December 12th, 2014 - Holiday Links

Happy Snowy Friday everyone!!

This week, I have a couple holiday suggestions for you, which may be useful in your classroom or as links you can send home to parents to keep students learning over the holidays.

First, NORAD Tracks Santa (http://www.noradsanta.org - also available

as an app for iPhone and iPad).  The North American Aerospace Defense Command has set up Santa’s sleigh with a radar system so they are able to track him as he travels around the world making his deliveries.  This is great fun for students to watch as he travels all the countries of the world and there are even some videos of him visiting important landmarks.  Until he begins his journey, the website lets you watch the Big Countdown, play games and learn more about Santa. 

Christmas Around The World.  (http://www.whychristmas.com/)  This website lets students explore a variety of countries from around the world and view videos and descriptions of their holiday celebrations and traditions.  There are explanations of the customs and symbols of this time.

New Year’s Traditions Around the World (http://www.fathertimes.net/traditions.htm). This website contains brief descriptions of New Year’s traditions from countries around the world as well as how to say ‘Happy New Year’ in many different languages.   What a great way to remember that the world is a much larger space that what we interact with on a day-to-day basis. 

Finally, a reminder that our very own UG2GO has a link to LEARN 360, which has a multitude of holiday videos for both educational and entertainment purposes. A simple search of holiday and the appropriate grade level returns various movies including ‘Holiday Facts And Fun’ for Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Multicultural Christmas.  Other videos include The Polar Express, The Nutcracker and The Night Before Christmas.

Have a great weekend!

                                                       Cheers,

                                                       Stace

November 1st, 2013 – Shift Your Reading Into Overdrive

I hope that everyone had a Haunting Hallowe’en!!

This week I’d like to highlight one of the new features of the UG2GO website – Overdrive Books.  This new and exciting application allows students and staff 24 hour access to e-books and audiobooks from their iPads, desktops and mobile devices.  There are over a thousand of English language e-books, 175 audiobooks and over 300 French language books, ranging from grade 2 to 12 with more being added all the time.

By visiting the UG2GO website (https://www.ugdsb.on.ca/ug2go/) and signing in using your computer log on and password, you will be taken to the UG2GO home page. Here you will find a variety of online tools and programs to use with your students.  On the left hand side, under the sub-title ‘Read’ you will see the icon for OverDrive.  When you click on the icon you will be taken to the OverDrive webpage.  In the upper right hand corner you will find a search box where you can search out books by author, title, category or keyword. Additionally you can use the dropdown menus to locate books by reading level, collection, or subject.   Once you have located a book which you would like to read, check the upper right hand corner for one of the following symbols: 

This indicates it is an e-book  , this an audio book,and when the item is grayed out like this one , it has already been checked out.

Luckily with Read&Write (see last week’s Blog post at techtidbitz.blogspot.com for more information) any text online can now become an audiobook for our students (and staff). 

Once you have located a book you would like to ‘check out’, simply click on the cover and you will be taken to the overview page which shows the book’s availability, gives a description, excerpt, ‘about the author’ and reviews.  When you click on the ‘Borrow’ button, the book will be checked out to you.  Next, you can choose to download the book by clicking on the download button and choosing the format for the download (i.e.mp3, etc.) or open the book by clicking on the cover.  When it is opened, you will be given a brief tutorial of how to turn pages, bookmark pages and look up words in the dictionary.  There will also be a menu on the right hand side of the webpage that allows you to jump to different chapters, change the size of the font, and even the background colour.   Books will remain on your ‘virtual bookshelf’ for three weeks, and then they will simply disappear, to be returned to the library. 

Books are also available on the iPad; however you will need to install the ‘OverDrive Media Console’ app from the App store.  It is a free app and can be found by using the search feature. 

Overall this new program is a great option for all of our students, whether they are struggling readers or just looking for new books and formats to read them on. 

As always, past Tech Tidbits posts can be found on the blog at  http://techtidbitz.blogspot.ca  and if you have an idea for a future blog topic, please feel free to pass it along to me.

Have a great weekend!

Stace