My ESL Technology Garden

Kidblog

2011-03-09T12:17:00.000-08:00

Blogs are another kind of website!

The word 'blog' is short for weblog - a personal web page where you can write about anything you want: your life, your family, movies you like, your opinions on teaching...anything

Using Blogs to Integrate Technology in the Classroom

The video below explains how you start :

What is it?

Kidblog.org is designed for elementary and middle school

teachers who want to provide each student with their own, unique blog.

Most importantly, Kidblog allows teachers to monitor and control all the publishing activity.

About Kidblog

What are the benefits?

It's free and simple

It is easy to create a digital classroom environment

Students do not need e-mail addresses, the teacher sets up all accounts

Students practice and improve their writing skills and spelling

Kidblog site also provides students with blogs of their own

Kidblog is a place to interact with other students

Voicetread

2011-03-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

Are you familiar with VOICETREAD?

It is a fun tool to use!

http://voicethread.com/?

I ´d like to share what I created for my lesson on fairytales:

Voicetread tool is really cool!

I love it! It allows creativity!

Tok Box

2011-03-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

How to use tokbox for video conferencing?

Tokbox.com- It allows you to set up a video chat channel in seconds.

Learn how to use tokbox by clicking here!

Bubble Joy

2011-03-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

Sharing a GREAT site- BubbleJoy

Do you know this site?

http://www.bubblejoy.com/

The world may be getting small, but it ´s still big enough that you don ´t always get to see and talk with others directly.

BubbleJoy enables you to quickly create and design custom video cards that are easy to share with others by simply using your webcam.

-it ´s FREE

-it ´s EASY to use

-it ´s CREATIVE

- it ´s good for practicing SPEAKING and LISTENING

it ´s a lot of FUN!

Create a Graph

2011-03-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

Do you love graphs?

Here are some beautiful interactive sites to create graphs with your students:

Simple Survey by Teacher LED:
Choose a topic (transportation, pets, TV, or food) and create a tally chart, pie graph, or bar graph with the data you collect as a class.

Create A Graph:
Create bar, line, area, pie, and XY graphs.

Make a Pictogram:Make a pictogram using images of flowers, people, cars, stars, boats, blocks, coach, bikes, trains, and computers. You can change the color of the images, as well.

How Far Away Do You Live? by I-Board:Create pins with your students name and place it on the graph to show how far away each child lives from school.

Birthday Pictogram by I-Board:

Make image labels for your students and graph their birthday months.

Favorite Snack Pictogram by I-Board:

Graph your students ´ favorite snacks.

Favorite Toys Pictogram by I-Board:

Graph your students ´ favorite toys and activities.

Interactive Grapher by I-Board:

Create your own tally chart, pie chart, bar chart, or pictogram by adding your own information and values.

Pie Chart Creator by NLVM:

Put in your titles and data to instantly create a pie chart.

Multi Bar Graph by Shodor:

Choose from given data to interpret the graph, or enter your own.

Bar Graph by Shodor:

Choose from given data to interpret the graph or create your own.

Using WORDLE in the classroom

2010-08-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

Many of you may have already discovered this web site already, but for those who haven't, don't forget to check out Wordle!

I have been experimenting with wordle lately and I like this tool!Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

How to use Wordle?

Wordle Ideas

Thirty Eight Interesting Ways To Use Wordle I

How to use Wordle

Alternatives

1.Tagxedo - Creator

Tagxedo turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning tag cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text.
Example:

2.WordItOut
WordItOut is the word cloud generator that gives you control with many custom settings. Free to use and no sign up required!

•Customise more settings than any other word cloud generator

◦Create word clouds from sentences, whole documents, web addresses or tables.

◦Decide how to filter that text, which words to display or remove, and tweak their importance with ease.

◦Design your word cloud as you like, find that perfect layout, choose your own colours, fonts and sizes (and how to mix them), or let WordItOut find a random look for you!

•Keep control of your word clouds

◦Share your word cloud with the world (or keep it secret!)

◦Easily embed them on your own website (as big or small as you want)

◦Download your own copy as an image file

◦Get any word cloud as a present or gift on a T-shirt, card or more...

Example:

3.Wordsift

Create your own tag cloud to visualize your text.

Ten Interesting Ways to Support Spelling in the Classroom

2010-08-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

More spelling ideas here!

Visit Interesting Ways to Use series to find more great ideas for tech integration and authentic learning activities.

Storybird

2010-08-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

What’s Storybird?
Storybird is a service that uses collaborative storytelling to connect kids and families. Two (or more) people author a Storybird—one with words, one with pictures—and then share it with their network.

The final product can be printed (coming soon), watched on screen, played with like a toy, or shared through a worldwide library.

Storybird-is an excellent tool for teachers.They can encourage their pupils to create and share their own stories. Pupils will improve their reading , writing skills.

Creating, sharing, and reading Storybird stories is free.

Speakaboos

2010-08-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

Speakaboos is one of my favorite sites.

Speakaboos is a children's website that features fairy tales, folk tales, and nursery rhymes recorded by famous celebrities.

Children can listen and watch their favorite stories for free on the Speakaboos website.
Speakaboos stories and activities are a fun and engaging way to develop students reading, writing, and speaking abilities. If you want to introduce your pupils to the classic stories and fables, then a visit to this website is a good choice.

Here is one story to hear from this outstanding site.

Fable: The Boy who Cried Wolf from Speakaboos

Picture Book Maker

2010-08-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

Picture Book Maker will help your pupils to create their own online picture book.

When the book has been completed, it can be saved to the gallery, sent to a friend via email, or printed out.

National Geographic Young Explorer

2010-08-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

National Geographic has amazing resources for the classroom.

It’s real. It has wonderful pictures.
You can turn the pages and it reads the text aloud if you click
Struggling readers can listen to the text read to them and read along.
English language learners receive support for their reading of the text.
The teacher materials that are included will help you to utilize the magazines and stories effectively.

My Hippo Has the Hiccups

2010-08-20T03:38:00.000-07:00

Kenn Nesbitt's hilarious poetry is adored by kids. They just can't get enough of the great beats, wonderful imagery, and good ol' belly laughs his poetry contains! My Hippo Has the Hiccups is a laugh-out-loud good time,it is funny and engaging for readers of all ages. The ebook is available to view online or to download.

MeeGenius Library

2010-08-20T03:23:00.000-07:00

Meegenius is an online library of picture books that kids can read independently or as a read along. Books can be personalized with students names, just answer a few quick questions and the book is rewritten for you. Each book comes with audio playback and word highlighting, perfect for beginning or struggling readers to read along.

MeeGenius is a nice web library of picture books . My pupils love it and feel self confident about reading because they are able to read along with the narrator!

Personalized books can be saved and shared with friends.
Features:

•A large collection of personalized ebooks for children.

•eBooks also come with audio playback.

•To make them easier to follow, audio playback comes with word highlighting.

•Parents can change characters’ names to make them more relatable.

•The site has paid iPhone / iPad applications.

Storybook Web

2010-08-20T03:09:00.000-07:00

Storybook Web is a great website.There are a number of fun activities on this site including the ability to listen to the author’s reading excerpts from their stories and answering questions about how they came up with ideas for writing. Students can choose from one of eight stories, each story has a related game, word bank activity, and videos/audio for reading the story and interacting with the author.

This site will help kids interact with stories, making connections to the authors of the stories and the themes that they are reading about. This site helps students think like an author. It gives them an inside look at how authors think about writing. Use this site as an introduction to a writing activity.

Interactive Books

2010-08-20T02:49:00.000-07:00

Learning takes place anywhere, all the time and at any age.
Keep reaching for new knowledge.

Interactive Books is an idea put together by Mrs. Laurence Haquet, of France .

Thanks to Mrs. Haquet for granting her permission to share this wonderful learning tool with my students .

Here is the link for you on my school site.

Signed Stories

2010-08-20T02:30:00.000-07:00

I always enjoy finding out about new sites related to reading!

Signed Stories- is another great site for children.

It’s got lots of great books to see in sign language and subtitles.
Students can read the story, watch it signed, and listen to the story.
The videos on Signed Stories are organized into seven themes:

Adventure
Baby and Toddlers
Fairytales & Folktales
Open House
Families & Friendship
Funny
Slimy Scary

I'm sure that this site is a unique experience for hearing students as well.

Kids Spell

2010-08-19T16:39:00.000-07:00

Kids Spell is another great website for pupils to practice their spelling . Students can choose to practice their own spelling words or practice spelling in general with the “select a spelling list” feature.

Kids Spell gives students a place to create their own spelling list and provides a unique url where they can access the list again and again.

After students have entered their spelling words, they can choose to practice them with eight games.

Spell A Picture

2010-08-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

Kerpoof's Spell A Picture activity is a cool way to practice spelling and phonics with your early elementary students.

Students start spelling a word and images appear in the picture window.
When the word is spelled correctly, the image will be available to place on your background.
Choose from several backgrounds and a large library of images.

'Look, say, cover, write and check' spelling game

2010-08-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

'Look, say, cover, write and check' game

Pupils will improve their spelling by playing this great game.

Directions:
Look at the word, say it to yourself, then cover it up and see if you can type it.

See 'N Spell

2010-08-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

See 'N Spell (Spelling Games)

Short Vowels
Long Vowels
Blends
Digraphs
More Vowels
Plurals
My Words

Look at each picture.

Click and drag the letters into the grey box to spell the word.

Click on the Check Work Button to check your answer.

This game has 10 questions.

Note: games require more memory and a newer browser. If game does not load, try updating your browser to the latest version.

Spellaroo

2010-08-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

Spellaroo can hop better than he can spell.

Click on the word that is spelled wrong.

If you get twenty right, you will go to the "Land of Joeys".

Spin and Spell

2010-08-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

Spin and Spell

A lovely interactive site for the simple practice of common key words.

Click on the words and use the spinner to spell them.

Play by yourself or challenge a friend!

Spelling Bee

2010-08-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

BigIQkids online spelling program acts like a virtual spelling tutor that presents spelling quizzes, spelling tests, and fun spelling games all customized to each child’s abilities.
You can use the grade level word lists on the site or create yours!

Spelling City

2010-08-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

Spelling City is a fantastic site for practicing spelling.

SpellingCity is a new and interactive site used to help children of all ages improve their spelling skills and expand their vocabulary.

Spelling City offers over 43,000 words and sentences.

Each of the words is spoken by a "real" human voice to offer the student more clarity. With each created list, a student has the option to: Teach Me, Test Me, or Play A Game.
The "Teach Me" option allows students to reflect on each word of their spelling list while the list and coordinating sentence are being read aloud.

The "Test Me" option allows students to take a test from any spelling list at any time. This test option gives the students the ability to hear just the word or have a sentence read.

The "Play A Game" option allows students to play a variety of learning games with any spelling list. SpellingCity offers learning games such as HangMouse, Word Search, Unscramble, and many more.

Have a look at our spelling lists.

My pupils love this program and their grades improve.