As attendees of one of BrainPop’s presentations were discussing some of the cool ways that they were using BP in their classrooms, I had a chance to pick up an awesome tip. Monica Nahas, an Instructional Technology Specialist, mentioned that Readwritethink.org has a tool for creating your own comics, and it could be used to create your own BrainPop styled comics.
Taking this tip, I decided to check it out. The tool is simple, and probably best for younger students, but I could imagine that even …

Frequently, I find myself going to Google to solve this or that. – maybe too frequently. Needless to say, I’ve got it down to an art. The question is whether or not spending a few minutes here or there to answer questions like “What was the name of GI Joe’s arch nemesis” and “Who played the dulcimer in Aerosmith’s Pump album” is worth it. You bet it is. Not only has it gained me the answers to some of life’s most troubling questions, but it has also given me a …

I realized after posting the poll about Twitter that it may be unknown to some exactly what Twitter is. Describing Twitter isn’t so much hard, as it is difficult to explain without leaving people wondering why anyone would want to use it… which is a question most people ask, and only try out of curiosity. The fact is, there isn’t one way to use twitter.
Let me give you a brief walk through.
I signed up for twitter, and now I have an empty page with a little box at the top …

A couple of weeks ago I received an email telling me about a site that offered up video content from the likes of the University of California that combined trusted video content with a sort of social media twist. And to be honest it has taken me quite some time to really dig into their site to really see what they had to offer. I liked it!
The videos that Veezyon offers are indeed trustworthy as they come straight from content partners that are notorious for being solid research institutions, which …

Flash animations can be found all over the web, and several can be very useful in the classroom-especially with interactive white boards. But what would happen if the site that offers it were to go offline, get blocked, or delete the video?? For these moments, it would be great to have a copy of it saved locally on your own computer, and with a little elbow grease it can happen. Here’s how.

Learning to use a computer efficiently can be a tough task if you weren’t born with one already at your finger tips. Solutions to simple problems typically aren’t obvious, and unless you have spent a great deal of time with one you won’t inherently know whether something needs to be clicked, double clicked, downloaded, uploaded, or just plain opened. J. McNulty understands your frustration and has developed a solution to alleviate these struggles over at  his site, 180techtips.com.

We’ve talked before about the incredible movies that Brainpop has to offer for a very wide selection of topics and content areas. But we have failed to mention one feature that places Brainpop above being just a place for good educational movies. Other than providing quizzes and the soon-to-be-added lesson plans, the site offers a way to view a list of all of their movies aligned to the State Standards for all fifty states. This feature takes all of the guess work out of selecting when and what to …

If you’re like me, you probably have an assortment of Education related blogs and sites loaded into your feed reader or bookmarks that you like to check on a frequent basis, but one way to add to your list of resources is to use the browser add-on, StumbleUpon.
If you are unfamiliar with StumbleUpon, it’s a free service that integrates into your browser that allows you to check out sites based on categories that others have found useful. Hitting the Stumble button in your browser takes you immediately to the next …

We’ve talked about BrainPop here before, and how they have some incredible content for K-12 through their animated lessons, but now they would like to extend an opportunity to the readers here at TTB. So, from now until the end of May if you sign up for their free trial to you can enter in the access code “TEACHERTECH” you will receive an all-access pass to explore all of their content for 30 days. Thanks BrainPop!

If you are unfamiliar with HotChalk, it’s a free, web based course management solution that allows teachers to create dynamic lessons and content in a online environment. Beyond just allowing teachers to create their own lessons, HotChalk also lets you share lessons in their Swap Shop. Meaning that teachers can access many quality lessons created by educators in the same field of study.  Some of the other features available on HotChalk include;
Creating Lesson Plans
Making Web Based Quizes
Management of quizes and assigments through their built in grade book
Easily communicate with students …