Google made it easy to embed in a site any book available at Google Book Search. You can add a fully-functional widget using this code:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://books.google.com/books/previewlib.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
GBS_insertEmbeddedViewer(’GkCpLIk7aisC‘,600,500);
</script>

You should replace GkCpLIk7aisC with the corresponding book ID, which can be obtained from the URL. See this example on the post at Google Operating System.

Post from Google Operating System

Obama’s Speech McCain’s Speech

This would make for an interesting class discussion (click on the pictures to make them larger).

Thanks to THE BIG PICTURE who got it from Wordle.net

It seems that the October 2008 issue of Esquire magazine brings us the first digital ink EVER used in a publication. Imagine the future of text books and manuals! And the kid’s books!!! Think of what it’ll do to kids books!!! CHECK out this video:

In an effort to raise the bar on my tests, I have sought to make my questions more like those found on AP tests.  I want my students to learn in preparation for the tests, but I also want them to learn FROM the tests.  However, the problem I am experiencing is a lack of knowledge of academic vocabulary.

ACADEMIC VOCABULARY
By academic vocabulary I do not mean words you would likely encounter at each grade level (which is mostly what I get when I google “academic vocabulary”). Rather, I mean the vocabulary test-makers use to craft the questions. Those verbs are what often trip students on such assessments. Since they were difficult to find, I decided to add some of the good stuff I found here on this page.

This list comes from the English Companion (by Jim Burke). It is a list of 350+/- words that one might encounter on an assessment. (Even teachers looking for new words to use in objectives on their lesson plans should check these out.) I don’t think it would be a problem to start off 1st graders on many of these words. What a great list! Thanks Jim Burke!

Test Practice sites (worth your time and for all content areas):
The College Board, which created the AP curriculum, I think, provides some well written free response questions that could easily be adapted for the lower level grades.

Here is a GREAT site for teaching students how to preform at the AP and Pre-AP levels. It has a lot of great links. I will definitely be putting this on my bookmark toolbar!

Of course, I cannot leave out WebEnglishTeacher.com out of the mix. At this link you will find ALL things English. This particular link just deals with AP, but just check out their home page for more great materials on just about anything.

For those looking for practice tests on a variety of subjects, you should check out THIS site. By looking at it, it was created a long time ago, but if you click enough times, you will find some really useful test practice materials. Again, I will say that half of the 100 or so sites do not work, but those that do seem pretty good.
This is for the writing assessment used in Florida called the FCAT (Otownteacher, this might interest you). Click on the drop down menu at the BOTTOM of the page to get a curriculum teaching elementary students how to break down the prompts. The test practice is broken down into weeks. After looking at them, I have found that they would be applicable to all states.

(this is a sort of repost from my blog)

I love to get kids writing as soon as they hit the seats, just to let them know that writing and exploring will be part of the year ahead. This year, I decided to try a few new twists to what I traditionally do on the first days of school.

I normally try to do a survey of my students, just to get a better sense of who they are and what they are thinking as a group. This year, I decided to create a Form Survey though my Google Documents (I got this inspiration from someone else in my various networks and even started with a copy of a Google Form from them, but I can’t for the life of me remember who it was — if it was you, dear reader, sorry). Google has made many improvements to this survey concept over time and it was quite easy to set up and then embed right into our classroom blog.  A bonus: it gathers all of the answers for you right in Google Docs. Nice. (Here is a link to the form, as embedded on our Weblog site called The Electronic Pencil)

Next, I thought about the answers and how to present them back to the students. I remembered Wordle – the word cloud application. So, I gathered up the answers to the question around what students are looking forward to this year, stuck them into Wordle and came up with this:

Pretty neat, eh? The kids loved seeing this and it was a nice collective image. (By the way, to save a Wordle, you need to do a screen save as a photo. You can’t download directly from Wordle, unfortunately).

Next, I took their responses to the question of their greatest accomplishments so far, and collected them in Google Docs (again), but tinkered with their new Google Themes. I will share this out to them (and our other teachers on my team) next week. See the student responses.

I have to admit: I am struggling with how to convert my multiple choice questions into graphs via Google, so if you have any links to help me, that would be most appreciated.

Peace,

Kevin

During my Master’s program, I was introduced to an up-and-coming teaching approach called UDL (Universal Design for Learning). This concept began in architecture, while designing infrastructure for people with disabilities. During this process, they discovered that those with disabilities were not the only people assisted by the designs. For example, when cut curbs were created, they were meant to aid people who are in wheelchairs cross the street. It was soon revealed that the smoother walkways also assisted those pushing strollers or delivery carts. So, while it helps support those with special needs, it was indeed universally successful. Fast forward to today- this same concept is being applied to education, with a technological twist. A Great Schools article by Nancy Firchow sums up the idea of UDL this way:

 ”UDL uses computer technology to create an educational environment that allows all students, including those with learning disabilities, to succeed in general education classrooms with minimal use of assistive technology (AT).”

It is guided by three principles,

• Multiple methods of presentation
• Multiple options for participation
• Multiple means of expression

While this is an extensive, pedogogy reforming approach to education, it is also a fantastic way to support every student in your classroom. It appears especially applicable to the ever-daunting Research Paper. With the guidance in UDL, students of all skill levels, reading proficiencies, mental/physical disabilities, and cultural backgrounds could access and manipulate the information required to perform grade level tasks. The catch here: teachers need to modify end goals to allow for the three principles. While a written product is the desired end result, those with difficulty in writing would have a built in support system. I have only scratched the surface of UDL, so please feel free to explore the following websites for an abundance of additional information.

http://www.cast.org/research/udl/index.html

http://www.washington.edu/doit/Faculty/Strategies/Universal/

http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/2490

I just stumbled across a New York Times article that examined the speeches that Democrats and Republican delivered at their respective conventions and then analyzed them to see what words occurred most frequently. This should, in theory, point out what is most important to these parties (at least in their rhetoric if not in fact).

Here in Canada, National Post did the same thing using Wordle and compared Barack Obama’s acceptance speech with Martin Luther King’s “I had a dream” speech. This kind of activity is instructive in its own right for history and Social Studies or Civics classes, but is also useful in an English course.

Just imagine if you had the most recent speech of your mayor or (if you dare) your principal. Run it through a program like Wordle. What are these people advocating? What’s important to them?

If you’re working on making speeches in class, have the students run their own speeches through Wordle. Are the ideas they’re emphasizing really the ones they want to bring across? It could be a great moment in self reflection.

If you have to teach kids how to pick out the main ideas of paragraphs or note taking skills, you may want to check out awesomehighlighter.com. 

DIRECTIONS:  All you have to do is 1.)go to the site

2.) type in the website address you want to mark up

3.) and click “highlight page.”

4.) hightlight and add notes as you wish.

5.) click DONE to get a url for your work and a list of everything you highlighted.

USES:

Use it to give instructions on how to use a website
Have students to a grammar technique scavenger hunt on their favorite sites
Teaching main ideas
Teaching researching methods
Teaching note-taking skills
You could put a paper on your website for students to highlight the errors
(if you have more ideas, leave them as comments)

AWESOME EXTRAS:
The great thing about this is you can pick different colors & you can even put a virtual sticky note on there. Then, students can just print out the marked up page when turning in the assignment.

***When you click done, it gives you the website address for a page that shows what you highlighted.  AND, it will even give you a list of all the thing s you highlighted.  In other words, it takes the notes for you!!!!!  (While that takes away from lessons about note taking skills, your reluctant students will enjoy the technology and ease.)