Tips from your TIS

In this day in age, it seems there is a new web application every day that can take the place of a desktop application. A big benefit of most of these is that they are free. But how do you find out if there is a program you can use? How can you keep up with all the changes? Simple Spark just might be your solution. Simple Spark has cataloged all WEB 2.0 type services that exist and brings them to you through a simple search. They have daily updates of the latest programs out there as well. You can search by key words or use their predefined catagories. The site provides a brief description of each app along with a rating. So, next time you need a quick photo editor or want to find a place that pulls in all the biggest news headlines of the day, start at Simple Spark and simplifly your search!

WEB 2.0 is all about sharing, collaborating, and receiving feedback. A great resource out there for you to check out is VoiceThread. Voice thread is a site where you can upload pictures, movies, pdf’s, and presentations, and add your own verbal and written comments to them, for the public, or a select few to see. The fun, and power of this site, is that others viewing your upload can listen to your comments and add their own. So what does this have to do with the classroom? Rich story telling with real pictures and the author’s voice. Group collaboration and sharing. Student/teacher conferencing over presentations or individual documents. The nice thing is that the Pro version, usually $30 a year, is free for educators and gives you unlimited use of the site. As for security, you can select to moderate any posting you make and your uploads can be kept private to just your group of friends, in this case, your classroom. Take a minute to check it out and feel out the potential in your classroom when everyone has a voice. Here is my posting Feel free to add your comments to it.

Here is a posting by a student. It is a report on black bears. What a great way to incorporate media into everyday projects!

Everyone likes free. Problem is, a lot of free programs out there just aren’t up to the challenge of being useful in the classroom or having the quality to be worth our time. Here are a couple, though, that are more than worth the time of a download!

Google Earth

Ever find yourself in need of a map of the United States? France? How about Iraq or Egypt? Ballwin or Chesterfield? Google Earth is your one stop tool for anyplace on the globe. With powerful features like zoom and 3D, give your students a whole new view of their world and the world around them. Curriculum uses? Seeing the correlation of resources and populations, measuring distances between real world destinations, looking at your local community, exploring the settings for stories or their authors, looking at landforms of the world, and now you can even explore space with the new sky view! Never buy another wall or book map again.

Art Rage 2

Finally a painting program that actually allows you the experience of painting! Art Rage 2 is an incredibly powerful art program that allows you to work with a wide variety of mediums on an array of surfaces while maintaining the look and feel of the real thing. Paints actually mix instead of overlaping, pressure and saturation can determine individual brush strokes, canvas choices effect appearance. While the full version costs 25(and is probably worth it!), the free version offers more than enough options to show off your student’s creativity and talents. Imagine giving your student a dry paint brush and having them paint on a Smart Board! Import images and trace over them with pastels before removing the original image and being left with your interpretation of the original. Can you say Finger Paints!

Sketchup

Now here is a great tool for your visual learners. Sketchup is a 3D modeling program that allows you to easily create shapes and other objects in well, 3D. Sure you could use it in a design class or architecture, but how about math? Studing area, volume, perimeter, angles, ratios, perspective, geometry in general? Bring life to your lessons by creating and modifying objects or having your students present their own interpretations of what they have learned. Measurements are in metric and standard form.