[00:00:00] Shanna Martin: Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast. For each week, we talk about a free piece or two of technology that you can use in your classroom. I’m your host, Shanna Martin. I’m a middle school teacher, technology instructional coach for my district.
[00:00:31] Fuzz Martin: I’m a producer and husband, Fuzz Martin, and each week I tell a pun to quack you up.
[00:00:37] Shanna Martin: Oh, that’s cute. Okay, so you did think of one? I did. I did.
[00:00:43] Fuzz Martin: This one, I felt like it was too easy, which made it difficult because I was like, well, it can’t be too cheesy.
[00:00:48] Shanna Martin: Yeah, you were like overthinking. Yeah. The fun I was of the week.
[00:00:53] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, because this week we’re talking about.
[00:00:56] Shanna Martin: Ducks
[00:00:57] Fuzz Martin: Ds.
[00:00:58] Shanna Martin: We are talking about Ds and I was thinking, well, it’s a week full of foul because Oh yeah, it is the week of Thanksgiving.
[00:01:06] Shanna Martin: Yes.
[00:01:07] Fuzz Martin: I need to get this podcast produced so I don’t run a foul of my life.
[00:01:13] Fuzz Martin: Oh
[00:01:13] Shanna Martin: boy. And there’s not many sites out there that talk about turkeys that are not cooking, though. Instead we’re gonna talk about duck stars a little bit.
[00:01:20] Fuzz Martin: Duck season, rabbit season.
[00:01:24] Shanna Martin: And it’s a short week here in Wisconsin for many, it’s a short week because of Thanksgiving. So it’s different in different states or different locations or mm-hmm.
[00:01:37] Shanna Martin: Like Thanksgiving is different all over the us. I grew up in Illinois. Mm-hmm. Where. Thanksgiving is on Thursday. And so you get Thursday and Friday. Is that always on Thursday? Yeah. Thanksgiving is always on Thursday. It’s always, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And you always get Thursday and Friday off. Yep. But in Wisconsin it’s a little different because it’s also hunting season.
[00:01:54] Shanna Martin: Oh, yes, yes. And while it’s not like I did not grow up with lots of people hunting. Mm-hmm. Now that I teach in Wisconsin, lots of people go hunting. So as a school, like we only have school Monday, Tuesday, this week. Because people, we, everyone gets Wednesday off. Mm-hmm. Because that’s a part of hunting. Yep.
[00:02:13] Shanna Martin: Um, middle school and high school students are allowed to sign a sheet of paper and you sign off by teachers. That’s orange, right? It’s, it’s hunting orange and you sign off on it and then, um, if they’re in good standing with the school, like they can go hunting during this week ’cause it’s a thing. And I did not grow up with that.
[00:02:28] Shanna Martin: But it is very much a thing here in Wisconsin, especially our area and areas around, heading north of us as well. So it’s just kind of fun. Like this week, it’s a short week for us. It’s always been like a four day weekend, but around here it’s a five day weekend. Yeah. That’s kind of fun and something That’s what we do here in Wisconsin.
[00:02:49] Fuzz Martin: Indeed, indeed.
[00:02:51] Shanna Martin: So there you go. Anyway, so instead of talking about turkeys, we’re talking about ducks.
[00:02:55] Fuzz Martin: Yes. Enough talking Turkey.
[00:02:57] Shanna Martin: See? Oh no, you couldn’t think of one before. And now we’re all just gonna keep on coming.
[00:03:02] Fuzz Martin: Exactly.
[00:03:03] Shanna Martin: As we. Gobble about our websites. Okay. We’ve had enough. Okay, so Dexter, I talked about this site way back when.
[00:03:14] Shanna Martin: I had to look it up once before episode one 19. Okay.
[00:03:18] Fuzz Martin: So almost well over, over a hundred, 103 episodes ago,
[00:03:23] Shanna Martin: which is also crazy that we are on episode 222. Yeah. Like I always, yes. So on episode 2 22, you this, the
[00:03:29] Fuzz Martin: show barely licks one 50.
[00:03:33] Shanna Martin: You’re so fabulous. So. But Ducksters I actually use all of the time, so I was like, why have I not talked about it more?
[00:03:40] Shanna Martin: But I think it just, there’s so many cool websites to talk about that I just don’t. But what Ducksters is a quick resource. It’s helpful for younger students. I do use it with my eighth graders, but it is definitely helpful for, early to mid elementary for sure if they, when they start researching online, it’s helpful.
[00:03:57] Shanna Martin: It’s an easy way to kinda control where your students are at. Like, you can go to this site, especially if you have one of those. Cool. You know, we have like, there’s different, uh, things that go on Student s Chromebooks where you can control, like, you can only push out one site to them. Like you can push this one out.
[00:04:10] Shanna Martin: Sure. And it’ll a lot of information. It’s really easy to navigate. It’s really well organized. So those are all just like highlights of Ducksters. But if you go to Ducksters, so the site itself is, it’s really Ducksters, it’s D-U-C-K-S-T-E-R s.com. You’ll notice across top there’s cute little ducks.
[00:04:29] Fuzz Martin: Oh, you think all those ducks are in the Ducksters Union?
[00:04:33] Shanna Martin: Wow. So, you, there’s history, biography, geography science, and there’s games in there. So it’s just something to be aware of.
[00:04:40] Fuzz Martin: Oh, jokes.
[00:04:41] Shanna Martin: And there’s jokes. And so it’s just a cool, cute, little organized site for research. You can always type in your topic as well. So sometimes I’m not sure if Ducksters has it.
[00:04:54] Shanna Martin: Instead of searching through their page, I’ll have my students type in like Franklin Delano, Roosevelt Ducksters, and it comes directly to that page. Oh, sure. So if there’s something you’re searching a specific person, sometimes that’s faster to see if they have it. So pick a topic. We got US history, world history, biographies, geography, science, fun with his jokes,
[00:05:17] Fuzz Martin: Titanic.
[00:05:19] Shanna Martin: Okay.
[00:05:20] Fuzz Martin: No.
[00:05:20] Shanna Martin: No, but I, I mean, I have to, that one I’ll have to search. So Search sters, tie Titanic. There’s a little search bar between the upper, there are ads, they’re student friendly ads, but there are ads.
[00:05:31] Fuzz Martin: Yeah. This, uh, this ad here is for Wings of Fire, which our, uh, child really likes. Right.
[00:05:36] Shanna Martin: So she does very much so.
[00:05:38] Shanna Martin: What I would like to point out is when you pull up search sites, like if you search it, like I just typed it in. It gives you other sponsored stuff. You have to scroll down a little bit. So just note to your students if they go through the search bar, other websites will pull Titanic information. But if you scroll down past the little gray box, you’ll see US History, a Titanic for Kids Dexter.
[00:06:00] Shanna Martin: And then you click on it and then it gives you history of the Titanic talks about, and it’s in small, easy to digest information. That’s why I really like it for like third grade through sixth grade was probably be like. The group that you’re looking at. Mm-hmm. It’s little pieces of information, but it’s got maps in there.
[00:06:19] Shanna Martin: It has like each piece broken down. It’s got like explains not enough lifeboats. It shows primary sources, interesting facts about it. And then they do have like a little quiz and they do have a audio recording, which I appreciate of that page. Then we’ll go through and read, read that page to your student, which I like.
[00:06:38] Shanna Martin: What I do like about it, even for older students is. They’re trying to use AI for everything right now, and my kid’s like, I’m just gonna look it up on Gemini, which sometimes is fine. Like I have them search things, but when I have, I need them to pull specific information or I don’t want them. This is just easier to read.
[00:06:58] Shanna Martin: It’s not just a whole like bunch of information thrown at you at once. Mm-hmm. Which I like. It’s easy to figure out. Also, if you click on where it says across the page, you’ve got history, biography, geography, science games. They give it two different ways. If you click on the history page, you scroll down, it gives little symbols, which I appreciate.
[00:07:16] Shanna Martin: So if some of your students have trouble reading all of the information, it’ll give like Ancient Mesopotamia, the Renaissance, ancient Rome, ancient Greece, world War I Westward expansion, and it has each by category. So I’m gonna click on westward expansion. And then from there, it breaks it down even further.
[00:07:36] Shanna Martin: So California Gold Rush has its own page, transcontinental Railroad glossary of terms. It’ll give you the information and the definitions. Louisiana purchase, Mexican American War, Oregon Trail Pony Express. And so it’ll give you. Like information about events and then also gives you peoples like Daniel Boone and then Lewis and Clark and Annie Oakley.
[00:07:59] Shanna Martin: So it will go through different pieces. It also has the work cited, which I appreciate ’cause I’m trying to teach my students to always like, look where are the information comes from. Mm-hmm. So they have their work cited in their as well, which is great for research. If you are, ’cause a lot of our listeners are listeners are not from the United States, you also can go under science.
[00:08:20] Shanna Martin: And pull up biology, earth science, physics. Let’s pull up physics ’cause that seems fun. It goes, what is physics? Gives you an overview and it goes into like motion work and energy waves and sound. And then once you click on that, there’s a million other choices to pick from. The sound wave gives you the breakdown.
[00:08:38] Shanna Martin: Mechanical, longitudinal waves, pressure waves, like and again. Has low quiz at the bottom of the page. And then also there’s a recording to listen to the page. So all of these resources are there for students. It’s easy for them to understand. There’s audio that goes with it and students can work through the site fairly independently doing research without you having to worry that there’s too much information.
[00:09:05] Shanna Martin: Mm-hmm. Or they’re reading the wrong stuff ’cause it’s just very small summaries and easy to read. Research information. Sure. Which is kind of nice. I know our fourth grade. Our fourth graders, our school usually do a biography unit, and so they have world leaders, civil rights, heroes, explorers, inventors and scientists, artists, women leaders, entrepreneurs, and then they go into historical biographies.
[00:09:32] Shanna Martin: There’s a whole nother collection of ’em, and you just keep scrolling and scrolling. They have famous pianists and guitarists and violinists, they have, athletes. So there’s just all kinds of cool information. Like click on Anne Frank. You get background, you get her biography information. You get a little bit of history at the time, like what’s going on during World War ii.
[00:09:57] Shanna Martin: You get a little map to show where she’s at. Talks about our secret hideout, talks about her journal, and it gives all of these different breakdowns. Again, there’s a little quiz and there’s an audio recording, and then it talks about other women leaders, and then you find more resources at the bottom. So when you’re looking at something.
[00:10:14] Shanna Martin: Like I’ve had students before, like they’re gonna search a World War. Mm-hmm. And then it’ll give them the breakdown that leads to all the important people at the bottom, and then you can click on their pages that links to more, and it’s all the pages that link together with all of the information that you’re looking for.
[00:10:29] Shanna Martin: So it’s really a cool, easy to navigate site for students to research, especially if you want them honed in on a very specific topic and not off on 40 different pages. Mm-hmm. Like pulling different information and then like. They can’t find where they were and they can’t read it ’cause it’s a higher like reading level than their wit.
[00:10:48] Shanna Martin: Yeah. Yep. And so it’s really helpful.
[00:10:52] Fuzz Martin: Excellent.
[00:10:52] Shanna Martin: Are you reading about something?
[00:10:54] Fuzz Martin: Yeah. I was, surprised to learn how old Martha Stewart was. I thought she was much younger than she is.
[00:10:59] Shanna Martin: Okay.
[00:10:59] Fuzz Martin: How old do you think?
[00:11:01] Shanna Martin: Um, I think she’s in her seventies.
[00:11:03] Fuzz Martin: She’s 84.
[00:11:04] Shanna Martin: Wow. Yeah. Good for her.
[00:11:06] Fuzz Martin: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. In fact, I had to, I, I founded in Ducksters and then I had to verify ’cause I was like, that can’t be right.
[00:11:14] Fuzz Martin: Yeah. She looks great. And she’s hanging out with Snoop Dogg, right? Yeah.
[00:11:18] Shanna Martin: They’re probably gonna do a Thanksgiving show at some point. Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:20] Fuzz Martin: Exactly.
[00:11:21] Shanna Martin: I love it. And it also gives students opportunities to learn about people they wouldn’t necessarily know about. So like in biographies, they, the whole thing about Nelly Bly, which I think her story is.
[00:11:30] Shanna Martin: Super interesting. And it’s just something that you don’t always like dig up on, you know, she’s famous but not necessarily people talk about her all the time kind of thing. Mm-hmm. So there’s just lots of really cool resources to get kids, kids engaged in research. Especially if you’re unsure about some of those AI searches out there.
[00:11:48] Shanna Martin: There’s gonna be a lot of information from Ducksters and it will link again when you click on the work cited. It will give you links to like where everything came from, which is really helpful as well. So if you’re looking for history, biography, geographies, science, did you go into the games with the jokes?
[00:12:03] Shanna Martin: I thought for sure you’re gonna start digging around in the joke area. I did, I
[00:12:06] Fuzz Martin: did. I had, I had one. I, I’ve clicked off of it since now. So, um, it was, it was a duck related joke. Nice. I kind of had wished I had seen prior to, the pun today, but it was, what do you call a crate full of ducks. A box of Quackers.
[00:12:24] Shanna Martin: Oh,
[00:12:25] Fuzz Martin: huh. Cute.
[00:12:26] Shanna Martin: See? All right. And there’s word games in there, and I know you love a good word game, so you can play waffle with words.
[00:12:32] Fuzz Martin: Hey, Shanna. Who? Who stole the soap? The robber Ducky.
[00:12:36] Shanna Martin: Oh, cute. So there are games, there are things that you can obviously control, what your students can do and not do. But everything in there is student friendly and.
[00:12:48] Shanna Martin: A lot of it is full of learning. So check out Ducksters if you haven’t. It’s been around for quite some time. And it’s just a good go-to resource that’s easy for students to navigate on their own. It’s great to put in a choice board because you can drop it in there and, you know, they’ll find kind of what they need.
[00:13:03] Fuzz Martin: So, and, and Ducksters is free, which means they won’t bill you.
[00:13:07] Shanna Martin: Oh, so you’re just looking at a roll now. What else do you have?
[00:13:11] Fuzz Martin: Oh,
[00:13:13] Shanna Martin: no,
[00:13:13] Fuzz Martin: no. I don’t know. That’s bad.
[00:13:15] Shanna Martin: That’s where we’re done.
[00:13:15] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.
[00:13:16] Shanna Martin: Fabulous. All right, well thanks for tuning in. This is been the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast. If you ever have any questions, you can find me on Blue Sky Threads, Facebook, Instagram at Smart nwi, and if you wanna get more information on the links to the technology discussing this episode.
[00:13:31] Shanna Martin: You can visit Smartinwi.com. If you like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or two. Visit. Buy me a coffee.com/ smartinwi or visit smartinwi.com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep the show going. New episodes after the holiday and. Thanks for listening.
[00:13:48] Shanna Martin: Go educate and innovate.
[00:13:49] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, it is an opinions expressed on this podcast in the smart in WI website. Are those of the author Shanna Martin and not of her employer? Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast, please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as described, but we hope they do.
