I am following two blogs: Dangerously Irrelevant and The Daring Librarian. But, I must say that I like Will Richardson and his blog. His educational points on taking risks are very relevant. He explains how just doing something ‘different’ can feel like taking a risk to a child, but children should be encouraged to take risks for growth. Overall, Richardson uses quite a few clichés, but his points on teaching kids to be motivated and seeing kids as learners are rather worth following. Lastly, I like that he gives himself five titles under his name at the top left of his blog. Aren’t we all several things in this life?http://willrichardson.com/blog/
I checked out new websites as well. New to me, that is. I went to VAASL.org to register as a member. Then I went to AASL to look at their Best Websites list. The first link to Digital storytelling found me a page that would be great to use with the ESL students I currently teach. It is called StoryboardThat. This is a storyboard creator that is very visual. Scenes can be easily dragged into frames in order of choice. There are so many options for many topics, and editing functions for colors and sizes are all there. It’s free. Here is the link: https://www.storyboardthat.com/storyboard-creator
Next, under Management and Organization, I looked at FlipQuiz. I can see how FlipQuiz could get very useful during review for SOLs to keep things from getting boring. Perhaps even students could run the game…. Oops, I mean Quiz. Yes, the quiz format reminds me of a game. Do you think of Jeopardy when you see it? Take a look: http://flipquiz.me/demo
Finally, I went to a content website with awesome educational videos, called Knowmia by TechSmith. I typed-in “kinetic energy,” and tons of neat videos with planets as examples popped up. http://www.knowmia.com/search?q=kinetic+energy
Another window also came up to say that, unfortunately, this website will be going offline at the end of August. Oh no! It’s a good one. How can we save it?
layneoflearning 