Another batch of great posts from this past week:
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Free Technology for Teachers: 4 Ways to Play Seterra’s Online Geography Games
Geography Awareness Week is a coming up later this month. If you find yourself looking for some geography games for your students to play, take a look at what Seterra has to offer. Seterra offers hundreds of geography games in 34 languages.
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Grateful to Hit the Reset Button – Classroom Powerups
In the B.C. years of my marriage (that is Before Children) my wife and I rocked Guitar Hero. Neither of us play guitar but ability to pretend to be rockers, enjoy the music, and just be goofy with each other got us through some tough times. We were …
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Let’s Talk About Reading Logs Again – Pernille Ripp
Let’s talk about reading logs for a moment. Yes, I know I have gone down this path before, but it bears repeating because not a week goes by without someone asking about them. Asking how they can speak to their child’s teacher about the reading lo…
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Maker Marvelous: Book Page Pumpkins
Book Page Pumpkins At the beginning of the school year I started my 9th year as a high school media specialist (14th year as a media specialist overall).
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use QR Codes to Share Animated Videos
Earlier this week I answered an email from a reader who had heard someone talk about using QR codes so that people could watch animations made by students.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Two Online Primary Source Document Activities for High School Students
Earlier this week the Library of Congress launched a new crowdsourcing project called Crowd. The project seeks volunteers to transcribe primary source documents that are available online through the Library of Congress. Crowd is similar to the Smith…
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Hey there you lovely people. I’ve decided to release a downloadable version of my Gamification Inspiration Cards as I know that the printed ones can get expensive and take ages.
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So where are we with ‘digital citizenship’ now? – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org
This week I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion in Delhi at Facebook’s South Asia Safety Summit with YLAC India (Young Leaders for Active Citizenship).
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Arizona: Parents Use Voucher Money for Personal Purchases, Not Education | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Arizona’s State Auditor identified more than $700,000 in voucher money that was mis-spent for cosmetics, music, movies, clothing, sports apparel, and other personal items. Some even tried to withdraw cash with their state-issued debit cards. The sta…
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All the World’s a Classroom: Adventures of a Crazy English Teacher: A Lesson From the Leaves
I was driving one day and noticed something that I had never noticed before. There was a row of green trees with one tree that had already turned for the fall and was bright red. These trees were obviously on different time tables.
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Classroom Games and Tech: Team Building Video Challenge for High School
Here’s a team building exercise I created for our high school video announcements team when we started the new semester. I loosely based it on a very fun, creative game we used to play, back before everyone carried around video cameras (and high pow…
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Level Up Your Talent With Gamification In Talent Management
Remember when we played Scrabble, competing to put the best words forward? The competitive streak to excel and prove your vocabulary sought to improve the proper use of words during conversations and eventually taught us to be better in communicatio…
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Two Riddles for Problem Solving
Riddles are a great way to get kids thinking logically, testing predictions, using math and even collaborating. They’re fun and often quite challenging.
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: 15 Sites for Differentiated Instruction
“Differentiated instruction and assessment (also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation) is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing students with different avenues to acquiring con…
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Math Run: Panda Chase
Math Run: Panda Chase is a super fun iOS app for grades K-5th learning basic Math skills (i.e. addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc.) This game follows the familiar “running” game-style and has students avoiding obstacles while solving Math pr…
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Modeling Collaboration | Mike Kaechele
This is the sixth and final post in a series where I flesh out why the ideal traits of a PBL teacher are important. Check out the links to the rest of the series below the post. Traditionally teaching has been an isolated occupation.
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Welcome to Meridian Stories, a national non-profit that offers schools curriculum-based ‘Challenges’ in Language Arts, History, Math and Science. Students work in teams to produce creative digital stories in response to the Challenges, and compete w…
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The Nerdy Teacher: Don’t Forget the A when talking STEM #MakerEd
One of the things that has bothered me over the years has been the dismissal of the Arts as part of an important, well-rounded education. I don’t want to think that it has been intentional, but I do know that many schools around the country will cut…
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Free Technology for Teachers: It’s Time to Change the Clocks
I’m one of those rare people who actually likes turning the clocks back in the fall. Sure, it means that it gets dark earlier, but I’m an early riser and like seeing the sun in the morning.
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Google Keep: Toggle List View – Teacher Tech
Google Keep (keep.google.com) is a note app, like Post-it ®️ notes. Make sure you have the Google Keep app on your phone. Handy when you want to make a bulleted list, to do list, or take a picture of where you parked.
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Learning From Games: Onboarding and Mario – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert
I’ve probably mentioned this in the past, but Super Mario (for me) has one of the best on-boarding experiences of any game I’ve ever played. But let’s start at the beginning.
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“‘Add More Positives’ When Your Classroom Goes South” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
A three-part series on classroom management is wrapped up by Julia Thompson, Rebecca Alber, Madeline Whitaker Good, Stuart Ablon, Alisha Pollastri, Allen Mendler, and Kelly Wickham Hurst. I’ve also included many responses from readers. I’m adding it…
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As if our students and their families don’t have enough to worry about, President Trump today added to their list of concerns when he said he would end birthright citizenship by Executive Order. The Citizenship Clause Means What It Says is from The …
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Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: The 5 Ways Tech is Shaping Humans in the Digital Age
In a presentation titled Constantly Connected – The Role of Humans in the Digital Revolution, Digital Anthropologist Rahaf Harfoush shared with attendees at the 2018 #GovTechLive Forum five ways technology is shaping humans in the digital age.
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Failing and Reflecting: 10-30-18 CPU Vlog – Classroom Powerups
Mr. Powley is a 14 year teaching veteran and is currently the dual enrollment American History teacher at the #1 ranked high school in South Carolina. For the last several years he has transformed his classroom based on the principles of game inspir…
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Insert Equations and Special Characters Into Google Documents
Here’s a question that I get a lot when I conduct on-site G Suite for Education training, “is there an easy way to add math symbols to documents?” In fact, there is an easy way to add mathematics symbols, equations, and other special characters to G…
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Google Classroom Comment Bank vs. Setting Your Preferences in Google Docs |
I was excited in August when Google Classroom got an upgrade. The feature I was most excited about was the Google Classroom comment bank.
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Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 3 Programs & 3 Strategies to Retain Millennials
Millennial expert Gabrielle Bosché spoke to attendees at the 2018 #GovTechLive forum to share advice for those wanting to retain millennial staff. If you’re an innovative educator you care about this because these are your colleagues (or yourself) a…
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Parent Communication Isn’t What It Once Was. | My Island View
In a recent #Edchat discussion we discussed whether or not schools should encourage teachers to use technology to reach out in communication with parents.
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Shapes 3D Augmented Reality Geometry Drawing App – Class Tech Tips
I’m always excited to meet folks who are passionate about educational technology. At ISTE this past June, I met Milena Piasecka a Product Manager for the company Shapes at the end of one of my sessions.
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Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Halloween Lesson Resources
Halloween is just two days away. If you’re looking for some Halloween-themed lessons, take a look at the following resources that I featured earlier this month.
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Guest Blogger: Mary Gross – Tension and Fear | CUNY Games Network
This week, we feature the first entry in a four-part series by guest blogger Mary Gross, Associate Professor of History at Marian University of Wisconsin, who has been designing games for history, political science, sociology, and first year studies…
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Schools Matter: The case against intensive phonics
Submitted to the New York Times, Oct. 26, 2018 In “Why are we still teaching reading the wrong way?” (Oct 26) Emily Hanford says the research supports systematic intensive phonics, a method that teaches all the rules of phonics in a strict order to …
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Podcasting in the Classroom? Here’s a Byte-Sized Option – Class Tech Tips
I’m not exactly sure how it started, but once I got hooked, there was no turning back. Podcasting is a powerful medium and a way to consume a wide range of content.
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What Does Improvement Science Look Like in Classrooms?
Teachers in the BMTN choose to focus on deepening their students’ abilities in one of three areas: connect, justify and solve. They are grouped with other algebra teachers at schools across New England working on the same skill.
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Embed A Google Photos Album Into A Website – The Edublogger
Google Photos is my favorite photo and video sharing and storage service. My phone is set to automatically upload photos to Google Photos in high resolution when I’m connected to WiFi.