The final 3

Heart-Rate Monitor & Computer Program

I was trying to think of ways teachers (other than classroom teachers) could incorporate technology into their subject.  I read a lot of articles that claimed P.E. was taking on a whole new curriculum that focuses now on developing a healthy lifestyle .  This curriculum involves students wearing heart-rate monitors while physically active, and then measuring everything (from strength and flexibility to cholesterol levels) on a computer.  Having students engaged in their physical fitness proves to be motivating in a fun, competitive way with their classmates.


Music Tech Teacher

Music teachers are often limited in the number of musical instruments due to money and space.  Now, with the use of iPads (and headphones!), students can learn and practice playing a variety of instruments.  There are many apps that can be downloaded and installed (Virtual Piano and Player Piano are the most popular) to stimulate playing a real piano.  The Music Tech Teacher website offers lessons, worksheets, piano practice, and quizzes.


Artsonia
Art teachers in elementary schools have begun to use this site which hosts online art galleries.  It's easy for students and teachers to upload their projects.  The website is great for organizing class rosters and their projects. The actual publishing of the artwork is a quick and painless process with easy tools to assist the student.  It also allows online interactions for students and "fans" of their artwork.

and 3 more

DreamBox

DreamBox Learning uses unique intelligent adaptive learning technology that goes beyond engagement for students in kindergarten through 4th grade.  The program provides millions of different paths through curriculums, based on a child's needs.  You can adapt the level of difficulty, sequencing, pacing, and much more to support every student from struggling to advanced.  

The Education Arcade

The Education Arcade uses interactive and engaging games to promote learning.  It seems to be geared towards students in middle school and high school.  For example, there is a project called iCue, in which MIT and NBC News have worked together to create in order to support teaching and learning in AP U.S. History, Government, and Politics.  The project reinforces students' classroom learning by linking the media to those classes.  Games and social networking activities are created based on these stories for teachers and students to access and use in unconventional ways.

Arizona K12 Center

This site offers quality professional development for educators using what they refer to as the "Arizona Technology Integration Matrix."  It includes 5 interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments and associates it with 5 levels of technology integration, creating a matrix of 25 cells.  In each cell, a video and 2 lesson plans are provided.  Though this matrix is based off the Arizona standards, many can be applied to Virginia's as well.

Amanda and I are authors!

This is what I like to do... what about you?

3+

EdHelper

This site has a multitude of different worksheets, activities, and games each categorized by subject or by grade.  I've used this site for extra worksheets and really enjoyed how they offer beginner, intermediate, and advance levels per grade.  It's helpful when accomodating for children in your classroom.  If you're not a member, you are only allowed access to a limited amount, but my school had a membership so we could all use it.  

QuizStar

Need assistance making quizzes for your class?  QuizStar is a Web-based quiz maker that enables you to create, administer and automatically grade your quizzes online!  You can incorporate media files like images, movies, and even audio so that the quizzes are more effective.  You can easily share with other teachers or administration.  

Cyberbee

This site has suggestions on how to use the web in the classroom. Sections include curriculum ideas, research tools, treasure hunts and web projects. I only saw math, science, and social studies based curriculum lessons, but the ones I looked at looked actually fun! I thought it was a bit difficult to navigate the site and find what you wanted-- but it's free! 

New Technologies

Jump Start

This site is very interactive and kid friendly, as well as teacher friendly!  The layout of the site is very nice as well, making it easy to get to games, worksheets, activities, lesson plans, etc.  They also give ideas for holidays as well.  Jump Start provides resources for kindergarten through fifth grade.  While there is a lot you can use for free, if you pay the $6 monthly fee, you are granted many more membership bonuses.

Hot Chalk

Hot Chalk has all of your "lesson plans by teachers for teachers."  This is a great site because it covers all grades, all the way up to high school.  It also offers a lesson plan writing guide with tons of tips and examples.  There is also a field trip section which offers "less-stress" field trips and virtual field trips as well.  

TenMarks

TenMarks offers online math practice and instruction for grades 2 through high school.  Though only a small portion of it is free (the entire program is $40), I really liked how it is designed to help all students-- enrichment and special education among others.  It also provides teachers with the tools for assessment and instruction for all 3 tiers of Response to Intervention (RtI).  They offer a summer program so that children won't lose their math skills over their vacation.  

Reading and Math!

Storyline Online


I briefly mentioned this when we had our assignment with the QR barcode. Storyline Online is an online streaming video program.  The very cool thing about it is that SAG members read the children's stories aloud.  Often, the students will recognize the members (famous actors/actresses) and become that much more engaged in the story.  They have about 25 stories to choose from, but they are constantly being updated and stories are switched.  I have used this for indoor recess and also for parts of the reading curriculum, like when students must identify the characters, setting, plots, events, etc.  

Illuminations


Illuminations is a math resource for K-12 students and teachers.  It is FULL of amazing stuff- like lessons, activities, and standards.  Illuminations make it very easy to search for specific topics and broader ones as well.  They have lessons and activities broken down from K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and then 9-12.  

ReadWriteThink


Another amazing resource for K-12 students, teachers, and parents but this site is for reading, writing and all of the in-betweens.  You can search for lesson plans, student interactives, calendar activities, and more all by grade level.  They also have many resources available for professional development as well as parent and after-school resources.  

The technologies continue

Big Blue Button
I watched 2 tutorial videos for Big Blue Button-- one from the teacher perspective and one from the student perspective.  I found both to be very simply explained.  Big Blue Button is pretty much an intensified Blackboard.  I think this technology would be best used for online college classes because of the video, audio, and even desktop enabling applications.  Big Blue Button has very basic features and designs, keeping it appealing and easy to use.

Survey Monkey
Survey Monkey is a free and very easy to use site which allows you to create and monitor a survey.  It's great because you don't need to be very technological advanced-- the simplicity of the site is doable for anyone!  The results of the survey stream in automatically, so you get real time results.  You can create a survey from scratch or choose from the many hundreds of templates Survey Monkey offers.  I remember filling out many Survey Monkey surveys in college for my marketing friends :)

Teacher Tube

Not all students learn best through lectures.  Many are visual learners in which watching videos would be crucial to their learning.  Teacher Tube is an online community for sharing instructional videos.  It's educationally focused, making it a safe place for students to learn from.  It's also free!  I just finished a lesson plan for telling time, but I wish I had used this site before, because I found a great video of children 'teaching' other children on how to tell time!  Super cute and effective!