Mar 4
Alphabet Rain is quick and free game to help elementary students with their typing. As letters fall from the top of the screen the student hits the corresponding key on the keyboard and earns points. Each round lasts a minute and gets progressively more difficult, and would be a great warm up for a lab or keyboarding session.
Although not specifically education related, I wanted to take a moment to highlight Snopes. com, the best site on the web for information about urban legends or scams. Snopes provides some history of the urban legend or scam, and information to confirm or deny the accuracy of it. It allows you to browse by category such as: Crime, Computers, or Fraud or you can use the sites built in search to find a particular myth.
So the next time you or your students hear about a gang initiation activities at a local Walmart, or an email claiming Bill Gates will give you $100 if you forward the email on take a moment and check out Snopes.com.
NY Times – Inside the Olympic Action:
“The New York Times has good collection of videos and audio slideshows designed to take you ‘inside the action‘ of Winter Olympic events. The videos will take you down a luge run at 90mph, through a snowboard half pipe, and down the men’s downhill ski course. Along the way athletes and coaches explain intricacies of each event and how the athletes maneuver through their events.
Applications for Education
Inside the Action could be a good resource for learning about Olympic events from an ‘insider’s perspective.’ You might want to use these videos in conjunction with a Google Maps Street View tour of the Winter Olympics.”
(Via FreeTech4Teachers.com.)
NASA Lunar Simulator on iPhone and iPod Touch:
I don’t often write posts about iPhone apps or iPod Touch apps, but today I learned about one that I had to pass along. NASA recently released an iPhone app that they’re calling the Lunar Electric Rover Simulator. As I don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch myself, I haven’t been able to try it yet, but the Lunar Electric Rover Simulator looks like it could be a fun learning experience for students that have iPhones or iPod Touches. The app is free and can be found in the app store where you can see more screen shots of the app in action.
Mashable, which is where I learned about the app, has some more information that you may be interested in reading.”
(Via FreeTech4Teachers.com.)
This morning many of us were awoken by a magnitude 3.8 earthquake that struck northern Illinois, likely many of your students were as well. Below is the link the US Geological Survey’s site on the event, and if more resources are found they will be added here as well.
US Geological Survey
Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology: Education Outreach Center
FEMA for Kids: Earthquakes
Global Earthquake Response Center
Chicago Tribune: Mild Earthquake Rattles Chicago Area
CNN: Earthquake rattles northern Illinois
Google News: Chicago Earthquake
BrainPop! Earthquakes
BrainPop! Plate Tectonics
BrainPop! Natural Disasters
Discovery Education: What are the odds? Earthquakes in the Midwest
Feb 9
Feb 8
We are aware of an issue keeping users from sending email and are working with Google to resolve. Will keep you updated.
Update: And we’re back.
Recently posted on FreeTech4Teachers is a list of 6 video/presentation resources that help explain Fair Use from a teacher’s perspective. The post is well written and the linked resource are great. I strongly encourage you to take a look.
A Brief Timeline of FDR’s WWII Decisions:
“Yesterday, while exploring Time’s website I came across this timeline featuring the key decisions made by President Roosevelt during World War II. The World at War is an interactive timeline in which you can click on any of the key decisions listed to learn more about those decisions. The decisions interspersed amongst other key events of WWII. None of the events are terribly detailed, but the timeline does provide a nice general overview.
Applications for Education
The World at War could be a good introductory resource or review resource for US History teachers and their students. Teachers could have each student in a class select an item from the timeline to research and teach to their classmates. ”
(Via FreeTech4Teachers.)
TIME Magazine Interactive World at War Timeline
Apple Pages Logo
I Work in Pages: Design a holiday greeting in Pages:
“With the holiday season approaching many of you will be looking for ways to do greetings projects. Pages is a fun tool to accomplish them – with all the family taking part.
Clipart is one way of designing a greeting card. But there are tools in Pages that let you design your own original holiday greeting. Here, I have put together a list of posts about tools, techniques and tricks that can help you design an original greeting. (The apple image top right is designed in Pages, read how to here)
It seems that many Pages users are simply unaware of the power that Draw Tool gives. It is not just curving lines you can create with it, with drawing tool you can do exactly what it says – draw. And ‘write’ too. In fact, you can create your own full alphabet in any language – and original cards and drawings. I have published several articles here on various uses of the drawing tool.
Here is a list of posts about curving lines and irregular shapes:
Curving lines and shapes – make them in Pages
Doodling memorable dates in Pages
Creating clipart and original shapes in Pages
Christmas graphics and clipart: a few easy tricks
Valentine: make your own in Pages
Drawing letters and numbers in Pages: Happy New Year
(Via I Work in Pages.)
