SlideShare

This past year, I was faced with the challenge of teaching 4th and 5th graders how to use computers. A great majority of them had never really used one, and even the few who did were unfamiliar with the terms and use - we spent a long time talking about how to select choices with radio buttons, how to use the trackpad, and how to save files. But there were never complaints, and anytime I asked my kids to do any task that would have usually been met with groans, I told them we would do it on the computers and they did everything I asked so as to get on the laptops ASAP. They were so excited to use Power Point, and were really positive on their feedback of other student's presentations. They asked if I could share the presentations on my Science Class blog, but I soon tired of embedding.

SlideShare is a great alternative. You can create an account, add tags, and even mark if you don't want others to download the presentations. It works for documents as well, and you can search other people's documents to see if there is anything you need! I shared my jeopardy power points, so that I can just email other teachers a link and they can use it directly from the site, or download to their computer. Also, I feel like I always email attachments and then the next day improve the file somehow. This way, I can improve the file and the changes will keep updating the original file. Click the link above to see what I mean, and you can leave a link to your page in the comments as well!

Google Gadgets For Vocab

Google Docs' official blog just announced Gadgets that are perfect for classroom use. You can read all about it on the blog, but here is a quick rundown:

• Flash Cards: Put your vocab words into the spreadsheet, add the gadget, and voila! You can play a little game to check out your vocab skills.

• Word Study: Play vocab games, and you can type in your own clues or have them fetched from the internet!

• Interactive Word Search: Great way to help with spelling, and you can play in the browser.

What a great way to get kids excited about vocabulary. I can see some of my students even working on these outside of school!

Play movies in class!

I wrote earlier about how to play YouTube in the classroom even if it's blocked by district firewalls. I mention Miro which is a great player of videos, where you can search, subscribe to channels (I love Discovery Science!) and download videos to play later. Here is a "How To" to get you started:

How To Use Miro

Google Docs/Forms for quizzes

I love the idea of using Google Docs to have students type up reports, book answers, or whatever, but I still hae to figure out how to get around getting 200 accounts for my elementary school kids, whose parents might not want them to have email. Until then, I realized I can still use Google Forms!

Google Forms allows you to create a questionaire, survey or quiz and let your kids fill it out simply by accessing a web page. Of course, the URL is nasty but I just shortened it with TinyURL with the name of the quiz, it's much easier that way.

Sample Form (please fill out!)

After (or while) the students are filling out the forms, you can get a spreadsheet of results WITH graphs of how they answered! Check out the responses to my Sample Form.

You can make questions mandatory or optional, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the spreadsheet, and you can sort the spreadsheet by last name (I made two seperate questions to facilitate this, "first name" and "last name", and "teacher's name" since I am in 8 different classrooms).

Finally, my favorite part - you can select a column to code for right or wrong answers. I asked it to highlight everything in red that said "no", "east" or "west" (to answer, what are magnetic poles called), and whatever else signaled a wrong answer. Or you can code green when you ask an essay question that signals a correct answer for using key vocabulary (pole, attract, iron for magnet concepts). It makes everything so easy to grade!

How does using Google Forms help you in your classes? Any questions or tips?

YouTube in the classroom!

Wow, why did I not include this earlier! This trinket comes from one of my favorite websites ever, Lifehacker.com - a forum for, well everything. They published a post on the Top 10 YouTube Hacks which is a teacher's dream!

My biggest problem is showing YouTube videos in class, because my district blocks YouTube. One way is to use TeacherTube.com but they may not always have the video you need. Solution? I use Miro (get it at www.miro.com), which fetches the videos and downloads them (beginner) so it's a file instead of a webpage, but you can also subscribe to channels (advanced) and it will automatically download new videocasts for you! For instance, I subscribed to the Amazing Human Body channel, and anytime I needed to fill 3 minutes in class, I had a video ready to go on superhuman strength, bones, or muscles.

In conclusion, there are some GREAT Math, Science, and of course English and History videos, so use them in your class, even if you have a firewall :) Please please PLEASE use the comment section to link to your favorite videos, or talk about other YouTube hacks!

See who sees your site, and who reads your blog!

 Today's Trinket is more of a behind the scenes tool for teachers, and is probably for more advanced users. But feel free to ask questions of me in the comments!

Ok, I am a huge Goog-a-phile. They have so many things that are teacher friendly, and have really changed the way I use the internet. My latest favorite is Google Analytics, a free tool that lets you track traffic to your site or blog. Web Analytics is a new up and coming field that looks and where people are looking at your site, how long they stay, how many repeat users you have, what pages they look at, etc. It's pretty simple to use, and very entertaining! 

For instance, a day after I started this blog I saw that I had 13 unique visitors to this site, which was viewed 20 times! That means that some of those 13 people went to my blog more than than others (let's call those people my favorites). I can also see that there are people in Mountain View looking at it (want to hire me yet Google?!) and also people in Illinois. The average time on the site is 2 minutes, so I know I need to make my posts short for their attention span, but it looks like people are reading it! 

So, sign up (you don't have a google account yet! Oh my! Get one NOW and turn your life around!) and put the code they give you into the HTML (lots of webpage tools or blog tools have a spot where you can "edit html", find that and stick it in - don't worry, it's invisible to everyone else!). Then watch the graphs, see if your children look at your site, and think about maybe how you can improve based on this info.

Any other ideas? Leave some comments for others to read!