Educational Technology

Saturday, July 6, 2024

Kids World Fun

Kidsworldfun.com stands out as a valuable resource for promoting literacy among young students. This free website offers an extensive range of literature options, providing over seven varieties to choose from. The diverse selection includes poems, short stories, myths and legends, magazines, e-books, children's books, and quotes specifically for kids. Within each category, users can explore a library of over 30 types of engaging stories, making it a versatile platform for reading with children.

A notable feature of the website is the "Learn" tab, offering educational content across various subjects such as English, science, math, coding, and even guidance on preparing for spelling bees. For a multisensory experience, Kidsworldfun.com includes nursery rhyme videos that promote rhythm and rhyme, enhancing language development.

Beyond literature and learning, the website also incorporates a wide variety of games and quizzes to make the educational journey enjoyable. Parents and educators will find additional resources such as arts and crafts activities, coloring pages, and even cooking activities, providing hands-on activities to children's development.

*Contribution by Julie Perez

Friday, November 17, 2023

Reading Rockets

Reading Rockets is possibly the most comprehensive reading strategies website available. It offers a multitude of research, strategies, and multimedia learning tools. It includes resources for parents, such as booklists, tips on creating a home library, tips on finding books at the right reading level for your child, and tips for reading with your child. Most importantly, it includes booklists, watch and learn videos, author study toolkits, and author interviews.

In particular, the author interviews can be useful. The video interviews are the cheapest and fastest way for students to connect with authors before they write or read. It would be excellent to show the Marylin Singer before a poetry unit and have the students analyze what she said poetry can be. Likewise, it would be fun for students to listen to Lois Lowry’s interview about “The Giver” before or after reading it, and discuss her point of view regarding how controversial it is. Students can then decide for themselves after reading it if it controversial and should be removed from a school reading list.

*Contribution by Erik Miller

Sunday, February 13, 2022

A Book And A Hug

A Book and a Hug - www.abookandahug.com allows students to find books that they enjoy and love using technology. Every book is an adventure that can take you anywhere. Barb Langridge, founder of the website, states, “The magic happens when the characteristics of the reader match the characteristics of the story.” The site uses a feature called the Reader Personality Types where a reader takes a brief assessment to find out the type of the reader that they are. After answering ten basic questions, the reader can then search the website to find books based on their reader personality type. The four reader personality types include: Team Player, Jokester, Champion or Investigator.

Being able to choose a book that you enjoy is not the only advantage of this website. There are also resources such as lesson plans that can be utilized in many ways. The lesson plans include everything from the introduction/anticipatory set all the way to lesson activities and games. There are also sections that are tied into different curricula and content areas such as character-building, mathematics, science, and language arts. The website is completely free and resourceful for all readers.

*Contribution by S. Paet

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Rewordify

Rewordify.com, http://rewordify.com/, a powerful and free literacy website, is dedicated to improving reading, learning, and teaching aimed at improving a learner’s comprehension level. This app is free, fast, and safe for all users. Both students and parents can become members and have access for better and monitored learning. Created by Neil M. Goldman, this site’s aim is to help more people understand materials read to enhance their reading skills. After ten years of teaching experience, Mr. Goldman realized the need to further build on reading skills and decided to develop an app for struggling readers who need to work very hard to understand the materials they read. He further stressed that despite the fact that dictionaries are already in place the help is minimal. As a result, he created this site to allow all learners the opportunity to attain their maximum capability. This application eliminates the difficulty to understand words and replaces them with simplified words while keeping as much of the original meaning as possible. Being a user-friendly site, it gently introduces learners to new words, teaches meaning, and empowers them to make necessary changes as they see fit for enhanced learning.

The goal of Rewordify.com is to build on the learners reading comprehension and vocabulary development by making the language easier to understand. It also allows the ability to reword sentences or paragraphs in simplified forms. This app is an important part of reading instruction and vocabulary instruction for ESL students, people with reading disabilities, people with a learning disability, or anyone who wants to improve reading skills. Benefits of this app include saving time when reading hard texts, improves comprehension and self-confidence, improves vocabulary and word retention, reduces frustration, and improves comprehension just to name a few. This site has received several positive comments from various educators which include “pretty remarkable”, “one of the most innovative websites”, “this is amazing”, “a fantastic web app”, “excellent tool to enhance comprehension”, “makes your life easier,” etc.

With the use of rewordify.com, materials will become simplified to boost understanding. When understanding is in place, learning will become productive. As educators, we ought to learn more about this app and utilize it in the learning environment, especially since it’s free of charge. Since we are ESL learners, this tool matches our capability and is more appropriate to maximize learning.

*Contribution by Y. Kanichy