Check this past week’s blogs that I found helpful:
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“Use ‘Compassion’ When Planning for a sub or Being one” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
Use ‘Compassion’ When Planning for a sub or Being one is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. In it, Roxanna Elden, Rachael George, Rachel Trowbridge, Kevin Parr, Amy Sandvold, William J.
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Adobe Spark for Education Now Available for Schools – Class Tech Tips
This post contains affiliate links, I may receive compensation if you click on one of the links. I’ve had the pleasure of working with this company. All opinions are my own. It’s finally here, and I am so excited! Adobe Spark for Education is now av…
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Tech You Didn’t Know You Needed: RunPee – GeekDad
Technology can solve many problems (and yes, it causes some too). Occasionally, it provides an answer to a common pain.
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Mad Libs get Googley – Mari Venturino
Growing up one of my favorite games to play was Mad Libs, I would play with my friends during recess, or with my family on car trips. I still have a giant stack of half-used Mad Libs books in my classroom waiting for some more love.
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What Education Hashtags Should You be Using? – The Tech Edvocate
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Find & Make OneNote Templates
The more that I use it, the more I think that OneNote is a fantastic all-in-one product for note-taking, bookmarking, and general organization of your digital life. Like any robust product, OneNote has some features that you might overlook unless so…
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Can you follow this “learning norm”? – The Principal of Change
Recently, I had a conversation with Tom Murray and Katie Martin about professional learning. The one thing that bothers me is often seeing principals or superintendents that are there to “learn”, walking out of sessions when their phone rings to ta…
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Four Student-Centered Tips for Teaching with Technology
For many years, educators have used the SAMR model as a way to conceptualize technology integration. Districts and conferences alike have poured great amounts of money into training teachers to think about their planning through this lens.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Dimensions – An Academic Research Engine
When it comes to searching for research studies and other academic articles many people turn to Google Scholar. But as your friendly librarian will tell you, there are still other databases that you should try. Dimensions is one such example of that.
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The war on cheating: Real talk about the copy/paste battle | Ditch That Textbook
Cheating is a BIG problem. There are even tech tools out there to help us catch students doing it. But what motivates a student to cheat? And how do we create activities or assignments that are different enough to reduce cheating? Cheating. It happ…
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Tip of the Week: Joe Harmon and shared Social Studies PLN goodness | History Tech
I love Twitter. And I love Google. So when Dr. Joe Harmon posted his idea on Twitter for a collaborative Social Studies resource Google folder, it was the perfect day. Taking advantage of my Twitter PLN and the awesome #sschat hashtag.
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Free Technology for Teachers: 5 More Alternatives to Padlet
Almost overnight 5 Alternatives to Padlet became one of my most popular posts of the year. Many of you Tweeted and emailed me to suggest some other alternatives. In no particular order, here are some more alternatives to Padlet. Netboard.me was sugg…
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How To Use Empatico to Connect Classrooms Across the World – Class Tech Tips
What does it look like to connect classrooms across the world? Last year I shared Empatico on my blog and this year I had to chance to meet some folks behind this fantastic resource for educators.
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Empatico is built on the belief that all humans, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status or faith background share a common humanity.
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Stunning Child Literacy Stats Infographic – e-Learning Infographics
Child literacy is one of the most important predictors of future academic and professional success. But these statistics tell a story that must be heeded by parents across the education, income and class spectrums.
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EdTech Nut – Kelly Fitzgerald: Designing Your Own Virtual Field Trips
With the technology that we have now it is not impossible for students to be “standing” in Paris one minute and “scuba diving” around the Indonesia Islands the next. As educators we need to be deliberate about making our content come alive in the cl…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Google Drive is Not Going Away
In the last 18 hours three people have emailed me with a concern that Google Drive is going away. To be clear, Google Drive is not going away.
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Unsplash is one of my favorite places to find high quality pictures to use in presentations. This week Unsplash launched a new iOS app. The new Unsplash app lets you search through the entire Unsplash collection.
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Create a low-cost, printed school yearbook with Google Slides | Ditch That Textbook
Yearbooks that cost $100 or more are out of reach for many students. By using Google Slides and local printers, some schools are creating low-cost, gorgeous yearbooks instead. This post is written by Jennifer Scott, an English teacher and technology…
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Control Alt Achieve: Springtime Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings
Spring is here, and April is National Poetry Month, so what better time to have your students work on their creative writing skills with a Springtime-themed writing activity.
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Fighting the battle of copy/paste cheating | Ditch That Textbook
It’s so frustrating when students turn in activities that are copy/pasted. To solve the problem, we have to get to the root of it first. It was a simple activity. One that I thought my students would have no trouble completing.
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Preposition Builder Master
prepositions. PBM is a easy to play game where a user tries to put the correct preposition into a sentence in as fast as time possible. This game can be played online for multi-player and there are 4 different levels to choose from.
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Teaching the Value of Money with Games – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert
Rate this item: No votes yet. Please wait… We don’t give our daughters pocket money. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is a concern about their understanding of the value of money. This is especially true for our eldest daughter who…
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Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Alternatives to Padlet
For the last 24 hours the Twittersphere has been buzzing about the recent changes to Padlet. While none of the following tools have as many features as Padlet, they all provide the core element of a digital wall to which you apply digital sticky not…
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New Resources On Martin Luther King, Jr. | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
Here are new additions to to the already pretty massive The Best Resources For Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 50 Years After His Assassination: The Best of Our Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Resources is from Teaching Tolerance.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Padlet Makes a Big Change to Free Plan
Padlet is a tool that I have used and recommended for many years. In the last year the folks at Padlet have introduced a slew of great new features including built-in video and audio recording.
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Steve Hargadon: The Spring 2018 Global Education Fair (Online) – May 4th!
Looking to take your school global? Working on a classroom global-connection project? Join us live on Friday, May 4th, for the Spring 2018 Global Education Fair, a free, virtual meet and greet for teachers and school districts to connect with global…
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Quickly Create a Livestream on YouTube
YouTube used to have a built-in option for creating a video with the webcam built into your laptop. That feature went away a couple of years ago. Now it’s back in a new form. You can now create a livestream on YouTube right from your laptop just lik…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Monet Was Here – Take a Google Earth Tour of Monet’s Works
Monet Was Here is a new exhibit on Google Arts & Culture. The exhibit coincides with the opening of a new Monet exhibit at the National Gallery London. The Monet Was Here online exhibit features works that are on display at National Gallery London a…
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Perhaps I’ve been living under a rock, but I had never heard of StoryBots, which, apparently, is a very popular kids television program.
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Reset the Google Classroom Code | 50 Things Book
My goal is to never hear “Keeler, the code is not working.” Oh… it’s working. You just typed it in wrong. On the Student’s tab is the ability to reset the Google Classroom code. Click on the tiny triangle next to the code and choose “Reset.” I reset…
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Student book talks are one of the many ways that students share recommendations for each other. Recommendations of books are a natural way to grow readers and they help immensely in the classroom when peers can hear from each other rather than just…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Poetry Lesson Plans Incorporating Word Mover
April is National Poetry Month. This is a great time to remind you of Read Write Think’s Word Mover app for iOS, Android, and web browser. Word Mover from Read Write Think is a free app that helps students develop poems and short stories.
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9 No-Fail Tips For Giving Constructive Criticism At Work Infographic – e-Learning Infographics
Providing negative feedback is challenging but cultures that prioritize constructive criticism benefit both companies and employees.
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Realtime Board is an online whiteboard tool that I have been recommending for the last half-dozen years. At its basic level Realtime Board provides a blank canvas on which you can type, draw, and post pictures. You can connect elements on your board…
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Free Technology for Teachers: ReCall Study Time – An Extension to Get You Back on Task
ReCall Study Time is a Chrome extension that is designed to help you stop wasting time on social media sites and get back on task.
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The Remote for Slides Chrome extension allows you to control Google Slides remotely from another device. While I am not a big fan of constant lecture from endless words on a presentation, there are times when you need to show information, images, et…
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Grouping students into ability-based sets holds back less able pupils – UKEdChat
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The Edublogger’s Guide To Podcasting – The Edublogger
Do you like podcasts? Chances are, either you or someone you know is a fan of listening to podcasts. According to a 2018 Nielsen study, not only is the number of people listening to podcasts growing rapidly, but the level of engagement is also incre…
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Create flashcards WITH students with Flashcard Factory | Ditch That Textbook
Making flashcards with student-created images can be easy and fun! Check out the Flashcard Factory and make flashcards WITH your students. Flashcards on index cards can be useful, but creating them can be a drag. Plus, there’s the trouble of carryin…
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An Updated Stream | 50 Things Book
A few things have been moved around in Google Classroom. They are minor changes but worth noting. The most notable for the Stream is that the “Students can post and comment” has been moved from the Students tab to the Stream.
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Amusing Monday: Wacky steelhead return for new ‘Survive the Sound’ game | Watching Our Water Ways
“Survive the Sound,” an online game that features cute little fish swimming for their lives, is back for a second year with some new additions, including free participation for students and teachers in the classroom. The basics of the game remain as…
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9 Ways To Focus A Wandering Mind Infographic – e-Learning Infographics
It’s probably no surprise that the human mind has a tendency to wander. Scientific research has discovered that this trait is almost ubiquitous among humans, and most of us experience it regularly.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Two Easy Ways to Create Printable Storyboard Templates
Next week Common Craft is hosting a free webinar about their video creation process. I attended one of their webinars last summer. In that webinar Lee LeFever stressed the importance of planning and using storyboards as part of that planning process.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Quickly Create a QR Code for Almost Anything
Over the weekend I shared the news that Google is shuttering the Goo.gl service. In that post I shared a handful of alternatives to Goo.gl. This morning someone emailed me to ask about an alternative to Goo.gl for creating QR codes. My suggestion is…
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Free Technology for Teachers: By Request – 5 Task Management Tools for Students
This morning I received an email from a reader seeking suggestions for to-do list management tools her students can use to keep track of assignments and other things that they have to do during the week. Here are my suggestions for task-management t…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Fast Advanced Google Search
Google’s advanced search tools can help students find useful information that doesn’t necessarily appear at the top of search results pages. Unfortunately, students often forget about the advanced search options or don’t even know where to find them.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Three Earth Day Resources
Earth Day is coming up in a few weeks. Here are a few resources that you might consider incorporating into your Earth Day lesson plans. I’ll be sharing more resources later this week. Google offers tours in its Explore Climate Change series.
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Control Alt Achieve: Copy Comments to Google Classroom Docs and Slides
Several months ago I shared a blog post about “How to Force a Docs Copy WITH Pre-Loaded Comments to Help your Students”. The post explained a URL trick you can use to not only make a copy of a document, but to also copy any comments you have made in…
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EdTech Nut – Kelly Fitzgerald: URL Shorteners and QR Code Generators Worth Checking Out
With goo.gl shutting down on April 13, 2018 (read more here) it is time for many to find a new replacement for the one they have adored for years. While I am sad to see another Google service die, I am not overly torn up about it because I know ther…
