Quest #5 Investigate Virtual Resources
You are going to spend quite a bit of time researching, evaluating and preparing to implement ten different virtual activities. You are given 8 hours of work time to complete this so keep that in mind as you work. Sloppy, basic, incomplete resources will not be useful to you unless you take the time to be sure they work properly, contain the content you want and truly help students to engage with the content.
For example, finding a Kahoot created by someone else, correcting all questions/images to truly reflect your standards and getting the play link ready to go WOULD be acceptable since I know how much time it takes to find a good Kahoot. Also, using Flippity and getting all your question/answers typed in for a jeopardy game would also qualify. An example of sloppy work is to say that you will use Google Arts and Culture to show students Picasso prints. That is not an example of deep learning and clearly shows a lack of effort on your part. Please take this opportunity to revolutionize your classroom and find resources that are new and innovative and FUN!
Below is a list of some of my favorite resources! Use this as a jumping off point to find free activities to use in your classroom. Before fully committing to any activity, be sure that it works on the computers that your students will be using. Also, I want to clarify that all ten activities DO NOT need to be for the unit you are designing. You can use ANYTHING that you will find useful in your classroom. You will be collecting the url and a description of the activity for each of the ten resources.
MIT Interactive Games for Math and Science
A lot of online, long-term games that teach a variety of different skills
This site has an amazing variety of virtual labs/activities to teach students about money, interest, budgeting, etc. I was really impressed with the amount of lessons to choose from and it seems like any teacher could find a lesson to use in their classroom.
Web based game system that allows students to compete against each other in a quiz show. You need a projector to display the game during class. Search 1,000 of pre-made quizzes.
You can use your flashcards and go Live in Quizlet live. Students are randomly grouped and compete! Search 1,000 of pre-made flash card sets.
Long term PBL projects for all areas of learning Includes all online lessons, videos and articles! I couldn’t get the videos to work on the Chromebook but it should work on other computers.
PBS Nova Science Labs and PBS NOVA Topics
PBS offers free interactive labs and videos that are organized by topic.
Easy to use story maker. This site has preloaded images and you can upload your own.
Write words into a shape or image. Image can be shared in a variety of ways and would be cool for poetry presentations or vocabulary words.
Great site for posting large collections of work. The teacher creates a padlet and students upload work/posts to a digital poster.
Access to all types of art, would be great for making connections to art. For example, solids are like this piece of art because the people are close together….
Flippity is an add-on that allows you to turn a spreadsheet into a bingo game, jeopardy, flashcards, etc. First, install the add-on, then pick your template, then edit the contents.
These use books and Google maps to create virtual field trips based on locations in books. You can create your own or use trips created by other teachers.
Tutorial for installing Bitmoji on Chrome and using it with Google Drawing to create fun Book Snaps. This will revolutionize book reports!
Weather and Climate Interactive Labs
Several activities to choose from
There are a lot of free activities that accompany the text books. All of the activities that I have viewed were free to the public.
Tremendous amount of recorded webinars that show how to to use Google tools in innovative ways. Each webinar is an hour long so it does take some time to complete. If you school honors certificates, you can get a free certificate that shows one hour of credit for taking the quiz that follows each webinar.
Designed for grades 5-8, students are a character based in a point in history. I previewed it quickly and was engaged right from the start.
Many webquests and games. The games are colorful, fun and quick. The site will sort based on standards, age and content.
You can look through pre-made tours using Google Maps or create your own. It appears that you just have to jump in and start creating to learn how to navigate this feature.
Free graphing calculators, graphing activities for ALL types of functions! If you are a math teacher - you need to get here FAST!
Students can create cartoons quickly and easily! Sponsored by Google so it’s all free and easy to use.