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Saving Wildlife and Wild Places - Bronx Zoo

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General information, zoo history, map, education program summary, animal photos and descriptions, and calendar of events. Part of The Wildlife Conservation Society.

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Tech You Can Do: 15 Days of Resources You Can Do

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Tech You Can Do: 15 Days of Resources You Can Do

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This share has been brewing in my brain for quite some time and it feels like the perfect time of year! The rush of the new school year has worn down, the weather is changing, and you have a good grasp on this year's students. Now is the time to stretch ... check out something new ... Starting with today and for the following 14 week days, I will share a resource I've come across and some potential applications for it on my companion blog. Nothing long winded - just enough to peek your interest, or for you to pass on. I will add links to each description below the graphic for your perusal. try something new ... To help, I've compiled 15 resources for you to review and see if any fit you and your students .

Please share these! It might not be the best fit for you, but it might be just what your friend needs.

Week 3:

Dec 17: Character Scrapbook by Scholastic [ LINK]
Week 2:

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This share has been brewing in my brain for quite some time and it feels like the perfect time of year! The rush of the new school year has worn down, the weather is changing, and you have a good grasp on this year's students. Now is the time to stretch ...

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Introduction

Growing snowflakes in a bottle can be a fun demonstration to show your students, or they can grow their own snowflakes working in groups of 2 to 3. This is accomplished by using household materials and dry ice. Purchase dry ice from local grocery stores or companies that supply ice. Check the Yellow Pages® using the search term "dry ice."

Materials needed (per setup)

Growing Chamber (500-mL plastic water bottle, preferably with no ridges at the bottom)

3 Large (20 oz) Foam Cups, 1-L Container, Tall Deli Container, or 4-c Measuring Pitcher

Small Sponge, 1/2" thick

Nylon Filament Fishing Line (2- to 4-lb test), 1 ft

Standard Paper Clip

Ice Pick

4 Straight Pins

Paper Towels

Dish Towel

2 to 3 lb Dry Ice

Goggles

Hammer

Insulated Gloves

Sharp Knife

Scissors

Large Spoon or Scoop

Tap Water

Transparent Tape

Background

The moist sponge in the top of the bottle creates a supersaturated atmosphere having a humidity of 200%, which is highly unstable. As warm moist air at the top diffuses downward to meet the extremely cold air (below 0° C) in the middle of the bottle, snow crystals will form on the fishing line. The purpose of the line is to provide a nucleation site for ice crystals to start their growth. Small imperfections on the line provide a surface upon which water molecules can bond and immediately freeze. This is the beginning of do-it-yourself snowflakes. Natural snowflakes form similarly as ice bonds around microscopic dust and particulates in the air.

Temperature and humidity influence the type of snow crystals that form. At the coldest location in the chamber (-15° C), fern-shaped dendrites form on the fishing line. These have symmetrical branches that are 60° from the center stem. A little higher on the line, at a temperature of -5° C, are fishbone crystals that look like fish skeletons.

When you or your students work with dry ice, wear goggles along with thick gloves. The temperature of dry ice is -78° C, which can cause severe frostbite upon contact with skin.

Teacher preparation

1. Empty a 500-mL water bottle and screw the cap on tightly.

2. Lay the bottle horizontally on a counter and use a sharp knife to make a small hole 1/2" from the bottom of the bottle.

Student preparation

1. Insert scissors into the small hole and make a circular cut all the way around the bottom of the bottle; remove the bottom.

2. Place the bottom, open end down, on a 1/2"-thick sponge. Using scissors, cut a circle in the sponge that is the same diameter as the bottle bottom.

3. Insert the sponge into the mouth of the bottom and secure it with 4 straight pins inserted from the outside.

4. Carefully make a hole in the center of the bottle bottom and sponge with an ice pick.

5. Thread a fishing line through the center hole in the bottom and sponge.

6. Tie a knot around a paper clip at the opposite end of the fishing line, away from the sponge.

7. Invert the bottle, place the fishing line with paper clip inside, and place the bottom with sponge back onto the bottle.

8. Adjust the length of the fishing line so that the paper clip swings freely inside the bottle, just above the screw cap.

9. Use a piece of transparent tape to secure the other end of the fishing line to the outside of the bottle bottom.

10. If you have three 20-oz foam cups, in the bottom of 1 foam cup cut a hole that is the diameter of the bottle cap. Place the bottle cap (still screwed onto the bottle) into that hole (Fig. 1).

11. Place the foam cup containing the inverted bottle inside 2 other foam cups nested together (Fig. 2).

12. If you don't have 20-oz foam cups, use a liter beaker, a tall deli cup (Fig. 3), or a 4-cup measuring pitcher. If the inverted bottle needs to sit higher in order for you to view crystal formation, add some dry ice to the bottom of the container first.

1. Remove the chamber top (bottle bottom with sponge).

2. Wet the sponge with tap water and replace the top.

3. Wearing safety goggles and insulated gloves, place a small block or pellets of dry ice in a towel. Fold 1 end of the towel over the dry ice. Hit the towel numerous times with a hammer to crush the dry ice into a powder.

4. Using a large spoon or scoop, add crushed dry ice around the growing chamber, up to the top of the cup.

5. For insulation, cover the top of the cup with paper towels.

6. Small ice crystals should start forming on the upper part of the fishing line in 5 to 10 minutes, with many others in about an hour. These formations are similar to real snowflakes. See Fig. 4.

7. Check the dry ice periodically and refill as needed to maintain a constant level for cooling.

8. You can take photos or record a time-lapse video of crystal formation by using a smart phone with a time-lapse app.

Extension activity

Students can take digital photos of natural snowflakes as they fall on a black background of cloth or felt. Placing this cloth or felt in a freezer prior to collection will prevent the flakes from melting as they collect on it. After downloading the photos to a computer, students can enlarge the images to view more detail. Many flakes have a hexagonal structure because water molecules arrange themselves in hexagons as they freeze. For photos of various types of snowflakes, do an Internet search for Wilson Alwyn Bentley. He pioneered snow-crystal photography in the late 19th century.

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Growing snowflakes in a bottle can be a fun demonstration to show your students, or they can grow their own snowflakes working in groups of 2 to 3. This is accomplished by using household materials and dry ice. Purchase dry ice from local grocery stores or companies that supply ice.

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20 Resources for Holiday Themed Writing, Doodling and Conversation Prompts | Tech Learning

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20 Resources for Holiday Themed Writing, Doodling and Conversation Prompts | Tech Learning

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"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Wishing you happiness." - Helen Keller

Tis the season to be jolly! Inspire students to write, doodle, sketchnote, and exchange ideas with the holiday and winter themed prompts below. Find resources for visual, video, and augmented reality writing prompts. Also, discover web tools and apps students can use to create their own digital writing prompts for their peers. Include any of these prompts in a digital click and learn calendar, such as the one at the end of this post.

Holiday Digital Prompts

Find several fantastic visual winter and holiday writing prompts on these websites- Write About, PhotoPrompts (December archive and here), and Writing Prompts.

MakeBeliefs Comix has several winter and holiday themed comic prompts, such as this one.

Story Starters has a list of holiday picture prompts followed by some lines to help students write stories or poems.

Boggles World has three creative writing prompts that explore the themes of a Santa rescue, a mystery, and bad labour relations at the North Pole.

The AR Christmas Card (iOS/Android) app animates a greeting card before students' eyes using augmented reality. This will definitely excite students and inspire them to create a story based on the action.

Quivervision (iOS/Android) app has an augmented reality Christmas Tree marker students can color and write about.

Larry Ferlazzo has several holiday videos listed here, which could be used as discussion or writing prompts.

Download a free Tic Tac Toe Christmas and Hanukkah Writing Prompts board here. Students choose 3 of the prompts to complete.

Inspire students to doodle with the December Doodle and Lettering Challenge.

Create Prompts

Buncee (Web/iOS) has a library of winter, holiday, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah stickers, templates, backgrounds, images, and clip arts for creating prompts.

Canva (Web/iOS) also has a library of holiday themed images and backgrounds to create beautiful prompts.

Adobe Spark (Web/iOS) has several holiday and winter themed backgrounds and images students can use to create video or visual prompts.

Students can create their own augmented reality prompts with Layar, Aurasma, and Blippar.

Recite has some holiday themed images for students to easily create a visual prompt.

With PicLits, students choose an image then drag and drop words onto the image to create a writing prompt.

With Image Chef (Web/iOS/Android) students can create visual poetry, word clouds, memes, and quote pics.

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is an education consultant, technology trainer, and author. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

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20 Resources for Holiday Themed Writing, Doodling and Conversation Prompts

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The Resource for Education Technology Leaders focusing on K-12 educators. Site contains a Software Reviews Database, articles from Technology & Learning Magazine, articles from Educators in Educators' eZine, Event and Contest listings, Reader suggested Web sites, and weekly news updates on education technology leaders."

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A mini make-at-home calendar with 24 days of smiles. On the first day of Christmas my matchbox gave to meeee...

Have a giggle and outbranch the competition with our homemade Christmas tree ornament.

A simple recipe that turns mealtime into a cosmic activity that your kids will love.

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Turning a balloon and toilet roll into Santa is the jolliest fun you'll have all weekend.

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A mini make-at-home calendar with 24 days of smiles. On the first day of Christmas my matchbox gave to meeee... Have a giggle and outbranch the competition with our homemade Christmas tree ornament. A simple recipe that turns mealtime into a cosmic activity that your kids will love.

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Countdown Calendar - eNewsletter for Tech Integration

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Countdown Calendar - eNewsletter for Tech Integration

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Be sure to bookmark this page and visit each day leading up to our winter vacation to reveal another Google Tool that you can use within your learning space. (All of the pictures published below...

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Create Your Own Google Slides Holiday Cards - EdTechTeam

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Create Your Own Google Slides Holiday Cards - EdTechTeam

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Google Slides is an online presentation app that lets you create and format presentations and work with other people. Due to its page setting options , you can use for more than just presentations.

In the spirit of the holidays, we decided to use Slides to design some fun holiday cards that are customizable so that you can create your own as well.
Step 1: Watch the Video Using Google Slides to Create Holiday Cards
In this video you will learn how to:

-change the order of objects on a slide

-align your text and graphics

-mask your photos with shapes

-nudge graphics into place

-adjust the contrast, transparency, and brightness in an image

-size images without distorting the image

-drag and drop images from Google Photos and into Google Slides

-group text or objects

-add borders and color to an image
Step 2: Make a Copy of the Template
-flip your photo horizontally
EdTechTeam Google Slides Holiday Cards Step 3: Design Your Card
Click here to make a copy of this Slide deck:
Step 4: Download Your Holiday Card
Customize your holiday cards with your pictures and messages

Select the slide with your card > File > Download As > PNG Image (.png, current slide)
Downloading Images per Google Slide to Share to Social Media Step 5: Share
Learn how to download and animate multiple cards into one in this video:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/edtechteam
Resources How to Change the Dimension of your Google Slides Always Up-To-Date Social Media Image Sizes Cheat Sheet
Instagram: www.instagram.com/edtechteam

Monica Martinez
Regional Director
Latina America & Southern U.S.
@mimg1225

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Create Your Own Google Slides Holiday Cards - EdTechTeam

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Google Slides is an online presentation app that lets you create and format presentations and work with other people. Due to its page setting options, you can use Slides for more than just presentations. In the spirit of the holidays, we decided to use Slides to design some fun holiday cards that are customizable so ...

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How to Make Your Own Holiday Snow Globes - Evite

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How to Make Your Own Holiday Snow Globes - Evite

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If you're like a lot of kids, you probably collected snow globes when you were younger. Well, now you can make your own at home using materials that you probably already have lying around the house! It's an easy indoor activity that you can do with kids when the weather outside is getting colder, and it only takes five steps or fewer. You can even invite friends over for a crafternoon so they can make their own snow globes, then make some hot cocoa and put on a holiday movie. Watch the video below to learn how to make your own.
Materials: Directions:
Step 1: Use a hot glue gun to adhere figurines to lid of mason jar and let dry.

Step 2: Fill mason jar with water.

Step 3: Add 1-2 drops of glycerin if desired (the glycerin helps the glitter disperse).

Step 4: Sprinkle glitter in mason jar.

Step 5: Screw lid onto mason jar and shake.

Start planning your next holiday party by sending the free Evite invitation below.

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How to Make Your Own Holiday Snow Globes - Evite

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If you're like a lot of kids, you probably collected snow globes when you were younger. Well, now you can make your own at home using materials that you probably already have lying around the house! It's an easy indoor activity that you can do with kids when the weather outside is getting colder, and it only takes five steps or fewer.

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30 Apps to Spread and Enjoy Some Holiday Cheer | Tech Learning

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30 Apps to Spread and Enjoy Some Holiday Cheer | Tech Learning

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"The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others' burdens, easing others' loads and supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of the holidays." - W.C. Jones

December is here! If your students are like mine, they are already in holiday mode. To motivate them tie their learning into activities where they get to send some holiday cheer or celebrate the holidays. Below, find free web tools/apps to spread cheer and create holiday gifts. You can tie reading, writing, and digital skills to any of these activities. Find ideas for activities in my slide presentation, Mobile Holiday Apps for Spreading Cheer.

Apps for Creating Gifts

Create digital cookbooks, journals, or digital stories as gifts with Book Creator (iOS/Android), Buncee (Web/iOS), and Storykit (iOS). Find more ideas and resources here.

Create a holiday photo video slideshows using Magisto (Android/iOS), iMovie, Flipagram (Android/iOS) or Google Photos (Web/Android/iOS).

With the YakItforKids (iOS) and Chatterpix for Kids (iOS) apps your students will have a blast adding mouths to their photos or drawings and making them talk! Decorate with holiday stickers, frames, and effects.

With Puppet Pals HD 2 (iOS) and Toontastic (iOS/Android) students can create holiday themed plays with characters they draw or choose.

Students can use Fotobabble (Web/iOS) to share photos with their own audio narration. They can spruce up these greetings with holiday themed backgrounds.

With Canva (Web/iOS) or Pic-Collage to create holiday photo greetings, collages, or a digital magazine cover of memories. Choose from their library of holiday stickers, backgrounds, templates and images.

Use Red Stamp (Web/Android/iOS) or Ink Cards (Web/Android/iOS) to send free e-greeting cards with various free holiday templates and messages to accompany your own photos.

Holiday Fun Apps!

Surprise children with a video call from Santa with the Video Call Santa (iOS/Android) and Santa Video Call Tracker (iOS) apps. Tell Me Santa Claus (iOS/Android) also lets children record a video of their wishlist and they can hear a story from Santa.

Want your children to receive a phone call from Santa in Spanish? Try the Videollamada a Santa (iOS/Android) app.

Toddlers will enjoy dressing up colorful characters for the holidays with Sago Mini Babies Dress Up (iOS/Android)! Tie this into learning vocabulary about parts of the body, clothing, or the weather.

Very young children will also enjoy grooming trees and Santa's beard with the Toca Hair Salon iOS app. Toca is known for diversity and inclusivity.

Students will enjoy dressing themselves up and their peers with the Elf Yourself (Web/iOS) video app and Dance Elf Booth (iOS/Android) image editor app.

Get students to learn famous Christmas Carols with the Sing Along Christmas Carols karaoke style iOS app.

Need help convincing children there is a Santa? The Catch Santa (iOS/Android) app will superimpose Santa Claus into any picture. You might use this app to create a story about Santa where you track his whereabouts in different rooms or at different landmarks around the world.

Love augmented reality?

Decorate the classroom using the Deck Your Halls AR (iOS) app.

The AR Christmas Card app (iOS/Android) app animates a greeting card. This beautiful animation could be used as a writing prompt.

Students will enjoy writing to Santa Claus who responds using the Letters to Santa (iOS) app.

The Christmas Fun HD (iOS) app has interactive sing alongs, dress up games, painting activities, peek-a-boo games, and interactive stories.

Jingle All the Way (iOS) is an interactive book with games, puzzles, and more for children.

Children learn how to play holiday songs on a virtual keyboard using the Piano Mi (iOS).

Challenge: Get students to celebrate the holidays with one of these fun apps.

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is an education consultant, technology trainer, and author. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

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30 Apps to Spread and Enjoy Some Holiday Cheer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Resource for Education Technology Leaders focusing on K-12 educators. Site contains a Software Reviews Database, articles from Technology & Learning Magazine, articles from Educators in Educators' eZine, Event and Contest listings, Reader suggested Web sites, and weekly news updates on education technology leaders."