I've been a little obsessed lately with Infographics. I can't help, I think they are great and that there are tons of educational value in them. A simple search will turn up many different kinds and although I hadn't realized it until a few months ago, infographics are a part of our daily life. They are everywhere. Anyways, here's a great site to create an infographic about yourself. What About Me? is free infographic generator made by Intel. Using your Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activity, it creates an infographic about you. You'll find parts of your Facebook posts, what time you generally use any of the three networks and what you most commonly post about. What About Me? even tells you what the average tone of your messages are. Are you happy or angry most of the time when you post? When you've completed your infographic you can even download. Go ahead, give it a try, you might be surprised at what you find out!
PS. The educational purpose of this? Getting high school students to look at their digital footprint. The overall question, what are their social networking skills saying about them?
Check out my What About Me? below:
February is Black History Month and it's not hard to find a ton of resources on the Internet. However, sometimes it might be difficult to find "good" resources or ones that you might actually use. So here are few and one new one that I'm particularly excited about, Mission US: Flight to Freedom!
The History Channel's Black History site has a great collection of quizzes, videos, images and information.
The National Archives. I've mentioned this in previous posts, but it's truly a fantastic site and they have put together a great set of resources that can be found here.
Letters of Note. I came across this site while reading through a blog. Letters of Note is a collection of "letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes and memos that are original and historical. Set up in a blog type format, it's a collection of confirmed tidbits of history that has the primary source material to go along with it. Pretty neat if I do say so myself and the reason for it being on this list- there's a letter from a former slave to his former master.
Mission US: Flight to Freedom. This is the one I'm most excited about! Mission US: Flight to Freedom is a fun and interactive role-playing game. It is the second in the series created by the people at Thirteen WNET. The first one was Mission US: For Crown or Colony. Players of Flight to Freedom assume the role of Lucy King who is a 14-year-old enslaved girl living in Kentucky in 1848. The object of the game is to work to navigate her escape and journey via the Underground Railroad to Ohio. The game can be played directly online or can be downloaded and installed on a computer. FREE! Need to mention that word here. FREE! There is also an amazing set of teacher resources to go along with the game. You'll find DBQs, primary sources, visual aids, writing prompts and more. Take a look it's well worth it. Even if you don't plan to use it for Black History Month, you could use it for studying the Civil War.
I know, I know. Why on earth am I posting about the State of the Union? A few reasons. It's important. As a child, ages 5-18, we always talked about it in some way shape or form in school. I'm a Social Studies, History geek. It's important. Whether you "like" or "dislike" the President, he had some good points. It's important. Have I said that enough? Alright you get the point. I'll spare you my personal thoughts on the actual address, but I did watch the whole thing and I did listen. But there are some things that you may find of use for discussions on the State of the Union.
(Image created using Tagxedo. I took the words of the address, copy and paste them into Tagxedo, chose the US as a shape and there you go. An instant word cloud that shows the most commonly used words in bold.)
Happy New Year and welcome to 2012! 2012 brings much anticipation and speculation for the world and also the United States as it is a Presidential election year. So if you are looking for some information on the candidates and up to date information check out this site FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight a site all about numbers and is pretty cool. You'll also find links to the Primary Calendar, Poll Watch and various other information. This will be first of many posts that focus on the election this year, so be sure to check back!
Ever wonder how much it would actually cost to purchase some of the items in the 12 Days of Christmas? This is a great to look at the rising cost of products or perhaps even the decrease in value. Through this interactive game, students can collect and find out just how much it would cost. So go ahead and take a look at The Twelve Days of Christmas, put together by PNC
bank. It's a great interactive if you are studying financial literacy and percent change over time. After you've completed this years price, you are able to scroll through and look at years past as a whole or individually by items.
A month ago I wrote about attending a workshop on embedding literacy across the curriculum. (see old post) In total the workshop is 6 days long and so far I've completed 4 days. In my post I shared my ideas, thoughts and goals on literacy. Another co-worker and I were recently asked to help a Literacy Coach come up with some resources that she could pass on to participants in her workshop on Literacy. She was looking for anything from listening to reading, working with words, sorting, printables, etc. and the list goes on. So that's what I've been up to. I've created a wiki with the help of my co-worker in which we've put a bunch of resources together to promote literacy and using technology. The wiki, Elementary Literacy Seminar is what we created. Geared towards the audience of K-4, you'll find links to sites that you can listen to books being read, download worksheets to go along with the stories and even play some games. Like I said there are quite a few resources there, so just play around. For example the site Speakaboos has fables, nursery rhymes and other favorites, such as 'Arthur' that you listen to. And if that doesn't catch your attention, try out Storyline Online. The Screen Actors Guild is the sponsor of this site that brings stories alive to students through the use of streaming video. Each book includes lesson ideas and is read by actors such as Lou Diamond Phillips reading the Polar Express . Check out our wiki, we'll continue to update it!
CNN Student News is a great site to check out if you are looking for daily current events for your students. CNN Student News has a program that airs each weekday during the school year. The actual newscast itself is streamed on CNNStudentNews.com and is even available as a free download as a video podcast on CNN. The news program is perfect for middle or high school students. As a teacher you can even check out some of the FREE teacher materials. Check out the Daily Discussion and Newsquiz, the Blog from A-Z and there are even printable maps in .pdf form. This site is definitely worthy of being added to your favorites bookmark!
