Some more great blog posts from this past week:
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Free Technology for Teachers: Check It Out – CheckItOut for Google Forms is Back!
CheckItOut is a Google Forms Add-on that makes it easy to keep track of the things that you let kids borrow from your classroom. It’s an Add-on that I recommended for a couple of years until this past spring when it, like a bunch of other Add-ons, s…
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3 Things You Must Do On The First Day Of School – Smart Classroom Management
The tendency is to rush. To try and cover every policy and procedure.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a Comment Bank in Google Classroom
Google Classroom got a bunch of new features this summer. One of those is a new option to create a comment bank to use when commenting on your students’ work.
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Daily Exit Tickets with Google Forms – Mari Venturino
Around my school, I have a reputation as the techy one. My friends look at me, and know I’m about to say something like, “we need to make a Google Doc!” Somehow, within this reputation, there is a misconception that I already know everything, and I …
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Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, WA | Official Website
Skip to Main Content Wildfire Smoke Wildfire season is here and with it comes the potential for smoky air. Read More > We’re Hiring Check out our current job openings for available positions.
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My 3 Student Expectations This Year For My Digital Heroes and a Free Handout! – Teacher Reboot Camp
I recently finished two weeks of intense teacher training. I enjoyed what my district coach had to say when it came to classroom rules. She only has one expectation, which is be respectful and that covers pretty much everything when you think about …
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Control Alt Achieve: What to do About the Missing “About” Page in Google Classroom?
Recently Google rolled out some great updates for Google Classroom. You can see my earlier post for all the details here: 9 Updates for Google Classroom (and 3 more to come) As awesome as these updates are, we did end up losing one feature in the pr…
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Carbon Monoxide from the California Wildfires – The Map Room
Carbon monoxide released into the atmosphere by the California wildfires is drifting across North America in concentrations sufficient to turn up on the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
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Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ways to Display YouTube in Class Without “Related” Content
One of the questions that I’m frequently asked at the beginning of the school year goes something like this, “do you know how I can download videos from YouTube?” I do know how to do that, but I won’t teach you how to do that because it is a violati…
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Just as literacy is a part of every classroom at every grade level, writing is a powerful component of the curriculum. Writing is generative in nature and helps students uncover thoughts bubbling in their heads that haven’t reached the surface yet.
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Tip of the Week: Six sweet social studies activities for back to school | History Tech
I spent a few days in Texas last week leading some conversation around the ideas of online civic literacy, fake news, and the power of the 1st Amendment and enjoyed every minute. This week? They’re jumping into the deep end of the pool with kids. So…
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Mrs. Willyerd’s Virtual Classroom: Should I Teach the Scientific Method?
The topic of teaching the scientific method is a controversial subject among science teachers. The old scientific method teaches students that science is linear. Many text books use this simplified method of explaining the six main steps.
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: ClassDojo Portfolios
ClassDojo the widely used (free) tool for behavior management and communication for education now offers digital portfolios. ClassDojo Portfolios is a great and safe way for students to share digital stories, projects, classwork, etc.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a Backchannel Chat
For most of the last decade I recommended using TodaysMeet to create backchannel chats. In June TodaysMeet shut down. Since then I have been using Backchannel Chat to create backchannel chat rooms.
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Power Up Blended Learning: A Professional Learning Infrastructure to Support Sustainable Change |
The days and weeks leading up to a new school year are exciting. Teachers return energized, refreshed and ready to tackle another year.
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7th Grade Reading Challenge – Pernille Ripp
So much of the work we do in room 235D comes down to students discovering new facets of their reading identity. Whether it means the books they like to read, when they read, or even if they read, all of the work that comes with being a reader is pa…
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Comparing the demographics of different countries is something I do a lot of in Geography class, and there are several tools that help make that easier for students (see The Best Tools For Comparing Demographics Of Different Countries – I think Nati…
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Lessons from the “Bad” Kids – Pernille Ripp
“I think of the children who make trouble at school as miner’s canaries.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Your Next Read – Webs of Book Recommendations
Your Next Read is a site that provides you with a web of book recommendations based on the authors and books you already like. Here’s how it works; type in the title of a book you like or author you like and Your Next Read will provide you with a we…
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On Tier 1 and 2 and 3 – Pernille Ripp
For years, I couldn’t understand why my own students weren’t growing as readers. Why the same names showed up at our data meetings as kids who were failing to progress. Why some kids made the yearly growth and others sat stagnantly.
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Valerie Strauss: “Arne Duncan Never Learns” | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Valerie Strauss read Arne Duncan’s book. There is nothing Duncan did or said during his seven years as Secretary of Education that moved us beyond the stale and failed ideas in George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind. In education, W.
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Building a culture of agency… – What Ed Said
It’s exciting to see so many teachers relinquishing control and empowering their students. Stephanie in Singapore had kids do their own set up on the first day of school and the inspirational folk of Studio 5 at ISHCMC have broken yet more moulds.
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Video: “How NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Will Touch the Sun” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
I’m a high school teacher in Sacramento, CA.
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Five Ways to Boost Metacognition In the Classroom – John Spencer
We live in an era where robotics and artificial intelligence will replace many of our current jobs. Global connectivity will continue to allow companies to outsource labor to other countries. Our students will likely change jobs every five to seven …
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10 Ways to Start Shifting Your Classroom Practice
She decided to try giving students time in class to read whatever they wanted. There were no expectations other than that students learn something and share it with the class. There would be no grades because it didn’t make sense to compare projects…
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Control Alt Achieve: New Pear Deck Critical Thinking Templates for Google Slides
Pear Deck is an awesome add-on for Google Slides that lets you add interactive elements to your presentations including multiple choice, text entry, numeric entry, drawing, and draggable activities. Now Pear Deck has added a whole new set of slide t…
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Oodlu
Oodlu is a excellent new (beta) site/app for creating games that I just found out about from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. The way this works is that an educator signs up for a free account on Oodlu and then add questions to already created games.
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Check Out the Star Wars: The Last Jedi Set and Scoring Stage in Stunning 360 VR | StarWars.com
Sit alongside the orchestra as John Williams conducts. Look around the Crait trenches as cameras roll. Check out the strange beings on the Canto Bight set. Thanks to a special new video, it’s like you’re there — inside the making of Star Wars: The L…
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Control Alt Achieve: 9 Updates for Google Classroom (and 3 more to come)
When Google Classroom launched in 2014 it was immediately a valuable tool to save educators time and increase connection with students. Since then Google has continued to make updates to Classroom, bringing new features and improvements.
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ClassroomScreen which I will be using at all future learning events. ClassroomScreen basically allows me to ditch my former toolbox of presentation tools as it combines them into one nice, simple place. Just visit classroomscreen.
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A Reminder for Those Tough Moments with Students – The Principal of Change
Early in my teaching career, I remember many nights where I would come home and cry. Non-stop crying.
