The Internet in Real Time

I am well aware that the internet is filled with tweets, likes, pins, photos, and much, much more.  But it is incredibly impressive when you can see the accumulation of internet "stuff" pile up in front of your eyes.  

Here is quick snapshot of this internet accumulation for only 30 seconds from today:

It might be hard to see, but here is a break down of those 30 seconds:

• Pins: 7,140
• Tweets: 171,000
• Facebook Likes: 1,565,880
• Facebook Posts: 1,649,280
• Hours of Video Watched on YouTube: 69,420

It baffles me!

If you want to check out the internet in real time, check it out here. The website starts accumulating the data as soon as you load it, so all numbers start at 0... but I bet you won't see many zeros.

Technology in the Classroom

Let's get some technology resources together for teachers. Here are just a few:

1) 27 Apps that have changed my Teaching and Learning Practice 

 2) What do you want kids to do with technology?

 3) 9 Powerful (And FREE) Tools To Boost Summer Learning

 4) 10 Exciting Ways to Use Mobile Phones in the Classroom 

5) Apps That Rise to the Top: Tested and Approved By Teachers

What other resources do you love?
Add links in the comments section to articles, apps, blog posts, and anything that you think is a great technology-related resource for teachers.

Great YouTube Channel for Phonics, Sight Words, and More!

If you are looking for fun songs to help teach your students the alphabet, letter names, letter sounds, and even sight words, check out Have Fun Teaching.

I have several students who just start singing in class.  They are in kindergarten or first grade, and while they are still mastering letter sounds, they are able to sing out lines of text like, "Lately I've been, I've been losing sleep..."  While I'm sure they have little idea of what the lyrics from pop songs mean, imagine if that type of automaticity could be achieved for letter names, letter sounds, and even for spelling sight words!

Here are just a few of Have Fun Teaching's videos:

What Do the Letters Say? (What Does the Fox Say Parody)



Alphabet Song



Letter F Song



The "Are" Song

Resource Round-Up: July 9, 2013

Here are two resources that center around technology.

First, we have a great post from Erin Macpherson from We Are Teachers called 16 Apps That Motivate Kids to Read.  I'm familair with a few of the apps mentioned and I'm excited to check out the others.

Second, from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning we have 50 Educators Worth Following in Twitter.  I personally never thought I would use Twitter, but it is an amazing resource for connecting with teachers around the globe.  I have learned more and gained better insights from Twitter chats than from some formal professional development. 

I already followed a few of the people they recommend and now I follow many more.  If you'd like 51 recommendation instead of 50, you can always follow me on Twitter at iHeartLiteracy.  :)

Resource Roundup: April 23, 2013

Here are a few recent  posts you might like:

14 Words That Are Their Own Opposites:  I can see some synonym and antonym fun here

Phonemic Awareness Activities Make Early Reading Skills Playful: Includes fun ideas like "shopping" for letters and sounds

20 Great Websites for Elementary Educators: The name says it all

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International Autism Awareness Day - April 2, 2013 - Free Apps

Today is International Autism Awareness Day.  If you are looking for information about autism and/or want to know more about it, I highly recommend Autism Speaks.

In honor of International Autism Awareness Day, many companies who provide services and materials for children and adults with autism have made their apps through itunes available for reduced price or even free.

If you use iPads or iPhones in your classroom, then you should be able to find quite a few good apps from these two websites that list many of the participating apps:

• iAutism's List
• The iMum's List

Hopefully you can find some good resources. 

28 Days of Free Literacy Resources, Ideas, and Tools: Day 24 - Blabberize

Oh, your students will have fun with this one!  Blabberize is a tool that lets you make talking pictures. 

You can upload any picture you want, select the mouth on it, add audio, and ta-dah!  Your picture talks! 

I have not used it in the classroom yet, but I can imagine that it will be a great tool for grabbing students' attention and for students to use when making presentations. 

Have you used Blabberize?  If you have any ideas for how to use it in the classroom, please share below.

Enjoy!

28 Days of Free Literacy Resources, Ideas, and Tools: Day 17 - Tagxedo

If you like using Wordle, then you'll also LOVE Tagxedo! 

The basic idea is the same - you can turn words into a word cloud.  Tagxedo also lets you pick different shapes, outlines, etc. that the words can form in and around. 

Here is an example for this blog iHeartLiteracy.  The words generated are all from how frequently they occur on my blog, and I picked the heart because... well... I just heart literacy!

Your students will enjoy playing around with this site.  The combination of shape and words can play off of each other in interesting ways to help create meaning for the image. 

Enjoy!

28 Days of Free Literacy Resources, Ideas, and Tools: Day 10 - Wordle

Wordle is an awesome tool that really engages students.  I like to use it with vocabulary development (where students add synonyms and make the more impressive words larger), but you can use it in many ways. 

Just make sure you go to Worlde.net not .com!  Or you can just click on this link: Wordle

Example:  A student’s Wordle for the word little.  (The word little is on there, it is just too small to read it – ironic?)

Enjoy!

 

28 Days of Free Literacy Resources, Ideas, and Tools: Day 7 - WatchKnowLearn

WatchKnowLearn is an amazing site loaded with over 30,000 educational videos.  

 The videos are broken down by category and are easy to find.  They are even developing a section for Common Core with videos correlated to the standards.  I highly recommend checking them out at WatchKnowLearn. 

28 Days of Free Literacy Resources, Ideas, and Tools: Day 3 - Librivox

Librivox!  When I taught high school English I used this resource all of the time.  The website uses volunteers to record readings of books that are now in the public domain.  No, you won’t find the newest, must-have books on this site, but you will find many of the classics including Shakespeare’s plays.

This website was a life-saver for a couple of my tenth grade students who read at a fifth to sixth grade level.  As a modification, I had them download some of our stories from Librivox with the caveat that they must follow along in their books when listening.  

So visit their site here Librivox and search through their catalog.  You can even volunteer to read a book if you’d like!