Web Tools for Elementary Teachers

Rick Bell

Interact with a number of web tools to integrate technology into your teaching. Webquests, educational resources and rubric creation are just a few of the areas that will be explored.  These tools help teachers become more efficient and effective in the areas of productivity, instruction, and assessment. 

Workshop links, resources, and/or materials:

Productivity

Technology to help organize, manage, and communicate routine preparation activities

• Cool Timer  ctimer.exe A timer download to place on your desktop, can be projected on board for great visual.

• Stopwatch/Countdown Timer: (http://www.online-stopwatch.com)

              A web-based timer that counts up and down.

• FastStone Capture  FSCaptureSetup53.zip 

  An easy way to take a screen clipping of any thing on your computer screen.  This download is free if taken from the wiki.  Adding clippings to your lessons will get students' attention quickly.

• Social Networking 

    a. Tags (edtags) 

   

Instruction

Technology to support the development and delivery of instruction

• netTrekker  - Elementary schools have this site available to the students as a search engine with specific searches for people, images and web search .  There are many tools on this site including readability levels and read-aloud capabilities.

   

• Discovery School - Tremendous resource with lesson plans and ideas to use technology.  Kathy Schrock's page is an exceptional source.

• 42eXplore - Thematic pathfinders for all subjects.  Resource for searching information to lesson plan or for students

• Verizon Thinkfinity - Site with strong reputation, used to be called Marco Polo.  Each curriculum area is supported with integrated ideas.

   

Assessment

Technology to help make assessments more efficient and help teachers collect data that can truly improve student achievement

• Audio recording

• Audacity audacity-win-1.2.6.exe  alex.wav- a program which can be used to capture audio, great for audio books or fluency checks
• VoiceThread - A tool to record conversation on the Internet and be able to comment about photos with voice or text.  Click on "What's a VoiceThread" for a preview.

• Rubistar - site to help teachers to create rubrics for projects
   

• Trackstar - Webquest collection created by teachers. Can also be used for Instruction.
   
• Visual Ranking tool - Part of the Intel Teach program, this tool can be used to interactively engage your students in higher-order thinking.  Take a look at some examples at this site.