bubbl.us Brainstorming

Brainstorming.  Making bubble maps.  Association games.  Line of flow.

All made possible and quick with bubbl.us

It's a colorful and fast way to make any sort of bubble map with however many directions you want.
Today in class, Elise and Ashley used it as a guide for response to Beeethoven's Moonlight Sonata - what does this piece make you feel?  Does it evoke any deep emotions?  Pictures?  Thoughts?

It was incredible how easy it was to make a full looking bubble map in just a minute, brainstorming.
To make a new bubble connected to the previous one, you just hit enter.  To create a new line just click on the part of the page where you want it.

This would prove a helpful tool in the classroom, I think, especially in preparation for writing timed essays.  It is easy to use, easy to navigate and colorful.

Learning Games

Games have always been a great way to learn - simply because they are teaching while the kids are having fun.  If the game is legitimately teaching and reinforcing some lesson - of math or grammar or anything - then a game is a great and subtle way for the kids to learn and strengthen and deepen their understanding, in a way that creates a natural affinity to learning and a love for learning

Timelines - Preceden.com

Timelines can be extremely useful in a classroom, especially for visual and tactile learners.  They help make events, especially in history, make sense.  They give you perspective on the bigger picture of life, people, and history.  Timelines can be a good main point review for students, as well as being a good way of condensing a lot of material.

Timelines though are certainly useful in more than just history though.  They can be used to represent eras in literature or they ca be used to represent a timeline of discoveries in the science field and much more.  They can even be used to illustrate the plot of a book you have read to your classroom.

Preceden.com provides an easy access and easy-to-use way of implementing and creating a timeline.

Google Docs

Google docs, theoretically seems like a great tool.  It's a neat way for everyone in a classroom group to access the same document at the same time, without the crowding that a tangible document, posterboard, etc might bring.

However, I personally have found a lot of stress dealing with it.  It may just be user deficiency... but until I gain greater skill in navigating and managing it, I think I would refrain from using it in my own classroom.

Meal Planning and Calories

I am not actually one for counting calories.  In fact, I avoid it all costs.  I don't like thinking about the numbers and the potential related fat cells that they entail.

However, I think that for many middle school and high school students, this would be a good way to count calories.  In a fast-paced and ready-made food lifestyle, this would be a good way to count them.

But on the flip side, I think that eating healthy is more a matter of eating more natural foods rather than eating foods with fewer or better calories.  The closer you eat it in the form that God made it, the better it is for you (obviously this does not apply to meat...).

Zefty... Thrifty? Nifty? Or Iffy?

zefty.com

Bank accounts, checks, savings, money....

It all sounds like a fantastic way to help set up your kids with the "real world" to introduce them to the world of money and finances.

But is it really?

In zefty.com, the kids don't actually control their own finances - their parents deposit any money, they have no control over how much they save.

Instead of being able to withdraw from their accounts, they have to write a check - but the check is only made out to themselves; they cannot address it to another person, a company, a church.

So my question is: is zefty.com really a helpful tool for kids?  Does it actually represent the real world of banks and money?

My personal answer would be no.

When I was a child, my daddy did give me an allowance (real money). 

I had charge of that money.  I decided to set up a savings account. 

So he drove me to the bank (the real one).  We sat up an account together (one has to have one's parent's name on the account if under a certain age).  And so I saved up.  I carefully put together my pennies and quarters.  Although I did spend some of my money, it wasn't too much - a little for the contribution plate on Sundays and sometimes a small item (a Grand Champion horse).  I learned the value of my savings account's interest.  I learned the slow process of keeping money safe.

I learned the reward of it all when I bought an American girl doll - with my own money.  And I felt independent, a small adult - all because my daddy had put trust in me in something in the real world.

It seems like something worth while for a parent to do today.

Now in a classroom, this could perhaps be useful for "special money."  You would obviously save on paper costs (instead of printing cash, you'd just keep up with it in your students' accoutns).

But it's still not as reflective of reality.

It would be a neat tool, but not something as applicable as it might be.

ToonDoo

www.toondoo.com

Toondoo would be a great tool in a classroom, especially for your artisitically inclined students, as well as for those who are visual learners.  In an elementary school classroom, you could use it very easily for sequences for science, history, and so on.
For instance, as a review, you could have each student make a cartoon illustrating the phases of the moon or the water cycle.  You could also have a summary practice after reading a story or a book in class - and have each student make a cartoon with main points in each square.
Or as a creative exercise, you could even have the kids practice making political cartoons of a character in history or in today's society!

The only problem with this (as well as with any type of computer-based technology) would be the number of computers available in the classroom.  With few computers, each project would be less effective and less do-able.