Teens Pick the Top 10 Titles to Read!!

YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) has just posted the winners of the top 10 best reads. You can find a description of each book HERE.

Post 500 Was Sunday! So Here's 501: 11 Visual Search Engines

I missed it; my 500th post was on Sunday, and I didn't send up the fireworks. So, without further ado...here is post 501.

Google is usually the first place students and teachers turn to when they are looking for images. But there are many other ways to search the web while making the experience a visual one. Many of the searches are for images only. See if any of these interest your students:


Boolify- teaches students proper search techniques

CamFind- visual search engine for Android phones

Compfight- search for photos, either commercial or Creative Commons

Evi- search online or use the mobile app for iPhone or Android

Google Images- choose the size, color, type, usage rights and more


Guided Search (Pinterest) for iPhone and Android

InstaGrok- interactive concept map

MUFIN-  (Multi Feature Indexing Network) search 100 million Flickr images

Quintura Kids- simple search for kids

Spezify- search online or with your iPhone

TinEye Reverse Image Search- "finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version."

A Break for a Serious Note

This coming Sunday, in memory of my father, I will be participating in the 2014 Walk to End Alzheimer's event. My dad battled the disease for over 10 years, but the worst day (other than his death) was when he looked at me and didn't know who I was. Alzheimer's robs a person of all their memories. There are currently over 5 million people affected by this hideous disease, and it is predicted that the number could grow to as much as 16 million by the year 2050.  Could you take a moment and donate anything you can afford? I'm sure that unfortunately we all will eventually know someone with Alzheimer's. Thank you.

Julie Greller's Walk to End Alzheimer's Page

Trick or Treat? Here are 62+ Things to Do for Halloween Fun

In two weeks we will begin 3 months of indulging.  Candy, followed by Thanksgiving dinner, Chanukah, Kwaanza, Christmas and New Year's. The extra ten pounds. YUM!! Okay, I know I'm rushing things, but my calendar says it is exactly two weeks until Halloween. Here's a great list of resources for you and your students!

ARTS AND CRAFTS / ACTIVITIES / GAMES
7 Halloween Themed Activities- from FreeTech4Teachers

Activity Village

Bat Flyers

Craft Stick Mummy

Eek! 50+ Halloween Activities, Resources, Apps- from Teacher Reboot Camp

Enchanted Learning- small list of crafts

Family Fun- wonderful site with loads of ideas

Halloween Crafts

Handprint Witch

Halloween Worksheets and Activities

Make a Halloween Pumpkin Face with Geometry Shapes- kindergarten

The Official Halloween Safety Game- from Halloween Magazine

PBS Kids Halloween Page

Tall Mouse Projects

COLORING PAGES / WORKSHEETS
173 Free Halloween Worksheets- from Busy Teacher

Halloween Coloring Pages- from Teachers Corner

Halloween Coloring Pages for Toddlers, Preschool and Kindergarten

Halloween Counting Coloring Pages

Halloween Themed Coloring Pages

Halloween Printables

Halloween Worksheets and Activities

LESSONS

Halloween Lesson Ideas- from Education World

Halloween Lessons- SmartBoard activities include games, puzzles, sound files and more

Halloween Math

Halloween Writing Prompts

Lesson Plan on Halloween Safety- from TeAchnology

Pumpkin and Ghost Lima Bean Math- grades K-3

Pumpkin Math Activities

Pumpkin Seed Project- counting game

The Science Behind Some of Your Favorite Candy

Spelloween- great for ESL/ELL students

Using Halloween Candy in Math Projects

WatchKnowLearn Halloween Videos

MISCELLANEOUS

Halloween Health and Safety- from the CDC

Halloween Infographics

Halloween Trivia Scavenger Hunt

Halloweenispere.com

MONSTERS AND CREATURES:

Alien: Assembly Required- for younger kids; part of the Arthur site

Goosebumps Monster Maker- based on the R.L. Stine series Goosebumps, students drag and drop body parts to create their own monsters.

Make a Monster- simple interface for younger kids

Me Make Monster- easy to use; share or save the monster created or print it on a tee shirt, mug, bag or baseball hat

Me Make Zombie- students upload a photo and make it into a zombie

Monster Maker- select various body parts for your monster and control the width, height, texture and background

Playnormous Monster Gallery- choose eyes, nose, ears etc. and have your monster rated on the site; gallery currently has over 5400 monsters.

Tinkatolli- create a "Tinka"

Toonix- create a "toonix" on this colorful site; many choices to create

The Troop: Monster Creator- the premise is simple: students recreate the monster they saw by clicking and scaling body parts

RECIPES

Bizarre Halloween Recipes- do you have the nerve???

DLTK's Recipes for Kids

Eight Haunted Recipes

Gross Halloween Party Food- they look really gross!!

Halloween Recipes

Kids' Turn Central- recipes

RESOURCES / COLLECTIONS
Teacher Planet's Halloween Lessons, Worksheets and Activities

TeacherVision's List of Halloween Resources for Teachers- printables, slideshows, lesson plans, activities and many subject areas, including math, social studies

The Ultimate List of Free Halloween Teaching Resources

VIDEOS





History of Halloween- several videos from History.com

Still Using Scantrons? Why Not Try Google Forms and Flubaroo!!

Today I bumped into a colleague of mine who was looking for the building's Scantron machine to grade a test. When I asked him if he had ever used Google forms to self-grade his quizzes, he told me he had never heard of it. The great thing was that he was open to learning about Google forms and Flubaroo. So for those of you out there who want to move away from Scantron forms and step into the 21st Century, here are a bunch of tutorials to help you on your way. This one's for you, Larry!!

Brent Coley- there are 5 videos which take you step-by-step, including creating, editing, analyzing/sharing, adding images, and creating a self-grading quiz with Flubaroo. Everything you need on one page.









Make Your Own Online Quizzes and Let Flubaroo Do the Grading- from ISTE

Self-Check Quiz Templates-  5,10,15,20 question samples from Tammy's Technology Tips for Teachers

14+ Language iPad Apps for ESL/ELL Students

I recently received a request for iPad apps that ESL/ELL learners could use to adapt to the English language. The following list are mostly free apps, with descriptions quoted from Apple's iTunes page.

Dictionary and Thesaurus- from Dictionary.com

Dragon Dictation- “Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. In fact, it’s up to five (5) times faster than typing on the keyboard”

Free Apps to Support Vocabulary Acquisition by ELLs- from Edutopia

Google Translate- translate 80 languages

iGE Lite- “iGE is a guide to the structure of the English Language that is specifically designed for mobile devices to meet the needs of busy teachers and students.”

iPad Apps for English Language Learners- free and $$ apps listed here

Phrasal Verbs Machine- “animated illustrations of 100 phrasal verbs set in the circus world of our main character Phraso and his friends.”

Phrasalstein- “Doctor Phrasalstein who, with the help of his friends, will teach us 100 phrasal verbs using animations inspired by the classic “horror movie” genre, with a touch of humour and irony."

Frequently, phrasal verbs have more than one meaning. For the examples we’ve selected, we’ve used the most common and well-known meaning for some while going with the more obscure meaning for others. In any case, you’ll always find an example sentence in English as well as other meanings whenever they are useful or necessary. What’s more, you’ll be provided with the translation in Spanish, German, Italian, Russian and French. "

TED- students can watch inspiring talks and practice their listening skills

Vocaba- “Vocabla is an app for improving your English vocabulary. You can translate, collect & memorize words, phrases, idioms and other chunks of language.”

Word Mover- “Word Mover allows children and teens to create "found poetry" by choosing from word banks and existing famous works; additionally, users can add new words to create a piece of poetry by moving/manipulating the text.

FEATURES:

- Multi-user poem storage

- User management with the ability to delete or restore within 2 weeks

- 6 poem categories, each with the ability to personalize

- 12 backgrounds for stylizing poems

- Helpful how-to information available throughout app

- Auto-saving of poems as they are created

- Viewing of finished poem for proofreading

- Ability to save poem to photos

- Ability to print poem on a wireless printer

- Ability to send poem by e-mail

14 Sites About the Salem Witch Trials

I got a request today from a colleague about a pathfinder for the Salem Witch Trials. As of yesterday, I had posted 122 different subjects, from African-American Scientists & Inventors to Young Adult Authors. I will add this one later today when I am at my desk with the proper software. In the meantime, here you go, Sasha!

A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials- from Smithsonian.com
Documentary Archive and Transcription Project- University of Virginia has supplied access to primary source documents, maps, letters and much more.

Famous American Trials: Salem Witchcraft Trials

History.com : Salem Witch Trials

Launchpad: Salem Witch Trials- from EDSITEment

National Geographic Salem Witch Hunt Interactive

Salem Witch Museum- located in Salem, Massachusetts, this museum has information on the Salem Witch Trials, which took place in 1692.

The Salem Witch Trials, 1692- from Eyewitness to History

Salem Witch Trials: The World Behind the Hysteria- from Discovery Education

Salem Witchcraft Trials Jeopardy

Student Research Center (EBSCO) - search “salem witch trials” for 700 results

The Witches Curse: Explore Salem- from PBS