Here are this past week’s collection of blog posts and resources:
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EdTech Nut – Kelly Fitzgerald: Google Street View App with Google Cardboard
Google expeditions is a great way for students to visit locations around the world. Unfortunately, the kits can be expensive. A great less expensive alternative is to purchase a couple Google Cardboard viewers or any other virtual reality headset an…
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Free Technology for Teachers: 5 TED-Ed Lessons About How the Food We Eat Affects Our Bodies
This morning while my daughter was napping I went down the rabbit hole of YouTube related videos. It started out as a simple search for some new cycling workout videos and ended up with this TED-Ed lesson about carbohydrates.
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Restorative Practices Starts with Empathy – Mari Venturino
I recently watched the TED Talk “Rethinking Challenging Kids-Where There’s a Skill There’s a Way” by Dr. J. Stuart Albon. His phenomenal message helps us shift they way we approach behavior challenges, by empowering students with the skills to do we…
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On the Need for Phone Free Classrooms |
I teach 7th grade and if there is one thing I have learned about 7th graders, it is that sometimes they do goofy things. Sometimes they see a hole in a chair and stick their head in it only to find that they are now stuck.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Stop Making Videos While Driving
YouTube and Facebook are filled with people publishing selfie videos that were recorded while driving. I don’t know why this type of video is popular. I do know that every time I see one I think about how dangerous that is.
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7 alternatives to Ted Talk goodness | History Tech
We all love Ted Talks. You get in. You get out. You walk away smarter. And almost always with smile on your face cause . . . well, they’re just so darn optimistic. Added bonus? The huge database of Ted Talks give you access to some excellent resourc…
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Five Assessment Myths and Misunderstandings
Walking around the classroom, clipboard in hand, I moved as quickly as possible, diligently checking for homework completion, assigning five points to those who had it done, two-and-a-half to those who had it partially done, and zero to those who di…
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Virtual Reality in the Classroom: It’s Easy to Get Started | Ask a Tech Teacher
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Share Kahoot Challenges Through Remind
This week Kahoot announced an integration with the Remind messaging service. This integration lets you send your Kahoot Challenges (games for students to play at home) to your students and their parents through the Remind messaging service.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Video – An Overview of How to Find & Keep Track of Free Audio Files
Over the last couple weeks I’ve published a series of posts featuring free sources of audio files that you can download for re-use in your multimedia projects. In the following video I provide an overview of three places to find free audio files.
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What Is Web Hosting? – Digitizd
If you want to start a website, whether it is a blog about something that interests you, a showcase for your photography or other work, or a site for your business, there are a few things you will need to get started.
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Rethinking Grades and Grade Levels | Stories From School
Most of you are likely familiar with Khan Academy. Khan Academy is an online tutorial program, offering support in Math and other subjects.
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Teaching digital citizenship with picture story books | Ditch That Textbook
Teaching digital citizenship in a meaningful way can be daunting. These picture books illustrate important concepts beautifully. This post is written by Eleni Kyritsis, a Year 3 teacher and Leader of Digital Learning and Innovation from Melbourne, A…
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8 Ways to Incorporate Technology into Your Classroom – Class Tech Tips
How can you use digital tools to enhance teaching and learning at your school? Recently I partnered with the folks at Voyager Sopris for a webinar titled “8 Ways Teachers Can Incorporate Technology in the Classroom.
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Change the Story, Change the Culture – The Principal of Change
I have been paying a lot of attention to the importance of stories in changing school culture. While many people are focused on the idea of “data” changing the culture, the reality is that practice doesn’t change because of numbers.
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New ways of fishing could better protect endangered salmon | Watching Our Water Ways
Higher standards of “sustainability” for salmon — recently developed by the Wild Fish Conservancy — are designed to put salmon on people’s tables with virtually no impact on depleted salmon runs.
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The New Scientist publishes a series of short animated videos simply explaining philosophical and scientific ideas. It’s called The Explanimator Channel and I think they’re ideal for IB Theory of Knowledge classes.
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What teens resent: Classrooms controlled by students rather than teachers
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SearchReSearch: Answer: How to find dimly remembered things?
And we remember… sometimes with help… If you’re like me, you probably constantly re-searching for things you only vaguely remember. A few years ago, my friend Jamie Teevan of Microsoft Research did a study about how often people try to re-find i…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Kahoot Now Lets You Share Games Through Remind
Last fall Kahoot released a new feature called “Challenges” that are review games your students can play at home or anytime they are outside of your classroom. That feature has proven to be popular.
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Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Online Collaborative Whiteboard Services
An online, collaborative, whiteboard can be a great tool for hosting a quick review session for your students. Your students can also use these tools to conduct online study sessions with each other.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Picture Dictionary and Custom Colors Added to Immersive Reader
Microsoft’s Immersive Reader just might be my favorite accessibility tool. This free add-in for Word, OneNote, Outlook, and Edge enables students to have articles read aloud to them at pace that meets their needs.
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Congress slapped Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in a massive new spending bill not only by rejecting many of her 2019 budget priorities but also in this unusual way: It inserted language forbidding her from making fundamental changes in her own dep…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Quizalize Announces a Game Design Competition for Students
Quizalize is one of my favorite services for creating and running review games for your students to play in your classroom or at home. Now they want students to get in on the game design fun. For the next five weeks Quizalize is accepting submission…
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Best Article Ever To Have Students Read About Cellphones! | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
Last year, I shared a summary of a recent study documenting the negative cognitive impact a cellphone has just by leaving it on your desk (see New Study On Cellphones Helpful To Teachers Everywhere).
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I’m a high school teacher in Sacramento, CA.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Scratchwork.io – A Video Whiteboard for Math Students
Scratchwork is a new online whiteboard and video conferencing tool designed with math students in mind. The platform works like many similar services as it provides you with a whiteboard on which you can draw, type, and import images to annotate.
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34+ Nonsense Apps, Web Tools and Resources to Wake Up the Brain Cells! – Teacher Reboot Camp
Students can get restless about this time of year. Summer vacation is near and so is April Fool’s Day and Easter. Many students also are testing or gearing up for graduation and this can be a stressful time for both teachers and students. Humor can …
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Teacher Tech Tools for Ditching Sticky Notes – Class Tech Tips
I don’t know about you, but I am constantly updating my organizational routine. This means I’m always on the hunt for a new tool to help me stay organized. From cloud-based calendars to new ways to think about to-do lists, I love finding tips and tr…
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The Adventure Blog: More Ships are Getting Stuck in Arctic Ice Thanks to Climate Change
A new report indicates that ships traveling in the north Atlantic run a higher risk of getting stuck in ice thanks to an increasing number of icebergs calving off from glaciers and floating south from the Arctic.
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Designing Effective eLearning Infographic – e-Learning Infographics
Organizations adopt different project management techniques, instructional design models, and visual design principles to create eLearning solutions.
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The Nerdy Teacher: Breaking Out Of Silos #EdChat
Last week, I stopped by a Spanish class and the students were throwing a party. It was the party unit I was told and the students organized a party and were learning all of the different words that go along with throwing a party.
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Thank You For Your Service, Still | The Jose Vilson
I recently wrote two pieces that I’d love for you all to read. The most prominent among them is an emotional piece from the Huffington Post about the recent mass shooting in Florida. “I don’t think I’m special. In fact, I think I’m the norm.
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Flocabulary
Flocabulary is a fun Web 2.0 site for education that I’ve mentioned a few times on my blog. This is a great site for introducing or reviewing a subject/concept.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Draw Chat – Free Video Conferencing With a Whiteboard
Draw Chat is a free service that allows anyone to create a video chat over a whiteboard, PDF, image, or map. To use Draw Chat you just have to visit the site and click “Start New Whiteboard.” Once your whiteboard launches you will have the option to…
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On paying for digital classroom tools | Ditch That Textbook
Free tools are great. Free is a teacher’s favorite price. But free isn’t always free. We should consider supporting digital tools that really help us. I’m a huge fan of free. I believe in what my teacher friend Mike Soskil says: a teacher’s favorite…
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Free Technology for Teachers: ZapSplat – Thousands of Free Sound Effects
ZapSplat is a website that offers more than 20,000 sound effects and songs that you can download and re-use for free. The licensing that ZapSplat uses is quite clear. As long as you cite ZapSplat, you can use the sound effects and music in your vide…
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Growing Readers Past our Classroom Walls |
I recently had the gift of being observed by teachers outside of our district. Our students are used to it and go about their regular ways, no puttingon a show for strangers here. I always get nervous because while I think our community it magical…
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Guide to Painting 3D Printed Parts: Priming | Formlabs
One step in the painting process is the key to turning a 3D print into a professional product. Most beginners skip it, but all experienced model builders do it. This one simple step makes painting effortless and helps create a flawless final surface…
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Relationships, Risk-Taking, and Innovation – The Principal of Change
So what was the most important factor contributing to a team’s effectiveness? It was psychological safety.
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Free Technology for Teachers: A Hands-on Science Lesson for the Spring
When I was in Kindergarten we grew marigolds in Styrofoam cups and took them home in spring (probably for Mother’s Day, but my mother will have to confirm that detail). I was reminded of that little project when I watched a new SciShow Kids video.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Find Free Music for Classroom Projects
Dig CC Mixter is a good place to find music for use in classroom projects like videos and podcasts. The music that you will find on Dig CC Mixter is Creative Commons licensed.
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Why Game-Based Learning Works for This Math Teacher — THE Journal
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Here Is How to Cite Online Sources in APA Style | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
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5 things you might not know about Kahoot! | Ditch That Textbook
Kahoot! was launched almost five years ago. You probably know the basics, but there are some powerful features teachers just don’t know yet. Here are five you might not know! (Kahoot! logo via kahoot.com)
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In June, four women plan on rowing from California to Hawaii to highlight their concerns about global warming and the degradation of the world’s oceans.
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Amusing Monday: World Water Day addresses natural purification | Watching Our Water Ways
World Water Day, coming up this Thursday, is an annual worldwide event designed to focus attention on the importance of water to all living things. Promoted by the United Nations, the 25-year-old World Water Day has always raised concerns about the …
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Free Technology for Teachers: Tips for Creating Strong Passwords – And Don’t Forget to Change Them
This afternoon I was in a little knick-knack shop when I came across a little notebook that had a cover page titled “online organizer.” Inside the notebook there were pages for writing your passwords for the websites that you use.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Take a Look at This Year’s Explore.org Wildlife Cams
Explore.org offers a fantastic collection of live nature webcam feeds. In the gallery of live webcams you will find video feeds featuring owls in their nests, ospreys in their nests, and bald eagles in nests, and video feeds featuring puffins.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Spring?! – Three Short Lessons About Seasons
It might not feel like it to many of us, but tomorrow is the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. If you’re looking for some quick video lessons about the seasons, take a look at the following three options.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How Do Trees Survive Winter
It has been a long, cold winter here in Maine. Some of the snow storms have taken their toll on the trees including the one that had my daughter’s swing in it. But many trees are making it through the winter just fine. It makes you wonder why some t…
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Flippy the Burger-Making Robot was Fired After Just One Day at Work
Flippy, the burger-flipping robot has been fired from his job, just one day after starting. Flippy was ‘hired’ by Pasadena Caliburger, with the KPI of cooking 150 burgers an hour. Unfortunately, the task proved too much for the robot who appears to …
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During Bezaire’s Curious Incident unit, each period begins with a typical 20-minute math lesson, followed by a 15-minute discussion of the previous day’s reading. For the rest of the 55-minute period, he reads a new chapter aloud.
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Is your lesson relevant? – Hack Learning
I get frustrated when I’m asked to do something irrelevant. Don’t you? And yet, many teachers dread when students ask, “When am I ever going to need to know this stuff?” It’s a rather obnoxious way of asking, “Is this lesson relevant?” Now, picture …
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Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Engagement Doesn’t Often Mean Effectiveness
A few weeks ago I asked a group of teachers to describe a lesson where technology was used effectively to impact learning. After some thinking, one of the teachers described a lesson where students were using Google Maps to take a tour of different …
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Timelinely
Timelinely is a new (beta) site for editing YouTube videos that I found out about from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. Timelinely easily lets users take a YouTube video and add comments, images, annotations and more. This is a great way to personalize a vide…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Sharalike – Quickly Create Audio Slideshows
Sharalike is a free iOS, Android, and web app that makes it easy to create audio slideshow videos. To create an audio slideshow video with Sharalike simply open the app, select pictures to import, drag and drop them into any sequence you like, and t…
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Heads Up – Student Blogging Challenge
The post next week is all about global issues but there are some interesting events happening this week that you might want to take part in ready for the activities in next week’s challenge. This is an excellent website showing what happens every da…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Draw and Tell – Great App for Simple Digital Stories
This afternoon, for the first time ever, I let my toddler use my iPad. I hadn’t planned on letting her play with it, but I had it open to play music and she grabbed it while I was changing her sister’s diaper. She enjoyed pushing the button and seei…
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Consent Between Students | Stories From School
Physical touch between sixth graders is not uncommon – they’re all over each other, and mostly in a friendly, playful way. I recently instituted a “one person per chair” rule in my classroom, as a trend towards seat-sharing started taking root.
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20 Ways to Increase Parental Involvement – Simplek12
Want to Increase Parental Involvement? Do you struggle to increase parental involvement in your classroom? Then this infographic I found on Twitter might just solve your problems.
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A Principal’s Reflections: Teachers are the Driving Force of Change
During virtually every keynote, presentation, or workshop that I give, the topic of change is very much a part of it. Leading the effort to uproot the status quo and prepare kids for anything as opposed to something is easier said than done.
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3 Conversation Shifts in Education
The focus of the original post was not moving on from the former to the latter, but building upon and moving conversations forward. Almost three years later after writing that post, I wanted to share three new conversations that I see education mov…
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Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 5 Innovative Suggestions For Supporting “Kids Today”
· 4 #EdTech Blogs to Bookmark · 9 Must Read Blogs for Innovative Teachers · 10 Digital Citizenship Bloggers to Follow · 10 Education blogs worth following – eSchool News · 11 Ed Tech Bloggers to Follow · 20 Best Blogs in Instructional Technology · 2…
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12 Ways to Upgrade Your Classroom Design | Cult of Pedagogy
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