Scribble Maps and Google

One of the schools I visit are doing a Pacific Migration Unit and I showed some of the teachers how they could use Scribble Maps as an activity.

Each child can create their own Scribble Map illustrating where they or their family came from.
Type in the address, press Enter.



Markers

Click on the marker button

Select a marker from the choices, look at the drop down menu for more markers.


Mark the spot on the map.  



 Annotate your Markers

Add pictures and/or movies to the markers by clicking on the Advanced Editing choice. Images can only be entered by using a 'URL' Check to make sure the image you add is smaller than 300kbs. If it shows up to large in the map, you can change the width and height within the code 'width="500" height="370"' change the numbers to about width = 125 height =95





 Draw a line using the line tool on the tool bar from one spot to the other.

Add text boxes by clicking on the ABC button. Click on the arrow button to move textboxes into place

Embedding

Click on the Menu button to Save and to embed into a blog or a wiki. Choose Widget/Embed.

The one problem I did come up with is in the embedding in blogs. I had to add a small bit of code to the html, so instead of this at the end

 The Scribble map embeds fine in Wikispaces.
This example shows some of the Volcanoes in Auckland.

Other Ways to use Scribble Maps

• plot places from a novel, journal story
• famous landmarks in your own country, the country you are studying or world
• plot a famous journey (Livingston, Shackleton, Hillary, Captain Cook)
• retell the adventures of an explorer, famous person
• retell your own family's migration story
• make up your own incredible journey plot the places visited and write/illustrate what you found there
• save the maps as pictures for inserting into Documents where students enlarge on what they have been writing about
• use with an Interactive Whiteboard (or projector on a screen) to create collaborative mapping
• improve students Geography by concentrating on a country at a time and find something indigenous to that country and adding it each day as a 'When we have a few minutes spare' activity

Keep up to date with new features from Scribble Map by reading their blog.
There are so many features that I haven't discovered yet, but I am sure your students will. This is an amazing resource which is always under development and being improved.

Volcanoes, computers, animations - Authentic Context

One of my schools are studying Volcanoes at the moment, and as we live in the city of Volcanoes (Auckland), this was a great opportunity to link our learning to an authentic context.

ICT component: View this slideshow, click on the links and follow the instructions on the slide.
Work through the PowerPoint file 'Making a Volcano'

• watch the animation on how a volcano erupts
• Look at the Shake, Rattle and Roll site, take notes on what the animations look like
• Look at the animations on Weather Whizz kids and take notes
• Look at the different types of Volcanoes on Volcano Explorer, build your own virtual Volcano and see how it erupts
Volcanic Simulations
View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.

Follow the animation steps in the Animating objects PowerPoint and practice making an animation.

How to animate objects in power point

View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.

Once all of the students have made the animation, share them with the class and talk about if the animations are in the right order. Revisit Volcano Explorer and look at all of the different volcanoes and identify the different ways the volcanoes erupt.
Ask the students can they identify what type of volcano they have, and if the order of eruption correct. If not then they can work on their volcanoes to  make the necessary adjustments.

Further Activities:

• Select one of the Volcanoes in Auckland, take a photo or find a photo, crop it, identify what type of volcano it is and create a volcanic eruption simulation
• create a volcanic simulation of your local volcano, upload to Slideboom, embed in a Glogster poster explaining the type of volcano it is 
• Read 'Under the Mountain' by Maurice Gee (a fantasy fiction based some of the volcanoes in Auckland) Create a map showing the positions and type of volcano,  create a simulation for the 3 different volcanoes

Twitter? I just don't get it! A guide for teachers

I have heard the comment 'Twitter? I just don't get it!' so many times, so I have created a guide for teachers. I hope it helps!

Twitter? I just don’t get it!

View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.

Fotobabble

I was reading a post about the iPad written by @dakinane when I saw him mention a flash based application using photos 'Fotobabble.
With this application you can upload a photo, add your voice to it and then embed into your wikis or blogs.
Fotobabble could be used in  many ways in the classroom

• as an oral assessment for speeches
• oral assessment for speaking in other languages
• a way of publishing a piece of writing, (selecting a photo that represents the writing)
• publishing explanations, narratives, persuasive and procedural
• final assessment tool in presenting information
• a linear slideshow presentation with several photos and voiceovers

This is a great tool for the verbal/linguist student. It is very quick and easy to use

The Amazing Web2.0 Projects Book

This book has been compiled by Terry Freedman (@terryfreedman) website http://www.ictineducation.org/
Teachers and educationalists from all over the world have contributed examples of Web2.0 projects to this book and what a great resource it is. Teachers will find many practical ideas of how to use Web 2.0 technologies in their teaching and learning.

Amazing web 2 projects 2 online version

View more documents from terryfreedman.

PowerPoint as a modelling and teaching tool

I was helping a teacher with ideas of how to integrate ICT into her classroom programme. I asked her what her shared book was and suggested how she could teach 'Shared Book' using the class computer and a group of children. (Read the Shared book with the children first)

• Start off with a blank page, introduce the shared book, ask what the title is, type the Title in
• in the sub title box type by Room #
• Insert a new slide
• Read the text from the Shared book and then start typing it in
• ask questions like "What do I need to type first?" "What goes at the end of the sentence?"
• Computer skills are taught as they are needed i.e. "How do I make a capital letter?" "Who can show me how to type a full stop, what finger should I use?
• As the book was one about 'I can run, I can draw' etc. The teacher taught the children how to take photos, so these 5 and 6 year olds took their own photos and the teacher inserted them into their PowerPoint. 
• To finish it off she chose a design template and this was all done as part of the lesson with the children participating alongside.

 All this was part of their shared book learning experience, and put their learning into an integrated, authentic context. They now have this story on the computer as an extra reading activity.

As a follow up to this, students can take photos of other things they 'can' do and add them to this shared book or create an new one.

Word Clouds for Juniors

And yet another Word Cloud ABCya, (as tweeted by @mdanonbaird) which is perfect for Juniors.

Go to ABCya

Paste in text









Click on the Arrow 




Click on Randomize to make changes to the Word Cloud

Click on Fonts to change the font,


Colours to change the layout colours

and Layout to change the direction of the text!

Click on Save to save to your computer or print out your Word Cloud.

Simple As!

Tagxedo 'Word Cloud'

Thanks to Technololgy Bits, Bytes and Nibbles blog post and the writer @cyndidannerkuhn who posted it on twitter, I came across a new player in the 'Word Cloud' arena Tagxedo

There are a lot of choices with this Tag Cloud generator.

You have wide range of colours to choose from, interesting fonts (this example is called John Lennon).







Best of all, there is a variety of shapes or you can create your own word shape.

 There are huge opportunities for this feature to be used in education.
The word shape could be

• main theme or idea in book
• main theme of a poem
• the title of an essay/story
• main idea of story
• the focus of a science, history, social studies study

This was a blog post I wrote about Wordle in June 2008, all activities can be completed in Tagxedo
This link http://delicious.com/sharpjacqui/wordle are some of the sites I have found on Wordle or other Word clouds. This site (46 Interesting Ways to use Wordle in the classroom) by Tom Barrett is a collaborative Google Doc that anybody can add to with their ideas of how they are using Wordle.
Like Wordle you can save a jpeg or a png for printing out or inserting into blogs or wikis. But I'm looking forward to when you can embed an Interactive version called Tagxedo player like the example here on the Tagxedo site (Scroll down to the last example to see the Word Cloud dance).

Here is a great slideshow 101 ways to use Tagxedo by Hardy Leung

Lab lessons with Juniors

I was working with a computer lab teacher today looking at ways to work with students. She had a class of Year one students came in!

You need to put some sanity saving measures in when working with a class of 5 and 6 year olds in a lab. They can't sit for long, because they are too excited, so it is best to get them on the computers straight away. If possible don't have them sharing as their collaborative skills at this age aren't that great!
Beforehand you will have needed to teach a couple (or more) of more able students to help the others to log on, and then click on the programme they are going to be using i.e KidPix or Paint. Let them go for it, experimenting with the tools or doing their favourite thing. Once everybody is logged on and in the programme, THEN you can start to add some order to your lessons.

The following are the stages you could go through with Juniors
These happen over several sessions!

• free play
• while they are in free play, work with individuals showing them a new tool i.e dragging background pictures and adding stamps
• show them the typing tool and type their name (you will need a display on a wall that shows the Upper and Lower case letters for those who haven't mastered them yet)
• type the words they know how to write (have high frequency words on the wall for students to look at)
  
• first official lesson can be drawing a picture about their topic or what they are writing about in their classroom LIMIT THE TOOLS! Pencil and Paint Can ONLY
• Repeat this session many times but bring something new in when the students look ready for it like typing your name (I also teach new things to students who look like they are capable of it as I walk around)
• next session might be typing a sentence
• at some stage teach the more able students how to save (they will help you to save students work)

• once the students are used to all these steps then you might introduce a new programme/Application
• at the same time talk to the students about the magic line, put two hands on the keyboard, this hand can't cross over this side of the magic line and the other hand can't cross over that side of the magic line (I put little pieces of folded paper between the keys to create a magic line)

Once the students know the routines and how to use one or two of the programmes, then start using your computer lab time as curriculum teaching and learning time. Writing is a good area to start with. Use the projector to model your writing genre. Students can have their writing books (there should be a container of pencils in lab). Send a small group of able students to the computers to draft (use Kidpix, Kidspiration, Pages, Word etc). The rest of the students can be drafting in their books. Children could be sent off to the computers to...

• draw a picture for their story
• Type a heading for their story that could be printed out
• find a picture in Kidpix that could be printed out

While this is all going on, integrate keyboarding skills at the same time

• always remind them of the magic line
• thumbs only on the space bar
• pinkies only on the delete key
• rest fingers on the home keys (those students whose fingers can reach and are ready for it)

With little ones it is all about learning the basic skills and developing that fine motor control. Some students will need more time 'with free play'. If you have students that need mouse skills then set up Interactive Learning Centres such as...
Mouse Practice

Mouse Practice PowerPoint Show version

View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.

To make these Learning Centres follow these instructions

Finally, limit the time students are on the computers, 30 minutes is plenty of time for younger children to be staring at screen. If you have extra time over, then bring out the cameras and take photos that could be used for motivational writing or for publishing their work.
Just remember at this age more than any other age, the students will develop their skills at differing speeds...some a LOT faster than others. Identify those children that have those skills and use them to help you to teach the others. You will find that children learn best from each other!

Researching smarter

There are still a lot of teachers that are sending children off to do 'research' on Google using one key word.i.e bird (253 million hits later). When they finally find a page that has the information they want, it is invariably printed out, and trawled through looking for information.

This is long, tedious, boring and usually irrelevant!

Become a smart researcher with some of these strategies

1. have at least 3 key words if you are looking for information on birds, what sort of birds are you looking for, what country etc so now the Google search becomes 'bird native wading' and because we want to search for New Zealand Birds we click on  pages from New Zealand.
Now we have 10,400 hits!

2. Open up a mindmap/Graphic Organiser (I like to use Kidspiration or Inspiration, or you can use online versions) Create a simple mindmap






3. Go back to the internet site you have chosen, press Ctrl F (Command F for Macs) type in one of the key words from questions in mindmap like 'eats'

4. The word eat did not appear on my page so I used a synonym such as feed, click the next button to see each instance of the word feed until you see a sentence that will answer your question
5. Go back to your mindmap and type in the information you found
6. Go between the Internet site and the mindmap adding information
7. Add a picture to your mindmap by right clicking on a picture in your internet page, select Copy Image, go back to mindmap and paste (Ctrl V)
8. Don't forget to reference where information and picture came from

Model this way of researching to your class.
Use this model in all curriculum areas.
Become a smarter researcher yourself and your students will follow!

What to do with a few minutes spare?

There are few games that I like to play with students when we have a few minutes spare, you need at least a projector (and laptop) and even better a mimio or IWB.

Free Rice
Free Rice is my first favourite. For every question you get right 10 grains of rice gets donated through the World Food Programme.








The reason it is my favourite is that if you click on Change Subjects you can choose from other subjects.

 I particularly like to do the Geography questions as most children in New Zealand schools have very little idea of where other countries are in the World.






Lemons for Literacy

Then there is Lemons for Literacy. With this site every correct answer helps somebody to read in America. Money is donated by the site creators to purchase literacy materials.

With this site you can click on the speaker symbol to hear the words and meanings.

You can also change the type of game by clicking on the 'Defintion Matching' dropdown menu to choose Word meaning. You can also choose a subject rather than General (some of the choices are Business, Medical, School, travel or hospitality). You can also adjust the level of the words.

Free Poverty
Lastly there is Free Poverty

The goal of this game is to test your knowledge of places on the map. Every correct answer means that freepoverty.com will donate 10 cups of water. The further away from the correct spot and the cups of water decrease, if you are too far away there is 0 cups of water awarded. Unfortunately it does have advertisements on it so check what they are advertising that day before using with your class.

The reason I like using the mimio or IWB is that students can use the pens to interact with words and the maps rather than one person using the computer.










And here is one more I have just found

Free Flour

Free flour used to donate one spoonful of flour to World Hunger, but they are looking for sponsers. You can still play the game for free.

In this game you get questioned General Knowledge questions. Check out what the advertisements are advertising before using with children.