Clarence Fisher of Remote Access has been kind enough to work through some thoughts on creating a classroom studio on his blog. I find his insights and questions helpful as I try to more fully realize my goal of making my classroom more construtivist and less legalistic. I can’t help but pine for what he […]
Calc5 and iJot: Online Utilities with Classroom Potential
I remember the expectation in my high school pre-calculus class was a graphing calculator–which cost more than I was willing (or able) to spend. Enter calc5: a free and online graphing calculator. Simply punch in your equation and hit “OK”. calc5 delivers a graphic representation of that equation. Have your students take a screen shot […]
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“Thumb Drive” Drive
As I consider upgrading my thumb drive from 128Mb to (dare I say) a gig or more, I thought this was a worthy cause for my old drive. The Non-Profit Inveneo is collecting thumb drives to distribute through their work in Africa. If you have a drive that has been buried in your desk organizer […]
Perfect Present for the Teacher in Your Life
From Threadless Finally, proof the dog did eat your homework. Threadless is also a great site for puns and other hooks for a variety of subjects if you’re willing to look- and who wouldn’t have fun looking? Studying communism? Geometry? […]
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Swivel- YouTube for Data (well as close as data’s likely to get anyway)
This is a perfect tool for teachers. Upload your own data sets and correlate away. You can now analyze your data and the data uploaded by other site members (currently all data is public). Once you’ve got things set up, Swivel then creates the html to allow you to easily embed different flavors of the […]
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Using Bollywood Clips to Illustrate Conflict
I used BombayTV last year to get students to illustrate the major and minor conflicts in Richard III. It could be applied to any story you are working with–whether literature or history. Actually, I imagine you could use this for math and science with a little creativity. The student’s loved it. […]
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MobZombies (I swear it’s educational)
MobZombies The twist is that a player’s physical position controls the position of their zombie-world avatar, forcing the player to actually move around the real world to succeed in the game.The virtual zombie-world is a simple environment — the game’s complexity comes from players having to negotiate real-world objects in order to avoid the zombies […]
Google Earth File on the Colonies
I am still feeling my way around using Google Earth in the classroom. I want to make it more than a 3d worksheet. I think the key is making the students responsible for creating the files but I think in order to do that they need examples and exposure the program and how to use […]
Behavior Modificaton Plan (with style!)
Looking for a way to refocus your students without having to stop class to speak to them? Want to maintain your street cred as a hip “techno teacher”? Well, check out the Warning Label Generator. You choose the label style, icon, and message, and the generator spits out a jpg. Save it, copy it, laminate […]
“Hop the Pond” for a great illustration
I happened upon this BBC site while tutoring a student last year, and I used it this year in my classes with great success. It’s an interactive activity that shows the student how adjectives and adverbs beef up a simple sentence and change the image the sentence places in our heads. My students loved it, […]