Savvy Sites 3

  

 

These are the latest sites I’m obsessing over: 

~ One Word: Every day brings a new word!  Click on “go” and you have 60 seconds to free-write on the word of the day.  Submit your response to a podcast for even more opporunity to share!  A stretching brainercise for the creative juices!!! → 

http://oneword.com/ 

~ Despair DIY: Create your own demotivational posters.  You can have your students create these to reflect theme or character OR create some for fun yourself and give them as gifts!!  (warning:  it may be hard to maintain appropriateness!!) → 

http://diy2.despair.com/ 

~ Literature Quizzes & Games – Sporcle: Got a few moments?  Test your literature know-how. From Hamlet to Lord of the Rings to Tales of Beatrix Potter . . . you will have fun getting lost on this site.  Fun for everyone at many levels and ages → 

http://www.sporcle.com/games/category/literature 

Click here for more sites I find EXTREMELY helpful! 

And here!!!

Share on Facebook

So Little Time . . . Only One Word

I just stumbled upon this website and instantly realized I will be able to use this in all of my classes . . . not to mention play on it myself for my own writing warm-ups.

It’s called oneword.com.  Here’s how to join the fun ✏

• Once you are on the site, click on the little circle “Go” icon.
• You will have EXACTLY 60 seconds to ‘free type’ about the word you see at the top of the page.  You can write phrases, lyrics, poetry, definitions, thoughts, whatever comes to your mind regarding that word the instant you see it.
• A little bell will signal when your time is up.  You will have a chance to finish the sentence you are on – and that’s it!
• Finally, you enter your name and email address (which remains private).
• Your 60 second post will appear in the archives for that word.  You can view what others wrote for the word-of-the-day as well as check out what words were posted on previous days.

Added bonus:  you have the option of recording your writing on to a posted podcast!!

It’s a fun way to warm up the writing muscles!!!  Perhaps you can open a class with this . . . or simply begin your day with 60-seconds of writing!

Share on Facebook

Holiday Site-Seeing

Home with the kids?  A kid yourself?  Play around on these sites to keep your holiday spirit soaring.  These are GG’s favorite holiday sites:

Elf Yourself: This is a classic from Office Max.  This will easily turn you into an elf in about 45 seconds.  All you need to do is upload one photo of yourself and, poof, you’re an elf!!  Your elf can disco, do the hoe-down or whatever else tickles your elfish soul.

http://www.elfyourself.com/

Make a Snowman:  A plethora of online paper dolls awaits you here.  Scroll down to the holiday section and you will see the “Make a Snowman.”  As a girl who used to own many paper dolls and bought her daughter many paper dolls – and laminated them all – the little girl in GG loves this site!

http://www.akidsheart.com/dress/dressup.htm

Snow Days – Catch a Falling Flake:  Thank you to @mayfieldc for tweeting this!  This is sooo cool!  Create your own snowflake, write a message on it, and send it out to the world!!! Beautiful!

http://www.popularfront.com/snowdays/index.html?skipDetect=true

Personalized Santa Video:  Another thank you to @mayfieldc for this one!!  This is so easy yet so cool.  Create a personalized video message from Santa in a matter of a moment!

http://portablenorthpole.tv/home

Collection of Holiday Sites: Here is a plethora of holiday sites linked together for your use.  Everything from recipes for the 12 days of Christmas to the historical origins of holiday traditions can be found here.  I wish I would have found this one sooner this year!! This one has some potential classroom work as well.

http://www.aristotle.net/fun-features/holiday_sites.asp

What other holiday sites have you discovered?!  GG can add to this before the holiday season is over!

Share on Facebook

In the Mood for a Debate?

It seems there are social networking sites for everyone these days . . . Facebook, Twitter,  and MySpace pioneered the way for numerous specialized sites such as The English Companion Ning where English teachers connect, BroadwaySpace for theater enthusiasts,  and CafeMom where moms exchange ideas.

There’s a new face on the networking block that looks quite different from its predessors - CreateDebate is a new social networking site built around “ideas, discussion and democracy.”  It’s a community for creating debates that scratch your brain and existing arguments that currently rile others up.

Bryan Orme invited me to try out this site.  I dabbled with it a little myself and then had my senior expository students explore it to precurse their argumentative paper research.  The goal of Orme’s team is to build a useful learning tool that will help “people sort through issues, viewpoints and opinions so that consensus and understanding can be reached and better decisions can be made.”  I believe the site does this.

My favorite aspect of the site is the CreateDebate communities tailored just for classroom use.  This is a great technological tool easily allowing students to discuss and debate thoughts with others outside of their classroom or even possibly outside school building walls.  I like that CreateDebate allows teachers to have complete control regarding public accessibility.  If you choose, you can create a site that only your students can access – students can access this from home, but only their classmates will see their reactions.  Pretty nifty – a tool that makes research motivating and fun.  Additionally, CreateDebate makes it simple to keep track of who’s online and what sort of activity is taking place on your site. The administrative panel allows you to manage and customize your community from a central location. Complete control!

Grading Girl gives CreateDebate an A for effort in creating a manageable, motivating debate community that brings current, relevant events literally at students’ fingertips to participate in.  Give it a try!

Share on Facebook

Brighter Resumes with BriteTab

This week, I received a request to review an online resume service.  I was a little hesitant since I imagined the typical fill-in-the-blank format that online resume services may offer.  I knew I was wrong as soon as I clicked on BriteTab and explored its offerings.

I’ve always been a firm believer that you have to make your resume stand out from the crowd; I used unique 8 X 8 cards to supplement my own resume when interviewing for my first teaching position.  But, in today’s highly technological, social networking society, it’s not enough just to type in a different font.  Your resume needs to be dynamic, succinct, and easily accessible.  You need to show that you are as progressive and tech-savvy as your words describe.  BriteTab allows you to portray yourself in exactly this manner.

Here’s a breakdown of the grade BriteTab earned:

Stand-out Appeal:  BriteTab is designed to accentuate personality and speaks to specific industry standards at the same time.  Whether you are searching for a teaching position, engineering job, or nursing career, the site offers a variety of themes (both traditional and more colorful modern designs) with user-friendly customization options.  You can incorporate these themes options with a simple click of the button.  I played around with the site myself and found you can create a professional, comprehensive resume in as little as 15 minutes.

Online Advantages:  You can upload videos that correspond to each particular section of your resume so that hiring managers don’t have to navigate through one long video to find out why you’re the perfect candidate. This is a very distinct feature from other online resume sources.  The videos are so easy to upload and, in turn, effortless for hiring managers to view.  You can send your resume to as many people as you want, and it won’t include distracting advertising or branding. BriteTab also allows you to make, save, and edit multiple resumes; each with a unique URL that is kept private.  Additionally, potential employers can contact you directly from your resume via a simple click – your email and/or website are actively linked right on your resume.  You are virtually eliminating the use of paper, envelopes and stamps, saving money, labor and environmental supplies in the process.

More Comprehensive Resume:  With BriteTab, you can easily attach graphics, videos and supplementary materials.  Moreover, you can edit and add to your resume at any time.  You can also create different resumes under the same account.  This makes it easier than ever to customize your resume according to the specific position you are seeking.

Monitor Your Progress:  BriteTab gives you traffic monitoring capabilities – see how many times and when your site is viewed!!

What organization wouldn’t be impressed with this progressive promotion of yourself?!?  Grading Girl gives BriteTab an A+ for its completely comprehensive resumes with stand-out appeal and effortless access.  If I was in the market for a new position, I would definitely take advantage of this opportunity and use BriteTab!!   I am recommending this site to my friends, family, and GG followers!!

Go to BriteTab today.  Check out the video tutorials and FAQs.  Explore and see for yourself how easy it is to create a resume that will help you land that new job and/or career.

I enjoy getting requests to review A-quality products and services.  Put yours to the test and let Grading Girl give the grade.

 

 

Share on Facebook

Savvy Sites 2

I am continuously amazed at the resources on the web.  What did we do before we had information at our fingertips?!?  Here are practical, useful sites I stumbled upon this week – both for educational and personal use!

Sites Helpful In and Out of the Classroom

Outta Ray’s Head English Lesson Plans – this is an oldie but a goodie.  If you are an English, reading or Language Arts teacher and you haven’t already discovered this, click on this NOW – a plethora of literature and writing assignments:

http://home.cogeco.ca/~rayser3/`

American Rhetoric – this is a comprehensive collection of famous speeches by political figures and entertainment icons.  You can read and/or hear them:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/

Neuroscience for Kids – Experiments and Activities . . . Very unique experiments and activities.  I’m using some for my communications class and some for my reading classes:

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/experi.html

This slightly scaringly illustrates how easily accessible our personal information is in this computerized society . . . I’ve used it when studying 1984:

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

These are great visualizations of what is ironic.  Take a peek at these for your enjoyment as well:

http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2009/09/signs_of_contra.html

A visual dictionary!  Watch the short clips that narrate the definition of words accompanied by still cartoons illustrating the meaning.  Great for visual and auditory learners who can’t grasp meaning just by reading it.  A more fun approach to SAT practice:

http://www.wordahead.com/Home/tabid/37/Default.aspx

A smattering of graphic organizers teachers can use in any content area and business leaders can use to plan meetings, to-do’s, etc:

http://my.hrw.com/nsmedia/intgos/html/igo.htm

JUST FOR FUN!

This will drive you nuts!!  The object of the game is to move the red block around without getting hit by the blue blocks or touching the black walls.  If you can go longer than 18 seconds you are phenomenal. It’s been said that the US Air Force uses this for fighter pilots.  Be careful . . . it’s addictive:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~pontipak/redsquare.html

Share on Facebook

Savvy Sites 1

Whether or not you are an educator, many of these sites may be of interest to you.  The following are links to helpful tools, interesting reads, and practical advice I’ve happily discovered or revisited within the past couple of weeks as I plan for the new school year.  For those I stumbled upon via my invaluable Twitter friends, Grading Girl thanks you!  Here goes . . . GG’s first savvy site faves:

Sites that will help classroom organization and incorporation of technology

• Twitter in the Classroom: (yes, yes . . . must try!)

http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dcf23zfg_27fdcsg9gs

• Twitter for Teachers: (need I say more!  I’d like to require my students to open a Twitter account and use it for interactive quizzes )

http://www.diigo.com/list/cedpaine/twitter-guides-for-teachers

• Links to School Bloggers: (click on these when you have some time to read . . . great advice and ways to incorporate blogging, technology)

http://supportblogging.com/page/diff/Links+to+School+Bloggers/83381337#htmldiff2

• Teaching with Technology: (so, so, so many tools and links here – bookmark this!)

http://ipt286.pbworks.com/Index

• Teaching English with Tech:  (many excellent links here for those wanting to know where to begin to incorporate blogging into the classroom)

http://tewt.org/englishteachersites.html

• A  simple management tool: (I looove this stopwatch tool!!)

http://viigo.im/0rep

• Top 5 Citation Applications: (very good cites for students to use when writing analysis and research papers)

http://instructify.com/2009/07/16/top-5-citation-applications

• Interactive Graphic Organizer: (very cool for teachers and/or students)

http://my.hrw.com/nsmedia/intgos/html/igo.htm

• My Backpack – Online Applications (many tools here!)

http://www.goodhue.k12.mn.us/school242/genie224/images/files/backpack2009d2.html

Sites I will use with my Speech Communication classes:

• How Obama could eliminate his ums: (very interesting and practical)

http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/delivery/obama-eliminate-ums/

• Ad Views: (this is excellent for my persuasion unit)

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adviews/

American Rhetoric:  The Power of Oratory in the United States (wow, what a plethora of famous speeches at one’s fingertips)

http://www.americanrhetoric.com

Sites I will use with my Reading classes:

• Three-Minute Fiction: NPR (an excellent way to open a class . . . can also serve as supplements to units)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyld=105660765

• Kelly Gallagher – Building Deeper Readers and Writers (I continually refer to Gallagher when planning reading and writing workshops)

http://www.kellygallagher.org/index.html

• Story Quotations (excellent motivators and class openings)

http://www.storycon.org/quotations.htm

• Skype other Classrooms: (a few years ago at a conference, I presented a way to connect students to other classrooms via online journals . . . this brings it to a whole new level)

http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/want-to-connect-with-other-classrooms/

• ReadWriteThink:  Student Materials (a classic site I always turn to!)

http://www.readwritethink.org/student_mat/index.asp

Sites I will use for my Senior Expository Comp classes:

• Beloit College Mindset List (this is eye-opening!!  I’ll use it as a reflective essay opener)

http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2013.php

• Brainstormer Applications (a cool little tool when you students say they have nothing to write about)

http://www.distractionbeast.com/brainstormer.swf

Share on Facebook