Great interactive typing lessons for students.

Have you ever wished that you had a way to practice typing so that you could become a more efficient and capable keyboard jockey? Typing at the “speed of thought,” perhaps? Enter Keybr.com — the flash–based typing instructor you’ve been waiting for!

Keybr.com is very straightforward. You can choose from three basic lessons that start with a certain number of keys on the keyboard, and then, as you progress through the lessons, more keys are introduced to the mix to make things a little tougher. As an added bonus, our software keeps track of all your mistakes and your words–per–minute (wpm) — and even creates graphs of your day–by–day performance.

But, things get even better! Once you have determined that the lessons you have completed have reached their maximum result, get ready to play with custom mode, where you can edit and personalize the text that you wish to practice! Very bare–bones, but oh, so functional.

Finally, to up the entertainment level of your typing lessons, you can import content from a web site or blog into Keybr.com to type it out.

High-tech vs. no-tech: D.C. area schools take opposite approaches to education

By Cecilia Kang

The sixth-graders are lighting up the room with their MacBook Airs, flipped open to Google, Wikipedia and YouTube for a physics assignment. Their classroom is decked out with touch-screen whiteboards, tablets and powerful WiFi connections able to handle a school full of children online at once.

“Cool!” Nina Jenkins says, opening links to Web sites that take her deeper into the study of acoustics. She’s making a small drum by hand and will record herself playing it on iMovie. At the end, she’ll write her reflections in 140 characters or less — in a tweet.

In the same week, about a dozen miles away, another set of sixth-graders is on a similar lesson. Only they are in a spare, birch-hued classroom that looks like a throwback to the Norman Rockwell era. There are no computers here. The only tools being used are spoons and forks tied together with purple yarn. The students listen to the clang of utensils change pitch as the yarn is shortened and lengthened. Nina Auslander-Padgham’s eyes widen with the discovery, and she rushes back to her wooden desk to write her reflections on the blank pages of a red hardcover journal.

At these two Washington area private schools, separated only by a 20-minute drive, the two Ninas may as well exist on different planets. They are growing up on opposite sides of a gaping educational divide formed not by the usual school fissures of economics and race. Theirs is a division wrought by technology.

The Flint Hill School in Oakton is ultra-wired. Apple hails it as a model for its embrace of devices. Teachers here believe technology immersion will make their students more excited about learning and better prepared for college and careers. So they’ve given each child a device — starting with an iPad for every preschooler and MacBook Airs starting in the fifth grade.

Read entire article here.

Get Set for London 2012: Teaching Ideas

Get Set is the official London 2012 Olympics Education site.  It is very comprehensive and contains a range of activities and resources to get students involved and enthused about the upcoming London 2012 Games.

You can search for ideas by year level or teaching area.  A great starting point for London 2012 in the classroom.

Implications for Teaching

We really should try to get our kids enthused about the Olympics as it really embodies the sense of trying to achieve a personal best, dealing with success and failure and finally it encourageses health and wellbeing.

Spellingcity.com - Interactive Games and tasks around your own words.

I am sure that we have all used a number of web sites that offer some really good spelling games and activities for students to complete online or print out. 

Whilst they are a great resorurce, it is a bit limting in the manner that your kids cannot actually enter their own spelling words and complete activities based around them

SpellingCity overcomes this problem by allowing students to enter their words either individually, or in bulk and it then creates games and activities based around them.

Implications for teaching.

I feel that SpellingCity is a great task for kids to do as part of their homework or literacy rotations after they have been through their writing books with a teacher and located 10 or so words that they need to work on.

We would love to hear of any other great spelling games you are aware of.

We're Sorry

First off, I would like to thank all of the loyal Edgalaxy readers out there who have been emailing us over the last couple of weeks identifying problems with our RSS and Twitter Feed which just stopped working for no real reason.

After much exploration and testing we have located and fixed the problem and hope all our teaching ideas can rejoin our twitter and RSS subscribers without further faults.

... So sorry...Won't happen again!

Teaching Poetry: Rhythm, Rhyme & Alliteration

I came across this great lesson plan about teaching rhythm, rhyme and alteration in poetry.  It does a great job at pointing out the process of creating rhyming patterns and sounds through common poems we all know.

It is suitable for students from years 3 - 9.  Enjoy.

Rhythm, rhyme and alliteration

View more presentations from Kevin Cummins.

2012 Horizon report: Educational Technologies over the next five years.

Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years. The areas of emerging technology cited for 2012 are:

Time to adoption: One Year or Less

• Mobile Apps
• Tablet Computing

Time to adoption: Two to Three Years

• Game-based Learning
• Learning Analytics

Time to adoption: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based Computing
• Internet of Things

Download the full 2012 Hroizon report here.

Lesson Plan Search Engine

We have recently added a number of new education sites to the Ultimate Search Engine for teachers.  

It has a database over 100 non commercial teaching websites full of great teaching ideas and lesson plans.

Be sure to check it out here.