Post your favourite website that you discovered during the Academy and share how you would or have used it in your classroom.  Please include the full URL so that others can find the site.  Comments on each other's site selections is encouraged.

The Kids love 2 learn portal is itself the best thing to me! (www.2learn.ca/kids) I love that I can suggest my kids go there on their own time to find activities that are at their level in the area they need improvement!

If I had to pick one destination - though I have not gone through all of them by any means - I like the Ancient Greek history at bbc.co.uk (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/ancient_greeks/)

Okay. I know this isn't related to the literacy stuff that we covered but I wanted to share it here since it is my new favourite site. The site is new to me. I think many in other districts may have experience with it. If you have used it could you share your examples, please. The site is called Selfchecker.com . It is a  student self-assessment tool that allows you to create an assessment that has built in supports. Here is my really simple quiz. Before you start make sure that you try to get the questions wrong so that you can see how I have built in the supports (weak though they may be). Tell me what you think...

Access link http://www2.selfchecker.com/checker?id=80&pf=PeN3

Here is my favourite from the session.

http://myths.e2bn.org/story_creator/

I really liked how students could change up so many parts of the picture. I thought that this would no only help them to modify, plan, and personalize their story but also give them a greater buy-in factor to the story building process.

Plus there was a house that was half-chicken half-house! You can't beat that!

 I totally agree and we also use the Enjoy pages in our school.  There is something there for all grades and it is quick and safe for the students to use.

I love Voice Thread and plan on using it by having the students in groups of 4/5 all read a book then present their information and thoughts as we go through it.   Other students can then comment on the work and give their opinions.

I will be a great way to start in January.

I wasn't in the session where they presented Animoto but I have used it. One of the draw backs has been that it is hard to get enough registrations for your students. Aninmoto has an educators side http://animoto.com/education where you can apply for a discount code that gives you free videos that aren't limited to 30 seconds. Once you have the code you can use your Gmail account to sign up multiple Animoto accounts.

Because you can hack/edit your gmail account you can add sub-emails to it. Yeah, I'm not sure if that is the best way to describe it since you're not really hacking anything. Here is what you do...

1. Get your Animoto Educator's code by giving them your info at http://animoto.com/education.

2. Wait to get the code. It may take a few days (5 days max)

3. a. Once you have the code use it to sign up with your existing gmail account like this..

Because you can add sub-emails by placing a + after your existing login name you are able to create multiple logins.

For example my gmail login is mraball (my gmail is mraball@gmail.com). I can use the gmail addresses mraball+1@gmail.com, mraball+2@gmail.com and so on. All of these will send directly to my gmail inbox and will look like a normal email to me but they will generate a different logins in Animoto that I can give to my students. The finished movies will also be emailed directly to me when they are done so that I have more control over when and who watches them.

I hope that makes sense. I think that Animoto is a great tool and the only thing that has stopped classroom use is the long registration process which is now no more.

Hope that helps.

I plan on using the 2learn Olympics links to help my students in January with a Winter Olympic sport research project.  I like that there is one place I can go to search for info and from there direct kids.

If you find a website related to the Winter Olympics that we don't have in our special edition, let us know and we will add it to our database. Thanks for your comment.

VoiceThread is certainly a wonderful tool, but I might caution you to check out your district's filtering policy on VoiceThread before you begin. It might be in the "Image Servers & Image Search Engines" category and be blocked. Filtering policies vary with each district and some of the tools being recommended are not available to students.

I have used Animoto to create short montages to show the school, retrospectives at the end of the year and love it. I have never tried it with my students, though.

Also, I have personally used Prezi to create presentations to share with staff and students. It's really cool. Again, I have never used it with students. I think the kids would get it, though.

I tried Self Checker and found it really easy to use. This tool has many possibilities for teachers, especially in a 1to1 environment. I did the quiz and found the feedback section very useful. Thanks for this tip Aaron.

What do you think of the new look of the Kids Love 2Learn.ca page? The Backpack is always open and there is a new Search tool that will help you find resources more quickly.

My class had a blog that is hosted by www.21classes.com

There are a few things that I really like about 21Classes. One is that for $9 US per month your portal is completely private. The only people who can see any content on your site are those with user accounts you create (up to 100). In addition, each user (i.e. student) has their own blog, so we have a class blog that I can use to share information with my students and their parents (who log in as their child) AND each student has a blog that is their own. The students can post their work on their own blog and, if you allow them, they can customize their blog settings and appearance. As the teacher you can basically allow/limit virtually any capabilities you want for your students (eg. commenting, voting, etc.)

 I've long been curious about 21classes.com.  It's great to know it actually works as it says!

Question: Does the 21Classes blog posting allow for pasting <embed> code? A class blog seems like a great place for students to post work done on other Web 2.0 sites such as Glogster EDU (edu.glogster.com), Prezi, or Animoto.  Does it allow you to upload media as well?

Thanks for sharing your experiences on 21Classes!

Mr. Maas,

21classes does have the embed feature, but I have not tried it. Other HTML code works, so I don't see why it wouldn't.