Enjoy your holiday!

 Be safe and I will be posting in the New Year.

Stanford University - Teach Your Class Online: The Essentials

 

This would be great to look at over the holidays if you are going virtual for quadmester 3.

Available for instructors worldwide, this free course offered in July 2020 covers the essentials of online teaching. The five-day course covers general guidelines for adapting your course to an online format, best practices for varied situations, common pitfalls in online course design, and how to troubleshoot student issues online.

Teach Your Class Online: Day 1  
This two hour course will provide you with the essentials of online learning.

Teach Your Class Online: Day 2  

Getting Specific: Situations and Tools
Science: Labs in Online Pedagogy

Teach Your Class Online: Day 3

Online Classroom Example Clips
Building and Maintaining a Classroom Community

Teach Your Class Online: Day 4

Review of Submitted Sample Lesson Drafts
Troubleshooting Obstacles to Success in the Online Environment

Teach Your Class Online: Day 5

Math: Using Writing Tablets and Whiteboards
Modern Languages: Tips for Highly Interactive Class During Which Students Actively Speak and Write in the Target Language
Humanities: Productive Classroom Conversations About Challenging Subjects
Closing Thoughts

M.O.O.C.

M.O.O.C.s = Massive Open Online Courses

These are free creditless massive courses offered in partnership with some of the biggest universities in the world.  They offer courses from many different disciplines and in many different subjects.  Maybe over the Christmas holiday you can take a course and get a certificate.  Some examples are: Coursera , EdX and Udacity.  If you would like more click here and here.  Also here is a list of 1500 free online courses.

Cell Labelling and Biorender

 

I have posted about this site in the past.  Last week I posted about Cells Alive so I thought you might want to some more cells and biology.   If you are teaching Science or obviously Biology you might want to take a look at The Biology Corner website by clicking here.  There are many great worksheets.  For example if you click here you will get a great set of slides for labelling plant and animal cells.  The images were created with Biorender which provides a huge bank of images to create scientific illustrations.  From their website, "Create Professional Science Figures in Minutes.  Browse thousands of pre-made icons and templates from more than 30 fields of life sciences."  It is free for educational use.  

Study Stack

 

I have posted about many different flash card sites such as Quizlet and Flippity.   With Study Stack you can make your own flash cards or use some that are already premade in many different  topics.  To see the website click here.

Santa Reads Your Script

 

 Would you like to have Santa read your script to a friend so  that you can send them the video?  You just select one of 4 backgrounds for Santa, type your message and give them your email address.  Then by AI you will get Santa to read your message.  It takes a bit of time for them to check your message for profanity etc.   This might be great to do in your class, especially an ELL class.  To see the website click here.

Creative Chemistry

From their UK website, "Whether you are a teacher, doing chemistry at school, or are simply just interested in chemistry, Creative Chemistry has lots for you.

There are full-colour worksheets and teaching notes for fun activities suitable for a chemistry club, and around three hundred pages of question sheets and practical guides for GCSE and A Level Chemistry.

You will also find fun chemistry puzzles, interactive revision quizzes and molecular models. Choose from the featured selection below, use the Search facility, or enjoy just browsing"

To see the website click here.

 

Cells Alive

 

If you are teaching a unit on cells in your science class this website is a must see. It has  To check out this website click here.

Making the most of Quizlet

 

On October 31 2020 I posted about Quizlet.  You can see the post by clicking here.  Today I read an excellent article, "Making the most of Quizlet" by Sandy Millin.  She goes into depth about using it for her class.  To see the article click here.

Citation

 

I know I have discussed using bibme, mybib, easybib, Citation Machine,  University of Alberta's Centre for Writers and purdue owl before.  Here are a few others that you might want to use for your citations. Bibcitation can be found by clicking  here.  Formatically can be found by clicking  here.   Quickcite can be found by clicking here.

Artemis Moon Pod Essay Contest

Only available for our American friends.  Drats.  

NASA is taking remote learning to the Moon! 2020 has been a year of working and living at a distance. Now consider what it might be like if you were living with a pod of astronauts 250,000 miles from Earth. Your challenge is to imagine leading a one-week expedition at the Moon’s South Pole – with the whole world cheering you on. Tell us about the types of skills, attributes, and/or personality traits that you would want your Moon Pod crew to have and why. How many would be in your pod? And of course you’ll need high tech gear and gadgets! In your essay, also describe one machine, robot, or technology that you would leave on the lunar surface to help future astronauts explore the Moon. Your entry must meet these requirements:

Grades K-4: Essay, up to 100 words

Grades 5-8: Essay, up to 200 words

Grades 9-12: Essay, up to 300 words

Please DO NOT put your name in your entry.

To see the contest website click here.

Most Dangerous Writing App

 

I posted about this in 2019 but it is as a good time to repeat it.   This website might be great to get your students writing.  You can ask it to give you a prompt or not.  You can set it to a preset time or preset number of words you must write for or it stops and you are finished.  When completed you can save your work in many different formats.  To see the website click here.

What is contact tracing?

 From Common Craft, "A short (and silent) video that explains the basics of contact tracing as a way to slow the spread of COVID-19. This video is part of a free resource called the COVID Communication Kit. https://commoncraft.com/covid"

Why Masks Matter

 From Common Craft, "This short (and silent) video briefly explains why masks matter in helping to slow the spread of COVID-19. It's part of a free resource called the COVID Communication Kit: https://commoncraft.com/covid."

Why Social Distancing Matters

 With December around the corner I will post today and the next two days video by Common Craft about Covid.

From their website, "This short (and silent) video briefly explains social distancing and why it matters in helping to slow the spread of COVID-19. It's part of a free resource called the COVID Communication Kit: https://commoncraft.com/covid."

New York Times 15 Second Vocabulary Video Challenge

 

New York Times 8th Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Challenge

The New York Times invites middle and high school students to create a short video that defines or teaches any of the words in our Word of the Day collection. Contest Dates: Nov. 10-Dec. 15, 2020.

The good news for Canadians is that this contest is open to the whole world.  To see information about this contest click here.

This might be a great idea to do with your English class, ELL class or even in conjunction with your Media Arts class.  Below are a couple of the top videos from 2019.

QRcodemonkey

We have all seen those funny little 2 dimensional bar codes like this one called QR codes.

This one should bring you to this page.  QR is an acronym for Quick Response.  QR codes are a convenient way to store URLs  better known as web addresses. Most students have phones that have a QR reader app built into their camera.  If not they can get one for free by clicking here for an Iphone app. Now these QR codes can  easily be made by a student or teacher.    I will suggest some sites in a moment.  What I would like to discuss is how they can be used in an educational setting.

As a teacher

1) If you put your assignments on line you can give your students a sticky with the QR code on them and they can put that in their agenda.  If you have a classroom blog, wiki or website post a QR code for it on your bulletin board.

2) If you want a quick way for the students to view a video but do not have a smart board or projector in your room you can post a QR code on a bulletin board and the students can watch it on their phones.

3) Some teachers augment their texts books by putting stickies in the right spots to lead them to appropriate websites or videos.

4) On research assignments you may want to put a QR code on it to get students to reputable starting points other than Google or Wikipedia.  Maybe a database such as Elibrary Canada.  See Mr. H for help with the database.

5) You could have a QR Scavenger Hunt as explained by the following history link.

6) If your students are doing digital projects and you would like to showcase them on a bulletin board in the hallway or just in your classroom, you can post a QR code directed to each students work.

7) On math work sheets you can add QR codes to video tutorials from Khan Academy or other sites to help students out.

8) There are many more things that can be done with QR codes.  Play around.

As a student

1)  A QR code can bridge the physical assignment you turn in or posted on the black board with the virtual work you have done.  Maybe you shot a video  and posted it on youtube or you made a glog (see glogster.com) to go along with your project to document it.  Place a QR next to your work and students and teachers can share in your digital work.   In the past my daughter  finished her science fair project and she added a QR code to show how she used some software to make a graph.

Here is a closeup of the QR code

2) If students are doing a video for class, students can review other students work if they are posted around the class.  Rather than just watching a video the whole class.  Students can preview the work in progress and make constructive criticism.

3) If students have their art work posted in the hall, maybe a QR code linking a Youtube video of the student discussing their artwork.

To make a QR code.

There are many QR code generators.  If you would like to make the Scavenger/Treasure Hunt as noted in 5 above you can go here.  If you would like to make basic QR codes for a URL such as YouTube or your own blog then use  QRMonkey by clicking  here.  You can use other QR code makers such as Kawaya by clicking here.  You may want to change the colour of the QR codes from black and white to another colour so that you have your codes colour coded for courses.  This can be done on QRstuff.com in step 3.  Just move the cross hair around the colour palette to select a different foreground colour.

If you would like to personalize any of your QR codes you can go here and add any photo you have on your computer to the QR code.  As an example the QR code at the top of this page has a picture of my kids on their first day of school.  I did for a new arrival in the library that gives a "title peek" of the book.

You can do this by  going to visualead or clicking here.

Typing Rocket

 

I have posted previously about typing apps/websites.  To see some of them click here.  Typing club and Z-Type are my favourites.  Typing Club will have you work on the home row.  Z-Type is a game that reminds me of Space Invaders from the '80's.  Typing Rocket might be a game that is a little less complex when compared to Z-Type and so might be better suited to newer typers that are working on the home row as opposed to hunt and peck typers.  To see the Typing Rocket website click here.

Seterra - Online Geography and Anatomy Self Quiz

 

This is from October 2018 but the site is still going strong.

Seterra offers Geography games but I am going to point out that they have Anatomy quizzes too.You can have your students point and click at the parts of the human anatomy or parts of the cell etc.To see the site click here.  I just did the bones quiz and mixed up tibia and fibula.  Oh well more practice needed.

Monkey Learn Word Cloud

 

A word cloud (also known as a tag cloud) is a visual representation of words. Cloud creators are used to highlight popular words and phrases based on frequency and relevance. They provide you with quick and simple visual insights that can lead to more in-depth analyses.  I have posted about several other cloud generators see here.  Here is another one that can be seen by clicking here.  The nice thing about this one is that if you put in source text you can find out how frequently a word or phrase is used.  You might do this for your own work to see if you use a phrase a bit too often.

Color Our Collection

 

Sorry for the US spelling of "colour" in the title but that is what the site is called.  If you would like some historical  art that is printed out in black and white so you can use as a colouring book, well here you go.  Below is an example  from  one of  Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.  There are many themes that could be used from this site from botany, biology, history, and medicine to name a few.  To see the website click here.

Gallery AR

 

This might be something your art class can do when they are on their virtual session.  This app only works for IOS enabled devices.  From the app store this is what they are saying, "Gallery AR turns your surroundings into the art gallery. You just need to pick up the phone and find a wall. The iconic art paints will show in front of you! You can walk as close as you want, or sit well into the couch in the living room. Don't worry about the dress code. Enjoy famous art collections!  Gallery AR collects the artworks from The Art Institute of Chicago. They released more than 50,000 artworks into the public domain in 2018, and the number will grow regularly. Besides, Gallery AR will also expand the source of art collections to other galleries, museums or institutes."  To see the website click here.

Google Public Data Explorer

 

Google Public Data Explorer is a free way to analyze public data.  I first posted about this in 2015.  It is worth taking a look at it again. You can look at fertility rate, life expectancy, HIV prevalence,  education, etc for many countries all at once.  You pick what you want to plot on what axis.  You can animate the graph through the century by moving a slider to see how things change over time.  To see this website click here.   This might work well in your Data Analysis class or Statistics unit.  This might work in your Geography class if you want to look at GDP versus Population Density, etc.  Play around with it to see what you can find out.

Math adventure with Google Earth Voyager Stories

 

Take your students on a math adventure with our Google Earth Voyager Stories. Using the power of Google Earth, Media4Math has developed a collection of resources that contextualize math in the real world.  These real world applications include: The Geometry of City Planning, Architectural Prisms, The Mathematics of Pyramids, Polygon Architecture, Quadrilateral Structures, The Geometry of Sustainable Architecture,  The Geometry of Castles, Triangular Structures and Circular Structures.  To see the website click here.

Pixabay - Images, Videos & Music free to share

 

If you are teaching your students to cite their work properly and are picky about this then you should be just as conscientious about the images they use.  If they are just googled and right clicked then the pictures are not necessarily for public use.  There are a couple ways around this as I posted here and here.  Another source of free and royalty free images, videos and music can be found by clicking here to go to Pixabay.

As far as citing goes you should do is teach your students where to find images that are not copyright protected.  I know most students just use Google Images and copy and paste but if you pick Google Advanced Images, and go to the bottom left and select  USAGE RIGHTS and pick FREE TO USE OR SHARE then your images will be copyright free and then you can right click and save.  If you have any question please come and ask me in the Learning Commons.

Why I should read ... A Ted Ed Lesson

 

This series of lessons/Videos by Ted Ed are not simply a trailer to classic literature but a deep overview of the book.  You might use one of these videos prior to reading one of these novels in class.  They all seem to be in the 4 to 5 minute range.  To see all the lessons click here.  

Random Name Wheel

 

Welcome to quadmester 2.  I posted a random name selector back in October 2018 and September 2016.  To see those posts click here and here respectively.  Here is another one that is pretty self explanatory.    Just edit the names on the right hand side and away you go.  If you  have a list somewhere that you can copy and paste into where the names go you are all set.  Note you can post pictures of your students or any image you have on your computer.  To see this site click here.

Icebreakers for Quadmester 2

 

Please take a moment today to remember our fallen soldiers as today is Remembrance Day.

With Quadmester 2 starting on Thursday I thought some of you might want some icebreakers for your new classes.  Check out this website by clicking here.  PS - Good luck on your Quadmester 2.

AudioMass

 

I am following up yesterdays 123apps with a web app site that allows you to do several different effects to an mp3 audio file that you have or you can record your own mp3 file on this site.  Effects include: Gain, Fade In, Fade Out, Paragraphic EQ, Compressor, Normalize, Graphic EQ, Hard Limiter, Delay, Distortion, Reverb, Speed Up/Slow Down, Reverse, Invert and Remove Silence.  To see the website click here.

Good luck on your final evaluations starting tomorrow!  I will be posting again in one week.  CYA on the 11th.

123APPS

 

This website has many apps available.  They are: Audio Cutter, Audio Joiner, Audio Converter, Video Converter, Video Cutter,  Video Recorder, Voice Recorder, Archive Extractor and PDF Tools.  To see the website click here.