Alpha Munchies - A Fun Typing Game

Last week I published a list of 7 Good Resources for Developing Typing Skills. Here's another good resource to add to that list. ABCya's Alpha Munchies is a fun typing game for elementary school students. The game requires students to type letters or words, depending upon the level, to guard their lunches against "Alpha Critters."

Applications for Education
I played Alpha Munchies for a little while and could see how students would get sucked into playing it for a long time. The longer they play it, the better they should get at typing quickly and accurately. If you're going to have students use the game in your classroom, I recommend having them use headphones or turn off the sound as the music might drive you nuts after a while.

Disclosure: ABCya is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers. 

Get Ready for the 2012 WordGirl Definition Competition

On May 1, 2012 Scholastic is hosting a live WordGirl Definition Competition. During the live webcast classrooms can play along by submitting their responses to the questions. Some participating classrooms will be called in to participate live over the web. The competition will feature three rounds of questions about word usage and definitions. You can register for the event and get a pre-competition preparation kit here.

7 Resources for Developing Typing Skills

This morning my friend Ken Shelton asked me via Twitter if I had any resources for online keyboards. Of course I do, I just need to find them. So for Ken and everyone else looking for online typing practice sites, here's a short list to get you started.

Typing Web is an online typing tutorial that provides instant feedback after every free typing lesson. Typing Web offers beginner through advanced typing lessons for free. You can register to track your progress or you can use Typing Web without registering.

Word Games offers a large collection of online word games and typing games. The word games range from simple word searches and crosswords to games that require players to complete sentences and phrases. The typing games are a mix of simple sentence typing for speed and games that require accuracy to "defend" a character or move a character through a scene. Some of the games featured on Word Games can be either downloaded to your computer, see Typing Defense, others can be embedded into your blog or website.

Listen and Write is a great way for students to improve their typing skills and hear about the news. Listen and Write plays short audio clips of news stories and users type what they hear. The audio clips are relatively short, come in a few different levels, and registered users can track their progress.

Power Typing hosts a small collection of five typing games that students can use to develop their typing skills. Power Typing also offers typing lessons for Qwerty and Dvorak keyboards. The two games that I found easiest to access are Alphabetic Rain and See Don't.

Good Typing is a free online typing skill development program. Good Typing provides 27 graduated lessons designed to help students learn to use their entire keyboards correctly. Unlike some free online typing programs, Good Typing offers support twenty different keyboard styles including US style, Japanese style, and several European languages.

Dance Mat Typing is a nice little resource from the BBC. Young students (four to eight years old) can receive clear, informative typing instruction through Dance Mat Typing. There are four levels for students to work through. Within each level there are multiple lessons and practice activities. The very first lesson that students receive is placement of their hands on the keyboard. Each lesson and practice activity offers instant feedback in visual and audio form.

Typing Adventure is a nice little game that young students can use to practice their typing skills. To play the game students just have to visit the game site, read the directions, and press start. The game scenario presented to students is a character leaping from stepping stone to stepping stone. To move along the path students have to type the letters of the stones they want to jump to. Students earn points based on speed and accuracy.

Bonus Just for Fun Item!
I Do Dog Tricks is a fun little typing activity from Heart Gard (that's what my dog takes). Simply type a command and the dog in the picture will do the trick that you type. Try "bark" and "roll over" to get started.

Thanks to Kevin Jarrett through whom I found a few of these typing resources over the years. 

Dance Mat Typing - Typing Instruction and Practice

Dance Mat Typing is a nice little resource from the BBC. Young students (four to eight years old) can receive clear, informative typing instruction through Dance Mat Typing. There are four levels for students to work through. Within each level there are multiple lessons and practice activities. The very first lesson that students receive is placement of their hands on the keyboard. Each lesson and practice activity offers instant feedback in visual and audio form.

Applications for Education
Dance Mat Typing is simple and clear enough that most students should be able to use it on their own without much more than some initial instruction from a teacher or parent which makes it a good individual practice activity. One thing that readers in the US should note is that the letter "Z" is pronounced as "zed."

I can't remember where I learned about this resource, but I have a hunch that it was probably on Kevin Jarrett's blog. 

Create Story Cubes With Templates from Read Write Think

Earlier this week I spent some time browsing Read Write Think and came across this lesson plan for creating biography cubes. The biography cube template is part of a larger set of four story cube templates called Cube Creators.

Cube Creators provide templates designed to break the writing process into six distinct parts. There are templates for writing biographies, mysteries, short stories, and a blank template that you can customize. Students enter the required information into the online template. When the template is completed, it can be printed with lines for cutting and folding to create an actual cube.

Applications for Education
Cube Creator templates could help students get started on a writing assignment when they're confronted with writer's block. The templates also provide guidance for outlining and formatting a story. These templates are suitable for elementary school use.

The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That

If he was alive today, today Dr. Seuss would be 108. Yesterday, I posted some resources for celebrating his birthday in your school. After that post appeared on Twitter, Shelley Owen told me about The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That. The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That is produced by PBS Kids. The site features online games, videos, puzzles, and printable materials based around the stories of Dr. Seuss.

Applications for Education
If you're an elementary school teacher looking for some puzzles or games that your students can use both offline and online, take a look at The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That. If you're an iPad user, you'll be happy to know that when I browsed the site I noticed that some of the activities are iOS-friendly.

Resources for Celebrating the Birthday of Dr. Seuss

If he was alive today, tomorrow Dr. Seuss would be 108 years old. I loved reading his books when I was a child and I'm sure that many of you did too. As I do every year, I would like to share some resources for celebrating the birthday of Dr. Seuss.

The Seussville Playground has fun online games that kids can play and printable resources for offline use. The games and the printable resources are designed with themes to match various Dr. Seuss books. The Seussville Story Maker which helps kids write a Dr. Seuss style story. To create their stories students select backgrounds and characters then write their stories. The Seussville Playground also offers a calendar of Dr. Seuss activities that teachers can use throughout the year.

Read Write Think has a good lesson plan based on the book Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? The lesson plan is designed for K-2 students to practice observing sounds and creating words from what they hear. 


Finally, any mention of Dr. Seuss has to include Green Eggs and Ham. A video of the story is embedded below. 

Math Chimp Expands to Middle School

Math Chimp is a catalog of mathematics games and activities that I initially wrote about last fall. At that time they only listed resources for elementary school. Now they have expanded to cover activities and games for middle school mathematics students. While Math Chimp is far from being a revolutionary mathematics resource, the catalog is handy for teachers looking for materials that their students can use independently. Teachers can find games on Math Chimp by selecting the grade that they teach then selecting a standard or objective. After you make those selections Math Chimp will direct you to an appropriate mathematics game for your students.

On a related note, one of the sponsors of Free Technology for Teachers, ABCYa offers great elementary school mathematics games that can be played online and on an iPad.

Create a Virtual Volcanic Eruption

A couple of years I posted a list of five good resources for teaching about volcanoes. Last week, through Ask a Tech Teacher, I discovered another resource to add to that list. The Discovery Channel's Volcano Explorer provides a small simulation that students can use to design a volcanic eruption. Using the Volcano Explorer students choose the magma viscosity and gas content to create a virtual volcanic eruption. When students make their selections the Volcano Explorer provides a short explanation of how those settings will affect the shape of the volcano and its eruption.

Applications for Education
Discovery's Volcano Explorer could be a nice little simulation to use in an elementary school science lesson. While students won't experience the fun mess of the baking soda and vinegar eruptions that we did as kids, the Volcano Explorer does provide some direct explanation and visuals of magma and gasses in action.

Interactive Bulletin Boards - Guest Post

As my students have transitioned more and more into creating digital projects over the last few years, I have struggled with ways to showcase their work in a community that does not always possess the tools to access the World Wide Web. Lately, I’ve been playing with the idea of bringing together the digital and “real” worlds in their projects. My students yearn for outside feedback, but rarely get it when they post their work on a blog or in an Internet gallery. Thus, after reading a post about Transliteracy, my Interactive Bulletin Board was born.


Using a project from Read Write Think about Parallel Poems and an art project from Princeton Online, the students had a beautiful 2-D Bulletin Board to display in our hallway.  But, I wanted to bring its viewers into the digital world as well, so I used a few tricks to engage the audience - QR codes, a puzzle, and an iPad.

First, I mixed up the artwork and poetry on the board so that they weren’t matched with each other.  Then I placed QR codes on the artwork that led the reader to an audio file in which the artist/poet read his or her poem.  I also placed QR codes that led the reader to Google Forms online that allowed the viewer to vote on their favorite pieces of art and poetry. This was a hit with my own students, but I wanted to widen the audience, so I then sent out e-mails to surrounding classrooms offering the loan of some of our classroom iPads so that their students could experience the bulletin board, too.

The teachers who volunteered to participate were not very familiar with either iPads or QR codes, but they thought their students would enjoy the opportunity.  With a few instructions, the students themselves (third grade) were able to tutor each other as small groups strolled over to our hallway to view the board. For almost a week, there were students standing in front of our board with iPads, discussing the art and poetry, trying to match them up, and giving their input on the work.  It was the most feedback we have ever gotten on student work - virtual or otherwise.

The success of this “pilot” has definitely made me want to branch out to other ideas - codes linked to videos or blog posts so viewers can comment, a bulletin board in the library to reach an even wider audience, etc... 

Students find QR codes engaging.  Sure, the novelty will wear off in a few years, but we can certainly take advantage of it now to enhance learning.  For a few more ideas on how you can use QR codes in the classroom in novel ways, such as for classroom coupons, check out my blog at http://engagetheirminds.com, and do a search for QR codes, or you can just click here. 

About the Blogger

Terri Eichholz is a teacher of Gifted and Talented students in North East Independent School District in San Antonio, TX.  This is her 21st year of teaching and learning from her students.  You can find her blog, Engage Their Minds:  Different Ideas for Different Thinkers, at http://engagetheirminds.com

Language Adventures with Leo the Lobster and Friends

Building Language for Literacy offers three nice little language activities from Scholastic. The activities are designed for pre-K and Kindergarten students.

Leo Loves to Spell asks students to help a lobster named Leo identify the first letter of a series of spelling words arranged in a dozen categories. Reggie Love to Rhyme features a rhinoceros that needs help identifying the words that rhyme with objects found in places like the home, the garden, and the supermarket. Nina the Naming Newt needs help identifying the objects that belong in places like the home, the store, and the firehouse.

Applications for Education
The three activities found in Building Language for Literacy can be used individually by students or as part of a group lesson. According to Scholastic that the activities are optimized for use on interactive whiteboards.

I learned about these activities through Kelly Moore's Techie Kids blog.

Character Scrapbook - A Tool for Student Reflections on Stories

Scholastic's Character Scrapbook provides a nice template that elementary school students can use to write about and reflect on the characters in their favorite stories. The template is quite simple to use. Students enter the name of a story and the name of their favorite character on the first page. On the next pages students list ten attributes of the character. The Character Scrapbook also allows students to create pictures of their favorite characters.

As you can see in the image above, Scholastic's Character Scrapbook doesn't limit students to human characters. Students can write about and create images of animal characters too.

Applications for Education
Scholastic's Character Scrapbook could be a great tool for getting students to think about their favorite stories. The Character Scrapbook has an easy print option so that you can print and display all of your students' works in your classroom.

Peep and the Big Wide World - Educational Games for Children

Peep and the Big Wide World is a nice resource for pre-K and early elementary school that I learned about through Kevin Jarrett's most recent Last Week in Lab post.

Peep and the Big Wide World, produced by WGBH, offers a great collection of online games, videos, and offline activities designed to help students learn and practice skills in math and science. One emphasis of the games that I tried is recognizing patterns. In all there are fifteen online games available through Peep and the Big Wide World.

The offline or Anywhere Activities section of Peep and the Big Wide World offers dozens of activities designed to extend the science and lessons provided in the Peep and the Big Wide World videos. In fact, when you're on the video page you will notice that there is a suggested Anywhere Activity listed with each video.

Applications for Education
Peep and the Big Wide World looks like it could be a great resource for pre-K and early elementary school science and mathematics lessons. Kevin Jarrett is one of the first people I started following when I started this blog and I've always found his work to be insightful and helpful. If he's using Peep and the Big Wide World, I'm inclined to think that it must be good.

Alphabetimals - A Fun Way to Learn the Alphabet

Alphabetimals is a nice website on which you will find some nice resources for helping young children learn the alphabet. The main feature of Alphabetimals is an interactive flipbook featuring animal sounds and the pronunciations of animal names.

The Alphabetimals characters can spell out any word that you would like. Just type in the word and it will be printed for you. You can then print out the Alphabetimaltized (yes, I just made up that term) version of the word. Alphabetimals also offers free printable flashcards, an alphabet poster, and alphabet coloring pages.

Alphabetimals is funded by sales of Alphabetimals products like posters and tee shirts. For every product purchased they donate a book to Books for Africa.

Applications for Education
Alphabetimals offers some nice little resources to help you help children learn the alphabet. For folks like me who are not artistically inclined, the option to type a word and print it in an alphabetimalized version could be a nice way to print and display vocabulary words in your elementary school classroom.

OK Go Explains Primary Colors in Song

From cool Rube Goldberg machines to tightly scripted marching band routines, OK Go produces fantastic music videos. Now they've jumped into making educational videos for kids. In Three Primary Colors, produced with Sesame Street, OK Go explains the three primary colors in a catchy little song.



Applications for Education
After your students get the catchy Three Primary Colors song stuck in their heads, have them try creating pictures using the Three Primary Colors game on the Sesame Street website.

H/T to Brain Pickings. 

One Month Left to Enter The Kids' Science Challenge

Back in October I wrote about the Kids' Science Challenge. A post on Fred Delventhal's blog just reminded me about it. There is one month left for students in grades three through six to enter the Kids' Science Challenge.

The Kids' Science Challenge is a national (United States) contest for students in grades three through six. The challenge asks students to innovate and build upon on our current conceptions of how things work. There are three areas of innovation in this year's contest; reducing waste, developing meals to be eaten on Mars, and developing a toy or game that demonstrates an animal's intelligence. The contest is open until February 29, 2012.

Applications for Education
To help students start thinking about the topics in The Kids' Science Challenge, the challenge website has a series of games and videos for students. For teachers, The Kids' Science Challenge offers a page of lesson plans and hands-on activities designed to help students develop ideas related to the contest's three challenge topics.

An Animated Guide to Electric Circuits

The Blobz Guide to Electric Circuits is a neat series of interactive animations designed to help students of elementary and middle school age learn how electric circuits work. There are five sections to the series. Each sections builds upon the lessons of the previous section. The series starts with the basics of what makes a circuit complete and concludes with diagramming and building circuits. Each section in the series has a few short lessons and is followed by an animated interactive activity to which students can apply what they have just learned. 

Applications for Education

The name, "Blobz Guide to Electric Circuits" reminded me a bit of the Squishy Circuits activity that I wrote about last fall. The Blobz Guide to Electric Circuits could be a good way for students to learn about electric circuits before you attempt a classroom activity like that of Squishy Circuits. 

Thanks to Jen Deyenberg for sharing this great resource on Twitter. 

Five Resources for Visual Fractions Lessons

This is a list that I created in response to a request that I recently received as direct message on Twitter. A couple of these resources I found through a search in the Diigo community. If you don't have a Diigo account or if you do but you have never searched the community bookmarks, I recommend giving it a try.

Who Wants Pizza? is a fun online activity for learning about fractions. Who Wants Pizza was developed by Cynthia Lanius at Rice University. The activity has five parts plus practice activities for students to explore. Teachers will find notes about using this activities in the classroom.

Visual Fractions has eight categories of visualizations, lessons, and games for students to explore and learn the functions of fractions.

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives has a lot of interactive activities for students learning the use of fractions, addition and subtraction, and the multiplication of fractions.

Thinking Blocks is a nice site for elementary and middle school mathematics teachers. Thinking Blocks provides interactive templates in which students use brightly colored blocks to model and solve problems. As students work through the problems they are provided with feedback as to whether or not they are using the correct sequence to solve each problem. There are templates and problems for addition, multiplication, fractions, and ratios. You can also develop your own problems using the modeling tool.

Conceptua Math is a provider of interactive visual mathematics lessons. One of Conceptua Math's primary focuses is on the development of tools to aid teachers in the instruction of lessons on fractions. Conceptua Math's offerings are a mix of free and premium (paid) tools. There are a total of fifteen free interactive tools for teachers and students. Each of the free tools has an introductory video and a sample lesson plan.