Tag: Triptico

3-12, Education, Interactive White Board, Student Products, Teaching Tools, Websites

Think Link

Terri Eichholz

Think Link is a Beta site brought to us by David Riley, creator of one of my favorite teacher resources of all time, Triptico.  If you have not read my review about Triptico, you can click here – or just go directly to his site to download this magnificent educator toolbox.

Think Link is a neat way to integrate technology into the activity that I wrote about yesterday – Hexagonal Learning.  On the Think Link site, you can create your own board of hexagons, add notes to each one, and manipulate them.  You can save your boards to be used whenever you like on that computer.  This is an alternative to cutting out a lot of hexagons to distribute to your students.  Think Link could be used for your students to generate hexagon words as a class about a particular topic.  The board could be saved, and then different student groups could create their own relationships with the words to show their understanding of the topic.

I highly recommend trying a Think Link activity with your students this year.

Education, K-12, Teaching Tools, Web 2.0

Web 2.0 Pins

Terri Eichholz

I found the link for this collection of Web 2.0 pins for educators on Teach-Lou-Ology.  I think that there are several of these floating around on Pinterest, but this one caught my eye with the particular sites that are included.  Some of them have been reviewed on this blog, such as Triptico and Storybird.  Others are ones that I use regularly (Wordle, Google Docs), but I have not included on this site.  And then, there are others I would like to investigate further – such as Animaps.  The summaries of each site pinned make this page very helpful.

Education, Teaching Tools

My Favorite Teacher Tools

Terri Eichholz
Many schools are out for the next two weeks, which gives teachers the opportunity to catch up on their personal lives.  Sometimes, though, teachers like to use this time for planning.  As the number of subscribers to this blog climbs, I am aware that many of you may not have had time to read all of the posts, or might have missed some of the earlier suggestions.  So, I thought this might be a good time of year to summarize and emphasize some of the most valuable resources I have reviewed so far.  Today, I would like to offer my Favorite Teacher Tools:
#3 – Thinkfinity:  This site is a great place to look for quality, standards-based lessons in a variety of subjects.  Many of the lessons are linked to free online printables or interactives that will enhance your own prepared lessons.
#2 – Extend-A-Menu:  This tool is invaluable for any teacher who would like to differentiate by using menus.  By selecting from his or her own online menus, the teacher can create a printable task sheet for any number of topics.  (If you do not want to purchase it, you can use the demo option at the top.)
#1 – Triptico:  Download this tool to your desktop, and you will be amazed at the ease in which you can incorporate it into your daily routines.  Once you load a class list, it will select teams for you, randomly choose names, create word magnets (with 42 different backgrounds to choose from; it’s great for an interactive board!) and many other really neat tasks.  It is very user-friendly, and the students love it.
Here are links to my posts on each of the above in case you would like to read more about them (the above links will take you directly to the sites for each resource):  Thinkfinity, Extend-A-Menu, Triptico
K-5, Motivation, Teaching Tools

Triptico

Terri Eichholz

Triptico is one of the most user-friendly teacher tools I’ve come across in a long time.  Designed by a teacher named David Riley to use with interactive whiteboards, this is free software that you download to your computer. Don’t despair if you don’t have an IWB, however.  If you can project your computer to a screen in the classroom, the activities (over 20, and the teacher plans to add more) can still be utilized.  Included in the package are random name generators, timers, text and photo spinners, word magnets with graphic organizers, and several games.  One intriguing game is “What’s in the Box?”, and eerily reminds me of the game show “Deal or No Deal”.  The interface is very simple, and the download takes less than a minute. I guarantee you will capture your students’attention – or your money back!