Links to Lotsa Stuff

Doing research for teaching The Alchemist led to some great links, and here is one of the first greats. This is from Oakmont Regional High School.

2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge

This is so up my alley. I love to read, and currently, young adult books fit my lifestyle. I can pick one up and finish it without spending hours and hours on it. So I am in for the Super Size Challenge, which is a lot of books. Happy reading!

On a techie note, I have personally been so challenged trying to add podcasts to the blog. I won't give up, but if I fail this class, I will personally be really outrageously upset with myself.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/austinevan/ / CC BY 2.0

AutoMotivator

This is my first blog after my class has ended. :( While I am enjoying lots of sleep, I want to get in the habit of continuing to evaluate websites that I might be able to use. This one is very simple, and I a huge fan of simplicity.

AutoMotivator is a site that allows users to choose or upload a photo and add motivating text. Users can choose the text color and either download it to their computer, or save it to Flickr, or even order a poster size of the image.

On a scale of 1 to 5 for ease of use in a Deaf Ed room, I would have to rate this a 5. Very easy. Very effective.

BP#14_2009124_Tool#5_Timerime

Timerime is a web 2.0 tool that allows students to build a timeline for their personal use. Texts, images, and links can all be placed in one location that will allow a student to see how everything relates to each other. Implementing text on a map can show a student where an event took place in relation to where they are, and also in relation to where they are studying. Images, either taken by the student on a camera or phone, or uploaded from Flickr or another photosharing site, can allow the student to visualize what certain events were like. Students can do further research and add links to a timeline. All of these abilities make for an excellent study aid or project for students in lieu of the traditional research paper. An excellent extension would be for a student to overlay two sets of information on one timeline, for example, Texas History and American History, or two different sets of legislation on a single timeline.

The student can make their own line, and either make it private for their own study, or invite others to add to the line. This would be a different way of looking at a family tree project in elementary school, or for an economics group project in high school.

Timerime is an excellent tool with few drawbacks. I do not like the fact that students would have to register, or the fact that it may be blocked by a school’s filter. On a scale of 1 to 5, for ease of use in a Deaf Ed room, I would give it a 4.

BP#13_2009123_PeerReviewSmith

Here is a comment added to my friend Karen's blog. She found a wonderful typing site that will allow a little or a lot of practice without registering or an account. My middle school students need this. So do I!

BP#12_2009123_PeerReviewWest

Here is a copy of the comment I left on Mark West's site. He has a great link to an art web 2.0 tool, and the cool thing is that it a great way to teach higher order thinking skills, as well as copyright info.

BP#15_2009124_Tool#5_Wordsift

Wordsift is one of the greatest finds that I have seen this month. It is an essential tool in a classroom full of English Language Learners (ELL) or English as a Second Language (ESL) students, or even Deaf Education students. Students that struggle with reading will find this as comparable as an interpreter in a room of gibberish. From the site itself:

" . . . think of a word much like a soccer ball or hackeysack. Think of a classroom as kind of playground in which words can be kicked around for fun and for learning - not drill and kill, nor list and define. WordSift enables teachers to create an environment where language is "talked about" as richly as possible. Much of language cannot be taught directly, but much of language is learned through active talk, so why not have a way of talking about language? Try pasting some text into WordSift, display it to your class, and talk about what you see. Be spontaneous and generative -- that is the stuff that forms the basis of strong language acquisition."

Students can use an online textbook and cut and paste the chapter into the text box. Then, after pressing sift, the words are placed in a cloud with the most often occurring word receiving the largest text. Also, Visual Thesaurus is place on the page, with the words already highlighted for easy lookup. On the left of the screen is a gallery of pictures that changes with the click of a word. For example, "valley" will bring up multiple images of different valleys. What better way to teach a word than to show many examples of it?

I vividly remember my undergrad teacher, Dr. Bird expressing his dismay at my class and the ideas of how to teach a simple vocabulary word like "bowl." The best way, he exclaimed, was to just bring about 25 or 30 different bowls to class and let the kids see them. Variety and simplicity. The spice of life.

A third and most excellent element in this site is that under the Visual Thesaurus, there is a list of sentences with the highlighted word shown. So not only are the words separated, defined, and illustrated, they are also placed back in context for the student to understand.

On a scale of 1 to 5 for ease of use in a Deaf Ed classroom, this rates a 5 about a million times.