Canva

 Canva for education is a free creativity tools for students to use. It allows a simple drag and drop way of creating posters, infographics, flyers, presentations, and so much more. The visual communication is very intuitive. There are many professional layouts to publish on the web or download as a jpeg, png, ppt, video, gif or PDF. Teachers can create a classroom where they can leverage even more creative power for their students, to collaborate and it allows the teacher to easily view student work. It can easily be shared with Google Classroom.

https://www.canva.com/education/

So many endless creative ideas one can create using Canva. Encourage students who feel anxious and frustrated when thinking they would need to draw by hand. It will give every students a space to shine.

Tes Blendspace

On their website you can access a quick start resource that lists 13 ideas for using Tes. A great tool for all types of learners, lesson tool and collaborative tool. Students can create and share work. You have the option of also downloading their app or the extension in Chrome web store.

See below for older post.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Edcanvas

Earlier I posted a lesson using Edcanvas.  Edcanvas allows you to gather information and resources into one place to make lesson delivery easy.  I visited it again and I noticed that there is now improved options in the text editor.  They have also launched a new feature that allows you to add audio to your canvas. Teachers can also set up a class and  Edcanvas can tell you which students viewed your lesson and give you detailed reports about their participation.
View an Edcanvas lesson on an earlier post.....

 For Educators:  
In the Edcanvas Blog post, the Edcanvas team write the following:
Many teachers have asked us to add the ability to annotate their canvases with sound, and others have asked us to give their students the same ability. Now, you can add audio clips anywhere in your canvas! Use audio comments to

1.       Read out material to make it easier for auditory learners to understand concepts.

2.       Add another level of instruction on top of your canvas.

3.       Require students to voice their opinion or speak aloud translations instead of just writing it in a comment.

Canada Learning Code ---- WE WON

On October 7, 2016, was the launch of Canada Learning Code. Canada Learning Code Week was from June 1-8, 2017.  

Canadians were invited to gather in schools or community places to code. Canada Learning Code wish to empower youth to learn technical skills where they can be active participants in the digital age. Canadians were invited to learn about and celebrate the history of Canada and to showcase their learning through coding a game using Scratch from MIT.  Lessons were uploaded for teachers to help guide the students to bring their perspective to telling the Canadian history through code.  Canada Learn was also running a contest sponsored by Google Canada. 

My students were excited because they had just started to learn how to code and they wanted to see what they can do without anyone helping them.  Each group of partners selected a lesson that was posted on the Canada Learning Code site and they personalized their learning. The teams worked collaboratively and created their games.

I was proud of the work the students did in such a short time. 

On June 30, 2017,  I received wonderful news that my class won the #Canada150 contest. We won Chromebooks for my class from Google.

The winning game was from Kevin and Gabriela

Below is my class studio with all the submitted games. To "All", a job well done!!

Click below for the announcement and to view the Digital Scrapbook.

Thank you to @CanadaLearningCode and @Google!

Crossword Puzzle Maker

Puzzle maker is a completely free tool to generate puzzles.  Students and teachers can use this puzzle maker to create simple puzzles.

Shorten URL web addresses

A URL can be very lengthy and students can make many errors copying it.  You can shorten the URL into a bite size for ease of use with bitly or with goo.gle

Coding Quest

This year I participated in The Learning Partnership Program: Coding Quest. The students in my grade 5 class were tasked to design and build their own computer game, using critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, as well as science, technology, engineering and math skills. Through collaboration, the students coded their game using Scratch.

Two students from my class, Michael and Dahlia and myself, were invited to the Learning Partnership’s annual Champions of Public Education Tribute Celebration which was held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

This Tribute Celebration is the primary fundraising event for The Learning Partnership, celebrating and honouring business leaders, organizations and educators who champion public education in Canada. Many from the corporate world, our staff, students and the Minister of Education attended to witness students representing their respective school board for other TLP initiatives and my Dahlia and Michael as they represented TCDSB in CodingQuest. (Video below.)

My 10 year old students began their journey with Code.org (hour of code) where they completed a series of courses to help them understand how to code. We then transitioned into Scratch from mit end of March. These artifacts were their products on Conservation of Energy, where science, math, Media Literacy, Art and Writing is seen. 

Below is the link to the Studio where you will find the short games the students created. 

Click on each game image below or the link.

https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/4081414/

By: Michael, Dahlia and Karlesha

By: Darien, Alejandro V. and Gabriela

By: Diego, Abigail and Katherine

By: Jose, Leticia and Kyra

By: Kevin, Isabella and David

Interview from The Learning Partnership Dinner where Dahlia and Michael are interviewed about their experience on Coding.

Coding in my classroom

My students worked hard the last couple of months on their Coding projects.  

A group of my kids went to an "Arcade" May 16 to showcase the work they completed along with other coders in Downtown Toronto.

Story Jumper

Story Jumper is a book writing tool  where students can create and publish their own book independently or collaboratively.  You can use your own photos or the sites art library. Special effects, music and authors voice can be recorded over the work as well.

Chalk / Planboard

Chalk.com or planboardapp.com/ is a suite of online productivity tools for teacher lesson planning and assessment.  The teacher can create their lesson plan and ad links to outside resources, embed videos or attach files.
The markbook helps to keep students assessment organized with comments as well as upload artifacts to support assessment.
Watch the following videos to get you started.

There are many youtube tutorials at the following link: Chalk / Planboard

Fodey...........Newspaper clip generator

You can make a Newspaper Clip with your own headlines and story.

An online tool students can use to publish newspaper clippings in a creative way. They can demonstrate their ability to write important details in a concise format geared to a specific audience.

Peergrade

With peergrade teachers enable students to grade their peers work.It facilitates peer to peer feedback on word documents and videos.  This tool allows for feedback to stay anonymous or it can be disabled. 

 

Stop Motion video

Two of my students worked very hard and many hours to story map, and create their own short stop motion video using a digital camera.  They handed in a back story and summary of their idea and then they created this video on "perseverance".  The students had no background knowledge on the mechanics of creating a video.  We watched examples of stop motion videos and discussed copy right and the use of creative commons information to enhance their work. We navigated how to use movie maker, and then I demonstrated how to create their own.  The video is a little shaky and could use some editing, but they did well.

This was created about 3 years ago.

Edpuzzle

Edpuzzle is a neat way for teachers to embed videos into their lessons. Select a video, crop it to the section of the video you want for a particular lesson, you can narrate it with your own voice and embed a quiz at any time you wish. Using this tool will make the lesson much more engaging and students can show you their learning. Videos can be added directly into Google Classroom.

Kahoot

Kahoot is a free game based learning platform. Students can answer a series of multiple choice problems played in a group setting. These created games promote student understanding and engage peer-led discussions. It is a student response system that allows teachers to create games and quizzes.  

Avatar generators

This is something fun for kids.  If they wish to add an avatar to their work, or add an avatar to an online application, there are free, safe avatar makers on line that they can use.  Create simple cartoon characters that represent themselves.

Doppelme

Avatar Maker

My Blue Robot 

Marvel Create your own Superhero

M&M'S brand character

Our Incredible World

Our Incredible World

A place to learn the natural world and how it functions.  It is a place kids can find out how to make the world healthy.  It offers free multi media curriculum resources for grades 4-11
There are curriculum based resources on habitats, ecosystems, biodiversity, species-at-risk and invasive species. VVisit the site to learn more and to use it's many lessons.i

Math is Fun

Math is Fun

I came across this site that my students were able to use interactively. Specifically counting money.

Wikipedia -Simple

I try to get my students to avoid using wikipedia for the sole reason that it is difficult for some to understand the vocabulary.  I share with students websites that can be used for whatever research they have to do but I also share with them "Simple Wikipedia".

Simple Wikipedia is written in basic english with words that can be understood and aims for people trying to learn english  .However, it can be used by young children who have difficulty understanding the vocabulary that Wikipedia uses.  On the web page itself, there is a search box.  Type in what you are searching for.

Digital Portfolio - SeeSaw

SeeSaw is a digital portfolio teachers can use to do formative assessment and share what the student is learning with parents on any device. Student learning can be captured in any format and saved. The SeeSaw Basics feature is free for teachers who just want to track work and communicate with parents.

Instructables and Howtoons

Worth another mention:

Instructables and Howtoons are great websites that one can use ideas to create and build their creations.

There are instructional manuals.  These manuals encourage creative problem solving skills.

At Howtoons, their mission is "to provide engaging content".  Using comic format, kids can build things.

This site offers PDF for downloading comics and the site features a content search.
http://www.howtoons.com/

The following link will connect you to instructables. There are downloadable PDFs available.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Toothpick-Bridge-Project/