Useful Information In and Out of the Classroom 6/7/13

Here are some interesting sites that I’ve found this week, thanks to my PLN. As a teacher, I feel we have to keep up to date concerning research in our field and current issues in the education system. I hope some of these inspire you, inform you, and even have you asking questions. Thank you for coming by and visiting!

Note: Each resource is labeled with a level and subject area to make it easier to use.

Levels: E: Elementary; M: Middle; H: High; G: General, all levels; SN: Special Needs; T: Teachers

Subject Areas: LA: Language Arts, English, Reading, Writing; M: Math; S: Science; Health; SS: Social Studies, Current Events; FA: Fine Arts; Music, Art, Drama; FL: Foreign Language; PE: Physical Ed; C: Career; A: All

Backpack TV - “find education videos to help you with math, science, and other academic subjects.” (L:M,H ; SA:A)

I Could - “icould gives you the inside story of how careers work. The icould storytellers relate, in their own words, their real life career journeys. There are over a thousand easy to search,varied and unique career videos as well as hundreds of written articles. From telecoms engineers to police officers, from landscape gardeners to web designers, from engine drivers to zookeepers; they talk about what they do, what it’s like, how they came to be where are and their hopes for the future.” (L:G; SA: C)

Depression Quest - “Depression Quest is an interactive fiction game where you play as someone living with depression. You are given a series of everyday life events and have to attempt to manage your illness, relationships, job, and possible treatment. This game aims to show other sufferers of depression that they are not alone in their feelings, and to illustrate to people who may not understand the illness the depths of what it can do to people.” (L:H ; SA:S)

Gamemaker - “Immediately get started creating a high quality game then publish native executables for both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X with aresource limited FREE version of GameMaker: Studio™.” I haven’t tried this but it seemed interesting to try and possibly some students would find this challenging. (L:H ; SA:S)

Nearpod Homework - “Your students can now navigate your Nearpod Presentations at their own pace. With Nearpod Homework, teachers can share their NPPs with their students via email, and students can review them at their own pace by simply swiping through the slides. Once at home – or even on the go – students can launch the presentation from their own devices and interact with it by reviewing videos, slideshows, and webpages. Students can also submit responses to teacher-made Q&As, Quizzes or Open-Ended questions. Teachers can later run the corresponding report to access all homework data and assess each student’s performance.” (L:G ; SA:A)

Original Image: Tools by Pat Hensley