Website of the Week: ZooBurst

Easily create your own 3D pop-up book, great for lots of uses. The site is free, but requires an email address for registration.

The books are super easy to create, can include a mix of pictures and text. Pictures can be imported from your computer so you can use your own pictures or download pictures from the internet. When you create a book the owner can specify the privacy settings. See the Zooburst gallery for some interesting examples.

I have already had teachers try this format for Science presentations on how the sun creates energy, I could also see using it to:
1) Tell a fractured fairy tale in Language Arts
2) Detail the life of a famous figure from History
3) Give a tour of a cultural region in a World Language class
4) Have English Language Learners tell a story using new vocabulary words.

Website of the Week - Pixlr

Need to make some quick adjustments to a digital image but don't have Photoshop? Try out Pixlr, a free, online photo editing website. Pixlr has three levels: Playful, Efficient, and Advanced to suit your editing and tech savvy needs. Want to get rid of wrinkles? Airbrush out that antenna you didn't notice? Add text or a border? Pixlr can do it all. Perfect for student multimedia projects.


See if you can find the antenna I airbrushed out of this picture! Pixlr is so eary to use, editing this photo only took me about four minutes. This is a great solution so students that want to do editing to images for their digital stories, prezis or animotos!

Website of the Week - Voki

http://www.voki.com/

Create an animated avatar that speaks, create a customized avatar that uses text-to-speech to say what you write. Vokis can be embedded in Blogs, wikis and websites.

http://www.voki.com/

Ideas for the classroom:

1) In History, research a famous historical figure: have them "saying" a famous quote.
2) In Language Arts, create a voki for a character in a novel. Have them "saying" a line of dialogue.
3) In World Language, have students introduce themselves in the target language
4) In Math, have students define mathematical terms.
5) In Science, have vokis report the results of a lab.

For more ideas, check out: Voki Lesson Plans

Website of the Week #4

Have a SMART Notebook file that you need to open or edit, but don't have your work laptop handy? This site from SMART Technologies allows you to open, edit and create SMART Notebook files without having SMART Notebook installed on your computer. There is even a free download of SMART Notebook Express available. While it doesn't have all the functionality, it can be a great help.

http://express.smarttech.com/

Website of the Week #3

Zunal.com WebQuest Maker
http://www.zunal.com

Free to use! Register and create your own WebQuest or choose a grade band and subject area to see WebQuests that may meet your needs. Each WebQuest has an introduction, task, process, evaluation and an evaluation rubric.

Once complete you have a web address that can be posted to your website, learning management systems or just written on the board!

Webquests are still one of the best ways to create real-world tasks for your students while providing access to relevant websites and scaffolding tasks.

Website of the Week #2

Power My Learning is a free, web-based learning platform. It contains over 1000 educational games in a number of different content areas. Games are easy to find in grouping by subject area and grade level. And when I say games, I mean excellent, thought-provoking, content-rich learning experiences. Power My Learning isn't filled with arcade-style bouncing balls, it has simulations, movie-creation, authentic learning opportunities. They are engaging and worthwhile.

The website is free and but you do need to create an account. The account has lots of advantages including assigning games to students and saving your favorite games. The rating system also helps steer you towards the kinds of websites you are looking for and make it a breeze to find great stuff.

I can easily seeing this becoming a great first stop for teachers when lesson planning or a top recommended link for parents who know students crave screen time, but want to make it worthwhile when students are logged on.

Do you use Power My Learning? What do you see as its benefits?

Website of the Week #1

Hoping to make this a new habit. There are so many great websites out there that I often forget what some of the great ones are! I am hoping that by posting just one a week (I'm also email blasting my teachers these) I will be able to share some great resources, remind folks of great resources, and have a nice catalog of some of my favorite sites when I want to put together a presentation or just make a recommendation to a colleague. And my hidden agenda is that maybe this will get me posting to my blog more often. :) So here is the inaugural....

Website of the Week #1

http://www.sweetsearch.com/

Tired of students going to Google for all their research? Try SweetSearch: http://www.sweetsearch.com/

Sweet Search uses only the 35,000 Websites that their staff of researchers, librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved. This helps students find good information faster. Consider recommending this site to students for all their research!

Have you had good luck using Sweet Search? What do students think? Would love to hear your stories!