Learning Technologies with Language Learners

I recently gave a presentation to a group of university English language instructors.  It's entitled Why? How?When? and Which Tools? Learning Technologies with Language Learners. It's divided into two parts.  Part 1: Frameworks to view technology integration. (The why, the when and a bit of the how.) Part 2: The tools with some examples.

What framework(s) do you use to guide your integration of technologies in supporting language learning and/or content learning?

Migrant Youth Voices on iPads and Blogs

I presented at NCCE 2014.  The basic concept of the presentation is giving underrepresented students a voice, bringing out the super hero in them, and allowing them to speak on topics of interest to them through the use of emerging technologies. The inspiration of this presentation is from the Oregon Migrant Leadership Institutions (OMLI) I've participated in at Oregon State University for the past five summers.  The presentation gives high school participant examples from the OMLI and reflects on tech integration from the perspective of a learning educator.

http://prezi.com/ontt6uhguty1/migrant-youth-voices/

Here are related posts about the OMLI experiences.
Giving Students a Voice with iPads and iMovies
Student Voice with Tablets vs Pens
Summer Camp Experiences Recorded with Weebly, Animoto, and Educreations

Multiple Perspectives from Winnie the Pooh to Groceries

My preservice teachers had a great discussion a few weeks ago about the importance of brining in multiple perspectives into the classroom.  Doing so affirms that the world is complex and takes more than one view to gain a picture of a concept.  It can widen our worldview.  Multiple perspectives activities should also be accompanied with conversations around information literacy, bias, culture, and language.

This Russian Winnie the Pooh video (Vinni Puh) by animator Fyodor Khitruk caught my attention.  One of my favorite blogs, The Kids Should See This, has a nice post about it.

In continuing the conversation of multiple perspectives, take a look at this interesting post, What a Week of Groceries Looks Like Around the World, on Nutrition News. I think it would be interesting to pair it with a unit that maps where food comes from with this site. Type in a recipe and explore the originations of the food.  

On a similar thread of thought, don't miss James Mollison's photographs, Where Children Sleep.  If you haven't seen it, The Danger of a Single Story TED Talk by Chimamanda Adichie is a must see!

How can you bring multiple perspectives into your learning environment?  If you are interested in more sites, check out my Multicultural and Bilingual Resources that I will add to in time.  Happy exploring!

Giving Students a Voice with iPads and iMovies

This summer, I worked with high school migrant students in a summer camp using iPads to give them a voice through videos and writing.  This posts builds on the one prior to it, Giving Students iPads vs Pens, but focuses on the instructional aspects.  Here's a fun video that two students created on the first day in about 20 min.  Watch others from this Shout Out page.

Prep and a platform are important!  A lot of prep work goes into setting something like this up.  I had 15 iPads, 4 staff, and around 25 students at one time.  I chose Blogger as the platform in part because it has a super easy to use app.  We used iMovies as the movie making app and You Tube Capture to quickly upload the movies to You Tube.  In weeks 2-3, when staff became more comfortable, we added Animoto (using an Educator’s account) and Explain Everything. The resources and handouts and general plans were posted prior to beginning each week.  It is handy to have videos, links, general purpose explanation, etc. set up ahead of time on a site to aid in the flow of instruction during a project.

Student choice: In week one, I began with a structured format that was “school like” the staff politely told me later. Staff were learning the apps, there were a lot of unknowns, and it seemed the safe bet. Students created Where I am From poems and turned them into videos.  I had my handouts, model examples videos and how-to videos ready to go on the site.  It was exciting the first day when one of the participants quickly created an incredible rap during a pre-write session.  But for what could be a variety of reasons—not wanting to share publically, or perhaps feeling the need to follow my “school like” directions, his rap didn’t make it to video.  Students in week 1 did a great job!   They followed my directions, but I was a bit disappointed in my directions and how it pigeon holed everyone into creating a similar looking video. 

In weeks 2-3, staff were more comfortable, and they opened topics up to students.  Wow, do kids have ideas and voices worth listening to!  They chose topics of importance to them such as bullying, language choice, goal setting, etc.  

Process and experience: If this is presented with a focus on the process and learning, not only the final product, it helps meet the needs of a wider range of learners, differentiating and even individualizing.

Learn together as you go:  Tablets truly give teachers the opportunity to take the seat of a facilitator and learner with the students.  Students asked each other, problem solved, worked together, naturally became the experts and taught me! I did do a lot of the leg work in managing the site and creating You Tube playlists, looking at privacy issues, etc, but some of this can be delegated to students as well.

Celebrate!  This type of learning differentiates and allows learners of varying levels to contribute.  We popped popcorn and watched their videos and related videos along the way.

Overview: This experience shows how mobile devices can be used quickly to create videos and give students a voice.  This is the tip of the iceberg when we have access to such devices and begin to rethink assignments and how technologies can support content and language learning. This experience also cements the importance of a platform (such as a blog) for workflow and instructional purposes, to share student work, and to communicate.

Happy movie watching!

The Up-Goer Five in Education

Guest Blog Post:

Hello all! I am a Biology teacher currently masquerading as an English teacher in South Korea. Since I don’t have much in the way of experience teaching English—much less English as a Foreign Language (EFL)—I am taking some online courses to improve my teaching skills.

When Tech: I discovered The Up-Goer Five on Nik’s LearningTechnology Blog.

Users are challenged to explain a complex idea using only the ten hundred most used English words. The program identifies any words that you use which are not simple enough.

Here's an example.  Can you guess where it is?  " I live in a big place with one people group that is not my own. The big place I live in is broken in two parts because the two parts were fighting. I live in the lower part. People here are nice. "

Met Ed: TheUp-Goer Five could be used either to help English Language Learners (ELLs) explain an idea using words that they are familiar with or with non-ELL students to show how difficult it is to express complex ideas when you don't have the proper words. Sites such as these can expose educators to new ideas and give them tools to implement the use of these ideas.

Go ahead and try it! Leave your definition in the comments so mine won’t be lonely. 

Ed and Tech Play With Web 2.0 Tools Part 3: VoiceThread

VoiceThread is a handy, easy-to-use tool in education with potential for digital storytelling and beyond.  It can be used to hold debates, explain, describe, persuade, etc.  It allows participants to interact on one platform in five different ways: writing, recording audio, doodling, video, or phone.   My online class will soon be experimenting with VoiceThread (VT).  I’ve used it in my College of Ed classes, a middle school classroom, with my adult ESOL classes, and at a personal level for several years now; I continue to see its benefits.

Getting Started and Examples in Education

I presented on VT back in 2007ish and hadn’t returned to the how-to’s since.  I was tickled pink to find that they still have their original (updated) directions. If you don’t get anything else from this post, do yourself a favor today and watch slides 5 and 6! (Use the arrows to access them quickly.) The first avatar still cracks me up.  What a great example of digital storytelling!

Viewable in a lovely world where I never age is my first attempt at a VT. I was surprised when a year after creating it, I returned to it and discovered people from around the world had responded.  It was memorably one of my first “ah ha” moments that this thing called social media, multimedia and digital storytelling had a bright future.  Embedded below is one my kiddo created years ago explaining her learning from a travel experience.

Wondering how to use VT in your content area?  Here are examples from various content areas and age groups aggregated on the VT site.   Search VT within a defined field to see how other educators use them.  For example, in my field I search for ESOL, ESL, EFL, ELL, assessment etc. Michelle Pacansky-Brock is a great resource to follow on Twitter or at Teaching Without Walls as well.

Ways I have used VoiceThread and things that have worked for me

Set-up: A. Use ones already created. (Do a search by browsing on VT.)  B. Make my own that I use either in the classroom or have students respond to.  C.  Guide students in making either a class, group, or individual VTs and in responding to each other.

Instructions/Purpose: It is important to have a clear set of instructions and purpose for the VT assignment. 

Storyboard/Process:  When students create their own VTs, I often have them storyboard their responses first.  This works well in a process oriented assignment.  For ELLs, it gives them the opportunity to use all modes of the language: reading (if they did research on the topic), writing/editing, speaking, and listening.  I provide checklists and grading rubrics with expectations along the way.

Collaboration: I have experimented using VT when working with multiple sections of a class.  I teach two sections of one class, and the students never see each other, but they are able to correspond, discuss questions, etc. via VT.  This also works in online courses when students enter VT from around the world.

Things I have learned as I’ve used VT

Privacy settings: I need to be mindful of students' comfort levels and privacy.  At this point, I do not have any VT that my students have made to share in public because as a class they opted to keep them private for various reasons.

Comfort level: I once had a middle school student who did a phenomenal job on a VT.  He was engaged in a way I hadn’t seen him engaged before.  He put a ton of effort into his VT, from the writing process to recording his voice several times.  When we got ready to share with the class, he hit “delete.” It was beyond his comfort level to share with others.  I think this is important to honor and another great reason if it is a project to be assessing with a rubric and/or checklist along the way.

Recording Issues:  The reality is that the tech doesn’t always work.  With best efforts, particularly in online courses, some students have hardware limitations and experience difficulties recording audio/video.  This is where the writing option comes in handy.

Potential I see in VT beyond what I have done 

Portfolios: VT could be a portfolio for students to showcase their work and reflect. 

Global Collaboration: VT could be exciting to work in a more global way with other classes.

Course Development: It could be fun to add to the same VT with subsequent classes.  This could work great with vocabulary.  Students in Spring term class create VTs for vocabulary on chapter 1 and Fall term create them for chapter 2, etc.

Get started with the free version of VT.  So far with planning, I have been able to use only the free version.  There’s an app for that.  Last year, VT introduced an app.  It’s straightforward to use and allows students yet another way to be mobile with their learning.  

How do you use VT?

Happy VoiceThreading!

Ways to Use Thinglink in Education

Visual literacy is an emphasis in ESOL. The visual aspect helps language learners develop vocabulary and much, much more.  It is also beneficial for many learners.  As an online instructor who wishes to bring more meaningful visuals into the classroom, I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for visuals for adult learners as well.  There are many online options available to us.

When Tech:  Thinglink Education is one option with a lot of potential.  The ThingLink Education site describes it as an “Easy-to-use editor, teachers can create immersive and engaging experiences by adding tags to any image in a few minutes: Create authentic, valuable, and rich interactive stories around historical events using media (video, sound, photos, written words, etc.) found online. Annotate graphs and timelines. Record an instructional message to students inside an image. Embed interactive images into student blogs. Enable students to curate content inside an image to demonstrate understanding of a topic."  

At ISTE, I received a free upgrade to the educator’s account of Thinglink Education, which took me from 50 pictures to 500.  

Met Ed: It may be no surprise that Pinterest is a great starting place to see the potential in education.  Explore the pictures at Thinglink Education on Pinterest. It will take you a few clicks to be able to interact with the picture in its intended way.  (Wave your cursor over the Thinglink and click on the circles.) I found this interesting one there by Mr. Loret’s World History class that demonstrates how students are using it!  Here's another Thinglink jumping place to gather ideas and examples.
 

 

Above is my first try with Thinglink. (Wave your cursor over the words, and click on the circles.) It’s very basic, but it shows me the potential firsthand.  I made this in Tagul and uploaded it to Thinglink.  I’ll use it to introduce a few options of online timelines my students can explore for an upcoming course.  It only took a few minutes to make.  I can imagine linking to videos I upload to You Tube or audio instructions I make on SoundCloud.  There are many possibilities.  With an assignment on theories of SLA, students could link to credible articles, videos, etc. that discuss and describe the theories.  Students could even have a “debate” starting place with the words “yes” and reasons on one picture and “no” and reasons on another.  They could then debate away, either by recording their voices and linking to Vacaroo or SoundCloud or simply by writing reasons on the picture and debating in person.  Thinglink has an option to invite others to work on a picture collaboratively.  There are a ton more possibilities, ways librarians, musicians, and others are using it too.  This Wired article gives an overview of a few.

Happy Thinglinking! 

Meograph: A Digital Storytelling Tool

I was pleased when I came across Meograph during my quest to pull together digital storytelling tools and resources.  It's claim is four dimensional storytelling that "combines maps, timelines, links, and multimedia to tell stories in context of where and when.” As with any online information, it is important to note the date that this post is written.  This is particularly true because as I write, Meograph is in beta.  It seems to have tons of potential, and I love the concept in education!

Get past the demo if you are a K-12 educator.  It has some interesting examples, but may not be appropriate for K-12.  Sign up and give it a try. Watch this how-to video to get an overview.   

I created this Meograph in more than a few minutes, but that is often the case the first time around.  If I were to attempt this again, I’d assume it would be much quicker with better results.  Here are some things I learned along the way that may save you time if you make one yourself.  

View Meograph on Google Earth mode in Chrome for more fun. Click on the orange "see more" tabs to view the links that are available.  In order to get the slides to stay in the intended order, you need to be specific with the date/time.  The narration lasts 10 seconds.  I couldn’t get Salar de Uyuni correctly placed on the map, but I thought it was kind of funny how Google Earth placed it because it really is an off the map type of place. Shortly after I published this post, the Meograph team kindly informed me that there is an option to put the exact latitude and longitude in, which could make a good geography lesson. 

Right now, there are two options available for privacy, publishing or not publishing. YouTube is the only way to embed videos, and at this point in history this could be an unfortunate deterant for K-12 (an entirely different important topic).  It's in beta; what can I say, it is one worth trying and following.  It sounds like their team has some ideas for expanding it for educational use.

Met Ed

Again, there is amazing potential in this site and its basic concept.  Maps meet multimedia, digital storytelling and basically any content area + creativity = seize the tech integration moment.  About any concept that includes two or more locations could be used.  This particularly seems relevant for ESOL, English, Social Studies, and any project that involves mapping a person, event, or process.  I can imagine adult ESOL classes mapping their stories.  A science class could write a biography or trace the origins of a discovery. Etc.  As with any project like this planning such as storyboarding and researching, practice, editing, and adequate time are a few important elements.

Happy Meographing!

SLA Theories Come to Everyday Life in Prezi, Online Comic Strips, and Fakebooks

It’s an exciting time to be in education!  Teaching in the online and hybrid environment is fun on so many levels.  One of my favorite aspects is taking a good assignment and seeing how the available technology can push us to the next level.   It’s an ongoing progress that involves some play.

Here’s one assignment for my TCE 572 online and hybrid courses that I’m in the process of playing with.  In short, students work with Second Language Acquisition theories that many of them are encountering for the first time.  It’s a lot to take in at once, so in looking for alternative methods for them to work with the theories and express themselves, they choose from a variety of levels of technologies: Prezi (challenging), online comic strips, or Fakebook. Since technology is also an objective of the course, they get exposure to it and discuss how they may be able to use it with their language learners in the K-12 environment.  Putting this into perspective, it’s a small assignment, so I encourage them not to spend more than an hour, but I know many of them spent more than that.  (Note to students: Thanks for your dedication to your learning:-)

This was my second time of giving this assignment a whirl.  There were a few glitches, but they worked through them.  The Fakebook site seemed to work about 85% of the time and seemed to load best on Internet Explorer for me.  Although I imagine it caused some frustration, many of those who had trouble with the site did problem solving and took screenshots.  In future courses, I will suggest they screencast them.

A big thanks to all the students who may have stepped out of their comfort zones to work with this technology and content!   Here are the debuts of those who chose the option to post them here!

Prezis on SLA: (For information on Prezi Educator’s account, look here.)

Chomsky   a. http://bit.ly/K6S7yO  b. http://bit.ly/J1Mmr9  

Krashen  a. http://bit.ly/JE4yEZ, b. http://bit.ly/IMYEh3 , c. http://bit.ly/KP6cjT

Schumann   http://bit.ly/JE4QM2

Vygotsky   http://bit.ly/J4f2ci  

Derewianka http://bit.ly/JFWdhJ

COMICS on SLA:  Humor is displayed in several of these comic strips made with Make Beliefs Comix. 

Approaches to Grammar Instruction  http://bit.ly/KdYOTD

Krashen  a. http://bit.ly/KUhMtF, b. http://bit.ly/KK2ldw  c. http://bit.ly/JtShBB

Schumann  a. http://bit.ly/J1NoTR, b. http://bit.ly/JndIV0 and c.  http://bit.ly/IGFwT7

FAKEBOOKS on SLA THEORIES:  This is a spin-off of the Facebook/social media idea in popular culture.  ClassTools.Net is the site used.   Several debates between theorists play out in some of these.  Some are in a question/answer format.   One student has a conversation with one of the theorists.        

Chomsky http://bit.ly/KP94xe

Krashen  a. http://bit.ly/JjCjd6,    b. http://bit.ly/LuoEjY,  c. http://bit.ly/J4h8sO

Vygotsky a.  http://bit.ly/KP9t2I   b. http://bit.ly/JAhEjA

Assignment Reflections:  We had an interesting discussion in my hybrid course about how this type of technology allows students to bring in their everyday language. They talked about how they could use it to compare/contrast academic language.  These assignments could be done in different languages as well. We also discussed following through with oral presentations to give language learners an opportunity to speak, explain, and ask questions.

It also made me reflect on the assignment when one student first made her own Prezi for her kindergarten class using content that she was familiar with in order to become comfortable with Prezi.  She did this prior to moving onto working with the new theory content.  Her Prezi with bright pictures shows how this could be a useful tool for teaching at this level. http://bit.ly/KrlE8w 

Extension for my students to consider:

• Fakebook was working about 85 % of the time.  If this happened with any technology in your class, but you really liked the assignment, what would you do?
• How would you grade this type of assignment in your own class?  
• Here is a related site: ifaketext (See Tammy Worcester's suggested ways of using it.)

Thanks again to my students for their creations and interesting discussions.  Here’s a link to the first time I attempted this assignment.  Happy creating!

Part 1: Bringing Science and Language Alive with Dance and Art

This term, my College of Ed. class is looking at the importance of using hand on activities, realia, manipulatives, visuals, etc. to make abstract concepts and new vocabulary more tangible.  They are discussing the importance of connecting learning to real life experiences and things that their K-12 students can relate to.   Recent topics have spun around making concepts in math and science accessible to English language learners in ways that build upon language development and differentiate by level.

Below are some related videos for bringing science alive in ways that have the potential of connecting to language and the student's lives.  (Stay tuned for an upcoming post highlighting some in math.)  Watch them with your own learning process and classes in mind if you are a teacher.

Watch John Bohannon: Dance vs. Powerpoint a Modest Proposal (11  min).  This has become one of my favorite TED Talks, which is not an easy feat since I am a big fan.

Here’s one for the young learners and those of us who just like to watch colors combine.  Watch Sesame Street: OK Go-- Three Primary Colors.

Minute Physics has RSA like “Cool physics and other sweet science- all in a minute!”   Weigh a Million Dollars With Your Mind caught my attention with this question:  A million dollars is a ton of money-- but how much does it weigh?

Met Ed (Application Questions):  How can you use some of the concepts in one of these videos to bring science alive, make it accessible to a variety of learners, and build on language development?  What approaches do you take to accomplish these in your classes?

Happy lesson planning TCE students!

Mexico EFL Teachers Rock

In November, I had the opportunity and honor to participate in the Binational Migrant Education Initiative (BMEI) for the second time.  I have so many wonderful things to say about the experience that this post only begins to describe the positives of the trip.  Hands down, the top benefit of the experience was learning from a dedicated group of educators in Mexico.

Here’s the low down of the who, what, when and where of the portion I participated in.  I went to Tulancingo, Hidalgo Mexico for one week where I provided professional development in SLA theories and strategies for 20 primary and middle school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers.  We had beneficial conversations regarding migrant students who travel between the US and Mexico.  In addition, we explored many cross-cultural issues.   Without a doubt, I learned as much if not more from the teachers I worked with.  They graciously allowed me to observe their classrooms where I witnessed their creativity and devotion.  A personal highlight for me was going to a rural school where students learn Spanish, their indigenous language, and English.  Beyond the classroom experience, they were also hospitable and treated us to visits to local sites, amazing food (one can’t get enough pozole), and good company.

This Animoto shows some of my experience.  (It was created on the 30 second free account, so it only gives a taste of Animoto.)  Check out the Animoto for educator’s account.

I was also fortunate to travel to Guadalajara and visit Intel as part of this trip.  It just so happened that the world’s second largest international book fair was in progress.  In my book, there aren’t many better ways to spend an evening than perusing good old fashioned books at a book fair.

I went to Cuernavaca, Mexico the first time I participated in the BMEI.   Both experiences were enjoyable and memorable, yet different.   I highly recommend the program!

Fun with Typografit, Flickr Poet, Vizlingo, and More for Jan 31st EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival

This is my “fun” contribution to the Jan. 31st EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival hosted by David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0.  In deciding what to contribute, I came to the realization that so much is fun to me, particularly when it includes technology that spurs critical thinking and discussions that my students connect with.   Have fun with a few of the sites and ideas I enjoy, and consider taking my “challenge” at the end!

A.      9 Simple free web 2.0 sites

TYPOGRAFIT and STORIES IN FLIGHT: FLICKR POET

When Tech:  Type text into Typografit or Stories in Flight: Flickr Poet and create something like the image above.  It's fun!  Give Typografit a whirl here and Flickr Poet a try here. Create a word picture and share it.  

Met Ed:  In ESOL or language, students can type in sentences in Typografit and then discuss punctuation and spelling. One of my classes typed in short paragraphs that used our vocabulary.  They then discussed the pictures and how closely they reflected their writing.  Sometimes the pictures were quite different than they expected, and this led to some interesting discussion.

Flickr Poet suggests typing in poems or music to visualize them. I couldn’t resist and typed in a poem from one of my favorite poets, Since Feeling Is First by E.E. Cummings. I then captured it using Jing; it’s viewable here.

Wouldn’t it be fun to have students write poems, use Flickr Poet, and then use a screencast such as Jing to record music that captured the spirit of their poems or their voices reading their creations? Of course, they could just simply read or discuss the results if a low tech route is preferable.  Any of these are bound to be fun and lead to language acquisition. How can Typografit or Flickr Poet be used in your class?

VIZLINGO

When Tech:  Type text into Vizlingo and create something like the video I made below.  You have some choices of videos to include in your final product.  You can even upload your own videos.  Create and share a video here. It’s almost too much fun!

Met Ed:  This can help students visualize vocabulary as well.  It can lead to some interesting discussions about idioms and multiple meanings of words.  Here’s a great post by Nik Peachy that explains it.  Don’t miss Nik’s suggested activities for using it. How can Vizlingo be used in your class?

*A word of caution is that not all the pictures generated on these sites may be appropriate for younger learners.

See more suggested sites on a recent post called, Six Fun Educational Sites.  It highlights Wonderopolis, Shel Silverstein, One World, Many Stories, Geo Greetings, Draw a Stickman, and Balloons of Bhutan.  Explore more fun educational sites on our Ed Sites page.

B.       A few past fun posts that I have done with students’ help.  The potential of fun is unlimited when tech and creativity are at play and the products are shared. 

• Who thinks SLA theories are fun?  I know I do and didn’t think they could get much more interesting until teachers in my College of Ed course helped me create this post using fakebook, Prezi ,and online comic strips.
• How can vocabulary class be spiced up?  My adult ESOL class showed me when they pulled together a Glogster mashup highlighted in this post. 
• Again, although browsing dictionaries is a delight, my adult ESOL students show in their reviews in this post how online dictionaries can make one fall in love with words and definitions in a new manner.

A thank you to David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0 for hosting this carnival.  I highly recommend checking out his site and its many resources!   Oh, and writing this post was a blast!  

Challenge for both of us:  Either A: Use one of the sites in this post and blog about it.  Or  B.  Use one of these sites for educational purposes, drop me a link to one of your creations, and I will compile them together some fun way that I share on this blog.

Happy creating!

Six Fun Educational Sites: Wonderopolis to Balloons of Bhutan

If you want to integrate technology in a fun, low stress way, here are a few of our “recent” finds we suggest exploring.   They fit into a variety of content areas and age groups.

• Wonderopolis Have you ever wondered any of the following questions:  Do sea cows moo?  Does every state have a national park?  If you or your students have such questions, look no further than Wonderopolis for answers, discussion and springboards for investigation.

• Shel Silverstein has long been one of my favorite authors.  This is a find that could be shared with multiple age groups.  In my experience if presented in the right context, even adult ELLs appreciate his poetry and books.  Watch as Shel Silverstein reads the Giving Tree in this animation.  Go to the Shel Silverstein website for more resources and online activities.

• One World Many Stories Use this site in geography, social studies or language arts. Google Lit Trips, which I blogged about here, is included on this site. Students may also share their own Google Earth stories on the site.

• Geo Greeting  Use this as an introduction to geography or to discuss architecture.  With some creativity, it could be used in ESOL/bilingual classes at the sentence level.  Check out the one I made for you. Make your own for free in a matter of seconds.

• Draw A Stickman  Use this with beginning ELLs.  It could be an entry to storytelling and a way to work with vocabulary.  Try it on an ipad. It’s fun.

• Balloons of Bhutan This is a “happy” project.  It could lead to interesting discussion on the topic of happiness, success, etc.  Perhaps some math could be included in the statistics section.  It would be fun to do a spin-off of this project small scale with a class.  The Happiness Project would be an excellent follow up activity.

Explore more educational sites we suggest.   Do you have any success stories using any of these in your teaching?  

Happy exploring!