Technology in Your Classroom : Hot Websites :
Hot Websites February 2005
By Linda Lindroth
From Groundhog Day to Galileo's birthday and Presidents' Day - there are lots of resources for your students to research and discover
February is the shortest month of the year, but the available resources for your classroom seem to be infinite.
enVision Your World
www.envisionyourworld.com
enVision Your World/Social Studies and enVision Your World/Science by Olympus and VayaVentures use visual learning in an interactive curriculum to help students explore their world. Along with lessons and activities for the classroom, there are take-home activities to involve parents.
Exploring Planets in the Classroom
www.spacegrant.hawaii.edu/class_acts/index.html
This rich resource includes more than 25 hands-on science activities to help students explore Earth, the Solar System, Geology and Outer Space.
My students loved the "Edible Rocks" lesson and the printable teacher and student activity pages make it easy to incorporate these lessons into the curriculum. The website is also a rich resource for science standards links and dozens of other science education websites.
American Presidents: Life Portraits
www.americanpresidents.org
C-SPAN in the Classroom provides a comprehensive index of resources for your Presidents' Day study.
Pick a president for an in-depth look at the man, his accomplishments and related links – with comprehensive teacher guides.
For even more material, click the "Teachers" button at the top of the website for activities:
- On this Day in Presidential History
- Shaping the Nation and the Presidency
- Career Paths to the Presidency
- American Presidents Timeline Quiz
Also, click on American Presidents: Life Portraits to tour presidential and vice presidential gravesites. In addition C-SPAN in the Classroom offers lessons about the Presidency and the opportunity to watch archived program video of all the Life Portraits.
e.Guides. Space Travel
www.spacetravel.dke-explore.com/
DK Interactive and Google have teamed up again to bring you more "book to web" titles. Their latest publications for class research are: e.guides Space Travel, e.guides Dinosaur, e.guides Earth and e.guides Mummy.
Each book has its own secure website with hundreds of selected links to support the topics the books discuss. The full-color print book gives key facts with keywords to use on the website for accessing the dozens of related web resources to help research your specific topic. Only keywords displayed in the book will work on the website.
Each e.guides website links to free images from the book to download and print for students to use in class research reports. In addition, a Google directory also links to a comprehensive index of annotated web resources, making it easy to skim all the related resources.
For more information about the new book to web titles, visit www.dk.com The books cost $17.99 each and are available on the website.
The Write: Outloud To Go -- Tech Spotlight
The Write: OutLoud To Go program from Don Johnston makes the portable Dana by AlphaSmart a talking word processor, offering auditory support for revision and editing of student writing. The Write: OutLoud software works with the AlphaSmart VoiceCard to provide speech feedback for student writing.
The VoiceCard plugs into a slot on the back of the Dana and headphones or a speaker jack are then plugged in to the card. Students can hear their words being read aloud as they write. The speech function lets you turn speech on/off and set the speech for letters, words, sentences or paragraphs. A word is read once the writer hits the spacebar and a sentence is read once a punctuation mark is typed to end the sentence.
Visit www.alphasmart.com or call 888-274-0680 for more information about the Dana ($429) and the VoiceCard. To learn more about Write: OutLoud To Go, visit www.donjohnston.com or call 800-999-4660. Mac/Win Write: OutLoud & VoiceCard $210.00
Linda K. Lindroth is Technology Editor and Web Coordinator for Teaching K-8. She is also a Technology Resource Teacher in a K-5 computer lab in Lexington, KY.
