Where's George

Where’s George is a site that tracks the travel of dollar bills through circulation. You can follow any denomination of currency by entering the serial number on the bill, enter your current zip code and learn about where the bill has been. If your bill doesn’t have a tracking history, you can start tracking it. Add a short note about the bill including where it was found, what condition it is in, etc. You can choose to receive an email when the next person finds and records the bill’s next location. In addition to tracking bills, you can view a report by zip code, state, bill denomination, or county.

Enter the dollar serial number as a class at the beginning of the school year, record information about it, and write the Where’s George web address on the dollar.

Christmas Activities

Christmas page for teachers: Christmas around the world, Christmas trivia, quiz suggested fiction and picture books and and printable worksheets.

Kaboose Christmas: How to wrap a present, games, printables and word finds, craft and songs.

Christmas Craft Projects: Make a variety of Christmas projects including recipes, ornaments, recycled craft and how to videos.

Microsoft Word Christmas Cards: Free Christmas card templates across many styles. Can be modified with your own text and images.

Special thanks to EdGalaxy for finding these.

Label the Continents

Here is a labeling game from Playkidsgames.com that is perfect to use on your Smartboard if you are teaching about the continents. Just drag the names of the continents to the correct locations!

Wylio -Photo Finder

Wylio assists users in finding images licensed under the protection of Creative Commons.

ookaboo - Free Pictures of Everything on Earth

Ookaboo is a a site where all images are public domain or creative commons and can be used freely by students and teachers.

MuseumBox

MuseumBox is a site allows students to place items into virtual boxes; these items can include images, video, text, and sound. MuseumBox can be used across the curriculum and can help students to describe a person, place, thing, event, idea, or issue. The site facilitates description, debate, investigation, and exploration and development of ideas and issues.

Conjugation.com

Conjugation. com is a site that instantaneously displayed a verb shown in all of its forms, voices and tenses. Just type the verb that you want to conjugate in any form and click on “Conjugate.”

2010 Edublog Award Nominations

Best individual blog: Free Technology For Teachers http://www.freetech4teachers.com

Best individual tweeter: Jeff Thomas http://twitter.com/jdthomas7

Best group blog: TechyThingsTeachersShouldTry http://bryantechnology.blogspot.com/

Best resource sharing blog: Digital Goonies http://digitalgoonies.com/

My Story Maker - Creating Your Own Fairytales

My Story Maker is a tool that helps kids write their own stories. Each story begins by asking the name of the student creating the story and what main character they would like to use from a list of pre-created characters. Add characters and objects to the storyboard, and click them to add actions. As they add each element, a basic story is written in which the user than enhances by choosing the different actions, objects, and settings for each page.

Study Jams

Study Jams is a truly incredible collection of over 200 learning resource collections. Study Jams are videos, slide shows, and step by step explanations for science and math that will have your students discovering everything from invertebrates to the water cycle and the rule of divisibility.

Pikikids

Pikikids allows users to create their own comics, they can select their own layout, upload their own photos, add speech bubbles and fun graphics and then save and share their work.
Very easy to use, with step by step instructions. To save you must create a free account with an email address.

Punctuation Practice

BBC's Punctuation Splat

BBC's The Magic Key

These are two interactive sites that you can use on your Smartboard to practice punctuation.

Linguee - Language Translator

Linguee is a great site for translating and learning languages. All a user has to do is type in a sentence and select what language they want to translate it into. Results are then displayed by people who have translated similar sentences and the exact words are then matched up in bold text.

Mapeas - World news on world map

Mapeas offers a new way of watching video news online.
Mapeas enables users to browse video news by location on a world wide map, so they can read them easier and faster (without user registration) by clicking on markers around the world.
There are several categories to choose from.


The markers decrease in size in correlation with the date of the news. Larger makers are newer, smaller ones are older.

Fall Interactive Games

Try out these Fall themed interactive sites that you can use in your classroom for learning and for fun.
Games include:
Harvest Hootenanny


Tackle Math Ball




Make a Scarecrow

FickrPoet

http://www.storiesinflight.com/flickrpoet/index.php Enter (or paste in) text and a visual representation of the text is presented by matching Flickr images to the typed words. Here’s an example:

Keyboarding Skills Sites

Here are 3 sites that not only will improve keyboarding skills, but are extremely fun.

Bubbles Typing Game:
Push your typing skills to their limits by playing the popular Bubbles typing game. In the game your goal is to burst the bubbles by pressing the corresponding key.


Free Typing Game: A mix of typing games students will enjoy.

BBC Dance Mat Typing: Meet the gang and learn to type. Make your way through all 12 stages and you can be a top typist.

BoostCam - 2 way video chat

BoostCam is an excellent site for creating a simple 2 way video chat. All a user has to do is click on the start chat now button and then share the URL w/ another that is generated.

Time Zone Converter

Time Zone Converter is pretty much as straightforward as it gets when it comes to calculating time differences. There are two clocks. The one on the left displays your local time. The one on the right will do the conversion for a number of major cities. If you simply need to know the time elsewhere in a hurry, this easy-to-use website has you covered.

BBC Dimensions - How Big Really

How Big Really is a site where you identify an event or object (The Great Wall Of China, a battle, etc.), then type in a zipcode, and then it will overlay the dimensions of that event or object to the zip code you picked to see how it would size up in the area you selected.

Zinepal - Create Your eBook

Zinepal is a way to bring the news to students by “clipping” online articles. This is a wonderful site for those making the move to ebook readers. Zinepal turns existing web content into printable PDFs. In four easy steps, you can finalize your own ebook. It's an easy way to repurpose your existing web content using eBooks and printable PDFs.

Yolink

Yolink is a search accelerator, that searches not just a page, but also the links contained within that page. This makes finding contextually linked information super simple. You can add it to your browser or as a gadget to a blog, as I have done on the right side of this blog. Try it out by typing in a topic and if that keyword is anywhere in my blog, you will see immediately where it is located.

Top Sites for Booking And Annotating

1. Diigo - Excellent site for bookmarking and annotating w/ the ability to create student accounts, simply the best!!
   
2. Delicioius - Probably the most popular bookmarking site on the web w/ lots of educators to be found!!
   
3. iCyte - Similar to Diigo w/ the ability to annotate and then share or embed into a site.
   
4. Rooh.It - A great way to highlight content on the web and then share w/ others and add comments!
   
5. Digg - A popular way to bookmark w/ the ability to share w/ others, comment, and even generate a widget for a website.
   
6. Trailmeme - An innovative site w/ a beautiful user interface for annotating web content and generating a unique user interface/path to follow.
   
7. School Noodle - A great way for teachers to bookmarks sites and then share these resources w/ other educators!!
   
8. Krunchd - A nice way to take a collection of sites and create one unique URL for all of them.

Join.me

Keeping in the sharing theme lately, another nice free service site is
Join.me, which allows Mac and Windows users to quickly share their screens with each other and work together. To use Join.me you do need to download the Join.me client. Once you've downloaded the client you can start sharing your screen with anyone you like. Just give your nine digit access number to your collaborators to give them access to your screen and to converse with you.

dushare - Real-time P2P file transfers

Lately, I've been creating larger video files that I need to send my coworkers. I came across an easy to use site called Dushare. This is a site for visual learners as there are not many written directions. Just follow the steps presented in symbols and you can load your file up in a very short time. Then copy the link and email it to a peer. Once they open the file you will be connected and can monitor that person's progress in downloading the file as well as chat directly with the other person. Dushare is a nice alternative to share files that may be too large to email to someone. Dushare is a free service and requires no registration.

Type Racer

Type Racer is a quick, fun way to practice keyboarding skills using a racing game as the premise. You can even invite friends to race/type against you. Would make a make a nice addition to teaching keyboarding at the Middle School level.

Vimeo - Alternate to Youtube

After creating a fairly large how-to video for my teachers, I was frustrated by the uploading process by such sites as Teacher Tube and You Tube, as well as the overall quality of the video resolution.
Thinking I would have to completely recreate my video, I tried VIMEO, another video sharing website. My large video uploaded extremely quickly and the interface is easy to use. Since I really only wanted my teachers to see this video, I chose the option of a password which I mailed with the URL to the video. Teachers then only had to type in the password and it opened up. What is most amazing about Vimeo is the quality of the video clarity. Unlike the other video sharing sites, my video did not lose any of it's original resolution in the transfer process.
Using the free service of Vimeo, each user is given a 500MB upload quota per week.
One downside is that VIMEO may be blocked as it is initially was at our district simply because it was a video sharing site like You Tube, but it one site worth opening up the filter for.

Copyright Free Pictures from Google

Students and teachers often struggle to find copyright free images to use in the classroom. Since Google seems to be the most often used search engine, here is how you can find these images.
Use Google's Advanced Image search options by selecting "advanced image search" on the main Google Images page. Once in the "advanced image search" page, you will find the usage rights options at the bottom of the page. In the usage rights menu you can select one of four options; "labeled for reuse," "labeled for commercial reuse," "labeled for reuse with modification," or "labeled for commercial reuse with modification." Select "Labeled for reuse" to find those that are copyright friendly.

16 of the Best Internet Safety Sites for Kids

16 of the Best Internet Safety Sites for Kids

I'm sure in most school districts right now, internet safety is being taught in class. Thanks to iLearn Technology, here are some great resources for elementary classes and a few for middle school.

History Animated

History Animated is a fantastic resource for teachers of US History.
History Animated provides animations of the American Revolution, the US Civil War, and the US Pacific Campaign in WWII. In each of the three series of animations you will see the animated movement of armies displayed on a map. Each animation is accompanied by captions describing the strategies of the armies as well as the results and consequences of each battle.

Thanks to Freetech4teachers.com for bringing this wonderful site to my attention.

Edmodo

Edmodo is a private micro-blogging platform built for use by teachers and students for use in the classroom. I've used Kidblog.org for some time now, but came across another very easy to use blog site. It seems perfect for middle school students and doesn't require students to have an email for their account, which neither does Kidblog.org, which is one reason I like that one so much.
Edmodo provides a way for teachers and students to share notes, links, and files. Teachers also have the ability to send, alerts, events, and assignments to students. Edmodo also has a public component built by allowing at the teachers discretion to post any item to a public timeline at the teacher’s discretion.

Sound Bible

Sound Bible is a resource for finding and downloading free sound clips, sound effects, and sound bites. All of the sounds on Sound Bible are either public domain or labeled with a Creative Commons license. You can find sounds for use in podcasts, videos, slideshows, or other multimedia creations.

Kidopo

Kidopo is an online coloring application where kids can color online coloring books. The application simulates a real coloring experience (in other words you can color outside the lines and the more you color over a spot, the darker it gets.). Kidopo has fun printables for the classroom including coloring sheets, bookmarks, birthday printables, awards and certificates, mazes, writing paper, connect the dots, room decorations, and stickers. The online coloring book on Kidopo is a great way to help primary students practice mouse manipulation.

Print What You Like

Print What You Like works in three easy steps: 1. Go to Print What You Like and paste the URL of the page you want to print, 2. Edit the page, 3. Print it. There is nothing to download with Print What You Like, it runs directly from your browser. You can make the page you are printing more readable by changing font size and typeface and removing the background. Print What You Like gives you the ability to combine multiple web pages by editing them and printing them as one document. You can even save your modified page as a PDF or HTML document.

Vorbeo - Free Poll Website

Vorbeo is a free service for creating polls for your blog or website. To use Vorbeo just type your question, enter your answer choices, select a background color, and specify the width of your polling widget. Then copy the embed code provided by Vorbeo and paste it into the html editor of your blog or website.

Dropbox - online backup and file sharing

Dropbox is a 2 GB e-vault tool that allows teachers to drop files in an online folder and sync it with multiple computers. For example, I might create a file on my MacBook at school, move it into my Dropbox folder and then open it up on my Dell at home. No jump drives to lose or accidentally wash and no email files that are too large to send. You can also create collaborative folders in Dropbox to share with other teachers.

Kidstube - Video Sharing for Kids

Kids Tube is a video sharing hosting and sharing site designed for hosting content produced by kids and content about kids. It is a safe alternative to YouTube. Kids Tube monitors all submissions and monitors comments left on videos. To encourage students to develop their videography skills, Kids Tube holds weekly videos submission contests. The contests are arranged around a theme and one winner is selected by the Kids Tube team.

Crocodoc

Crocodoc lets you quickly upload any document (PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations,etc.) and turn it into a webpage, and lets you view and mark them up online.
This is an extraordinary tool. Students can create anything, for example, using Microsoft Word, and immediately turn it into a webpage. This is an extraordinary way for people who are not familiar with creating online content to use a program that they’re familiar with — like Word — and develop something very useful that can be shared with everybody.
You do have to register to use it, but it is a free service for most of it's features.

Historical Facebook

Derrick Waddell created a Facebook template for historical figures. This template, available through the Google Docs public template gallery, asks students to complete a Facebook profile for famous people throughout history. The template has a place for pictures, an "about me" section, a friends column, and a map to plot the travels of historical figures. Please note, this template will not result in an actual Facebook account being created.

Tripline

Tripline is a new map creation service. You can present your trip itinerary with details at each stop. You can add images and information along each stop on the map and even add music if you wanted, giving it a slideshow sort of feel.

There are a few different ways that you can create a trip on Tripline: use your mobile device to check-in at different locations and have Tripline plot those points for you or you create trips on Tripline is to plot them directly on the Tripline site.

To create a trip directly on the Tripline site log-in, click "create a new trip," enter a map title, then type the first location on your map. After entering your first location, you can add more by simply typing location names into a list. Tripline will place the placemarks for you (you can also rearrange them manually if you like). Should you desire to enter information about each place on your map , just click the edit icon to type information and or to add an image. When your placemarks are completed you can then select music to accompany your tour. Maps can be embedded into your blog or website. See my map below.


This is a great tool for education. Tripline could be used by students and teachers to create a walking tour of their communities. Use Tripline's mobile services to plot a tour while walking then come back to school to edit and add information to the placemarks. Tripline could also be used by students to tell the story of a summer vacation. Or students could map historical events or trace the path of a novel.

Rags to Riches

Rags to Riches is an economics game that has students working to make their band a success. Students play the part of a new band going on tour with a few new songs. As they play the Rags to Riches game simulation, students must make decisions about what the band should do. They have to decide which cities are best for them to play in, what venues to play, how much money to spend on publicity and how much to charge for tickets. Students start out with $100 and must make wise decisions to continue in the simulation. When they run out of money, the game ends and they must start again.

How to integrate Rags to Riches into the classroom: In this game, students are working to take their band to super star status. This is a great game for teaching students about business, economics, and money. This game is really best played in a setting where each student has access to their own computer.

Bounce - Screen Captures Shared

http://www.bounceapp.com/
Bounce allows you to make annotated screen captures of websites and then instantly share those screen captures with others. To use Bounce, type in the url of any website then click "Bounce." Bounce will then create an image of that website on which you can draw boxes and annotate those boxes. You can create as many boxes and notes as you like. When you're done creating notes, Bounce will provide you with a unique url for your screen captures that you can share with others. If you create a Bounce account (optional) you and other Bounce users can annotate the same screen capture.

Historypin

http://www.historypin.com/
Historypin (a new service developed by We Are What We Do in partnership with Google) lets users place images within the setting of current Google Maps Streetview imagery, or your can explore the imagery added by others. To explore the imagery on Historypin, zoom in on a location then select a range of dates on the Historypin timeline.

Epub Bud

http://www.epubbud.com/
ePub Bud is like the YouTube of Children’s eBooks in that anyone can create and share their own children’s ebooks. The goal of this not-for-profit website is to provide an easy way to find, share, and self-publish children’s ebooks. ePub Bud lets you create an ebook for a small audience, or for the whole world, digitize a real book by mailing in a physical children’s book and having it “digitized” for the iPad, upload an ebook file that you can read on the iPad, or download an eBook (classics and books others have shared).
If you have access to the iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, consider sending in some of the books from your classroom libary to be digitized.
Or you can search the collection of children’s eBooks that are on ePub Bud and download those for students to read.