Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

More great blog posts to check out from last week!

• Retro Inspirations: UNO – Classroom Powerups

  We are 5 weeks into Summer Break. We love in a tourist destination area and my wife and I have gone through most of the reasonably priced (i.e. non-tourist trap) activities to entertain our 8 and 5 year old.

• Padlet: Time to Take a Selfie Icebreaker |

  Do you struggle to learn your students’ names at the start of the school year? If so, this is an icebreaker activity you should try! First, teachers create a Padlet wall, title it “Time to Take a Selfie,” and provide a prompt with questions for stud…

• Next Generation Learning Games (part 1) – Evan Rushton – Medium

  tags:math maths mathematics game gbl ratios games gaming education

• On Boy Books and Girl Books – Pernille Ripp

  I get asked for a lot of book recommendations, I think it comes with the territory when you share the love of books.  And while I love pairing books with potential readers, I have also noticed a pattern that causes me to pause, that should cause all…

• Gamification Advice: Points – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Generally speaking, in gamification, a reliance on nothing but the unholy trinity (Points, Badges and Leaderboards) is a guaranteed recipe for eventual failure. However, that does not mean they should be ignored – especially not points!

• Free Technology for Teachers: Brush Ninja – Make Animated GIFs on Your Desktop or Mobile Device

  Brush Ninja is a free tool for creating animated GIFs. Unlike some similar tools, Brush Ninja works equally well in the web browser on a Chromebook, Windows or Mac laptop, iPads, Android tablets, and iOS and Android phones.

• Augmented Reality Heart Rate Tracker in Virtuali-Tee – Class Tech Tips

  Are you exploring augmented reality in the classroom? At ISTE this year I had the chance to see Virtuali-Tee in action. It’s an amazing augmented reality tool for students and users of any age. When it comes to using AR in the classroom, there are c…

• Curiscope Virtuali-Tee – Learn about the Human Body with AR

  View it through our free Virtuali-Tee app on your phone or tablet to unlock the portal into the body. Jump into the pumping heart of an anatomical adventure that brings learning to life using augmented reality technology.

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Research Isn’t Sexy…But You Need It Anyway

  For some time now Shaelynn Farnsworth and I have been reflecting on our own learning and professional development practices, looking for gaps in instruction and aiming to improve our craft. One of our longest conversations has been around research.

• Dictate, edit PDFs, track changes – 10 handy tips for Microsoft Word

  Microsoft Word is used by people across the world to create and edit documents. It can help with spelling, grammar and even stylistic writing suggestions, let you collaborate with others in real time and give you information about a subject matter a…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Headliner – A Slick Online Video Editor

  Headliner is an online video editing tool that could challenge Adobe Spark and WeVideo for the top of my recommended video tools list. I just learned about Headliner from their PR person this afternoon.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Climate Kids’ Big Questions Teaches Students About Climate Change

  NASA’s Climate Kids website has many excellent online and offline resources for teaching students about climate change. One of those resources is the Big Questions wheel. The Big Questions wheel guides students through the basic concepts and issues …

• Ready, Set, Play – Blog

  ​What was the last game you played that you truly enjoyed and got lost in? Think about it for a minute. Now, think about the parts and pieces that made it fun.

• KQED

  When a person learns something new she forms a connection between two previously unconnected neurons. If that connection is weak, the new learning can easily be lost through forgetting.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Annotate Your Google Slides

  On the heels of answering questions about how to annotate PDFs, I received a question on the Practical Ed Tech Facebook page about annotating Google Slides. You could do that by exporting your slides as PDFs and then importing them into Kami.

• KQED

  In the classroom Gregory observed, all those gathered shared their perspective. The teacher expressed remorse for reacting to the student’s outburst with so much frustration. Another student reflected on her own struggles with anger management.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The New Gmail is Coming Soon to More Domains and Users

  Back in April Google revealed a redesigned Gmail user interface with a fantastic set of features including reply suggestions, message snoozing, and follow-up reminders. When it was announced the new Gmail interface was only available to those domain…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 23 World Languages Lesson Plans That Incorporate Comics

  Storyboard That is known for its excellent storyboard creation tool that can be used for many purposes including making comic strips, creating scripts, making greeting cards, and developing timelines. Storyboard That also offers detailed lesson plan…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A New Grammar Checker is Coming to Google Docs

  Google Docs has had a spell check tool for years. The grammar check tool has always been a bit rudimentary. That is going to change in the next few months. Earlier today Google announced that a new grammar suggestions tool is going to be added to Go…

• 12 Free Web Tools and Apps to Highlight, Mark Up, and Provide Feedback on Readings and Writings – American TESOL Institute

• STEM lesson plans & hands-on activities | Microsoft Education

  Build affordable inquiry and project-based activities to visualize data across science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) curriculum. Middle school standards-based lesson plans written by teachers for teachers.

• The Secret Ingredient to Effective Interventions: Students’ Perceptions | All Things Assessment

  When students know they are getting additional time and support for learning essential standards, sometimes referred to as intervention, do they see it as a punishment? Does it contribute to their perceptions of themselves as a “low” achiever? If so…

• Moving Beyond a “Growth Mindset” – The Principal of Change

  As focusing on a “growth mindset” has become amazingly popular in schools, there have been several criticisms that the work is not beneficial, or sometimes misinterpreted. All fair criticisms of the work, even coming from Carol Dweck herself.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Few Air Conditioners in Seattle (and western Washington): The Dry Facts

  Today, one of my favorite Seattle Times writers (Gene Balk) had a fun story about the lack of air conditioners in Seattle. Turns out that our ownership of air conditioners is noteworthy: no major city has less AC per capita.

• Back to School Student Goal-Setting and Motivation with Digital Vision Boards – Teacher Reboot Camp

  At the beginning of the school year we can get students focused on setting and accomplishing learning goals and personal goals by getting them to create digital vision boards. Vision boards are basically collages of inspirational people, quotes, and…

• How to Easily Do A Book Talk – Pernille Ripp

  One of the pillars of our reading community is the daily book talk.  While I used to do them once in a while, I was spurred on by the wisdom of Penny Kittle to do one every single day, which I have now fully embraced for the past few years.

• Free Technology for Teachers: More Than 5,000 Historical Maps for Teachers and Students

  Florida’s Educational Technology Clearinghouse has a collection of more than 5,000 historical maps. The maps are licensed for free download and reuse by teachers and students. The collection is organized by continent and country.

• Holler for High-Quality NGSS Instructional Materials!

  Hey Folks! I hope the summer is treating you all well. We’re currently engaging with teachers in a pilot course, pairing videos of teacher practice with high-quality instructional materials. While our course is now full, we want to make these resour…

• A Beginner’s Guide To Google Photos — Store, organize, and share your photos for free!

  If you’re anything like me, you’re taking more photos than ever but there’s an important next step which is often overlooked — organizing and archiving. Google Photos is my favorite solution for storing, organizing, and sharing photos and videos.

• EdTech Research Study: What really has an impact? – Class Tech Tips

  When making decisions about how your school and district use technology in classrooms, there are many things to consider. During my travels to schools and conferences in different corners of the country, the conversation often comes back to one topi…

• KQED

  “It used to be when a class would come in,” Taylor said, “I’d have a line of 10 kids that needed to ask me, ‘Where’s this book?’ Or where’s this or that.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Answerables

  Answerables the innovative educational tool that combines the best features of game based learning w/ a learning management system has just released their free iPad app.

• Seven Reasons to Pilot a Game-Based Learning Unit – John Spencer

  For the last two weeks, I have worked with on a team of fellow doctoral students on a game to explore the themes of turbulence, equity, justice, and empathy. We began by playing Rockville, a game that began with us developing our own avatars and ult…

• 3 Ways to Help Move Your Boss Forward – The Principal of Change

  I had a great conversation with a friend of mine about how they felt under-appreciated and under-utilized in their work by their boss.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are this past week’s great blog posts:

• Free Technology for Teachers: Say Goodbye to Old Google Forms

  The current version of Google Forms has been available for almost three years. But change is hard and so there are still people using the old “classic” version of Google Forms. The old version is going to be officially retired by the end of this yea…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create an Animated GIF

  Animated GIFs can be handy for quickly showing a process or sequence of events. Check out Common Craft’s soccer guide for great examples of using animated GIFs to illustrate concepts. And, of course, GIFs are fun to use to make a point in a social m…

• Fun Video Project! Produce a TV Commercial for an Invention – Teacher Reboot Camp

  In a previous post I outlined my 6 step process for implementing digital projects (1. Evaluate an example, 2. Assign the mission, 3. Students carryout the mission, 4. Peer edit, 5. Share the mission, and 6. Feedback/evaluation).

• 14 Questions To Ask Yourself Before The First Day Of School – Smart Classroom Management

  To help ensure you begin the school year on the right classroom management foot, I compiled a list of questions. The questions are meant to test your preparedness.

• Flexible Seating: What’s the Point? – The Wejr Board

  I have been critical of Twitter as it very rarely seems to create dialogue but for some reason, this tweet caused a number of different deeper conversations of which I thoroughly enjoyed and helped with my thinking. As with any changes we make in ed…

• 9 New Teacher Survival Tips

  I occasionally get emails from followers, readers, and conference audience members asking for advice. It’s lovely! And flattering! And OK, a lot of work sometimes. But, I always try to answer and help.

• Elementary Writing Rubrics |

  In my book Blended Learning in Grades 4-12, I shared the following elementary writing rubrics with my readers.

• Starfish continue to baffle researchers with mysterious disease | Watching Our Water Ways

  Five years after a mysterious disease began killing millions of starfish and turning their tissues to mush, the decimated population has yet to recover.

• Happy Jeans Day – an #XPLAPcamp ‘Player’ Type Motivation post – Classroom Powerups

  I am intrigued by the “Player” player type in the realm of education because most educators, especially ed reform minded types, are so put off by the idea of external motivation.

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Easy Way to Find Images for Google Slides Presentations

  There are plenty of good places to find public domain and Creative Commons images to use in your Google Slides presentations. The Unsplash photos add-on even makes it possible to find public domain images without ever leaving the slides editor.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: GoGo Brain

  GoGo Brain is a new site/program set to launch Aug 1st. This learning tool is designed for students grades Pre K-5th and helps develop their skills for school.

• Mercedes Schneider: Charter School Growth Is Declining | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Well, here is some good news. Mercedes Schneider reports that the net rate of charter school growth is declining. The number of charter school closings is rising, and the number of new schools is slowing.

• BBC – History – Ancient History in depth: Mummy Maker

  tags:bbc mummy maker game games gaming gbl history egypt interactive socialstudies

• BBC – History – Ancient History in depth: Pyramid Challenge

  tags:bbc pyramid builder game games gaming gbl history egypt interactive socialstudies

• Learning, Education & Games – Volume Two: Bringing Games into Educational Contexts

  tags:learning education games gbl educational contexts pdf research

• Home | Quandary

  tags:game games gaming gbl classroom education educational ethics decision decisions decision-making

• Lure of the Labyrinth

  tags:math game games pre-algebra education gaming interactive algebra gbl mathematics

• Factus Games

  tags:game games gaming gbl history educational education

• SimCityEDU | GlassLab Games

  tags:game games gaming gbl simcityedu science environmental pollution challenge

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Reading Racer

  Reading Racer is a free new iOS app that I just had the pleasure of reviewing. This is an excellent easy-to-use app that uses the mobile device’s microphone to “listen” as a student speaks the words on the screen.

• 15 Science Projects for Book Creator Classrooms – Class Tech Tips

  15 Science Projects for Book Creator Classrooms is a free ebook I created for K-12 educators. It provides ideas for how to use Book Creator for science projects in your classroom. You can tailor the ideas to different grade levels and subtopics.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Add Music to Your Google Slides With the AudioPlayer Chrome Extension

  Earlier this year I excitedly shared the Google Slides Add-on called AudioPlayer for Google Slides. The video tutorial that I made for about it has proven to be popular too. Recently, I’ve received comments from viewers of that video who said that t…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Add Music to Google Slides

  In my previous post I shared some information about the AudioPlayer for Google Slides Chrome extension. If you need some help getting started with that extension, please watch the following video tutorial that I created.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Great Example of Sharing Stories Through Google’s My Maps

  Kevin Hodgson’s blog has been one of my daily reads for the better part of the last ten years. Kevin is a sixth grade teacher and masterful storyteller. Over the years I have learned a lot from reading his blog.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Polyup

  Polyup is a new free site that uses Game Based Learning to help students grades 3rd-12th learn Math. These fun games teach a number of different Math topics such as: order of operations, logical thinking, calculus and more.

• New TED-Ed Video & Lesson: “A day in the life of an ancient Egyptian doctor” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The latest TED-Ed lesson and video is on A day in the life of an ancient Egyptian doctor. I’m adding it to our ELL World History class blog.

• Honing the Craft | My Island View

  As an educator and speaker I have often used pictures and images to underscore comparisons of education to other professions as a very effective tool to demonstrate the great need education has as a system to change.

• Blended Games for the classroom using YOUR content

  CUSTOM CONTENT 1. In the member’s section users can select a game to play by clicking on it. 2. Once the game is launched, a ”new game” can be created or an existing question file can be loaded from the user’s account. (see below on how to save an…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Blended Play for Classroom Review Games

  Last week I published a post about a neat game platform called Blended Play. Blended Play provides five online game boards that you can project in your classroom to use as the template for review games.

• Item Cards: Symbols and Images Meaning Map – Classroom Powerups

  In my past version of Item Cards I just picked colors and symbols that I thought looked cool or matched the picture image. This year, since I am rebooting my narrative and needed to redo items anyways, I figured I would take a little time and plan o…

• Getting lost in the tangle of connections called the Puget Sound food web | Watching Our Water Ways

  I’m increasingly amazed at the interwoven nature of the Puget Sound food web. Whenever I become focused on a specific species — Chinook salmon, for example — one of the first questions I ask is: What is this species eating?

• How it Works | Micro-Credentials | NEA Center for Great Public Schools

  If you’re reading this, it means you’re interested in taking steps to improve your practice as an educator and create better outcomes for your students.

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: Lots of Fun with Numberella

  While wandering around the expo at ISTE, I stumbled upon a board game. A board game, at a technology conference. A longtime lover of board games, I was immediately intrigued. Numberella is a game designed to increase skill level and engagement in ma…

• Why Can’t Most College Graduates Write a Decent Essay? – The Edvocate

• NASA’s Software Catalog – Remote Sensing Toolkit

• A Brief History of Gregor Mendel – Math with Bad Drawings

  The poor guy tried. Took the qualifying exam twice, and failed both times. (He kept botching the section on “natural history.” Cue Alanis Morissette.) So he put in a few years as a substitute, and eventually left the job behind to focus on his true …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Formatically Offers a New Instant Citation Tool

  Formatically is a service that was designed by college students to help other students create properly formatted works cited pages. Last year I published a tutorial about how to use it. This week Formatically introduced a new instant citation tool.

• Am I Evil? Gamification Brought Into Perspective By My 11 Year Old! – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  I had an interesting chat with my eldest daughter recently. As with many chats with her, I was left thinking about the choices in my life… yeah, she’s reached that age! This really hit me hard.

• The Adventure Blog: Trash is a Common Sight on Ben Lecomte’s Pacific Ocean Swim

  When Ben Lecomte set out on his attempt to swim across the Pacific Ocean last month he knew he’d be facing some big challenges. Swimming in an ocean brings dangerous currents, encounters with sea creatures, plenty of big waves to battle through.

• The Problem with Fear-Based Education Reform – Have You Heard

  Did you hear the one about how schools should be run more like businesses? In the latest episode of the Have You Heard podcast, Jennifer and Jack are joined by business journalist Andrea Gabor, author of the new book After the Education Wars: How Sm…

• NOLA Research Unit Issues Glowing Report, Wins $10 Million from DeVos | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Which game shall we play: Follow the Money or Connect the Dots? Only two days ago, the Education Research Alliance at Tulane University released a glowing report about the privatization of public schools in New Orleans.

• Mercedes Schneider: TFA Has Been Losing Money Since 2013 | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Is this any way to run a business? Mercedes Schneider reports that Teach for America has been losing money every year from 2013-2016, the last reported year.

• Gary Rubinstein: Tennessee’s $100 Million ASD Melts Down | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Tennessee was one of the first states to win a grant from Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top. It won $500 million. It placed its biggest bet on an idea called the Achievement School District. The big plan was to have the state take over the state’s lowes…

• Infographic On Gamification In eLearning—6 Examples – e-Learning Infographics

  Gamification is the integration of gaming elements in eLearning to create a highly effective and immersive learning experience. Here’s an infographic illustrating 6 examples of gamification in eLearning to engage learners in a better way.

• KQED

  “There are a lot of other things that we’re not attentive to enough, and that we’re not measuring, to make it important in schools,” Duncan-Andrade said.

• #Instagrambookstudy: Part 2 #innovatorsmindset | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  The #instagrambookstudy of George Couros’ Innovators’ Mindset continues this week with Chapters 7-14. You can read my documentation of participating and learning of the introduction and chapters 1-6 in Part 1. How do we learn to be comfortable? Prac…

• Work Life English | Better English. Better Life.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Tools for Gathering Real-time Feedback From Students

  Chat rooms and polling services provide good ways to hear from all of the students in a classroom. These kind of tools allow shy students to ask questions and share comments.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Record and Share Video Notes in Real-time

  Tools like EDpuzzle and TED-Ed are good for creating questions that you want your students to answer about videos that you share with them. But if you want students to share their own questions or notes with you, you’ll have to try some tools that w…

• 20+ Emoji Activities and Resources for Teaching Math, Science, and English – Teacher Reboot Camp

  Today is World Emoji Day and to celebrate I’m sharing 20 emoji activities, my slide presentation, and resources to engage your learners. Emojis are an important part of our students’ digital culture and the way students humanize time spent communica…

• 3 Thoughts on Innovation in Education Heading into the New School Year – The Principal of Change

  The #InnovatorsMindset book study on Instagram just wrapped up, and it was a great learning experience for myself and hopefully, the participants that took their own time (most on a break) to connect, create and model their learning openly.

• 7 Reasons Microlearning Works Today Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Microlearning, or bite-size learning, speaks to what science has long known about the brain’s inner workings and helps learners focus—despite their diminishing attention spans—by providing information in a manner aligned with their brain’s wiring.

• Technology as Distraction – Ideas and Thoughts

  Today most inspirational messages, books and challenges to schools are to “prepare them for anything” or “future ready” or “solve big problems” or “change the world”, all good and valid messages. I’ve already shared my concerns over an overemphasis …

• Group by Need, Not by Number | All Things Assessment

  Let us talk about shopping for shoes. I am not one of those people who meanders through shoe stores, struggling to narrow down my choices (no judgment for those who do—that is just not me). Rather, I am a very pragmatic shoe purchaser.

• ABCmouse is Free for Teachers! – Class Tech Tips

  Finding a robust resource for ELA and math activities for students can be a challenge. This is especially true if you’re looking for free ebooks, activities, and games for students.

• A Process for Implementing Student Digital Projects – Teacher Reboot Camp

  Lately, I’ve been busy grading my students’ digital products. Each year my students accomplish so much with technology, such as brainstorming, collaboration, annotation, editing, research, and so forth.

• ProKeys: Save Time Online with Keyboard Shortcuts |

  I’ve been using shortcuts in Google Documents for years to save time editing student papers. However, I do a lot of work online outside of the Google environment.

• Move your kids past simply consuming virtual reality. They need to be making it. Tour Creator can help | History Tech

  I spent part of last Monday working with the awesome staff of the Eisenhower Foundation at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum. They hosted 18 teachers from around the state during a week long focus on using primary sources across the curric…

• #Geniushour Chat Archive | The Genius Hour Guidebook

  7 June 2018 we had a great discussion on “Genius Hour 2.0: Elevating Genius Hour to the Next Level.” Our guest host was Bobby McCutcheon (@Fight4Mizzou). He was so attentive in responding to everyone’s tweets; he…

• KQED

  One powerful example of students taking on a different role in the classroom happens when teachers use the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development as a framework for inquiry. Students explore their passions, interests, and curiositie…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: The Technology That Can Provide Society with Actionable Information For Dealing with Global Warming

  The long-term impact of global warming is one of the key issues of our time. Greenhouse gases are increasing rapidly and it is becoming increasingly clear that mankind will not significantly reduce emissions during the next few decades.

• New Resources For Teaching About Refugees | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Memories Lost and Futures on Hold: A Look Inside a Camp for Syria’s Displaced is from The NY Times. SEEKING REFUGE FOR MY CHILDREN is a bilingual (English/Spanish) interactive.

• Opening the school year with a letter to your physics teacher | Quantum Progress

  Every year, I seem to go through some variant of an introduce yourself to your teacher activity, from asking students to fill out some sort of template I’ve created or to answer a Google survey.

• The Nerdy Teacher: “Find Your Passion” Research #EdChat

  A new article has come out and it shared the research done on the idea that people just need to “Find their passion” and how it is terrible advice.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Listen. Reflect. Decide.

  Conversations on effective leadership are varied although they focus more or less on the same general points, yet in different contexts. One saying revolves around the notion that the buck stops with the leader.

• Model the Way – The Principal of Change

  Think of these two statements: You should do ___________ because it will make you a better teacher. I have done ____________, and here it is how it has made me a better teacher. The first statement, obviously with the best intentions, can almost fee…

• Quality-Check Your Tech: 6 Strategies | Cult of Pedagogy

  In schools, we use more tech tools every year. We also have very little time to vet them for quality. Do the math and you have a formula for some tech choices that may not be serving our students as well, or as equitably, as they should be. It’s eas…

• More States Opting To ‘Robo-Grade’ Student Essays By Computer : NPR

  Here’s a little pop quiz. A: They’re cheap to score.

• Robo-Grading Student Essays is Garbage | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  NPR ran an interesting story about robo-grading student essays. It didn’t use the headline that appears here, but there is no better way to describe the insanity or stupidity of asking a machine to judge a student essay. First, it shows disrespect f…

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some great blog posts from last week:

• eSports: The new path to an athletic scholarship | USA TODAY High School Sports

  tags:esports gaming scholarships

• Opinion | Everyone Has an Accent – The New York Times

  Mr. Agudo teaches Spanish and Portuguese to college students. I have an accent. So do you.

• Explore the Cave Where Mysterious Human Ancestor Homo Naledi Was Discovered in Live Broadcasts From South Africa

  Lee Berger has a strange problem for an archaeologist leading an excavation: He can’t actually access the site, and will likely never be able to.

• Homo naledi Had Small but Surprisingly Complex Brain

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Easy Way to Create a GIF from Google Slides

  A simple animated GIF can be useful for things like showing how a simple system works, illustrating the steps to solving a math problem, or showing a sequence of before and after pictures. A few months ago I shared three easy ways to create animated…

• Using Book Creator in Elementary Classrooms – Class Tech Tips

  It’s been so exciting to see the response to the webinars I’m hosting for Book Creator this summer! With a wide range of topics to choose from, there is clearly an interest in using Book Creator in elementary classrooms. If you missed the live event…

• How To Increase Maturity And Independence Tenfold – Smart Classroom Management

  This may be one of the easiest strategies we’ve ever covered here at SCM. It may also be the most powerful.

• Teacher Fed Up With Students Swearing, Stealing, And Destroying Property Speaks Out – Wow Video | eBaum’s World

• Sobering Finds in Most Comprehensive Study Ever on Antarctic Ice Loss

  tags:antarctic ice loss science earth climate change climatechange climate-change

• When teachers think differently about themselves as math learners, students benefit | Stanford Graduate School of Education

  Like a lot of students, many elementary school teachers dread math class.

• codeSpark: Coding for Kids and Coding PD for Teachers – Class Tech Tips

  Coding in the classroom is more than a hot topic. It’s an opportunity to introduce students to essential problem solving and literacy skills needed beyond the walls of the classroom.

• Battle Mechanics: Clashes – Classroom Powerups

  As part of my 2018-19 narrative (click here to read more) the students in my classrooms will be broken up into two meta-guilds – the Sentinels and the Hunters.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 13 Great Drawing Lessons for Students

  ShowMe is a popular app for creating whiteboard style instructional videos on iPads, Android tablets, and Chromebooks. ShowMe users have the option to publish their videos for inclusion in a public gallery of instructional videos.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Making Your Teaching Something Special – An Online Book Club With Rushton Hurley

  Rushton Hurley, founder of Next Vista for Learning, published Making Your Teaching Something Special. If you picked up the book to read this summer or you’ve already read it, consider joining the online book club that Participate and ICE are hosting…

• My Learning Journey – The blogging space of the Burlington Public Schools Assistant Superintendent

  Day two of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents Executive Institute featured Scott McLeod as the keynote speaker.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Blended Play – A Blend of Online and Offline Review Games

  Blended Play is a service for creating educational games to use in your classroom. Unlike the game creation tools featured in my previous post, all of the games on Blended Play have to be played in your classroom.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A 360° Video That Shows You How to Find the Summer Constellations

  NPR’s Skunk Bear YouTube channel has recently become one of my favorite YouTube channels. The latest video published on the channel is a 360° video that explains how to find the constellations that are visible in the summer night sky over North Amer…

• 10 Easy Ways to Create an Awesome #SchoolCulture This Year – The Principal of Change

  Recently, I tweeted out an older post titled, “10 Easy Ways to Create an Awesome #ClassroomCulture This Year”, where I share some simple ideas on quick ways we can connect with students. Here is a list from the original post.

• Security Awareness In Higher Education – The Edublogger

  Cybercriminals have the higher education industry in their crosshairs. According to certain reports, higher education accounted for 13 percent of all data breaches in 2017, with only the healthcare and financial sectors being targeted at a higher ra…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 7 Places to Create Your Own Educational Games for Students to Play at Home

  The Internet is not lacking for websites that offer games that students can play online. Despite that fact, there are still occasions when you can’t find exactly what you or your students need. In those cases you might want to just create your own g…

• What’s in a 4? DOK and Proficiency Scales | All Things Assessment

  When it comes to measurement, four is a popular number; rather, a range of 1 to 4 is a common scheme. Two different powerful measurement systems use a range of 1 through 4 scores to clarify levels of quality.

• Resources – CoderDojo

  tags:code coding programming

• CodeyMcCoderson

  Skip to content Previously: Why I Go All In with Data Science Data Science Part 1 – Gapminder Data Science Part 2ish – The Netflix Prize Data Science Part 3 – Marketing Profiles At this point in the unit, my goal is to create real-world, authentic e…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Text2MindMap is Back – Outlines and Mind Maps on the Same Page

  For a few years there was a popular mind map tool called Text2MindMap that enabled you to create mind maps from typed outlines. It was popular because you could see a written outline on one side of your screen and the connected mind map on the other…

• Will New Standards Improve Elementary Science

  That’s a problem because careers in science, engineering and math are some of the fastest growing (and best paid) sectors of the American economy. Such jobs made up 6.2 percent of all U.S. employment in 2015, according to the U.S.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Rye Board – An Online Corkboard for Your Ideas

  Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo’s This Week In Web 2.0 I recently learned about a new online corkboard tool called Rye Board. Rye Board provides you with a blank canvas on which you can place text notes, images, and drawings.

• Segregation in America | Equal Justice Initiative

  Racial segregation had a long and enduring history in America, supported by courts, laws, and elected officials. The pervasive effects of that legacy are still felt today.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Share Specific Google Earth Views in Google Classroom

  The development of the browser-based version made Google Earth accessible to students who use Chromebooks as their primary classroom computers. One way that I like to use Google Earth is to create sets of inquiry questions based upon a specific loca…

• XP Grading & Other Management Ideas – Classroom Powerups

  tags:gamification grading xp

• LunaPic | Free Online Photo Editor

  tags:image photo editor edit editing

• classic.csunplugged.org

• The Good, the Great, and the Mind-Blowing – CSTA 2018

  If you’ve never been to the CSTA 2018 (Computer Science Teachers Association) conference before, you need to go to Phoenix, Arizona for their 20th anniversary conference next summer. This year’s conference was held in Omaha, Nebraska, and was a huge…

• Family Separation

  Explanation about families that come to our border, credible fear interviews, and asylum law. The horrors of families, infants, and children in detention centers is not new.

• Code Club International – A worldwide network of coding clubs for children

  tags:code coding programming club

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Beautiful Cloud Pictures of a “Cap” on Some Cumulus

  Over the weekend two people independently sent me pictures that amazed them…and they were looking for an explanation. The first was from Ellen Baker from Glacier, Washington taken late Friday afternoon.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Soft Fruit, Mold, and Sour Milk – A Lesson on Food Safety

  At one time or another we’ve all opened a milk container and noticed that something wasn’t quite right or picked up a piece of fruit that was just a little too soft.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Geography Drive Arcade

  Geography Drive Arcade is a fun iOS game for students wanting to learn about Geography. This is done through 4 engaging mini-games such as: state shape challenge, capitals, flags, and more. Also, GDA helps kids learn how to spell geographical locati…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Google Forms Features You Should Know How to Use

  Google Forms received a couple of updates that teachers have requested for years. Those new features let you create a custom look for your Forms. The new customization options are just a couple of the built-in features that are handy yet frequently …

• “The Human Reach” Is A Good Interactive On The World’s Population | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The Human Reach and The Human Reach Atlas are impressive interactives examining the world’s population and its implications for our planet. They are part of an on-going series of interactives called Living In The Age of Humans.

• Teaching and Scaffolding Student Talk – Reading By Example

  One of the strongest draws towards reading Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence and Equity for All Learners has been the many research-based practices offered by Routman and the different educators participating in this book study.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Kami – Annotate and Collaborate on PDFs

  Kami is a neat service that makes it easy to annotate and comment on PDFs. The folks at Kami describe their service as a digital pen and paper. That is an accurate description of what the core of the service provides.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Elementary School Rocks

  K-5 GeoSource is a great resource produced by the American Geosciences Institute. On K-5 GeoSource you will find free lesson plans, science fair project ideas, links to virtual activities, and resources for professional development.

• Digging Deeper to Better Inform Your Literacy Instruction @StenhousePub #litessentials – Reading By Example

  As a reading interventionist, I am required to administer a universal screening tool to kindergarten through second grade students three times per school year.  Screening tools are considered an important part of Response to Intervention (RTI)/Multi…

• Are Your Students Sharing and Amplifying Their Learning? – Primary Tech by Kathleen Morris

  I’m currently reading through A Guide to Documenting Learning: Making Thinking Visible, Meaningful, Shareable and Amplified by Silvia Tolisano and Janet Hale. What is learning? How do we look for, capture, reflect on, and share learning to foster me…

• On Reader Identity and Its Importance – Pernille Ripp

  I was asked recently why the need to focus on reader identity.

• Gamification In eLearning Facts Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Gamification Infographics 80% of the learners say that their productivity would increase if the learning approach used in their university/ organization is more game-like 82% of the learners are in favor of multiple difficulty levels and explorable …

• Free Technology for Teachers: TypingClub’s Typing Jungle Offers Hundreds of Typing Lessons

  TypingClub has been providing excellent typing instruction for many years. I’ve watched as the service grew from a simple practice site to a complete system that teaches students proper typing technique.

• Flogging the Dead Horse of RSS – Ideas and Thoughts

• Free Technology for Teachers: Create Your Own Search Engine

  Last week I saw some folks on Twitter sharing a link to a site called Kidy that advertised itself as an “intellegent, safe search engine for kids.” I checked out the site and found that it was just an implementation of a Google Custom Search Engine …

• Trying it out… Investigating… Testing… Researching… Practice what I Preach… Modeling | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  So, when George Couros announced he, was trying out an #instagrambookstudy of his book The Innovator’s Mindset, I had to step up to participate. Writing an introduction forced me to refine my elevator pitch who am I as an educator, author, blogger, …

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: EDpuzzle Update

  EDpuzzle the world’s leading tool for “flipping” a classroom or lesson has been hard at work w/ new features and updates to make it easier and even better for teacher to integrate in their classroom.

• A Principal’s Reflections: A Practical Way to Increase Access to Mobile Technology Regardless of Age

  More and more schools are either installing or improving WiFi networks in schools. We still have a long way to go in many places, but the increase in access provides kids with an array of innovative learning opportunities that continue to evolve.

• 3 Reminders for When Challenging Others

  No one shows up to work wanting to do a lousy job. This doesn’t mean they won’t say or do things that don’t bother you, but when we assume positive intent, it places our focus on the idea, not the person.

• Spark Video Activities for Google Classroom – Class Tech Tips

  Are you using Google Classroom this school year? I love combining favorite tools! Spark Video is a fantastic, web-based and mobile movie-making tool for students.

• Breaking Reality Down: AR, VR and MR | Inside the classroom, outside the box!

  “I’m excited about Augmented Reality because unlike Virtual Reality which closes the world out, AR allows individuals to be present in the world but hopefully allows an improvement on what’s happening presently… That has resonance.

• Get Out of Your Own Way – Go Where You Grow

  Looking back on 25 years of classroom teaching, I can say that the greatest changes that I made to my classroom practice began in 2006, when I had a principal that pulled me aside and told me that I should really push the limits and rethink my class…

• New Interactive On Japanese-American Internment | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The New York Times has just published an interactive on Japanese-American internment during World War II. It focuses on Mas Okui, who was imprisoned in Manzanar during the war and goes back to visit it every year.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are this past week’s amazing blog posts!

• How To Have Better, Sharper Routines Next School Year – Smart Classroom Management

  Routines are the lifeblood of a well-run classroom. Because, done right, they save tons of learning time. They keep students focused and on task. They cut way down on misbehavior.

• Smiling About Bitmoji Books

  My favorite avatar creator Bitmoji, which I’ve been blogging about since 2015 (links to those posts below) has recently added a few NEW cartoons featuring books! But, as my Twitter & PA friend Ms.

• Education Websites Face Pending ‘Mark of Shame’ – K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center

  Cross-posted on the EdTech Strategies blog: https://ift.tt/2s3xgci. Chrome is the most popular** browser, and later this month it will be making a change in the way it communicates the safety of websites to users.

• The lives of salmon are complex, leading to threats but also hope | Watching Our Water Ways

  Salmon have a tough life. Not only must they escape predators and find enough food to eat — as do all wild animals — but they must also make the physiologically taxing transition from freshwater to saltwater and then back again to start a new genera…

• WellPlayed Pod: Game Plans! – Classroom Powerups

  I always have a blast talking with Mr. Matera and this episode was no different! I would suggest opening up this video in YouTube and leaving a comment (actually I would hope you leave a comment below too). Mr.

• School Directory – Collegiate Esports Governing Body – NAC Esports

  tags:esports gaming education edtech

• College esports – a list of varsity esports programs in North America

  tags:esports gaming education edtech

• tnl.media/esportsnews/2017/5/19/collegiate-esports-report-q2-2017-40schools-4million

  tags:esports gaming education edtech

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Great Place to Find WordPress Tutorials

  Creating a classroom or personal blog on hosted services like Blogger, Weebly, or Edublogs is rather quick and easy process. Services like these provide easy-to-follow templates and manage all of the software and security updates that a lot of peopl…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Monster Heart Medic – A Game for Learning About Heart Health

  Monster Heart Medic is a free iPad app produced by the Lawrence Hall of Science with funding from the National Institutes of Health. The purpose of the app is to help students learn about the cardiovascular system through a game environment.

• What if we don’t know what we don’t know? | My Island View

  Several decades ago I read an article that I believe was in Time Magazine on the most difficult jobs in America. The article defined a difficult job based on the number of impactful decisions a person had to make in a day.

• ditchthattextbook.com

• Free Technology for Teachers: New Metaverse Tutorials – Build Your Own Augmented Reality Games

  Over the last year Metaverse has become a popular tool for creating your own augmented reality games. Many teachers have used it to create digital breakout games. Like many other tools that quickly rise in popularity, Metaverse has made some changes…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Profound Impacts of Fireworks on Visibility and Air Quality

  The visibility this morning was greatly reduced compared to yesterday and fireworks smoke played a major role. Here is view from the Seattle PanoCan looking towards the Cascades at 9:30 AM this morning (Thursday, July 5). Very hazy with the foothill…

• U.S. Court: Detroit students have no right to access to literacy | News Hits

  “If they are unable to educate their students, that’s a shame, but court rulings have not established that “access to literacy” is “a fundamental right.””

• MTC Expands Membership to Public Schools – Mastery Transcript

  tags:mastery based transcript high school schools education reform edreform

• Free Technology for Teachers: Learn About Lake Ecosystems on DIY Lake Science

  For the Fourth of July holiday I took my daughters to play at a little beach on a local lake. My older daughter enjoyed gathering snail and mussel shells in her bucket while my younger daughter enjoyed playing with some beach toys.

• Schools Matter: Dweck’s Brainology = School Budget Drainology

  Largely in response to the demands of paternalist school reformers fixated on training the poor and children of the poor to be immune to their own poverty, non-cognitive behavioral interventions aimed at “character building” have proliferated within…

• Our Notion of Being Literate or Illiterate Calls for an Update | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  What does it mean to be literate? What does it mean to be illiterate? I think about the definition and the notion of literacy quite a bit. Looking back at history, we know that the ability to read and write were in the hands of the clergy (male) and…

• This Land Is Your Land – Practical Theory

  This song has been on my mind a lot lately — not just the verses they teach in elementary school, but all the verses. It strikes me that this song, in many ways, speaks to the heart of the divide in this country.

• Learning from Fortnite about Exclusivity in Gamification – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Recently, gaming phenomenon, Fortnite ran an event that signalled the end of their current season and a whole new set of clues to what may be coming next.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Be More Than a Hashtag

  I’ve been on an off social media since ISTE. One of the things I have seen is more asinine tweets that either take veiled shots at teachers or are just nonsense.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 4-H STEM Lab – A Good Place to Find Hands-on STEM Activities for K-12

  The 4-H STEM Lab is a good place to find hands-on STEM activities for students of all ages. Activities in the 4-H STEM Lab are organized according to topic and grade level. The topics are alternative energy, chemistry, electricity, engineering, and …

• Enhance Literacy with Comics

  tags:comics literacy reading

• New TED-Ed Video & Lesson: “Are there universal expressions of emotion?” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  I’m a high school teacher in Sacramento, CA.

• Signs of serious progress for digital citizenship – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org

  It has been a big year for digital citizenship, and what better time – at least here in the United States – to check in on its practice this July 4th week, one year since the Obama Foundation issued a call to look more deeply into its meaning (here‘…

• Impressive ARKit Apps in Education | ARVRinEDU | Jaime Donally | Professional Development

  tags:ar edtech app apps

• Free Comics – Comics by comiXology

  tags:comics free literacy reading

• Reading Activities for Students Using Book Creator – Class Tech Tips

  How do your students respond to reading in your classroom? Well, this summer I’ve teamed up with the folks at Book Creator for a handful of special events. One of the webinars I hosted this summer focuses on reading activities for students.

• Free Technology for Teachers: NRICH – Another Good Place to Find Math Activities

  In response to yesterday’s post about MathsLinks a handful of folks reminded me via email and Facebook of another good place for teachers to find mathematics resources. That place is NRICH which I initially reviewed almost eight years ago and then a…

• Kapwing – Create and Edit Video Online

  tags:video image editor photo photos

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Crash Course on Independence Day

  Tomorrow, July 4th, is Independence Day in the U.S. In the video below John Green offers a short overview of the history of Independence Day and the ways in which Americans have celebrated the holiday since 1776.

• What Can Video Games Teach Us About Instructional Design? – John Spencer

  When I was a kid, I used to spend hours playing Tetris. I would zone out everything else and hit a state of hyperfocus. I was fully engaged. I could spend hours playing Tetris. Over the years, the trending games have changed.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Chemistry of Fireworks

  Tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States. Cities and towns all over the country will feature fireworks displays to celebrate the day. I’m sure that many of you will be enjoying a fireworks display tomorrow. (My kids are too young and my dog…

• From virtual reality to ebooks, the future of digital media in schools is a total toss-up – GeekWire

• GameOn.World – Online Trivia Game

• Polyup: The world’s first Casual Modding platform

• 3D Printing: One Step Closer to a Star Trek Future? – Best Computer Science Schools

  tags:3d printing 3dprinting infographic infographics

• ISTE | Infographic: Citizenship in the digital age

  tags:digital-citizenship DigitalCitizenship infographic infographics

• What Your Font Says About You – Blog About Infographics and Data Visualization – Cool Infographics

  Join the DFW Data Visualization and Infographics Meetup Group if you’re in the Dallas/Fort Worth area! What Your Font Choices Say About You infographic from GetVoip is a comical explanation of why we choose what font we use.

• Free Technology for Teachers: MathsLinks – A Good Place to Find Resources for Math Lessons

  MathsLinks.net is a great site created by a mathematics teacher for mathematics teachers. On the site you will find collections of games, interactive demonstrations, and lesson ideas for use in elementary, middle, and high school mathematics lessons.

• The Importance of Educating Educators | My Island View

  I recently returned from my yearly trek to ISTE, one of the largest education technology conferences to be held annually. This year better than 22 thousand educators were in attendance in Chicago for three days.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 110 Videos About Careers

  For nearly a decade I have been referring folks to Next Vista for Learning as a place to find and to share educational videos made by students and teachers. The Light Bulbs section of Next Vista is where you will find most of the videos on the site.

• Google adds new Classroom features. Use them responsibly. | History Tech

  All the MCU fans out there know that this phrase was first used in the 1962 Amazing Fantasy #15 issue and then later by Uncle Ben in the 2002 Spiderman movie. But history nerds know that different versions of the phrase have been around for much lon…

• Backchannel Chat: My Choice to Replace TodaysMeet |

  I’m still mourning the loss of TodaysMeet. I used it regularly as a teacher and presenter. It was the rare tool that was easy to use and free. I’ve been on the hunt for a viable replacement. Richard Bryne posted a blog with six potential alternative…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Gates & Teacher Effectiveness: Duh

  If you’re an innovative educator, the news about teacher effectiveness having little impact on student achievement is no surprise. The Gates Foundation spent a whooping $575 million buckaroos, when they could have just been listening to teachers who…

• Zoomtastic | A game about guessing countries

  The map zoom outs slowly giving you more information over time. After 15 seconds, 4 possible answers appear.

• Come Teach Again – On Teacher Guilt and the Platitudes that Grows It – Pernille Ripp

  For a while, I have been noticing a trend in my Twitter feed, or rather what Twitter wants me to see.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Check out these great blog posts from last week:

• “Skype A Scientist” Brings…Scientists To Your Classroom | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Skype a Scientist matches scientists with classrooms around the world! Scientists will skype into the classroom for 30-60 minute Q and A sessions that can cover the scientist’s expertise or what it’s like to be a scientist.

• 11 Things Not To Do This Coming School Year – Smart Classroom Management

  Via negativa is a method of improvement whereby one focuses not on what to do to become more proficient. But on what not to do—which, for many, is an easier proposition.

• Re-envisioning Roles – Reading By Example

  It’s easy to get caught up in the quick fix of doing the task, presenting the question that gives one quick response, and providing the immediate answer when a student approaches us.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Random Name Selectors

  If your students are like mine, at one point or another you’ve asked for volunteers and not had any students raise their hands. In that situation using a random name selection tool is an easy way to choose students to call on.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Last Day to Get Five Practical Ed Tech Webinars in One Package

  As many of you know, Practical Ed Tech is the site through which I offer professional development webinars. I host those webinars on a regular basis throughout the school year. For the last week I’ve offered the five most popular of those webinars i…

• Free Technology for Teachers: ABCya’s Number Chart Is a Fun Math Activity for Kids

  ABCya’s Number Chart is a simple but fun online activity for elementary school students. The chart offers “beginner” and “challenge” activities. In both activity levels students have to drag numbers into their proper places on a number line.

• What are Esports – YouTube

  tags:games gaming gbl esports

• ISTE Standards for Students & Esports: Standard 1: Empowered Learner – YouTube

  tags:games gaming gbl esports iste tech standards

• ISTE Standards for Education Leaders & Esports: Standard 1: Equity & Citizen Advocate – YouTube

  tags:games gaming gbl esports iste tech standards

• Commentary: Game to Grow: Esports as a Learning Platform | STEM Solutions | US News

  tags:games gaming gbl esports

• Fortnite Game A Win for Librarians Looking to Boost Teen Attendance | School Library Journal

  tags:games gaming gbl fortnite

• KQED

  Adapted from Game-Based Learning in Action: How an Expert Affinity Group Teaches with Games by Matthew Farber Professor Karen Schrier, Founding Director of the Games & Emerging Media program at Maris College, developed the Ethics, Practice, and Impl…

• Power Searching with Google

• Why do airlines sell too many tickets? – Nina Klietsch – YouTube

  View full lesson on ed.ted.com: https://ift.tt/2IABvUs you ever sat in a doctor’s office for hours, despite having an appointment? Has a hotel turned down your reservation because it’s full? Have you been bumped off a flight that you paid for? These…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Measuring Worth – A Lesson on Inflation

  Do you remember when a cup of coffee didn’t cost $3? Or when ten dollars bought you enough gasoline to drive for a week? How about buying a pack of baseball cards for 25 cents and getting a piece of gum in the pack too? I remember those days. My mon…

• Free Technology for Teachers: This RWT Template Helps Students Craft Persuasive Essays

  Developing persuasive writing skills is a process that students start in elementary school and continue to develop through high school and beyond. Read Write Think offers a good interactive guide that can help students craft a good persuasive essay.

• The Global Problem Solvers Series Challenges Students to Tackle World Issues – Teacher Reboot Camp

  At the recent ISTE conference, I was excited to be part of the team to help spread the word about the new, Global Problem Solvers: The Series (GPS: The Series), a free educational initiative that introduces adolescents and preteens to real world pro…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ways to Blend Technology Into Outdoor Lessons

  By the time that many of you read this, I’ll be fly fishing on one of my favorite rivers in Maine. Where I’m going there isn’t any cell phone reception. Even though there won’t be reception, I will still have my phone with me to take pictures.

• 5 Fun Reasons to Have a School Library Photo Booth

  I’ve noticed lately that Photo booths—in all shapes and sizes—are becoming increasingly popular at events. From fairs, community outreaches, dances, weddings, even Bat Mitzvahs, the photo booth is providing more than fun and games.

• 3 Ways to Develop a Shared Path Toward One Vision – The Principal of Change

  There was an interesting conversation between two participants in a workshop that I was facilitating that I have been thinking about a lot over the last 24 hours.

• Control Alt Achieve: 4 Fantastic Rubric Tools for Google Docs

  On the 4th day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me… four rubric writers. Note: This post is part of my “12 Days of Tech-Mas” series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: “12 Days of Tech-Mas …

• SNEAK PEEK: Kasey’s 2018 ISTE Presentations! #ISTE18 #notatiste | Shake Up Learning

  Pinterest SNEAK PEEK: Shake Up Learning’s ISTE Presentations 2018! Hey, y’all! I promised that I would be sharing EVERYTHING from the ISTE conference this year, and guess what? You get to see my presentations before I even share them at ISTE! Yep! Y…

• Using Crosscutting Concepts to Prompt Student Responses | Science for All

  OVERVIEW: The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) recently released a document to support and encourage K-12 educators to provide clear and explicit language and prompts to integrate the Crosscutting Concepts into instruction and assessme…

• A Gullible Population Is a National Security Issue @coolcatteacher

  The hair on my arm prickled up like porcupine quills, but there was no breeze. It was a discussion about a digital literacy issue at the U.S. Army War College National Security Seminar that caused this response. Suddenly, information literacy became…

• Free Technology for Teachers: What is a Storyboard? – History and Use Cases

  Over the years I’ve written many blog posts about using storyboards in a variety of classroom settings. I’ve even hosted webinars on the topic. But until today I never wondered about the origins of storyboards. That changed when I read Aaron Sherman…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 PD Webinars in One Package

  Throughout the year I offer many professional development webinars on PracticalEdTech.com. The sales of those webinars help to keep this blog running. This week I’ve been running a sale on PracticalEdTech.com webinars and many people have taken adva…

• Classroom Games and Tech: Our Completed Interactive Comic Story

  Last fall I wrote about an interactive story experiment I started with some students a our middle school. They enjoyed our usual Google Slides comics assignment, so we decided to start an ongoing story based on input from the rest of the school.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Photo Roulette – A Library of Congress Game

  Photo Roulette is a fun little game from Library of Congress. The game shows you a randomly selected pictures from the LOC’s digital collections and you have to guess the year in which the picture was taken. You have ten guesses before you’re out of…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create, Use, and Embed Lino Boards Into Blog Posts

  This morning on the Practical Ed Tech Facebook page I had a question from a reader who was looking for an alternative to Padlet. My recommendation was to take a look at Lino.

• 10 tech tools that will make you a super teacher! | @mcleod | Dangerously Irrelevant

  Just kidding. Because there are no tech tools that will make us super teachers. Pencils didn’t make us super teachers. Textbooks didn’t make us super teachers. Chalkboards and whiteboards and overhead projectors didn’t make us super teachers.

• Badass Teachers Association

  The Supreme Court’s decision in the Janus vs AFSCME case has overturned a rule that is a blow to an educator’s ability to effectively advocate for what is best for all students in this country.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Key Updates to Microsoft’s Education Products

  During the ISTE conference this week Microsoft showcased many features of their varied education products. If you, like me, were not able to attend the conference, you can get a full run-down of all of the updates in What’s New in EDU. Here are the …

• Free Technology for Teachers: More Ways to Add Content to Book Creator Projects – Coming Soon!

  Thanks to Amy Burns I just learned about a great, new feature that is soon to be available in Book Creator. The new feature will let you embed content from third-party sites into your Book Creator books.

• News: Supreme Court Rules 5-4 to Support Janus vs. Unions | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  As widely anticipated, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a law in Illinois requiring non-members of public sector unions to pay fees for the benefits they receive from collective bargaining.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use SeeSaw’s New Activity Library

  Earlier this week SeeSaw unveiled a new activity library for teachers. The new library contains more than 1500 activities that you can assign to your students in your SeeSaw classroom. You can use the activities as they are written or modify them to…

• HyperDoc Templates | HyperDocs.co

  tags:free google-slides google slides templates template presentation googleslides

• KQED

  To understand the debate that’s raging now, between the “hards” and the “softs,” you have to go back first to March 31, 1994. That’s when President Bill Clinton signed the Gun-Free Schools Act. The law mandated that if a student brought a firearm to…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Google Classroom Improvements Announced During ISTE

  The week of the annual ISTE conference is when many of the biggest purveyors of technology products unveil their latest and greatest offerings. Google is not an exception to that rule and so uses this week to showcase their latest product updates.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Beautiful AI – Create Better Slideshows

  Beautiful.AI is a neat service that helps you design better PowerPoint presentations. Beautiful.AI provides more than fifty slideshow templates that automatically adjust when you type or add media to them. Beautiful.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Complete Guide to Making Videos in Microsoft Photos

  Windows Movie Maker is no longer available for download and Microsoft now recommends using the video creation tools that are built into Microsoft Photos.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Flipgrid to Publish Instructional Videos

  In Sunday’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week I mentioned three ways to use Flipgrid now that all features are free for all users. One of those ways is to have students record and publish instructional videos. They can do this is a few ways.

• Does practice make perfect? | Learning with ‘e’s

  Does practice make perfect? Malcolm Gladwell’s claim that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is required to become world class in any field, has been challenged by a Princeton University study.

• How HyperDocs Can Transform Your Teaching | Cult of Pedagogy

  tags:hyperdocs edtech

• Virtual Reality Evolution Detailed Analysis Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  The technologies are the innovations of the previous discoveries. When the scientist discovered something for the betterment of someone, the discovery of new innovations and solutions comes up with technology for a better life. It is said that histo…

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Web Version of Google Earth Finally Gets a Measuring Tool

  Distance measurement has been a feature of the desktop version of Google Earth for as long as I have been using it. So I was surprised when it wasn’t included in the browser-based version of Google Earth that was launched last year.

• Tip of the Week: Questions, tasks, and resources. Oh, my! Covering content using the C3 IDM | History Tech

  Our current state standards have been around since 2013. Centered on five Big Ideas and a balance between content and process, the document is unlike previous standards documents.

• The Irreplaceables: What AR and AI Mean for the Future of Teaching #iste18 @coolcatteacher

  Augmented reality and artificial intelligence are on the horizon. What do they mean for education and teachers? What kinds of teachers will be irreplaceable and what kinds of teachers will lose their jobs? Today, we seek to answer this question.

• Free Technology for Teachers: SeeSaw Unveils a New Activity Library – 1500+ Activities to Use Now

  SeeSaw is a great digital portfolio tool that students can use on Chromebooks, iPads, Android tablets, and on any computer that has an updated web browser.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a Virtual Tour That Includes Audio Narration

  One of the many things that Google announced to coincide with the ISTE conference was the addition of an option to add audio to virtual reality tours created with Google’s VR Tour Creator. This is an update to the VR Tour Creator that was launched j…

• Anchoring Phenomenon and Osmosis |

  The Next Generation Science Standards recommends using anchoring phenomenon as a way to teach scientific concepts.  There’s a lot of information and ideas from NGSS Phenomena  and  Next Generation Science Storylines .

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Lesson for Beachcombers – How Seashells Are Made

  If your summer plans include going to the beach, you may be interested in a new video from Reactions about how seashells are made. In How Seashells Are Made viewers learn that seashells are made of 95% calcium carbonate and 5% protein and sugar.

• 3 Fun Ways To Improve Your Observational Skills This Summer – Smart Classroom Management

  Good teachers are observant. In fact, their students swear they have eyes in the back of their head.

• Control Alt Achieve: My 2018 ISTE Sessions

  I am excited and honored to once again present at the 2018 ISTE Conference in Chicago this June 24th through 27th. I always look forward to this opportunity to see old friends, make new friends, share some ideas, and learn so many new things from ot…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Simple Tip for Quality Posting & Consuming on Facebook

  · 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…

• 2 Questions to Focus on Long-Term Learning in Classrooms – The Principal of Change

  It is “conference season” for many educators, and I have seen the wave of “60 Tools in 60 Minute” sessions being posted online.  The promise is often made that there will be ideas that you can implement “the next day!” for your classroom. Is this a …

• A Principal’s Reflections: Backchanneling: The Why, How, and What (Best Tool)

  As I wrote previously, digital tools can support and enhance discussion among learners and adults. As a supplement to traditional discussion strategies technology can serve as a catalyst to increase engagement by getting more people actively involve…

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