The school year begins here on the 1st February and for the third year, I will embark on the blogging journey with my new Grade Two class. As my class will still be called 2KM, I have decided to keep my 2009 2KM blog and customise it to my 2010 class. If you are setting […]
Social Bookmarking: Delicious Vs Diigo
Always looking for ways to make my life more organised, I became a fan of social bookmarking a year or two ago. In case you are unfamiliar, social bookmarking is a way of storing, organising and sharing your favourite websites. Instead of having your favourite sites listed in your Internet browser, they are stored online […]
Teaching Technology Post “Noughties”
For a while now I have been questioning the curriculum that is seen in many primary school I.T/ICT/Technology/Computer classes. Many primary school students spend an hour each week in a computer lab learning about Office programs and the like….”how to make a PowerPoint, Word Document, Photo Story etc”. Now that we have left the “noughties”, […]
Global Connections
My class blog has been a central part of our classroom this year for reflecting on and publishing student work while celebrating the students’ achievements in their Grade Two year. Making global connections has been one of the most rewarding parts of the blogging experience for me and my class. Two particularly worthwhile connections we […]
Christmas Sites for Primary Classrooms
As we’re now getting into “Christmas mode” at school, here are some sites that might be useful in the primary classroom. Primary Games has a wide range of flash style Christmas games for kids. Great to use on an IWB or classroom computer. North Pole is a great site for kids and teachers. There are stories, games and […]
Google Wave
Google Wave is the next big thing by Google that is currently released as a “preview” for people to try. It has been said to be a mix between email, wikis and instant messenger and has some excellent functions for collaboration. This short video is worth watching to get an overview of what Google Wave […]
Speechable
Speechable is a cool website I found out about from David Kapuler’s blog. It is simply an easy way to add a speech bubble to an image. You can upload an image from your computer or a URL and photos can be shared with friends via email or on Facebook®, MySpace®, Orkut, blogs, and message […]
Great resources for your IWB by Triptico
Triptico is a UK site that provides eLearning training and support. They also have a fantastic library of classroom tools that can be used on the IWB. I found out about many of these from Kelly Tenkely’s great blog iLearn. I have blogged about Word Magnets in the past. Here are some other great tools […]
Holiday Card Exchange Project
This is the second year I have involved my class in a global Holiday Card Exchange Project. This project, organised by iEARN, matches schools up with 7 schools from around the world. The schools then prepare an envelope of cards (Christmas, Hannukah, Chinese New Year, Eid etc) which they send to each of the schools. Part of the […]
Missing my IWB!
Two weeks ago the projector for my Interactive Whiteboard stopped working and I am missing it! It’s been over 12mths since I got my Promethean IWB and I have gradually integrated it into my teaching to the point of using it for most lessons with my Grade Two students. Without the IWB, the atmosphere in […]
Explanation videos
Two sites which I often use for “how to” or “explanation” videos for my Grade Two students are the How Stuff Works video centre and Howcast site. How Stuff Works is provides “credible, unbiased, and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works”. I often use short videos from this site to assist with the explanation of a concept […]
Put a poll on your blog
Polls are great way to make your blog or website interactive and more interesting. A poll could be part of a post or as a sidebar widget. Poll Daddy and Vorbeo are two very easy to use applications that allow you to create a poll to embed on your blog or website. After you click […]
Read Write Think
Read Write Think is a site from the UK that offers a collection of online Student Materials to support literacy learning in the P-12 classroom. While this site includes lesson plans and web resources, I have found the most useful aspect of the site to be the Student Materials. There are over 50 interactive resources […]
Word Magnets
Word magnets is a fantastic website for the Interactive Whiteboard or classroom computers that I read about Nik’s Learning Technology Blog. Word magnets is a tool that allows you to paste in some text and then change the text into word tiles like fridge magnets that you can drag and rearrange. Word magnets would be […]
Fun Spelling Games
GamesGames.com is a site with lots of fun and free games. Some of these games are simply “for fun” but there are some educational games which are very worthwhile for use in the classroom. My Grade Two students are enjoying the Spelling Games. There are 18 spelling games where students have to build and find words in […]