From the Desk of Karen Gedeon- August 2015

Post date: Aug 18, 2015 10:19:21 AM

Welcome Back. To help kick the year off on the right foot, I've come up with a variety of ten tech resources which can be used across all grade levels and content areas. I know you will enjoy some of these as much as your kiddos. Let me know if you have any questions.

Have you tried http://www.edheads.org/ yet? Edheads.org is designed to support math and science activities for most grade levels. With many activities from Simple Machines to Virtual Hip Replacements to Manufacturing Technician, this site will fit many needs. Each activity comes with teacher resources, suggested grave levels, vocabulary/glossary and more.
Looking for a way to incorporate writing into your lessons this year? Try having your students’ blog through http://kidblog.org/home/. Simple and safe – teachers set the classes while teaching students how to ethically utilize technology as they complete assignments. There is a free version as well as a paid version.
Bring character into the classroom with Be a Noble Kid: http://beanoblekid.org/. There are monthly lessons each covering a different pillar of character each including social skills, talking points and community projects. You can also join other ongoing projects or create your own.
Go on a field trip to a national park at http://www.nationalparks.org/our-work/programs/electronic-field-trip. Each of the 15 field trips include a televised broadcast with a park ranger and youth host along with teacher resources including lesson plans games and more.
Looking for a new type of music to play during class work time? Try video game music from:http://www.rpgamers.net/radio/. Video game scores are written to keep the player engaged and motivated without distracting them from their task. Often instrumentals, sometimes with lyrics of fantasy languages, most students will find the themes played fun background to work with.
Do you have a visually impaired student or one with a disability which “significantly affect use of printed materials”? Look into https://www.bookshare.org. It is a free service which supplies over 300,000 books for student to read or listen to. Users can highlight text, use text-to-speech, alter fonts (including use of digital braille) and more.
Be the coolest teacher by turning your kids into zombies at http://makemezombie.com/. Turn any ordinary picture into a gory mess.
Create free web or print presentations, posters, flyers and more with Canva athttps://www.canva.com/. This cool tech tool offers a million images, hundreds of fonts and many templates to choose from. They also offer additional options for $1. Canva creators made this easy to edit through drag and drop, insert and various other commands students need to master. A collaboration piece allows multiple people to work on the same project.
Ever find a video that almost fits what you need? Edpuzzle at https://edpuzzle.com/ allows teachers to customize videos by cropping them down, adding audio notes and quiz questions. Worried students will fast forward? You have options such as preventing fast forwarding, posting a due date, allowing retakes and more. Following the many tutorials allows even the novice techie to learn the ropes on this one. Best of all? It’s FREE!
I know I’ve mentioned Symbaloo before, but now is a great time to start using it. It is a great free curation tool that lets you set up links to websites you want students to utilize. You can set up one to use throughout the year or different ones for different units. Symbaloos are very customizable and there are many already created that you can use without having to create your own. Check out the educational versions at: https://edu.symbaloo.com/home/mix/13eOcMQQRU.

Karen Gedeon

Middle School Media Specialist

Cuyahoga Falls City School District

330-926-3809 ext 502414

Secretary, Ohio Educational Library Media Association (OELMA)

"those who think that the internet replaces a library must think it is okay to use WebMD instead of going to a doctor." - Debra Kachel