Agriculture Websites

The students in our Geography class made websites that highlight important information about agriculture in Quebec.

The site the students used to construct their websites is www.weebly.com.  I like using Weebly because it is easy to use and at the same time, it has enough features to produce nice results.  Also, it is free.

Another good site which we used is www.scribblemaps.com.  Scribble Maps allows students to draw and color on Google Maps.  The resultant production can then be embedded in a website.  The students used Scribble Maps to identify the agricultural areas of Quebec and  the different physiographic regions of the province.

The students used www.chartgo.com to create embeddable charts.  I like Chartgo because it is simple to use and the results are aesthetically pleasing.

Here are a couple of examples of the websites produced by students:

Agriculture Quebec

Sabrina Agriculture

Explorers Websites

In our history class, the students created websites to display information about the European explorers.

We used www.weebly.com to create the sites.  We used www.scribblemaps.com to create the embedded maps and www.timerime.com to create the timelines.

Here are some examples:

http://europeanexploring123.weebly.com/

http://exploringeurope13.weebly.com/

Global Citizen Prezis

In English, we are exploring the topic of what it means to be a global citizen.  Students used a website called Prezi to create dynamic presentations concerning this topic.  Here are some exemplars:

Global Citizen on Prezi

Global Citizen on Prezi

Goanimate

Students in my English class used www.goanimate.com to create responses to a short story they read that dealt with the topic of slavery and freedom.  Here are some of the productions:

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Two Web 2.0 Collections

Here are two websites that have collections of interesting websites that could be useful to teachers.

Curriculum21

Webtools4u2use

Glencoe Literature Study Guides

Glencoe has a number of study guides for novels available online.

Linoit Poetry

The English students composed poems of different varieties.  They used a website called Picfont to put their poems onto photographs.  Then, they used a website called Linoit to display their creations.

Here are a couple examples.

Poetry page one.

Poetry page two.

Musical Animations

I wanted my students to do an activity that would get them to think about the way that music is used to enhance and complement the mood in movies.

I tasked them to create animated sketches that would include a variety of different moods.  The site we used was GoAnimate.  The great thing about GoAnimate is that some of the animation templates include music that is already categorized into various moods.

GoAnimate is fun and relatively easy to use.  The students all enjoyed using this site to create their productions.  Here are a few exemplars to enjoy:

 

Glencoe

Here is a great resource that I found out about from Larry Ferlazzo.

It is a website hosted by the textbook company Glencoe.  The content is intended to be used in conjunction with their textbooks.  However, it is not necessary to possess the textbooks in order to take advantage of some of their online resources.

Glencoe’s landing page looks like this:

As you can see, in the corner is a box you can use to access their online resources.

There are many subjects available.  The subject that interested me was Social Studies.  Selecting Social Studies takes you to this page:

I have opened up the “World History” tab.  You can see that there are resources for three text books available within World History.

Selecting “Journey Across Time” brings you to this page:

You can see that there are many resources available.  Some are better than others.  I would recommend the “In-Motion Animations,” and the “Student Web Activities.”  However, perhaps the best resource on this site is the “Spotlight Videos.”

There is a large library of videos available.  Here is a screen shot showing just some of them.

Hip Hop Songs

Students in my music class composed hip hop songs.

They used Myna to create the background music and beats. Myna is a free online audio editor. It includes a library with many audio samples that can be stitched together.

This student used 19 different audio clips in her production.

Then, the students used Ujam to record their voices. They used headphones to listen to their music on Myna while they sang.

Myna can be used for voice recording, but I prefer Ujam because it has many neat effects that can be utilized to improve and distort the sound of your voice. The only drawback is that Ujam has a one minute time limit. If necessary, this problem can be solved by having students record two different sessions and then using Myna to paste them together afterwards.

Here is one student`s voice, as recorded on Ujam, before he added his music.

Song by Kangirsuk

Having recorded their voices, the students download the MP3, and then uploaded it to Myna. They then did any necessary adjustments, such as changing the tempo, to match the vocals to the music.

Here is the song created by one student who actually did not know what to write about, so she read from the novel, `The Giver.`

Hip hop song by Kangirsuk

GoAnimate

GoAnimate is a great site for creating animations.

It offers a nice balance between simplicity to use and complexity of features. My English students all enjoyed creating animations.

Here are a couple of examples.

GoAnimate.com: Ghost squad Alpha squadron by Ghost239


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

GoAnimate.com: A day at the vending machine by Ryan Marcoux


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

RSA Animate

Here is an interesting animation.

Dialogue Activity

Here is an activity my English students did in order to practice properly writing quotations.

Much of it was borrowed from a lesson plan I found on the National Writing Project website.  On their site you will find a variety of situations that would involve conversations.

I instructed the students to work in pairs.  Each duo selected a scenario, then composed a dialogue.  At first, the students tried using a website called, “Collabedit,” which is supposed to allow multiple authors to collaborate in real-time on a single document.  Unfortunately, we found this website to be too buggy; the students encountered many glitches and error messages.  So, we had to settle on using good old Microsoft Word.

Writing collaboratively was fun and the students were very motivated to write.

Face Movie

Picasa has an interesting tool for making slideshows that focus on faces in the photos.

Middlespot

When students complete online projects, I ask them to post the results to their blogs.

The problem is that there are often technical difficulties with this ostensibly simple task.  For example, Blogger and Wordpress often do handle embed codes properly.  Sometimes, for random reasons I do not understand, Blogger will request that an account be verified with a cell phone number.

Also, Blogger can be frustratingly restrictive in the way it handles photos and such.  Wordpress can be intimidating to uninitiated students with it cluttered interface.

My solution is to try using Middlespot.  Middlespot allows users to post many media formats, including embed codes, photos, music and videos onto a blank workspace.  The workspace is larger than the visible portion of a browser, so visitors can scroll around the area.

This site will provide a more interesting way for students to display their work.  Hopefully.  It’s still in beta, so there might be glitches.

Lyrics Training

Lyrics Training is an interesting site I discovered from Twitter.

You select a music video from Youtube.  As the song plays, you must type the lyrics.  There are three levels of difficulty, which each successive level omitting more words.

There are seven languages to chose from, so this site could not only help my students learn English, but it could also help me learn French.  Many people have told me that a good way to learn French is to listen to French music. 

I think that my students would be interested in using this website because if there is one thing they all universally love, it’s music videos on Youtube.

As the song plays, the lyrics scroll below segmented into short phrases.  The neat thing about this is that the song automatically pauses after each phrase, and it will not continue until you type the missing word.  If you want to rehear a phrase, then click on the backspace key and it will replay.  If need be, you can skip words.   As well, there is a translation feature.

When you finish a song, you receive a score.  Here, you can see that I received a time penalty.  You can compare your score on a song to the scores of other users.

There is a stats page that displays all the songs you have played and your score for each song.

ListAndPlay

Since I’m on the topic of listening to music online, another good website for creating playlists is ListAndPlay.com.  Click on, “Generate your own MTV,” input the name of a song or artist, and the site will generate a playlist of similar tunes.  ListAndPlay is linked to YouTube, so you can watch videos of your songs.

Playlistnow

Sometimes I like to listen to music online. I had been using Grooveshark for this purpose. Grooveshark allows users to create lists of their favorite tunes, but I'm not the kind of guy who likes to collect songs and listen to the same songs over and over. To suit my needs, Grooveshark has a number of stations, in different formats such as Rock and Classical.

I recently found a similar, better site, called Playlistnow. What I like about Playlistnow is that you can input your mood or activity and it will find playlists of songs to match your situation.

PhotoPeach

Here is a project that caters to one of the primary interests of many students: music.

I asked my students to choose a song, then create a slideshow on PhotoPeach using the lyrics from their song. They used photos downloaded from Google Images. I recommend using only large size images.

Here is one student`s production:

EasyBM

EasyBM is a website for quickly and easily saving your bookmarks online.