Another nugget from freetechforteachers:

I found this book on one of my favorite sites,  http://www.freetech4teachers.com, and it is literally an online book (you can even download it with active links) that describe free resources for teachers. They are listed in an easy to use way and the links take you right to the site!

The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators

Rockin Link, Gail!

Thanks to Gail for sharing this great collection of free music to be used for digital storytelling. My kids checked it out on their iPods and were excited, they love free music. As a matter of fact, if they made more of it free kids might be exposed to a greater variety of music in general.

Scholastic is a Must Have Resource!

Scholastic is a great tool in the classroom. We subscribe to the monthly magazines which come with tons of extras that can be found online. The children benefit from interacting with the articles early as well as the exposure to poetry, nonfiction, and even reader's theater style magazines. The back always includes a task, from reading graphs/ maps to comprehension work. There is also an online version which we check out as a class using the interactive white board. I link that to my webpage as well so the kids can read or listen to the magazine on their iPads, play the games, check out the vocab, and watch a video.

I also use the Scholastic Book Wizard to level my classroom library. Because "Just Right Books" are essential to making Readers Workshop work (click this link to find a very thorough video and explanation of Readers Workshop from Scholastic), this tool has been key to successfully implementing it.

I also found an awesome collection of nonfiction books to be read online (or they can listen to them read). I am currently in the middle of our nonfiction unit and have linked this site to my classroom assignment page of my website so that kids can go on quickly and easily to check out the books offered.

There is even a page of blogs all about reading and writing and technology! This is a must see. I have followed Beth Newingham for years as a Readers Workshop guru of sorts

A little something... xtra!

Got this great idea from a student in the Thursday class named Kate. It is called xtramath.org and it's FREE! It literally took seconds to set up and I can't wait to try it with my students.

Great Tech Blog Full of Ideas

I came across this great site Ask A Tech Teacher: Series of Weekend Websites. This is a comprehensive list of ideas to use with classroom computers or in a lab. The videos link (#27) on this page actually helps meet some of the NETS in regards to teaching the language of technology. I also like this site because you can find other grade pages associated like 17 Story Sites for First and Second Grade. Not all of the links work, but the ones that do are well worth exploring. #7 even led me to this oldie but goodie!




I also found myself amazed by the number of links/ suggestions for the iPad. I will add this link to our wiki so that everyone has access to it :)

Using Animoto with Your Students- Set up Dummy Accounts

So those of us who teach first grade are probably very familiar with the "all about me" writing of the past. But today's "all about me" is about to look very different in room 222. I love Animoto and wanted to know if there is a way for the kids to all log on to it at once. I found the answer and it is YES! Click here to learn how to set up dummy accounts from your Animoto by assigning each kid your email+1, 2, 3, etc. These emails are instantly recognized as legit but the program doesn't actually recognize the +# so the emails go to you, but each kid has 180 days of their own free educator animoto account. Just use the educator code you got when you first applied for every kid. I already set my class up and it was easy, took about 20 minutes tops, and worked flawlessly as directed :)

how to set up fake emails for your students under you animoto account

Scootpad

I am so excited about this new program scootpad with my classroom. It was free and super simple to sign up. It is for K-5 teachers. Here is a presentation that explains the program. It has both reading and math practice/ assessment AND it links directly to the Common Core! And I made this great screen capture using the Diigo capture tool :)

Pinterest Links to Technology (esp. for Special Ed)

Here is an iPad website (pinterest) I found when I was searching the pinterest account of the presenter whose workshop I was scheduled to attend two weeks ago. Unfortunately it was cancelled, but what a wealth of knowledge she shares on this account! Here is her home page (cmcormier) and here is another pinterest page (jjotat), which is filled with ideas, especially for special education teachers in the primary grades.

Check out this post about iPad apps for teachers!