In-Service Day and eTech Ohio
As you might know, several staff members from Genoa attended the eTech Ohio Educational Technology Conference February 4th through 6th in Columbus. We wanted to share with you some of the emerging technologies that we learned about. Please take this time to look through some of the following sites, and see if there is anything that you might consider for use with your classes in the future!
Moodle http://moodle.org/
Moodle is a learning management system. Essentially, it’s an online classroom. Many universities use programs like Blackboard or WebCT. Moodle shares many characteristics with such programs. However, there’s one major difference- Moodle is Open source.
You can post your tests and quizzes online, and have them graded automatically (except objective questions). Your students can work collaboratively, even outside of the schoolroom. There are lots of options about how you set up your Moodle account, and lots on online help available to walk you through the process!
Access to NOECA's Moodle site can be found at http://fmpx.noeca.net/moodle/
Check out the speaker’s website to see what can be done with Moodle: http://www.misterv.net
For more information about Moodle itself, go to http://misterv.net/what-is-moodle/
For a handout about Moodle, click here (Adobe Acrobat Reader file)
Picasa http://picasa.google.com/features/index.html
Want to edit and share your photos for free? You can with Picasa, which is a FREE photo sharing and editing software program provided by Google. Picasa can help you:
Locate and organize all the photos on your computer.
Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks.
Share your photos with others through email, prints, and on the web: it’s fast, easy and free.
For handouts about the features of Picasa, click here for organizing photos and editing photos.
For a guide for getting started, click here.
For a review of the software, go to http://www.a-digital-eye.com/Picasareview.htm
*This program requires a download to begin using it, and that feature is blocked on these computers. However, you can take the TOUR offered at the site above.
Quizlet http://quizlet.com/
Quizlet is a FREE tool for learning vocabulary. Got some vocabulary words you need to learn? Try Quizlet, a free interactive learning tool.
Here's how it works: enter in any kind of data (vocabulary, dates, coding strings, etc.) and Quizlet generates specialized flashcards, quizzes, and collaborative tools for other folks who might be also learning these words to study right along with you. This is a super way to study pretty much anything that requires memorization.
Hint: If you are looking for a particular topic, try the search box.
Wikispaces http://www.wikispaces.com
What are good uses for a wiki?
Wikis work great for classrooms, work groups, families, sports teams, book and fan clubs, and more!
You can create simple web pages that groups, friends, & families can edit together
Energize your classroom- Need somewhere to work on essays together? A wikispace for a class is a great place for students to post their work so that teachers and classmates can correct, improve, and discuss their work.
Organize group activities- Got a softball team, scout grou, or book club? A wikispace lets you post schedules, plans, and lists that the rest of your group can update and edit any time they like. Your group members can also be notified of changes as they happen so that they never miss out on updates.
To see what can be done with a tool such as Wikispaces, go to the following sites:
http://future-of-education.wikispaces.com/ and click on the 2008 eTech Ohio Presentation Wiki Wiki Wow. To view the presentation (.wmv file), click here.
The February Wikiletter includes a list of sites to find online video resources. However, you may have to search the from home, due to our filtering system.
Wikispaces for teachers http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers
Wikispaces is a great place for teachers, students, and educators to work together. They are committed to helping educators, so Wikispaces for K-12 education use is completely free, and free of advertising.
Try the brief tour offered on their site.
Edublogs http://edublogs.org/
Edublogs is a large education community which hosts over a hundred thousand blogs, provides an enterprise blogging solution for schools and other educational institutions, and continues to develop and support what they hope is the best blogging platform and community for educators, anywhere.
Try the brief video tour or the link to 10 ways to use your blog with students!
ILILE http://ilile.org
The Institute for Library and Information Literacy Education provides local, regional and national leadership in fostering valuable collaboration among teachers, school library media specialists and academic faculty who work together to promote information literacy in the K-16 classroom.
Includes ODE Checklists of Standards that is very useful, as well as lesson plans that you can use to meet these standards.
INFOhio http://www.infohio.org/Educator/educator3.html
INFOhio offers educators a large selection of resources and tools to help you. These include lesson plans, learning modules, web links, etc. For those of you that are taking graduate classes, the EBSCOhost Professional Search can help you find journals and other resources for completing research for these classes. You could even create a folder in EBSCOhost and collect articles that you want to have your students read outside of the classroom. The Digital Video Collection includes hundreds of digital videos that have been made available at no cost to Ohio K-12 districts.
Schoolrooms (an INFOhio resource) http://schoolrooms.infohio.org/index.html
SchoolRooms will provide the K-12 community with reliable and authoritative resources for school assignments and research, tied to school goals and student achievement, and features Single Search capability. View the PowerPoint program explaining the features of Schoolrooms, or visit the demo site to sample this exciting new way to organize information for K-12 students, educators and parents.
With SchoolRooms:
Students discover information in a new and more engaging way.
Educators access a variety of high quality resources from one easy and convenient search
Parents find appropriate resources to improve their child's education.
Ohio Treasure Chest of Technology Resources http://www.ohiotreasurechest.org/
Here you will find an archive of great web sites organized to match the objectives in the Ohio Academic Content Standards. It can be searched by subject and grade level.
Ohio Resource Center http://www.ohiorc.org/ (for Math, Science and Reading)
ORC enhances teaching and learning by promoting standards-based best practices in mathematics, science, and reading for Ohio schools and universities. ORC serves as a trusted source of easily accessible, peer-reviewed, high-quality, and effective resources.
Ohio Social Studies Resource Center http://www.ossrc.org/
OSSRC links to resources that support best practices in Math, Science and Reading.
TRAILS: Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills http://www.trails-9.org/
TRAILS is a FREE knowledge assessment with multiple-choice questions targeting a variety of information literacy skills based on sixth and ninth grade standards, though it can be used at other grade levels. This Web-based system was developed to provide an easily accessible and flexible tool for library media specialists and teachers to identify strengths and weaknesses in the information-seeking skills of their students.
Categories of skills to be evaluated include:
Develop topic
Identify potential sources
Develop, use, and revise search strategies
Evaluate sources and information
Recognize how to use information responsibly, ethically, and legally
*I would love to find someone that would like to use this tool along with a research project in the library!!! It would be a good evaluation tool, and could be used both before and after a project.
Plagiarism.org: Learning Center http://www.plagiarism.org/
Plagiarism.org is one of the Internet's predominant anti-plagiarism resources for educators and students alike. The Learning Center is designed to help educators and students develop a better sense of what plagiarism means in the information age, and to teach the planning, organizational, and citation skills essential for producing quality writing and research. The site includes a link to printable handouts for your students.
PBS Teachers http://www.pbs.org/teachers/
PBS Teachers is PBS' national web destination for high-quality pre K-12 educational resources. Here you'll find classroom materials suitable for a wide range of subjects and grade levels. They provide thousands of lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video assets, and interactive games and simulations. These resources are correlated to state and national educational standards and are tied to PBS' award-winning on-air and online programming like NOVA, Nature, Cyberchase, Between the Lions and more.
They also provide professional development for educators through PBS TeacherLine.
PowerPoint Games- Websites with available templates
This Word document will give you links to many websites that provide PowerPoint templates for use with your classes.
PageFlakes http://www.pageflakes.com/
Pageflakes enables you to easily personalize the web and make it your own.
Create a page using Flakes; they're small, movable versions of all of your web favorites that you can arrange on your personal homepage. There are Flakes for thousands of uses and interests, including news, sports, e-mail, local events, search, photos, music, videos - even interactive tools like a calendar and a to-do list - and just about anything else you do on the web at work and at home. The service is free for everyone.Try the brief tour offered on their site.
Google Reader http://www.google.com/reader
With Google Reader, keeping up with your favorite websites is as easy as checking your email. By using Google Reader, you can subscribe to RSS feeds from Google and other sources.
Stay up to date Google Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content.
Share with your friends Use Google Reader's built-in public page to easily share interesting items with your friends and family.
Use it anywhere, for free Google Reader is totally free and works in most modern browsers, without any software to install.
