Week 3 Blog: Free Technology for Teachers

    During this week's blog assignment, I visited free4teachers.com which is ran by Richard Byrne. This site offers all kinds of free technology ideas that teachers can implement to enhance their curriculum. Byrne suggests practical reasons and tips for using the technology he introduces which include a wide range of multimedia tools that can be content specific or used for any subject area. One of the really neat sites I looked at was entitled "Literature-Map" which helps students and teachers find books based on the authors they like. When you type in the author of a favorite book, the site generates an author web. This provides examples of other writers whose style is similar to the author of your favorite book or books. Just messing around on the site, I searched 5 different writers, and each time the web was finished, it depicted around 20 different authors with similar styles. Writers closest in the web to your favorite author share the most similar styles. Our school utilizes the Reading Counts program, and when this time of year rolls around, it can become difficult for even the most avid readers to find novels they're interested in (especially if they've read everything by their favorite author). Using Literature-Map with my 7th and 8th grade Literature classes will help keep them focused on reading because once they find a certain style they like, the author web will provide all kinds of new texts to peruse.

 Here's a link to the post about Literature-Map: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/03/literature-map-helps-you-find-authors.html#.Vu3e-hIrLEY 

Here's the Literature-Map link: http://www.literature-map.com/

    I think a really effective blog for students could be used to post assignments for the next day or the week. By doing this, kids would get a heads-up on what to expect for the class. It would also be a great tool for students who were absent or feel the need to double check assignments. I can also see it being used as a reflection on the daily lessons where teachers could provide positive feedback to classes. If I embedded the Literature-Map link, students could use that from the blog and create a running dialogue about new writers they found and their own experiences with the author web.