IHMS Tech Tips

Storybird is a web-based, free tool that, "uses illustrations to inspire students to write stories."  Whether it's long-form books, picture books, or poetry, students can choose an illustration to prompt their writing or find one that matches what they've already got in mind. Signing up for a Storybird account is easy and free and links to your Google account.  After signing up, you will create a class and be given a code for students to use to enroll.  Creating a class also allows parents to become part of the audience if they choose to sign up as well.  They can then see their student's work.  Below is a brief tutorial on how to sign up your students as well as the parent invite: To create the first story, click on Create and choose an image to use as a writing prompt or use the search feature to find something specific.  Unfortunately, there is not a way to import images so your only options are what is housed within Storybird. I...

Word clouds are visual representations of text.  When "y ou input a large passage of text, a shape is created from the words, with the more frequent words displayed in a bigger font size, and the less frequent words shown smaller."  The Knight head posted around the school that is filled with words of varying sizes is a great example.   Below are some sites to create word clouds as well as some information about how you might use this tool in the classroom.  There are many other sites that work the same; these are just a few: 1. Wordsift Incredibly easy to use, simply copy any text you want to create a word cloud out of, paste it into the site and hit "sift."  Wordsift selects the 50 most-used words in your text and displays them. You can then change the shape of the cloud, the style, and sort the words alphabetically.  Upon completion, screenshot the cloud and embed it in a slideshow or document or post to classroom as a .jpg. 2. WordAr...

There are many uses for screencasts in the classroom both for teachers and students, and there are also several websites/programs you can use to create them. Here are a few: 1. QuickTime Player QuickTime comes loaded on all Macbooks.  Hit command+space bar and search "QuickTime" to open it.  While there is no menu that opens, you should see the "QuickTime Player" menu in the upper right of your screen.  Choose File --> New Screen Recording.  Push the record button when you are ready to start.  QuickTime will record your entire screen, so make sure you only have up and open what you want to be recorded.  Test your volume and make sure that, if you want audio included in your recording, you can hear it sufficiently. 2. Screencastify Screencastify is a free Chrome extension that has a few more features than QuickTime.  Add the extension from the website or Chrome Web Store .  This extension allows you to record your entire screen/desk...

Field trips are costly and time-consuming...unless they are virtual! There are dozens of locations that have their own virtual tours (always search for one if you are talking about specific locations), but I want to highlight Discovery Education as they house a large archive of them on a variety of subjects. You can search by subject, theme, and grade level. These virtual field trips are a great way to supplement your content or as a brain break.  Most field trips are about one hour in length and are all up-close and personal accounts that students wouldn't normally get to experience due to cost or location.  Check out the calendar to see if one of their live field trips works for you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another site for virtual field trips is Learn Around the World .  While they don't archive their shows just yet and are mostly geography-based, if you can hop on a time that w...