TeachersFirst - Featured Sites: Week of Jul 14, 2019
Here are this week's features. Clicking the tags in the description area of each listing will present a list of other resources with this topic. | Click here to return to the Featured Sites Archive
Bensound Royalty Free Music - Benjamin Tissot
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Play musical selections for students to talk about musical elements and styles in music class. Have partners explore the site to find examples of different rhythms or styles they prefer. Use Bensound Music for soft background music during quiet work times in your classroom. Share with students for use in multimedia presentations (with proper attribution, of course). Try sharing this resource with students when they are creating podcasts, slideshows, and other media projects. This site would also be great for performance groups such as drama clubs or musicals that need background music. Use background music for poetry readings during poetry month. Make sure students realize that "royalty-free" does not dismiss the need to give proper credit for their source!You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Remove Background - Kaleido
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Bookmark this site for many classroom uses. Combine your downloaded image with others using a variety of tools including Google Slides. Choose a background image of a city being studied, a different time, or in a far-away setting like the moon, then place your student image on top. Resize the image to fit the scene. Include this image as a starter for class projects. Use images on top of book covers for book talks, create images for story characters and heroes, or use for weather reports. The ideas for using this tool are only limited by your imagination and that of your students. Use your new images to modify or refine classroom technology use by creating a Google Drawings, reviewed here. Google Drawings allows you to annotate an image with links to videos, text, websites, and more. Not familiar with Google Drawings? Watch an archived OK2Ask session to learn how to use: OK2Ask Google Drawings, here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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GooseChase edu - Andrew Cross
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Use GooseChase in your classroom as part of your project based learning activities. Assign a series of activities to groups for completion. Differentiate projects based on student interest and ability. Use one of the many educational games already in the library to see great examples of how to use GooseChase for any subject area. GooseChase would be an excellent addition to staff meetings. Have participants locate information on websites, textbooks, or throughout your school as part of professional development. Create a GooseChase for students as part of a nature walk outside of your school, ask younger students to find different geometric shapes, or have students draw pictures of main characters in books as part of a GooseChase mission.Edge Features:
Includes an education-only area for teachers and students
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
Includes teacher tools for registering and/or monitoring students
Requires download/installation of software
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PicFont - Picfont.com
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Use this easy tool to replace paper posters and add captions to images, create memes, or posters for your bulletin boards. Use this easy tool with students during back to school time as a way for them to get to know each other. Have students upload a picture of themselves doing their favorite activity and label it with amusing text or a favorite quote (or song lyrics?). Have them upload images that represent their interests and character traits. Print the images with text for a back-to-school bulletin board. Use after a field trip for students to write captions on the photos they took. Be sure to share the photos on your class web page, blog, or wiki. Haven't started blogging yet? Check out TeachersFirst's Blog Basics. For other uses, have students practice new words in a world language class by labeling and identifying images in that language. Create writing prompts using several annotated images. Have students create annotated images to explain key terms in science class. In ELA class, make homophone or vocabulary images to show the correct word along with a picture that explains it.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Eventbrite - Kevin and Julia Hartz
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Use Eventbrite to increase excitement for any classroom event. Be creative and have students attend an "event" to review for exams (with bar coded tickets they can earn by sharing a student-made review activity). Offer tickets to in class enrichment "events" for those who test out of a unit. Have student groups design "events" instead of giving class presentations. The "event" could be a quiz show or game session that teaches a curriculum topic, such as "World War Wonders." Have your class work together to plan a culminating "event" such as a tea for famous Americans, and issue invitations and tickets to students who play the parts of the people they researched. Invite parents to Open Houses and Conferences. (Perhaps provide a small door prize for those using the Eventbrite app as their admission ticket!) Use Eventbrite to manage events with limited seating or a limited number of participants. If you provide professional development sessions, this is an excellent way to spread the word and manage participation. If you are an advisor for a school club, this tool would make club-sponsored events easier to organize.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Yarp - Agility Fix, LLC
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use this tool anywhere a quick, simple poll is required (on any device!). Share polls on a projector or interactive whiteboard to discuss and informally assess prior knowledge. This is great as you start a new unit and ask questions about the material. Discuss in groups why students would choose a particular answer to uncover misconceptions. Use for daily quiz questions as a formative assessment. Use a class account to have student groups alternate to create the new poll for the next day. Place a poll on your teacher web page as a homework inspiration or to ask parent questions to increase involvement. Older students may want to include polls on their student blogs to increase reader engagement. Have students create polls for the start of project presentations. Use polls to generate data for math class (graphing), during elections, or for critical thinking activities dealing with the interpretation of statistics. Use "real" data to engage students on issues and current events that matter to them.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Canva for Education - Canva.com
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
This site is perfect for enhancing, modifying, or transforming classroom technology in the classroom depending on the requirements of the assignments. Create a slideshow, invitations, or photo collages for any classroom presentation. Share what you created on your website or blog for students to review or for students who were absent. Deliver blended or flipped lessons using Canva Edu by adding links to videos, assessment information, and other learning activities. In the younger grades, teachers would be the ones creating the project. However, older students could easily create their own Canva presentations. Have students use this online tool as they would any presentation tool or image enhancing site. Use this site for research projects about famous people from the past and present. Have cooperative learning groups create presentations about science or math topics. Have students create presentations to "introduce" themselves to the class during the first week of school. Link or embed the introduction presentations on your class wiki or website and have others guess who they are. Use this tool with your 1:1 art class for students to practice design principles and techniques. Create 2 to 5 circle Venn Diagrams. Share student projects with parents and others via URL. Be sure to demonstrate HOW to use this tool on your interactive whiteboard or projector.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Blabberize - Mobouy Inc.
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
If your students have never tried to make a Blabber, select Browse to share the an introduction blab on the home page on a projector or interactive whiteboard. You may want to create one of your own to share, and then have the class create one, all projected on your whiteboard. Browse a few examples first to get ideas on how to make a mouth on your photo to move and "talk." Be sure to turn up your sound! Have a student demonstrate uploading an image from a safe and legal source. You may want to use a single, whole-class account you create with your "extra" email account. Be sure to spell out consequences of inappropriate use/content of blabs. Have students enter the site through the "Make" page link provided in this review to steer clear of the "latest" blabs. You may want your students to make their blabs "private" so they do not show on the public areas, depending on school policies. If you are implementing technology in your classroom, this is an augmentation tool.Blab the homework directions on your teacher web page. Have your students use photos or digital drawings to "blab"! Have students draw in a paint program, save the file, and then make it "speak." Spice up research projects about historic figures or important scientists. Have literary characters tell about themselves. This tool is great for gifted students to go above and beyond the basics with an independent project. Create entire conversation sequences of blabs between people in world language or ENL/ESL classes (with students speaking in the language, of course), then embed them in a wiki. Have speech/language students make blabs to practice articulation and document progress over time. Promote oral reading fluency with student-read blabs. Create book "commercials." Have students blab what the author may have been thinking as he/she wrote a poem or literary selection or as an artist painted. Blab politicians' major platform planks during campaigns for current events. Blab the steps to math problem solving. Even primary students can make an animal blab about his habitat if you set up the blab as a center. Make visual vocabulary/terminology sentences with an appropriate character using the term in context (a beaker explaining how it is different from a flask?) Students could also take pictures of themselves doing a lab and then blab the pictures to explain the concepts. This would be a great first day project (introducing yourself and breaking the ice). Share the class blabs on your class web page or wiki! Give directions to your class (for when a substitute is there). Use at back to school night to grab parents' attention for important information.
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20 Questions - 20Q.netInc.
Grades
5 to 12When you arrive at the site, click your language (there are MANY languages from which to choose). Enter your gender, age, and location (optional). Then choose the "game" you wish to try. Some are more commercial (Disney, The Simpsons, or Star Trek). Others have educational value (Harry Potter, Earth, or Classic, Famous people). This is an interesting and challenging activity. There are disclaimers that the "game gets smarter" the more you play because the game compiles facts over time. It is involving and entertaining to play. The site does include some advertisements.
In the Classroom
Share this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Teachers could have students research a person, place or thing and then use their research to play twenty questions against the computer. It could also be used as review if posted to the class wiki and then completed independently by students at home. Use this as a first day or first week activity, have students try the 20 question game about names and see if the computer can figure out their name. Use the Earth activity for geography practice in cooperative learning groups or as a class activity. In world language classes, choose the appropriate language to practice vocabulary about animals and other categories of information. Extend learning by having students create their own 20 question activity and quiz the class! Use Involve.me, reviewed here, What a great culminating project in any class. You will be teaching HOTS (higher order thinking skills) as students use classification to create their questions.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Icebreakers, Games, and Fun Group Activities - icebreakers.ws
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
New or veteran teachers who want students to get to know each other as they enter a new school (starting middle school, for example), want to observe them so YOU get to know them, or need to build better team skills with a challenging class or club, will find ideas to try. Mark this one as a Favorite so you can find it again, since "first day" activities tend to get lost in the flurry ---and in the fading memory-- during the year.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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