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Which country lets you visit both cities of Edinborough and Glasgow? Where can you see stalactites?

Remember these questions from the wonderful folks over at BrainQuest? Those  marvelous flip books which kept thousands of us entertained on the road and we now are trying to get our own children interested in learning various tidbits in the hopes of landing a Jeopardy slot someday.

Now, even better, these books are available for free over at Scribd! Scribd is a free place provided by Google to allow us to jot something down and publish it. In a nutshell it is “largest social publishing company in the world — the website where more than 60 million people each month discover and share original writings and documents.” (See here)

You can browse for items to read and even save them to a “reading list”.

I think this would also be a great activity for Smart Boards and allowing the students to take charge of the activity.

So – do you know which has the most gravity: a supernova, a white dwarf, or a black hole?

When telling a story, words can convey so much. However, when you can tell a story using words, pictures, music, and your own voice – the power of the message becomes exponentially greater. Even those unenthusiastic writers may show a glimmer of interest when presented with this program as a medium to create a project.

Photo Story 3 is a free download for Windows XP and greater computers. It is a program that is very easy to learn and show others how to create their own digital movies, narrate them, set them to music tracks, and publish them for others to view. Students can create their own videos for just about any topic you can think of. Turn them loose with a couple of digital cameras and see what they can come up with. Don’t have any digital cameras? Use Flickr to search for photographs relating to the topic and have students use those.

Here are directions on how to download music to Photo Story 3 from a CD as well as general Photo Story directions. (The directions on downloading music were created by Melissa Given.)

There are some ideas and websites listed below for inspiration.

The following activities are just a few samples from TeachersInTouch.
* Learn how to create a farewell, end-of-year video file that will be remembered long after the streamers are cleaned up and the DJ has gone home. Using still images and text, you can create a video file complete with music and narration using Microsoft Photo Story.

* What I should have done in the holidays – Students always write a recount of what they did in their holidays. Here is a way to make their recount dynamic and more meaningful. Using Photo Story 3, students narrate their
recounts making their everyday recount come to life in visual and audio multimedia.

* In this activity, students create a Photo Story video file using still images, text, narration and sound files to advertise and promote sun safety. Throughout this lesson, students will gain an understanding and appreciation of their home climate and its affect on skin.

* Waltzing Matilda – In this activity, students are asked to analyse the meaning behind a well known song or quote. Students create a visual audio story using Microsoft Photo Story and synchronize it with a PowerPoint presentation detailing the song lyrics along with their own interpretation.

Websites with examples:

Digitalcamerasined – a wiki with resources on using digital photography in general in the classroom along with Photo Story 3. Lots of great ideas!

ReadWriteThink - Here is a website that has a lesson plan and activities using Photo Story 3 and/or Movie Maker from the ReadWriteThink site.

Thanks to a link from Cool Cat Teacher – I’ve been exploring a wiki dedicated to Dr. Marzano’s Classroom Instruction that Works.

My school system is one that a few years ago adopted this resource and every teacher was provided a copy of his Handbook for Classroom Instruction that Works. We all participated in several days of in-service as well as on-going staff development sessions through-out the year.
Dr. Marzano has now put together a wiki designed as a portal for Web 2.0 resources which specifically target one or more of his instructional strategies. These strategies, as outlined in his books and the wiki are:

1) Identifying Similarities & Differences

2) Summarizing and note taking

3) Reinforcing effort and providing recognition

4) Homework and practice

5) Representaing knowledge

6) Learning groups

7) Setting objectives and providing feedback

Generating and testing hypotheses

9) Cues, questions, and advance organizers

On the wiki page labeled, web 2.0 tools, there is a marvelous chart where all the tools and resources that have been added to the site are arranged and then check-marked as to which strategy they address. Many of these tools are ones that several of us already use, but sometimes it’s nice to have verification that what we may already be doing is on the right track according to The Power That Be. Be that as it may, there are quite a few new items that I will be seriously checking out.

This site is obviously new and a work in progress. You don’t have to join it to utilize the resources, but if you wish to add something you use then you need to sign up to join the wiki. Check back with it often to see what new!

[slideshare id=286905&doc=technology-driven-differentiated-instruction-1204295745836703-2&w=425]

Differentiated instruction is the best way to ensure students of all levels are reached. Differentiation of process, content, and product allows for great flexibility on the part of the teacher to exercise their creativity. Students are given choices with their learning and how they demonstrate mastery of the material. One of the greatest gifts we can give our students is the ability to choose and learn how to make good decisions on the part of their education.

The above slide show (be sure to come over to the blog site if your reader stripped the slide show) was created by CoolCatTeacher for one of her presentations at a convention. This slide show shows how technology can seamlessly differentiate for us according to Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. She has done a fantastic job with this presentation.

Flickr has a tool that lets users make trading cards of their favorite pictures. How cool would it be to make a bulliten board for Open House that showcases your students with a trading card of their own? They could fill out the information part with likes and dislikes or some of their interests.

How about another use for this tool? Have students make FLASH CARDS with this site! First step – have students find a picture or graphic for each card they need to make. These pictures are saved and the student needs to remember where they are saved. Then picture is uploaded to the Flickr site using their tool and the student types in the information they want to have on the card and click “create”. Here’s a cool option – the “icon” selector allows students to choose up to seven icons that will go on their card. What I found this to be useful with was specifically when my students were making cards for various cell organelles. If the organelle was specific to plant cells, they chose the “clover” icon. If the organelle was specific to animal cells, they chose an animal icon. And if the organelle could be found in both types of cells, then both icons were chosen.

This assisted the students to not only to study the information they typed on the card, but the icon helped in reminding them which cell type the organelle belong to. What a neat way to help kids study!

You could print up sets of cards based on students’ likes, dislikes and activities from information you have gathered from various “Get to know you” activities and pass them out to students as they come into the room. Then the students can gather into their groups for the lesson based on whatever sorting you wish to use. Example: all students with a musical based card, group one. Nature based cards, group two. People based cards, group three. and so on. The cards themselves can either be positive reinforcers to give to students at the completion of the daily assignment, or collected to reuse another day. Use the icon feature to add more variety to your grouping for future projects.

Flickr has other tools which I’ll post on here in future posts but all of flickr’s tools are part of something referred to as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is the name given to a collection of sites that are the “next generation” of internet tools. You will generally find them to be free, community developed, and a cleaner look to the site – i.e. fewer ads. Not all of the new sites are something worth your time and energy, but alot of them are really cool and with a little creative thought can be used in the classroom to help you reach your students and teach those technology objectives!

Check out a card I made of my iguana!