Smarthistory: Khan Academy for Art Teachers

Smarthistory, presented by the Khan Academy in collaboration with several museums, is a wonderful resource for art teachers looking to add some technology components into their lessons.  The website explains their purpose as:
Smarthistory.org is a free and open, not-for-profit, art history textbook. Part of the Khan Academy, we use multimedia to deliver unscripted conversations between art historians about the history of art.

My first impressions of this resource after stumbling upon the site while searching for video about Van Gogh's Starry Night are that this could be a great tool for the art teacher, especially at the Middle and High School levels.  Art and Art History are expansive topics, but the site organizes artists and movements through an interactive timeline making it easy to find what you need.

All of the features of the site are well thought out and highly organized.  The conversations, links, videos, and shared Flickr images give the art teacher multiple methods for presenting art pieces and explaining their significance to the art world.  Since I am an elementary art teacher, I would share with you that my students are not going to be browsing this site on their own due to the many nudes that are displayed in several different pieces, but the middle and high school teachers could probably let their students use this site for research as long as there is an understanding between the teacher and his/her students about how to approach such images in art.

Interactive Volcano Lessons

After watching some of our 3rd grade students work on Volcanoes in Science class, I started looking around for   some resources and interactive activities and found a blog post that discusses several great resources for students to use to learn more about volcanoes.  I initially started writing this post in the fall and just recently found the draft after I uncovered   Discovery Channel's Volcano Explorer which allows students to simulate and design different aspects of a volcano, like lava makeup and amount of gases contained inside.   When students make their selections the Volcano Explorer provides a short explanation of how those settings will affect the shape of the volcano and its eruption.

Learnzillion Common Core Math Videos

 Mastery Connect hosts an active community of teachers who are sharing lesson ideas built around the Common Core standards. Now you can also find more than 300 LearnZillion videos in the Mastery Connect community. 
All of these videos are tied to Common Core Standards from grades 3-9.   If you would like to add a video to your lesson plan, head over to the Learnzillion site and explore their offerings which also list the standard they are covering.  Most of them are recorded whiteboard lessons that are good for going over together as a class or individual review.  If you create a free account, you will be able to create video playlists and also connect and communicate with other members through comments and discussions on the pages.

Daily Awesome: Automatoon

Automatoon is a free online animation tool that has simple tools easy enough for a KDG student to use, but in the hands of someone creative and willing could create complex animations that you can post to anywhere on the web.  

Alas, I waited to long to post this find as the link will take you to a message from it's creators which are not allowing any new users and are collaborating with  AnimAction.com to release anew version as well as a version specifically for classroom use.  That was in October.  Let's hope they are at work on this and get it to the world soon because this would be a lot of fun to use in the classroom letting students animate scientific changes or create a verb word and giving the word that action.  Possibilities are endless and students will love to get their hands on this!

Facebook and Fakebook

In our social media-enhanced lives, it is easy for us to forget how not too long ago keeping in touch was a major hurdle in rural school systems.  Passing information through the grapevine now takes on a new meaning as tweets and wall updates have replaced the newsletter and even e-mails to an extent.

As my building begins to dive deeper into the "high touch" aspects of using Facebook to more effectively communicate with parents and community members, I can't help but think of how we would achieve better communication in our school without social media?  It seems so long ago that we were facing these challenges without social media, only it was just a few years back when most of us were navigating the social realm and trying to engineer ways for both sharing and managing our lives for all to see.

Sitting in the parent meetings about what their take is on the use of Facebook makes me reminisce back to when I was trying to find a Facebook voice and wondering how this was going to fit into my life.  Thankfully for our students, our teachers have been a part of this evolution and are now ready to impart knowledge of how to successfully manage such networks without both inflicting or receiving harm from our circles of followers out there in cyberspace.

But how do we teach these 21st century skills to our students?  One way, is to leverage the technology being produced around us to inject classroom curriculum goals into technology projects and use modern influences to drive real learning and smash together media literacy with grade level standards.
Enter Fakebook...

Fakebook by Classtools has given teachers the ability to create fictitious Facebook pages that can be used to increase understanding of classroom concepts while teaching younger students about what is OK to place online for all to see.  Imagine a teacher in class using Fakebook to create profiles for story characters or in my art/tech classroom creating profiles for artists or even for famous technology pioneers.  All of this while also discussing with students proper e-etiquette when negotiating social networking sites.  Fakebook requires no registration, but has limited features, but with an email address you can use My Fake Wall to add more content and even give fake wall updates.

Tech Tool 'O' the Week: Viewbix

I am not sure where or when I ran across this, on a little sticky note inside my sketchbook I just noticed the word"Viewbix" written on it.  After a quick search, I remembered why I wanted to blog this.
Viewbix works with several video sharing sites to create interactive apps that can be embedded into videos.  Did your head just explode?  Mine did when I first was reading about it.  The pic below can give you a little bit more of an idea:

With Viewbix, you can take a video and add widgets to it.  The menu along the side shows some of the many things that you can add to your video to enrich any activity or lesson explanation, giving students options to continue learning more about the lesson, watching more videos, completing a document for an assignment, or visiting a webpage with more information.

I can see this as being a great way to introduce concepts to students, embedding this video into your website or blog so students can view it and continue along with attached activities and assignments.  Perfect for the kid who missed the day you introduced a concept in the classroom as well!  The power of this free tool is hard to measure, but the potential is enormous.

Viewbix

Tech Tool(s) 'O' the Week: Drawing Tools

I have been looking for a good web-based drawing tool for the 4th grade students to use to create a cityscape instead of using MS Paint or PowerPoint's drawing tools to practice our CTRL-C and CTRL-V keyboard shortcuts (windows on buildings can be tedious until you learn about Shift+click for multiple selections).  I came across a blog post that showcases 11 different free online drawing tools and decided to pick a few of my faves from them.

1.  Sketchpad
Lots of options, all kinds of ways to create, print, and save without the need of a username or password. very cool for just free-drawing and using all of the options to make something cool.
2.  ArtPad
Not a lot of tools, but having the ability to replay your steps to create a movie of you making a drawing is really neat.
3.  Odosketch
Again, not a lot of tools, but what it does is use charcoal and watercolor brushes well to give your artwork that nice sumi-e effect.
4.  WebSketch
Great introduction to vector art, but the controls are a little weird and I can't quite figure out where the drawing goes when you save it.  The app does, however, solve the problem with making vector art understandable.
5.  Sketchcast
People in my profession have to be raving about this!  I haven't played with it nearly enough, but what I have done I likey a lot!  Record your voice and a drawing at the same time?  Sign me up!

That's just five drawing tools, there are more in the Google Chrome web store and apps for your IPads and smartphones as well.  None of these use copy and paste functions or have easy to access and control shape-making tools, which is what I need for the project!  I'll keep looking...

Tech Tool 'o' the Week: Page-o-rama

We were having discussions around the building last week about how we can give the students a little more online presence and this tool seems to have everything we need. Page-o-rama is a web-based tool that gets students published on the web without the use of an email address or password (unless you want to continue editing the page after your first visit, that requires an email address).

This little web app could be the answer that teachers are looking for to get elementary students without email accounts to publish online.  Other applications could include creating a quick, standalone page for class announcements or a group project that the teacher can do with their class to create a learning guide for a specific topic. Think of any other ideas?  Hit me up with a comment and share!

This tech tool can be found on our Monroe splash page under web tools

Tech Tool 'o' the Week: Class Parrot

Class parrot is a wonderful alternative to the usual ways teachers communicate with their classes.  Class Parrot is a website that teachers can use to send group text messages to parents to inform them of activities going on in the classroom.  Have a spelling test tomorrow?  With class parrot, you can input parent's cell phone numbers (they are kept private and are never revealed) and send them a text from the website without using your phone or giving out your cell phone number.  Almost everybody I know has a cell phone with text capabilities.  It gives teachers the ability to bridge the digital divide among students and parents by meeting the people who are unable to check your website halfway and communicate with them by text, which most people have available to them right now.
A link to Class Parrot can also be found on our splash page under the web tools tab.

Tech Tool 'o' the Week: Wallwisher

Wallwisher explains their tool as an "online notice board maker"  where people (in this case, students, teachers, and the rest of the school community) can post virtual post-it notes to a "wall" with it's own web address.

Easy to use, and feature-packed, people can put images, links, pics, or videos onto a sticky note and post it to the wall based on the topic of the board.

My hope is to use Wallwisher soon.  It has a lot of educational uses.

A link to Wallwisher can also be found on the Monroe splash page under the "web tools" category