Take a look at digieducate!

With the close of the Thinkfinity Community as an umbrella for the Content Partners and their groups, a Symbaloo site - http://digieducate.symbaloo.com - has been created for easy access to the Content Partners' resources. Symbaloo.com is a visual bookmarking and sharing tool. The application acts as a personal learning environment. If your resource has a URL, it can be a link with the Symbaloo site. If you are an educator, I recommend creating your own Symbaloo at http://edu.symbaloo.com. Then you can create a bookmark to http://digieducate.symbaloo.com on your own Symbaloo site.

A Guidebook for Social Media in the Classroom | Edutopia

A Guidebook for Social Media in the Classroom | Edutopia



Here's a a good read from February 2014.  Includes:
12 Ways Teachers are Using Social Media in the Classroom Right Now

History and YouTube

Take a look at this blog post, How to Use YouTube in Your History Class.

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Alternatives to YouTube

There has been much talk over the past few years regarding the use of YouTube in the classroom.  It seems the use of videos that last 30 minutes or longer are not as effective as they once were.  Kids attention spans have definitely been affected by the use of electronic devices.  YouTube offers a wide variety of video and offers the ability to embed the video into Google Drive.  There are also many varied videos on current educational topics; The Flipped Classroom is one example.

SafeShare.TV - The Safest Way To Share YouTube videos

If you are working at a school that blocks YouTube, consider checking out this shared Google Doc, Eighty Alternatives to YouTube.

Everything Google

So many wonderful ways to use Google, finally folks are realizing it isn't just a verb for a search engine!

May 3, 2014

Google is offering productivity tools "outside" of Google Drive for mobile devices.  Take a look, One Month After Microsoft Office Hits iPad, Google Debuts Dedicated Productivity Apps For iOS | TechCrunch.  Google Docs and Google Sheets are available now and Google Slides is coming soon.  There is offline support so students will not have to connect to use these Apps.

Frog Days of Spring

While teaching sixth graders, my team offered students a variety of activities during the course of a week.  We tried to make as many connections as possible with the theme.  We asked students to:

• Read The Frog Prince
• Review math concepts by using the teacher made, “HOP TO IT “ sheet.  Students were asked to ‘hop’ around the Math book answering a variety of questions.
• Read The Frog Prince Continued and talk about points of view.
• Use a graphing page in Math, “RRi-BETT”, and review ordered pairs.
• Create a frog continent.  Design the continent, designate a frog civilization, and explain the customs, system of laws, and social structure of the civilization.
• Write their own fairy tale about the inhabitants of the frog continent. 

Resources:

The Frog Beyond the Fairy Tale Character: Searching Informational Texts

Frogs on a Log

Internet Quest: Frogs and Toads

The Celebrated Jumping Frog

Frog Alert!

FCIT Resources

The Florida Center for Instructional Technology, located on the University of South Florida campus in Tampa hosts a Social Studies blog.