Wordsmyth and Lexipedia are a couple of great dictionary and thesaurus tools for students. Wordsmyth offers a picture dictionary for younger students along with a full dictionary that will meet the needs of high school and tertiary students, Lexipedia makes using a thesaurus fun by providing a visual network of words, their base words, prefixes and suffixes.
Learning the periodic table of Elements has always been a bit of a bore for many but I have put together a few websites that might make this a little more enticing to your students. there is an excellentiPad appthat sparked my memory for this post but here are a few web based alternatives to try.
Touchspin Periodic Table- Very Easy to navigate with all the key components.
The Visual Periodic table- Flash based Table
The Dynamic Table- Nice and large great for Inteacitve Whiteboards
Web Elements- Not so Kid friendly but rich in content for older students.
I am sure there are plenty of others out there and I would love to hear about them.
Timetoast allows people to create interactive timelines, which they can share anywhere on the web. Anyone can join Timetoast and start creating and sharing their own timelines in minutes, all they need is a valid email address. It's completely free!
For the first time you can actually embed a timeline into a blog which is great which I have done below. It is not visually amazing but ceratinly does the job.
Both student and teacher will find a purpose for this in their classroom. I highly recommend checking it out here
Science is something that is often difficult to organise in the classroom due to time, mess and often resources. These web sites have some great little practical exercises, experiments and explanations of scientific events in simple language students and teachers.
e-learning for kids - is full of animated, and interactive science based tasks.
Active Science - Is full of science themed activities targeted at middle years students including teacher notes.
Popular Science - contains some quirky science to spark interest in science in your classroom.
PBS Kids Science - Some simple science experiments to explore how and why things occur in the world of Science.
let me know if you have any more that need to be included.
What is it?: This is my pick of the week by a long margin. Chartgo.com is a great resource for creating a range of graphs in seconds online. You do not need to register which always proves a class concentration killer and offers a range of styles of graphs from simple through to complex. There is more than enough here to satisfy the juniors through to tertiary maths students. my only complaint about this is that you cannot embed your finished graph onto your blog or web space. You can however add a link to your chart.
How can I use this in the classroom? There are a number of applications in maths, for chartgo particularly in the are of statistics and data. You might start out small by simply completing a simple class survey and graphing the results through to a complex statistical record of events in physics or chemistry.
Give this a shot in your next maths lesson, look forward to hearing how you use have used Chartgo for your needs.
Sometimes you come across apps and tools on the web that just serve the purpose they were designed to do and Wordnik is definitely a brilliant example of this. Wordnik is quite simply the best online dictionary site and should be in the favourites bar of every teacher and student.
Wordnik is a true 2010 web dictionary. For example if you search the word cat it will give you all of the stock standard dictionary definitions and meanings on the word but you will also find examples of using the word correctly in a sentence from various articles across the web.
You will also find an audio file for correct pronunciation and flickr photos relating to the word. To further this you will also find data relating to the use of the word and references to it in Twitter.
All in all Wordnik has taken the role of the Oxford style of dictionary which has been pretty stagnant for nearly 200 years and introduced a range of web 2.0 technologies to enhance it's use as a learning and reference tool. Check out Wordnik here.
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Sharendipity is a web based creativity suite where anyone can build and deploy engaging and interactive web applications. There are loads of educational applications and games available and loads of scope to create. Go. Build something wonderful today. Check out Sharendipity here. |
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Lesson Plans, Teaching Ideas, Classroom Posters, Educational Apps, Tech for Teachers & Students.
