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Celebrate Twelve – 12.12.12

Posted by Kathy Adkins on December 7th, 2012 No Comments

Next Wednesday will be 12.12.12, a date that provides an opportunity to celebrate learning using a variety of engaging activities in the classroom. There are dozens of ideas to celebrate this unique day and integrate it into content. The simplest activity, sharing 12 favorite things, is part of a special student blogging day. You can join 12.12.12. A Special Blogging Day by submitting this form and share learners’ 12 favorites. Canadian educator Nothy Lane, shares Wednesday 12.12.12. Lesson Ideas, which will also get your wheels turning. Whatever you do to celebrate, make your learning engagement relevant and exciting for learners. Even if you do have a list of 12, dig deeper to continue the learning from this list. Have an amazing 12.12.12 Day and try 12 new ways to engage your learners?

Friday Flash – Holiday Activities with Mobile Devices

PNC Christmas Price Index shares the price of the 12 Days of Christmas and provides a lesson on economic trends and inflation. Total Number of Gifts and Total Cost of Gifts are Excel spreadsheets that can be used to crunch the numbers. Learners can use their device to crunch numbers with a calculator and use apps such as Calc Lite Spreadsheet.

Create a QR Code Scavenger Hunt such as this one – The Twelve Days of Christmas Giving at ClassTools.net. Create a QR Code for the Christmas Price Index so learners can quickly access the site on devices and search for answers. You can search samples quizzes at ClassTools for new ideas.

Create a Socrative quiz using holiday math word problems or practice grammar with holiday sentences. There are so many great ways to use Socrative including ticket in the door or exit ticket. Check out the growing list of quizzes that are shared and can be imported.

Twelve Holly Days and New Year’s Resolution are two MadLibs from Wacky Web Tales. These simple activities work well on mobile devices. Make a QR Code for learners to quickly access these sites.

30 + Free Apps for Celebrating and Learning About December Holidays was recently posted by Shelly Terrell for Tech & Learning. One favorite shared, Red Stamp, allows you to create and share many types of greetings with friends and family. What a great way learners can share gratitude this season.

Image above created with Visual Poetry.

 

 

 

 

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Share Your Bookshelf and Ignite Creativity

Posted by Kathy Adkins on December 10th, 2010 No Comments

Educators’ bookshelves are lined with wonderful stories that can be paired with online creativity tools such as Sumo Paint, Sketchpad and Voicethread to produce projects to engage young learners and ignite creativity. Providing opportunities for learners to express themselves using these digital tools will produce many outcomes that may not exist the traditional way. There are also many fun online games that compliment the literature and can be used but the level of learning and engagement may be low. Use the online games to hook interest but push it up a level or two to inspire creativity and expression with visual and audio tools. During this busy season, take the time to invite an administrator, parent or older student into the classrooms to read a holiday book and include them in follow up activities with the learners. Share the warmth of the season and ignite the creativity in young learners.

Friday Flash – A Few for the Holiday Season

The Night Tree by Eve Bunting, is a beautiful story that shares a family holiday adventure. Using authoring/drawing tools shared above or Pixie/ Wixie(free 30 day trial) from Tech4Learning, students can create their own version of the night tree. Decorate a Tree from KidsHeart, offers an online trim a tree activity. Share more about real evergreens with Real Trees 4 Kids. Activities range from K-12 and share the importance of real trees.

Gingerbread Baby, by Jan Brett, is a classic and her web site shares many resources to compliment this picture book. The interactive Gingerbread House as well Gingerbread Friends Postcards correlate with this story. Home Sweet Home, from Jenny B. Harris, is another easy decorating site as well as Sprint’s, Sprints Sweets. At Sprint Sweets, learners can decorate a gingerbread man as shown in the image and import image into a word processing application to write a story to share his/her gingerbread man adventures.

The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg,  is read online by Lou Diamond Phillips at Storyline Online. Houghton Mifflin, shares a teachers guide that lists some guiding questions that can be channeled into creative activities.   Sharing Christmas Wishes as well as audio reviews by readers at the Horn Book are just two activities shared at gaillovely.com. Can these examples be updated using  VoiceThread for creativity?

Friday Flash will return in 2011. May the warmth of the season brighten your days and warm your heart.

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Ending on a High Note – Keep Singing!

Posted by Kathy Adkins on May 21st, 2010 1 Comment

With the last day of school approaching, teachers are extremely busy wrapping up the year posting grades, updating records, cleaning and inventorying classroom items and completing checklists.  Many have the opportunity of ending on a high note with graduation celebrations and end of the year classroom celebrations. What will be your end on a high note? Now is a time to reflect on accomplishments and be grateful for a great year of learning and staying positive toward the future. With job roles changing due to budget cuts, it is still awesome to be an educator.  As you move from being a NITS, New Instructional Technology Specialist to an ITS, remember that you will continue to manage the vision and purpose, learn on the fly, show managerial courage and drive for results. Take time to end on high note by brainstorming all the wonderful things that were accomplished to engage teachers and students in 21st century learning.  Try Edistorm, a new brainstorming application (Edison + Brainstorm) and share your thoughts. Celebrate by ending on a high note!

“Keep a smile on your face and a song in your heart!”- Dr. Dennis Whittle, former principal, always a teacher!

Five for Friday – Some Musical Resources – Keep Singing!

Wild Music – A traveling expedition about sounds and songs of life. Create music with animal sounds as well as test your memory.

Creating Music – A creative online music site to compose music, play a musical performance and interact with puzzles and games showcasing pitch, and rhythm.

CitySounds – A great site where you can listen to the latest sounds from cities across the globe. There is a latest chart which shares recently updated cities as well as individual city pages with more tracks, genre and stats.

Moodturn – Relax and enjoy music and backgrounds to fit your mood. Themes include the rainforest, garden, rain, and beach just to name a few. Use the tabs on the side to select moods and backgrounds. What is your mood?

Science (and more) to Music – An incredible site with lots of connections for music based teaching with science, math and more!

Photo Courtesy of  stock.xchng: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1108048

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