Friday, February 29, 2008

The Easiest Slideshow Tool...EVER!
bookr :: pimpampum

It doesn’t get any easier than this. Just type in a subject and bookr will search through Flickr for images. You drag the photos into your slideshow/photobook and add text. Your creation is stored in their online archive. They even supply the html code if you wish to imbed into a webpage or blog.
A Quick Slideshow..South America

The following site looks like a good way for teachers who are interested in celebrating Math Day on March 5th:

World Math Day

Their goal is to have over 50 million math questions answered correctly on math day. Students log in and play against other students of the same age from around the world. Up to the actual day students can practice against others.

Some figures:

* 1 million students
* Over 15,000 schools
* 152 countries
* 84,270,982 million practice questions already answered.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Storyline Online
Streaming video program featuring famous people reading children's books aloud.
I stumbled upon this innovative website featuring well-known actors reading quality children's picture books aloud. What a site! Real people reading books to children - not just cartoon versions. Storyline Online also includes a supplemental activities section developed by an Early Literacy curriculum specialist. The videos and related activities strengthen comprehension, verbal and written skills of English language learners worldwide. In a one computer classroom you may wish to have the students listen to it in a center rotation. Consider adding it to your literacy toolbox.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

This video explains why blogging is such a valuable instructional tool for teachers and students.
Top 10 Reasons to Blog with Students

Friday, February 22, 2008

Byte Size Science Podcasts

Retrieved from eSchool News, Wed, Jan 30, 2008
New podcasts aim to make science more accessible - and enjoyable
Seeking to make science more fun and easily accessible for today’s students, the American Chemical Society (ACS) has launched Bytesize Science, an educational, entertaining new podcast for young listeners. Bytesize Science translates cutting-edge scientific discoveries from ACS’s 36 peer-reviewed journals into stories for young listeners about science, health, medicine,energy, food, and other topics. New installments are posted every Monday and are available free of charge. The program’s archive includes items on environmental threats to killer whales, a scientific explanation for why some people love chocolate, and some unlikely new uses for compact discs.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/bytesizescience

How to use: Begin your science classes with these 5 minute podcasts. Think about having your students create their own reflective podcasts!
Perfect for science teachers, parents and kids with big curiosities.
Bitesize Science




Use your RSS feed, aggregator or bloglines to access!

Monday, February 18, 2008



Beat the February blues with these hilarious numeracy and literacy games and worksheets. There are 3 levels of play!!

Sunday, February 17, 2008

by way of the EDTECH LISTSERV

Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:03:01 -0500
From: EDTECH Editor-Beil
Subject: Re: early childhood and technology

From: Susan Brooks

I have an article that was in EducationWorld pertaining to KKers.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech209.shtml

This will give you some ideas on what to do with KKers. Also there
is a website that has links for prek and kk.

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/prek.htm

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/kindergarten_links.htm

I also hold workshops on What can a 5 year old do? The links can be
found here.

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/kk_workshop_links.htm

Hope that helps.

Susan Brooks
Tech Facilitator
susan@internet4classrooms.com

I stumbled upon a "wildly successful"** made-in-Ottawa Children's Book Podcast, Just One More Book ! -- a podcast about the children's books we love and why we love them, recorded in our favourite coffee shop.

Through this podcast and website, they are building a lively, interactive community linking children's book authors, illustrators, readers (parents, children, librarians, teachers and literacy activists) and publishers.

Busy parents and educators can now discover great read-aloud children's books while they are busy doing the many tasks that would otherwise rob them of the opportunity to research great children's books in more traditional ways.

Our guests have included celebrity authors such as Sheree Fitch, Rachna Gilmore, Jack Prelutsky, Daniel Pinkwater, Eve Bunting, Eva Ibbotson, Henry Winkler and Mary Ann Hoberman. We have also aimed the spotlight at interesting and lesser known authors such as Tim Huff, Heather Jopling and Jarrett Krosoczka.

They are on their 300th episode. So I would love to spread the word. Use with your Read Aloud or a with your author studies and poetry areas of your curriculum. Or just use it to introduce a new book. Try Tyrannosaurus was a Beast by Arnold Loebel and Jack Prelutsky

I am taking the liberty to use the description from the site: ~
"Just One More Book!" is a thrice-weekly podcast which promotes and celebrates literacy and great children's books. Each weekday morning, we take a few minutes out of our morning coffee ritual to discuss one of our many favourite children's books. We also feature weekly interviews with authors, illustrators and experts and enthusiasts in the areas of children's literature and literacy as well as listener-submitted book reviews.

The Just One More Book! Podcast has been recommended by the American Library Association as one of itsa2007 American Library Association (ALA) - Great web sites for kids and has been featured in such prestigious literary publications as School Library Journal.

a great way for students, in grades 1-8, to practice their spelling words. It is a fun and fast-paced, so all students can enjoy it. From the website:
Contestant - that’s you! - in grades 1-8 will listen to three stories, one at a time, and then spell words from each story. Students in high school will listen to separate sentences and then spell the words from each sentence.
If you get stumped, you can click to hear a word again, as many times as you need to. If you’re in grade three or higher, you can aske for a definition too. Since words often make more sense when they are attached to an idea, all the words in the story or sentence are in context.
Review the words, hear the audio, and SPELL the missing words. Make sure to check your SPELLING carefully, since your results will be calculated at the end.

This well-done site will help even older elementary school students explore the elements of a story using the well-known Cinderella tale as source material. Students will learn about setting, character, sequence, exposition, conflict, climax, and resolution. The site would also be ideal for ESL/ELL students as a pleasant female voice "reads" the text appearing on the screen, which can help with English pronunciation, etc. The site also has a 14-question assessment.

Monday, February 11, 2008

This class web site can serve as an inspiration for various classroom activities...
We are a creative, hard-working class at Eugene Field Elementary. We have lots of computers, a SmartBoard, a web camera, a science area with bones and fossils, and a great view of Hannibal from our third floor windows. We write and publish a class newspaper every week and we post a few of the stories on this web site at Fourth Grade Times.

Friday, February 08, 2008

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

TeacherTube, functions as a library of video lessons from teachers around the world that can be used for enrichment.

Power Teacher Teaching Kindergarten Class Rules

Many kindergarten teachers love the Story Circle section of the BBC CBeebies website, which you can reach at



Tip: Enable the Full Screen for each story. Make this site part of a centre.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Thinking of starting a class blog. This serves as an inspiration!

Friday, February 01, 2008



"Let the 6 & 7 year olds from Room 9 at Nelson Central School educate you about what they think a blog is and why they love using them!

Related blogs to check out ...Rachel's Edublog
Room 9