Free Everything!

Educational Freeware is a site dedicated to offering the best educational games, software, and websites free of charge for teachers or anyone else dedicated to education. I have utilized this site for a couple years and I am nowhere near exhausting all of the free educational resources that it offers. Every teacher should keep this site at the top of their favorites list. Educational Freeware also has a Multilanguage feature which allows users to sort through the free products by language.

Unlike many other sites that claim to have free educational software, the education free ware site is free from all pop ups and annoying advertising and extremely easy to navigate. One of my favorite applications I found on Educational freeware is Google Bodies. The only way to describe Google Bodies would be to say that it is a fully controllable digital version of Gray’s anatomy. In addition to just giving you the link to the site Educational Freeware gives users detailed instruction on how to access and use the site in an effective manner.

Education Freeware not only does this for Google Bodies, but also for most of the hundreds of other games, software, and websites they have compiled. This site is a great resource for teachers of all grade level and content areas. I could go on and on about all of the features available on this site, but it would be much easier if you just clicked the link below and checked it out for yourself. Trust me you will not be disappointed.

Educational Freeware Link

Do You Weebly?

Weebly website maker is the easiest and most intuitive website creator I have ever used.  Did I mention that it is also free!  Not just free web creation but also free hosting!  Weebly also has many widgets available in addition to one click Google Ad sense set up.

I use Weebly website creator as the culminating project in my computer class every year. I have the students set up a website of their own creation, something that will draw as many viewers as possible and then have them set up a Google Adsense account for their site. High school students love projects with real world implications and the ability for them to make money through a class project is as real as it gets for students.  A great feature about weebly is that you can upgrade your site at anytime without losing any of your content. The pay portion of the site allows users to drop the weebly address from the domain in addition to a host of bonus features.

 I find that the basic site is more than enough for students to complete their project, but I know a few students who have upgraded on their own and from what I have heard are actually making a few dollars on their sites.

Don’t take my word for it though, check it out for yourself.  What do you have to lose it is free!

Click the link below create your very own free website.

Weebly Link

Are You Historically Relevant? Digital Story Telling Project

Getting my 10th grade U.S. History students excited about historically relevant figures is an uphill battle to say the least. One way I have found to make them sit up and listen is when I start making connections to events of the past and how they effect the lives of the students today. Some of my most teachable moments occur when I can make a personal connection with a historical figure or event to the lives of my students. In my opinion history is a personal experience and the more personal you can make it for you students the better they will learn and retain the content provided.

The assignment I created for my 10th grade U.S. History class consists of the students researching a historically relevant figure that shares personal and possibly professional characteristics with the student. My goal is that students will make a connection with history and realize that the people and events we talk about in class have relevance in their modern lives. It is important for the students to know that most people share the same hopes, goals, and dreams and with a lot of hard work and ingenuity they make be able to be historically relevant one day.

I have included a link to my assignment page below that contains an example Prezi that I made.

Link to my assignment page

Please let me know what you think. I appreciate any and all feedback.

Thanks

Erik

Digital Storytelling, A Great Assignment for a Great Price

Digital stories are a great way to connect with your students while simultaneously allowing them to work with new technologies and have their voice herd. I have used digital stories in my classroom for the past two years with great success. The culminating project we complete is a me story. A me story is basically a biography of the student which tells where the student comes from, where they are now and where they are headed in the future. I have found that the most interesting topic for my high school students is themselves and the me story allows them to study and present their favorite topic to the class. With the me story project in full swing I have decided to add another digital storytelling assignment to my curriculum.

The new digital story telling assignment will consist of the students researching a historical figure and presenting on how that figure inspires them as well as the similarities and differences between the historical figure and the students. The students will also explain a personal connection that they share with the teachings or actions of the particular historical figure. This assignment would fit in perfectly with by 10th grade US History curriculum.

The students would create their digital story using free photo story software and I would allow some of my more advanced students to use Windows Movie Maker. In order to facilitate this project I would recommend a few websites to get the students started and allow them to integrate sites of their own once they became more comfortable with the digital story telling assignment. In addition, I would create a digital story of my own to use as an example so the students could get an idea of what was expected of them. I find that a good example is often more effective than two hours of explanation.

I have listed some of the initial sites I would have my students research below

Photostory tutorial 

Biography on many famous United States figures

The History of Storytelling

digital storytelling on Prezi

This presentation was made using Prezi. Prezi is a free program that allows you to take your presentations to the next level. Start using Prezi today and see the difference in your classroom.

Take a picture or record your screen for less than the price of a can of beans.

How many times have you wanted to take a picture or record live action from your computer screen?  If your answer is all the time, then I have your solution, Jing. Yes that’s right I said the answer to your question is Jing. Jing allows you to take instant screen shots or short videos directly from your computer screen. In addition, Jing also allows you to label and alter the screen shots before you save them to your computer.

As a teacher I use Jing almost every day. For example, I take screen shots of students’ assignments, comment on the assignment and email the graded and commented assignment back to the student. Jing is also great for communicating with faculty and administrators. I do not know how many times I have used Jing to help a faculty member solve a computer problem using Jing. Imagine being able to take a picture of your computer screen with an arrow and text pointing to the fix of a problem.

Jing can also be used to create short videos with sound, which I find to make great anticipatory sets when the day begins. The best part of all is that Jing is totally FREE! Techsmith, the company that owns Jing does allow free users to upgrade for additional features and recording time, but I find the free version is more than sufficient for my use. Try Jing and you will prove to yourself all over again that a picture is truly worth a thousand words.

Click the link to download Jing for free. 

Jing Homepage 

Build Your Own Student Response System For Free

Student response systems such as the promethean have become all the rage in many educational technology circles.   I have spent many nights dreaming about the difference I could make in the classroom if I had all of the systems that have been modeled to me in my years of teaching only to wake up to the reality that I have two computers in my classroom without internet access. Never being one to become discouraged, I often try to figure out ways in which I can implement state of the art classroom technology in a way that is free or at a fraction of the price of the actual hardware being marketed.

About two years ago a Promethean sales representative came to our school and modeled their instant response system to a few teachers and our administration. Knowing that my administration did not have the money for the system I came up with an idea for a student response system of my own.

As a high school teacher I spend a lot of time enforcing the no cell phone policy at my school. I figured that this was a losing battle and tried to figure out a way to implement cell phone use as a positive force in the classroom. So I decided to ignore the school cell phone policy of my school (much to the dismay of my administration) and began allowing students to use them in my class. For example, you need to send or receive a text just raise your hand and ask.  I have found that this policy has actually reduced the cell phone use in my class.

Recently I have had students using their phones as an instant response system in my class. All I did was set up a gmail account and gave all of the students the address. Next I added multiple choice questions and short answer sections to my presentations. Now when one of these slides with questions comes up, students send a text to the email and it is projected on a split screen for the whole class to see.  I initially gave a participation grade for correct answers, but have recently began giving quizzes in the same manner.

 I have found that implementing this student response system has dramatically increased student attention (because students never know when a quiz question will pop up) and interest in my lessons. 

The best part of this whole idea is that it did not cost me or the school one dollar, which now has my school rethinking their cell phone policy.

image courtesy of  http://blog.interactiveachievement.com

Check out the link for a wiki on how to set up your own student response system

student response system link

Make your own smarboard for a price you can afford.

After a few years of teaching, I figured out quickly that if I wanted the best resources for my students I would have to obtain them myself. I am always on the lookout for new technologies to share with my class at a fraction of retail price. Sometimes in my pursuit of these deals I have found myself in some very dark internet back alleys (does frostwire ring any bells). Other times my search leads me down bright open roads where people way smarter then me decide to share inventions of their own creation with the world for no price at all. Fortunately the shoestring budget I will be sharing this week is from the latter of my searches.

My shoestring budget tip of this week is how to make a smart board from a Nintendo Wii controller.  All that you need to set up your own Wii smart board is a Nintendo Wii controller, an infrared pen that can be purchased or made (see my picture below), a computer, a projector, and a simple free piece of software courtesy of Johnny Chung Lee. In fact Mr. Lee not only wrote the open source software, he actually came up with the whole package.

You can connect to the following link and Mr. Lee will show you in a step by step manner  how to create your own Wii smart board. Also included in the page is a link to the free software that makes the whole smart board work.  Johnny Chung Lee Smart board page  

I have personally made one of these smart boards and they work great. You just have to watch out the students do not get between the Wii Remote and infrared pen. This problem can be overcome by placing the remote in a strategic manner (see below illustration).  If you have any questions please do not hesitate to post them below.

Now what are you waiting for go out and make your smart board!

Image courtesy of http://www.jaftalks.com/Home/Show/Smartboard-whiteboard-Wii-remote

Are we doing what is best for our students?

Are we doing what is best for our students?

I believe that is a question teachers and administrators should ask themselves on a daily basis.
I have had the opportunity to teach in both the public a private sector and have found that most teachers do want the best for their students. Now do not get me wrong there are always a few teachers at a school that do not care for the students, but it is my experience these individuals are often in the minority.
I think that we are not doing what is best for our students because most of us are not given the ability to do what is best for our students.  Our society evolves so quickly that the educational system cannot catch up.  Combine that with a system that is slow to embrace change and you have a readymade educational disaster on your hands.
If we are to bring the American Educational system back to first in the world, a grassroots approach should be implemented starting with teachers and moving all the way up the chain of command to the department of education.   I suggest the following steps to all who are interested.
1.  Educate your administration on the connection digital education and critical thinking skills
2.  Start or join an organization that advocates against standardized testing as a way to promote students and pay teachers.
3. Enlighten your community about your role as a teacher; we have let our profession become a political issue.  We should be framing education as a human rights issue (ie. Everyone has a right to a great education).
4. Bring discipline back to the classroom. Even if your administration does not hold students accountable, let students know that they will be held accountable in your classroom.
5. Help promote digital learning and other current educational strategies in your school by hosting in services and creating a professional learning group at your school.
I have found that if you give people the opportunity to rise to an occasion they often do. I challenge everyone to implement a few or all of these ideas into their current school and to add some ideas to the five ideas I have listed above.
 I look forward to hearing your ideas on how we can do what is best for our students