m thrilled to return full-time to the classroom. Over the past years I’ve cultivated some wonderful relationships with many different people in Yukon, and I’m excited to continue developing them!

2. Hands-On Learning is Best

This is a slide I’ve been using in my conference keynotes, breakout sessions and workshops for awhile now. It’s a phrase straight from John Dewey: We remember what we DO.

As an elementary STEM teacher, I have the great fortune every day to provide HANDS-ON learning opportunities for students. Whether we’re building towers with spaghetti pasta, marshmallows and masking tape (as we did this week) or programming our own games on iPads (as we will do next week) my goal is to provide students as much time as possible each class period to create, make and “DO” their learning rather than passively watch someone else talk and present.

3. Curricular Autonomy

As an elementary STEM teacher I do not have a prescribed curriculum to follow. I am guided by the Common Core State Standards (now referred to in our state as “Oklahoma Academic Standards“) but I do not have a defined curriculum, scope and sequence, or (heaven forbid) a pacing guide. This level of curricular autonomy in a public school in 2013 is, in my experience, extremely rare as well as priceless. I’ve started gathering STEM curricular resources and links for my students on a Google Site (stem.wesfryer.com). I started reading Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager‘s excellent book, “Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom” several weeks ago and have been brainstorming project ideas ever since this job became a possibility for me in October. It’s extremely exciting to have this opportunity to design and share a project-based STEM curriculum with my students.

If you haven’t seen Sylvia and Gary’s outstanding keynote for the 2013 K-12 Online Conference in the “Building Learning” strand, “Making the Case for Making in Schools,” take 33 minutes and watch it. The learning environment and learning opportunities they espouse are exactly what I want for my STEM students in Yukon.

4. iPad Cart

I am extremely thankful and fortunate to have a cart of iPads in my STEM classroom to use with students.

Following the instructional philosophy of “Mapping Media to the Common Core,” we are using / are going to use our iPads in STEM class to document and share our learning with others. I’ve created 9 new interactive websites on KidBlog.org, to join the two KidBlog sites created by IES teachers I worked with the past two years on classroom blogging, so each student has a chance to post and share their STEM work online. (These are linked under their grade headings at the top of stem.wesfyrer.com). Out of the almost 300 students I teach this semester in STEM, only five have (with their parents) opted out of publishing / sharing their photos and work online. I’m hopeful some of the other classroom teachers at our school will become both aware and interested in “interactive writing” as a result of our digital publishing in STEM class. It will be both interesting (and hopefully) exciting to see how this develops over the course of the school year.

I’ve started an “iPad Apps” page on my STEM curriculum site, and will be posting regularly here (I’m sure) about the different apps we’re using in class and what we’re learning together. This week was my first opportunity to use NearPod (free) with students. Next week will be my first opportunity to teach coding and game design on the iPad using HopScotch (free).

5. STEM is Important

Lots of people (including our governor, Mary Fallin, who held a state educational STEM summit on my birthday this past summer) are talking about the importance of STEM in our schools. While politicians like to stand up and pontificate about the importance of STEM, I’m much more interested in the PRACTICAL ways we can not only inspire but also equip students to pursue STEM studies TODAY. That’s one reason I’ve been involved in leading “Scratch Camps” in Oklahoma the past few years.

I feel very passionate about not only hands-on, project-based learning, but also STEM skills like coding, problem solving, group collaboration, and game design. I love the Code.org video, “What Most Schools Don’t Teach,” and feature it on the homepage of my STEM curriculum site. This video explains many of the reasons I’m fired up to be a STEM teacher and work with students on STEM projects every day.

6. Yukon’s Priority Emphasis on STEM

Yukon Public Schools’ emphasis on STEM is VERY unique in our state. At both our grade 4-5 elementary schools, ALL students go to STEM class as a “special” class just like PE, art and music. There are a lot of people responsible for this, but one of the primary ones is Dr. Fred Rhodes. Dr. Rhodes is now the superintendent of Putnam City Schools, near Yukon, but previously was the Assistant Superintendent for Elementary in Yukon and championed the STEM program when the district restructured its schools a couple years ago. I am VERY thankful to all the staff, board members, and parents in Yukon who have and continue to support STEM with support for full-time, certified STEM teachers. Hopefully we will see STEM programs in more Oklahoma schools in the months and years ahead.

7. Scratch and Coding

As I’ve already mentioned a few times in this post, I am very excited to teach my STEM students in Yukon about coding and game development. Scratch software, created by MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarden group and shared freely, is one of the best platforms to introduce to students when it comes to coding and computational thinking. I loved introducing both students and teachers in Yukon to Scratch the past couple of years when I was an instructional coach in the district, and look forward to continuing “Scratching” at IES with my students. We may continue the after-school “Scratch Club” next semester which my predecessor, Chris Simon, started.

8. Twice Per Week for One Semester

One of the best things which changed this year in the STEM program at IES is the schedule. Rather than seeing 22 classes of students 1 time per week for 50 minutes each, as the STEM teacher I see half that number (11 classes) TWICE per week. This is fantastic for several reasons. First of all, it’s possible to do far more with students (and take them “deeper” in their learning) when we get together twice per week. It’s also less like a “Groundhog Day” teaching experience (in the words of Chris Simon) to teach fewer repetitions of the same lessons each week. I’m very thankful and pleased this schedule change was made this year. My students are going to benefit as a result I’m sure.

9. Balanced Content Filtering

Yukon Public Schools is one of the most technologically progressive school districts in the state of Oklahoma. We certainly have others (Howe Public Schools and Piedmont Public Schools are two which immediately come to mind) but I would put Yukon up against any other district in our state in many categories of technological vision and IT support. There are many reasons for this, but primary among them is the leadership of Yukon superintendent Bill Denton as well as former Chief Academic Officer Dawn Danker-Pierce and former Technology Director Jason McDaniel. The curriculum team at Yukon, now led by Kathy Davis, has been fantastic and over the past four years implemented a large number of innovative changes which have positively shaped the learning culture within the district.

One of the HUGE and important changes which Dawn, Jason, and others implemented in the past few years in Yukon was providing “differentiated content filtering” for teachers, staff and students. By using LightSpeed Systems Internet filtering service, Yukon has and continues to directly empower teachers to utilize Internet content in student lessons. Teachers are able to bypass the Internet content filter when needed with their login credentials, and can DIRECTLY add new YouTube videos to the “whitelist” of approved, educational YouTube videos for students by adding them to their personal “video library” in My Big Campus. This kind of teacher empowerment is NOT yet common in our Oklahoma schools, and is another reason I’m very enthusiastic to work full-time as a Yukon teacher. This is an approach to Internet content filtering in schools which I would term, “balanced content filtering.”

The visionary, positive learning culture supported by technology in Yukon shaped by the leadership of Bill Denton, Dawn Danker-Pierce, Jason McDaniel, Kathy Davis, and others was captured well last spring by videographers from LightSpeed Systems who visited the district and created the video, “Yukon Public Schools Think Different.” It’s six minutes long. Even though Jason and Dawn no longer work for the district, I’m very hopeful this kind of progressive educational vision in Yukon will continue and grow in the months and years ahead.*

* Full disclosure: LightSpeed Systems sponsored a presentation I shared in New York in October 2013 titled, “Roadmap to Blended Learning.”

10. Fantastic IT Support

I am absolutely not writing this point to score points with anyone: I’m writing it because it’s 100% true. The IT support in Yukon schools is the best I’ve ever seen or experienced as a professional educator. In some nearby districts now (I won’t name names here) teachers can wait literally WEEKS for technology problems with their computers to be fixed. In Yukon, at most I’ve had to wait just hours rather than days. Yukon is not a digital technology utopia, there are still many challenges, but the IT support is outstanding. This relates directly to my first point: Great people. People make the difference. You can have millions of dollars to buy “stuff” (as some large school districts have) but without great people, those resources can’t be used to their full potential.

11. MacBook Air and Apple Vision / Support

Yukon Schools is a cross-platform district, and provides support for Apple as well as Windows-based computers as well as tablets / mobile devices. This is SO important, and again (unfortunately) is NOT the case in many other Oklahoma districts today. All teachers in YPS were issued new MacBook Air laptops in October 2012. Part of my contract last Spring with Yukon included developing curriculum and sharing a series of workshops on “MacBook Basics.” Having suffered for many years of my educational career with IT departments who were very antagonistic and closed-minded to ANY operating system other than Microsoft’s, the attitude and perspectives of Yukon’s leadership toward technology platforms is oh-so welcome.

12. Consulting Flexibility

One of the important things YPS agreed to provide for me in my teaching contract was flexibility with some consulting days. Given the low salaries paid to Oklahoma teachers, this is very important for our family.

13. Superb STEM Peer Teachers

I loved working with the other STEM teachers in Yukon the past couple of years, and look forward to continuing those collaborations.

14. Adam Zodrow

Adam is the director of professional development for YPS, but also wears other hats, including leadership for the district STEM program. I was extremely blessed the past year to be able to share an office with Adam, as I worked to support the district curriculum and technology team as an instructional coach on contract. Being able to continue working with Adam specifically is a HUGE reason I’m also thrilled to return to Yukon as a classroom teacher. Working with innovative, creative and passionate educators is priceless. Adam is tops and (as you’ll hear a bit if you watch the video “Yukon Public Schools Think Different“) continues to play an important role in Yukon’s educational innovation trajectory.

15. Google Apps

Several years ago Yukon Public Schools “went Google,” transitioning to Google Apps for Education. I’m a prolific user of Google tools and am thrilled that Yukon supports the use of Google platforms like Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, etc. Just this week, my STEM students took photos of their “Marshmallow Challenge” projects (thanks to Nevada STEM educator Brian Crosby‘s recommendation) and shared them via email from our iPads to a Blogger site. If YPS didn’t support Google tools, this might not have been possible.

Oh… and let’s not forget this one!

16. I Love Teaching, Especially 4th & 5th Graders!

Can you tell I’m thrilled to be a full-time Yukon Miller?!

Technorati Tags: code, coding, edtech, education, oklahoma, scratch, stem, technology, yukon

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Check out Wesley's new ebook, "Mapping Media to the Common Core: Volume I." (2013) It's $15!

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If you're trying to listen to a podcast episode and it's not working, check this status page. (Wes is migrating his podcasts to Amazon S3 for hosting.) Remember to follow Wesley Fryer on Twitter (@wfryer), Facebook and Google+. Also "like" Wesley's Facebook pages for "Speed of Creativity Learning" and his eBook, "Playing with Media." Don't miss Wesley's latest technology integration project, "Mapping Media to the Common Core / Curriculum."

15 Reasons I’m Thrilled to be a Grade 4-5 STEM Teacher in Yukon, Oklahoma originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 9, 2013.

Filed under: best practice, C4, common core, standards, strategies, tip of the week

I became a big fan of Planet Nutshell the first time that I saw their series of videos on Internet Safety. They've also produced great videos on Financial Aid and Climate Science. Math Shorts is the latest addition to Planet Nutshell's line-up of  animated educational videos.

Math Shorts will eventually have twenty videos in the series. Right now the series contains four animated videos for elementary school and middle school students. Each of the videos has a Common Core standard aligned to it. All of the videos have supporting materials from PBS Learning Media attached to them. The first video in the series is embedded below.

Edsavr is a new Chrome extension developed by the team at An Estuary (a start-up founded by teachers in the Baltimore area). Edsavr is a bookmarking tool that you can use to send your favorite links to Edmodo, eduClipper, and Sanderling (a field journal service still in beta).

Applications for Education
If you and your students are using Edmodo and eduClipper to share resources that you find on the web, Edsavr could be a time saver for you.

From time to time I find that I need to create a PDF to use as a flyer or to send information that can't easily be edited. Most of the time I create my PDFs in Google Drive. It's a simple process and the directions for doing it are provided in the screenshots below.

I'll be covering a lot of these kind of topics and more in my December PracticalEdTech.com course, How To Use Google Drive In School.

Step 1:

Click image to enlarge.

Step 2:

Click image to enlarge.

Step 3:

Click image to enlarge.

EWC Presenter is a new tool from Easy Web Content (a website creation and hosting service). EWC Presenter makes it easy to create slideshows, banner graphics, and interactive infographics. The slideshow creator and banner graphic creator don't stand-out from other tools like them. The EWC Presenter's infographic animation option is worth noting.

EWC Presenter's infographic tool allows you to animate elements within your infographic. The video below demonstrates how that is done.


How to easily create animations online - HTML5 and mobile friendly from Easy WebContent on Vimeo.

Applications for Education
EWC Presenter could be an excellent tool for your students to use to create infographics based upon data that they research or gather on their own. Some student infographic projects that I've seen include comparing development data and community demographic data.

Stipple is a new service that allows you to create interactive images. The service launched in closed beta during the summer. Since the summer Stipple has left beta and has added a free iPhone app for creating interactive images on the go. Using Stipple you can upload an image and tag it with pinmarks. Within each pinmark you can include videos, links, text, audio files, and more images. Stipple also gives you the option to track where your images are viewed and shared by others. The video below provides an overview of Stipple's features.


Meet Stipple from stipple on Vimeo.

Applications for Education
Stipple is similar to the popular ThingLink service. Both services can be used by students to enhance images with videos and links that they find on the web. One possible use could be to have students upload images of the solar system (or parts of the solar system) then add pinmarks with videos and links about the solar system. During a field trip you could also have students take pictures of famous landmarks and add pinmarks with information about what makes those landmarks significant.

We all have times when we wish we had more time in our day. Unfortunately, we can't make more time, but we can use our time more efficiently. Flubaroo is a tool that I've used for years for to help me use my time more efficiently. Flubaroo is a script that you can use in Google Spreadsheets to have your multiple choice and short answer quizzes graded for you with just a couple of clicks on your part. The latest version of Flubaroo can even be used to email grades to your students.

Applications for Education
If your school uses Google Apps for Education, when you have students take quizzes that you've created through Google Forms, have your students sign into their accounts before taking the quiz. That way you will capture their email addresses and be able to quickly email grades to them after you have run the Flubaroo script to grade the quiz. If your school doesn't use Google Apps for Education you can still require email addresses by making "email address" a required question on the quizzes you create in Google Forms.

I'll be covering a lot of topics like this one and many more in my December PracticalEdTech.com course, How To Use Google Drive In School.

Here's a fun challenge to give to students and most adults; try to wait ten minutes before looking at your phone when you hear your text message notification. It's a difficult challenge for most people. Study Boost knows this and is trying to leverage that compulsion to check text messages in order to make studying a part of students' text messaging habit.

Here's how it works; students sign-up on Study Boost and link their favorite IM service or SMS (mobile number) to their Study Boost accounts. Then students create batches of questions or find batches of questions made by others. After creating and or selecting batches of questions students "activate" those questions. Activating a batch of questions means that those questions will be sent via IM or SMS at intervals specified by the student. Students answer the questions and get feedback via IM or SMS.

Watch the video below to learn more about Study Boost.


Applications for Education
Study Boost could be a good service for students to use to study on the go. Using Study Boost students traveling for club or sports activities need to only take their mobile devices with them study. As a teacher you can register and submit batches of questions that your students can study. Or students can create their own sets of questions to study.

Before you have students use Study Boost, you may want to consult with their parents to get permission for using the service. Study Boost is free to use as long as you have an unlimited text messaging plan within the United States. 

Next week is Geography Awareness Week. National Geographic Education has highlighted some of their activities for the week. I've put together a collection of other online activities to use during Geography Awareness Week. Those resources are summarized below.

Playing Geosense is a fun way to use and improve your knowledge of world geography. Players can play against the computer or challenge another player. Geosense can be played anonymously or you can register and have your scores recorded for you. There are four Geosense maps (US, World, Europe, or advanced) that players can select from. Geosense is also available as an iOS app.

Mission Map Quest, developed by Russel Tarr, is a map-based tool for creating virtual treasure hunts. The concept is simple, you create a series of clues that your students need to follow to identify places around the world. You can add as few or as many clues to your Map Quest as you like. When you're ready to have students try your Quest just give them the web address of the challenge or have them scan the QR code assigned to your Quest.

GeoGuessr is an addictive geography game that has become quite popular since its launch earlier this year. You can create your own GeoGuessr games by using GeoSettr. When you visit GeoSettr you'll see two screens. A map with a Pegman on your left and the Street View imagery for the Pegman's current location on your right. Move the Pegman around, zoom-in if you like, until you find the location that you want people to guess. When you've found the right location click "set round" to save the location. When you've set five rounds (locations) your game is assigned a URL that you can distribute. Just like any other GeoGuessr game when someone plays your GeoSettr game he or she will try to use the visual clues in the Street View imagery to guess the location. After making a guess GeoGuessr shows you the correct location and how far away from the correct location your guess was.

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. For example, you can overlap Lake Erie onto New Hampshire.

Place Spotting is a website of geographic riddles. Place Spotting is based on the Google Earth platform. Place Spotting users can create their own geographic riddles or try to solve riddles created by others. The search feature on Place Spotting lets users search for riddles based on level of difficulty, language, region, or creation date.

Math Trail provides a nice blend of geography questions and math questions appropriate for 5th to 7th grade students. Math Trail from HeyMath! is a series of map based math trivia challenges. Math Trail offers six thematic games. Each game follows a trail of locations that students have to find by using the clues provided. If they get stumped they can click "show location" but they lose the point value for the question. When they arrive at the correction location students have to answer the multiple choice math question presented to them before moving on to the next question in the trail.

Fotopedia Reporter, available for use online and as an iPad app, lets you upload pictures and geo-locate them to create digital stories. When you use Fotopedia Reporter you create digital booklets of your images. When you upload an image you can add a description to it, center it on a map, and link to a Wikipedia entry about the place or thing featured in your picture. All stories must have at least six images plus a cover image. Fotopedia Reporter could be a fantastic tool to have your students use to create digital booklets about places that they study in a geography lesson.

Capital Toss is a free geography game from ABCya. The game has a state capitals mode and a country capitals mode. In both modes of the game works the same way. The name of a state or country appears at the bottom of the screen and three rows of capital names scroll across the top. When the correct capital name appears players virtually toss a ball at it. After ten correct answers players can choose a new ball. Three consecutive incorrect answers ends the game.

World Geography Games is a free site that features twenty-five geography games. The games are simple identification games in which students are shown the name of a country, state, city, or geographic feature and then have to click on the correct locations. Students earn points for each correct answer. World Geography Games tracks how many attempts students make at correctly answering each question.

The USGS offers free topographic maps for most of the United States. The maps can be downloaded as PDFs through the USGS store. The maps can be used in the 27 suggested topographic maps lessons found in the USGS education site. All of the lessons are rated by grade level and time required for completing the activity. In the list of lesson ideas you will find suggestions for lessons about typical geography topics like coordinates, scale, and map projections as well as lesson suggestions for less common things like analysis of stereo aerial photographs and analysis of humans and hydrography.

• Photo Pin : Free Photos for Bloggers via Creative Commons

  tags: photos creativecommons favorite

• Five Steps to Starting a Class Blog in 2012

  tags: blog blogging favorite

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Ways to Visually Explore Wikipedia

  tags: Wikipedia favorite

• The Mobile Native: BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Toolbox

  tags: byod favorite

• Over 25 Links Uncovering Project Based Learning Resources On The Web

  tags: project based learning PBL favorite

• Using Google+ To Improve Your Teaching

  tags: google teaching favorite

• Personal Learning Networks for Educators: 10 Tips

  tags: PLN favorite

• Infographic: Get More Out Of Google | HackCollege

  tags: google search infographic favorite

• Learning with 'e's: Five tools for global educators

  tags: tools favorite

• Copyright and Creative Commons | Common Craft

  tags: copyright creativecommons favorite

• Digital Storytelling Resources

  tags: digitalstorytelling digital storytelling favorite

• Critical Thinking On The Web

  tags: critical_thinking criticalthinking favorite

• QR Codes in the Classroom - PETE & C

  tags: QRcodes qrcode favorite

• Web 2.0/Mobile AUP Guide

  tags: aup favorite

• Get Your Google Earth Going « Thumann Resources

  tags: google earth googleearth favorite

• Prezi Resources

  tags: prezi favorite

• Thinking Big About Engagement | Edutopia

  tags: engagement edutopia favorite

• How Web-based Tools Change Teaching and Learning

  tags: technology web2.0 teaching favorite

• Welcome to Open Library (Open Library)

  tags: ebooks library books favorite

• Twitter Chat Schedule

  tags: Twitter favorite

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Welcome this third of a  four part series intended to provide Math teachers with some outstanding PBL resources.  First, to ensure you do not miss one of these valuable posts or other resources covering PBL, Digital Curriculum, Web 2.0, STEM, 21st century learning, and technology integration, please sign up for 21centuryedtech by email or RSS.  As always,  I invite you to follow me on twitter (@mjgormans). Please give this post a retweet and pass it on. Have a great week – Michael Gorman (21centuryedtech)

Booking Info – Are you looking for a practical and affordable professional development workshop for your school or conference?  I have traveled the country delivering PD relating to technology integration, PBL, STEM, Digital Literacy, and the 4 C’s. I have done 100′s of workshops and presentations.  Check out my Booking Page… Dates are going fast, with time up to and including December filled,  but I am  taking 2014 dates.

When facilitating Project Based Learning (PBL) workshops across the country I often have math teachers eagerly ask for additional math PBL resources. They want material that might provide a further  idea, a scaffolding lesson, footprint, or even an entire plan for a PBL unit. In meeting these teachers’ needs I have spent hours in research. I am pleased to share with you these twenty sites that I am certain can help facilitate Math PBL.  Of course I have many things I would like to discuss in regards to Math and PBL… but I will save that for a future post. I hope you enjoy these twenty resources that are a part of this four part series. Is there something that should be added? Let me know! Please return, share, and provide a retweet.

Part 3: Math and Project Based Learning… 20 Amazing Resources 

Michael Gorman (21centuryedtech.wordpress.com)

Intel PBL – Intel stresses that PBL puts assessment and content standards at the forefront of learning. It is with projects that students can be engaged in authentic work and develop 21st- century skills of collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking. A well-designed, project-based curriculum can yield high quality results for students and a rewarding experience for teachers. The provided link opens the door to some great Math projects from Intel.

Exploring Space Through Math – This amazing NASA site promotes inquiry through real world applications. Students assume the role of NASA scientists, engineers and researchers who work in teams to accomplish tasks. These projects promote cooperative learning, problem-solving and the use of technology. The problems in this project follow the 5-E’s Instructional Model with a segment for each phase of instruction – Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend and Evaluate. The projects cover the scope of Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and Precalculus.

Curriki Algebra – This is an Open Education Resource (OER) Algebra course that consists of five units aligned to the Common Core. Each of the units culminates in a project that utilizes mastery of conceptual understanding taught in the individual lessons. These units include:

• Unit 1: Relationships between Quantities and Reasoning with Equations
• Unit 2: Linear and Exponential Relationships
• Unit 3: Descriptive Statistics
• Unit 4: Expressions and Equations
• Unit 5: Quadratic Functions and Modeling

Teach 21 – This resource rich site was designed by teachers to assist colleagues in planning and delivering effective 21st century instruction in West Virginia. While it enables educators to quickly access 21st Century Content Standards, Learning Skills and Technology Tools for WV Schools the provided link indexes the Math PBL projects for grades 3 -12. There are over 50 potential projects to explore!

Annenberg Learner Math Lessons – Annenberg Learner uses media and telecommunications to advance excellent teaching in American schools. This mandate is carried out chiefly by the funding and broad distribution of educational video programs with coordinated Web and print materials for the professional development of K-12 teachers. The math lessons could be a footprint to a PBL unit or scaffolding for an entire PBL. While at the site… take a look at the interactives.

Thanks for joining me on this wonderful journey of 21st century resources and please feel free to attend what will be an awesome webinar . Join me in future weeks as together we continue to explore several more posts devoted to the Flipped Classrooms, Project Based Learning, Assessing 21st century skills, technology integration, web resources, and digital literacy.  I enjoy learning from all of you. Also remember to subscribe to this blog by RSS or email and follow me on twitter at mjgormans. I also appreciate your sharing of this post and any retweets. Keep up the amazing work,  have a great week, and enjoy the resources! – Mike Gorman

Booking Info - Are you looking for a practical and affordable professional development workshop for your school or conference?  I have traveled the country delivering PD relating to technology integration, PBL, STEM, Digital Literacy, and the 4 C’s. I have done 100′s of workshops and presentations.  Check out my Booking Page… Dates are going fast, with time up to and including December just about filled,  but i am  taking 2014 dates

School websites and classroom blogs are excellent tools for distributing information to parents and students. But sometimes you might want to make your announcements stand-out from the rest of the cyber noise that parents and students experience on a daily basis. Or perhaps you want your students to create their own webpages to showcase their best work or to announce an upcoming school event. In those cases, you might take a look at a tool to build a stand-alone webpage dedicated to one specific event or announcement. Here are five tools for doing just that.

Striking.ly is a service that can be used to create one page websites to show off your best digital work or to advertise an event. Striking.ly provides a variety of templates for digital portfolios and digital flyers. Each template can be customized by hovering your mouse on any element of the template and selecting the edit button. Free Striking.ly pages are assigned Striking.ly subdomains. Premium accounts can have custom domains.

Page O Rama is a free service for quickly creating stand alone webpages. Creating a webpage with Page O Rama is very simple. Just visit the Page O Rama homepage, select a web address, title your page, and start typing. Page O Rama offers a good selection of text editing tools including page breaks. If you want to, you can add images to your Page O Rama pages too. If you think your page is something that you're going to want to edit and update occasionally, you can enter your email address to create an administrative log-in.

Pagefin is a free service for creating simple webpages without the need to register for an account. To create a webpage with Pagefin just click "create and share," enter the captcha code, and start designing your webpage. Pagefin does not offer any fancy template to widgets to add to your pages, just a blank slate to design on. You can add text boxes, images, and videos to your webpages. When you're happy with your page click on the share button to have a URL generated for your page. The share button will also provide you with an editing link (don't share that one).

Smore is a service for quickly creating great-looking webpages. Smore markets itself as a service for creating online flyers, but it's a little bit more than that. To me "flyer" implies that you're creating a single-use PDF and posting it online. Smore's flyers are dynamic and changeable, they're not single-use PDFs. Your Smore flyers can include many types of media including videos. Deleting or adding elements to your Smore flyer is as simple as dragging and dropping them on or off your page.

Populr is a service for creating simple webpages to advertise events and promotions. On Populr you can quickly create a stylish webpage with pictures, text, and document uploads. Populr offers a selection of templates that you can modify or you can build your page from scratch. All of the editing (aside from typing text) is done through a drag and drop interface.

Trying to solve riddles and other brain teasers can be a fun way to "warm-up" the brain before a brainstorming session or before a lesson on Monday morning. If you use this method, take a look at Mind Cipher for some new-to-you riddles and brain teasers. Mind Cipher is a collection of brain teasers, logic puzzles, and riddles submitted by members of the Mind Cipher community. All submissions placed into one of ten categories. The categories include mathematics, logic, lateral thinking, and physics. All submissions are ranked one a difficulty scale of 1-10.

Applications for Education
Mind Cipher could be a great resource to consult during those times when you have a few minutes of "down-time" with your students. Bring up one of the Mind Cipher puzzles to keep them engaged in thinking even if they're not thinking specifically about your content area.

MOOCs and other similar online resources have made it possible to learn more than ever without ever leaving your house if you don't want to. A good example of this can be found in the breadth and depth of the free course materials that Stanford has put online over the last few years.

The Stanford School of Medicine has made available three semesters worth of lectures on human biology, health and disease, medical research, and health care. The lectures are available through iTunes, YouTube, and on the Stanford Mini Med School website. Click here for winter term, here for spring term, and here for fall term.

Listen Edition is a service that organizes lessons around public radio stories. The stories are made available through recordings on Listen Edition. Each story is accompanied by a lesson plan, a list of vocabulary words for students, and now a pre-made Socrative quiz. Teachers can save lesson plans in their Listen Edition accounts.

Listen Edition is only free for the first 90 days. I usually don't mention services that only have free trial periods, but I think this is one service worthy of an exception to that rule. To be clear, Socrative is still completely free for everyone to use.

Applications for Education
Short audio recordings an make the news and other stories accessible to more students. Listen Edition allows your students to listen to the stories multiple times before answering the Socrative questions. Socrative offers good tools for seeing how your students are responding to questions online.

This fall GeoGebra released new apps for Android, iPad, and Windows 8. All three of the apps include the graphing and modeling tools available on your desktop. The apps also include GeoGebraTube in which you can search for the things that other GeoGebra users have created. The video embedded below provides an overview of the Windows 8 GeoGebra app (the video does not have sound).

What is VoiceThread?

VoiceThread is a tool that allows your students have virtual discussions around media such as images, text, sounds, and video. With VoiceThread, you can create slides (like a PowerPoint), and students can then come in and comment by recording their voice, typing their comments, or video recording themselves using a webcam. Other students can then listen to these comments and make their own contribution to the discussion.  Check out this quick explanation of a Voicethread –  

VoiceThread Accounts

All students and staff have a VoiceThread account set up for them already. To access these accounts, go to http://www.ed.voicethread.com.

Student Logins
Email Address = Student’s school email address
Password = Student’s network password

Teacher Logins
Email Address = Your school email address
Password = Contact me for your district password

VoiceThread Tutorials

Please visit the Voicethread Tutorials page on the library website for video tutorials, written step-by-step directions, and sample VoiceThread projects.

If you are interested in using Voicethread in your classroom, please email me to set up a meeting time so we can walk through the creation process together.

Have a great week!

Nanoogo is a newer site designed to get kids interested in creative writing projects. At first glance Nanoogo reminded me a bit of Glogster without video and audio elements. On Nanoogo students can write stories and add pictures and other clipart to their stories. The writing takes place on a blank canvas that students decorate.

Applications for Education
Nanoogo has some excellent options for teachers. On Nanoogo teachers can create class groups and distribute writing prompts to students. Teachers have the power to create student accounts, maintain student identifications on the site, and re-set passwords. Writing prompts that teachers create can have an expiration date assigned to them. Teachers can log into their accounts to see what their students have created. Watch the video below for a complete overview of teacher side of Nanoogo.


nanoogo cropped final from Nick Urrea on Vimeo.

Google Books is one of the research tools that Google offers, but a lot of students overlook. Google Books can be a good place for students to look for books and look within books that can help them with their research projects. In the short guide below I provide updated directions for the basics of Google Book search.

For directions on publishing your own PDFs to Google Play, click here.

Populr is a service for creating simple webpages to advertise events and promotions. The service reminds me a bit of the popular Smore platform. On Populr you can quickly create a stylish webpage with pictures, text, and document uploads. Populr offers a selection of templates that you can modify or you can build your page from scratch. All of the editing (aside from typing text) is done through a drag and drop interface. See how it works in the video below.


Applications for Education
Populr, like other services that are similar to it, could be a good tool for creating promotions for school dances, club activities, or to advertise good news from your classroom.

Populr offers a variety of pricing plans. The free plan should be more than adequate for most school settings.

Mentimeter is a free service that allows you to pose a question to your audience and get instant feedback on that question through cell phones, tablets, and any other Internet-connected device. I reviewed the service back in February of this year. Since then Mentimeter has add a new open-ended response format.

Mentimeter allows you to create an unlimited amount of questions and collect unlimited responses. The user interface is clean and simple and your students don't need to create accounts in order to respond to your questions.

A demo of Mentimeter's basics is included in the video below.


Applications for Education
Mentimeter, like Socrative and Poll Everywhere, is a good tool for collecting informal feedback from your students. You could use Mentimeter to ask students simple questions like, "do you feel ready for the quiz on Friday?" then use that information to formulate your next lesson plan. Tools like Mentimeter are also good to use as exit ticket systems at the end of a class meeting. Again, you can use the information collected through those exit tickets to influence how you design your next day's lesson plan.

Google Scholar, like Google Books, is one of the research tools that high school students often overlook. Searching on Google Scholar is not like searching on Google.com or searching in any other public search engine.

Google Scholar indexes scholarly, peer-reviewed academic papers, journals, theses, books, and court opinions. These are materials that students usually won't find through Google.com, Bing, or Yahoo search. Just they can do for Google.com searches, students can create Google Scholar alerts. Google Scholar alerts notify students when new materials related to their search queries appear on Google Scholar. The screenshots below offer directions for creating Google Scholar alerts. (Click the images to view them in full size).

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