21st+Century+Resources+and+Tools

21st Century Resources and Tools

Wall Wisher

Wall Wisher is a collaboration tool that allows a student or group to brainstorm and post ideas for everyone to see. After posting thoughts, the "stickies" can be organized and categorized.

Uses:
 * Brainstorming for a project
 * Questions on a chapter or concept
 * Facts about a concept
 * Different representations of numbers in math (written expression, decimal, fraction, percent, picture, etc)

Skills addressed:
 * Learning and Innovation Skills
 * Information, Media, and Technology Skills
 * Collaboration and Communication.

Bubbl.us

Bubbl.us is similar to Wall Wisher, but has a more organized format for brainstorming. You can connect ideas and thoughts as you go along with change colors of boxes to match your thoughts.

Uses:
 * Brainstorming for a project
 * Showing what they know on a subject
 * Prewriting

Skills addressed:
 * Learning and Innovation Skills
 * Information, Media, and Technology Skills
 * Collaboration and Communication

Word Sift

Word Sift is a great way to give kids a visual representation of material. After "sifting" a passage or words, you can drag pictures and see a visual thesaurus to help further develop the student's comprehension level of a concept. I've used this in my science class for them to "sift" a passage on certain biomes. After the sifting, they chose pictures to represent the different highlights of the passage.

Uses:
 * Science: Sifting a passage to make a visual representation
 * Math: Definitions of math vocabulary terms

Skills addressed:
 * Learning and Innovation Skills
 * Information, Media, and Technology Skills

Wordle

Wordle is similar to Word Sift, but you can customize colors and arrangements for your wordle. There is not a function to add images, but it gives a colorful and neat representation.

Uses:
 * Science: Passages/Information on a concept
 * Math: Decimal, Fraction (?), and Percent Equivalents

Skills addressed:
 * Learning and Innovation Skills
 * Information, Media, and Technology Skills

Prezi

Prezi is a web-based presentation tool using a map layout and zooming to show contextual relationships. It adds a little more spice to presentations other than a plain powerpoint.

Skills addressed:
 * Learning and Innovation Skills
 * Information, Media, and Technology Skills
 * Creativity
 * Collaboration and Communication

Comic Life

This site has great ideas to incorporate Comic Life into curricular areas. Comic Life allows you to create page layouts with photos and text.

Skills addressed:
 * Learning and Innovation Skills
 * Information, Media, and Technology Skills
 * Creativity
 * Collaboration and Communication

BitStrips

This site allows students to create comic strips with characters and text. They can add scenes, alter positions, add text bubbles.

Uses:
 * Explain a math concept
 * Tell their favorite activity from the class
 * Write questions for the teacher

Skills addressed:
 * Communication
 * Creativity
 * Information and Media Literacy

Interactive Math Activities

This website has multiple activities for building spatial sense in geometry, as well as some algebraic sense. One activity lets the students click to add blocks, while the computer updates what the different perspectives on the object look like. GREAT FOR SPATIAL SENSE!

Skills addressed:
 * Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Tiny URL

Tiny URL is a site that gives you a short URL in place of the long, nonsense URLs from other websites. This prevents mistyping a web address.

Delicious Bookmarking

Delicious is a site that saves all of your bookmarks on your account. You can access your "favorites" from any computer by signing into your Delicious account. You can also search keywords to give you lists of "bookmarked" sites by others that are related to your keyword.

Skills addressed:
 * Communication and Collaboration
 * Information, Media, and Technology Skills

Math Interactive White Board Sites

This site has links to quite a few math websites that work with an interactive white board. Because I have a SmartBoard in my room, this is a great resource for me to turn to for ideas on how to use my SmartBoard, other than just regular lessons. I use my SmartBoard nearly everyday. The kids love writing on it for regular notes. There are also quite a few interactive items in the gallery, such as a protractor. Games are also fun and interesting on the SmartBoard. http://www.whiteboardcentral.com/ http://www.bristolvaschools.org/mwarren/sbactivities.htm http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/grade-middle-school/ http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+activities/

Skills addressed:
 * Information, Media, and Technology Skills
 * Collaboration

Skype

Skype is an application that allows for great communication between people. It could also allow classrooms to go "global" by communicating with a class from another part of the country/world. http://www.teachingdegree.org/2009/06/30/50-awesome-ways-to-use-skype-in-the-classroom/ http://www.suite101.com/content/tips-for-using-skype-in-the-classroom-a205290 http://www.teachhub.com/news/article/cat/14/item/367

Uses:
 * Guest speakers
 * Student-Teacher Contact outside of school: Help on problems
 * Business away from home

Skills addressed:
 * Communication and Collaboration
 * Global Literacy

Geometry Architecture Lesson

This lesson has great application skills of mathematics into the real world. This would be a great activity for students to see how geometry (as well as other calculation math) plugs into the real world.

Skills addressed:
 * Collaboration and Communication
 * Creativity
 * Critical Thinking
 * Life and Career Skills

Poll Everywhere

This is a site that allows you to create a poll in which the responses can be texted. I've used this with my students, and they are hounding me to do it again. It allows you to get immediate feedback while students get to pull out their cell phones. For students without a phone, I let them borrow mine or had other students share.

Skills addressed:
 * Communication

The Creativity Crisis in America

A Newsweek article from July 19, 2010 on the decline of creativity in our schools, and the need for more creativity in our country.