When I look at all the cool technology that is available to classroom teachers, it is easy to be seduced by a lot of flashy, "Gee Whiz" applications. You look at them and say, "Wow - wouldn't it be cool to...", then somehow, you never get around to actually using them.
On the other hand, what about the not-so-sexy, practical tools that I actually put to use? The ones of real value? The Mary-Anns of my little island, if you will? (Sorry - a totally wasted youth coming back to haunt me...)
The type of application that springs to mind is Mapping Games.
I've been using these in my classroom for the past several years to help drill students in study sessions for geography quizzes. They are practical, immediate and visual ways of studying that target a different type of learner than traditional pen and paper petagogy. If I have a student who swears he or she can't memorize a particular map, half an hour of traditional drilling - ("Okay, what's this one? Uh, huh... and this one? And what was the first one, again?"), followed up by half an hour or so of playing a mapping game will almost always nail the fundamentals into his or her brain.
Okay, granted - this isn't higher-level learnng we're talking about here. This is not going to inform a student in any meaningful way about the history of a conflict or the richness of a culture; this is rote memorization. There is a place for that, though, and mapping games really help with the tedious gruntwork.
Anyway - useful online mapping games:
http://www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/ - These are games that I've been using for several years. They are very basic, but really get the job done. There are mapping games here that cover dozens of different topics, from very basic to very esoteric.
http://www.mapmsg.com/games/statetris/ - If you are familiar with the old videogame Tetris, these games will make instant sense to you. If you don't know what I'm talking about, they will confuse and dismay you. These games are seriously addictive. Please, for the sake of your own sanity, if you play these yourself, start on the Easy level. (By the way, the fact that this set of games sucks you in so thoroughly is a very good thing when you can get a student into that zombie-like trance, where, quite against his will, he learns something.)
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games.htm - I've just discovered this series of games. They have several different sets that focus on the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, South America, etc.. Each set starts out with a very basic, easy(ish) game to lull you into a false sense of complacency, then presents you with more and more challenging games on the same theme. By the time you've worked your way up to Level Three or Four, you REALLY know this stuff!
I see all these as being particularly useful for 5th grade and up. I looked for a New Hampshire mapping game to help out the 4th grade with their New Hampshire unit. I didn't find a GAME, exactly, but I did find this page of very cool classroom support materials. I hope it's useful.
Hmmmm.... maybe we should have student's design their own online New Hampshire mapping game. A very Ginger-y idea.
One of my favorite toys is the Free Hi-Q Recorder.
Basically, it is a tape recorder for your computer. You can use it to record any sound that comes across your sound card. (If that sounds too tech-geeky, it basically means that you can save any sound that you listen to with your computer.) Here are some of the things I’ve used it for in the classroom:
· Recording news stories or streaming audio from websites
· Recording episodes of audio podcasts
· Recording the sounds from videos on YouTube
· Saving sound clips from DVDs and CDs
· Grabbing sound effects from computer games
· Collecting samples of music from the free previews available on shopping sites like Amazon or the iTunes Store
How to use Free Hi-Q Recorder:
Step #1 – Download the program. It is a free application; you do not have to pay for it. Download it at this website: http://www.roemersoftware.com/free-sound-recorder.html
Step #2 – Once you’ve downloaded the recorder, open it by double-clicking the new icon on your desktop.
Step #3 – Cue up the sound you want to record. (This means, get the sound that you want to record ready to play.)
Step #4 – Free Hi-Q Recorder is set up very much like a tape recorder. The buttons are pretty self-explanatory. The button you want for recording is the red one. Press the “Record” button, then play the sound you want to record. When the sound is done, press the “Stop” button. The sound will automatically be saved on your computer as an MP3 file.
Step #5 – “Okay, so WHERE did this thing save the sound I just recorded?”
If you click on the “Options” button at the top of the recorder, the program will open up a window with a whole menu of options for where and how to save sounds. Play around with it a little. One of the great things about this program is that it starts out very simple and easy to use, but as time goes by, you can do fancier and trickier things with the sounds you record as your comfort level rises.
Step#6 – Editing the sound. After you’ve recorded sound clips a couple of times, you’ll probably become more of a perfectionist and want to edit your sound files to make them more useful for your purposes. The best program for this is another free application called Audacity. We’ll talk more about how to use it in some later post.
PowerPoint is one of the most useful tools in my bag of tricks. It allows me to show students graphic examples of whatever abstract concept I'm trying to teach them. It allows me to use pictures, sounds, music - even videos and games to get points across the dreaded adolescent apathy barrier.
One of the biggest frustrations in putting together a good slide show presentation is citing my sources. It's not that I'm in any way reluctant to show anybody where I found stuff - it's just that after I've put in a lot of work to make a slide look really schnazzy, I hate to clutter it up with bibliography information.
That's where the the notes section of a PowerPoint slide comes in.
When you are building a slide in PowerPoint, at the bottom of the page, under the actual slide, there is a window labeled "Click to add notes". This was originally designed for nervous speakers who were likely to forget what they were showing to their audience. The idea was that they would print out a hard copy of their presentation beforehand and be able to read from their notes as they proceded.
This is where I've been citing my sources. There is plenty of room to put a formal or informal citation. If anyone asks "Where did you get your information?", you can show them your source on the spot.
[Legal disclaimer: It goes without saying that I'm not a copyright lawyer - or indeed, an expert in anything - so I don't absolutely, completely, swear in court, know for a fact that this constitutes legal attribution, but I'm pretty sure that this falls into the catagory of "Good Enough For Teachers"]
All I know is that since I started doing this, I've gotten much more concientious about copywrite stuff (a technical legal term) and I feel more like I'm modeling ethical use to my students.
Flickr is one of those websites that you discover and suddenly realize that everyone in the world knows about it but you. (Welcome to my world!)
Flickr is a website designed to allow people to share their pictures with each other and with the world. Let's say you just bought a new puppy and you wanted all your friends and relatives to see it (especially your Aunt Helga who said you were too irresponsible to keep a cactus alive - take THAT, you old biddy!). You could upload a photo of your puppy looking very cute and allow:
a) nobody to see it,
b) a selected list of friends and family to see it or
c) the whole world to see it.
This third catagory of photos is what is most interesting to me as a teacher. There are literally many millions of people out there, constantly uploading their pictures that they really really want people to look at. Some of these are incredily useful in the classroom.
For instance, let's say that you are preparing your class for a fieldtrip to the New England Aquarium. There are hundreds of teachers and parents out their who have already visited the aquarium and posted pictures of it on Flickr. You can download these photos and pop them into a PowerPoint or print them onto an overhead, to give the kids a heads-up of what they will see.
If you are nervous about the ethical issues of using other people's photos, you can do an advanced search of pictures. One of the options is to select only photos with a Creative Commons licence - that means people who have really thought about this and decided that they would like the world to see their pictures and use them, as long as they don't use them commercially. Also, you can contact the person who uploaded the work and ask their permission. I did this for a great photo I wanted to use, but which was not listed as Creative Commons. The photographer (a professional art photographer from Toronto) happens to have a daughter in Grade Eight and not only gave me permission to use her photo (with attribution) but sent me a much larger, higher quality copy of it.
Flickr (Aaargh! That's the fourth time I've had to retype that name, I always insist on putting in an "e") also has some cool features like Interesting Photos of the Last Seven Days, which is pretty much what it sounds like. A lot of professonal photographers post their work on Flickr, as well as really, REALLY good amateurs, who want to get feedback and an audience.
Try Flickr and you'll be hooked. (Okay, I know I say that about everything, but it's true. At least for some of you. Okay, for me. Try it anyway.)
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