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This Day in the Civil War
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
At the beginning of a unit on the Civil War, introduce this site to your students on your interactive whiteboard or with a projector. Depending on the age of your students you could divide the menu topics up for small groups to report on, or you could take one topic and divide the information up for small groups of younger students to report on. After individuals and small groups have finished researching their topic, enhance student learning by having them use one of the multimedia tools listed here. Click the tool name to access the review: Genially, Microsoft PowerPoint Online, Animatron, Renderforest, and Canva Inforgraphic Maker.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Smartboard in the Classroom - Eduscapes
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Explore the sites provided to use as classroom resources in the computer lab, on classroom computer centers, and on your interactive whiteboard. The lessons/interactives could be used to enhance a unit on simple machines, dinosaurs, vaccines, panda bears, tornados, and much more. If an interactive whiteboard is not available, complete the activities in the computer lab or on laptops.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Poetry Everywhere - PBS
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Share several poems with students and then have them create similar poet and poem podcasts. Enhance student learning and augment classroom technology use by using a site such as podOmatic, reviewed here, to present to their classmates. Post the podcasts to a class wiki or website. Not familiar with wikis? Have no wiki worries - check out the TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Photography from National Geographic - National Geographic
Grades
2 to 12In the Classroom
Share a photo of the day as an activator at the start of a lesson on your projector or interactive whiteboard (IWB). Allow a student of the day to select his/her photo of the day as a class inspiration. Share a photo as a visual writing prompt. Use tools on your IWB to discover and reveal design elements in the photos in art class. Use selected collections on laptops with student partners (galleries) to provide a visual experience of a location or culture you are studying, engage students and enhance learning by asking students to use Padlet, reviewed here, to record their observervations for visual evidence of some of the major concepts you have discussed in class.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Ancient China Online Games and Activities - Mr. Donn
Grades
1 to 12In the Classroom
Browse through this site to find activities to fit your specific class during a unit on Ancient China. After you've found games that can work, save them as favorites on classroom computers and use them as learning centers or stations. This would be a great way to review before an assessment or immediately after a lecture introducing the topic.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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7 Things All New Teachers Need to Know - Adam Gordon/USC Rossier School of Education
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Share with all teachers, not just new teachers, as part of back to school planning and activities. Create your own list of advice for new teachers in your school and district. Share with student teachers as a starting point for discussing how to handle different situations they will face as new teachers.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Quotes Cover - QuotesCover.com
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Create posters with students' favorite quotes, book titles for a bulletin board, All About Me information, or whatever your imagination produces! Have students include a poster as part of a research project or choose a favorite quote from class reading materials to "cover" a book talk. Create a poster with a quote from any figure in history and personalize it using Creative Commons images. In primary grades enter sight words and other basic vocabulary to create word posters. To find Creative Commons images for student projects (with credit, of course), try Wikimedia Commons, reviewed here. Have students create a poster for Back to School night to share with parents. Use this tool for students to make posters of the class rules they agree upon during the first week of school. Create quote images to use as Facebook "cover" photos for a famous person or fictitious character. World language teachers and students can create clever vocabulary or sentence posters to help master the new language.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Kids Open Dictionary Builder - K12 Open Ed
Grades
2 to 12In the Classroom
Imagine the sense of accomplishment your class will feel if you allow them to submit definitions to this site. They become the Merriam Websters in your own classroom. Definitions don't need to be perfect as the online community will continually edit them. One drawback at the present time is that not all words have definitions. This site is still "under construction" and being built upon daily. Classes can get in on the ground floor in providing definitions for these incomplete areas. Assign cooperative learning groups to explore various vocabulary words in social studies, science, math, music, or art class. Have the groups add their new vocabulary words into the "Kids Open Dictionary." You may find the usefulness of this site in the generating of definitions for now. (This will be a moot point as the dictionary becomes filled.) As you study dictionary skills, work as a class on your interactive whiteboard to write definitions together and discuss the format of dictionary entries.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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National Archives: Educator Resources - National Archives
Grades
4 to 8In the Classroom
This is an excellent site for any history, art history, or civics teacher attempting to put forth something more tangible for students to grasp. Click on "Images of the American Revolution," and open up the pictures on the interactive whiteboard or projector. Question students as to the meaning and context of the illustrations, to help them understand how images were used to convey certain meanings. Ask the students to create their own cartoons about something controversial in their town, or about the unit being studied, and encourage them to use some of the same subtle concepts the original illustrators did.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Native American Dioramas - University of Michigan
Grades
4 to 8In the Classroom
Share this site on an interactive whiteboard or projector as an introduction to a unit of Westward expansion or colonization. Allow students to view the images to garner a more realistic vision of what Native Americans were like during that time period. Use the images as inspiration for students to create their own dioramas, although be careful in making sure that the students don't create exact replicas of the originals.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Madlibber - Sean Huber
Grades
2 to 12In the Classroom
Create a Madlib using Madlibber and share it with your class using your interactive white board and projector to reinforce curriculum topics such as types of plants or famous inventors. Either show the students how to make one about the curriculum topic, or have students operate the board/computer while others suggest words to fill in the blanks in one you have prepared. Madlibs can be used in so may ways: teaching parts of speech, reviewing for a quiz, introducing a new subject, or even as a "Cloze" reading story. Use this site as a station on one of the computers in your class. Put the direct web address (URL) for your Madlibber on your class web page, since some of the public Madlibbers may not be appropriate for your students. Give extra credit to those who work outside school to create classroom-appropriate madlibbers for others to use as review (and share the direct links on your class web page).Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Calisphere - University of California
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Teachers and students have permission to print, or download these collections for classroom use. Make bulletin boards or let students include the images in their PowerPoint or movie presentations. You do not have permission to place these images on a web page or use them for other purposes without specific permission to do so.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Inspirational Quotes for Teachers - Windows to the Universe
Grades
2 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Post in the signature on your email, on your website, or even on your whiteboard! Encourage leadership, hope, and inspiration! Use quotes as a theme for writing prompts or even to relate to the theme of a story. Use the quotes as examples of figurative language. Add quotes to end of year picture CDs/DVDs. Use the quotes to inspire personal or classroom mission statements. Have students include a quote when turning in work, and explain how it inspired or helped them. Add music or art to explain a quote. During the first week of the school year, share this site with students. Challenge students to choose a "quote of the year" for themselves personally. Have students put the quote in their notebook, folder, or as a screen saver. Also, choose a few quotes to hang around your classroom. If you need more quotes, check out TeachersFirst's Bulletin Board Hangups.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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MindMeister - MeisterLabs GmbH
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Use this tool easily in your Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) classroom since all students will be able to access it for free, no matter what device they have. Realize that you can only make 3 maps for free, but you can always delete old ones to make room. Play with the tools and toolbars to create a mind map; use toolbars to collaborate, publish, or print diagrams. Creating the organizers is of easy to medium difficulty depending upon how elaborate you desire your organizer to be (don't miss the notes feature!). A handy revision "history" helps you see what changes were made when. See the blog for helpful video tutorials and tips. Note: to use the "real time" collaboration feature, collaborators need individual email accounts to gain access.Note that maps that are "published" can be seen by the public (read only, so they cannot be altered). If a map is shared via a URL, only those that were "invited" to view the map will be able to see it. However, this does require each viewer to sign up (free) to MindMeister to be able to view this map. You can specify members who may collaborate and make alterations to a map that is not "published." You can also invite other members to view (but not change) unpublished maps.
The class can create organizers together, such as in a brainstorming session on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Or, you can assign students in cooperative groups to create a mind map as a study guide for unit content, to collect information for a group research project, or show examples of an important concept. Use this site for literature activities, research projects, social studies, or science topics. Use this site to create family trees. Have students collaborate together (online) to create group mind maps or review charts before tests on a given subject. Have students organize any concepts you study; color-code concepts to show what they understand, wonder, and question; map out a story, plotline, or plan for the future; map out a step-by-step process (life cycle).
Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
Includes teacher tools for registering and/or monitoring students
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How Do You Play - howdoyouplay.net
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use this site to find games and activities for classroom centers or review activities. Icebreaker activities include options for the first week of school community building. Bookmark this tool for the first week of school or anytime that you want to experience some "team-building" in your class. This is a great site to use if you have weekly classroom meetings to build relationships among students. Share this site with students and have them create their own games based on research projects or as review for major tests. Challenge students to describe their "creations" using the models shown on this site. Share this site with parent helpers to find ideas for classroom parties.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Civil War Traveler - civilwartraveler.com
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Use this fabulous resource for research. Turn your students into virtual "Civil War Travelers" by sharing the Podcasts and pictures on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Have students complete interactive research projects about these famous locations. Have students create a news broadcast, wiki, blog, or PowerPoint presentation. If you want to video the broadcast try YouTube or another tool such as SchoolTube (reviewed here).Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Ninjawords - Phil Crosby
Grades
3 to 12Be careful, since the site is nondiscriminatory and will give a response to any word you enter, regardless of the propriety of the word!
In the Classroom
Use the "random" button to generate a word of the day in an instant! Create pre-made word lists for students to access online from your teacher web page by entering them all , separated by commas, and clicking "Link to this page" at the end of the page. The URL that then shows in the address bar IS the URL to access that word list any time from any computer. Have students make personal lists of their own for individualized vocab study. Open Ninjawords as students read a selection in class--even in science or social studies texts, and allow students to take turns entering new words they encounter. If you have a projector or interactive whiteboard, the entire class can "see" the current "word wall" created by the history function. Or you can simply keep it on a classroom desktop to help those who need it. If you mark each "glossary" page as a Favorite on your computer, you can NAME IT "Chapter 3 Glossary" or "Amphibian Unit Glossary" etc and make it available for students to use any time. The history feature allows you to "track" whether students have entered inappropriate words. The history list seems to remain on your computer for a period of time, probably by leaving "cookies" on your computer -- in this case a useful thing! Use it on your machine to recall vocab from day to day for continuing lessons.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Teampedia - Seth Marbin
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use this site to find Icebreaker activities and options for the first week of school community building. Bookmark this tool for the first week of school or any time that you want to experience some "team-building" in your class. Use this site if you have weekly classroom meetings to build relationships among students. Share this site with students and have them create their own games based on research projects or as a review for major tests. Share this site with parent helpers to find ideas for classroom parties.Comments
So wonderful to develop creativity using tech. Love the idea of creating games based on research.Patricia, NJ, Grades: 6 - 12
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Multiple Intelligences Posters - Marek Bennett
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Print and share posters to get your colleagues and students thinking about their own multiple intelligences. Be sure to maintain the attribution and copyright information on the posters. Explore with students learning about their own strengths in learning. Hang the posters in your classroom. Share information during parent conferences and professional development. Share posters on your board during back to school information sessions to help parents understand different types of intelligences. Encourage students to create comics of themselves using their most comfortable "intelligence" and use it as a locker decoration or on a class bulletin board during the first part of the school year. Use one of TeachersFirst's many comic/cartoon tools reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Inspire My Kids - Mike Stutman and Kevin Conklin
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Share stories from the site on your interactive whiteboard or projector when learning about character traits such as sportsmanship, perseverance, and responsibility. Use the site as a resource when problems arise in the classroom such as bullying, intolerance, or special needs awareness. Have students use resources from the website as models for writing their own articles or enhance learning with the challenge to create a podcast. Use a site such as podomatic, reviewed here. Use the stories as models for writing activities and essays. Your students could also draw inspiration from this site to create values comics. Have students create printed comics (or rough drafts) using Printable Comic Strip Templates, reviewed here, or exchange paper for a digital online comic with one or two characters. Use ToonyTool, reviewed here. Students can create an online comic strip by using Make Beliefs Comix, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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