January 18th Professional Development

During today's staff development at Okoboji I showed the staff some websites that I hope will prove useful for some. I am listed them below and have added a brief description of each.

Prezi

Prezi is a different way of presenting information. The hope, of course, being to keep engagement levels high. The interface to build the presentations is a bit hard to get used to, but once used to it is very easy to use. The one complaint I have so far is that you cannot hyper-link objects or even words. You have to type out the URL, close the presentation, and then re-open it for the link to become active. The site says they are working on making other objects linkable.

TimeGlider

Building interactive timelines could prove a very useful activity for a history class or any project where such a thing might be needed. This website makes it easier. There are also some already-created timelines that could prove useful for various topics in history.

Google Translate

With the increasing number of ESL students in our district and others in the area, I thought it might be useful to show our staff Google Translate. This is a pretty cool site that does live translation from one language to another. I am told that it does a pretty good job. Plus, there is always the option to offer your own, more accurate translation.

WolframAlpha

This site has been around for a while, but continues to get better and better. It is simply awesome. If you haven't checked it out before, you should check it out now. The ability to solve equations is awesome, but so are all of its other capabilities. Company comparisons, species breakdowns, information on elements, it's all there. How could you use this in your classroom?

Soungle

Need a sound to activate prior knowledge or help with a sensory lesson? This site has them. It is the Google for sounds. I also think it would great for sound bites for presentations or other multimedia projects.

Newseum

This site shows the covers of newspapers all over the country and the world? It is very interesting how different parts of the world view and/or potray worldly headlines.

Tag Galaxy

This site provides a very visually pleasing way to search tagged photos on Flickr.com. Many of teachers and learning teams are already dreaming up ways to use this site in their classrooms. The hope of such eye candy is to keep students engaged while still performing a needed activity. Our elementary teachers are hoping to use it in their sensory imaging activities. Our high school home ec. teacher is considering its use when introducing different types of clothing. How will you use it in your classroom?

Readability

The results this site produces make cluttered websites much more readable when projected in a classroom. It does a pretty good job of taking the main content of the page and making it larger and black type on a white background all the while removing the business surrounding it. I think this could be extremly useful for presenting content from the Internet in any classroom.

HippoCampus

Digital resources from various textbooks have been compiled in one place. They are all organized by subject, then book, then page numbers and topics. These are all great resources and could be utilized by anyone with the textbook or without.

Email to Text Message

The last site I presented to our staff was a list of email addresses from most US carriers to allow a text message to be sent to a cell number via an email.The teachers at the presentation were able to think of many uses for such a list.

I think the presentation went well, and I recieved several positive comments on it throughout the rest of the day. I am already scouring the Internet for more resources to present next time.