Quia.com

This week's entry looks at an interactive site where you can post online quizzes for students to complete. The site is called Quia.com and you can sign up for a free trial version to see what it can do. When you click on the above link, you then want to access the Quia web link which is in the middle of your screen. There is a $50/year subscription fee but that drops to around $40 if ten or more teachers are interested. This fee may be covered by the school.

What's so great about Quia, is that it allows students to log in, complete an online quiz, and then get immediate feedback as to how well they did. Not only do they get the number correct, but they also get shown which answers were correct and which one's were not.

You can create a variety of quizzes including multiple choice, matching, t/f, fill in the blank and even open ended questions. My socials 10 students used it to review material for their final exam and they loved it.

As well, if you want to use the results for marks, you can create a class, and then when the exams are finished, the results of the students automatically get put into a mark book for you to use. It also shows you how many times they attempted the exam, who completed it, and who did not. You can then decide what to do with the marks. If you use a test bank of questions, the exams take very little time to complete. As well, there are already dozens of tests already created that you can access. In others words, most of the work is done for you and includes dozens of subject areas for you to access. Find a quiz, copy it to your classroom and you're ready to go. Students can also access them at any time so if they are away, they can log in at home an complete the assignment.

As well, there are other activities students can complete such as interactive matching games, hangman, jeopardy, etc. They can all be tailored to what you want to have them do. I will be demonstrating this at the next staff meeting so you can get a better look at it. Definitely a site worth checking out.

Ipods continue to change education

As mentioned in the previous posting, Ipods are having a dramatic impact on how education is changing to meet the needs of today's learners. Students in Minnesota have begun using them with remarkable results. Read the article here.

If you're interested inig having students work with digital images in a creative way, check out Big Huge Labs' site This site has been approved by the district and restrictions have been removed. There are a variety of programs that students can use to upload photographs and then turn them into creative projects. One that my students have used is called Mosaic. Students first register for free, then they have access to this program to create a mosaic of pictures. Once done, they can download it into their folder on the server. After that, the mosaic can be imported into Microsoft Word where they can use text bubbles to add details. Click here to see an example of one.

Happy surfing!

iphones revoluntionizing education

Here's the link to a great article I came across recently - talks about how iphones are going to revolutionize education in ways we can't even begin to imagine. Follow this link to read all about it - iphone in the classroom We may have to rethink what our district policy says when it comes to using cell phones in the classroom.

As an aside to this, another great example of using cell phones in the classroom can be found in the book "From Toys to Tools". I have a copy and if you'd like to take a look at it after I'm done with it, let me know. You can also order your own copy from Amazon and use your pro-d funds to pay for it.

The Committed Sardine

Hello everyone,

Happy New Year! Hard to believe 10 years have passed since the millenium. One can only wonder what technological wonders await us in the decades to come. This will actually be my focus at the next staff meeting when I give a presentation on how technology is going to impact education. That ties in to today's blog posting.

Blogs are an increasingly common way of sharing information. Last year I used a program called Edublogs which allowed students to be able to write in a blog and respond to questions that I posed. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of blogs on every conceivable subject. A good one that I have found is called The Committed Sardine and can be found by clicking on the link. It is an informative site with lots of relevant articles on technology and education. If you click on Resources you will find digital handouts that you can read. Some of them include "Understanding Digital Kids I & II", "Living on the Future Edge" and "Teaching for tomorrow". The articles are not very long but are well worth reading.

I will be incorporating information from them in my presentation. If you click on the Blog link on the home page, you come to a very interesting blog that is updated daily with links to the latest and bizarre happenings in the world of technology. Some of them are very interesting while others are extremely funny and good for a laugh. Check it out.

Science, science, and more science

The focus is on (yes, you guessed it), Science!

A great link for science teachers is the The Periodic Table of Videos. This is a site that displays a Periodic table and when you click on each element, a little YouTube video pops up discussing and demonstrating the properties of that element. Very clever! You can find the link here -http://www.periodicvideos.com/#

The next site is called Wonderville which is done by the Alberta Science Organization. It is an interactive site with lots of games and activities. It can be found at www.wonderville.ca

The last site, which is great for biology, is called Cells Alive. It does a great job with animations demonstrating the biology behind cells including the different parts of cells. Definitely worth checking out if you teach biology.

The Big Picture

This weeks entry deals with a site from the Boston Herald called "The Big Picture". Every couple of days a Boston Herald reporter posts high resolution photos of an event that is signinficant somewhere in the world. These photos are taken by professional photographers and they are often stunning!

This weeks photos include pictures of H1N1 activity from around the world which you see to the left, Remembrance Day services across the globe, and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not all entries are based on current events - there are thematic entries as well.

The photos are great for creating discussions within y0ur class - you could have them write about what they see, analyze particular photos for specifict deatails or talk about what's signifcant about the picture they are seeing.

New photos are published every other day and you can check the archive at the top of the page for previous posts.

Just a note- when you first go to the site you will see one photo of that event. If you scroll down, you will be able to find a link that will reveal up to 40 photos of that particular event. The photos look amazing when blown up on a big screen - you don't need a smartboard for this application either.

Check it out at www.boston.com/bigpicture/

Glogster

Recently my students have been using a program called Glogster - you can find it at http://www.glogster.com/. It is a way of creating interactive posters using a variety of media. The students quite like them and it makes creating an informative poster much more interesting and fun.
You can sign your class up for a school account at no charge. To do this go to http://www.edu.glogster.com/, register yourself, select how many students you want (you can have up to 200 and I suggest you select that, as you'll have enough for all your students should you want multiple classes to use it.), then they will email you a list of passwords and login names that your students can use.

The great part is you can control the content, who sees it, and be aware of who is creating what.

To see an example watch the video below.