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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
Posts
