I am
a teacher in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
with 33 years of experience. I have taught
everything from regular classes to co-op to
learning assistance in both secondary and adult
education settings. Currently I am at a small,
alternative education site offering
individualized courses to at-risk high school
students who have been unsuccessful in
mainstream schools or who have made themselves
unwelcome there. In my area I can have up to 17
or 20 students working on different units in up
to 8 different subjects in math and science --
all at the same time. Hence my need for
engaging, easy to use tools that add richness,
fun, and fresh approaches to what we do.
Sue's Top 10 Tools as at
30 March 2008
Teacher’s Domain -- a library of learning resources
that provides a collection of everything from lesson
plans and essays to video clips and interactives -- all
collected under one easily accessible umbrella. When you
sign up, you get your own 'filing cabinet' with as many
folders as you want. You can collect TD resources in
your folders as well as add links to any others you find
online & they're all stored in one place. I can give
students access to some or all of the folders (eg. to
view videos while they are doing assignments) and they
can assemble their own resource collections as well.
Freepath -- a presentation tool that allows me
to create an instructional path that includes any type
of media material I want -- powerpoint, video and audio,
worksheets, weblinks, etc. What I get is a sequence of
thumbnails on one screen and the full view on another.
(In about a month both screens will be viewable in solo
mode.) Instead of the old overheads and video machine, I
can now use my laptop and a projector and organize
everything I need for a lesson in the order I want to
present it all in one file ready to go. I also can build
individual instructional units for my kids, and they can
follow my path by clicking on the thumbnails. We have a
serious bandwidth problem at our school so if I can
download videos, etc. at home and load them into
Freepath for the kids to view they don’t have to wait
for slow loads to get to the material online.
Vuvox
-- a slide show program. The collage feature (our school
is in the beta test group for this) allows students to
do projects by building a sequence of connected and
'collaged' images with embedded hot spots that
incorporate everything from text to audio to video.
ToonDoo
-- a tool for making cartoons in 1, 2 or 3 frames. A
teaching partner uses this in social studies to get
students thinking analytically about the key elements
that determined the outcome of a particular historical
event. It gets them away from 'research and copy'
because they have to have to crystallize the content in
3 images and a few words.
Stinks and Bangs -- I only use the balancing
equations tool of this chemistry site. It makes a
difficult task very easy to teach. I have the students
first learn to identify, list and count the elements on
each side of the equation, and then they go back and
figure out how to balance. This one is stored in
Teacher's Domain so I can get to it quickly.
MWSnap 3 -- a screenshot program that is easy to use
and free.
Powerpoint Jeopardy @ Educational Resources for Teachers
-- a template for students or teachers to build great
vocabulary study resources in game form. When the
students click through the finished game, it works just
like the real thing. We have revised it so there are 3
levels of questions -- those requiring 1, 2, & 3 clues.
Students have to incorporate hints, pictures, and
different backgrounds. It's also a great way for them to
learn different powerpoint features.
Google Page Creator -- I, with very little computer
skill and no knowledge of HTML, I was able to make a
department website !!! In future, I will have students as part of their Earth
Science course, make webpages of their own on various
topics, and we will link these in as they're done.
GCalc -- an on line graphing calculator tool that
lets students input equations and get the graph back. I
have Math 10 and 11 students keep it on their desktops
when they do their graphing units. This way I don't have
to worry about expensive graphing calculators being
stolen. It can be hosted on a website as well.
efofex equation and draw -- Worth its weight
in gold -- it's an easy to use math writing program for
algebra and geometry that makes the task of doing
worksheets, tests and instructional material so much
easier than using MathType. I finally went from doing
all my math stuff by hand to using a computer for that
task after I found this program.
What are your
Top 10 tools for learning? Let us know and help to build the
Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008
