Additional+Educational+Resources

The following resources are excellent for motivating students by grabbing their attention, relating assignments and lectures to their lives by using technology tools that they enjoy, which in turn builds their confidence and leads to both student and teacher satisfaction with the progress we make together!

Podcast Here is a podcast explaining a few of the many ways that teachers and students can incorporate podcasts into the classroom. While many people do not like to hear the sound of their own voice, the benefits outweigh negativity. By simply downloading audacity, which is free, one can begin on this new "adventure" in teaching/learning. Check it out to learn more.

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Movie Maker Watch the video to learn more about Mrs. Helvey Beyond the School. Students will learn about me, as I will learn about them through our assignments this school year. My example below is only minimal for demo purposes, but my original movie is 3:30 minutes long that tell a story with captions throughout the slideshow/movie. I used Movie Maker to create this project. It can be downloaded onto your computer from Microsoft, and it's FREE! The downfall is that when uploading to Wiki, be sure to limit the size of your video, for you are only able to upload 20MB. As a result, videos must be minimal. Other websites may allow larger video sharing, though.

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Destiny Search This is an excellent database for research that many schools and libraries have begun using. A person is able to access better, more reliable, online information using this search engine, or one may view what books are available for check out from his or her school library. Click on the highlighted word, database, to access Destiny. Survey Monkey Survey Monkey is an excellent, free, technology tool that teachers can incorporate into their lessons as pre-tests, post-tests, etc.... It provides a variety of ways to set up your survey. Once you have created your survey, you simply provide the link to your students for completion. Survey Monkey also allows you to analyze results, which can be done in graph form if you choose. Click HERE to access my survey on the political process that you may use for reference.

Voki Ever wonder what a Voki is and how to use it in your classroom? It is a wonderful digitool many students of the current generation will find engaging and exciting. The possibilities of how to incorporate it into lessons are endless. Personally, I have used this feature for oral summaries with novel units, peer evaluations of projects, "radio advertisements" when creating a presentation for our unit on Media Literacy, but the list goes one. I highly recommend trying it. Feel free to ask any questions and please share if you have any suggestions from which we can all benefit!

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Excel Spreadsheets These provide teachers a way of keeping an electronic grade book that is capable of organizing, averaging and graphing grades of entire classes or individual students. With formulas/functions already embedded into the program, calculation errors can be avoided, unless grades are manually entered in incorrectly. Of course, it has other functions, too, but the overall benefits of using it in the classroom are to help visualize student performance, thus academic growth. Some school systems provide online databases such as PowerSchool or SASI that can be accessed from school servers, but Excel provides the opportunity to save grades in various locations: school, home computer, portable laptop, and notepad. The key, however, is to update grades onto a jump drive that can be transported and saved in these various locations.

Below is an example of an Excel Spreadsheet. Check it out to "see" its benefits.

Prezi An excellent, creative way to provide lessons, but students can also create Prezis to demonstrate what they have learned. These take time in creating, but they provide a lot of movement and room for creativity. From personal experience, they definitely keep students engaged and motivated to learn. Click HERE to view the Prezi website, a free website! media type="custom" key="24247402" width="258" height="172" align="center"

Rubistar A website with already created or opportunities to create your own rubric to fairly and adequately grade students' projects, writing assignments, etc... Rubrics can also be used to give students opportunity to be aware of the expectations for the project or assignment. On Rubistar, teachers can either print or upload the rubric of their choice for students to view. Click HERE to view the Rubistar web site.

Below is a rubric I used to evaluate a website. I modeled a web site evaluation with my students so they would know how to complete the assignment. I also demonstrated how I used the rubric to complete this assignment. This is the same rubric I used in grading my students. They particularly liked being able to choose their own web site to evaluate in relation to our assignment on evaluating primary/secondary sources for validity for research purposes.