Check these great posts from this past week:
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New BBC Video: “Leap years and why we need them” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
TheDigitalArtist / Pixabay I’m adding this new BBC video to The Best Resources For Learning About Leap Year:
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Search the Smithsonian’s Open Access Collection
Earlier this week the Smithsonian launched a new open access collection. Smithsonian Open Access contains more than 2.8 million digital artifacts that you can view and download for free.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Mixkit to Find Free Audio and Video Clips for Your Projects
Mixkit is a good place to find free video clips and audio clips to use in your multimedia projects. I wrote about it earlier this week and mentioned it on my podcast.
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Why Your Best Students Need Strict Accountability – Smart Classroom Management
Many, many teachers are in the habit of looking the other way when the top 10% of their class break a rule. It’s understandable, and certainly easy to justify. After all, the misbehavior is nearly always an accident, like quietly asking a question b…
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Black Engineer Invents Gloves That Turn Sign Language into Audible Speech
Roy Allela, a 25-year old engineer and inventor from Kenya, has found the ultimate solution to bridging the communication barrier between deaf and hearing people.
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Open Access just made me love Smithsonian more | History Tech
You all know how much I love the Smithsonian. Between their 19 brick and mortar museums, the amazing Learning Lab, the History Explorer, and their handy digital resources, it can be difficult deciding where to start. And the decision just got a bit …
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Procedures or Concepts? – The Reflective Educator
“What’s four times four?”, my son asks. “Sixteen,” I respond and then add, “How do you know that’s true?” “Hrmmm. I know four times four is the same as four plus four plus four plus four and that’s the same as eight plus eight, which is sixteen.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Three Good Ways to Create Rubrics – Tutorials Included
In my previous post I highlighted the University of Wisconsin Stout’s collection of rubrics for multimedia projects. At the end of that post I mentioned that while the rubrics might not match exactly what you need, they can be a great starting point…
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5 Tools For Supporting Project-Based Learning – Go Where You Grow
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What Really Engages Students : Current Research on Engagement
Heather Wolpert-Gawron surveyed over two thousand students from every US state and type of school to find out what engages them in learning. She discovered some surprising trends that will impact how we teach teachers to teach and how we look at a s…
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5 Reasons Using Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers is a Bad Idea
Some districts and schools use test scores to hold teachers “accountable.” But what if this practice is hurting the very kids it is trying to help.
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Tactics Used to Generate Disinformation | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog
false information spread deliberately to deceive. This is a subset of misinformation, which also may unintentional. […] misinformation refers to inaccuracies that stem from error, disinformation is deliberate falsehood promulgated by design.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Rubrics for Videos, Podcasts, Blogs, and More
Over the years I’ve referenced the University of Wisconsin Stout’s collection of rubrics for multimedia projects. It has been a few years since I last featured it so I think it’s time to highlight it again. UW Stout’s collection of rubrics is organi…
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investing-in-counselors-isnt-only-about-mental-health-its-good-for-academics-too
School counselors have long been understood as a key ingredient in college access, but the impact of counselors on student achievement has largely gone unmeasured. A recent paper from researcher Christine Mulhern, a Ph.D.
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Duolingo App: Language Learning In The Classroom For Teachers And Students
In late 2018, I read about the 50 Geniuses Companies in Time Magazine. This one caught my eye. Duolingo. An addictive language learning app.
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epic things alex did in game: Batman: Arkham City Review
Arkham City has a detailed open world map that is fun to glide and grapple around as Batman. There are some instances where you have to play as Catwoman, and running through the city as her feels like a slow trudge compared to Batman’s elegant glidi…
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Flexible Classrooms: Research Is Scarce, But Promising | Edutopia
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Why Engineering Design Might Have a Place in Your Classroom – Class Tech Tips
What does it look like to design for the future? When we talk about the skills students need for success, engineering design might not be at the top of your list… yet. If you aren’t familiar with the term, this blog post has you covered. Last year I…
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Control Alt Achieve: Write Right with Google Tools
After students have started their writing, they will want to review what they have written and make improvements. There are loads of useful tools that can help students to self-edit their writing, including text-to-speech, grammar checkers, dictiona…
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Brendan’s Game Design Portfolio: Simple Game Mechanics
Game Mechanics In game design and development class, we will be making a Rube Goldberg machine in Fortnite. We will be using simple game mechanics like levers, wheels and axles, inclined plane, wedge, pulley, and screw.
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Your students are not like you. Accept it. Teach differently. | History Tech
I had the chance to chat with a high school history teacher yesterday and as teacher conversations often do, we veered into a discussion around instructional best practices. That discussion then veered off into a more specific conversation about Gen…
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Make games!
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five-apps-students-can-use-to-make-podcasts
Karen Keating’s eighth-grade English students at Lower Dauphin Middle School in Hummelstown, Pa., fire up their laptops and gather a bundle of snowball microphones. With the click of a mouse, their laptops become studios, and they’re ready to record.
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Mixkit is a website that offers hundreds of free music files and videos that you can download to use in your multimedia projects. The licensing terms for assets on Mixkit are clear. You can download videos and audio files from Mixkit to re-use and r…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Fun and Challenging Geography Games for Students of All Ages
Over the years I’ve tried dozens of online geography games for students of all ages. Many have come and gone over the years but the following geography games are still going strong. WikiWhere is a neat map-based trivia game. The goal of the game is …
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The Nerdy Teacher: Don’t Waste Money on a Makerspace… #MakerEd
One of the things I encounter on the internet and in my travels are schools that have spent lots of money on makerspaces, but have not provided a framework of support for teachers on how to get the most out of them.
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With the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. We will collaborate with our commercial and international partners and es…
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Updated at 4:10 p.m. ET
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Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities | Science News
Nebelivka, a Ukrainian village of about 700 people, sits amid rolling hills and grassy fields. Here at the edge of Eastern Europe, empty space stretches to the horizon. It wasn’t always so.
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A Principal’s Reflections: Bookend Pedagogy
As I work with more and more schools in a coaching role, I am beginning to see specific trends emerge. Now, before I go any further, it goes without saying that I see fantastic examples of sound pedagogical practice and innovative strategies that ar…
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I don’t often promote other people, I’m a selfish git like that. However, the work of Gustavo Tondello at Gameful Bits is some of my favourite in the industry.
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Cloud Stop Motion
Cloud Stop Motion is an innovative site for creating and storing stop motion video projects. This is ideal for educators looking to integrate technology into the classroom and can be used for project based learning, digital storytelling, and more.
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MakeCode Arcade Game #1 During Game Design and Development class, I developed a game using MakeCode Arcade. MakeCode is a platform where people can make and publish games. It also helps us learn how to use block code to create games. First I complet…
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Bronny Jr. creating a better game with more sprites
TEST Tutorial I thought tutorial was pretty easy to follow as didn’t encounter troubles with just doing simple things like making him walk or move. Changing variable names of sprites I changed variable names by getting new sprites and making their n…
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The Office is on Fire – Claim, Evidence, and Elaboration – Teacher Tech
The art of the lesson plan is knowing your students and creating an engaging lesson for the students you actually teach. This is the problem with pre-made lessons from the publisher, they don’t know your students.
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CHECK the Conditional Formatting – Teacher Tech
I like to joke that the greatest invention of my lifetime is checkboxes in Google Sheets. They are SO EASY! Use the Insert menu and choose checkbox. Boom! Now when you check that checkbox, you want something to happen. How about cells light up?!
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Google Classroom: Click on the 2nd Icon – Teacher Tech
In Google Classroom when you click on student work in an assignment it opens in the feedback tool. The sidebar has 3 icons on the edge. The default is the files icon. This is where you can see what files students have submitted.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Quickly Turn a Blog Post Into a Video
Last week I published 5 Ways to Create Social Videos. In that post I included a neat tool called Lumen5 that can be used to turn blog posts or any other written text that you own into a video.
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Live Long and Prosper…: Those Third-Grade Punishment Laws
Michigan joined the Third-grade Punishment Club in 2016 during the administration of Rick, “let-them-drink-lead,” Snyder. The 2019-2020 school year is the first year that third graders can be retained-in-grade for failing a state reading test.
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Stop Timing Kids. Time Yourself! | Mike Kaechele
Many teachers use online timers as a management tool to keep students focused for a set amount of time during a specific activity. Sometimes students have to complete a task under pressure and they race furiously to get it done. Some students may fe…
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Mississippi: The Shame of a Nation | Diane Ravitch’s blog
Mississippi boasts about its gains on NAEP reading scores, but those “gains” were largely the result of holding back students who didn’t pass the third grade reading tests. It’s a form of “gaming the system,” aka cheating.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Quickly Turn a Podcast Into a Video
Earlier this month I shared Headliner as an alternative to using Adobe Spark to make videos. One of the features of Headliner that I didn’t share in that post was their tool for turning podcast episodes into videos.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Four Videos Explaining Leap Year
This year is a Leap Year and Leap Day is just a week away. Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo I recently learned about this new video from Homeschool Pop that explains Leap Year to kids. Here are three other video explanations of Leap Year. These were all fea…
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