Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Easily track time spent on projects without time sheets! Enter your task and click to begin tracking. View the day-by-day breakdown of time spent on the activities. Generate summary, detailed, or weekly reports. Use this tool to create teams and generate team reports. Invite members by email and mark team data as public or private as needed. Use multiple machines in the day? No problem. Time is tracked across multiple devices including Android and iOs.
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tag(s): classroom management (123), DAT device agnostic tool (146), organizational skills (89), Teacher Utilities (170), time (92)

Spend some time with this real-time typing competition to increase your typing speed AND accuracy. Nitro has multiplayer typing car races where competition is against either other unknown members or with friends. At the signal to go, racers type the words they see on the screen and mistakes are highlighted in pink as you go. Correcting a mistake while racing is do-able. The faster you type, the faster your race car will speed ahead. Race as a guest to try this typing game, or sign up to keep track of your progress or to race against friends.

tag(s): game based learning (183), keyboarding (28)

Create and personalize online surveys quickly with SoGoSurvey's easy to use online platform. This survey tool will work on ANY device. Step by step wizards guide you through the process of adding images, videos, logos, and more. There are many features including steps for using the survey process and even receiving email alerts for negative responses. Choose from over 25 sample surveys to modify or start your own from scratch. Add questions in multiple-choice format or more complex matrix grid formats. Share completed surveys via email invitations or social networking links. The free account allows you to create up to 15 surveys with 75 questions and up to 200 responses. Use this tool anywhere a quick, simple poll is required and on any device! This tool works on mobile device browsers.
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tag(s): data (150), polls and surveys (48)

Discover countless activities, lesson plans, facts, and fun at Planet Pals. Lively characters such as Moonbeam and Earthman guide you through activities teaching about our planet and resources. Other links lead to Fast Facts about Earth, Wonders of the World, and much more. Explore book lists, arts and crafts, coloring pages, and much more within sections for teachers and parents. Don't miss the newest part of the site featuring Green Journals for use during holidays and seasonal celebrations.
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tag(s): conservation (93), earth (185), earth day (60), endangered species (27), environment (245), ozone (7), recycling (45), weather (161)

Let the games begin with ARIS, an open-source, web-based platform to create and play mobile games, tours, and interactive stories that will run on iOS devices. ARIS stands for Augmented Reality for Interactive Storytelling. ARIS is an authoring environment for non-programmers, and also a toolbox of useful code for people that want to make their own interactive mobile apps. You will experience a virtual world of interactive characters, items, and media using GPS and QR Codes through Google Maps reviewed here. During the games, you can trade items with other characters, drop them on the map, get them from characters, or have them taken away. Download the free ARIS app to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to play the games. After creating your player account, select from a list of ARIS experiences. Each game will start on the quest screen, and the quests will likely tell you to go somewhere physically. Open the map screen to see your position and destination to begin the game. QR codes are used to help ARIS determine your position as you complete the quests. A few games contain codes that can be used to access some of the content remotely.

Use the ARIS Editor to create your own games under the "Make Games" section of the site. A separate account is needed to play games, but you can use the same username and password if you want. You'll begin with a Google map on the main screen where you can search to zoom into a particular place in the world. Use the object pallet located on the left-side of your screen to create characters, items, and plaques. Drag and drop the items you authored onto your map to build your interactive game. When your game is ready to publish, you need to set up your iOS device to work with the server for the authoring tool. You need to change the server URL under the ARIS settings to http://arisgames.org/stagingserver1.

tag(s): augmented reality (8), design (81), maps (207), qr codes (18)

Free Map Tools provides tools for measuring, marking up, and using overlays with maps. Scroll through to find tools for discovering the radius around any point on a map, calculating the area of the enclosed point on a map, or determining the distance between any two points. Choose any of the tools to begin and follow directions to find results. This site has some clickable advertisements, so be cautious where you click.
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tag(s): area (52), map skills (57), maps (207), measurement (123)

Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics (wasteachMathematics) offers many activities, simulations, lessons, videos, and more for upper elementary through high school math instruction. Choose from the topics of Numbers, Algebra, Geometry & Measure, and Statistics & Probability. Although this is a subscription site, a large amount of free content is available. Find "Free Stuff" by topic by clicking on the button at the top left of the home page. When on a topic page, click "Free Pages" near the top right of the page.
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tag(s): equations (118), factors (29), geometric shapes (135), numbers (119), probability (97), problem solving (224), puzzles (144), statistics (120), symmetry (27)

Bring art alive for young students. Paint and color, clay, fabric and fiber, drawing, construction, and print are the six strands of visual art covered by I Am An Artist. Click on a strand to view short videos, about six minutes in length, designed to keep your attention. Each strand also has a "Look and Respond" stimulating slide show with discussion questions. The "Can You?" section under each visual strand provides steps for a hands-on explanation. I Am an Artist allows you to explore the visual arts with various materials and tools, allowing students to express their world in a visual, tangible form. The "For Teachers" section on each strand page provides child-centered lessons developed to foster creativity and design with printable activity sheets. The site also provides weblinks and interactive games on a wide range of visual arts topics. Explore the I Am an Artist Gallery for examples. Find information about how to submit your own work to the gallery. The content for I Am an Artist has been created in consultation with Irish teachers.

tag(s): colors (63), crafts (60), creativity (92), design (81), drawing (61), makerspace (43), painting (55), sculpture (19)