Presentation Tools
There are so many fun ways to create presentations for your class, or to have students create presentations. Here are a few of my favorites:
Blabberize
Blendspace
Get ready to change the way you lesson plan with this one. Blendspace has got to be the coolest new tool I have found! Add videos, pictures, links, docs, etc. to your Blendspace to create a fun, interactive lesson.
Prezi
No offense to Powerpoint, but Prezi is like Powerpoint's cooler younger brother! It is an updated way to present information to your classes and it is so easy to convert one of your musty, old Powerpoints to a bright, shiny new Prezi!
GoAnimate.com
GoAnimate.com is a neat way for you to present a lesson to the class, or even better, have students prepare a presentation for you! The first video below is a GoAnimate video I created, and the second video is a how-to:
BrainPop.com
BrainPop is a great site for all subjects and they even have a BrainPop Jr. for younger students. BrainPop has a free site with limited access to lessons, but I think is well worth the cost to get a subscription for your school. Here is a brief look at what you can do with BrainPop:
Forensics in your classroom
This first video is of a super cool site from forensics.rice.edu. You get to solve a crime by collecting evidence and analyzing it in the lab. The site provides great information on things like DNA and comparative anatomy, plus it is so much fun you will want to play at home! Great idea for cross curricular activity!
The second video is of a really cool site called Murderatoldfields.com which is a forensics curriculum based on an actual crime and would be an amazing cross-curricular activity for any school! It provides days or even weeks of lessons, including historical documents, and then has you go onto the crime scene, collect evidence, and do lab work. This one does cost per student, but totally worth it!
The second video is of a really cool site called Murderatoldfields.com which is a forensics curriculum based on an actual crime and would be an amazing cross-curricular activity for any school! It provides days or even weeks of lessons, including historical documents, and then has you go onto the crime scene, collect evidence, and do lab work. This one does cost per student, but totally worth it!
Google Earth lesson planning
This is so cool! Teachers are finding great ways to use Google Earth for lesson planning. There are a ton of ideas out there-- you can go to the moon, check out how cities looked in the past, look at real Roman architecture...the possibilities are limitless! See below for a quick newbie lesson from middleschoolcomputerlessons.files.wordpress.com:
Khan Academy
Khan has been around for a little while now, but still is a great resource for teachers. There are digital lectures on almost any topic you can think of, great to use for in class lectures or homework assignments.
Drawing Apps
Drawing has always been a large part of my class, from punnett squares to drawing what we see under a microscope, so going digital created some hurdles. I have found a couple of drawing apps on the iPad that I like: Pencil Pad and Whiteboard. They are both easy to use, students can save their photos on the camera roll and upload them to Google drive. Here a student uses Pencil Pad to draw a cell during mitosis:
3-d Drawings
There are some really neat 3-d programs out there, some more user-friendly than others. I like really easy to use apps like 123d Sculpt, 123d Draw, 123d Creature, but if you have a little more time to spend learning a program, Sketchup from Google is really cool, as is Bryce. The image below is a 3d cell my student made using Sketchup.
Digital Books
I am super excited about some of the apps available that allow students to create digital books! The one I have chosen to use is called Bookabi. It is super user-friendly, allows you to upload your own photos or drawings, has a big gallery of pre-fab backgrounds and characters, and allows you to input audio! In the video below watch a student present her cell division nursery rhymes with audio: