Hi everyone,

Thought I’d try something different today and share a few different sites in one post, with a bit of fun sprinkled in as we head into the weekend.

The first is the Fiery Ideas flash timer. This handy site lets you easily create a countdown timer, with different selections for background music. Great for tests and quizzes with one exception … it’s so neat it’s a little too distracting! The first time you use it, kids are liable to just watch IT instead of working on their activity! (The balloon grows and grows until it hits the pin and then there’s a thunderous explosion!) If I were going to use this in the classroom, I’d do it quite a few times until the novelty wore off, then it’d be just fine. :) This site came to me via my Twitter network (thank you, whoever you are!)

The next site is the Educational Jargon Generator. It’s firmly tongue-in-cheek but I could actually see people using it for writing grants, technology plans, articles and blog posts! It could also be great fun for a staff in-service “Jargon Bingo” game (there’s a similar name for that I remember from my days in the business world that I can’t repeat here because this is a G-rated blog!). Anyway, check out the site for yourself. Grab some handy jargon or, if you need some help, just press the ‘Generate Jargon’ button and see what comes out. It’s great fun! This site also came to me via my Twitter network (thank you, whoever you are!)

The final site is Grammarman, a comic by Brian Boyd, a teacher in Thailand. These delightfully produced strips are fun AND educational. You can read the comics, listen to them, or watch them as a YouTube movie. Each one contains errors to be discovered and some are pretty tricky! This is definitely an upper middle-school activity. The comics are funny and effective! Kids will proofread them voraciously! The site is loaded with lots of other free resources including links to related sites and even a blackline master template for your students to try creating their own Grammarman strip on paper.

For online comic creation, check out these sites:

• http://www.toondoo.com
• http://stripgenerator.com
• http://www.scholastic.com/captainunderpants/comic.htm
• http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/comix.php
• http://www.quicktoons.com/create
• http://www.instructables.com/group/howtoons

And yes, this site also came to me via my Twitter network (thank you, whoever you are!) I’m now diligently writing down people’s names when I bookmark the sites I find so I can properly give them credit.

That’s all for now. Enjoy the day and keep smiling!

Hope this helps,

-kj-