Create Picture Books, Infographics, and SCIENCE! This Month’s Top PD Resources

posted by: Melissa | March 08, 2013, 06:21 PM

Looking for something new to spice up your lessons? Check out our top resources of the month!

Storybird – This is such a great tool. Available in both free and pay versions, this website allows you and your students to create picture books with relative ease. Have younger students? They'll love selecting art from all the available options and watching their story come alive. Teach an art class? Your students can upload and share their own art. Seriously, the true potential of this tool is endless.

Piktochart – this relatively affordable web 2.0 tool allows students to create their own infographics. It's easy to use, and students will be drawn by this popular means of sharing information.

Live Binders – Live Binders is really hitting its stride this year. This online tool is created with teachers in mind and is a way to organize and share online materials in a manner similar to what you would do offline. For me, this means no more printing out webpages to stuff into a unit binder!

Smithsonian Quests – This new site, introduced by the Smithsonian this past month, allows students to go on webquests and collect badges. The quests are created with different grade levels in mind, and students will appreciate the competitive nature of the badge system.

SmartScope iGo – At first, a hand-held microscope seems nice, but nothing that you haven't seen before, then you look more closely at iGo and you realize that it syncs up wirelessly with a wide variety of mobile devices, including Android and iPad tablets.

Universe Sandbox – This physics toy is seriously one of the neatest things I've seen. Students can create a universe or play around with gravity. If I didn't have work calling me, I would fiddle and play with this all day! This program truly does make science come alive. Part of Steam's Teach With Portals program, Universe Sandbox is free for schools.

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