Digital Is is a media-literacy website created and curated by a community of educators. As a source for professional development, the site shares the NWP's ethos of encouraging teachers to help others in their field. Content on the site is organized under four tabs: Blog, Resources, Collections, and Community. The succinct blog entries link to activities and, when needed, definitions. Much of the Resources section is comprised of teachers' documentation of their own inquiries into their practice. These narratives focus on specific activities, like media storytelling, Connected Learning projects, or social-justice units that are tied to current events. The Collections are exactly that -- resources grouped by theme; as such, they serve as a user-friendly way to get at the site's content.
Skype is a website that allows users to communicate using instant messaging and video and voice calls. Its basic features are free. After downloading and installing Skype, a log-in screen will appear. You can sign in using a Skype, Facebook, or Microsoft account. You can add contacts using someone's name, Skype handle, or email address. After adding contacts, you're ready to start calling. Click on the name of the person you'd like to chat with; if there's a green light next to their name, they're already signed in and ready to receive your call. They'll answer, and you should be able to hear them as well as see them using your webcam. During your video call, you can also share screens or send files, which can be very useful in a classroom setting. This can also be used for collaboration between teachers. Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging platform that allows users to communicate through 140-character messages on a computer or smartphone. It's used by millions of people worldwide to keep up with news, gossip, events, weather -- you name it, it's being talked about on Twitter. You can also use Twitter as a home base for classes, assigning homework or quizzes, or starting conversations with students. When using it as a class, though, make sure you set up ground rules for language and respect, as kids may be used to using Twitter for more casual communication. Teachers should also be aware of the incredible resources available on Twitter for professional development. Across the world, educators are turning to Twitter as a way to build personal learning networks. By following other educators and participating in education-focused chats, teachers can expand their network of colleagues and find resources to further their classroom practice. BetterLesson is an updated addition to the original BetterLesson website, created by the NEA Master Teacher Project. More than 130 highly qualified ELA and Math classroom teachers from across the U.S. are part of the project, with the goal of creating and sharing exemplary lessons and resources for Common Core implementation. Any teacher can search these lessons by standard, by subject, or by grade level. It's also possible to view all of the contributions from a particular master teacher. There's a consistent structure to the design of each lesson that includes a title, an objective, a big idea, links to standards, suggested timing, detailed procedures, resources, related lessons, and feedback. In addition to searching the site's exemplars, any teacher can still create their own collections through the original BetterLesson platform. There's space to plan, create, and upload lessons, as well as ask questions of the community. Common Curriculum is a gracefully designed online lesson-planning and calendaring tool. After creating an account (only a name and email are required), teachers see a set of example classes pre-loaded by the site. These examples -- along with some to-the-point video tutorials –- give new users quick, clear guidance. Teachers can go through all the how-to’s or dive right into calendar setup and planning. The Collections are the site’s organizational system for viewing classes. Teachers can view these separately or in groups organized by schedule, topic, or grade level. The Classes, Schedule, & Settings tab is used to personalize calendars (start date, holidays, class times) as well as create or tweak templates for both lesson and unit plans. Users can shift views for a single day, a week, or an entire month. The Long Range Planner assists teachers as they work on entire units. The Common Core standards, as well as those for individual states, are available to guide; users can even peruse several side by side as they build lessons. Power My Learning is a website that brings together free, curated educational content and activities from all over the Web. Teachers can find academic games, videos, and interactive content aligned to the Common Core State Standards across a range of subjects, from language arts, math, science, and social studies to technology and other subjects. Activities are tagged by subject, grade, Common Core State Standards, and type (video, interactive, etc.). As an example, if you scroll over an activity like Slinkyball, the intended grade level will appear (6-8), as will the category and subcategory (science/physics), any technical requirements, the Common Core standards, and a brief description. Teachers can use the site to curate a list of websites and Web-based resources, and then assign students the task of visiting and viewing them. Wikispaces.com is a simple platform where teachers and kids can take these baby steps to online creation and collaboration. The user-friendly wiki site is great for grade-school children and powerful enough to accommodate tech-powered educators. The websites you'll create in Wikispaces are organized with hyperlinks and searchable tags. For this reason, they're a terrific choice for teachers to use with students. As kids author Web content in a safe environment, they'll discover how the Web is organized, filtered, and sorted. About seven minutes of video tutorials on Wikispaces.com’s help page will enable beginners to create and share their Web creations with an audience. Wikispaces asks for an email address when you create your account, but if a teacher creates the student accounts, no email is required. Creating a wiki is as easy as naming it and clicking Done. Inside a new wiki, you can edit your home page, add pages, or invite members to join your wiki. The edit button on each page reveals a few options. A menu of buttons lets you to insert pictures, create links to other pages, and more. If you save your changes often, you'll switch back and forth between the published page view and the editing view. Collaborize Classroom offers a secure online antidote to uninspired, disengaged classroom discussions. Teachers post discussion questions and set specific response options; multiple choice, yes/no, comment-based, or poll-based. At the conclusion of a discussion, teachers and students can access the results for review, reflection, and extension. The site also tracks participation so teachers can quickly assess comprehension as well as engagement. Should teachers want to differentiate or group students within a class period, they need only create, and post within, new categories. Collaborize Classroom also boasts many support features for teachers including a Topic Library, and links for an FAQ section, email contact, as well as webinars. Actively Learn is a free online e-reader where students can highlight and annotate text as they read. Teachers can assign texts to groups of students to interact with. The site contains thousands of free ELA, history, and science texts. Teachers can add their own documents to the site for students to read. There are also options to purchase or rent copyrighted materials. Most of the titles on the site include "Layers" which are Common Core-Alligned questions for discussions and interactions. These questions do a nice job at engaging students with the text. Kids can also add their own questions. This option is good for students who might be reluctant to raise their hands. You can use the questions or other observations to guide your own discussions or lessons. Teachers can monitor each individual student's progress and see the notes that they are writing. Piazza is an advanced classroom communication tool. This site is free and was created more for college professors. However, there are many uses for this site in a high school classroom. The site provides places to have open discussions. Teachers can choose many customizable options, including the ability for students to post questions anonymously. This can be a great site to have students collaborate and ask questions related to homework. The teacher has the ability to endorse student answers so that other students can tell if advice given from another student really is good. Students can create an account using their school email address. Teachers (and students if teachers allow it) can also create polls to get instant feedback from students. This is a great tool to allow students to ask questions and work together with you and other students. Beenpod is a Web browser add-on used for bookmarking and surfing the Web collaboratively. Users can create "Beens," which are similar to folders, and then fill these Been folders with annotated sites. To create a Been, a user downloads the add-on, visits a page, and clicks on the Been (conveniently located in the lower-left corner of the screen) to add it to the queue. They can then comment on the site and see each site they’ve added. Once they've got their Beens set up, users can share them with others. Take note that teachers can set up students accounts with ease (including uploading a .CSV file) and no student emails are required. Many people can collaborate on and add comments to a Been, much like instant messaging. This allows classes to surf the Web together, either in real time or in their own sessions at their own paces. Browsers can pause a session like a DVR, and see a record of surf history too. This is helpful for a teacher who wants to show her students how to search for something or to search things together, while allowing students the ability to follow at their own pace. TodaysMeet is a site that can be used in a variety of ways. This digital discussion is a great way to brainstorm ideas, to set up a quick formative assessment, to use as a warm-up with a thought provoking question, or to extend the classroom discussion from home-almost like office hours. Students can log into your "room" without needing to create an account. This can be a great collaboration tool or a way to communicate with each student. Teachable is a free site that is a compilation of resources in virtually every subject. The resources are created by teachers and approved before going onto the site. This is a great place to find a new activity or worksheet to help your students learn content or remediate. There are resources for virtually any grade level as well. Pinterest is a “visual discovery tool” that lets users search for, upload, and collect images for later review, reflection, and inspiration. Users can collect individual images (pins) in collections called boards, and then share their boards publicly or save them for private use. The tablet and mobile apps for Pinterest offer the site's best features in an easy-to-use interface. Users can easily add pins from the Web, their own photos, or their current location. They can also flexibly search their friends' boards, as well as publicly shared boards from around the world. This is a great tool for finding new ideas to use in your classroom or at home. R LiveBinders is a free site that is used present resources quickly. Each "binder" can have different sections/tabs with resources posted in each section. It is a great way to post resources for students when doing research. Students could also create binders to help them organize thoughts for a project or collaborate with another student. A livebinder it bookmark tool is available for each internet browser to make adding items to your binder easier. |
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