Pro-d to go

This weeks entry is for those becoming familiar with SMART boards. Two educators, one out of the states and one from Winnipeg, have been creating Podcasts about SMART boards for a couple of years. They have done over 150 podcasts incorporating most school subjects such as science, math, socials, language arts, etc.

Each podcast is about 40 min. during which time they talk about ways to incorporate SMART boards into your classroom. They often invite teachers along who have used the boards and share their ideas. You can download the podcasts free of charge at their website and listen to them when you have the time. You can find their site at pdtogo.com/smart.

Some of you have been trying to leave comments on the blog. Unfortunately you need to have a google account in order to do that. To sign up, go to google and click down in the right hand side where it says "Create an account now". It takes only a minute and then you have access to Gmail and other Google programs. You can then leave a message on the blog for others to read as well.

The wonders of youtube

This week we look at the wonderful world of youtube. More than just a place to post your summer vacation videos, Youtube can be a wonderful educational tool if you know what to look for. Fortunately most of the work has been done by someone else.

One page in particular lists the 100 best videos for teachers. They are categorized by subjects and some are quite good. The link is included below

100 Best Youtube videos for teachers

Web 2.0 Highlights

Hello again,

Thanks to those of you who emailed and commented on what a good idea you thought this blog might be. If you want to leave a message, it is really easy to do. Click at the bottom where you see the 0 comments and a new window will open that will let you leave a comment. You can also email me as well at mike.archibald@sd6.bc.ca.

Last week I talked about Web 2.0 which is the new interactive wave of websites that are hitting the net. It's impossible to talk about them all as there are so many. What I thought I'd do is give you some of my favourites that you might incorporate into your own classroom.

English teachers, and just about anyone else will love this one. It is called "Wordle" and can be found at http://www.wordle.net/ This site lets you take a group of text and create beautiful word clouds with them. Click on the example below to see a good example.

Click above


The great thing is you can use any type of text, letters, numbers, whatever, to make these. It is simple and free. You can then get students to try and decipher what the main topic is about, highlight the most important parts, etc. Wordle removes the most common words like "the, an, and" and only leaves the main ideas. I've used it and the kids love them. You can print them off, use them on a Smart board and have kids make their own.

Another great site is http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/ For those of you with a Smart board or for those of you who would like to start using one, this site is a must. Its creator, Jim Hollis has created this blog with hundreds of links to interactive sites that you can use with or without a Smart board. Once again, any of these sites work with a computer and projector - Smart boards help to get students interacting with them at a different level. Jim is constantly updating the blog with new things he comes across and it is all archived so you can go back and look at his previous entries.


For math and science teachers, you'll love this one. Nikon, the camera company has created a wonderful site that deals with scale. You have to see it to fully appreciate it. You can get to it by following this link -
http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/index.htm

Check it out and let me know what you think. That's if for this week. Let me know if there is anything specific you'd like to know more about.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Golden Secondary School Technology Blog!

The purpose of this blog is to enable me (your learning coach) to be able to assist you with technology ideas. Also, it is a great forum to be able to share with you some of the amazing and, best of all, FREE sites on the web that can make your lessons come alive. All you need is a computer and projector to access them. Having a SMART board helps for the interactiveness but it is not necessary.

If there is something you'd like to know more about, please email me or leave a post on the blog below and I will do what I can to assist you.

So where do we start? With everyone teaching different subjects it is challenging to be able to give everyone what they specifically need. That's why your feedback and questions will become so important.

Having said that, the best place to start is to give you a sense of what is out there in the World Wide Web that can be used within your own classroom. The past couple of years has seen a huge explosion in what we call Web 2.0 applications. This refers to the next generation of web sites that are out there where interactivity becomes the norm. Instead of just reading for information, we are now able to interact with the websites in a variety of ways. Many of these sites are free - all you need to do is access the website. Whose making these things? No idea but there are a lot of them with hundreds more appearing every month.

Web 2.0 takes it one step further. The best place to find Web 2.0 sites is through the website http://www.go2web20.net/ Here you'll find an archive of hundreds of websites organzied by categories. Some of them are shown in the image above. Each website is briefly described in detail and then if you click on it, it will take you there to check it out. More are added to the list every week and as mentioned before, many are free to use. Take some time to see what's there and next week I'll post some of my favourite sites that I use in my classes.