Here are some more amazing blog posts and resources from this past week:
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Why Is Professional Development So Bad: How Do We Fix It? is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio Show.
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Google’s Tour Creator
I’m a little late to the party but recently Google just announced their new Tour Creator for creating virtual field trips. This is done right from the browser and interacts w/ Google Maps while users select points anywhere in the world and get a 360…
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Peergrade
Peergrade is an all-in-one peer assessment platform. The way this works is an educator creates an assignment and rubric while students upload their work to Peergrade. Peergrade then automatically and distributes that work to other students.
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Answerables
Answerables is a wonderful new innovative site/game that is perfect for Game Based Learning (or more accurate Game Based Learning meets Learning Management System). It reminds me of Second Life but geared more toward kids w/ their fantasy/SciFi envi…
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Why Celebrating Our Students Is Worth It – Reading By Example
I know I am not alone in this, but I absolutely love the idea of intentionally spending time on building community in our classrooms. When we think about engagement, all too often our minds go to students being engaged in a particular subject or act…
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Listening to Themselves: Podcasting Takes Lessons Beyond the Classroom | Edutopia
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Free Technology for Teachers: Play Code Fred to Learn About Circulation and Respiration
Code Fred is a free online game developed by the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. The game helps players learn about the human body’s responses to trauma. The object of the game is to help “Fred” escape from the woods while he is chased by a…
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Free Technology for Teachers: City Guesser – A Challenging Map Game
City-Guesser is a challenging map-based game. The game shows you a section of a map centered over a city. The labels are removed from the map so you have to guess the city’s name based on other clues like bodies of water and orientation. City-Guesse…
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Using Design Thinking to Innovate in Your Own Practice – John Spencer
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to deliver an opening keynote and closing talk for EdEx, a conference in Eindhoven (in the Netherlands).
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How To Handle Aggressively Disrespectful Students – Smart Classroom Management
They describe angry, argumentative, and aggressively disrespectful students. Students who tell them off and try to disrupt and sabotage their class.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Include a Discussion Element in Your Google Site
The transition from the old version of Google Sites to the new version of Google Sites has left a lot of people longing for features of the old version. Commenting was one of the features of the old version that does not exist in the new version.
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Diagnosing Employee Development Needs Infographic – e-Learning Infographics
Other Infographics Diagnosing Development Needs Gap Knowledge What It Is What they know The information they need to be successful Questions To Ask Do they need additional information? Do they need to increase their knowledge around a particular sub…
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Summer reading list 2018: Five books that will make me smarter | History Tech
Long time History Tech readers already know this. Every summer, I make a list of books I plan to read between now and September. Long time History Tech readers also know this. Not once, not ever, a couple of times I came close but never ever, have I…
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Hey gang! So, because of the snow we had this year, we’re going all the way until June 19th! DOH! I mean, super! And if you’re out of school already….
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Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D. | User Generated Education
Makerspaces, Maker Education, STEM, and STEAM are gaining lots of traction in Kindergarten though college level education. Articles, resources on social media, and conference presentations on these topics are proliferating at a rate that most educat…
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Free Technology for Teachers: The Stillmotion Method for Storytelling
Stillmotion is an award-winning video production company. According to their website they focus on telling stories to which people have an emotional response. How they do that is revealed in a five part series that they published on Vimeo.
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Universal Design for Learning: Meeting the needs of all students | Ditch That Textbook
What is UDL and how can we use it to design lessons that meet the needs of all of our students? Educators shared plenty of suggestions in a recent #DitchBook Twitter chat.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Collect Video Reflections from Students
As the 2017-18 school year winds down for many of us, it’s a good time to have students reflect on what they learned throughout the year. You could have students write these reflections and post them on a classroom blog.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Use These Two Google Slides Add-ons to Create Audio Slideshows
It’s that time of year when I get a lot of requests for recommendations on tools for making audio slideshows. I get these requests because people want to make slideshows to showcase some of the highlights of the year in their schools.
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Free Technology for Teachers: A Few Good Videos for Learning About Memorial Day
Memorial Day in the United States is ten days away. Many students associate the day with with barbecues, parades, and a day off from school. But that’s not what Memorial Day is about. As we know it’s a day to honor those who died in service to our c…
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15 Ways to Use Book Creator for Reading Responses – Class Tech Tips
Are you looking to energize and elevate reading responses in your classroom? Well, I am so happy to have partnered with my friends at Book Creator to make a special ebook just for you! This free ebook is full of ways to use Book Creator for Reading …
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create Staff Notebooks in OneNote
Early this year I was finally convinced that Microsoft’s OneNote is a product that I should be using more often.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Place Videos Side-by-Side in a Google Sites Page
In a post earlier this morning I mentioned placing videos side-by-side in a Google Sites page. Within minutes I got an email from a reader who wanted to know how to do that. The way to do it is to simply insert two videos into a page then drag and d…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Use Video in End-of-Year Review Activities
The end of the school year is rapidly approaching. If you’re a high school teacher you probably planning for final exams and final exam review session. You might have in-classroom review sessions planned.
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Real teaching means real learning: Differentiating Assessment
During this process I combined parts of one outcome with another, broke up some outcomes into smaller chunks, and then I created a list of “Rock, Sand and Water” objectives: Rock outcomes (outcomes that pass the endurance, leverage and readiness tes…
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Esports and the ISTE Standards for Students – e-O’Hagan
On October 29, 2016, millions of people around the world will watch an event take place at a sold out Staples Center in Los Angeles. There will be more who watch this event online, via Twitch.tv, than watched the NBA Finals and World Series combined.
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Tip of the Week: 7 Resources for the End of School | History Tech
Good luck and have fun!
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Call for Proposals Now Open for NCCE 2019! – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog
The NCCE 19 Conference Committee invites you to share your knowledge and expertise by presenting at NCCE 19, February 26 – 28, 2019 in Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How Coffee Affects Your Brain
Like millions of people, I start my day by brewing coffee. On those rare days when I discover we’re out of coffee at home, it can totally throw my morning out of wack. Heck, I even pick hotel rooms based on whether or not they have in-room coffee ma…
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Free Technology for Teachers: How Does the Brain Work? – A Series of NOVA Lessons
How Does the Brain Work? was a NOVA show that explored what scientists currently know about the human brain and the research that will help us to know more about the human brain in the future.
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Free Technology for Teachers: The Science of Cookies
I love cookies! In fact, I just had two warm chocolate chip cookies for dessert tonight. I bet that you have a student or twenty that enjoys cookies too. TED-Ed has a fun lesson that you can use to teach some science concepts through cookies.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Get Back to Me – A Wait Time Strategy
The Teaching Channel has a vast library of videos that demonstrate and explain teaching strategies. One of the videos that I recently stumbled upon is about the “Get Back to Me” strategy.
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Why Teens Should Understand Their Own Brain
Blakemore has a new book, Inventing Ourselves, The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain — where she dives into the research and the science — and offers insights into how young adults are thinking, problem-solving and learning. Our conversation has been…
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Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Student Work That Matters: Free Volunteer Now Kit
· 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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Free Technology for Teachers: Map-based Stories from National Geographic
GeoStories are short, map-based stories featured on National Geographic Education. The stories combine text, maps, and pictures to tell a story as a series of slides connected to placemarks on maps. National Geographic Education currently offers twe…
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At 78 feet tall, and churned by a fierce storm, it’s the largest wave ever recorded in the southern hemisphere, New Zealand scientists report.
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Matt Baker, the creater of the Evolution of the English Alphabet chart, traced the English alphabet all the way back to Proto-Sinaitic in 1750 BCE. This chart is a simplified version of his complete work called Writing Systems of the World and both …
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Free Technology for Teachers: Google Finally Removes “Next Blog” Link from Blogger
For as long as I can remember people have complained about the “next blog” link that appears by default at the top of Blogger blogs. No one likes it because it can lead visitors to random blogs that may or may not be appropriate for classrooms.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Export, Save, and Re-purpose Your Edublogs Posts
As the end of the school year approaches you might find yourself wondering what to do with all of the blogs posts your students wrote during the year. If you used Edublogs for your classroom blog, there is an easy way to export and save a copy of al…
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How do we create a community of readers? @StenhousePub #litessentials – Reading By Example
I long ago lost count the number of mistakes I have made as a school principal and literacy leader. My errors are often the product of not practicing what I preach as it relates to effective literacy instruction for students.
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One of the most important ways to end the year is by getting students to reflect on the learning journey in your class. They need to reflect on the purpose of different tasks and projects.
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Last week Google introduced the new Tour Creator for making virtual reality tours. I published a tutorial last week that shows you how to create a basic tour. Today, I made a new tutorial that shows you how to include featured points of interest wit…
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Install and Manage Chrome Extensions
From time-to-time the icons in my Chrome browser prompt questions from viewers of my YouTube videos. Usually, the questions are about which extensions I’m using.
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Free Stories! | Mark Cheverton
Here are some stories I’ve written over the years. I hope you like them. These stories are free to download, use, duplicate . . . Teachers/librarians, you can printe these up and give them out to your students, of you can email the PDF to a colleagu…
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The Edublogger’s Guide To Global Collaboration – The Edublogger
One of the many advantages of having a class blog is the potential for global collaboration. Global collaboration has always been one of my very favorite aspects of blogging with students.
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This week the #NYCSchoolsTech Team brought innovative educators a chance to hear directly from “The Big Three: Apple, Google, and Microsoft” (listed alphabetically).
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5 Myths About Classroom Management in PBL – John Spencer
I want to make something clear before we dive into this topic. I made huge mistakes in classroom management as a teacher. I let certain disruptive behaviors go unchecked because I was tired and I didn’t want to put out another fire. I had moments wh…
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The end of the school year is quickly approaching. At this time of the year I start to get a lot of requests for suggestions for tools to create review activities. Here are twelve good options for creating review activities.
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People think of the Pacific Northwest as being a wet place, with wet, sodden soils. But something startling happens in May in much of western Washington: a rapid drying of the soils. A transition so rapid that some folks begin irrigating their garde…
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10 questions in pursuit of learner agency… – What Ed Said
1. What is your ‘image of the child’? How do you view the learners in your class? Do you believe children are inherently intelligent, curious and creative? Do you recognise their rights and their capabilities? Do you trust them to learn? 2.
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What Should Your Teacher Book Club Read? | Cult of Pedagogy
This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. When people talk about teachers having summers off, most teachers laugh.
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NEW BOOK! Standards-Based Learning in Action | Tom Schimmer
Very excited to announce that my new book (co-authored with Garnet Hillman and Mandy Stalets) Standards-Based Learning in Action: Moving from Theory to Practice (Solution Tree) is now available!
Another EducatorAl Blog 