Ed Tech Ideas

Paragons of the Week is a reoccurring post highlighting resources that I find to be worth mentioning. I come across 100s of useful tools for educators each week. Below are the top 3 “paragons” that I found this week that I feel teachers might dig. To view previous Paragons, click here.

1. JimsPages.com – US States Game

This is a great site for students to practice their US states and geography. Fantastic for IWBs the US State Game works by having students drag a state to its correct location on the map. While playing, the site keeps track of correct/incorrect placement and tracks how far away you placed the state in miles.

2. One Word

One Word reminds me of a writing warm-up activity I used to do with my third grade class. The kids would chose a word and then have 1 minute to write as much as they could on that topic. We called the activity Speed Writing. They would then chose a second word and write on that, and so on. We would do this 3 or 4 times and each time they would count their words and I would graph the results. Every time, they would write more (I would purposely give them a couple of extra seconds more each round… shhh!). My mantra during this activity was, “The more you write, the more you write.”  One Word works the same way. After clicking on Go students write as much as they can. After the minute is up, they enter their name and email and they can see what they wrote, as well as what others have written on the same topic.

3. Stanford on iTunes

Stanford University has launched its iTunes portal which allows you to download courses, faculty lectures, interviews, music and sports. Download and learn on the go!
Thanks fo @russeltarr for the find.