Useful Links (weekly)

• Youth – Book Trailer genres A large range of video book trailers with a YA section

• Educational Networking – List of Networks listing of social networks used in educational environments or for educational purposes 

• EditMe – Wiki Web Publishing: Simple, Collaborative & Extensible EditMe lets you make a web site in minutes and edit the content with a single click, by yourself or collaborating with a team. EditMe is great for: * Organizational, team or personal wikis * Small business web sites * Classroom sites * Online documentation * Custom web development 

• CriticalThinking.org – Critical Thinking Model 1 Online Model for learning the Elements and Standards of Critical Thinking 

• Safe Color Codes Hexadecimal These are good colour reference codes to use when making an HTML document.

• The Fat Strawberry Free Seamless Tiling Textures Site that provides background patterns for wikis, etc. It features seamless tiling textures for web background  

• American Book Review :: Home 100 Best First Lines of Novels As chosen by the editors of American Book Review

• 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived — Infoplease.com 

• Christian Faur: Crayon Series 1 Faur’s portraits are made of crayon. He arranges various Crayolas vertically, with each color crayon tip representing a “pixel” in the resulting image. The portraits are very detailed. Some of the images contain messages “spelled out” by 26 discrete color crayons which correspond to the 26 letters in the alphabet. A color key is located in the bottom corner of Faur’s installations. 

• Typographic Collaboration | Typophile Collaboration and Forum on Typography. Interesting homepage with live data pull from forums to create background texture. 

• 100 Best First Lines of Novels — Infoplease.com 100 Best First Lines of Novels As chosen by the editors of American Book Review (in Tabular format) 

• GRSites.com Free graphics, textures, backgrounds, buttons and more for Web design

• Photoshop Tutorials, Free Fonts, QuarkXPress, Graphics Tutorials Photoshop tutorials, free fonts, graphics tutorials and desktop publishing tutorials for Macintosh and Windows

• eyePlorer.com A graphical search engine that is useful in helping to narrow down research topics and organize information for a report or project

• Dfilm – is now Dvolver. Make your own movie with the MovieMaker A simple online movie maker program. It can help you make a movie in a few simple steps. When it is complete you can post it to your website or send it to a friend.

• Free Math Video Lessons and Tutorials | Tutor-USA.com Tutor USA is a site that offers a variety of useful links for mathematics teachers. In addition to free worksheets and lesson plans, Tutor USA has built a nice collection of video tutorials. The videos in the collection come from sources like YouTube, Blip.tv, and TeacherTube. Some of the videos are quick how-to videos while others are longer lecture-style explanations of mathematics concepts. 

• Scitable | Learn Science at Nature ”A free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world’s leading publisher of science. Scitable currently concentrates ongenetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich complexity of living organisms. As you cultivate your understanding of modern genetics on Scitable, you will explore not only what we know about genetics and the ways it impacts our society, but also the data and evidence that supports our knowledge”

• Sweeney Math Good Maths blog. 

• ACMA – Click and connect: Young Australians’ use of online social media This research focuses on young people’s use of social media, including how, why and when they encounter content, contact and privacy risks when they go online. The research was conducted in two parts—a qualitative phase and a quantitative phase. 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Great First lines

There have been some great and/or provocative opening lines to stories. There are opening lines that set the scene or atmosphere, that challenge/encourage the reader to go on. Some of these lines have begun fantastic stories, other stories never quite live up to that opening.

This past week a number of classes have come into the library to allow the students to choose books that they will read over the fortnight school holiday that starts this weekend. We have been challenging the boys to read out of their comfort zone and even to try some of the classics. Many of the boys always read the same type of book  (0r even the same few books again and again.) The boys had to scan and skim through several books during the period and choose one by the end of the session.

 We also had a bit of a discussion about what might make a “classic”. What elements are needed to keep readers interested many years after the books were first written? What are some books remembered

 This got me thinking about the opening lines to some of the stories. There have been some great ones. I started to think about the ones I know from the books we have at our library.

The teacher responsible for these classes is also working on writing tasks with his students.  The lines below give such great examples of writing. Next I think my nest task will be to find some of the great endings.

Examples from the Classics:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ……
A tale of two cities Charles Dickens
It was a pleasure to burn.
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind……..
The outsiders S.E. Hinton
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the Equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight.
2001: A space odyssey Arthur C. Clarke

Examples from current popular titles:
I found him in the garage on a Sunday afternoon.
Skellig David Almond
Joseph fixed his eyes on the coffin and thought of silkworms.
The running manMichael Gerards Bauer
We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.
Feed M.T. Anderson
The boy with the dreadlocks had two lines of business: (cars and the patio trade).
Exposure Mal Peet
Henry got up early on the day that changed his life.
Faerie Wars Herbie Brennan
I was five when I first saw the future. (Now I am seventeen.)
The foreshadowing Marcus Sedgwick
It is a relatively little-known fact, that, over the course of a single year, about twenty million letters are delivered to the dead.
The Lollypop shoes Joanne Harris
The worst night of my life? My first – and last – date with Angela O’Bannon.
Son of the mob Gordon Korman
We are all around you. (You don’t think about us much because we are invisible.)
So yesterdayScott Westerfeld

Any other suggestions would be welcomed.

There are sites that you can go to for lists of first lines that could also be useful. These include:

• 100 Best First Lines of Novels from the American Book Review
• 100 Best First Lines of Novels. (As chosen by the editors of American Book Review) tabular format on InfoPlease site
• Famous first lines quizzes(FunTrivia)
• Favorite first lines of a novel(Listology)

EyePlorer – beta visual search engine

I have been looking at other visual search engine alternatives to SearchMe. Beta visual search engine EyePlorer is a reference search engine that takes your initial keyword search term and displays related terms in a color wheel of information based around that term. When you hover over the different areas of the color wheel or click on a topic, information (from Wikipedia) is revealed about that term in the default eyePlorer facts window that opens up. If the information is useful and you want to save for later use, you can drag it  onto the EyePlorer notebook at the side. These facts you put into the notebook can be rearranged as needed. Once you have your notes, you can either save, copy or email them.You also have the option of choosing websearch view, that offers links to other sites or an images window (results from Bing). The images are also linked to their sites of origin.

These short explanations from Wikipedia could help give students an overview of the topic without having to read the whole article. They could then go on to do a more indepth search with a better understanding of the topic. All students I know understand about checking the data for accuracy.

Other options for EyePlorer users include:

• “i” button under the search box. Click on this to get a quick summary of the topic
• “+” button to add search parameters
• the paper button to go to a Google search.

Class use:

This is a an interesting way for students to think about research and explore for new information.  Students very easily create a visual guide to their inquiry. It is then a very easy step to drag and drop what they find out into a notebook. This can form the basis for more in-depth research. The brief notes could enable students to see note making as a way taking down main points and important ideas, rather than copying whole slabs of text. The way that the information in the notebook can be rearranged could  also help them to go on to think about or work on organising ideas into some sort of order to form the basis of some structure for an argument, conjecture or essay.

It could also be used on a class wide basis.  When a teacher wants to introduce a new concept/idea. Using a data projector, so the whole class can watch, the teacher could type the subject into the search and then the whole class could work together to decide which information they want/need to save in the (class)notebook for later. It would also allow the whole class to work on the above ideas.

eyePlorer was created in Germany so you can choose to search in German or English. I had heard that you need to manually choose English but I typed in search terms with English spelling and it automatically searched for results in English for me

Useful Links (weekly)

• Right Words 2009 :: Child Soldiers Writing Competition :: Home Page A writing competition for British students but this could be applied locally anywhere. Lesson plan and resources are all provided. A good social justice project for middle and senior years as it offers students the opportunity to develop perspectives by seeing the life of the child soldier through a comparison to their own lives.

• The National Archives Learning Curve | Focus on Film | Film Archive. This Focus On presents film as a historical source and considers its advantages as evidence for the past. There are activities to investigate aspects of film as evidence. Access these on a pc or via an interactive whiteboard. There is a film archive with background information on each film. Film can be downloaded for free. Work in our editor’s room and use our online film-editing tool to create your own clips.

• Mind Map Inspiration Mind Maps for inspiration and motivation, plus mindmapping tips, drawing tips, techniques for enhancing your creativity and improving idea generation.

• Which Social Sites Do People Use Most for Sharing Content on the Internet Facebook is now the most popular site for sharing content followed by a distant Twitter. Surprisingly, more people now prefer to bookmark content on Yahoo! Bookmarks and Windows Live Favorites than Google or Delicious which dominated the scene in 2007.

• The Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection The digital collection incorporates images of all Poe manuscripts and letters at the Ransom Center with a selection of related archival materials, two books by Poe annotated by the author, sheet music based on his poems, and portraits from the Ransom Center collections. Poe’s manuscripts and letters are linked to transcriptions on the website of the Poe Society of Baltimore.

• art.com artPad A collaborative art tool that would add to a written story by adding pictures (drawing or painting). This would be an option for students to use when contributing to a wiki

• 100 Useful Tools for Special Needs Students & Educators | Teaching Tips This list of 100 useful tools can help anyone with a learning disability like ADHD, dyslexia or test anxiety, as well as students with visual or hearing impairments, use the Internet and other technology systems to help them with reading, math, organization, social skills, and more.

• ACMA – Click and connect: Young Australians’ use of online social media This research focuses on young people’s use of social media, including how, why and when they encounter content, contact and privacy risks when they go online. The research was conducted in two parts—a qualitative phase and a quantitative phase.

• Teaching and Learning Strategies 

• 
  http://www.GoogleLitTrips.com
   This website offers learners virtual worlds to explore as they study great literature by using Google Earth and embellished placemarks that mark a story’s journey.

• Real World Math This website is designed for educators who wish to extend the concepts of the math curriculum beyond the pages of the text. Google Earth is the dynamic tool that will be used to accomplish this.

• Blogs Wikis Docs Chart A good comparison table can help to determine which tool is right for your lessons. Compare Blogs, Wikis, and Google Docs in order to see what works for your needs.

• Storybird – Collaborative storytelling Storybirds are short, visual stories that you can make to share. Students and teachers could create stories together by combining imaginative artwork and text. The final product could then be printed, watched on screen, played with like a toy, or shared in an online library with the world

• TiltShift Generator – Art&Mobile TiltShift Generator is a web service that offers an image touch up tool for artistic effects. The app was originally made to improve cheap iPhone Camera photographs

• Culturally-Situated Design Tools Many cultural designs are based on mathematical principles. This software will help students learn standards-based mathematics as they simulate the original artifacts, and develop their own creations. 

• Thematic Mapping Engine – thematicmapping.org Thematic Mapping Engine (TME) enables you to visualise global statistics on Google Earth. The primary data source is UNdata.

• SFMOMA | Explore Modern Art | Multimedia | Interactive Features | Ansel Adams at 100 Explore the world of ideas behind Ansel Adams’s photography through archival footage of the artist at work, audio commentaries by art historians, and words from Adams himself. 

• Watch Free Documentaries – SnagFilms Many free documentaries that you can also ‘snag’ and embed on websites and blogs. Included are short commercials, but there are some great documentaries here. Search by keyword or topics, including campus, environment, health, history, international, life and culture, music and arts, politics, religion and spirituality, science and nature, sports and hobbies, and women’s issues.

• Interactive Shakespeare Project 

• widgenie – Home Widgenie provides a set of tools that allows you to easily take data from a spreadsheet and turn it into bar charts, pie charts, line charts, area charts, and tabular charts. You can import data from Excel spreadsheets, Google spreadsheets, or any CSV file. If you just want to test out Widgenie you can use their sample data sets

• ChartGo – Create Charts Online Fast, Easy and Free This is a free service that allows users to quickly and easily create pie charts, area charts, bar graphs, and line graphs. Chart Go does not require any registration to use the service.

• AutoMotivator: Make Your Own Printable Motivational Poster AutoMotivator allows you to create those annoying but sometimes effective motivational posters you see in offices like the example in this post. You can either use pictures from their gallery or just use your own.

• Masher – create free online video, photo and music mashups Masher let’s you easily create a video by mashing together video clips, music tracks and photos.

• The Power of Educational Technology: 10 Tips for Teaching Technology to Teachers

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Google Lit Trips

Another practical use for Google Earth has been found in these interesting lessons that utilize this application.  On the website named Google Lit Trips  you will find a list of lessons using various texts in which a virtual “trip” has been planned for use in describing events, settings, etc. of a story. 

2 interesting videos as an introduction to Google Lit Trips are presented by Kate Reavey (Peninsula College). Part 1

Part 2

 

This has the potential to be an excellent resource for teachers who are looking for ways to introduce literature in a different format into their classrooms.  The lessons seem good enough to be used with a class via a teacher’s computer that is hooked up to data projector or it could be used by students at individual computers.

site map

I had a look at the Lit Trips for Elizabeth Honey’s book Remote Man , Hana’s suitcase by Karen Levine and they also have one for Macbeth. 

  Looking at the above and, based on my knowledge of how reasonably user friendly Google tends to make the applications I have already used, it leads me to believe that creating your own lit trip would not prove to be too difficult a task.  There is a pdf “how-to” for creating your own lit trip ad it does not look to difficult. I have a small group of students working with me at the moment, reading e-books from DailyLit. One of the titles is Around the world in eighty days. I thought that this would make an interesting project for us to expand on the journey through the book whilst learning about creating something new with GoogleLitTrips. 

In general, this site seems to be an extremely valuable resource with downloadable materials complete with discussion questions and other class activities. I believe that this could be a great tool to help students visualize and learn about the places they encounter in various stories. 

To get started on your Lit Trip journey with characters from famous children’s novels you will have to :

• Download Google Earth
• Return to Google Lit Trips
• Click on one of the grade level links at the top of the page
• Find a Lit Trip that meets your interest 
• Start exploring