Today's Tech Tip was discovered on Free Technology For Teachers. It's a good one! It is called Prodigy and I have a feeling that the name is very appropriate. It gamifies math in such a way that your child will not want to stop doing math. It is hard to believe but I am finding it to be true. Prodigy is a FREE online game in which students can create their own avatar and are given challenges to save the good guy by attacking the bad guys through math problems. The user interface really is very appealing and is quite addictive. This would make a fabulous center activity within your classroom or serve as a great resource for extra practice at home.
A couple of Prodigy tips for our particular school community: I selected Texas as our curriculum because well, I am from Texas. However, the other options to choose from for the U.S. are Common Core or Florida. I went with Texas. Second, I had to select a grade above my child's grade level to find the skills that I need for my child to practice to be in line with her grade level. I also created a teacher log in (but parents can create a log in too) and assigned my child "assignments" that target specific skills. I love this resource and I think you will too! Explore it at ProdigyGame.com.
Today's tech tip is all about a resource that most, if not all of us, already know about. It is Common Sense Media. The reason, however, that I am sharing it with you is because in a recent technology exploratory class, I realized that so much of what we think our students know about online safety and protecting our personal information is really something that we take for granted. Digital Citizenship is a topic that we need to circle back to often and it isn't a topic that should be left to the guidance counselor or to the technology coach. It is the responsibility of all of us to insert teachable moments about digital citizenship wherever and whenever possible.
I realize that this is easier said than done. It is challenging even for me and I teach a class centered around technology usage! Therefore, I have started framing these mini lessons as Brain Breaks (even though the students' brains are getting the opposite of a break during these thought-provoking sessions) but it does redirect their focus in a way that gets them prepped for the topic. This brings me to my original subject: Common Sense Media. This resource, free to all, is a great source of inspiration when I'm searching for a creative way to broach a specific topic that has to do with digital citizenship. Today, for example, since my students have been working on building a website for a product that they invented, it was the perfect opportunity to remind students of their responsibility as they enter the dark hole of the Internet and publish their own websites.
On Common Sense Media, I found a host of hot topics in the form of different scenarios and allowed my students to role play each scene to create a digital citizenship skit that teaches all of us about the do's and don'ts when it comes to netiquette and online safety. It was an active exercise forcing us to get moving, start planning, and be creative about the ways in which we wanted to share each of our skits. I urge you to take advantage of this resource when you get the feeling that your students could use a friendly reminder about digital citizenship and/or could use a "brain break".
BEFORE AFTER
Many of you may remember learning about smore.com as an awesome tool for creating classroom newsletters. Those of you who have used it have told me how much you absolutely love it.
Another fantastic resource for newsletters was sent to me by a colleague and I felt that it was too good not to share. This resource is all about how you can make your newsletters more readable. It even shares before and after pics of how you can improve your newsletter. The amazing thing is that the suggestions are actually quite easy and simple but they have a big impact.
To learn more about those small changes that you can make to your newsletter but that make a huge difference, click here.
To sum it all up, there are five tips that you can do to give your newsletter a facelift:
1) Make it less wordy.
2) Declutter
3) Avoid recycled content
4) Don't overdo it with clip art.
5) Make parent action items very clear.
Make your newsletters irresistible!
With so many tech tools out there, it can be completely overwhelming. This is why I am very appreciative of AASL's (American Association of School Librarian's) website that highlights the best resources each year. The best websites for teaching and learning of 2014 recently came out so today I'd like to highlight just one of those resources.
It is a website called Stoodle and it can be accessed from any device. Stoodle is recommended for grades K through 12. This is a tool that allows teachers, students, parents, or anyone to communicate via a whiteboard. To see it in action, go to this link and you can join my "conversation". To entice you to join the conversation on the whiteboard that I've created, you will find the answer to the following joke: What is the math teacher's favorite sum? I know you really want to know the answer!
Stoodle doesn't require a log in and can be a helpful tool for brainstorming, solving math problems, studying vocab words, making a reading list, voting, creating study guides, and more. You can upload images, links, text, and you can even draw on the whiteboard. It really is a powerful tool to make connections while learning.
