Anne Frank and the Secret Annex

Are you always looking for new materials and interactive resources to use with your students?  If so you will have to check out this website. http://www.annefrank.org/en/Subsites/Home/  This website it packed with really great information about Anne Frank and the struggles that she had to go through.  There is a 3D house which you and your students can tour and actually see where Anne hid out when she needed to.  There are some great videos of real footage from World War 2 as well as tons of information about the occupants that lived in the house as well as many other great resources.  If you like this website and you would be interested in more great websites (K-12) sign up here to receive emails when anything new is posted. After signing up look for the follow up email which will verify your subscription.

Online Children's Museum

FRABOOM!!!!!

I know it sounds like something went wrong but this website is totally right! Fraboom is a fun interactive website for children of all ages.  Fraboom is free for the most part but they do offer some other features for a monthly fee. With the free version of Fraboom students and teachers will have access to live classes that are taught by teachers, the classes change on a daily basis. Fraboom also has games that are educational and videos that help explain topics like the solar system.  You will also have the ability to check out some pretty cool interactive books that read the book to you if you choose.  Within the book you also have the ability to click on different parts for more information on that topic.  All of this is part of the free version and really with the paid version all you really gain is the ability to watch a few more videos, participate in the live classes and keep track of your points that you can earn by playing the games.  The choice is yours but it is definitely worth checking out.

Interactive Periodic Table of Elements

High school Chemistry would have been so much easier if I would have had this tool in front of me!  ptable.com offers a great interactive Periodic Table of Elements.  Click on any of the elements and it will give you a complete description of what the element is and how it is used.  Not sure what the Alkali Metals are just hover over the Alkali Metals tab and ptable.com will highlight all of the metals for you to quickly view. This is a great resource that not only teachers can use within their classroom but also a great study tool for students as well.

Quick Presentations

Qwiki is a fairly new website that could change the way that we search for information.  It is unlike all other search engines that I have come across.  Qwiki is very different website that lets you type in your search terms and then it will actually take wikipedia entries and photos and turn them into a fairly decent presentation.  It is still in its beta version but I think that with a little more work this can be a very valuable website.  The best part of Qwiki is the ability to type in what you would like to search for and have a pretty good explanation within just a couple of seconds.  It is very easy to use and it will definitely save you some time.  Qwiki now also offers an iPad app that will do the same things as the website but bundled into a nice easy to use application.

Let Google Docs and Flubaroo do the Grading!

Why do all of the grading when Google Docs and Flubaroo can do it for you. If you use Google Docs there is a great new tool that can be added to your Google Docs account, the name may sound funny but what it can do will amaze you.  Flubaroo.com provides a very nice set of instructions on how to use their tool located here.  Once you have the script installed and you have created your form you will just click on the grade assignment and then tell flubaroo what answers you are looking for and it does the rest for you.  Imagine grading 160 assignments in less then two minutes.  Sounds good to me!

Check out the video!

14 Minute Webinar

How to Engage Your Students with 21st Century Projects

Simplek12.com is offering another webinar that you may be interested in .  This webinar is based on 21st Century Projects and ways that you can help engage your students using these great tools.  According to Simplek12's blog post this webinar will only take 14 minutes.  You can choose from three different days.  The webinars are Tuesday, March 22 at 5:00 PM, Wednesday, March 23 at 9:00 AM and Saturday, March 26 at 11:00 AM.  To register for the webinar just go to this link.  

Transforming Education through Technology

For the past year I have been receiving a wonderful publication from The Journal that I would like to recommend to everyone.  The Journal whose goal is to Transform Education through Technology is a great way to learn about new tools that are available in this ever-changing world of Education and Technology.  Each month you can choose to receive the digital or the print version of the magazine.  Within every issue there are many ideas that may help you implement technology into your classroom.  This is a great way to learn about new ideas that will help push you towards having a 21st Century classroom.  If you have a minute visit The Journal website and sign up for this free publication.

Study Jams

If you are looking for something to liven up your classroom you will have to check out Study Jams.  Study Jams is a website that is built around the Math and Science subjects.  It has animated videos that explain a several topics of Math and Science.  There is also the karaoke section which provides songs that help the students remember the steps to many problems.  You can start the video and have your students sing along.  One of the nicest parts of Study Jams is the step through process on the Math section.  This takes math problems and shows the students step by step how to complete them.  All of the lessons are animated and all of them contain quizzes that you can use to help evaluate how your students are doing.  When you get a chance check out Study Jams!!

Great Math Manipulatives

Math Open Reference is a great website for showing geometry figures on the Promethean Board. With this website you can choose from three different categories Plane Geometry, Coordinate Geometry, and Solid Geometry.  Within the categories there are several manipulative activities that you can choose to show.  Each of the manipulative activities can be used to introduce the concept and also as an interactive lesson that the students can control.  If you don't mind the occasional ads on website this is a great place to visit.  Your students will get a lot out of seeing and controlling the manipulatives.  With these tools you will be able to help your students to focus in on the activities as well as retain the information.

Math Open Reference

Dropbox

It seems like the more that we use technology the more that we start to rely on it.  This is a good thing especially when everything is working properly but we have all been there when something goes wrong and the technology doesn't work the way that we want it to.  Recently I found a free and easy to use program that will help you back up your files so that if your computer does go down you can still access your files from any other computer.  Dropbox is a free service that allows you to have 2 GB of space out on the web for free.  All you have to do is download a quick application which will place a folder on your desktop that is connected to your Dropbox account. Place any file in this folder and it is automatically uploaded to your Dropbox account.  Now you can access your files from the folder on your computer or from the website itself on any computer that has web access.  Just imagine how useful this could be.  You create something at home, place it in your Dropbox account and it is ready for you the next day at school.  We have all had that scare when our computer isn't working properly and we are told to back up our files.  With Dropbox they are already there and we just have to log onto any computer to access the files that we backed up and we never miss a beat.  Do you have an iPhone or Droid?  Dropbox has an app for that as well.  Give it a try, I am sure you will see the benefits some day.