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Tour Literature with Google Lit Trips

Google Lit Trips are special files that let you and your students travel along with the characters of your favorite books along the surface of Google Earth.

Though Google Earth is a very powerful and sophisticated application, only a very limited amount of skill is required to take advantage of the many resources available in a Google Lit Trip. Students can go on virtual “road trips” and learn through media rich supplementary information such as biographical, historical and geographical information through images, links and video added to various place markers along the route.

Google Lit trips includes tours through literature as diverse as Candide, The Kite Runner and Macbeth to Underground to Canada, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and  Make Way for Duckling by Robert McCloskey.

Google Lit Trips allows students to be surrounded with a piece of literature instead of just looking at it. All you need is Google Earth and the special kmz file that you can download for free from the Google Lit Trips site.

Storybird, Myths and Legends

Grade 2/3 teacher Maureen Antoski shared this excellent collaborative storymaking site – still in beta testing – with us during a tech teacher session we held last week. We all agreed she deserved the prize for best new website.

Storybird is a service that uses collaborative storytelling to connect kids and families. Two (or more) people create a Storybird in a round robin fashion by writing their own text and inserting pictures. They then have the option of sharing their Storybird privately or publicly on the network. The final product can be printed (soon), watched on screen, played with like a toy, or shared through a worldwide library.

Storybird is also a simple publishing platform for writers and artists that allows them to experiment, publish their stories, and connect with their fans. Someone starts a Storybird by writing a few words or grabbing a few images. Then the other person takes a turn, adding more words and pictures. In as little as one or two turns they can finish and share a Storybird. It’s that easy. And they can do it sitting side-by-side or across the country from each other.

The Myths and Legends site is loaded with familiar and not so familiar stories, myths and legends. Not only can you read these stories online but students can also create stories of their own using the very cool Story Creator and even add audio narration. Registration is required and free.

That Quiz – Make Free Online Quizzes

That Quiz  is a free online assessment tool for teachers of all subjects and grade levels. Teachers who register receive complete record-keeping of student grades and have access to more precise test-generation tools, can create single tests with questions from different categories, can create matching and multiple choice questions, and can access a public test library. Teachers can create online quizzes for their specific classes or choose from an extensive library of quizzes. Quizzes are also available in French and other languages.

Purple Math – Building Confidence in Algebra

How do you really do this stuff? — Purplemath’s algebra lessons are written with the student in mind. These lessons emphasize the practicalities rather than the technicalities, demonstrating dependable techniques, warning of likely “trick” questions, and pointing out common mistakes. The lessons are cross-referenced to help you find related material, and a “search” box is on every page to help you find what you’re looking for.

20 Ways to Use Comics in the Classroom

Through Josh Allen’s Tech Fridge blog I recently learned about this slideshow created by S. Hendy who writes Digital Tools for Teachers. The slideshow, Tap Into the World of Comics, presents a series of comic creation tools followed by twenty suggestions for using comics in your classroom. Many of these comic creators are linked from the Digital Storytelling page of the Tekchako Lakes website.

Engaging the Olympics and Paralympic Games

www.vancouver2010.com/education-programs/ is the Canadian school portal for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.  Teachers can:

• find resources related to school curricula across Canada
• find ways to connect students to the 2010 Winter Games
• share with the world innovative projects already happening in their schools

The site features five main themes: sport, culture, sustainability, the Olympic Movement and the Paralympic Movement, plus the overarching theme of global citizenship. Here’s a two minute video tour of the site.

Here are a few other great resources:

Canadian Olympic School Program – excellent project packs, Olympic athlete stories and Torch Relay support

One page document loaded with olympic/paralympic educational resources. 

Official International Olympic Site

Paralympic Education Site

A direct link to all the great Olympic Videos is here.

Students Live – student reporter program engaging youth with web 2.0 tools

Olympic Mascot Project – collaborative writing project to share the Olympics through a flat mascot project

Everything’s Amazing. Nobody’s Happy.

Chris Kennedy, the deputy superintendent of schools for West Vancouver, opened his keynote address at the CUEBC (Computer Using Educators of B.C.) conference tonight with this video.  He is an inspiring educator and visionary leader. Here is a link to the CUEBC wiki where you can watch this video and many others as well as links to resources including “10 Free Tools You Can Use on Monday” and “Using Media to Engage Kids in the Olympics and Paralympics.”

Moving Windmills

William Kamkwamba is from a remote rural village in northern Malawi. He dropped out of school because his family could not afford the required school fees of $80. He wanted electricity for himself and his village so they could pump water, power a radio and lights as well as give his village access to the Internet. Are you moving windmills in your classroom?

Visuwords and Speakaboo

ELEMENTARY/JR SECONDARY/SECONDARY ENGLISH – Visuwords is an online graphical dictionary and thesaurus that lets students view words and their meanings and associations with other words in an active “neural net” kind of display.  No membership is required and Visuwords is built on Princeton University’s WordNet opensource database built by University Students and language researchers. Worth a look and great with SmartBoards! (Thank you Maureen Antoski for sending this find along!)

PRIMARY LANGUAGE ARTS/READING
Speakaboos brings classic children’s stories, songs and nursery rhymes alive with professional storytellers and excellent animation. This is a new site (stil in beta) and well worth the look. Registration is only required if you wish to record stories – which is also a great idea!