Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Great blog posts from last week:

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Cute Series of Videos About Engineeering

  SciShow Kids recently published series of three videos about engineering. You wouldn’t normally associate engineering with cute, but in this case it’s an appropriate match. Like all SciShow Kids videos these are designed for elementary school studen…

• A Student’s Guide to Learning the Human Bones

  Most anatomy classes include a unit on the human skeleton. I have several disarticulated human skeletons and quite a few plastic models. Students use them to identify bones and structures on the bones.

• Student-led learning in Puerto Rico

  Staying ahead of the latest edtech can feel like a difficult task—especially in a region hit hard by the pandemic. Find out how educational technology teacher Lisvette Flores Quiñones implemented Minecraft: Education Edition for her students in Puer…

• Teachers Need a Genius Hour, Too – John Spencer

  In my hardest year of teaching, we had a toxic school culture after a leadership change. I had panic attacks in the parking lot. Eight teachers quit by December. I had a stretch of nineteen days where I had no prep period. For me, community, counsel…

• Engagement, Not Distraction: Managing Technology’s Pull in the Classroom – ASCD

• How to Use Google Forms & Microsoft Forms in Canva Designs – YouTube

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Short Lesson on the Long History of Electric Cars

  The Surprisingly Long History of Electric Cars is a new TED-Ed lesson that should be of interest to anyone who is curious about electric vehicles. The video begins with an explanation of the first electric cars and why they were overtaken by gasolin…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Canva’s Image Background Remover

  It’s not a secret that I really like the many ways that Canva can be used to create graphics, videos, presentations, and simple websites. Within any Canva template there are lots of neat editing tools including an image background remover.

• Parent Involvement vs Parent Engagement PDF by Larry Ferlazzo

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Good Source of Last-minute Halloween Games

  I mentioned this in the list of Halloween-themed resources that I shared a few weeks ago, but I thought it would be worth reminding you that Kahoot has a huge gallery of Halloween-themed games.

• Salmon study sparks controversy | Puget Sound Institute

  Occasionally, this space includes reports and essays from guest writers on the subject of Puget Sound ecosystem recovery. Biologist and author Eric Wagner has this look at the controversy surrounding a recent study of salmon numbers in the Strait of…

• Buying Parts | FLL Tutorials

• NASA’s Juno: Science Results Offer First 3D View of Jupiter Atmosphere | NASA

• Lower the Risk: When a Tweet is Just Not Enough – Classroom Powerups

• Show & Tell: A Video Column / Why Do Students Disengage? – ASCD

• Making History Relevant | Using Comics in the Classroom

  My students are currently researching and presenting revolutions across Latin America, think: Miguel Hidalgo, Jose Maria Morelos, Simon Bolivar, Jose de San Martin, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

• Student engagement critical for academic, emotional recovery | K-12 Dive

  Dive Brief: As schools aim to help students recover academically and emotionally from learning disruptions due to the pandemic, school leaders should give more weight to students’ experiences and perspectives when making instructional and programmin…

• 20 Canva templates to use in class tomorrow – Ditch That Textbook

  This post is written by Karly Moura, a teacher on special assignment (TOSA) in Mount Diablo USD in Concord, California. This post was originally published on her blog, Teaching, Tech and Twitter, at KarlyMoura.blogspot.com.

• Steve Hargadon: Thrive! Webinar: “How to Win at the Game of School: a Survival Guide for Students and their Parents and Teachers”

  “It’s true – @stevehargadon is a national treasure.” @markjotter “Steve is an amazing facilitator. He brings this wonderful combination of humility, hospitality and insight to conversations that matter in education.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Share Specific Google Earth Views and Turn Them Into Assignments

  Google Earth has a lot of great little features that sometimes get overlooked. One of those features is the ability to share a specific location and view of that location. In fact, you can share a specific location and view directly into your Google…

• How to Find Photos for Student Projects – Class Tech Tips

  Do your students use photos for projects? Although a simple Google Image Search might be a tempting way for them to find photos, it’s not the only option. In today’s blog post, I’ll talk about the benefits of making collections of photos for student…

• National School Boards Association Bows to Pressure, Withdraws Complaint About Threats and Intimidation | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  A month ago, the National School Boards Association wrote a letter to President Biden, asking for help on behalf of local school boards that were under attack and subject to threats by groups angry about masking and critical race theory.

• Cliff Mass Weather Blog: Is California Experiencing More “Weather Whiplash”?

  After the heavy rains of the past few days over central and northern California, a number of media outlets are talking about California suffering from “Weather Whiplash”, since the record precipitation this autumn follows a year of drier than normal…

• Pumpkin check-in – Google Slides

• Here Is A Great App To Copy Text from the Uncopyable (PDFs, Images, Videos, Presentations, Screenshots…) | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  TextSniper is an excellent app that I discovered in Apple’s Copy the Uncopyable. TextSniper, as its name insinuates, allows you to copy text anywhere it is found: in photos, PDFs, screenshots, websites, videos, online presentations, scanned paper do…

• Review – Batman/Fortnite: Foundation #1 – The Batman Who Games – GeekDad

  Batman/Fortnite: Foundation #1 variant cover, via DC Comics.Batman/Fortnite: Foundation #1 – Scott Snyder, Christos Gage, Donald Mustard, Writers; Joshua Hixson, Artist; Roman Stevens, Colorist Ray – 8.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Accessible Online Physics Simulations

  PhET is a service that provides free interactive math and science simulations covering topics in physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics. It has been popular with science and math teachers for many years.

• 5 Interactive Games to Help Students Explore the World’s Cultures | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  2015-Dec-23 • December 5, 2015 Today we are sharing with you some excellent Google Docs templates to use with students to create newspapers.

• Free Technology for Teachers: BookWidgets – Create Unique Online Activities for Your Students

  BookWidgets is a service for creating interactive online activities. It has been on my radar for a while and last week I finally gave it a try. I wish I had tried it sooner. BookWidgets lets you create online interactive activities for your students…

• 5 Awesome New Screencastify Features

  Screencastify is more than a screencasting tool. You can now screencast, edit, quiz, see student analytics, get feedback, and more using Screencastify. In this post, I’ll share some of the new features in Screencastify and how I’ve used it in my cla…

• Boss Assessment Standard 2 (pt1): Castle Seige – Classroom Powerups

  At the end of boss assessment #1 the students took on, and defeated, a Dragon! The dragon was defending some powerful magical sources they needed to escape an alternative reality.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Video Project for the Week – Halloween Safety

  Halloween is just seven days away. Ten days ago I shared my updated list of Halloween-themed activities and resources. In that list I included playing a Halloween safety review game from Kahoot.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Alternative Learning: Supporting Our At-Promise Students

  Long gone are the days that a one-size-fits-all education program could even be considered an effective option to meet the needs of every student.

• Classroom Games and Tech – Ed-Tech to Engage and Inspire: Two Free Math Games for Elementary Students

  It’s been a long time since I’ve posted any games on this blog. I’m glad to get back to its early origins (not to mention its name). Here are two simple games I’ve been playing with elementary students. Both of these games have some graphics to prin…

• Blended Learning: Design a Mini-playlist that Allows Students to Control the Pace of Their Learning – Dr. Catlin Tucker

  After reading Catlin Tucker’s blog post, 5 Strategies to Engage Learners Around Flipped Instruction, I was inspired to reflect on and revise a mini-unit I designed focusing on the short film Alike by Daniel Martinez Lara and Rafa Cano Méndez.

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: Fast, Fun, and Free: A Vocabulary Game

  In a recent grad school class, the professor directed us to head to the UpGoer Five Text Editor website and use the tool to write a definition for the word “molecule” using only the “ten hundred” most common words in the English language.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Great blog posts from last week:

• Fortnite maker believes Facebook and Google broke the Internet. This is Epic’s plan to fix it. – The Washington Post

• THE CIRCLE 1964 EXPLAINED | THE ARCHIVAL PANDEMIC CULT GAME – YouTube

• Mainbot Launches The First Global Education Games Metaverse with its own Cryptocurrency and NFTs

• https://www.classcraft.com/resources/blog/mood-management-theory-and-the-games-we-play/?fbclid=IwAR1p65xJ5c3-pe74Etj5C9UTvmiB71yBjacdHJqH9wrY6A2nsPIUHCLCxt0

• ‘Teachers can only ever have a small impact on their students’ results – yet they are judged as if they are 100% responsible’ | Tes News

  There is little evidence to suggest we can link the performance of a teacher to a set or sets of exam results. There is, however, plenty of evidence to suggest hereditary and environmental factors have the dominant impact. This evidence seems to be …

• Carrd – Simple, free, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything

  Simple, free, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything. Whether it’s a personal profile, a landing page to capture emails, or something a bit more elaborate, Carrd has you covered. Simple, responsive, and yup — totally free.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Adds More Audio and Video Controls to Google Meet

  This week Google announced a new feature that will be welcomed by any teacher who regularly uses Google Meet to host online classes. That feature is the ability to selectively mute participant audio and video. For quite a while you’ve been able to m…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Helpful New Feature for Formatting Google Docs

  Google Docs users who regularly create multiple page documents will be happy to learn that Google is adding a new page break feature to Google Docs. The new page break option will let you insert a page break before any new paragraph.

• Tic Tac Tell: Supporting the use of foundational content | History Tech

  One of the advantages of doing what I do is the chance to meet and talk with lots of great social studies teachers. Whether it’s traveling around doing on-site trainings or leading workshops in ESSDACK’s own facility, the opportunities to brainstorm…

• 20 ways to use Wakelet in your class – Ditch That Textbook

  The Internet is a busy place. Wakelet makes it more manageable. See how you and your students can create collections and more with Wakelet. The Internet is full of useful information … and it’s getting fuller every day. The struggle these days isn’t…

• Originals | Original Content

  Math can be a boring experience for many kids but this myViewBoard Originals –Angles (.

• How I Use @PearDeck with a @Wacom Tablet for Instruction & Active Participation for Every Student #TechWithHeart #edtech | techieMusings

  By intentionally integrating technology into lessons, teachers can give all students in the room an opportunity to share their voice and express their ideas in a format that best fits them.

• Teachers Are Barely Hanging On. Here’s What They Need. | Cult of Pedagogy

  The 2021-22 school year is off and running, and what I’ve been hearing from teachers over and over, from every corner, is that this is the worst school year ever. So much worse than 2020, which should have easily held the title for “worst year ever”…

• Classroom Games and Tech – Ed-Tech to Engage and Inspire: Simple Podcasts or Audio Recordings on Chromebooks

  I’m highlighting some projects I’m supporting as part of the Go Beyond Challenge I started in our district. The ultimate goal is to encourage and share student talent by intentionally stretching in a few specific ways. You can read about the challen…

• Texas: Insanity Erupts at School Board Meetings Over Critical Race Theory | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Under the combined influence of Donald Trump and Governor Gregg Abbott, a considerable number of Texas parents have become convinced that their public schools have become hotbeds of Marxism and malignant “critical race theory.” Any discussion of rac…

• Intrepid Ed.: Choosing Student Choice

  A blog about education, Project Based Learning (PBL), and the teaching of math and science in Kevin Gant’s courses at nex+Gen Academy.

• Fast Grading: Time-Saving Tips for Grading Efficiently – Every Teacher, Every Day

  How many hours do you spend grading per week? Five, ten? More? It’s daunting to add it up, but grading is an important part of the job.

• Free Halloween Google Slides and PowerPoint Templates for Teachers | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  2015-Dec-23 • December 5, 2015 Today we are sharing with you some excellent Google Docs templates to use with students to create newspapers.

• Gamification: Creating a Level Up for Your Students – Teacher Tech

• Class management with Collaborative Gameplay : Minecraft apply in the classroom: Collaborative Gameplay – Microsoft Educator Center

  tags:minecraft education edition charter community

• Building Community in Minecraft – Massively@jokaydia.com

• Corpse to Skeleton: The Creepy Work of Crucial Insects – Actively Learn

  Have an account?

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Share Google Arts & Culture Experiences in Google Classroom

  Last week Google Arts & Culture published a great online exhibit titled Walk the Great Wall. It’s a fantastic colleciton of Street View imagery and multimedia stories about the Great Wall of China.

• Some Helpful Math Resources for Teachers and Students | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  2015-Dec-23 • December 5, 2015 Today we are sharing with you some excellent Google Docs templates to use with students to create newspapers.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Efficacy in Professional Learning

  There are countless ways to grow and improve. At the individual level, intrinsic motivation drives educators to actively seek opportunities that support their diverse learning interests and needs.

• Creating moveable digital activities with Google Drawings + Slides – Ditch That Textbook

  A teacher sent me a link to a video recently. I think it was probably from Teachers Pay Teachers, and she asked, “How do you make something like this in G Suite?” The video showed a document with three columns and a bunch of words at the bottom. The…

• How to identify bad science in news articles | Popular Science

  In our increasingly chaotic digital age, disinformation disguised as science is rampant.

• Google Slides: Roster to Slides – Teacher Tech

  Take your roster of student names and assign them a slide in Google Slides. Each students name will appear on a slide in the newly created Google Slides. alicekeeler.com/rostertoslides is an unofficial Add-on for Google Sheets.

• 10 Effective Ways Students Can Use Google Arts & Culture to Enhance Their Cultural Literacy | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  2015-Dec-23 • December 5, 2015 Today we are sharing with you some excellent Google Docs templates to use with students to create newspapers.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

My picks from last week’s amazing blog posts:

• Free Technology for Teachers: Gary Paulsen Talks About Reading and Writing

  Gary Paulsen’s book, Hatchet was the first book that I willingly and eagerly read from cover to cover when I was in elementary school. It filled my suburban child mind with great thoughts of adventure and a little virtual escape at a time when my ow…

• Texas School Holocaust Controversy Highlights Dangers Of “Both Sides” Position | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  By now, you’ve probably heard of the Texas school administrator who told teachers if they had a book about the Holocaust in their classroom library, then they better have a book telling the other side of the topic.

• Texas: Teachers Told to Teach “Opposing Views” of Holocaust and Slavery | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  As part of the Republican effort to eliminate teaching about slavery, racism, and other injustices, the state has banned “critical race theory” and requires teaching “both sides” of controversies.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Fifteen Exit Ticket Questions for Almost Any Classroom

  This is an excerpt from this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter. The newsletter is sent every Sunday evening (Eastern Time) and it includes my tip of the week and summary of the week’s most popular posts from Free Technology for Teachers. You can s…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Life on Minimum Wage – A Personal Economics Simulation Game

  The purpose of Life on Minimum Wage is for students to recognize how difficult it is to save money when your only job(s) pay minimum wage without benefits. To win at Life on Minimum Wage the students have to reach five financial goals that they sele…

• Billy Townsend: Is the Era of High-Stakes Standardized Testing Coming to an End? | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Billy Townsend of Florida writes here about an emerging development: the end of high-stakes testing. As a candidate, Biden promised to end it, but didn’t. Now Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis says its day is done.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A New Video Editing Tool from Canva

  Canva’s new video editor includes hundreds of video creation templates designed for school projects. All of the templates can be modified as teachers and students see fit. It’s also possible to simply build a video from scratch without using a templ…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Tour the Great Wall of China – A New Google Arts & Culture Experience

  After Google announced the closure of Google Expeditions earlier this year Google Arts & Culture became the place to go to find much of the virtual imagery that was available in Expeditions. The library of imagery and stories in Google Arts & Cultur…

• 10 Habits to Help Teachers and Students Stay Positive and Engaged | Inspired Ideas

  It’s been a year, and it’s only October. From talking with other teachers, I think many of us feel like this year is even harder than last year.

• Free Technology for Teachers: My Updated List of Halloween-themed Activities and Resources

  Halloween is just a couple of weeks away. My daughters are getting excited to wear their costumes (they’re going to be Winnie the Pooh and Tigger). Their excitement reminded me that it’s time for me to publish my annual list of Halloween-themed less…

• Ask Simple Questions to Start Co-Designing Instruction with Students

  At the heart of any learner centered classroom is the co-designing of instruction by teachers and students. This can seem like a very daunting tasks at first.

• Halloween & Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos) Are Coming Up – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Halloween and The Day Of The Day are coming up this month. The Best Websites For Learning About Halloween & Day Of The Dead (I’ve just done a quick update and removed a fair number of “dead” links).

• How parents and educators can support healthy teen use of social media – MindShift

• Unreal Engine Learning HUB Private Beta (Unreal & Epic Games ISTE Session recordings!)

• Five Healthy Screen Time Habits for Distance Learning

  Children are surrounded by screens. They carry them in their pockets, wear them around their wrists, and many have had to rely on them exclusively for schoolwork during distance learning.

• Progressive choice boards: Provide choice without overwhelming – Ditch That Textbook

  Choice boards give students options for activities they do, but they can also be overwhelming. Here’s a better option. Once, when teaching high school Spanish, my students and I had finished covering a new verb tense. We practiced it. They were gett…

• The Truth About Gamification: The Ugly, The Bad And The Good – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Gamification is a little over 10 years old now, but has much really changed since its wild days of infancy? I remember when I first started getting involved in 2011, it was a time of excitement, learning and playing.

• Now Boarding Marvel’s Star Wars: Halcyon Legacy – Exclusive Reveal | StarWars.com

  The legendary Halcyon is ready to launch and you’re invited along for the ride. StarWars.com is pleased to announce Star Wars: Halcyon Legacy, a new 5-issue comic book miniseries from Marvel, debuting next year.

• The Goal: An Inclusive and Equitable Education for All

  We Need a Plan… You don’t have to be a fan of aphorisms to agree that the fearless writer and pilot, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was onto something when he said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish”.

• Present Google Slides in a Partial Screen – Jake Miller

  If you’re anything like me, you need more when you’re teaching, especially if it’s remote, hybrid, or concurrent teaching. More coffee. More time. More money in your paycheck. More aspirin. More screen space. Well, I can’t help with the first 4, but…

• Control Alt Achieve: Google’s Applied Digital Skills: 150+ Free Tech Skills Lessons for You and Your Students

  Digital skills are more important than ever for our students and for us as educators. There are loads of wonderful resources to help all of us improve our digital skills from blogs to YouTube channels to podcasts and more.

• The Difference Between Formative Assessments and Formative Assessment – The Reflective Educator

  Formative assessments are tasks selected by educators intended to help them gain insight into what children can do, know, or believe.

• ‘How to Survive a Human Attack’ is a Must Read for All Movie Monsters – GeekDad

  Did you know human attacks account for a staggering 100 percent of premature deaths for witches, swamp monsters, cyborgs, and other supernatural, mutant, and exceptionally large beings? Therefore, it is important for all monsters to gain a better un…

• 7 YouTube Tips for Teachers with a Free Download – Class Tech Tips

  Do you use YouTube in your classroom? If you follow along with me on Instagram or have listened to any episodes of my Easy EdTech Podcast, you know that I love to use multimedia.

• Assessment CAN SHIFT in Higher Education | All Things Assessment

  Assessment is at the heart of formal learning environments. Assessment practices in K-12 contexts have been the subject of significant research, especially since the late 20th century.

• Are all zeros created equally – YouTube

• Chris van der Kuyl: Minecraft can inspire next generation of digital experts

• climate-futures

  Climate Futures takes your students through a series of lessons designed by Welsh educators Kellie Williams and Barri Mock. Each lesson focuses on a different set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)and offers students an opportunity to build a c…

• Checkology – Learning Aloud

  Checkology is a great resource for educators or any individual interested in developing the skills of news literacy.

• Close Reading Strategies that Keep Kids Engaged – Not So Wimpy Teacher

  Close reading is an important skill for students to learn. Not only is it required by the Common Core standards, but it helps deepen comprehension. But close reading can be hard for students. And boring. It requires repeated reading and discussion o…

• Just-In-Time Learning – a Game-Based Approach

  The subject of game-based learning is a growing topic in education. It can often be a heated debate on whether games or game-based learning is effective in the classroom. Research has looked at what makes a game effective and what characteristics of…

• How Darkest Dungeon and Other Psychological Horror Games Make Great Use of Sanity Mechanics

  Video games often give their main protagonist a health bar, a finite resource representing their physical condition that the player must ensure remains above zero unless they want to face death.

• Refreshing My Students’ Equation Solving Skills

  This year was supposed to be a “normal” year. But we are still wearing masks, still dealing with students out for weeks at a time with COVID or quarantining from exposure to COVID. In addition, it’s just a fact – my students are needing extra help.

• 9 Teacher-Tested Ways to Build Student Ownership into Informational Reading – John Spencer

  When we think of choice-based reading, we often imagine silent reading with novels. However, we can take a student-centered, choice-based approach to non-fiction as well. In this article, we explore nine different areas of student empowerment within…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Transcribing Early Copyright Applications

  By the People is the Library of Congress project that was formerly known as the Crowd project. The name changed at some point in the last year, but the purpose of the project remains the same.

• What Is Indigenous Peoples’ Day? – HISTORY

  Since 1991, dozens of cities, several universities, and a growing number of states have adopted Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a holiday that celebrates the history and contributions of Native Americans.

• Three New Resources On Climate Change | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  How climate change is making parts of the world too hot and humid to survive is a Washington Post interactive. The Climate Action Tracker is so impressive that there is a new TED Talk about the site.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Seeking Out Feedback

  Growth is a never-ending journey. While there is no one best way to get better at what we do, I think we can all agree that feedback is a necessity no matter the path taken. For it to impact practice, it should be practical, specific, timely, and fa…

• 5 Strategies to Engage Learners Around Flipped Instruction – Dr. Catlin Tucker

  Teachers got a crash course in creating video content when schools shifted online. They relied on videos out of necessity to explain concepts and model strategies while students learned from home. As teachers transitioned back into classrooms, many …

• Instagram, adolescent girls, and the importance of evidence | @mcleod

  I’ve written on this blog before about irresponsible fearmongering when it comes to technology. It’s one thing to judiciously weigh the pros and cons when it comes to technology and our children. It’s a whole ‘nother to just throw claims out there t…

• Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Why it’s replacing Columbus Day in many places

  Columbus Day celebrations in the United States – meant to honor the legacy of the man credited with “discovering” the New World – are almost as old as the nation itself. The earliest known Columbus Day celebration took place on Oct. 12, 1792, on the…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Posts you may have missed from last week:

• Free Technology for Teachers: What Does Indigenous Mean? – And Why Some States No Longer Celebrate Columbus Day

  While I was reviewing videos about Canadian Thanksgiving YouTube displayed a suggested video from CBC Kids News. The video is simply titled The Word Indigenous and it provides an animated explanation of what the word indigenous means when referring …

• An Alternative To Time-Out – Smart Classroom Management

  The thinking is that it’s too punitive. That it’s associated with sitting in a corner and wearing a dunce cap. Setting aside for now that the way we teach it here at SCM is wholly dignified and in the student’s best interest, there is an alternative.

• Take-aways from the ‘Facebook Files’ – NetFamilyNews.org

  What a week it has been, right? At least for those of us who follow and/or use social media.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Resources for Connecting Classrooms

  Yesterday, during Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions Rushton and I answered a question about how teachers can find other classroom to connect with for collaborative learning. We came up with three suggestions. Those suggestions are explained below.

• Transform Paper Tests and Worksheets Into Interactive Quizzes Using This Handy Tool | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  A few days ago I compiled a list of EdTech tools that can help you create interactive and media rich lessons. Today’s post features another equally helpful tool to be added to this list. BookWidgets provides you with the tools to both add interactiv…

• Here Is A Great Tool to Help You Create Various Types of Forms to Use in Your Teaching | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  2015-Dec-23 • December 5, 2015 Today we are sharing with you some excellent Google Docs templates to use with students to create newspapers.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create Comics – A Four-Part MOMA Series

  From telling personal stories to summarizing historical events to illustrating creating writing over the years I’ve shared a bunch of ideas for using comics in classrooms. And I’ve shared a bunch of tools for creating comics (resources linked at the…

• Here Is A Simple Tool to Help Students Create Their Own video Games | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  2015-Dec-23 • December 5, 2015 Today we are sharing with you some excellent Google Docs templates to use with students to create newspapers.

• Giant Ed Tech

• Invasive green crabs spreading on US West Coast despite lack of genetic diversity | NSF – National Science Foundation

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Science of Cake! – And 83 Other Food Science Lessons

  Caffeine and carbohydrates are just a couple of the topics covered in TED-Ed lessons about the science of food. Here are seven TED-Ed lessons that address elements of the science of food. How Does Caffeine Keep Us Awake? explains what caffeine is an…

• Combatting the Challenges of Whole Group Lessons with Blended Learning – Dr. Catlin Tucker

  When I work with teachers shifting to blended learning, I strive to establish the WHY driving our work together. I want teachers to understand the purpose and value of the shift to blended learning. Blended learning is not a reaction to a moment.

• Control Alt Achieve: Build a Jack-O-Lantern with Google Slides and Mote

  A few years ago I created my “Build a Jack-O-Lantern” activity for Google Slides. It was a giant hit with students as it let them be creative while improving their writing skills and tech skills. With Fall here once again, I decided to revisit this …

• How Indigenous Stories Helped Scientists Understand the Origin of Three Huge Boulders | Science | Smithsonian Magazine

  This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com. The first time James Terry heard the legend of Makin Island’s three boulders was in 2012.

• nasa-fema-to-host-alliance-for-climate-action-series-in-october

  NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will co-host the Alliances for Climate Action, a virtual series to address rising demand for accurate, timely, and actionable information at a time of rapid global climate change.

• Here Is How to Use Google Drawings to Create Digital Badges | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  2015-Dec-23 • December 5, 2015 Today we are sharing with you some excellent Google Docs templates to use with students to create newspapers.

• Assessment Changes the Learner – The Reflective Educator

  In physics, there is a limitation on the measurement of particles called the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. The principle says, “the position and the velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly, at the same time” (source).

• 5 powerful things to think about when using primary sources | History Tech

  Way back in the day, there was no access to digital primary sources. There weren’t any online archives. DocsTeach? Nope. Stanford History Education Group? Nope. Library of Congress? Nada.

• psyche-mission-to-an-asteroid-electric-propulsion-comes-of-age

  When it comes time for NASA’s Psyche spacecraft to power itself through deep space, it’ll be more brain than brawn that does the work.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Small, Helpful Change to Google Slides

  Last week I shared a couple of updates to Google Docs, including watermarking documents, that teachers and students should find helpful. There was also a small update made to Google Slides last week. That update was to replace the “Present” button w…

• Blurring Videos, Blurring Images, and Other Privacy Tips

  Sharing videos and pictures can be a great way to build community and showcase the great things happening in your school. Of course, when we do this we want to do it in a way that protects and respects the privacy of students and our colleagues.

• AR Apps to Help Students Learn Human Anatomy in 3D | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  2015-Dec-23 • December 5, 2015 Today we are sharing with you some excellent Google Docs templates to use with students to create newspapers.

• Welcome, Adventurer! – Life’s an RPG

• A Principal’s Reflections: Setting the Stage for Current and Future Learner Success

  The traditional goal of any education system is to prepare students for either college or careers. Over the years, I would say that while this view still holds value, the context has changed dramatically.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Great blog posts from last week:

• Augmented Reality in Education: Apps and Lesson Ideas to Use in Class with Students | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  2015-Dec-23 • December 5, 2015 Today we are sharing with you some excellent Google Docs templates to use with students to create newspapers.

• How To Handle Students With ODD – Smart Classroom Management

  It’s popping up more and more in IEPs and 504s. Called Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), it’s marked by disobedient behavior toward authority.

• Winning After a Loss | All Things Assessment

  Educators have been inundated with news articles and media posts focused on the amount of “learning loss” that students have experienced since the requirement to close on-campus learning in March of 2020.

• How Sid Meier’s Civilization Conquered Gaming – The Atlantic

  If the point of life was simply to enjoy the moment that you’re in, we’d all be playing video games constantly. The likes of Minecraft and Zelda turn the drag of time into a silvery chute you drop into and emerge from after hours in a state of flow.

• Narrative technologies for immersive educational games

  Digital gamification opens up an new unprecedented field to implement various game worlds, which, undoubtedly, can also affect the field of education. The word “gaming” obviously defines not only overall product focus, but also the presence of mecha…

• Middle School Esports League

• Cultivating a better gamer in middle school esports – NASEF | Free High School Esports Clubs

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Google Calendar Features You Should Know How to Use

  It has been a while since I made any tutorials about Google Calendar. The user interface, particulary the user interface for background settings, has changed a bit since the last time I published a tutorial about Google Calendar.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two New Google Docs Features to Note

  This week Google announced the addition of two new features in Google Docs. Both new features will be welcomed by teachers and students. The first new feature is an increase in the size of the comments box in Google Docs.

• Pathogenika

• The Benefits of Using Moviemaking in Your Classroom with Jessica Pack – Easy EdTech Podcast 131 – Class Tech Tips

  In this episode, ISTE author and California Teacher of the Year Jessica Pack joins me to discuss bringing moviemaking into any subject area with students at any grade level.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two More Helpful YouTube Features for Teachers

  Last week I published a video in which I detailed five helpful YouTube features for teachers. After I recorded that video I thought of two more features that I should have included. Therefore, I recorded another video that is simply titled Two More …

• Future proof: Solving the ‘adaptability paradox’ for the long term | McKinsey

  Just when leaders need fresh thinking and decisiveness, they tend to fall back on tried-and-true ways. Five actions can transform your relationship with uncertainty and help you thrive. Shutdowns and supply-chain hacks. Hybrid work, remote shopping,…

• Minecraft-global-build-challenge

  Make sure you have the latest version installed. You can check your version and update if necessary with these instructions.

• Introducing DORA Explorer | Puget Sound Institute

  Whether on land or in the sea, oxygen is critical for sustaining life. Healthy ecosystems depend on it, and the amount of dissolved oxygen in marine environments is one of the ways that scientists measure water quality.

• A Principal’s Reflections: A Five-Step Process for Resolving Conflict

  When it comes to a thriving school culture, many factors can derail progress.

• Memorizing vs. Understanding in Physics

  In physics many students discover that they need to learn to understand the material rather than memorize it. This video discusses and shows examples of the differences between the two.

• Study shows that students learn more when taking part in classrooms that employ active-learning strategies – Harvard Gazette

  Co-author Kestin, who in addition to being a physicist is a video producer with PBS’ NOVA, said, “It can be tempting to engage the class simply by folding lectures into a compelling ‘story,’ especially when that’s what students seem to like.

• Design is a Contract. Whether you design physical objects… | by Caro Williams-Pierce | Sparks of Innovation: Stories from the HCIL | Medium

  Whether you design physical objects, digital experiences, or classroom curricula, your design is a contract with the users.

• Hattie effect size list – 256 Influences Related To Achievement 

  John Hattie developed a way of synthesizing various influences in different meta-analyses according to their effect size (Cohen’s d).

• Boddle Learning – 3D Math Game for K-6 Kids

  Boddle provides adaptive math practice & assessments all through a fun game. We show you which math skills your students need to practice so you can help right away. Boddle delivers just right questions to each student so that they are practicing at…

• The CDC recommends booster shots for healthcare workers and other at-risk groups | Popular Science

  On Friday, an advisory committee to the Food & Drug Administration voted unanimously in favor of providing a booster dose of the Pfizer vaccine to Americans aged 65 and older, those at high risk of severe COVID-19, and those who are at an increased …

• What to know about J&J booster shots | Popular Science

  Johnson & Johnson just released new data about a booster shot regimen for their single-dose vaccine, including important initial efficacy stats. The FDA and CDC have yet to evaluate this information, and there are still plenty of questions unanswere…

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