Shmoop: better than Spark Notes, and teacher friendly!

Here’s the link to Shmoop that some of us were discussing… Literature, Poetry,
Civics, Biographies, US History, Shakespeare.
And I’m also including all teachers on this email so you all
can investigate this site for your teaching or your students’ use. Or for your
love of reading!
http://www.shmoop.com/
main site

This project by Ph.D. and Masters students at Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley (and other top universities) is recognized as great quality stuff. It would be better to recommend or
endorse this site instead of the other random stuff our students use doing
a Google search for quotes, study guides, notes, summaries, etc. Those include
Spark, Cliffs, PinkMonkey, GradeSaver, BookRags, GoodReads, (I did a search!)
and, believe me, they use them all the time! And the way you quiz on reading, there is no way they will stop reading your books.

There may also be books that you don’t have time to cover in
their entirety, or they don’t have time to read, but that can still be
introduced and discussed for comparison, etc. using Shmoop in creative ways.
Here is some more shmoop content:

http://www.shmoop.com/life-of-pi/
sample literature content
http://www.shmoop.com/kite-runner/allusions.html
allusions and cultural references
http://www.shmoop.com/teachers/
for teaching resources

I’m interested in ideas for how you may use this resource in
your teaching, or for your students to push them further.
I’d like to list this under Learning Resources on My
Louisville but I’m waiting for more feedback from you.

Pick a book you’ve never read and learn all about it on
shmoop this summer!

Comments

Anatomy online

www.zygotebody.com used to be Google Body using Zygote's imagery... now Zygote owns it. Use FireFox!!! You can switch from male to female, select a body system like skeletal, cardiovascular, etc. Rotate and zoom... The left side has sliders to move from one system to another, or slide horizontally to turn on and off systems. You can have several on at once. You can search for things by name, and pin them so they stay put when switching systems. I noticed that when a pin or label has a blue + sign, clicking it expands that label to more sub-labels that you can pin. Try this with the brain stem! The program requires WebGL, which seems to not be included in IE...and doesn't work on iPad's safari browser either. But works fine in FireFox!

Infographics - "More than words can say"

We've seen man eye-catching and engrossing infographics lately. Here's a great one... http://www.studyblue.com/projects/infographic-mobile-studying-online-flashcards-on-smartphones/ and here's "40 useful infographics " that present a range of styles and topoics . http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/40-useful-and-creative-infographics/ Here's a mini course on infographics in education, designed by the NY Times: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/teaching-with-infographics-places-to-start/ And here's a great list of infographic information and samples: http://www.delicious.com/jkrauss/infographics As a teaching tool, here's a list of infographic sources: floating sheep: www.floatingsheep.com cool infographics : www.coolinfographics.com GapMinder : www.gapminder.com information is beautiful: www.informationisbeautiful.net But what about having students CREATE infographics as projects? Here's a great article! htt...

LanSchool does Polling!

All teachers should be using LanSchool to monitor and restrict what students are doing in class... there are other more appropriate times to shop for prom dresses, work on art, and look at pictures of their favorite stars. But POLLING is a really great way to engage all of your students, and for you to use formative assessment. Simply use the VOTE button on LanSchool to send everyone a question, and you see the anonymous results as they are submitted. You can even prepare questions ahead of time and load on the fly so you are not typing them in while students wait. Please ask Laura or David (or Jamie!) how to do this. Or give it a try in class, it's simple. We have other ways to poll students , like PollEverywhere .com, but they take more time to setup. However PollEverywhere can be a web link that students access 24/7 for out-of-class polling.

Tech Happenings @ LvHS

Search This Blog