Tools for Schools

Presenters: Michael Swirsky and Ellen Phillips,

Instructional Technology Specialists,
Office of Educational Technology, Queens
NYCDOE
 Embedding
• Embedding allows another part of the Internet
to live on your site

(Similar to an
embedded
reporter in a
war zone)

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 Linking to a URL
• The URL Link directs you to another website

START END

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Our Baker’s Dozen

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 In the Classroom
• Embed source documents on your site
• Embed assignments
• Embed school/class newsletters
• Embed student work
• Here’s an example
• Accepts assorted document types in one player and
will tab each document.
• Customize permissions for printing and downloading
• Generates an embed code and a URL
• Your viewers do not need third party software like
Adobe Acrobat to read PDFs, etc.
http://docsteach.org/
 In The Classroom:
•Create Flash Activities based on topic and thinking skills

•Find created Flash activities based on topic and/or thinking

skills i.e. create an activity that focuses on an historical era
and drill down even further to find one that focuses on
interpreting data.

•The activities can be a great place to differentiate learning for

all levels of students.
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 http://www.hippocampus.org

Free multimedia lessons and course materials

•Free Interdisciplinary multimedia lesson database

•Provides you with pre build courses that unit ad lesson plans or select specific topics to enrich
lessons.

•Contains a wide range of content areas, supplementing existing classroom resources

•Add your own annotations to lessons.
•Spanish content for Algebra and Calculus
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www.tagxedo.com

What does it do?

Tagxedo turns words -- famous
speeches, news articles, slogans
and themes, even your love letters
-- into a visually stunning tag cloud,
words individually sized
appropriately to highlight the
frequencies of occurrence within the
body of text.

Example
•make tag clouds in real-time,

•save the tag cloud as an image for printing and sharing

•choose from many different fonts

•quickly switch between different colors and themes

•constrain the cloud to selected shapes (heart, star, cloud, oval, etc)

•use images as custom shapes

•use words as custom shapes

In the Classroom:
101 ways to use Tagxedo.
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 http://www.historypin.com

•A great marriage of photos (old and new) and

maps
•Access with a Google account
•Learn history and add to history
•You can read/write the stories
•Search the map by topic, date or keyword

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 In The Classroom:

•Students can research local photos on the map and

read/write about them.

•Students upload old photos and add their stories to the

map

•Student can add comments to existing stories on the map

•Compare past and present through photos and stories on

the map by using streetview.

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http://scratch.mit.edu
http://scratched.media.mit.edu
 Scratched.media.mit.edu
•Scratch is a graphical programming language that students can use to
create animations, simulations, games, interactive projects, stories,
etc.
•Fosters creativity, thinking and problem solving and technology
fluency
•Communication and Collaboration: Scratch community encourages
global sharing
and remixing Scratch programs is encouraged
•Resources for educators at the Scratched site
 In The Classroom
• Choose old-style video game and have small groups of
students program their own versions
• Student can program animations of book reports and stories
• Simulate a scientific process i.e. the water cycle, food chain,
etc.
• Used in Lego Robotics program
• For more information: Learning How to Make a Game
(http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Mick/10482) and
(http://scratch.mit.edu/galleries/view/93770)
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 BBC Dimensions
http://howbigreally.com

Make real word

connections to places
and events in
history.
 BBC Dimensions
In the Classroom:
• Bring home the human scale of events and
places in history
• Helps communicate history in a way that
connects with your students’ lives
• Coming soon: Create your own maps
• Here’s an example
“A brilliant way to
quote”
 Kwout.com

•“kwout” is a plug in for the Firefox browser

•“kwout” lets you quote a part of a web page as a image with an

image map. Links stay “live.”

•Generates an embed code

•Can be shared with a click to social networking sites (Twitter,

Facebook, etc.)

•Allows for annotation

 In the Classroom

•Students can take direct quotes from web pages and embed
them on site.
•Embed teacher-created Kwouts as prompts for blog posts or
free writing
•Non-readers can “see” the sites in a Kwout and know where to
click
•Link Kwout URL to Google Map placemarks for students to get
additional information/perspectives on a topic.
QWIKI: A Curated Information
Experience

www.qwiki.com
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In the classroom:

•Provide a narrated experience complete with images

•Text can accompany narration

•Images can be downloaded

•Provides an engaging visual overview of a topic with

related links and additional resources.

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Their mission is to bring users the best information on the Web for
any topic, employing human insight and methodical review.
SweetSearch4Me is our search engine for emerging learners.

SweetSearch2Day is where students Learn Something New Every Day.

Visit SweetSearch for School Librarians for content that helps students use the
Web effectively.

Visit our SweetSites for teachers and students, organized by subject and academic
level.

Visit SweetSearch Biographies for profiles of 1,000+ significant people.

Visit SweetSearch Social Studies for our best social studies content.
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In The Classroom

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 Giving readers the power to search and explore rich content and media from
the web without even leaving the page.
•Works by installing a plug in
•Highlight any word on a page and get search results in a pop up
box from Google, Bing Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Images
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 In The Classroom

•Great for vocabulary understanding

•Differentiates the learning, helping struggling readers

•Have your students go to an article at NYTimes.com and

highlight several names mentioned in the article.

•Have them share what they learned about those people and
their relevance to the article.

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•Real-time multi-user online whiteboard.
•Live audio, image collaboration, text-chat
•No download required
•Permissions allow for locking and privacy
•Easy on-the-fly invites to the room
 In The Classroom:

•Global collaboration on project planning

•Online homework help/tutoring
•Upload Flickr images to spark discussion
•Embed a room on your blog as a collaborative workspace for students to
respond to a post
•Link a room to a Google Map placemark for student response/work
•Archive student work in a room by locking and linking
 http://www.wetoku.com

Two way video side by side conference

A great way to have a show on your website or
blog

Embed a live conference

Record and archive

interviews.

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 In The Classroom:

•Invite an expert into your classroom

•Interview an author
•Have your students role play an interview, or debate, record and
embed on your wiki, blog or website.
•Use it to conference with a parent
•Use it to tutor a child
•The possibilities are endless

Here’s an example
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 Wild Wacky Worthy Wiki
http://wildwackyworthy.wikispaces.com

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 To Contact the Wild and Wacky
Team

Michael Swirsky
mswirsky@schools.nyc.gov

Ellen Phillips
ellenquilt1@gmail.com

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