Students create graphic/visual reports using Create your Own Museum

Thinkport's "Create your Own Museum" is a great way for students to graphically showcase information that they might have gathered while creating a report for your class.  With the "Create your Own Museum" activity students can upload images that they gather based on some educational concept and then create a museum  that can be printed or emailed.  They can add information to each image to demonstrate their content knowledge and then share it with you as their teacher.  Below is a quick tutorial on how to use "Create your Own Museum."


1. First go to http://museum.thinkport.org/ and then click the "Make a New Museum" button.  You might consider having your students create their own account so that they can save their work.

2.  You can use the arrows to select the museum layout that you would want to use.

3.  Now click on one of the gray numbered boxes off to the right of your museum's layout.

4.  Use Thinkport's Image library or your own.  Most likely your students will want to upload images they found on the web.  Click the "Upload New Image" link found directly under the "My Idea Box" radio button.

 

 

 

 

5.  Fill out the information as needed.  The neat thing is that you can add searchable keywords, grade levels, and subject areas to your images.  Click "Browse" to find your image on the computer.  Once you have added the image click "Begin Upload."

 

 

 

6.  You should now see data about your image.  Just close this window and go back to your museum page.

 

 

 

7.  Now when you click the "My Idea Box" radio button and the "Find Image" button your new images should be visible and ready to use.

 

 

 

8.    Your students will title the image as well as give it a description.  Click the "Save and Exit" button when you are ready.  Have them create an image for all 15 museum slots.

 

 

9.  At the top of the page you should now see where you can open a gallery, save the current one, print it, or even reset the whole thing back to new.

 

 

 

Your now have a digital museum that can show case their work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Create Research Citations with the Citation Wizard

Although the Citation Wizard isn't as advances as BibMe and EasyBib, it is extremely useful to use and does an excellent job at creating a usable Citation for your next "Works Cited" or "Bibliography" page.  Please share this one with your digital students.

Advantages:

• Extremely easy bibliography maker to use.
• Does APA and MLA bibliographies
• No user registration is required.

Tutorial

1.  Go to http://21cif.com/tools/citation/

2.  Choose which style of bibliography you would like to make.  MLA is the more common in the K-12 schools.

3.  Choose from this list which type of resource you are citing.  In this example I am going to cite a Book.

4.  Fill in the information from your resource.  This is a very nice and easy form to fill out.

5.  After you click the "View Citation" button it will take you to a new page that contains your citation and you should be good to go to copy and paste it into your "Works Cited" or "Bibliography" page.

Create bibliographies for your next research paper using BibMe.

BibMe is another great resource for those seeking easy to use methods of citing your sources while doing your research papers or presentations.

What are the advantages of using BibMe?

• Will create bibliographies just by typing in the title of the book or article.
• Citations for books, magazines, web pages, journals, film, and newspapers.
• APA and MLA styles as well as some others.

Tutorial

1.  Go to www.bibme.org

2.  Once you are at the site, decide what type of citation you are going to need.  Click on the appropriate tag.  For this tutorial I will just use the "Book" tab.

3.  When I use Bibme, I just use the "Auto-fill mode."  If you want to try the "Manual entry mode" just click the link.

4.  The nice thing about Bibme is that you can just type in the title of a book and click the "Find Book" button.  It will then produce search results based upon the title.

5.  You can now scroll through the list of books with similar titles.  Click the "Select" button when you find the right book.

6.  This will then fill in the following form.  Make any changes you deem necesary.  I have to admit that I haven't found very many errors in the Auto mode.

7. Once you have verified the info click the "Add to My Bibliography" button.

8.  Your citation will now be created on the right hand side of your screen.  You can delete an uneeded citation by clicking the red "x" or you can edit it by clicking the "pencil" icon.

9.  To change the Bibliography style just click the drop down menu.

10.  Once you are ready you can click the "Download" button, or if you created your own "BibMe" account you can save the bibliography online.

11.  If you prefer you can just highlight the bibliography, right click on the highlight and then click the "Copy" option and then go to your document that contains your "Works cited" page and paste it into your document.

Bibme.org is really a simple solution and an easy site that will make your research life much more tolerable.

Create research papers using Google Doc's research pane.

I have been recently accused by coworkers as being on Google's payroll because of how much I bring it up when helping teachers with solutions to their educational technology issues.  I am not, but I think that Google should pay me!!!  Just kidding.  (Sort of.)  Let me shout out though the "I Love Google APPS!"  Google has done a great job keeping educators and their students in mind when developing ideas and products.  Today they are beginning to release the Google Doc's "Research" pane.

What can I do with this web 2.0 tool?

• Site sources directly from the research pane.
• Drag and drop pictures while using the pane.
• Browse websites from within the research pane.

This tool is awesome!!

Tutorial

 1.  Log into your Google docs.  If it hasn't changed yet, it will soon be called "Drive."

2.  In the "Tools" menu click the "Research" option.  This will then open the "Research" pane on the right hand side of your document.

3.  Type in your research key words.  This will then automatically start searching.

4.  In my example using dogs, you will notice that images will be displayed from Google images.  The search sometimes will give you some neat things such as "Also know as", "Other names," and "Classifications."

5.  If you left click on an image it will grow in size to give you a larger image. 

6.  If you left click and hold on the image you can then just drag the image over to your document.

7.  The really cool thing with this is that you will see a little number by your picture which then give it a cited source.  Now you wont be able to see the citation until you get ready to print.

8.  Here is what it would look like when getting ready to print your pages.

9.  Now if you hover your mouse over some of the research sources you will get three buttons that will appear.  The "Cite" button will create another citation for the website that you use.

10.  The "Insert link" button will insert a reader friendly link into your document.

11.  The "Preview" button will give you a snapshot of what the webpage you might visit would look like.

The is really all there is to using the Google Research Pane.  Please share this with your students or if you are a student, let your teachers know.  This will truly help those using Google Docs/Drive complete their research in much less time and frustration.