Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some great blog posts from last week:

• Create Beautiful Newsletters for Your Class Using These Editable Ready Made Templates | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  A classroom newsletter is an important pedagogical tool that bridges classroom learning with school engagement.

• Microsoft Store Events – Minecraft Education Edition!

• #GridGames – Brave In The Attempt

  Welcome to #GridGames! Now what does that mean? Well, I’m glad you hypothetically asked. For years I have long been using games (game-based learning and gamification) to make learning deeply engaging for students and more recently doing the same for…

• becominghuman.ai

  As of today, almost every field, domain and industry has been impacted as well as transformed by AI when it comes to processing efficiency and improvement. However, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning hold considerable promise for the field…

• Mountaintop Mining Causes 40 Percent Loss of Aquatic Biodiversity | Duke Today

  DURHAM, N.C. – Trickling down over rocks, surrounded by wildflowers and ferns, Appalachian mountain streams are chock-full of life. They hold some of the world’s greatest diversity of freshwater animals, including many species that can’t be found an…

• 6-strategies-to-make-classrooms-safer-as-the-delta-variant-spreads

  It’s the kind of news story that keeps parents of school-age children up at night: Kids go to school, dutifully wear masks, and still half the class ends up infected with the coronavirus. That’s what happened this past spring at an elementary school…

• Cliff Mass Weather Blog: Why doesn’t the Pacific Northwest Get Hit by Hurricanes and Tropical Storms? And the Latest Forecast. All in My New Podcast.

  The U.S. Southeast and the East Coast have been pummelled by tropical storms and hurricanes this year, but not one has hit the West Coast. Why? If you look at a map of the historical hurricane and tropical storm tracks one notes huge numbers over th…

• A Fun Way To Improve Group Work Participation – Smart Classroom Management

  You taught your group-work expectations in exacting detail. You modeled what it should look like. You had a few students model while everyone else looked on.

• New ABC News Video: “How Do Hurricanes Form? Hurricanes Explained” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Free-Photos / Pixabay I’m adding this new ABC News video to The Best Sites For Learning About Hurricanes:

• Bruce Baker: What Does Research Say about Differences Between Spending of Charter Schools vs. Public Schools? | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Bruce Baker of Rutgers University is one of the nation’s foremost experts on school funding and spending. He reports here on the differences between charter schools and public schools.

• Time for a new quest!. Getting ready for the new school year… | by Martina Matejas | Sep, 2021 | Medium

  After two terms of Classcrafting, I abandoned it because it seemed overwhelming and time consuming at the kick-off, for the first three-four weeks. It took a lot of effort to explain what they should do, how, why, and to sign them into the Class.

• 12 Best WordPress Automation Tools and Plugins Compared

  Are you looking for the best WordPress automation tools and plugins? By automating tasks on your WordPress website, you can save time and money while growing your website traffic and business.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Good Places to Find Ideas for Makerspaces

  Hacking STEM is a Microsoft website that offers about two dozen hands-on science and engineering lessons.

• Part 1: Computational Thinking: 10 Ways To Promote | 21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning

  Welcome to part one on this series based on Computation Thinking. This first post will provide the “what” along with some steps to promote this important practice. The second post will provide a goldmine of resources to get you started with your stu…

• Steve Hargadon: Do You Know Someone Considering Homeschooling? Learn About “Hybrid Homeschooling” – Thrive! Webinar

  Hybrid Homeschool 101: What is Hybrid Homeschooling and Can I Actually Do It? Part of the LearningRevolution.com “Survive and Thrive!” Series

• Captain of a hook: 10 engaging lesson introduction ideas – Ditch That Textbook

  This post is written by Megan Diede and Kara Risby. Megan and Kara both currently teach primary at Prairie Wind Elementary in Gillette, Wyoming. They are also the founders of IntegratED LLC a framework that challenges teachers to find a new norm and…

• Countering ‘hate raids’ needs to be coordinated too – NetFamilyNews.org

  The “hate raids” on Twitch spotlight an important online safety reality: It’s increasingly a cross-platform effort. Because everything good online seems to have its bad side (and vice versa), raids are the downside of a good thing.

• We Skipped Flu Season. That’s Bad – YouTube

  SciShow is supported by Brilliant.org. Go to https://ift.tt/2gYnWTH to get 20% off of an annual Premium subscription. Some experts feared we were in for a “twindemic” during the 2020-2021 flu season. That didn’t happen, which might mean that there w…

• onlinelibrary.wiley.com

• Some wasps’ nests glow green under ultraviolet light | Science News

  Beam a black light into some Vietnamese forests at night, and brilliant green bulbs may glow in the trees.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Add Your Voice to Google Forms

  Yesterday I shared five Google Forms refreshers for the new school year. That post focused on settings that are built into Google Forms. You can do even more with Google Forms when you install Google Forms add-ons and or Chrome extensions.

• Talk Climate

  Educating. Partnering. Empowering Educating. Partnering. Empowering

• Big Educator Energy (Pt. 1) | The Jose Vilson

  Imagine putting the locus of your faith in actual people, not the ones you pretend to know or the ones you envision, but the actual people each with their own big and bold visions and ideas of the world.

• Page not found – MindShift

• unplanned-lessons-what-pandemic-education-has-taught-teachers

  Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, American educators have experienced unprecedented change and challenges. But not everything unexpected is undesirable.

• Do You Know About Secret Bitmoji’s?

  Did you know about Secret Bitmoji’s? Well, I just stumbled over them this summer and WOW! Cool! Are these new features or something we just missed? Since Bitmoji never talks to me — and I’ve Tweeted and Instagrammed them over and over for years and…

• Teach Students To Treat Their Learning Like They’re Making a Documentary – Dr. Catlin Tucker

  Learning is a dynamic process that requires active engagement. Unfortunately, many students have gotten comfortable in their roles as passive observers or consumers in the classroom. Yes, that is a less cognitively and socially taxing role, but it i…

• A Good Google Drive Tool to Create and Assign Digital Badges to Students | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  Magic Digital Badges is a Google Drive add-on that lets you create and assign digital badges to students. You can use images saved in your Google Drive to create various types of badges.

• Principal Kafele Writes: Could the Banning of Black History Month Be Next? (More CRT Madness)

  Like wildfire, the banning (and the consideration of banning) of what is called Critical Race Theory is spreading across the country in various different states to the detriment of tens of millions of children and to America overall.

• Principal Kafele Writes: “Principal Kafele, Please Refrain From Referencing CRT in Your Presentation”

  About a month ago, I wrote a blog post entitled, Critical Race Theory, Sleight (Slight) of Hand, Smoke & Mirrors (“slight” in …

• A Principal’s Reflections: The 6 Dimensions of Disruptive Thinkers

  What is really needed for success in the world today? I think this might be the million-dollar question. Even though it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict the future, we can examine current trends and societal forces to determine the compet…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

More great blog posts from this past week:

• Using Minecraft to Write Survival Fiction | Minecraft: Education Edition

  When teachers use Minecraft: Education Edition for lessons, they usually operate in creative mode so students aren’t bothered by scarcity and the business of resource gathering—not to mention monstrous mobs prowling in the night! But Canadian educat…

• Our Minecraft Club – Educational Aspirations

  My school’s first elementary Minecraft club ended this week. It’s been quite a journey since January. The club started back in January with 25 students in grades 3-5. 11 weeks later the club concluded. Mary, Tara and I sponsored the club this year.

• Teachers protest against laws restricting lessons on racism – The Washington Post

  Educators sign pledge saying they will not lie to students.

• Remote Learning with Games by Teachers | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  The popular platform Tinytap offers a wide variety of educational game-based resources to help students in their online learning. Educators are provided free access to these materials. As a teacher, simply log in to your Tinytap account, browse thro…

• Geek Out Projects: My Approach to Genius Hour and 20% Time in the Language Arts Classroom – John Spencer

  In the past, I’ve always chosen a series of ice breakers (even though it’s way outside of my comfort zone) and a History of Me project. I felt like the safest topic for a student was writing about one’s own life.

• Make/Play/Watch/Read: E3 and Video Games – GeekMom

  It’s the question on every forum this week: What’s happening at E3 2021? Will we finally see footage of the hotly anticipated Breath of the Wild 2? Will there be news on Elder Scrolls? Can Ratchet and Clank be as delightful as it looks? And is there…

• Free Technology for Teachers: More Virtual Background Options in Google Meet

  Last fall Google added options for blurring your background in Google Meet and using your own pictures as backgrounds in Google Meet. This week another background option was added to Google Meet. You can now use videos as virtual backgrounds in Goog…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ziplet – A Great Way to Gather Feedback from Students

  This morning I saw an interesting Tweet from a company called Ziplet. The Tweet is what prompted me to write this blog post. Ziplet’s Tweet this morning was an interesting exit ticket prompt. Here’s the prompt: “Imagine a classmate is absent from cl…

• Dad Deserves a Nintendo Switch: A GeekDad Father’s Day Gift Guide – GeekDad

  No matter how you slice it, this past year has been a struggle.

• Rare “ring of fire” solar eclipse captured in spectacular photos from around the world – CBS News

  Eager skywatchers across the globe were gifted a spectacular annular solar eclipse Thursday morning — and they didn’t pass up the opportunity to document it. Millions of people around the world marveled at the sight, which appeared as a glowing “rin…

• How to Spot Dyscalculia | Child Mind Institute

  Lots of kids struggle with math, but for some the difficulties go beyond a little bit of frustration. If your child’s math troubles are serious — and persistent — they may be a sign of a learning disorder called dyscalculia.

• Is Math a Feature of the Universe or a Feature of Human Creation? | Idea Channel | PBS – YouTube

  Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you

• Free Technology for Teachers: Free Summer Reading Packets from ReadWorks

  Summer is here in the northern hemisphere. If you find yourself looking for some summer reading that you can give to elementary and middle school students, ReadWorks has you covered. Once again this summer ReadWorks is offering free summer reading p…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Sources of Summer Math Activities for Elementary School Students

  If you’re like me and you still have another week or two until summer break, you might be looking for some resources to share with students and their parents to help prevent summer slide.

• Powered Up XP, Badges, and the Marvel Power Grid – Classroom Powerups

  One of my favorite gamified mechanics was the voluntary “ranking” system that was based on my son’s Karate Belt Test. In a nutshell students could voluntarily chose to demonstrate their mastery of various skills as a way to “rank up” into higher bel…

• Displaying Badges – Digital Power Grid Example – Classroom Powerups

  Badges are a good way to indicate a student’s progress. In my experience though a private badge is useless. There needs to be some sort of public display. I believe this motivation ties into the SAPS reward of Status – a powerful and engaging reward.

• International conference at UW will focus on emerging contaminants | Puget Sound Institute

  This year’s International Conference on Emerging Contaminants will be hosted virtually at the University of Washington from September 13-14 in partnership with the Center for Urban Waters, the Puget Sound Institute and the Washington Stormwater Cent…

• Perspective | Rethinking COVID-19 learning loss – EducationNC

  As an educator, it feels nearly impossible to get through a week without seeing or hearing mention of “learning loss” due to COVID-19. I understand the concern for students not being provided the opportunity to grow as they would have had this pande…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A New Flippity Game Template – Connecto!

  Flippity recently published a new game template for Google Sheets users. The new template is called Connecto. Connecto is probably best described as a digital version of the classic Connect Four game.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Four Important Padlet Updates to Note

  For more than a decade I’ve been using Padlet to facilitate online brainstorming sessions, create KWL charts, to make multimedia timelines, and to host many more online activities for more my students. Just like any well-loved tool, Padlet has gone …

• The ULTIMATE Google Slides teacher resource – Ditch That Textbook

• Pandemic teaching transitions back to classroom with lessons learned

  During the 180th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, June 8-10, Andrew Morrison from Joliet Junior College will reveal lessons learned by educators during remote teaching caused by the pandemic and what techniques they can use in the retur…

• www.aft.org

• Game Builder Garage for Nintendo Switch – Nintendo Game Details

  Ready to take the lead? Let your imagination—and curiosity—run wild in Free Programming, where the sky is the limit! Add Nodon to your programming screen and decide how they interact to bring your game to life. You can even choose the music or an ex…

• Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Why Do Students Remember Everything That’s on Television and Forget Everything I Say? | American Federation of Teachers

  How does the mind work—and especially how does it learn? Teachers’ instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such knowledge often serves us well, but is t…

• 8 High School Classroom Management Strategies That Empower Students

  New teachers — and younger ones, in particular — are often encouraged to lead with firmness, an authoritative presence, and a no-nonsense approach.

• When, where and how to see the June 10 annular solar eclipse | CBC News

  Just two weeks after the total lunar eclipse, there’s another celestial event on the horizon — but this time involving the sun.

• 6 Ways to Prepare Students for the Future with Interactive 3D [Infographic] | EdSurge News

  Interactive 3D has opened a door between worlds, allowing us to solve problems in virtual spaces and bring those solutions into the physical world that we inhabit.

• Classroom Settings – MEE

  The Classroom Settings screen includes a collection of commonly used world settings and the ability to link to an external resource like Flipgrid, Microsoft Forms, or other web tools.

• UDL and Blended Learning: Thriving in Flexible Learning Landscapes (has arrived!) – Dr. Catlin Tucker

  Today is the official launch of my newest book UDL and Blended Learning: Thriving in Flexible Learning Landscapes! I had the pleasure of collaborating with Dr. Katie Novak on this project.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Expeditions Pro – A Replacement for Google’s VR Tour Creator

  Sadly, at the end of June Google is closing the doors on Tour Creator. I’m bummed about it because it is one of my favorite creation tools. Fortunately, there are some companies working on making alternatives to Google’s Tour Creator. One of those c…

• Best Online Cyber Security Degrees for 2021

• Content or Skills, What’s More Important? | Mike Kaechele

• The 400 Years Project Looks At Native American Identity Through The Native Lens : The Picture Show : NPR

  The year 2020 marked the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s arrival from England to Plymouth Rock, Mass., a moment encapsulated with the general notion that the following year, pilgrims broke bread with the Wampanoag Tribe in an act of friendship.

• DNA Lesson Using PTC as an Anchoring Phenomenon

  Natural phenomena are observable events that inspire questions and curiosity in students. The NGSS suggests using anchoring phenomenon as ways to engage students in lessons. When I plan lessons, I try to locate phenomena that can be observable and i…

• Insects Drawing Tutorials – Step by Step : DrawingTutorials101.com

• How Big is Big? Understanding Scale in Nature | Lesson Plan

• Tech for Good – Life Below Water – Wakelet

  We built Wakelet using the latest technologies to make it faster and easier to use. Unfortunately, your browser doesn’t support those technologies.

• Emotional and Diversity Intelligence are Inseparable | Blog.SHRM.org

  How are Emotional Intelligence and Diversity intertwined with each other as we work to create healthier, more equitable, and diverse workplaces? Most of us are now aware that Emotional Intelligence matters A LOT in the workplace.

• A Journey in TEFL | Caption it!

  Some of the activities I wrote need to be updated because of the online teaching. I had written a few posts about using photos in class. Today I updated one of them. Here is a caption writing activity for the virtual classroom. The previous posts ar…

• A Principal’s Reflections: A Path to Equity

  For a very long time, we have known that an inequitable environment exists for many learners across the world. It’s no one’s fault per se but a reality, nonetheless. Even with this knowledge in hand, change has been hard to come by.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are more amazing blog posts from this past week:

• 3 Twitter Tips for Interacting – Teacher Tech

  When you start a tweet with @ it is semi-private. Rumor was they were going to eliminate the need to start a tweet with a period, but really they just made it harder to start your tweet with a period. Let me explain.

• Dungeons & Dragons had its biggest year despite the coronavirus

  As the coronavirus spread last year, people around the world were forced inside and apart from each other. For many Dungeons & Dragons players, that meant putting a stop to their regularly scheduled in-person tabletop sessions. And yet, the D&D bran…

• Video Interview on Games and History with the Arise Project | Gaming the Past

  I had the pleasure of being interviewed this past July by Vinicius Carvalho and crew with the Arise Project part of the USP Archeology and Ethnology Museum, in 2017.

• Heart Anatomy for Remote Learners

  This version of the heart anatomy labeling was designed for remote learners so they could practice on their laptops or devices. Students in the past have used paper versions of this activity.

• What is the most recent research on elementary departmentalization?

  Following an established REL-NEI research protocol, we conducted a search for research reports as well as descriptive study articles on departmentalization in elementary school grades.

• SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research

  Access to society journal content varies across our titles. If you have access to a journal via a society or association membership, please browse to your society journal, select an article to view, and follow the instructions in this box.

• Scout Archives – Stated Clearly

  As the name suggests, Stated Clearly uses “short animations” and “neutral language” to expose “people from all walks of life to the simple beauty of science.

• Arctic Lightning Has Tripled in the Last Decade | IE

  If lightning and climate change are linked, we should be paying attention.

• The Effects Of Departmentalized And Self-Contained Structures The Effects Of Departmentalized And Self-Contained Structures On Student Achievement On Student Achievement

• The Amazon Rainforest Now Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Absorbs |Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine

  Climate change and deforestation have transformed the ecosystem into a net source of planet-warming gases instead of a carbon sink The Amazon rainforest may now emit more greenhouse gases than the famously lush ecosystem absorbs, according to new re…

• SearchReSearch: Four tricks you need to know to read on Google Books

  Google Books… … you might have used it to do research. Even though it’s a resource I use all the time, this week I learned a few tricks that completely change the way I use Google Books. Here are the 4 key things that you need to know:

• Which should you choose? Scientific Method versus Engineering Design Process

  Want to learn more? Check out these other resources: Explore Our Science Videos Two-Stage Balloon Rocket Introduction Vibration & Sound: Make Sprinkles Dance Paper Roller Coasters – Fun STEM Activity!

• First known gene transfer from plant to insect identified

  The finding, reported today in Cell1, is the first known example of a natural gene transfer from a plant to an insect.

• Tom Loveless: Why Common Core Failed | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Tom Loveless is an experienced education researcher who taught sixth grade in California. He has long been skeptical of top-down solutions to classroom-level problems. In this post, he explains why Common Core failed.

• Citizen Science Month – SciStarter

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Meet Transcripts Automatically Saved as New Google Docs

  For Google Meet users one of the easiest ways to improve the accessibility of your live online instruction is to enable captions during your meetings. A transcript of those captions can be quite helpful to students who miss the meeting and or those …

• Attend Ritual Motion’s 2021 Esports College Fair Virtually – GeekMom

  Collegiate sports has a new kid in town, and they’re bringing in the opportunities our generation dreamed about. Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamt of how cool it would be to play video games through college like they get to do for other sport…

• Ritual Motion – Home

  Ritual Motion is a community-driven resource, dedicated to gamer health, wellness and inclusion. We believe that it’s not just about winning, it’s about ‘Winning Well” because as a gamer or eSports athlete you’ll be challenged, mind, body, and soul.

• avatar-maker

• Cliff Mass Weather Blog: Secret Rocket Launch. Alien Visitation, or Meteorology?

  One of the most enjoyable aspects of this blog is that readers send me cloud pictures for identification or discussion. Most can be readily explained and others require some detective work.

• Destruction of the Amazon forest very likely contributes to global warming, as accurately described in The National Geographic article – Climate Feedback

  Three scientists analyzed the article and estimated its overall scientific credibility to be ‘high’. more about the credibility rating A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Accurate, Insightful.

• Using Digital Games to Teach STEM | Filament Games

  From Flash classics like Reach for the Sun to cutting-edge VR experience Breaking Boundaries in Science, our studio has spent that past decade plus creating award-winning educational games for learners all around the globe.

• Best Science Website for Teachers – OpenSciEd Classroom Materials

  OpenSciEd Middle School Science Units OpenSciEd materials are open educational resources (OER) licensed to be free for anyone to use, share, redistribute, adapt, transform, and build upon for any purpose, even commercially.

• EarthGen – Learning sparks action

  EarthGen equips youth to grow their power as changemakers for a healthy environment. Through EarthGen’s science-based, action-oriented programs, young people gain the knowledge, skills, and experience they need to become leaders for climate solution…

• Kathy Schrock’s Kaffeeklatsch: Having fun with MockoFun!

  Designing graphics is a great way to enhance your slideshows, videos, newsletters, and more.

• My Heart: An Emotional Intelligence Primer in the Form of an Uncommonly Tender Illustrated Poem About Our Capacity for Love – Brain Pickings

  “How is your heart?” I recently asked a friend going through a trying period of overwork and romantic tumult, circling the event horizon of burnout while trying to bring a colossal labor of love to life.

• Eye Dropper Cartesian Diver | Science Experiment

  JavaScript seem to be disabled in your browser. You must have JavaScript enabled in your browser to utilize the functionality of this website.

• How Does a Venus Flytrap Work? | Wonderopolis

  We’ve learned about lots of interesting plants here in Wonderopolis. If you’ve been WONDERing with us for a while, you may know why the sensitive plant is shy. You might be able to spot a weed or poison ivy.

• How to Create Comic Strips in Google Slides – YouTube

  How to Create Comic Strips in Google Slides. Earn graduate credit while learning more about Google Slides https://ift.tt/2my9qVT…

• UW Climate & Environmental Justice FREE Course & Resources | Science for All

  Philip Bell and Nancy Price have shared a graduate course they taught at the University of Washington on Climate Justice and Environmental Justice in Education during winter quarter 2021. The entire course has a nicely organized Google Site built to…

• How to Create Your Own Online Board Game – YouTube

  Create your own online board game by customizing a Google Sheets template from Flippity.net. You game can include videos, pictures, drawings, graphs, and more. Create a game to make a fun review activity for your students.

• ‘Dancing’ fish could be key to ridding salmon farms of parasites

• accessible.games

• Home – Playmada Games

  WEB VERSION AVAILABLE FOR DESKTOP BROWSERS. Use Collisions your wayDesigned as modular and interconnected spaces, Collisions can be used flexibly in a flipped classroom, to introduce a lesson, and for extra practice or homework.

• 4 powerful ways to embed media on your Canvas homepage – Ditch That Textbook

  This post is written by Jon Kelley, bacon and coffee-loving educator in Delaware, Ohio, and 2019 Canvas National Educator of the Year. Jon is a Teaching and Learning Coach for Delaware City Schools. You can connect with Jon on Twitter @MrKelley64.

• Free Technology for Teachers: New Copyright Compliance Checks in YouTube

  Last night I uploaded a new video to my YouTube channel. Everything was normal for the first few steps. I added my description, added a custom thumbnail, and added the video to a playlist just as I normally would.

• H2O: THE MOLECULE THAT MADE US | PBS LearningMedia

• Video: “Drone flies above lava-spewing volcano in Iceland” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  In case you haven’t seen it already, I’m adding this amazing video to The Best Sites For Learning About Volcanoes:

• Pop Out Your Google Classroom Roster – Teacher Tech

  I love Google Classroom yet there are a few things I find odd that you can not do in Google Classroom. One is that you can not easily get a roster of the students in your class… in Google Sheets. Pretty much every day I want to check something off.

• during-covid-a-few-education-changes-were-for-the-better

  The closing of schools across the U.S. has been a disaster for most students, families and teachers. But in some places, educators are making things work, and even finding ideas that could outlast the pandemic and transform schooling for the better.

• create-a-rube-goldberg-machine-in-fortnite-creative

  Overview In this lesson, students will learn about simple machines, engineering, and automation as they design and build a Rube Goldberg Machine in Fortnite Creative.

• Free Technology for Teachers: MathQuiz.io – A Simple Game to Practice Math Skills

  MathQuiz.io is a new math game developed by a student. It’s a relatively simple site that presents you with a series of math problems to solve in your head then enter an answer. The problems are presented in sets of ten consecutive questions.

• Ankylosaurs dug into the ground to protect themselves, U of A paleontologist says | CBC News

  In 2008, paleontologist Phil Currie returned to a remote location in Mongolia to collect the skeleton of an ankylosaur he first came upon in 1999.

• Blended Learning: The Whole Group Rotation – Dr. Catlin Tucker

  When I work with teachers who are new to blended learning, there is often a knee-jerk concern about the time required to design a lesson that strategically blends active, engaged learning online with active, engaged learning offline.

• Day 22: UtopiaVR

  Earlier in the month, I shared Spoke by Mozilla to customize and built virtual reality spaces using Mozilla Hubs. While searching for similar platforms, I’ve come across UtopiaVR. The feature similarities are literally identical, but an assortment o…

• How To Build Resilience in Students During the Pandemic

  The disruption of regular classroom life this year brought about by the pandemic makes it really hard to tell just how our students are doing.

• She came to the U.S. with only $300 and worked housekeeping jobs to pay for school. Now she’s a flight director for NASA’s Mars Perseverance – CBS News

  When NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars last week, aerospace engineer Diana Trujillo, who is a flight director on the mission, said in an interview with CBS News that it took her some time to process that it had arrived on the red…

• 30-in-50, 2021 Edition – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog

  Here is our collection of 30 interesting’ish things we have discovered over the last year! A special shout-out to educators… you make it happen each and every day, no matter the global event!

• Export your Minecraft Education Edition Worlds – Tech with Class

  Export your Minecraft Education Edition (MC:EE) worlds so they can be shared, moved or saved. Worlds can be shared with a student or teacher, or moved from one computer to another. Exported worlds can be used as a backup to be saved to a safe drive,…

• Day 21: Assemblr Studio & EDU

  If you’ve heard about Assemblr in the past, there have been some major updates this past year. I’ve shared a few resources to create augmented reality experiences, and Assemblr Studio made it on that list.

• Approaching Student Discipline with a Teaching Mindset

  Discipline! If you asked everyone in a single school to define it, it would be hard to keep track all the different answers. To teachers, discipline may be synonymous with class management and setting up rules and consequences.

• Day 6: Spoke by Mozilla

  One of my favorite virtual reality creation tools is Spoke by Mozilla. I stumbled across this tool as I was exploring Mozilla Hubs (which was covered last year in #31DaysofARVRinEDU). As described below in my new book, The Immersive Classroom, I sha…

• A Principal’s Reflections: Differentiating in the Personalized Classroom

  I love visiting classrooms around the country to not only support but to see educators in action. In my opinion, I learn just as much, if not more, from them as they hopefully do from me.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are last week’s selection of amazing blog posts:

• Making my Class Game Voluntary – Classroom Powerups

  A constant struggle in creating a classroom game is the truism that a “game” is voluntary. As I design my class structures I attempt to build in an abundance of meaningful choices but on some level the students are required to “play the game”.

• Video: “Did an asteroid kill the dinosaurs?” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay I’m adding this new video from the American Museum of Natural History to The Best Sites For Learning About Dinosaurs:

• 19 Myths Of Managing Difficult Students – Smart Classroom Management

  There is a mountain of misinformation about how to manage difficult students. It’s on a never-ending loop.

• Climate Sense: U.S. stuck in icebox while Australia comes out of the oven | Watching Our Water Ways

  Last week, I shared stories about a record heat wave that has been causing severe fires, drought and medical emergencies in Australia. This week, I was pleased to see climatologists and meteorologists in the U.S.

• Independent & Dependent Variables |

  I have found my students have a great deal of difficulty with the concept of independent and dependent variables. Newer textbooks will now call these variables “manipulated and responding” but that still doesn’t seem to make it easier for students t…

• The 22nd Student Blogging Challenge Begins March 3 – Student Blogging Challenge

  My name is Kathleen Morris and I’ll be guiding you through the next Student Blogging Challenge with support from challenge founder, Sue Wyatt, and the Edublogs team. The ten week challenge runs twice a year beginning in March and October. The next c…

• How to Cite Sources in Google Docs | Shake Up Learning

  Did you know you can EASILY cite sources without ever leaving Google Docs? Yep! It’s so easy!

• Control Alt Achieve: The 4 C’s of Education

  Our students’ future will most likely look quite different from our past. If we want them to be successful after graduation it is critical that we help them develop the skills they will need in five, ten, or fifteen years from now.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Audio or Video in Your Sub Plans

  The other day I saw a meme that read, “a teacher never realizes how much they do until it’s written down in sub plans.” Many of the the comments written under that meme said things like, “that’s why I go in when I’m sick” and “it takes forever to wr…

• My Favorite Low Prep Review Game – History Gal

  I love review games, but I HATE spending hours to create them. Out of necessity, I came up with a couple of review games that required very little prep time on my part and would work for all of the different subjects I was teaching.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Cold Wave to Hit the Pacific Northwest With Some Lowland Snow Possible

  Some of us may have been feeling safe here in the Northwest, as extraordinary cold has hit the Midwest and the eastern U.S.. Soon we will be feeling the sting of cold temperatures and even the potential for lowland snow.

• Maker Projects – Josh Stumpenhorst

  Recently, I have been posting a great deal of content via my Instagram and twitter feeds around things our students have been creating in our library. Yet, as a follower on twitter pointed out to me recently, I really have not shared the how or why …

• New free resource for leading change: The Science Education Initiative Handbook

  For the past few years, I have been working (with my collaborator Warren Code) on a guide to help others use a productive model we’ve used at the University of Colorado Boulder to support change – embedding educational experts within departments to …

• Petition seeks upgrades to Puget Sound sewage treatment plants | Watching Our Water Ways

  An environmental group, Northwest Environmental Advocates, is calling on the Washington Department of Ecology and Gov. Jay Inslee to invoke a 1945 law in hopes of forcing cities and counties to improve their sewage-treatment plants.

• KQED

  Now, growing demand for college-trained workers has brought a powerful new voice to the chorus: businesses desperate to fill increasingly complex jobs at a time of almost nonexistent unemployment.

• Facebook’s ‘Oversight Board’ & Internet safety’s next big step – NetFamilyNews.org

  This could almost be a sidebar to what I wrote earlier this month about the new middle layer of user care that’s organically developing for the new conditions of today’s media environment – a layer of care that’s independent of government and corpor…

• Bob Shepherd: How Long Will the Love Affair with Standardized Testing Go On? | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  As a nation, we are hypnotized by standardized tests and the scores they produce. We forget that the tests and the answers are written by human beings. The tests are not objective, except for the scoring, which is done by machine.

• Study claims @ClassDojo encourages an archaic approach to school discipline – UKEdChat

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Make Room in Your Google Docs Dashboard

  One of the participants in my current Getting Going With G Suite course asked me about how to change the layout of her Google Docs dashboard. In this case we’re using dashboard to refer to what you see when you visit docs.google.com.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Sunset for Classic Google Sites Has Been Extended to 2021!

  Last year Google announced a timeline for the shutdown of the classic version of Google Sites. That announcement called for the classic version of Google Sites to come to an end at then end of this year.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog

  The coldest temperatures of the winter have hit the eastern U.S. and misinformation is now spreading around social and traditional media.

• Schools Matter: Spelling: Everything except what works

  Everything except what works Sent to the Wash Post, Jan 29 Rebecca Denn asks “In the era of spellcheck and auto-correct, does it matter that my son can’t spell?” (Letters, January 29). First, it is not clear that her son is a bad speller.

• Introduction to Gamification Part 4: Motivation (R.A.M.P, Maslow, SDT and more) – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Warning, this is one of my longest blogs ever! Now we know a bit about what games, gamification and game-based solutions are (and are not), it’s time to start to consider some of the non-game related topics you need to understand to be good at build…

• New York Times: L.A. Teachers’ Strike Was a Setback for Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  In a somewhat ambivalent article in the New York Times, Jennifer Medina and Dana Goldstein write that the L.A. teachers’ strike was a setback for charter schools. They say that in the age of Trump, charters are no longer popular with the Democratic …

• FINAL GAME

• HOME – Raffaello in Minecraft

• how-effective-sports-coaches-help-students-feel-understood-at-school

  Of course, not all coaches are effective, and some kids will take home destructive lessons and sour memories from their sports experiences. Even worse, the intimacy of the coach-athlete relationship can morph into abuse.

• 10 Perfect D&D Gifts for That Special Dungeon Master in Your Life – GeekDad

  Special occasions like Valentine’s Day are the perfect opportunity to show your Dungeon Master some love. So why not pick up one of the following D&D gifts? Let’s face it, Dungeon Masters can have a pretty rough deal.

• Presidents’ Day Is Coming Up – Here Are Related Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  President’s Day celebrates the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (though there is some confusion about the day itself).

• Resources To Help Students Develop “Knowledge Questions” For TOK Classes | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Many students and teachers come to this blog for resources related to IB Theory of Knowledge classes (you can find all my TOK resources here). What is a knowledge question? is from Theory of Knowledge Student.

• During Documentation Phase: Encourage “Capturable” Thinking | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  There are three phases for the documentation OF/FOR/AS Learning process that Janet Hale and I advocate for in our book A Guide to Documenting Learning. This blog post explores a little the “During Documentation” phase and ways to encourage “capturab…

• During Documentation Phase: Capturing Images | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  During the Documentation Phase, you might capture different media. Images are an easy and fast way to capture visible and sometimes “not so visible” evidence of learning. As with other media, there are a few things to consider to:

• 12 Tips For Maintaining Momentum With Blogging – The Edublogger

  Congratulations to all our “Get Blogging in 2019 Challenge” participants! They’ve worked hard over the last 28 days to complete the steps on our kick start calendar. This post shares 12 tips for maintaining momentum with blogging.

• Ditch Those Sub Plans

• Posters — Cool Infographics

  Need Infographics? These are infographic posters available from designers all over the world. Infographics and posters have gone together since the beginning, and I love that I can help support these design by sharing links to their work.

• Tools Overview — Cool Infographics

  The question I get asked most often is “What software do you use to design your data visualizations and infographics?” Although it’s often different for every project, here are links to some of the most popular tools used by designers all over the w…

• Cool Infographics

  Join the DFW Data Visualization and Infographics Meetup Group if you’re in the Dallas/Fort Worth area! Logos are very important for a company’s image, it needs to be simple and memorable.

• Google Slides: Teach the Polyline Tool – Teacher Tech

  A useful tool for younger (and older) students to know is the Polyline tool in Google Slides. This is a type of line creation where students click to create vertices to create shapes. Learning this tool allows students to identify things in a pictur…

• Google Sheets: Capitalize Text – Teacher Tech

  Sometimes you need your text in capital letters (or all lowercase). If your information is in a spreadsheet you can use formulas to make your text in uppercase (or lowercase). In a spreadsheet cell type =UPPER( and click on the cell that contains te…

• Educators Share How Video Games Can Help Kids Build SEL Skills | EdSurge News

• Adding Rigor to Math by @mathdiana – Teacher Tech

  Struggling with that term Rigor in your math class?  Administration and other teachers will ask “where is the rigor?”  Here is an answer for you: Rigor (noun):  the quality of being extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate.  “My class’s analysis …

• The Unexamined Game Is Not Worth Playing ? (repost) | Gaming the Past

  A bit over 8 years ago, November 2010, I wrote this essay on Playthepast.org. I referred to it a few times in a talk the other day, and thought I should repost it. The central premise holds up well and is still the core of my method using video game…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are more great resources from this past week:

• Slime Science Fair Project Ideas: Questions for slime based learning
• Teaching Responsibility or Compliance? – The Principal of Change

• Alcohol and Drug Abuse in College – Substance Addiction Statistics

• Students’ smoking- the earlier you quit smoking, the better

• “Unpaywall” Is New Tool For Accessing Research Papers For Free | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…As anyone who has tried to pursue even a little bit of academic research can attest, publishers charge an arm-and-a-leg to access studies if you are not part of an institution that subscribes to their journals. And the authors of those studies don’t…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Federal Land vs. State LandAs I write this What is Federal Land? is the #49 trending video on YouTube. It’s nice to see an educational video trending that high on YouTube. The video was produced by CGP Grey who has produced some other fantastic educational videos over the yea…

• History Nerdfest 2018: Using Structured Academic Controversy to teach 21st century skills | History TechIt ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to l…

• History Nerdfest 2018: Encouraging Historical Thinking Through Picture Books | History TechIt ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to l…

• A Little-Known Secret To Effective Teaching – Smart Classroom ManagementThere is a secret to effective teaching very few teachers are aware of. It’s so secret, in fact, that I’ve never heard anyone speak of it.

• Classroom Games and Tech: A Simple, Powerful Reflection Activity with Google DrawingsFor some recent professional development I have been focusing on thinking routines from The Visible Thinking website. One particularly powerful reflection routine caught my attention, so I created a related template for it in Google Drawings.

• History Nerdfest 2018: Unpacking color consciousness | History TechIt ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to l…

• Screenplay – Edit video as naturally as textScreenplay gives you an auto-generated transcription of all the speech in your whole video file. All you have to do next is use the familiar text editor interface to trim, cut, and rearrange text to create your brand new video!

• 8 Food Myths You Need To Stop Believing | MyFitnessPalYou can find healthy eating advice on every corner. That doesn’t mean it’s good advice, though. Nutrition research can be confusing, and it’s always changing.

• Hydrophones open a world of underwater sound to people at home | Watching Our Water WaysListening to the sound of whales in Puget Sound from your computer at home is becoming easier than ever, thanks to a new hydrophone on Whidbey Island and its connection to a more sophisticated computer network.

• History Nerdfest 2018: Fostering Civil Dialogue | History TechIt ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to l…

• History Nerdfest 2018: Civic Engagement in actual practice – handouts, resources, and rubrics | History TechIt ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to l…

• Yong Zhao’s Must-Watch Lecture on “Side Effects in Education” | Diane Ravitch’s blogThis is a video of Yong Zhao’s brilliant lecture on education reform at Wellesley College on Bovember 1. He called it “What Works May Hurt. Side Effects in Education.” He recently published a book explains this paradox. I strongly recommend this boo…

• No, Robert Pondiscio, School Choice is Not a “Moral Agenda” | Diane Ravitch’s blogYesterday, I participated in a panel discussion at the Washington Post about national issues in education with Robert Pondiscio of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Dean Bridget Terry Long of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

• Blended Learning: 8 Respectful Routines |I field a lot of questions about classroom management when I work with teachers transitioning to blended learning. Teachers worry about what will happen when they shift from whole group lessons to blended learning models that encourage student agenc…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Teaching the Constitution With Political Cartoons – Webinar RecordingDocsTeach is one of my favorite tools for building history lessons centered around primary source documents, pictures, maps, and drawings. DocsTeach contains an integrated search tool for finding artifacts from the U.S. National Archives. You can us…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Turn Text to Speech With the Voicepods Chrome ExtensionA couple of months ago I discovered a new text to speech tool called Voicepods. When I first tried it and wrote about it Voicepods would only create voice recordings based on text that you wrote.

• 8 Good Sketchnoting Apps for Teachers | Educational Technology and Mobile LearningWe are revisiting the topic of sketchnoting with an updated list of some of the best iPad apps you can use to create visually attractive sketchnotes.

• How to Multitask Like a Pro on Chromebooks: 8 Tips and TricksGoogle wants to replace your computer with an operating system that, on the surface, might seem like just a web browser. But when you want to get work done, you need those desktop-grade multitasking tools, and easily switch between multiple apps and…

• Control Alt Achieve: 8 Ways to Supercharge Google Docs with DrawingsOn the 8th day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me… 8 Docs Drawings. 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 2017…

• Development Progress #1Introduction Why, hello! My name is Felpix, and thanks for checking out my first post in my development progress for my own game, titled CrashBound. If you haven’t seen the first post, check it out at the hyperlink.

• Steve Isaacs (stevei2071) on Pinterestclasscraft story : Game in Progress – Reflection 1!Reflection #1 by Stephanie 11/30/2018 Quick Summary: The game I am creating in Minecraft is called Parcore. It is a game where you (the player), goes through a test (or a series of levels) to see if you’re a qualified parkourist.

• History Nerdfest 2018: Helping Teachers Embrace Controversial Issues | History TechI love the National Council for the Social Studies national conference. Who doesn’t? Seriously. Thousands of social studies nerds all in one place? Talking about best practice, resources, tech tools, sharing ideas, getting smarter? What’s not to lik…

• Trump Administration Warning On Climate Change | Diane Ravitch’s blogThe Trump administration released an ominous report on climate change in the middle of the Thanksgiving weekend, on a Friday at 2 pm. It hoped to bury the consensus of 17 federal agencies. But the facts won’t stay buried, no matter how much politici…

• History Nerdfest 2018: Social Studies Inquiry Made Real. Teachers as Designers | History TechI love this stuff! The Inquiry Design Model is a great way to integrate the NCSS Inquiry Arc into actual practice. This is something that we in Kansas have been struggling with since 2013. We created new state standards that focuses on finding a bal…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A New Gradebook for Google Classroom!One of the long-running complaints about Google Classroom that I and many others have had is about the nearly featureless gradebook. It appears that Google has heard those complaints and is taking some steps to improve the Google Classroom gradebook.

• A Professional Development Alternative | My Island ViewI recently attended the annual conference held by , the New York State ISTE affiliate organization. It is a favorite conference of mine, since I served as a board member of that organization for about six years. It is also both comprehensive and pro…

• History Nerdfest 2018: Spatial Analogies and Learning Geography | History TechDr. Phil Gersmehl is rocking the room with brain science and maps. His basic point: He’s using brain research to show how our brains unconsciously encode maps differently. What we remember depends on how we encode it. He highlighted some ways that t…

• Room Escape Maker – Create Escape The Room Games For FreeROOM ESCAPE MAKER is a free online application to create Escape The Room games. Build challenging casual point and click games with puzzles, hidden objects, safes with combination locks, and much more. YOU are game designer. And for free 🙂

• Great Books for Dystopian Book Clubs – Pernille RippOne choice can transform you. Beatrice Prior’s society is divided into five factions—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent).

• Control Alt Achieve: Google Tools for English Language LearnersGoogle Docs translate add-on Instead of translating an entire document, sometimes you may just need to translate a phrase or sentence. For those occasions you can use the Google Translate add-on for Docs.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google is Removing Annotations from YouTube VideosEighteen months ago Google removed the annotations editor from YouTube. Today, I logged into the YouTube editor and saw an announcement that Google is going to remove all existing annotations from YouTube videos on January 15th.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Sites in VR – The VR App for Those Without VR HeadsetsSites in VR is a free Android and iOS app that provides a 1700 virtual reality views of significant landmarks around the world. The app is a good one for those who would like to experience a bit of virtual reality without having to use a virtual rea…

• My Own Game: The Minecraft Olympics Name (s): John, Zayan, Ben, Charlie Game Title: Minecraft Olympics Genre: Action/Adventure Tool / platform you think you will use to create the game: Minecraft Storyline: In the city of Gome the Olympics have been going on for a hundred years with c…

• Homework did not prepare my daughter for college.“I give homework to my students to prepare them for college” is a common statement made by teachers that I work with and throughout the country.  According to Bill Gates’ Blog, (cnbc.

• Real teaching means real learning: Area and perimeter of a triangleAsk, “What do you notice? What do you wonder?”. After some discussion pose, if not already asked, the following questions:

• 5 Resources to Find Tons of Free Fun Unplugged Coding Activities! – Teacher Reboot CampPart of the series, Hour of Code Ideas! In a previous post I described why all students should participate in the upcoming Hour of Code event, which takes place December 3rd to 9th.

• [Mailbag] What Do You Do with the Ideas You Used to Call “Mistakes” – dy/danGuillaume Paré, in the very interesting comments of my last post where I urged us to reconsider mistakes: I do agree with what is written, but I am still wondering what I’m supposed to do with that information and the student’s copy.

• Guest Blogger: Mary Gross – Anger and Hope | CUNY Games NetworkToday we wrap up the four-part series from guest blogger Mary Gross. In this final entry, Mary describes a game in which students participate in strategic gambles that result in reallocation of resources represented by chips.

• How to build an integrated STEM lesson using Minecraft – Monash EducationAnd it all starts with searching for action verbs, write Monash’s Gillian Kidman, Roland Gesthusizen and Hazel Tan. Within the Australian curriculum, there are a number of specific cognitive skills that need to be developed in science, technology an…

• Sketchnoting How-to Sylvia DuckworthThe perfect combination of pedagogy and practice, Sylvia’s new book begins with an overview of why doodling is not just okay, it’s beneficial to the learning process.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Technology Use Is A Right, Not A PrivilegeSome traditional educators may still view student access to technology as a privilege, but it is not. Today, technology is necessary for learning to be accessible, real, and relevant in the modern world.

• A Big Reward for Writing this Blog | Diane Ravitch’s blogSeveral weeks ago, I told the story of Arnold and Carol Hillman, who retired as educators in Pennsylvania and moved to South Carolina.

• Paymon Rouhanifard: I Was Wrong About Standardized Testing and Accountability | Diane Ravitch’s blogPayman Rouhanifard was in charge of Joel Klein’s “Office of Portfolio Management” in New York City. He was appointed as superintendent of schools in Camden, New Jersey, by Chris Christie.

• ditchthattextbook.comSketchnoting in the Classroom: A Beginner’s Guide – Class Tech TipsAre you ready to try something new? Sketchnoting isn’t a new concept, but it’s gaining traction throughout education communities. Educators and students are exploring ways to capture their learning. It’s been very exciting to see the excitement arou…

• Get Started with Augmented + Virtual Reality | ARVRinEDU | Jaime Donally | Professional DevelopmentFree Technology for Teachers: Nearly 900 Free Art History Books – And an Art LessonAround this time five years ago I discovered that the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts free online art history texts. A recent Tweet from Open Culture reminded me of that collection. Today, I revisited that collection and discovered that it has expa…

• Collection: Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection – Cornell University Library Digital Collections Search ResultsStart Over Collection Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection Cornell University Library Digital Collections Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection About the collection Skip filters Cornell University Library Web Accessibility Assistance Library Resources:…

• Badass Teachers Association: BATs Statement on US Attack on Asylum SeekersThe directors of the Badass Teachers Association condemn U.S. border agent’s unjustified use of tear gas on asylum seekers this weekend in Tijuana, Mexico.

• 50 New Blog Post Ideas For Students – The EdubloggerDo your students have blogs? Or perhaps they contribute to a class blog? Enthusiasm is typically high when blogs are first set up but students may need some assistance to keep the momentum going.

• Are Rubrics Counterproductive and Limiting? | All Things AssessmentA few months ago, a young teacher, Maggie, asked me what I thought of the use of rubrics. I thought it a curious question, so I asked her why she was asking.

• A Side Quest about Side Quests! – Classroom PowerupsPlease leave me a comment so that I know you found this side quest! If you aren’t actually at my FETC Session this is going to be a side quest participants will be able to go on as I am playing a dice game with the group.

• 8 Wonderful Websites for Easy Coding Activities for Any Age or Level! – Teacher Reboot CampFirst in the series, Hour of Code Ideas! Throughout my 20 plus years of teaching I’ve integrated technology in the various subjects I’ve taught because the world needs all our learners to gain the digital skills needed to thrive, connect, and contri…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Check out these great blog posts:

• Teach Better by Doing Less – The Reflective Educator

  There are two common activities teachers do that have either little to no impact on student learning but which do take teachers a tremendous amount of time, time that could be better spent on other activities.

• NV Math Team | Math

  What is the New Visions Mathematics Curriculum?

• Augmented Reality | Hide messages in the real world | WallaMe

• Audiotool

• Timeblocks | A quick and easy Agenda Timer

• 10 Tips to Keep Pupils’ Attention – UKEdChat

• Why is Maths a Big Deal? – UKEdChat

• 10 Easy Ways to Motivate Your Students by @RichardJARogers – UKEdChat

• Insufficient sleep in children associated with poor diet, obesity and more screen time – UKEdChat

• Brickapic – Turn your pic into a brick mosaic

  tags:lego brick picture photo

• PBS LearningMedia

  tags:math maths real world resource

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Fog and Roadway Icing: The Warning of the Husky Bus Crash

  Yesterday, a bus with a number of students of the Husky Band overturned on Interstate 90 just west of the town of George, Washington (see map below) as they headed to the Apple Cup game in Pullman. A number of students sustained injuries, but thankf…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Access and Use the Blurring Tools in YouTube’s Video Editor

  This is the time of year for winter concerts and plays at schools. If the ones at your are anything like the one I attended last week, there will be plenty of parents recording the performances. And I’d guess that you or someone from your school wil…

• How Technology Helps In The Education Of Special-Needs Students – e-Learning Infographics

  Special-needs students who have, in the past, faced particular learning challenges in the classroom have benefited from the introduction of technology.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How Frost Appears on Plants – A Science Lesson

  Here in Maine we’re way past worrying about frost in the morning. That’s because we’ve already had a few snow storms. But some of you may have frost on plants in the morning. SciShow Kids has a new video all about what causes frost to appear on plan…

• Filling a Makerspace Room – Classroom Snapshots

  Wondering what to start collecting and purchasing for your STEM/STEAM makerspace room?  I started this growing list to help guide what’s added to our elementary STEAM makerspace. Do you have any additions I could make to this list?  Comment below or…

• Low streamflows have constrained the salmon migration this fall | Watching Our Water Ways

  If you are hosting out-of-town visitors this Thanksgiving weekend, it might be a good time to take them salmon-watching — or go by yourself if you get the urge to see one of nature’s marvelous phenomena.

• John Thompson: Goliath, King of the Zombies | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  John Thompson here writes about his reaction to the annual conference of the Network for Public Education, where the implicit theme was that David is beating Goliath, but Goliath just keeps stumbling forward, crushing public schools and advancing pr…

• Ditch Summit 2018 PD on Your Couch

• Free Technology for Teachers: Wakelet Now Lets You Copy and Build Upon Collections

  Wakelet is free bookmarking and note-taking service that I’ve been using since April when I started looking for alternatives to Padlet. On Wakelet you can create collection and sub-collections of notes, bookmarks, and pictures.

• Royalty Free Music by Bensound

  You can use this music for free in your multimedia project (online videos (Youtube, Facebook,…), websites, animations, etc.) as long as you credit Bensound.com (in the description for a video). For example: Music: https://ift.tt/1R9NTfT

• Free Technology for Teachers: Bensound – Free Music for Video Projects

  On Tuesday I wrote about the impending closure of the Free Music Archive. In that post I shared some other sites to find free music to use in your multimedia projects. Thanks to an email from Kari Kakeh I’ve learned about another good site to find f…

• 7 geography tools that mess with your head. Cause that’s a good thing | History Tech

  We all know that I spent a significant amount of my formative years digging through old National Geographic maps. You know the ones I’m talking about. They got slipped into the middle of the magazine and unfolded into poster size after you discovere…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Make a QR Code for Just About Anything

  This fall there seems to be a renewed interest in QR codes, at least amongst readers of this blog. In just the last two weeks I’ve answered a half dozen emails with questions related to QR codes.

• Using Technology to Humanize – The Principal of Change

  I have been an advocate of technology in education for a long time. But I have been an advocate of “people” for my entire career.

• That Isn’t a Mistake – dy/dan

  I’ve seen this particular incorrect answer from dozens of students over the last several weeks. The work for 10 and 15 marbles is incorrect, but it isn’t a mistake.

• Tweens are smart about smartphones: Study – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org

  Everything about this study is smart — the 10-14 year-old respondents (average age 11), what the authors are modeling for pediatricians and parents, and the tweens’ answers. For example, when asked what age kids should be given mobile phones, one an…

• 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.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Free Music Archive is Closing – But Not All is Lost

  For the better part of the last decade the Free Music Archive has been one of my go-to places to find free music to use video projects. Unfortunately, the end is near for the Free Music Archive.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Change Coming to Your Google Account’s Sign-in Screen

  Starting next Tuesday you might notice a small change to the sign-in screen for your Google account. The change is that you will see a box around the “email or phone number” field on the sign-in page instead of just a single line.

• what giving students choice looks like

  1. People to Work With. Give students the chance to choose whether to work independently or with another student(s). As a teacher, you can still maintain some control by giving students input.

• Three Ways You Can Improve Your Math Textbook Tomorrow – Achieve the Core Aligned Materials

  In my work as a Mathematics Specialist at Student Achievement Partners, I get the opportunity to talk to and work with educators from around the country. Often, especially in conversations with elementary school teachers, we talk about challenges wi…

• Teach Students How to Give Peer Feedback – Teacher Tech

  Peer feedback can be powerful for learning, but only if students do a good job at it. Analyze and critique can be higher critical thinking levels than doing the task in the first place. I guarantee if you ask students to give peer feedback the quali…

• Gamification, part 2

  In the previous article, I wrote about the basic motivation principles for setting up a great gamification model. In this one, I would like to tell you what I learned about failing and why it is a critical element in gamification.

• The Benefits of Gamification for Call Center Managers | Fonolo

  Attention all call center managers: It’s time to talk about you. Picture it: You are the fearless leader of a call center team in 2018.

• 20 ways to celebrate hour of code in any class

• The Nerdy Teacher: What I Learned About Literacy After I Left The English Classroom #EngChat #Literacy

  Making the decision to move from my high school English Literature and Composition job after 15 years to build a makerspace and support tech integration for teachers, was very tough. I loved working with students and helping them read and evaluate t…

• Nobody Knows Anything: Why Skipping Playtesting Is Inconceivable | David Mullich

  Last week plagued us with at least three deaths of figures in the entertainment industry.  The death of beloved Marvel Comics editor and Marvel film cameo star Stan Lee made front page news around the world.

• Atlas Obscura Shares Your D&D Maps – The Map Room

  Remember how Atlas Obscura put out a call for Dungeons & Dragons maps? They’ve received a pile of entries and are featuring two dozen of them: “[Y]our D&D maps are more incredible than we could have imagined. Every single one calls out for explorati…

• Where Apple Maps and Google Street View Will Be Driving (or Walking) Next – The Map Room

  Apple now has a fleet of cars collecting data for Apple Maps. Since they’ve been making a point about consumer privacy lately, this page lists where their cars are going to be in the coming weeks. (AppleInsider notes that some of that data collectio…

• Amusing Monday: New satellite enhances images of East Pacific region | Watching Our Water Ways

  An amazing new satellite, designed to peer down on the West Coast and Hawaii, started transmitting stunning images last week, when heavy snows blanketed parts of Alaska while California wildfires sent plumes of smoke into the air. The satellite is c…

• Showcasing Class Blogs! – The Edublogger

  Do you enjoy seeing what’s happening in other classrooms to get new perspectives and ideas? Or maybe you’re looking for other classes around the globe that your students can connect with? We’ve just updated our list of class blogs!

• Another Test? How to Plan Assessments So Students Can Learn | All Things Assessment

  Ever feel like you are giving assessments all the time? Between the pretest, post-test, quizzes, district benchmarks, state interim assessments, or other nationally normed progress monitoring assessments, when is a student supposed to learn? When is…

• Why choice matters to student learning?

  Student choice builds ownership in the learning. Student choice allows students to display their learning in the way that they feel best represents their knowledge.

• Control Alt Achieve: Adding and Using Comments on Screencastify Videos

  There are many excellent screen recording tools available, but one of my favorites is the Screencastify Chrome extension. It is simple to use, has lots of nice features, works on Chromebooks, and is free for videos up to 10 minutes long.

• Classroom Games and Tech: A Quick, Simple Google Chrome Extension for Student Video Responses

  Here’s the most popular tool I showed at the miGoogle conference recently. It’s a simple Chrome extension from Alice Keeler called Webcam Record.

• Welcome to Discovery Education Canada – Total Education Solution in Canada

  In case you missed it, check out our monthly Newsletter. We have included timely content, resources, and events to engage your students inside and outside of the classroom.

• Gamification can help education — here’s how | VentureBeat

  Teachers and parents hear it over and over again: “make learning fun” to keep kids engaged. Gamified education apps for use outside of the classroom have proliferated, leading students to expect gamification when they’re back inside of the classroom…

• A Student’s Guide to Using Google Sheets – Teacher Tech

  Using a spreadsheet is a life skill. In the real world, successful people use spreadsheets. I have created a Google Doc with 4 essential skills that if students can do just these 4 things they can use spreadsheets for assignments.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some amazing blog posts from this past week:

• 6 ways ordinary people can prevent climate change, according to researchers and advocates

  Worried about the environment? Scientists, researchers and advocates share the top changes we can make to be part of the climate change solution. In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a leading international body on climate chan…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a QR Code for a Voice Recording

  Just a few minutes ago I answered an email from a reader named Chris who wanted a recommendation on how to have students create voice recordings that play back when a QR code is scanned. My recommendation was to try Vocaroo.

• ditchthattextbook.com

• Badass Teachers Association: Linda Darling-Hammond vs. Linda-Darling Hammond – How a Once Great Educator Got Lost Among the Corporate Stooges by Steven Singer

  Linda Darling-Hammond is one of my education heroes. Perhaps that’s why her recent article in the Washington Post hurts so much.

• Different Definitions of Personalized Learning Conflict Cause Confusion

  It’s a concept grounded in the psychology of motivation, learning science and growing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). And the hype around it is blowing up. Personalized learning is the No.

• How PortfolioGen Helps Students Create Free Portfolios – Class Tech Tips

  Do your students have fantastic work to share this school year? If your students have a wide range of creations, they can help their work shine with an online portfolio. A digital space to showcase student work opens the possibilities for a wider au…

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: UDL Smackdown

  Fighting the Inertia of a Traditional Classroom

• A Grading Strategy that Puts the Focs on Learning From Mistakes

  The students get their grade a day later on PowerSchool, and they’re given opportunities to retake the test after they’ve digested their mistakes. Alcala also projects “favorite mistakes” on the board that they talk about as a class.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Tools for Creating Custom Maps Without a Google Account

  Google’s My Maps is a great tool for designing custom maps. The problem with it is that students can only save their work if they have Google accounts. If your school uses G Suite for Education that’s probably not a problem, but it is a problem for …

• Powercards: Unit 3 Items – Classroom Powerups

  For the 2018-19 School Year I have completely revamped my Power Card Items. This year I have tied the Items to my narrative. The story concept is that the students’ powers are based on the manipulation of “Primary Source Energy” and each items is ba…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: 10 Sites for Checking Plagiarism

  “Plagiarism is the “wrongful appropriation” and “stealing and publication” of another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions” and the representation of them as one’s own original work. (wikipedia)”.

• A Supreme Court Justice’s Legacy in Edtech | EdSurge News

• Pear Deck for You! – Teacher Tech

  It’s pretty universal, seeing Pear Deck and falling in love. It allows for making interactive lessons. Not only do they have really cute pear drawings, but their interface is super easy to use.

• The Future Of Education With AR – e-Learning Infographics

  Technology in education has made it possible to add a layer of enhanced reality and interactivity, this gives Teachers/tutors opportunity to make learning more realistic and immersive improving retention and deep learning.

• 3 Ways to Make Literature Real and Relevant – Class Tech Tips

  How can you make curriculum content real, relevant, and approachable? Making student-centered instruction a priority is an important place to start.

• Free Technology for Teachers: CoRubrics – An Add-on to Facilitate Assessment Among Students

  This week I am hosting guest posts. This one was authored by Jaume Feliu at the Salas i Xandri High School in Sant Quirze del Vallès, near Barcelona. More and more rubrics are coming into the classroom for assessment.

• The Importance of Definitions (and Why They Don’t Matter) – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Yep, paradoxical title alert! Recently I got into a very interesting debate on LinkedIn about the definition of Gamification. Now, I have long had my definition of gamification, one that doesn’t stray too far from the closest thing we have to a “pro…

• Mercedes Schneider: Letter Grades for Schools Are a Measure of the Families’ Income Level | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Jeb Bush had this big idea about how to hold schools accountable: Give them a letter grade based mostly on their test scores.

• What it’s Like to Teach When You Don’t Have Parent Support

  Not all of us are dealing with lawnmower parents. Maybe you read this viral article on lawnmower parents and nodded in agreement. Or maybe, like me, you read the piece and sighed ruefully, thinking, “Champagne problems.

• changing how educators see negative experiences in the classroom

  For example, a fourth-grade teacher I’ll call Jane had been teaching for nine years and was on the verge of dropping out of the profession from exhaustion. She told me, “I just don’t think I can keep this up another year.

• Google Slides Sticky Note Brainstorming Powerful Planning

• Video: “The science behind California’s surging wildfires” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Our discomfort is obviously infinitesimal compared to those who lost their homes – and their lives – due to the Camp Fire. But I have to say the constant hazardous smoke in Northern California is pretty bad, and most schools have prohibited all outd…

• Peers are Powerful

  Since the #MeToo movement, six states have introduced or passed bills to require the teaching of consent in their sex ed classes in K-12. But there’s not yet much research on what kind of education actually works to shift teens’ attitudes and action…

• Important New Video: “The Science of Racism” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The Science of Racism is a new video from YouTube’s “Creators for Change” program. I’m adding it to Revised & Updated: Useful Resources For Learning About Race & Racism.

• 25 incredibly useful things you didn’t know Google Docs could do

  tags:google docs tips shortcuts googledocs

• 7 Questions To Guide Your PBL Implementation Plan –

  tags:pbl questions guide implement implementation plan

• CPU VLOG: 11-13 Ranking Up – 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…

• Just a Little Push: Five Ideas for Intervention and Feedback | All Things Assessment

  When you are unsure, not feeling confident, and scared no one will like you, it can be hard to get started. My son, Chase, is a fifth grader, and we signed him up for a basketball camp. He went alone and didn’t know anyone. As can be predicted, he w…

• Celebrate Geography Awareness Week with Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunts – Class Tech Tips

  It’s here! This week is Geography Awareness Week, and I’m excited to share some tech-friendly ideas for exploring the world with your students. Augmented reality scavenger hunts can get your kids moving both inside and outside the classroom.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Adventures in Icelandic Schools #MakerEd #MakerMentality

  The nice part about all of this is that these skills are all transferable to all of the other classes the students attend. Maths, English, Science, etc. are all using Project Based Learning to explore ideas and the students have the skills to create…

• 25 Coding Apps For Kids Under 8 – e-Learning Infographics

  Did you know that coding can help kids develop their problem-solving and critical thinking skills? Did you know that you can introduce them to programming at a very early age? Maybe you are looking for a way to make the kids’ screen time a bit more …

• A Guide to Gamification

• Linda Darling-Hammond Vs. Ravitch and Burris on School Choice | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Carol Burris and I wrote a critique of that report, because it seems to endorse the reformers’ idea of a portfolio of charters, public schools, and other choices.

• 10 Ways To Instantly Make Your Blog Better! – The Edublogger

  Your blog might be full of inspiring ideas but are people reading your posts? Are they sticking around and returning when you publish new content? I have the pleasure of reading a lot of blogs as part of my role with Edublogs.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Why did the Catastrophic Camp Fire Start Where it Did?

  The tragic Camp Fire of northern California has killed at least 31 people, destroyed approximately 7000 structures, and basically leveled the retirement community of Paradise, California.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Edji – A Great Tool for Literacy and Critical Thinking

  This week I am welcoming some guest bloggers. This one is from Eric Hills. As a tech coach, I love spending time trying to find tools that are easy to use, can enhance student learning, and are engaging for students. Edji checks all three of those b…

• 4 Skills and Traits Great Schools Teach That Will Always be Essential – The Principal of Change

  Most educators are aware of the “Four C’s” (Critical thinking, Creativity, Collaboration and Communication) and their importance in schools for ensuring the development of today’s skills in our students ().

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Presentation Trick Innovative Educators Will Love

  · 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…

• A Principal’s Reflections: 3 Shifts to Make Learning Personal

  In education, a lesson makes or breaks a learner’s experience in a classroom. Planning takes time.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some amazing blog posts from last week:

• Math Journals: Pairing a Metacognitive Practice with Adaptive Software |

  An increasing number of school districts are investing in adaptive software to allow students to engage in personalized math practice. I often see students at the elementary level rotate through a station rotation lesson like the one pictured below.

• When Games about the Past Trouble the Present: Games and History, Accuracy, Equity, Representation, and Reality | Gaming the Past

  Over the past few months I have been mulling over some ideas for a set of talks I’m giving in the winter and spring for students, teachers, and parents on historical video games and gameplay as historying, the ways they represent the past, and the i…

• How To Avoid Losing Your Students’ Attention – Smart Classroom Management

  There is a phenomenon I see again and again in the classrooms I visit. They’ll talk and move faster as if trying to finish before completely losing the class.

• Quick Start Guide for Adobe Spark for Education – Class Tech Tips

  Creativity in the classroom is essential across grade levels and subject areas. Students can demonstrate what they’ve learned about a topic, synthesize information, and create a shareable movie, website or graphic with Adobe Spark.

• Getting Started with Applied Digital Skills – Mari Venturino

  Raise your hand if you use any Google Apps (search, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, etc.) in your personal life? It’s as simple as this blog post, which I drafted on Google Docs, and inserted images and links.

• 6 Appetite-Control Strategies that Helped Me Stop Overeating | MyFitnessPal

  It can be hard not to overeat. You eat a healthy meal at home, think you’re doing well, then you head out (to almost any destination) and are surrounded by junk food. You get hungry, and pretty soon you’re at the local burger joint, diet forgotten.

• 30 ways to make your lessons interactive

• The Changing Roles of Educators – Reading By Example

  My son did not want to practice his trumpet. He was finding anything else to do to avoid this daily task. To be honest, I felt the same way when I was in 6th grade and the novelty of playing the trumpet had worn off after about two weeks.

• GBD Compare | IHME Viz Hub

• Chart Maker for busy people | Chartify

  Chartify’s chart creator currently only supports desktop browsers.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Is Your Feedback Really Effective? – This Google Docs Add-on Will Tell You

  Anyone who has ever spent a Sunday afternoon grading essay after essay has at some point wondered, “did anyone listen when I explained homophones?” This usually happened to me around the 27th essay of the day.

• A Spelling, Grammar and Word Checker for Students – Class Tech Tips

  One of the great things about education technology is how when it is used strategically, it can provide an extra layer of support to students. If you’ve worked with students of any age, you’ve probably heard the same, “How do you spell this?” questi…

• Live Long and Prosper…: Still Teaching From the Grave

  Last month I reread Carl Sagan’s Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the brink of the Millenium. It is Sagan’s last book, published in 1997, the year after he died from the rare bone-marrow disease myelodysplasia.

• Linda Darling-Hammond vs Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris

  I recently published a post by Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris titled “Why It Matters Who Governs America’s Public Schools,” which took issue with some parts of a new report — “The Tapestry of American Public Education: How Can We Create a System of …

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Handful of Resources for Learning About Veterans Day

  This Sunday is Veterans Day (many places will observe it on Monday). The following resources can help students understand the origins and meaning of Veterans Day including how it is different from Memorial Day. Bet You Didn’t Know: Veterans Day.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Origins of Ingredients in Thanksgiving Meals

  Last week I shared three Thanksgiving-themed projects that you can do this month. Of course, I have many more Thanksgiving resources bookmarked to share with you. One of those is an interesting video from It’s Okay to be Smart titled The Surprising …

• World War I Ended On Nov. 11th One Hundred Years Ago – Here Are Related Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The centennial of the end of World War I is this weekend. You might be interested in The Best Resources For Learning About World War I.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Build a Body – An Interactive Biology Lesson

  Spend a few minutes using Build a Body and it is easy to understand why it was recognized by the National Science Foundation. In Sponge Lab Biology’s Build a Body students construct a human body system-by-system. To build a body students drag and dr…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Good Tool for Writing Reflections on Stories

  Scholastic’s Character Scrapbook offers a good template that elementary school students can use to write about and reflect on the characters in their favorite stories. The template is quite simple to use. Students enter the name of a story and the n…

• Tech Transformation: Sleep and school start times

  Since moving back to the UK I’ve been living in a village. It’s stating the obvious, I think, to say that village life is very different from living in Mumbai, a city of 22 million people. For me one of the biggest differences I’ve noticed is in the…

• 5 mistakes your kids make while thinking historically. (And how you can fix them.) | History Tech

  A big part of what I do every week involves spending time with teachers, especially social studies teachers, leading and having conversations around best practice, instruction, and assessment. And it’s almost always the best part of the week. Think …

• Personalizing the Journey for Our Students – The Principal of Change

  The key to this question is not thinking like you but thinking about your students and their point of view.

• Using Book Creator for Formative Assessment – Class Tech Tips

  What does it look like to check for understanding with digital tools? This is a question I’ve posed to teachers from different corners of the country. When speaking about the use of technology in the classroom, formative assessment is a hot topic.

• Larry Cuban: Who Says Classrooms Never Change? | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  One of the favorite lines of Faux Reformers like Bill Gates, Lauren Powell Jobs, Michelle Rhee, etc. is that American schools haven’t changed in a century, maybe two centuries.

• 3 Types Of Motivation – e-Learning Infographics

  Whether its getting to the gym, writing that personal blog post, networking with professionals developing your app and more, we always need motivation to get these things done. Sometimes it’s tough to understand what motivates us best.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Visme – Great Tools for Making Flowcharts and Mind Maps

  Visme is a graphic design tool that I’ve been using off and on for the last five years. Back when I started using Visme it was known as EWC Presenter and it was a good tool for designing slides and infographics. Recently, Visme added new flowchart d…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Knoema – Huge Collections of Data Maps and Charts

  Knoema is a service that offers a huge collection of data sets and maps for public use. Knoema offers data maps and charts for almost every country in the world. There are dozens of data categories to pick from.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How GPS Works

  From finding a place to eat in a new city to navigating a detour to geocaching, GPS is an amazing technology. But just how does GPS work? NASA’s eClips channel on YouTube has a good student-friendly explanation of how GPS works.

• Video: “World’s oldest cave paintings from 40,000 years ago discovered in Indonesia” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  I’m adding this new video (it may look like there’s nothing there, but click on it and it will play) from The Telegraph to The Best Sites For Learning About Prehistoric Cave Paintings:

• Windy: Wind map & weather forecast

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• earth :: a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions

  community EarthWindMap earth ≡ Date | Data | Scale | Source | Control | Now « – ‹ – › – » ⊕Grid▷HD Mode | Air – Ocean – Chem – Particulates – Space Height | Sfc – 1000 – 850 – 700 – 500 – 250 – 70 – 10 hPa Overlay | Wind – Temp – RH –

• Why teachers should embrace digital devices in the classroom – UKEdChat

  France’s recent decision to pass a law banning the use of cell phones, tablets and smartwatches at school for children under 15 is just the latest example of moral panic around new digital technologies, according to a University of Alberta education…

• Best Website Builders 2018 – Lab Tested Reviews by PCMag.com

  Getting your message out these days requires good helpings of Facebook and Twitter, with maybe a dash of Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr. But that’s not enough: if you want an internet presence that truly represents you or your organizati…

• Shakespeare Unlimited | Folger Shakespeare Library

• Gender myths dispelled by major new maths study – UKEdChat

  A major study into maths attainment has found that boys and girls perform equally in the subject, dispelling long-held myths around gender and education.

• A Strategy for Effective Student Collaboration | Edutopia

  To address the problem of group learning, a team must develop the ability to reflect on itself. Without intentional reflection, members of a team are unlikely to develop a collective sense of what is working and what is not, making improvement unlik…

• Microsoft MakeCode

• ‘Geek Girl’ gamers are more likely to study science and technology degrees – UKEdChat

  Girls who play video games are three times more likely to choose physical science, technology, engineering or maths (PSTEM) degrees compared to their non-gaming counterparts, according to new research from the University of Surrey Girls who play vid…

• NonExamples.com

  A B C Topic:

• All About Explorers

  © 2006–2017 All About Explorers. All rights reserved. Powered by WordPress. Designed by

• Quotes and Descriptions to Inspire Creative Writing | Discover, Share, Connect

  We are the kids nobody knows We are the kids nobody hears We are the kids nobody listens to. With tears streaming down my face, I could do nothing but sit cross-legged on the sandy shore and stare at the horizon in front of me.

• Silk – Interactive Generative Art

  To save, right click the thumbnail and choose Save Image As…. Silk was made by Yuri Vishnevsky, with music and sound crafted by Mat Jarvis.

• Ba Ba Dum

• IT IS BACK!! To-Do in Google Classroom – Teacher Tech

  One thing that has been driving me bonkers about the new design in Google Classroom is the lack of ability to see if students have submitted work. The Classwork page does not indicate that students have completed work unless I click on the assignmen…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Parts of Speech Quest

  ABCya offers hundreds of fun and educational games for elementary school kids. Parts of Speech Quest is one of the games that was recently featured on ABCya’s homepage. Parts of Speech Quest is a series of nine games that, depending upon your age, w…

• 9 Scientific Reasons Reading Makes You Smarter – e-Learning Infographics

  Other Infographics 9 Scientific Reasons Reading Makes You Smarter Infographic Be more empathetic Once in a while, readers will experience a deep sense of empathy towards fictional characters.

• Getting Into Gamification – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  First off, don’t go my route – it was long and painful! However, there are things I did that will help you to get into it all and get a great understanding of what gamification is all about.

• What The Election Results May Mean For Education | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Yesterday’s election will have a huge impact on education throughout the United States.

• English Learners in STEM Subjects | Science for All

  Overview: The National Academies just released a new consensus study report titled English Learners in STEM Subjects: Transforming Classrooms, Schools and Lives. Like other reports from The National Academies this report is free as a pdf or to read …

• NGSS Science Assessment Task Screeners | Science for All

  Overview: Achieve recently released two tools for screening and reviewing science assessment tasks- the Science Task Prescreen and the Science Task Screener. These tools will be necessary additions to your toolbox of NGSS assessment resources.

• Tip of the Week: How not to teach the Holocaust & resources for doing it right | History Tech

  Let’s be clear from the get go. It happened. We have hundreds of thousands, millions, of primary sources. We have photos. Government documents. Train timetables. Movies. We’ve got oral histories. Diaries. Letters. Court transcripts. There are prison…

• XP and Spreadsheet Pacer: CPU Vlog 11-5 – Classroom Powerups

  My class just finished up our 2nd unit and students are starting to have some clarification questions about the XP Grading System. I am going on year 5 and thankfully I have some answers! One of their biggest concerns is knowing their “grade”.

• The Dangers Of “Choose Your Own Adventure” Genre For Real & Painful Stories | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  I’m a big fan of Choose Your Own Adventure Games – both having students play them, and having them create ones. That’s why I have The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories.

• 7 Ways You Can Make Outdoor Activities Fun For Your Kids – e-Learning Infographics

  Certain lifestyle changes in recent years have influenced the way parents are raising their kids. Back in the day, children would beg their parents to go out in the yard or the playground so that they could play with their friends.

• New Report Says Corporal Punishment Doesn’t Work | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  It’s always a big mind-boggling to me when I share a new resource on corporal punishment – either at school or at home. It is 2018….

• Free Technology for Teachers: A New and Easy ClassDojo Login for Students

  Earlier this fall ClassDojo added new features to their digital portfolio tools for students and teachers. The highlight of those was the option for students to select the items that they want included in their portfolios. ClassDojo calls these stud…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Places to Find Free Music and Sounds for Multimedia Projects

  From adding music to a slideshow to adding sound effects to videos to bumper music for podcasts, there are plenty of classroom projects that require free audio files.

• Free Technology for Teachers: MyBib is Back

  The last time that I wrote about MyBib it was to report that I didn’t have any information about when it would be back online, if ever. That was exactly one month ago.

• Free Technology for Teachers: WWF Together – Revisiting a Favorite App

  The World Wildlife Fund’s Together app has been one of my favorite iPad apps since the first day that I saw it more than five years ago. The app is beautifully designed to show the stories of endangered or threatened animals around the world.

• Civic Responsibility – Reading By Example

  This post is a newsletter I am sending home to our elementary school families. Let me know what you think in the comments! -Matt

• Some Different Ideas to Increase School Sport Participation |

  If I wanted to grow my blog audience, I could probably just write about youth sports, they are typically my most popular posts with anywhere from 2X to 10X the audience as when I write about other topics.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: A Stunning Video of Arizona Monsoon Thunderstorms

  Rarely does one see a weather video so stunning, so poetic, with music and imagery so in sync, and that vividly communicates the beauty and grandeur of the atmosphere . But this week I was privileged to view such a video of southwest U.S. thundersto…

• Gamification has a dark side

  Deep under the Disneyland Resort Hotel in California, far from the throngs of happy tourists, laundry workers clean thousands of sheets, blankets, towels and comforters every day.

• Steps Teachers Can Take to Enhance Learning With Technology – Class Tech Tips

  If you’ve ever walked across a conference expo hall or scrolled through your Pinterest feed, bright and shiny technology can instantly grab your attention. Making sure a new piece of technology or compelling digital resource is a good fit for your s…

• 5 ideas for creating an interactive classroom

• Creating An Exhibition Of Learning: Sparks & Stories – The Edublogger

  All children have extraordinary stories to tell if we take the time to listen. All children have gifts and talents. Our job is to create opportunities and experiences that allow children to find themselves.

• Yes, I’m Telling You to Be Grateful for Stress – Technology Pursuit

  It’s been a stressful past two weeks. I was senior sponsor for Homecoming. We’ve had daily rehearsals for our one-act play.

• 3 Ways to Develop Leaders in Your School or Classroom – The Principal of Change

  I used to get teased mercilessly by some saying that everyone in education can be a “leader.” If you think of leadership in the traditional context, it is more about positions of authority than it is about ability.

• A Principal’s Reflections: What Learners Really Need

  A great deal has changed since I began writing this blog back in 2009. For starters, my primary device to connect on Twitter was a Blackberry. I didn’t even have a Facebook page until a year later.

• To Learn, Students Need to DO Something | Cult of Pedagogy

  I first became aware that there might be a problem a few years ago, when one of my kids was studying weather systems: high- and low-pressure systems, cold fronts and warm fronts. We were trying to help her prepare for a test and also do some sort of…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Another batch of great posts from this past week:

• 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.

• 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 …

• 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…

• 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).

• 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.

• 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…

• New Downloadable Version of the Gamification Inspiration Cards On Sale – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  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.

• 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).

• 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…

• 18 ways to go gradeless

• 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.

• 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…

• 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…

• 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.

• 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…

• 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…

• 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.

• www.meridianstories.com

  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…

• 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…

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• “‘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…

• Here Are Answers To The Question Many Teachers Will Be Asked: “Am I Still Going To Be A Citizen?” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  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 …

• 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.

• 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…

• 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…

• 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.

• 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…

• 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.

• 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.

• ghostmaster25 game design portfolio

• 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.

• 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…

• 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 …

• 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.

• 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.

• Learning with ‘e’s: Head, hand and heart

• 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.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here is another week’s bounty of great blog posts!

• The Best Sites For Learning About Daylight Saving Time | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Check out my New York Times Learning Network interactive for English Language Learners on Daylight Savings Time. Students identify word meanings, explain the context clues they used to determine them, and then respond to an informational writing pro…

• 21 Things You Should Do To Students – Smart Classroom Management

  1. Create a classroom they look forward to. 3. Be consistently kind to them.

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Easy Way to Create Your Own Captioned Flipped Video Lessons

  Two weeks ago I published a video about how to use the automatic captioning feature in Google Slides. A lot of people have asked if there is a way to download the captions that are automatically generated when you speak while presenting your slides.

• 15 innovative ideas for outside the box teaching

• Top 6 Reasons Why Students Prefer Digital Content – e-Learning Infographics

  The latest study released by McGraw – Hill Education in partnership with Hanover Research has 3000 students voice their digital preferences in college education. The infographic shows research on why students prefer digital reading over print.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Format Tables in Google Docs

  Last week Google added new ruler and margin tools to Google Docs. The new ruler that appears on the left edge of your screen can be used to format the vertical spacing of tables that you insert into Google Documents.

• the secret menu for google slides doc drawings and more

• Free Technology for Teachers: Your Life in Comics – 100 Writing Prompts from Make Beliefs Comix

  Make Beliefs Comix is a nice service on which students can create their own comics. But there is more to Make Beliefs Comix than just comic creation tools. Make Beliefs Comix offers free ebooks containing many writing prompts for students.

• Meet Synch – A Classroom Audio Tool

• Free Technology for Teachers: GeoGreeting – Send Messages Using Google Earth Imagery

  Years ago I wrote about a service called GeoGreeting. This morning I got an email that reminded me of the service so I decided to see if it still works. Sure enough GeoGreeting still works as well as ever.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Scrible Helps Students Organize and Use Research

  Scrible is a service that helps students organize their online and offline research findings. That is done through the Scrible’s website and Chrome extension. Scrible’s Google Docs add-on helps students use their research in their papers.

• New Study Shows That Researchers Don’t Always Think Through How Their Studies Can Be Misused | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The study itself is behind a paywall (there are other ways to access it), and you can read a summary here under the title Why relationships – not money – are the key to improving schools.

• Somethign went wrong…

  Having the “same” text written for different levels of English comprehension can be a life-saver for a multi-level class of English Language Learners or for a teacher with a mainstream class that includes some students that are facing other challeng…

• Text Quest: The Scarlet Letter – Google Slides

• Home

  As part of a school trip to Romania, you and your class decide to create your own side trip: Visit the Castle Poenari, where Vlad the Impaler lived–the same man who inspired Bram Stoker to write the novel Dracula.

• classtechtips.com

  How do your students keep their work organized? And are you able to give feedback to students in real time? When I first started teaching in the classroom, I remember collecting student’s notebooks at the end of the day and flipping through them to …

• Google Classroom: Step One – Organize Your Topics – Teacher Tech

  The new Google Classroom interface allows you to organize your assignments into topics. However, new topics are added at the bottom. It can be incredibly tedious to move a topic up from the bottom to the top.

• Alice Keeler and @JoBoaler #ISTE17 Talk: Google Apps with youcubed.org Math Activities – Teacher Tech

  My favorite book of all time is Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler. Truly a life changing experience for me to read it. While the title says Math, it is really a book about teaching. Every educator should read it. To say the least, I am a huge fan o…

• Hiding Easter Egg Items: 10-25 Vlog – Classroom Powerups

  Hello! Join me as I hide some of my physical Easter Eggs through my school building. I began this last year and wasn’t planning on continuing this year but several current students had heard about the game and began asking when I would be hiding car…

• Map of Indigenous Canada Accompanies People’s Atlas – The Map Room

  The map accompanying the Indigenous People’s Atlas of Canada is a map of Indigenous Canada: as iPolitics’s Anna Desmarais reports, “Dotting the map are the names of Indigenous languages, including Cree and Dene, and the geographical location where e…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Find and Modify Halloween Games in Kahoot

  Halloween is only seven days away. If you’re an elementary school teacher, you might be planning to do some trick o’ treating safety reviews with your students. Playing Kahoot games is a fun way to review almost anything including Halloween safety.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Create Digital Scavenger Hunts With Flippity’s New Google Sheets Template

  Flippity is a site that offers great Google Sheets templates that you can use to make flashcards, timelines, and games. The latest game template added to Flippity is a scavenger hunt template.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Kids Health in the Classroom – Guides & Resources for K-12

  Kids Health in the Classroom is a great place to find lesson plans, videos, and games for teaching personal health topics to students of all ages.

• The neuroscience of play, games, and learning (and why Fortnite might not be so bad) @coolcatteacher

  Dr Dave Neale is a researcher in the psychology of play and learning at the Centre for Play, Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) at The University of Cambridge. Today he talks about the neuroscience of play, games, and learning in the classr…

• Fitoons Healthy Eating and Exercising App for Kids – Class Tech Tips

  My friends at Avokiddo made a big announcement today! They just released Fitoons, a new educational app with the goal of helping kids eat healthy and exercise each day. Fitoons can help students develop healthy eating habits and discover ways to add…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Help Students Address a Garden of Emotions with QR Coded Book Featuring Innovative Wellness Technique

  Before educators can help students get to the learning, we must first ensure we help students feel good about themselves.

• 8 Tips for Carving an Amazing Pumpkin From the “Pumpkin Guru” – GeekDad

  You may remembering seeing Jon Neill on the Food Network’s “Halloween Wars” or sculpting squash in a Snickers ad or carving pumpkins on Nickelodeon or the Hallmark Channel, but you most certainly have seen his work as one of the most recognized pump…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two New Ways for Kids to Create Stories on WriteReader

  WriteReader is one of my favorite tools for elementary school students to use to create multimedia stories. The outstanding feature of the service is the option for teachers to write corrections directly beneath a students’ original writing in their…

• Guest Blogger: Kathleen Offenholley – Quick Games for Any Subject | CUNY Games Network

  This week’s guest blogger is the CGN Steering Committee’s own Kathleen Offenholley, Associate Professor of Mathematics at BMCC (Borough of Manhattan Community College). Her post offers ideas of quick games for any subject using the elements of rando…

• Media minds need new ways to inform people about climate change | Watching Our Water Ways

  The headline on Margaret Sullivan’s column captures the urgency of the moment: “The planet is on a fast path to destruction. The media must cover this like it’s the only story that matters.” Margaret writes about media issues for the Washington Post.

• The Full Measure of a Teacher: Using value-added to assess effects on student behavior – Education Next : Education Next

  When students look back on their most important teachers, the social aspects of their education are often what they recall.

• Gaming The Classroom – The Art And Science Of GBL: Game Based Learning – e-Learning Infographics

  Over 60% of learners say leader boards and competition would motivate them. 80% of learners would be more productive if learning was more game-like. 97% of teachers use digital games created for educational use.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Taking Off and Landing in Dense Fog: A Miracle of Technolgy

  On Sunday, I flew out of Sea-Tac on a flight that took off around 8 AM. The region was covered in dense fog and the horizontal visibility at Sea-Tac Airport was reported at .12 miles (630 ft) at 1453 UTC (7:53 AM)–see below for hourly reports.

• November 11th Is Veterans Day – Here Are Related Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  November 11th is Veterans Day (recognized as Remembrance Day or Armistice Day in Great Britain and in other countries to specifically remember those who fought in World War I). I’ve just updated The Best Websites To Learn About Veterans Day.

• Free Technology for Teachers: ClassTools SMS Generator – Text Messages Between Historical Figures

  Last week I wrote about three ways that students can create social media profiles for historical and literary characters. Writing that post reminded me of the Classtools Fake SMS Generator.

• Free Technology for Teachers: PicLits – Using Pictures to Inspire Creative Writing

  PicLits is an excellent site for finding creative writing prompts. PicLits aims to provide inspiration for writing short stories. PicLits tries to reach this goal by providing users with images upon which they can build their writing.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Zap Zap Math

  Zap Zap Math is an excellent new mobile (iOS/Android) app for Math grades K-6th. ZZM focuses on a lot different topics such as: addition/subtraction, multiplication, geometry, and more. All of this is done in a fun game based learning environment.

• Control Alt Achieve: Make Mondrian Art with Google Sheets

  Although you might not recognize the name, you most likely will recognize the look. Mondrian Art is an abstract form of art that uses a creative layout of squares and rectangles, often filled in with primary colors.

• Sacrificing Character Ally Cards: Strategic Classroom Thinking – Classroom Powerups

  As part of my Battle Mechanics: Skirmishes system students can earn “Enthralled Allies”. These are historic character cards and up to this point I had a vague notion that these would have an impact in my class game but wasn’t exactly sure how. I hop…

• The Adventure Blog: Video: Hiking Boots vs. Trail Runners –– Which is Best for You?

  I get asked all the time whether I prefer trail running shoes or hiking boots when heading out for the trail. It turns out, the answer to that question isn’t easy, as it depends on the trail, the length of the trip, the terrain and weather condition…

• The Future Proof Educator

• Making a Plan for Student Engagement with Tech-Friendly Strategies – Class Tech Tips

  What does student engagement truly look like? And are we making it a priority when entering classrooms and leading lessons? As an educator who now spends time in other teachers’ classrooms, I think about this topic often.

• Twitch, Yubo & online safety innovation with an ancient ‘tool’ – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org

  As geeky as “content moderation” sounds, we’re hearing about it more and more these days – in podcasts, at conferences, in books and in hearings. People all over the U.S.

• The Nerdy Teacher: The Dog Days of Fall for Teachers #EdChat

  The Fall part of the school year can be tough on teachers for many reasons.

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: Escape to Flippity.net

  I’ve written several times about the amazing free tools at Flippity.net. In fact, when I am looking for a way to get people interested in spreadsheets, I almost always use Flippity because once people see the variety of the tools, and how easy it is…

• Video: “The History of Trick or Treating” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay I’m adding this new video from Reading Through History to The Best Websites For Learning About Halloween:

• Environmental volunteers needed in Kitsap County | Watching Our Water Ways

  I thought I would offer a quick note on some volunteer opportunities in Kitsap County, based on an email from WSU Kitsap County Extension.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Meaningful Learning Begins and Ends with the Opportunities We Create

  Learning hasn’t really changed, but the conditions that impact and influence it has.

• What Are the Best Ways to Use Leveled Texts? | Cult of Pedagogy

  This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. A few weeks ago, a teacher named Isabelle O’Kane sent me a direct message on Twitt…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here some of this week’s amazing blog posts:

• 21 Things You Should Never Do To Students – Smart Classroom Management

  Effective classroom management is as much about what you don’t do. As it is about what you do.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: The Winter Transition is Imminent

  It is like falling off a meteorological cliff. And it happens every year. The transition to winter weather in the Pacific. It is a real meteorological curiosity.

• Machine Teaching, Machine Learning, and the History of the Future of Public Education

  These are my prepared remarks, delivered on a panel titled “Outsourcing the Classroom to Ed Tech & Machine-learning: Why Parents & Teachers Should Resist” at the Network for Public Education conference in Indianapolis. The other panelists were Peter…

• Innovation in Education – Reading By Example

  I walked into a classroom that was modeling the story structure process. The teacher had provided one-word sentence starters as a guide. The students were using this structure to organize a personal narrative in their writing journals.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create Storyboard Templates in Google Slides or PowerPoint

  Creating a storyboard is an excellent way for students to plan video projects. Storyboards provide a frame-by-frame outline of the plot of a video.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Make Social Media Profiles for Historical and Literary Characters

  Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who was looking for a way that her students could create fake Facebook and other social media profiles based on historical and literary characters.

• Gaming Association of Manitoba Educators – Keynote » edurealms.com

  Wow.  200+ educators in one place to explore all things related to games and learning!!  Thank you @gametolearnmb for organizing an incredible event!  I wish I could be physically present to hang out with you all (y’all as we say, ’round here) and l…

• 12 must have teamplates for teachers and students

• Legal settlement could help protect salmon eggs incubating in gravel | Watching Our Water Ways

  Washington Department of Ecology has agreed to take steps to protect wild salmon eggs incubating in gravel by developing entirely new water-quality standards to control fine sediment going into streams.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Set Start and End Times for Videos in Google Slides

  This morning I answered an email from a reader who had a question about ytCropper. The link ytCropper link for her cropped video wasn’t working in Google Slides. My solution was to not use ytCropper and instead just use the built-in formatting tools…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Why Have Students Make Simple Animations?

  Last week I wrote about having middle school students create presentations from a combination of illustrations and videos that they made. In that post I shared Brush Ninja animation tool. That’s just one of many tools that students could have used t…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Beautiful weather produces noisy mornings!

  Yesterday morning I received an email from blog reader Emily Vilbrant wondering about an increase of train noise during the morning hours. Distant trains sounded unusually loud and clear. Emily asked if I might have an explanation. And I have been n…

• Virtual Reality Employee Training Is Here. Should You Adopt?

  Imagine a world in which new hires can practice running through chaotic Black Friday scenarios without interacting with actual customers and potentially harming your brand.

• Metacognition Hyperdoc – Mari Venturino

  This year I’m doing something entirely crazy with my AVID class–I’m going (mostly) gradeless! It’s a bit scary, seeing as I have to report grades each six weeks. So, my solution is to have students keep a portfolio, then reflect on their progress an…

• Class Rules Focus Poster in Rainbow Colors – Mrs. Harris Teaches…

  The classroom rules focus poster I created was originally designed in blue and green. Although my classroom color scheme has always been blue and green, other teachers have different color palettes. With that in mind, I created several different col…

• The Moral Imperative of Sharing | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  We are all on our own learning journey. All of us have different experiences and backgrounds. Some of us have been reflecting on the paradigm shift in education longer than others.

• Equal Earth Gets a Wall Map – The Map Room

  It was announced today at NACIS that the Equal Earth projection is now available as a wall map—which is a necessary thing if it’s going to go toe-to-toe with the Peters map.

• how dungeons dragons primes students for interdisciplinary learning including stem

  “Dungeons & Dragons, and other narrative role playing games of its kind, provide many opportunities for learning,” said Simkins. “Participation in narrative role play can open up interests in topics such as mathematics, science, history, culture, et…

• A-Frame – Make WebVR

  A web framework for building virtual reality experiences Make WebVR with HTML and Entity-Component Works on Vive, Rift, Daydream, GearVR, desktop Get Started Supported by

• Getting started with VR

  As I attend conferences and education events, the topic that seems to be on everyone’s lips is augmented and virtual reality. After doing some research, I wanted to see what it would take to introduce AR / VR into the classroom. I found a tool calle…

• How Many Ways Can You Write 27 + 8? – Teacher Tech

  Rule, after you find the solution whatever way you want, you have to do it another way. Too often we focus on algorithm procedures rather than number sense or place value.

• EDU in 90 – YouTube

  EDU in 90 is a new video series from Google for Education. Each episode, we’ll focus on an important topic for educators, administrators, and school leaders – things like product updates, new programs, and helpful resources for the classroom.

• 8 Halloween Reads to Make Your October Spooktacular

  In this collection of Halloween reads there’s something for kids, teens, and adults, whether you prefer your October filled with silliness, spooks, or full-on scares.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A New LOC Online Collection – Theodore Roosevelt’s Papers

  I have always found Theodore Roosevelt to be one of the most fascinating characters in U.S. History. That is why I was excited this morning when I saw an email from the Library of Congress announcing the online publication of Theodore Roosevelt’s pa…

• Single-point rubrics and Checkmark make your life easier & your kids smarter | History Tech

  We’ve all been there. You just finished putting together a great instructional lesson or unit. Kids are gonna love it. They’re working together. Doing research. Creating stuff, not just consuming it. The historical thinking will be off the charts. T…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: GameBuilder

  GameBuilder is an excellent site for game based learning that I just found out about from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. Not only can an educator find any number of games on a wide range of subjects they can also select a template and create their own game.

• Dancing Robots & More | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Robots at Work and Play is a photo gallery from The Atlantic.

• Free Technology for Teachers: JotForm – A Better Way to Create Online Forms

  If you have ever looked at a form on a web page and thought, “I’d like my forms to look like that,” then JotForm is the service you need to try. JotForm is a service for making fillable online forms.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Money-Saving Facebook Setting Phone Providers Don’t Want You to Know

  If you have Facebook on your phone, you may have noticed that videos automatically play. If you are not connected to WiFi this eats up your data. Here’s what my data looks like: When talking with some colleagues we were discussing this and found out…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Design a Custom Certificate in Google Slides

  On Monday I shared tutorials for two ways to send personalized certificates via Google Forms and Google Sheets. What I didn’t include in those tutorials was how to create a custom certificate without using the default certificate template found in G…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Wakelet Makes it Easier to Organize Bookmarks

  Wakelet is quickly becoming a popular choice amongst teachers who want to create collections of notes that can include text, videos, links, and pictures. Students can use it for the same purpose and share their collections with their teachers.

• Turn School Permission Forms into PDFs with JotForm – Class Tech Tips

  Collecting and keeping track of permission forms can be an organizational headache for schools. As you work to leverage the power of technology in your school, you can combine online data entry with traditional PDF files.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A New Vertical Ruler and New Margin Settings in Google Docs

  Google has added two new formatting features to Google Docs. First, there is now a vertical ruler that you can use to evenly space the rows in tables in your Google Documents. Second, you can now adjust the size of the margins in your headers and fo…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Case Maker – Civics Lessons Built on Primary Sources

  Case Maker is a free service designed for middle school social studies teachers and their students. Case Maker uses primary sources from the Library of Congress as the basis of activities in which students have to build a case in response to real ci…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Unhangout

  Unhangout is an interesting new site from MIT for creating events/backchannel chats, that I just found out about from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog.

• Reflections on Situated Learning vs. The Traditional School System |

  The more I learn about situated learning theory, developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, the more I find myself reflecting on the sharp contrast between authentic learning and the design of traditional schools and curriculum.

• Stop Collecting Papers – Classroom Powerups

  I am trying to get better at my click-bait titles. How did that one sound? The only thing better would be if I could get a Listicle title in there – 5 Ways to Stop Collecting Papers… Maybe next week.

• Atomic Habits: How to Easily Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones – Hack Learning

  Thanks so much for stopping by Hack Learning. Please join others like you who have decided to become a Master Teacher. Grab your copy of the 10 Habits of Master Teachers presentation now. Click on the form below, enter your email, and you’ll have 10…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Halloween Articles for ELA Lessons

  ReadWorks is a popular service that offers a huge library of standards-aligned ELA lesson plans for K-12. You can search the ReadWorks library according to grade level and topic. Throughout the year ReadWorks publishes curated collections to align w…

• TED-Ed Launches Cool New Animated Poetry Video Series | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  TED-Ed is launching a weekly video series of animated poetry. The first one is only available on Facebook right now, and it’s embedded below. I assume they’ll soon start showing them on their regular YouTube channel.

• Video: “Deepfake Videos Are Getting Real and That’s a Problem” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  GDJ / Pixabay I’m adding this new video to The Best Tools & Lessons For Teaching Information Literacy – Help Me Find More:

• New Video: “The Origins of Halloween” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  QuinceMedia / Pixabay I’m adding this new Reading Through History video to The Best Websites For Learning About Halloween:

• Notable Books, Notable Lessons: Putting social studies back into K-8 | History Tech

  Full confession. Elementary kids freak me out. They’re sticky. They smell funny. And they throw up. All the time. Seriously. All the time. Every day.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Elementari

  Elementari is a wonderful new site for digital storytelling and project based learning that I just found out about from Larry Ferlarzzo’s excellent blog.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How I Found a Google Earth File of 550+ Ancient Greek Places

  Last night on Twitter Wes Fryer asked me if I knew of any Google Earth files that displayed ancient Greek locations. I didn’t have anything within my own bookmarks so I did a quick Google search that I filtered according to file type. I first filter…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Import Files Into Google Earth

  In my previous post I shared the steps that I took to find a Google Earth file that contains more than 550 ancient locations in ancient Greece. At the end of the video in that post I demonstrated how I was able to display those locations in Google E…

• Control Alt Achieve: 360 Degree Learning with Google Tour Creator

  Google has a rich history of creating map-related tools that can be used across all subject areas for engaging, immersive learning experiences. Some of these include Tour Builder, Earth, Expeditions, My Maps, and many more (see my slideshow on Googl…

• The Golden Age of Podcasting

• Free Technology for Teachers: New Ways to Personalize Certificates in the Certify’em Google Forms Add-on

  Certify’em is a Google Forms Add-on that I have been using all year to issue certificates when people complete one of my professional development webinars or courses. Certify’em makes it easy to have certificates automatically emailed to people when…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Send Personalized Certificates via Google Forms or Google Sheets

  From perfect attendance to volunteerism to honor roll there are lots of occasions during the school year for schools to issue certificates to students.

• The Ultimate Guide To Twitter 2018

  Most educators who learn to use Twitter effectively say they learn more from their personal learning network (PLN) on Twitter than any other forms of professional development or personal learning.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: If You Worry About Climate Change and Care About the Environment, Vote No on I-1631

  If you care about the environment, if you worry about global warming, and if this summer’s smoke is of concern, you should vote against Washington State Initiative 1631. If you are like me, you are worried about the impacts of increasing CO2 in the …

• OneNote Class Notebook: A Digital Binder That Will Change the Way You Teach | Cult of Pedagogy

  This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own. Now imagine doing all of those things inside a single digital platform, where you could share and deliver materials, access student work, and allow students to work together seamlessly at school or …

• EdTech Nut – Kelly Fitzgerald: Thinking/Sentence Frames for All Content Areas

  Thinking Frames are used to help students begin the thought process by providing a model for organizing their thinking. They should be used in any classroom K-12, regardless of level or content area.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Tool to Brand Yourself or School with a Logo

  Educational institutions are becoming more and more aware of the importance of branding staff and schools in our digital world. However schools and districts often don’t consistently have and/or use their logo and slogan in their materials.

• Free Logo Maker, Create Custom Logo Designs Online – DesignEvo

  Not a registered user yet? Sign Up Already have an account? Login

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: SOLE

  SOLE is a “self organized learning environment” that is a wonderful app for mobile learning and integrating technology into the classroom. The way this works is by a simple process: asking a question or selecting one, investigating/collaborating w/ …

• Google Maps Walking Tours with Street Views and Screencasting

• The 56 Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2018 | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  With this post, I’m beginning to publish my end-of-year “The Best….” lists. There are over 1,700 regularly updated lists now.  You can see them all here.  You can also find many of them organized a bit differently here.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Another collection of great blog posts from this past week:

• The Adventure Blog: So Far This Year the Arctic Sea Ice isn’t Reforming as it Should

  When it comes to climate change and warming temperatures on a global scale, one of he canaries in the coal mine has always been the Arctic and Antarctic ice.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Edthena

  Edthena is a wonderful site/app for professional development that uses an innovative “video coaching” approach. This is done through a very user-friendly browser based interface where educators can record themselves right from the web (i.e. they can…

• Open World Class and Feedback Loops: 10-12-18 CPU Vlog – Classroom Powerups

  This has become a bit of a running theme in my thinking lately. A lot of my game inspired design comes from Open World or Sandbox Style Games.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Kindness Bookmarks and Kindness Bingo

  This week I had the opportunity to observe a great teacher-librarian in action at Sigsbee Charter School in Key West, Florida. One of the activities that she did with kids was making “kindness bookmarks.” The kids made bookmarks like the one in the …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Answers to FAQs About Automatic Captioning of Google Slides

  Last night I published a video demonstration of the new automatic captioning feature in Google Slides. Today, I’ve received eight emails from readers asking questions about automatic captioning.

• Helping Learners to be Kind Online and Offline – Teacher Reboot Camp

  October is National Bullying Prevention month. I like to focus on getting students to spread kindness and feel the benefits of being kind versus being mean to others. Many children play social games, such as Roblox and Fortnite, and experience cyber…

• iThrive Games ::

  The potential for video games to empower teens has been largely overlooked even though video games allow for players to stretch their skills, take risks, and explore who they are and who they want to be.

• 4 Big Shifts That Can Personalize the Learning Journey | EdSurge News

  What needs to happen to move your school or district toward an effective implementation of personalized learning? According to EdSurge Fusion conference speaker, Dr. Scott McLeod, there are Four Big Shifts that propel “deeper learning schools” along…

• The New Google Sites: The Good, The Bad, and Nothing Ugly! | Shake Up Learning

• Coding posters for printing PDF.pdf – Google Drive

• Three Things Teachers Need to Spot—and Stop—Plagiarism | EdSurge News

• “This Is 18” Is A Great NY Times Interactive | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Yesterday was The International Day of the Girl (see The Best Resources For “The International Day Of The Girl”), and The New York Times published a great feature headlined This is 18. It highlights images, music and commentaries from eighteen-year-…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create Personalized Certificates in Bulk Through Google Sheets

  Creating a certificate for one or a few students is a fairly straight forward process. You can use Google Slides, Canva, or any number of Word templates for that.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Halloween Writing Activity for Elementary and Middle School Students

  Earlier this week I shared a bunch of Halloween-themed math and science resources. If you’re looking for a writing activity that has a Halloween theme, consider having students create Halloween cards.

• Is it more about what you can teach or what they can learn? – The Principal of Change

  In a workshop, an educator shared their reluctance to try some of the things that I was suggesting with students in their classroom. Luckily, I had students joining me in the workshop and asked them for some feedback.

• 10 Ways that College Classes Differ From High School

  Sadhvi Mathur Senior Blogger at CollegeVine Sadhvi is a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, double majoring in Business Administration and Media Studies.

• Two Videos About Hurricanes | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Thoughts and prayers to those affected by Hurricane Michael.

• Why Graphic Novels Belong in All of Our Libraries – Pernille Ripp

  Look at that; an incredible graphic novel is shortlisted for the National Book Award.  Image from School Library Journal.

• Google Slides Templates for Snapchat Games in Class – Ditch That Textbook

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Projector Screen

  ProjectorScreen.com is an excellent site for people or educators to find projectors and other type of equipment for their classrooms. Not only can a person search through an immense amount of screens, but from other categories such as fixed or manua…

• Free Technology for Teachers: More Halloween Science and Math Lessons

  Last week I shared a handful of Halloween-themed math and science activities. PBS Learning Media also has a collection of Halloween-themed science and mathematics lessons.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Synth – Quickly Record Short, Interactive Podcasts

  Synth is a new service from Swivl. Synth is a free service that you can use to record short podcast episodes that are up to 256 seconds long. When you record your episode you post it publicly for others to listen to and record spoken responses.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Using Brush Ninja and Screencastify to Make Science Presentations

  This week I had the opportunity to work in an eighth grade science class. I was there to help their teacher help them learn new ways to make presentations. The topic of their presentations was “forms of energy.” That topic lends itself to having stu…

• Good Work Leads to More Work | Mike Kaechele

  This is the fifth 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. I am a believer in hard work. I always tell my students that “good work leads to …

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: New Infographic: 8 Dates All Teachers of #EdTech #DigCit #MediaLiteracy Should Know

  Post this on your wall for 2018/2019 school year as a reminder of all the dates you can celebrate ways to prepare modern learners. Visit the infographic here.

• VLookup: Creating Battle Damage – Classroom Powerups

  I’m stepping on Alice Keeler’s corner and I think I need to watch my back! In my Dreadsheets, whether they are clashes or boss fights, I try to include “Battle Damage” or images that show when a student or team’s hit points decrease.

• Jennifer Binis’ #PairedTexts Is An Amazing Resource For Teachers & Their Students | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  For a long time, Jennifer Binis has been sharing #pairedtexts on Twitter. She scours the media to find contrasting articles, photos, quotes, etc. that are great teaching tools for a variety of classes.

• Teaching Resources On U.N. Report On Climate Change | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  You’ve probably heard about the terrifying United Nations report on climate change that was issued this week. Here are some useful teaching resources on the report.

• Starting With the Questions to Develop Curiosity and Better Solutions – The Principal of Change

  I first heard about the idea of “Problem-Finders” from Ewan McIntosh, and it always struck me as something we should be focusing on in education: “Currently, the world’s education systems are crazy about problem-based learning, but they’re obsessed …

• The Data Says…What? (Or: Why we struggle to make sense of literacy assessment results) – Reading By Example

  Our instructional leadership team recently analyzed the last two years of writing assessment data. We use a commercial-based rubric to score student writing in the fall and in the spring.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Eight Options for Creating Screencasts on Chromebooks

  Recording screencasts is one relatively easy way to get started making videos in your classroom. Today, I helped some middle school students make screencasts in which they explained the animations they made to represent forms of energy.

• The Many Lives of Doctor Who: A First Glimpse Into the 13th Doctor – GeekDad

  Titan Comics presents a myriad of artists reliving 12 moments, one for each of the previous doctors.

• Leveraging the Lore of Dungeons and Dragons to Motivate Students to Read and Write

  MindshiftSep 25 Overcoming Childhood Trauma: How Parents and Schools Work to Stop the Cycle Many people have experienced some kind of trauma in their childhood, such as loss of a caregiver, substance abuse in the home, homelessness or abuse.

• Google Slides Gets Automated Captions – HUGE Help To Online Teachers Of English; Could Maybe Help In Regular Classroom | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  I would imagine that every single educator who teaches English Language Learners online are jumping for joy today – Google announced that Google Slides will now provide automatic slide captioning for everything a speaker says.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Has Added a Captioning System to Google Slides

  Today, Google announced a new Google Slides feature that some teachers are going to love. Google Slides now has a real-time captioning system. This system works when you are presenting your slides (full screen) and have a microphone connected to you…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Is Shutting Down Google+

  This afternoon Google published an official blog post about their Project Strobe data and privacy audit project. The leading portion of that Google announced that the consumer edition of Google+ is going to be shut down.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival – Videos Based on Newbery Winning Books

  Thanks to one of the great teachers that I am working with at Sigsbee Charter School I learned about the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival. The festival is really a contest that is organized by YA author James Kennedy.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two Detailed Presentations About Copyright for Educators

  Earlier this evening I answered an email from a teacher who was looking for some resources about copyright that she could share with colleagues in her school. There were two resources that immediately came to mind when I read her question. The first…

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Making The Best Technology Purchasing Decisions

  In our next collaborative post, Shaelynn Farnsworth (@shfarnsworth) and I discuss how schools and districts can make the best technology purchasing decisions. Recently I was talking to a Tech Director colleague that was in the middle of a purchasing…

• The Nerdy Teacher: Writing IS Making #MakerEd #CSforAll

  The more I have spent time sharing Making and Makerspace with people, the more I get to reflect on those conversation and see how others perceive the act of making. I also spend time thinking about my own practices and how I used to teach in my Engl…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: No. You Haven’t Been Hacked Or Cloned 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…

• Lessons From Sherlock Holmes: It’s Elementary! – The Edublogger

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories was lucky enough to rediscover his love of literature in his later years. Is this true for all students?

• DB Quest: The latest super sweet tool from iCivics and Library of Congress | History Tech

  A few days ago, I bragged on one of the latest Library of Congress interactive tools titled CaseMaker. Part of the Teaching with Primary Sources project, CaseMaker joined the three earlier tools that rolled out last year. But wait. There’s more.

• Tough Topics – Josh Stumpenhorst

  Sexual assault, rape, harassment, and abuse are currently hot topics in the world and often ones we don’t like talking about. In light of recent world events, I’ve thought a great deal about these topics and their impact on our society.

• Hood Canal avoids a major fish kill following unwelcome conditions | Watching Our Water Ways

  Southern Hood Canal avoided a major fish kill this year, but for a few days in September it looked like conditions were set for low-oxygen waters to rise to the surface, leaving fish in a critical state with no place to go, experts say.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Good Reminders About Password Security

  The mot recent Facebook hoax making its rounds has prompted me to remind everyone about the importance of using strong and varied passwords (don’t use the same password for Facebook as you do for your bank account).

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Do Wind Turbines Enhance Global Warming? No!

  There were a series of headlines in a variety of media outlets this week suggesting an unfounded and unphysical claim: that wind turbines might contribute to global warming. Some examples below: The key issue is that frequently the surface is cooler…

• Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Problems with Evidence-based Education: Side Effects in Education

  The following is the Introduction of my book What Works Can Hurt: Side Effects in Education published by Teachers College Press in June 2018. “Ibuprofen may cause a severe allergic reaction,” you are warned when you buy a bottle of Advil, and “this …

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some great posts from this past week:

• How Not To Feel Resentment Over Difficult Students – Smart Classroom Management

  It’s normal to feel angry. How could you not? You have a student who is ruining your school year.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 7 Dates #EdTech Teachers Need to Know

  If you teach tech, then you need to know when important tech topics are celebrated across the year.

• 10-5-18 CPU Vlog: Battles and Open Worlds – Classroom Powerups

  It is Reflection Friday on the Classroom Powerups Vlog! This Friday I discuss how I use my Battle Mechanics as a classroom review system and its impact on my Feedback Loops.

• Science teacher: Getting certified, FRS-NJ version

  I do get, however, why credentialing of some sort can be useful at times, and have participated when necessary. I have been board certified as a pediatrician, and am currently certified as a public school teacher in the state of New Jersey.

• DeVos Doles Out $399 Million to Charter Schools and Charter Organizations | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Politico reports the latest federal handouts for charter schools and charter advocacy organizations, as well as to state agencies. There is no sector of American education less in need of federal funding than charter schools.

• Control Alt Achieve: Turn Google Slides into an Animated GIF with this Free Tool

  With Tall Tweets you can import a Google Slideshow, set the duration for each slide (as well as some other options), and then create and download an animated GIF version of your slideshow. First you need to finish creating the Google Slideshow that …

• 50 ideas for using video in the classroom

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Writer Igniter

  Writer Igniter is a nice little tool for writing prompts that I just found out about from Ozge Karaoglu’s wonderful blog. All a teacher has to do is click on the “shuffle” button and a random character, situation, prop, and setting, will appear and …

• Zombies, Run! — Hey Siri, Raise the Gates!

  1.5M ratings 277k ratings See, that’s what the app is perfect for. Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna Hey Siri, Raise the Gates! That’s right – in our latest 7.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Land Breeze Clouds

  This morning I was at an early meeting at the UW, looking out towards the West and I saw a line of low-level clouds and I recognized their origin…. clouds over the Sound produced by converging land breezes from both shores. Here is a satellite ima…

• Ongoing lack of rainfall raises concerns for chum, coho salmon | Watching Our Water Ways

  We’ve just gone through one of the driest five-month periods on record in Kitsap County, yet the total precipitation for entire water year was fairly close to average.

• The Philippines is building a green, disaster-resilient city

  (CNN) – In one of the most disaster-prone regions on the planet, a new city has been designed specifically to withstand natural calamities — and it’s being built using remnants of a major disaster.

• Future cities: the rise and rise of smart grids | News | Eco-Business | Asia Pacific

  Faced with a burgeoning urban population and the need to achieve resource efficiency, city planners are increasingly seeking solutions to green their infrastructural systems and smart grids are poised to play a key role in this transformation.

• In British Virgin Islands, hurricane whips up green energy transition | Reuters

  ROAD TOWN (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Nearly a year after Hurricane Irma knocked out power across the British Virgin Islands, electricity boss Leroy Abraham will be among the last residents to have their homes reconnected.

• Japanese cities move towards distributed energy systems to power-proof from natural disasters – Climate Action

  According to a research conducted by Reuters in the city of Higashi Matsushima, a ‘silent’ revolution has been happening in Japan in the wake of the 2011 fatal earthquake and tsunami, with more and more municipalities setting up distributed energy s…

• 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.

• 3DBear AR – Explore learning with AR and 3D printing

  Human life is inherently creative. It is the common currency of being a human being. *Tarjoamme 7 päivän ilmaisen kokeilun. Huomioithan, että sinun tulee olla yli 18 vuotta vanha tai sinulla tulee olla huoltajan suostumus.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Wakelet Has a New Sections Option

  Wakelet is a free bookmarking and note-sharing service that I first tried back in April when I started to look for new alternatives to Padlet. On Wakelet you can create collections of notes that can include text, videos, links, and pictures.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Add Custom Covers to Podcasts You Make on Anchor

  Anchor has become my favorite tool for creating podcasts. In a matter of minutes you can have your first podcast episode recorded, edited, and published (watch this video to see how). You can do that on your laptop, on your phone (Android or iOS), o…

• Arizona: Governor Ducey, Facing Election, Decides It Is Time to Curb Charter Corruption | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona has been a stalwart champion of unregulated charters and vouchers. He has looked the other way when members of the legislature pass laws to enrich themselves while running charter chains and voucher programs.

• Passionate PBL | Mike Kaechele

  This is the fourth 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. It’s cliche, but of course most teachers are passionate about their students and…

• When They Abandon Every Single Book – Pernille Ripp

  “….well, I didn’t finish any books last year…”She turns to me and smiles. “What do you mean?”  I ask, not sure I have heard her correctly, after all, I know what amazing work they do in 6th grade. “….I just stopped reading them, I didn’t finish them.

• Free Technology for Teachers: My Tips for Managing Student Blogs – One for All or All Have One?

  In the course of a year I get to run a lot of workshops about blogging.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Fun and Free State & Country Capital Identification Game

  Capital Toss is a free geography game from ABCya. The game has a state capitals mode and a country capitals mode. In both modes of the game works the same way. The name of a state or country appears at the bottom of the screen and three rows of capi…

• Five Apps for Reducing Isolation and Increasing Connectedness – Reading By Example

  The principalship, as well as other leadership positions in schools, can be isolating. We typically don’t have a team of our own within a building.

• Item Alchemy: Student Created Mash-ups – Classroom Powerups

  First, just a refresher and some vocabulary. In my classroom Items are Powerup Cards that students can earn in a number of ways. To see my first two series of item cards click here: 2018-19 Items: Unit 1 Cards, 2018-19 Items: Unit 2 Cards.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Share Your Google VR Tours With Students

  Over the last few weeks I have received a lot of emails from readers who had made virtual reality tours in Google’s VR Tour Creator but then ran into difficulty sharing those tours with their students.

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Taking Collaboration And Teacher PD To Another Level With Verso Learning

  When I was teaching Middle School Science I always tried to encourage academic discussion among my students. As a group we would debate results from various experiments, attempt to understand current events in science and talk about how science was …

• Library of Congress adds awesome new tools. Today? Case Maker. | History Tech

  A year or so ago, the Library of Congress introduced three new apps that focused on civics and the use of primary sources. Eagle Eye Citizen, Engaging Congress and Kid Citizen were developed through the LOC’s Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) prog…

• Elementary Book Club for Advanced Readers |

  When I work with elementary teachers, one of the biggest challenges they face is the wide range of reading skills in their classrooms. A first-grade class may have students who are struggling to decode while other students are reading at a third-gra…

• 2018-19 Items: Unit 2 Cards – Classroom Powerups

  I am a huge proponent of using ITEMs in the classroom. These are powerups that allow students to change their experience in the classroom by changing the rules or expectations within the classroom universe.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Science & Math Resources That Have a Halloween Theme

  SciShow Kids has a playlist of videos covering topics that are frequently connected to symbols of Halloween. Those topics are bats, spiders, skeletons, and the changing colors of leaves.

• Should You Use Student Photos Online? – The Edublogger

  This is an update of a post that was first written by Sue Waters in 2013. Whether you’re blogging, using social media, producing videos, or publishing any digital creations, the topic of student privacy must always be considered.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Voicepods Has New Editing Features – Turn Text Into Voice Recordings

  A few weeks ago I introduced a new tool called Voicepods. Voicepods is a service that will create voice recordings based on the text that you write.

• Strategies to Promote Inquiry in Your Classroom – Class Tech Tips

  When students take part in inquiry-based learning they pose questions and research issues. Promoting inquiry in your classroom can take many forms. So I was excited to connect with Trevor MacKenzie who has written books on the subject.

• 5 LMS Mistakes To Avoid Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  A Learning Management System (LMS) is designed to solve the problems around training, but not cause new ones..obviously.

• Everyone Can Create

  Have you heard the news? I am so excited to share a new, totally free set of resources from Apple Education. Today Apple Education released four books of lesson ideas and one teacher guide to spotlight the ways Everyone Can Create.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Mind Over Media – New Resource for Teaching Propaganda and Media Literacy

  I first met Professor Renee Hobbs from the Media Education Lab last spring at the SXSWedu conference. She led a fascinating discussion about how to foster media literacy and digital literacy in an age of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence.

• For this Bullying Prevention Month, a bit of clarity – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org

  The Pew Research Center just published a surprisingly high figure under a headline referring to “cyberbullying.” The authors report that 59% of US 13-17 year-olds had experienced some form of it. But it’s important to zoom in on the “some form of” p…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Seven Good Places to Find Writing Prompts

  Anyone who has ever taught language arts has heard, “I don’t know what to write about” from a student or two. If you’ve ever heard that from a student, take a look at the following sites and apps to find writing prompts. Emoji Prompts uses emojis as…

• Watch and share YouTube videos safely | teachers and family friendly YouTube

  Kids Are 3 Clicks Away From Improper Content On YouTube …Safe YouTube Solved This! Surrounding Youtube Videos Decrease Attention To Your Video …Safe YouTube Solved This! Teachers Can Now Show YouTube In Classroom …

• boardgamegeek.com

  Patrick Rael (prael) United States Brunswick Maine We see our role as essentially defensive in nature. Heading to College of the Holy Cross for a workshop on using boardgames in college classrooms. Here’s an introductory handout I intend to use. Hap…

• Steven Singer: The Six Biggest Problems with Data-Driven Instruction | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Steven Singer writes here about the mechanistic, anti-child implicationsand consequences of data-driven Instruction. He identifies six issues. I offer only the first of these problems. To learn about the other five, open the link. He writes: No teac…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Digital Portfolio Styles – And Tools for Making Them

  This post originally appeared in my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter and on my Practical Ed Tech website. This week I am working with a group of teachers who want to have their middle school students create digital portfolios that they will maintain thr…

• Control Alt Achieve: Create Halloween Rebus Stories with Emojis and Google Docs

  In earlier posts I have shared Google Docs templates for creating Emoji Rebus Stories for both Wintertime and Valentine’s Day. With Fall coming soon, I have put together a Halloween-themed version.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Is Global Warming A Significant Contributor to Washington State Wildfires, Now or in the Future?

  During the past several summers there have been major wildfires in Washington State producing a lot of smoke. And many people have been asking an important question: To what degree is anthropogenic global warming contributing to Washington State wil…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Tools for Teaching With YouTube Videos

  If you can get past the distraction of cute animal videos, video game highlights, and other nonsense, you can find excellent educational videos on YouTube. But even then it’s not enough to just share the video with your students either in your class…

• Seven Things That Happen When Students Share Their Work – John Spencer

  When my middle son was in the third grade, he volunteered to share a joke with a big audience at a family camp. As I watched him standing in the line with older kids and quite a few adults, I felt nervous.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Seterra Offers Science Quiz Games

  A couple of weeks ago I featured Seterra’s hundreds of geography quiz games that are available in more than thirty languages. But geography isn’t the only subject that Seterra offers quiz games about. Seterra also offers games about human anatomy, p…

• 10 Core Values for Education – The Principal of Change

  As in any profession, educators should be able to look back and think, “Why did I do that?”  If you aren’t able to do that, there might not have been much growth.

• A Principal’s Reflections: 10 Strategies to Strengthen Instruction and Learning

  When I think back to my training to become a teacher, there were some reasonably consistent norms. These consisted of sound classroom management, listing the learning objectives, and developing a lesson plan.

• A Notecard Check – A Simple Way to Check for Understanding – Pernille Ripp

  Ask our students what makes them hate reading and many of them will say the work that comes after.  The reading logs, the essays, the taking notes when reading, the post-its, the to-do’s.  Not the act of reading itself.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Create a Screencast Within Padlet

  Back in June I published a video that demonstrated ten types of notes that you can add to Padlet walls. Thanks to Dan Methven I recently learned that there is another new way to add notes to Padlet walls. The new type of note is a screencast video.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are this past week’s list of some cool blog posts:

• How To Bring Instant Calm To Your Classroom – Smart Classroom Management

  One of the biggest causes of misbehavior is excitability. It’s also one of the hardest to fix.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Rubric for Digital Portfolio Assessment

  Next week I am working with a group of teachers to help them start creating digital portfolios with their students. After we decide what we want students to include in their portfolios and the platform for the portfolio we’ll start looking at the as…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Planning a Student Video Project? – Don’t Forget the Storyboards

  Earlier this week I shared details of Next Vista for Learning’s Creative Storm student video contest. One of the rules of that contest is that videos have to be 90 seconds or less. That’s generally a good guideline of classroom video projects too.

• Do We Give A Zero Or 50% For Work Not Turned-In? Here Are Some Useful Commentaries | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  I think I do a pretty good job on grading and am generally successful in having students be less concerned about “points” and more concerned about learning. You can read more about my thoughts on the topic, and those of others whom I respect, at The…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Manufacture Your Future – A Discovery Virtual Field Trip

  Next Friday at 1pm EDT Discovery Education is a hosting a virtual field trip titled Manufacture Your Future. The virtual field trip will take students to the Arconic plant in Texas where they’ll learn about the 3D printing in the context of the aero…

• 150+ Digital Learning Apps Inside 1 Simple App for K-2 Teachers

  The Really Good StuffⓇ Digital Learning Collection has over 150 apps for kindergarten to second-grade classrooms. Recently, I took a tour of this amazing app. Perhaps you’re wondering how more than 150 apps can be inside one? It is possible.

• Comics and Graphic Novels: Honoring All Literacies – Reading By Example

  I was only partially surprised when a librarian mentioned to me that in her school, graphic novels were not seen as quality literature by some of the teachers. This discussion was prompted by a note a former student had written to her recently. Than…

• 5 ways to gamify your class

• What You Should Know About Banned Books Week – GeekMom

  We again find ourselves smack in the middle of the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. Maybe you’ve seen articles about the Top Ten Most Challenged Books.

• Video: “It’s Getting Harder to Spot a Deep Fake Video” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  pixel2013 / Pixabay I’m adding this new video from Bloomberg to The Best Tools & Lessons For Teaching Information Literacy – Help Me Find More:

• Games For Thinkers | Accelerated Learning Foundation

• History Simulation Games For Kids | History Simulator

• The Propaganda Game

  tags:game games think thinking gbl

• Providing Support Versus Enabling – The Principal of Change

  In a workshop this past week, I discussed how it is essential to create conditions for students where students and adults find ways to learn for themselves.

• Beginner’s Guide to Genius Hour: Developing Students’ Passions – Teacher Tech

  A Guest Blog Post by Marcia Carrillo @marciamentor I am passionate about sports! I love to play sports, watch sports, coach sports, analyze sports, and learn new sports or exercises! At what age did I realize this? Probably in 6th grade, when you co…

• Internet Safety For Kids: 7 Tips For Parents Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  It’s the start of the school year again, so you’ve probably started giving your kid the same old tips – be careful when crossing the street, don’t talk to the strangers, don’t play with scissors, etc.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Frostbite Theater – 87 Science Experiment Video Lessons

  Jefferson Lab’s YouTube channel includes a playlist titled Frostbite Theater. The first time I looked at the playlist a few years ago it had about fifty videos. The playlist has now expanded to 87 videos. The playlist features videos of science demo…

• Google Science Fair Now Open For Submissions | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The famous Google Science Fair is now open for submissions (through December 12th). You can read all about it at Google here – and watch the video below.

• Flex like Stretch Armstrong | Mike Kaechele

  This is the third 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. I remember as a kid that Stretch Armstrong was definitely the ultimate Christmas …

• Avatar Selection Day: Reflection Roundup pt 1 – Classroom Powerups

  Friday started the process through which my students would select their Avatar types for my classroom. For those interest an overview of the Avatars can be found here – Super Avatar Types Overview.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ways to Use Google Slides Besides Making Presentations

  Google Slides has come a long way since the first time that I had students use it a decade ago. Many features have been added in that time. Many of those features make it possible to use Google Slides for more than just making slideshows.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Einstein’s Archives Online

  More than 80,000 of Albert Einstein’s documents and drawings are now available to view for free at Einstein Archives Online. The archives include not only his scientific work but also his images and documents from his travels and thoughts on the wor…

• Control Alt Achieve: Create Your Own Story Cubes with Google Drawings

  Story cubes have long been a popular item to give inspiration for writing. Typically they are regular cubes with a different picture or word on each face. Students can pick a few cubes and then roll them to randomly get elements for a story.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Bring Project Pals into the New School Year

  The template guides students to create an introductory story about the person’s life, timeline, and map out the key events of the person’s life. Digitizing PBL provides an outlet for students to dig deep into their interests.

• What Is Your Teacher Personality Type? Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Every teacher approaches their job differently. Some teachers are strict, while others are lenient. Some are spontaneous, while others are more practical. One thing is for sure: there are pros and cons to every teaching style. What teacher personali…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: New Infographic! 8-Step Plan to Finding A Student Internship

  · 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…

• 5 handy tools that combat fake news and create informed citizens | History Tech

  Civic engagement is one of the latest education buzzwords. But for many of you, prepping kids to be engaged, informed, and knowledgeable citizens has always been job one. So it’s good to see the rest of the Ed world climbing on board.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Creative Storm – A Next Vista Video Contest

  Next Vista for Learning is a great place for teachers and students to share short video lessons that they create. I have been recommending the service for almost ten years now.

• Small Disruptions in Text – Pernille Ripp

  I have been so incredibly inspired by the work of the women behind the #DisruptTexts movement.  This movement, started by a group of fearless educators: Tricia Ebarvia, Lorena Germán, Dr. Kimberly N. Parker, and Julia E.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: eNotes

  eNotes is a wonderful site/iOS app for students looking for homework help and much much more.

• Resources from YouCubed | Patty Papers

  Youcubed.org is a free K-12 math resource from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. Many of you are familiar with the Week of Inspirational Math, but here are a few of the other resources you’ll find on the site.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 8 Tools for Making Multimedia Timelines

  Creating timelines has been a go-to activity for history teachers since the beginning of history. When I made timelines as a student and in my first year or two of teaching, timelines were made on paper. Today, there are better ways to have students…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 VR Projects for Students

  Google’s VR Tour Creator is one of my favorite media creation tools. Since its launch in May of this year I have shown it to hundreds of teachers in-person and even more in videos and webinars.

• Roberta Memeo – Games for Health Europe

  Graduated with honours in Arts from the University of Florence (Italy) in 1993, e-learning specialist and Project Manager, she has been working for Grifo multimedia since its foundation in 1997.

• The 8 core drives behind great classroom gamification – Classcraft Blog

  With its focus on human motivation, gamification can have a positive impact on our lives, from school to the workplace. Many educators are already using game elements to boost student engagement, track progress, and enhance the learning experience.

• Hey, dumb American question here. Every UK person…

  Where do I fucking start? So, Thatcher was the bane of the working classes, and much of what she did still has repercussions to this day. So, in no particular order, just in the order I remember them, here are some things she did that pissed us off –

• Save the Date/Call for Blogs | CUNY Games Network

  The CUNY Games Network of the City University of New York is excited to announce The CUNY Games Conference 5.0, to be held on January 18, 2018, at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City.

• 10 Ways To Introduce Your Students To Blogging – The Edublogger

  It’s ‘back to school’ season for much of the Northern Hemisphere. Along with setting up classrooms, decorating bulletin boards, and preparing lessons, many educators are also considering their virtual spaces.

• My Vision of a Multi-Disciplinary Academic Center for Video Game-Based Learning. – Simone Bregni, Ph.D.

  tags:gbl ar vr games gaming learning learn

• How to Quickly Create, Send, & Translate a Parent Newsletter – Teacher Reboot Camp

  “At the end of the day, the most overwhelming key to a child’s success is the positive involvement of parents.” – Jane D. Hull A few weeks ago I sent my first parent newsletter to 400+ parents.

• Voice of Witness: Bring the Power of Oral History to Your Classroom | Cult of Pedagogy

  Teaching history and English has gotten complicated. For many, many years, educational publishers produced texts that centered an overwhelmingly white, European experience.

• A Principal’s Reflections: The Pivotal Role Movement Plays in Learning

  “More blood means more energy and oxygen, which makes our brain perform better.” – Justin Rhodes Spending time in schools as a leadership and learning coach has been some of the most gratifying work I have done.

• The Connection Between Innovation and Time – The Principal of Change

  The demands of teachers are seemingly going up while the time frame of our days stays the same.  From my conversations with educators, the “other stuff” that they do not tell you about in college (paperwork, reports, etc.) is getting to be more and …

• FBI, This Week: Education Technologies Could Pose Risks to Students – K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center

  As a follow-up to the recently released public service announcement on the privacy and security issues the FBI has observed with the use of technology in education, on September 21 they also released a brief podcast targeted to parents.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

More amazing blog posts from this past week:

• Cells Alive Worksheet |

  This worksheet follows diagrams and activities at CellsAlive.com which focuses on the size of cells compared to other objects, such as viruses and pollen.  Students view interactive plant, animal, and bacteria cells to learn about the different stru…

• 4 Strategies Designed to Drive Metacognitive Thinking |

  Metacognition is defined as thinking about one’s thinking or learning. More formally, “metacognition was originally referred to as the knowledge about and the regulation of one’s cognitive activities in learning processes” (Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters…

• I Don’t Read – Pernille Ripp

  “I don’t read” has been a refrain heard loudly in our classroom for the last three weeks.  Several students have informed me that reading is not something they do.  Not something we can get them to do.  And they have been right.

• 3 Simple Ways To Check For Understanding – Smart Classroom Management

  In observing teachers, one common area of weakness is checking for understanding. Not every teacher, of course. But many.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: REX Will Dominate Northwest Weather This Week

  During the past two weeks, the Northwest has enjoyed absolutely normal weather. Typical temperatures (see plot below, purple and cyan are normal highs and lows) and nearly normal precipitation (see cumulative precipitation for the same period).

• Chrome-Friendly App Smash Tips for Book Creator – Class Tech Tips

  So many of you joined me this summer to explore how to use Book Creator in the classroom! But whether you’re checking out this blog post on a hot summer afternoon or chilly winter morning, you can jump into Book Creator right away.

• Global Problem Solvers: Authentic problems, engaging content, free resources. What’s not like? | History Tech

  We want our kids to help lead their own learning, have the soft skills to work well with others, be engaged with their communities, and solve authentic problems. So basically . . . kids who grow up to save the world. No biggie.

• Schools Matter: School Libraries and Books Critical for School Success

  Published in the New York Times, September 20, 2018 To the Editor: Re “Why libraries still matter.” [https://ift.tt/2oR1Oyb (Sunday Review, Sept.

• How to talk to young people about the Kavanaugh story.

  Spector is also a survivor of sexual assault, and it took her years to come forward. She says she’s willing to use her full name because she is a feminist activist who feels the importance of raising public awareness.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Slides from ESC-20 Library Resource Roundup

  Today I had the pleasure of giving four short presentations at the Texas ESC-20 Library Resource Roundup. It was a great day! Thank you to everyone who came to my presentations. And a special thank you to those who came for multiple presentations.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Math in Real Life – Why Airlines Overbook Flights

  I’m currently flying home the ESC-20 Library Resource Roundup in San Antonio, Texas. Before I boarded the flight the gate agent was looking for volunteers to take an alternate flight due to overbooking.

• 7 Hidden Tips for Google Sites – Teacher Tech

  I have been loving using Google Sites to create tutorials. The autosizing of pictures, the easy insertion of items from Google Drive, mixing text with video and images, and other features that just make the process easier.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Make a Timeline Through Google Sheets

  Earlier this week I wrote about Flippity’s new timeline creation template for use in Google Sheets. The template lets you create a multimedia timeline by simply entering information into a spreadsheet and then publishing it to the web.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Apps to Incorporate Into Outdoor Learning Activities

  One of my passions is encouraging teachers to take their students outside for class. The technology that our students use the most in their daily lives is meant to be mobile so don’t keep it locked up in your classroom.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Apps to Explore the Potential of Augmented Reality

  On Friday I am giving a presentation about augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality in education. If you’re unsure of the differences between the three, take a look at my explanatory video and slideshow on the topic.

• Gamification Stage Three: The Constraint • Teched Up Teacher

  My father got a job with AT&T after the military. My dad started out driving trucks and laying phone line. After a couple years, AT&T asked him if he’d like to go back to school to become a computer tech. I was probably four or five at the time.

• 2018-19 Super Hero Game: Villains Guild Option – Classroom Powerups

  Last year I introduced Boss Battles about half way through the year. It began as a simple dice roll game against Gen Robert E Zombie and Gen William T. Shermonster (1st Boss Fight Post). It was low tech and the students had fun with seeing the Hit P…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Time to Drop the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale

  One of the most familiar aspects of hurricane season is the constant talk about the strength of developing storms using the Saffir-Simpson scale, which ranges from Category 1 (a marginal hurricane) to Category 5 (a powerful monster).

• Big Online Courses Have a Problem. Here’s How We Tried to Fix It. – dy/dan

  Here is some personal prejudice: I don’t love online courses.

• google-slides-icon-boards-for-low-prep-visual-thinking

• A Game-Changing Approach to a Back to School Syllabus by @MeehanEDU – Teacher Tech

  Hi. I’m John Meehan, an instructional coach and eleventh grade English teacher at Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, Virginia.

• Free Technology for Teachers: If You Manage a School Facebook Page, Watch Out for This Scam

  I manage a handful of Facebook Pages. This morning when I logged into Facebook I had notifications that “Verified Facebook Page” had requested administrative access to those pages.

• Classroom Fortress: The Nine Kinds of Students

  It doesn’t take long to learn that there are different kinds of students. In fact, there are exactly nine kinds.

• A group of scientists is using Fortnite to talk about climate change with gamers | BT

• Ten Jobs That Should Be Safe From Automation

  In contrast, robot-proof jobs tend to involve tasks like decision-making and problem-solving, and require a flexible mindset and a willingness to multitask.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Assessing Making #MakerEd #MakerMentality

  The other day, I was doing a webinar for littleBits and I was asked a question I often receive when talking about Makerspaces.

• One Important Question That Leads to Student Empowerment in Schools – The Principal of Change

  I walked into Jasper Place High School in Edmonton, Alberta, as a basketball referee for the game, but as a principal at another school at the time.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Use Flippity to Make a Multimedia Timeline

  Flippity is a site that I have recommended for years as a place to find templates that you can use in Google Sheets to make things like flashcards, quiz games, and random name pickers. Recently, I noticed that Flippity has added a template for makin…

• 8 Reasons We Need Kids Playing RPGs – GeekDad

  RPGs came about in a time when so many things didn’t exist: pre-World of Warcraft, pre-HBO-Game of Thrones, and pre-internet. In those early days, players sat down and let their imaginations provide the imagery, the sounds, and the story.

• How rumors spread on social media during weather disasters | NSF – National Science Foundation

  After hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research to investigate the broad impacts of these disasters.

• Control Alt Achieve: Collabordependent Writing with Google Slides

  Technology can have it’s pain points. Take peer feedback for example. We want to students to be able to write, express themselves, create, etc. Then we want them to be able to share what they made with their peers. Then we want their peers to be abl…

• Ready Player One: Parzival’s Motivations – Classroom Powerups

  Warning: SPOILERS! Seriously… I am talking about the book Ready Player One. If you haven’t read the book then please stop here and read the book.

• Reverse engineering your mobile banking app

  Our Austrian banks (seemingly) hate developers as they don’t give you an API to check banking statements or balances. Soon there should be the new PSD2 Standard which will force all european banks to have an API but I didn’t want to wait so long.

• So you have been scammed

  It’s okay, it happened to the best and even large companies aren’t bullet proof when it comes to scammers.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Sites That Help Students Understand the Size of the Universe

  Living in a relatively rural area that doesn’t have a lot of artificial light helps make it easy to spot constellations. Some nights when I take my dogs out before bedtime I look up at the constellations and I try to wrap my head around the size of …

• The Obsolete and Costly American Faith in Testing | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Alyson Klein wrote a useful overview of emerging critiques of our national obsession with standardized testing. As Marc Tucker points out, we are likely the only country that tests every child every year.

• Four Strategies for Google-Friendly Classrooms – Class Tech Tips

  Google tools have transformed the way we think about technology in the classroom. Students can collaborate with their peers, and create products that were unimaginable just a few years ago.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a Progress Tracker With Google Forms and Sheets

  Last week I wrote about using Google Forms and a pivot table in Google Sheets to create reading logs and other progress trackers. Over the weekend I received a lot of emails from folks asking various clarifying questions on how to use the pivot tabl…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Shakespeare Uncovered – Ten Free Lesson Plans

  Shakespeare Uncovered is a series of videos about Shakespeare’s life and work. The series, hosted on PBS Learning Media, is organized thematically. Some of the themes are “Shakespeare and History,” “The Use of Soliloquy,” and “Gender Roles in Shakes…

• Student-Created Videos in the Classroom | Edutopia

  1. Learning product videos: Learning product videos are often summative assignments that students create to demonstrate their learning. One year, my students worked in small groups to create green screen videos explaining the life cycles of differen…

• Storybird – Guides

• Encouraging Creative Writing With Bookcreator – Kleinspiration

  Today education technology is on its peak and will continue to evolve as we leverage technology solutions in every aspect of our lives. Education is no exception. There are a ton of useful edtech solutions available for both teachers and students to…

• A Tacoma Teacher Strike Reflection — A Teacher’s Evolving Mind

  The strike is over and school starts Monday. When I got the email letting me know we’d reached a tentative agreement, I was so giddy I screamed to my wife “TA, TA, WE GOT A TAAAAAAAAA.” Words can’t describe how glad I am this is over.

• Asking Questions to Find Better Answers – The Principal of Change

  As we consider what’s best for each learner, we must also think about how what we’re teaching will impact his or her future.

• A Principal’s Reflections: 5 Strategies to Create a Culture of Accountability for Growth

  In a world where ideas are a dime a dozen and shared openly on social media, it is incumbent upon all of us to critically reflect and determine if it is, in fact, a sound strategy.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Freebie & Ideas For Parent-Teacher Conference Success

  · 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…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are this past week’s list of great blog posts:

• Free Technology for Teachers: Why We Say “OK” – And Other Lessons on the Origins of Words

  A few days ago Vox published a short video that explains the origins of “OK” and how it came to be something that we say, read, and click everyday.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Find Free Photos by Searching on Every Stock Photo

  Regular readers of this blog probably know that my go-to places for free images are Photos for Class, Pixabay, and Unsplash. But those aren’t the only places that you can find free images to use multimedia projects.

• Schools Matter: Blockchain: Welcome to Your Permanent Record

  I realize my Blockchain video presents an abundance of information that may be difficult to absorb all at once. For that reason, I’ve pulled together images from the video and accompanying text into a slideshare that people can review at their own p…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two Ways to Use Google Sheets to Create Reading Logs

  Google Forms and Google Sheets are my go-to tools when I need to collect and organize data. One of the things that I often help teachers do with data in Google Forms and Sheets is create progress trackers or reading logs. There are two ways that you…

• What’s In Our Reader’s Notebook – Pernille Ripp

  A frequent question I get while speaking to other educators is what does your reader’s notebook look like?  I usually don’t have a good answer because much like for many others it is a work in progress, every single year.

• Why we should focus on our beliefs as well as our practices – Reading By Example

  I was at the front of the school during dismissal, holding the door open for the students leaving. One 3rd grader stopped, looked at me, and asked, “Did you go to college?” “Yes, I did,” I responded. He thought for a moment, then shared quietly, “I …

• Uncovering The Virtual Reality Secrets Of The Empire | David Mullich

  I’ve been a fan of location-based entertainment ever since I was a child ho bought a book at Disneyland on the making of The Pirates of the Caribbean attraction and dreamed about becoming an Imagineer, one of the creators of Disney theme parks.

• Hurricane Florence: A Link Roundup – The Map Room

  The Washington Post has maps tracking Hurricane Florence’s forecasted path and its potential impact. Researcher Eira Tansey compiled data from several NOAA sources—hurricane track forecasting, potential storm surge flooding and long-duration hazards…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Voicepods – Automatically Turn Text Into Voice Recordings

  Voicepods is a neat service that will create voice recordings based on the text that you write. Voicepods offers eight voices in which you can have your text read-aloud.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Bookmark It – A Tool for Adding Bookmarks to a Video’s Timeline

  Bookmark It is a free Chrome extension that can solve a problem many people face when trying to show students just a specific part of a video. That problem is having to scroll along the timeline of a YouTube video to find the spot that you want to s…

• Technology Beyond the Tools | My Island View

  I recently read a blog post about how teachers will never be replaced by technology. The author stated that technology was just a “tool for learning”. This had to be among literally hundreds, if not thousands, of similar posts and comments that I ha…

• SearchReSearch: Answer: Can you be a Fermi estimator?

  Fermi Estimation needs both kinds of knowledge–along with a bit of practice in figuring out how to go from point A to point B. Let’s practice with a true Fermi estimation! 1. Can you estimate how tall Enrico Fermi was? In this example, I give you a…

• ‘It’s Like Amazon, But for Preschool’

  A year ago, the richest man in the world asked Twitter for suggestions on how he should spend his money. And today, Jeff Bezos unveiled a few more details about his plans – other than funding space travel, that is.

• Beyond Test Scores and Retention of Information – The Principal of Change

  There are two terms that I have seen thrown around which mean a lot more than how they are being used; learning and achievement. The reason these two come to mind is due to their direct connection to one another in the context of education.

• Superhero Cards and Relationship Journeys – Classroom Powerups

  I am currently on a Hurri-cation 2018. I have evacuated my eastern South Carolina home in Pawley’s Island and have found refuge with family in the upstate due to Hurricane Forence.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Hurricane Florence: Stunningly Good Track Forecasts, Problems with Intensity

  Hurricane Florence is has recently made landfall near Wilmington, North Carolina as a category one storm with sustained winds of approximately 85 mph (see latest radar image below). It is now weakening rapidly.

• Learning the Wrong Lessons from Video Games – dy/dan

  In the early 20th century, Karl Groos claimed in The Play of Man that “the joy in being a cause” is fundamental to all forms of play. One hundred years later, Phil Daro would connect Groos’s theory of play to video gaming:

• Seven Reasons to Pilot Genius Hour Projects – John Spencer

  Genius Hour (or 20% Time) projects begin with a simple idea: give students a dedicated period of time to pursue their passions, interests, and questions in a creative way. In this blog post and podcast, we explore the benefits of doing Genius Hour p…

• 10 Tips for Teachers Using the Station Rotation Model |

  Teachers are already blowing up my Twitter feed with awesome photos taken during their first few station rotation lessons! It’s exciting to see so many teachers trying this blended learning model and creating opportunities for small group instructio…

• The Adventure Blog: Researchers Create Most Detailed Map of Antarctica Ever

  Even in the 21st century, much of Antarctica remains unvisited by man, with the frozen continent largely unexplored. Sure, there are expeditions to the South Pole every austral summer, but most stick to the same trident and true routes, rarely varyi…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two Interactive Copies of the Constitution for Constitution Day

  Next Monday is Constitution Day in the United States. By law all schools that receive federal funds have to offer some instruction on on the Constitution.

• Using Book Creator in Middle School – Class Tech Tips

  Middle school students have stories to tell. From narrative writing in the English Language Arts classroom to daily reflections in the math classroom, students can use Book Creator to capture the story of their learning.

• hyperdocs tips and making learning addictive

• “I want students to own their own learning” | Mike Kaechele

  What do educators even mean when they say, “I want students to own their learning” in our school? Think about the context of that statement for a moment. In our highly standardized curriculum and over-tested classroom environments, this statement is…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Battle of the Models: The Old Versus the New U.S. Global Weather Forecasting Model

  Early next year, the U.S. will move to new global model. The new model (FV-3) was developed at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamical Lab (GFDL) in Princeton and will replace the old Global Forecast System (GFS) model that has been around forever.

• Six New Videos Related To 9/11 | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  WikiImages / Pixabay I’m adding these six new videos to The Best Sites To Help Teach About 9/11:

• Schools Matter: St. Hope Charter School Students Have Had Enough

  St. Hope Charter Schools, Inc. is a small charter school chain owned by Kevin Johnson and his wife, Michelle Rhee.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Free iPad Apps for Making Videos in Elementary School

  In the next weeks I’ll be spending quite a bit of time working in elementary school classrooms that are equipped with iPads. One of the things that I’ll be doing is helping teachers help their students make short videos. These are some of the apps t…

• Sharing Adobe Spark Creations with Google Slides – Class Tech Tips

  When it comes to sharing student work, there are lots of ways to establish a workflow in your classroom.

• Five Proven Benefits of Play

  Play is, by definition, intrinsically motivated. People and many animals do it just because. But apparently parents and teachers these days need more of a nudge than that to make the space for play. So here are some of the research findings that app…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Become a Mystery Skype Master!

  In a post earlier today I shared an explanation of the Mystery Skype game and some places to find partners to play the game. But if you’re not sure how to get started, Microsoft offers a detailed overview in the form of Become a Mystery Skype Master.

• Free Technology for Teachers: What is Mystery Skype?

  Last week I reTweeted someone’s request to find a partner for a Mystery Skype activity. That generated some new connections, but it also generated a few questions from people who wanted to know what Mystery Skype is and what it entails.

• Student Blogs In The Middle School And High School Classroom – The Edublogger

  A few weeks ago, we brought you the story of grade two teacher Becky Versteeg. She told us how she sets up student blogs with a new cohort of students. Blogging offers many benefits for students from the early years of schooling right up to adult le…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Edventure Builder

  Edventure Builder is an innovative new site that is perfect for sparking student’s creativity by providing a online platform for creating: scavenger hunts, interactive stories, or choose your own adventures.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Good Site for Vocabulary Lists and Practice Activities

  Vocabulary.com is an excellent vocabulary study service offering thousands of vocabulary practice lists and activities for students in elementary school through graduate school.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Online Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

  The Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond hosts the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. This online atlas contains more than 700 historical maps of the United States. The maps within the atlas are arranged into ei…

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: Digital Interactive Notebooks, Part 2: Adding to your Students’ Collection

  My last post demonstrated a way to use Google Slides and Drawings to make a digital interactive notebook.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Funny Face Picture Prompts Spice Up Class Photos

  For most of us we have just two options when it comes to group photos. Say cheese is the standard. Okay, be silly, is next. Second grade teacher Shira Moskivitz has figured out a way to make boring class or staff photos a thing of the past.

• The Balance Between Struggling and Developing Strengths – The Principal of Change

  I thought about this quote a lot this past week in connection to education as I listened to a powerful student speech where they encouraged their teachers not to have them conform into a specific “box” but help them bring out their talents while fin…

• Social Emotional Learning Resources | Inside the classroom, outside the box!

• Note-taking: A Research Roundup | Cult of Pedagogy

  Let’s talk about note-taking. Every day, in classrooms all over the world, students are taking notes. I have my own half-baked ideas about what makes one approach better than another, and I’m sure you do too.

• Class Introductions with Flipgrid – Mari Venturino

  One of the biggest lessons I learned in EDS 250, one of the first education courses I took as part of my Masters/Credential program, was the value of names. Our professor, Dr. Luz Chung, read us a poem called “T-shirt” from a selection called My Nam…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are another bunch of amazing blog posts from this past week:

• How To Become A Better Teacher? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The New York Times Magazine this week is the “Education Issue,” with several articles that are well worth reading. I’d start with Sara Mosle’s Can Good Teaching Be Taught?

• A Fun Game and Mission to Teach Students About Giving Good Instructions – Teacher Reboot Camp

  I recently took on a new position teaching 400+ elementary students Computer and Technology. After the first few weeks of going over procedures and an introduction to computers, I noticed my students were getting restless.

• A Fun Way To Teach Students How Not To Behave – Smart Classroom Management

  One of the most effective classroom management strategies is teaching students how not to behave. The way it works is simple.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Parent’s Guide to Instagram – Including a Glossary and Discussion Questions

  Instagram recently released published a fairly comprehensive guide for parents.

• Classroom PowerUp VLOG – Classroom Powerups

  I love writing on this Blog. It is a great way to reflect on my classroom practice and hopefully inspire others with some awesome engagement tools. But I am branching out to the world of video and launching a weekly VLOG which can be found on my You…

• Wisconsin Science and STEM Education: How Are Some Districts Connecting Standards-Based Grading to NGSS/WSS? (Part 2 of series)

  Grades 9-12 1. Explains the structure and function of systems. 2. Uses mathematics to support explanations and draw conclusions. 3. Applies scientific knowledge to investigate how humans impact environmental/ global systems. 4. Clarifies and organiz…

• Wisconsin Science and STEM Education: Why Do Standards-Based Grading? (Part 1 of series)

  When I taught eighth grade in California, our administration started talking about implementing standards-based grading. I was skeptical to say the least! I could not imagine how I would manage that type of scoring for 120+ students.

• A Principal’s Reflections: The Purpose of Content

  When I think back to my days as a learner, the content seemed to be at the forefront of every class. Whether it was disseminated during a lecture in college, through direct instruction in K-12, or at times consumed from a textbook or encyclopedia, i…

• K-5 Interactive Science Lessons on iPad – Class Tech Tips

  Do your science lessons inspire students to explore the world around them? If you are interested in bringing interactive science lessons to your classroom, here’s an iPad app you’ll want to check out! Tappity is an interactive app for iOS to help cu…

• Tabletop Audio – Ambiences and Music for Tabletop Role Playing Games

  Original, 10 minute ambiences and music for your games and stories.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Add a Materials Section to Google Classroom

  Last night I shared the news that Google has added the option for teachers to add materials like digital handouts to the Classwork section in Google Classroom. Judging by the emails and Tweets I’ve already seen, this is going to be a popular feature.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Add a Classwork Section to Older Google Classroom Classes

  Last night Google released two new features for Google Classroom. The first was the option to add materials into the Classwork section of your Google Classroom classes without making assignments. The second was the option to update your older Google…

• 15 must have resources for teaching digital citizenship

• Free PBS Site Explores Nature Through Games & Real-World Activities – Tech Learning

  Pros: Hands-on investigations help kids explore the world around them and build scientific understanding. Cons: Alignment to the Next Generation of Science Standards leaves a bit to be desired.

• 2018-19 Items: Unit 1 Cards – Classroom Powerups

  For the 2018-19 School Year I am completely revamping my Power Card Items. This year I am tying the Item cards into my narrative.

• 10 ways to generate great lesson ideas

• Free Technology for Teachers: ReadWorks Now Integrates With Google Classroom

  ReadWorks is a free service that provides standards-aligned reading lesson plans for K-12 classrooms. In addition to lesson plans ReadWorks offers a huge libray of fiction and non-fiction literature that you can search according to topic and grade l…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two New Google Classroom Features That Everyone Has Been Asking For!

  The new version of Google Classroom just got a little bit better. Ten minutes ago I got an email from my contact at Google about informing me that the new version of Google Classroom now has a dedicated “materials” section within the new Classwork s…

• How to transform your library into a real learning community – Hack Learning

  Is your school library mostly a place to store books? Is it empty and silent? What if you could transform your library into a dynamic learning hub? Award-winning school librarians Kristina Holzweiss and Stony Evans are on a mission to incorporate li…

• 3 Questions to Promote Innovative Leadership in Education – The Principal of Change

  I received an email from a teacher the other day that was quite frustrated.

• Stuff I Have Been Wrong About |

  Shocking, but sometimes I am wrong. Part of the job of the Superintendent, as I have described it, is to be looking around the corner at what is coming next.

• Gamification And Microlearning: A Dynamite Combination – eLearning Industry

  We, at EI Design, have been offering learning and performance support solutions for over 16 years. Over these years,

• Google Classroom: Quickly Add Video Directions – Teacher Tech

  The most influential element in a classroom: the teacher. You work hard to build relationships and students like you. Putting your face into your digital assignments makes a personal connection with students, even when they are using a computer.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Multimedia Projects for Social Studies Classes

  If you teach social studies and you’re looking for a new project to engage your students this year, I have some suggestions for you. All of the following ideas can be modified for use in elementary school, middle school, or high school settings.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: 30 Sites and Apps for Digital Storytelling

  For my Pinterest board on Digital Storytelling click here.

• iPad users – Minecraft: Education Edition now available – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog

  Welcome back teachers! We are excited to share stories, resources, and videos with you again this year! For the readers of this blog that are using iPads in your classroom, Microsoft released some big news just in time for the start of school! Minec…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Good Options for Digitizing Your Students’ Physical Work

  Whether it’s a model made for a science fair or a paper on which a student successfully solved a complex math problem, there are times when we want to save a copy of physical work to use in digital portfolios.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Find & Read Old Newspapers Through the Google Newspaper Archive

  Yesterday’s blog post about the Chronicling America collection of digitized newspapers prompted Daniel Bassill to ask me about options for newspapers printed after 1963. My suggestion was to try the Google Newspaper Archive.

• You want kids to have skills. Read Inquire Write can help. | History Tech

  Last week, I got the chance to work with about 25 teachers and educators from around the state as we started the process of revising our state social studies standards. Long time readers will recall a similar process from seven years ago.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Fiete Math Climber

  Fiete Math Climber is a fun iOS game to help students w/ basic Math skills (i.e. addition, subtraction, etc.). The concept to FMC is simple as a student solves an equation and their character jumps up on the ladder collecting coins. If a player gets…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 18 Great Cartoons That Teach Cyber Safety Lessons

  Planet Nutshell is a video production company that produces short, animated videos to explain products, services, and concepts. Within their education section you will find videos addressing topics in mathematics, physics, climate science, and cyber…

• The Perfect Pairing: Virtual Field Trips and Scavenger Hunts |

  “Mrs. Tucker, why don’t we go on more field trips?” Every year students ask me this question. There are a couple of answers. In an effort to expose my students to more experiences, I’ve embraced virtual tours and field trips.

• A Slightly Embarrassing Look into my Classroom: Narrative Example and Plickers – Classroom Powerups

  Every so often our Curriculum Coordinator, Ms McCoy, comes in to view my classroom. When she does she often brings her iPad and records things she finds interesting.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Twine – Write Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Stories

  Twine is an open-source program for writing choose your own adventure stories. You can use Twine online or you can download the software for Mac or Windows. I used Twine online to create a short story.

• Real teaching means real learning: Zombies and number talks….

  Recently, during a walk I was playing The Walking Dead: The Zombies, and an awesome mathematical experience occurred. I smiled, and replied “How would we do that?” As she grabbed for her phone, I asked her to humor me and try it mentally….

• KQED

  Really. In a reversal of fortune that seems lifted from fantasy, the once stigmatized refuge of the antisocial is now the new social, and it has returned from exile with a vengeance.

• ditchthattextbook.com

• How many questions should you have on a summative assessment? | All Things Assessment

  I love using Twitter as a way to communicate thinking in a markedly different way than when using blogs, articles, and books. By limiting the number of characters, Twitter forces us to be succinct in our thinking.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Collaboratively Create Documents on Canva

  Last week Clint Heitz asked me for a suggestion for tools that students can use to make magazines online. He has used Lucid Press and was looking for other options to try. There were two tools that I suggested. One suggestion was to try Book Creator…

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: Using Google Slides & Drawings to Make Interactive Notebooks

  If you were using interactive notebooks in the spring of 2017, you probably remember the Great Glue Shortage. Somehow that spring making slime exploded onto the scene and glue was hard to come by.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Badaboom

  Badaboom is a new “game based” learning tool that I just found out about from the amazing educator and friend, Naomi Harm. Badaboom bills itself as an alternative to Kahoot, where educators can make quizzes/games and then have students answer them i…

• How Data Privacy Lessons in Alternative Reality Games Can Help Kids In Real Life | MindShift | KQED News

• classtechtips.com

  I grew up in a family where the Beatles were on constant rotation. It was the default soundtrack for many family car rides. Even today The Beatles Channel on Sirius XM is definitely in my Top 10 stations. It’s Channel 18, in case you’d like to add i…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Chronicling America – An Archive of 2,600+ Digitized Newspapers

  Chronicling America is a great resource provided by the Library of Congress. On Chronicling America you can find more than 2,600 digitized copies of newspapers printed in the United States between 1789 and 1963.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Yo Teach! to Create a Classroom Backchannel

  On Friday I wrote an overview of a new backchannel tool called Yo Teach! It’s a great alternative to the much-loved, but now gone, TodaysMeet. To help more people get started on Yo Teach! I made the tutorial video that is embedded below.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: #BacktoSchool List No No #1 – Graphing Calculators

  It is not unusual for costly graphing calculators to be a part of back-to-school lists. The arguments go something like this. We need students to have a separate non-computer graphing calculator to know they really know how to use a graphing calcula…

• Back To School with Bitmoji

  I swear to you dear reader, I am NOT a paid spokesperson for Bitmoji! In fact, they haven’t even answered, commented, acknowledged, or even liked ANY of my Tweets or Instagram where I’ve mentioned them. I am just a total fangirl. A lonely little neg…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: The Real Way to Avoid Hearing from the Same 26 Facebook Friends

  Innovative educators are generally good fact checkers and don’t fall for chain social posts like the one making its rounds about seeing the same 26 people on Facebook. They know to verify and even a quick search on The Google will help you find out …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Poetry 180 – A Poem for Every Day of the School Year

  Poetry 180 is a Library of Congress project that was created when Billy Collins was the U.S. Poet Laureate. The purpose of the project is to provide high school teachers with poems for their students to read or hear throughout the school year.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are great resources and blogs from this past week:

• Examples — Pear Deck

  tags:samples google-slides activities lessons pear-deck peardeck googleslides ready-made

• Thinking in a White Room: Using Conversations as Evidence of Learning

  (This happened last year and the name of my student has been changed.) George drops by my class every morning. “Hi Miss!” he shouts. He tells me about his girlfriend, and asks for breath mints because he got rushed out of the house and didn’t have t…

• How To Avoid Labeling Difficult Students – Smart Classroom Management

  Difficult students feel different from their classmates. As if, they don’t quite fit in.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: EDpuzzle

  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.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: YO Teach!

  YO Teach is a fantastic new site for creating a backchannel chat that I just found out about from the amazing Richard Byrne. YO Teach is a very user-friendly tool to use to create a backchannel chat by simply creating a room and then setting a passw…

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: Tracking Progress with Google Sheets

  My friend Andreas is a Spreadsheet Jedi. So when I saw this post of his where he created a progress tracking to-do list, I immediately wanted to try it. Since I am a new AP Chemistry teacher, using Andreas’ system to track progress in AP Chemistry s…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Short Lessons About the Origins of Labor Day

  This weekend, Labor Day weekend, is the unofficial end of summer. After this weekend nearly all students and teachers will be back in school. If you’re already back in school, you and your students are probably looking forward to the three day weeke…

• Blended Learning Strategies and Resources

• Free Technology for Teachers: Yo Teach! – A Great Alternative to TodaysMeet

  Since TodaysMeet was shuttered in June I have fielded lots of emails and Tweets from teachers looking for alternatives to it. I have been suggesting Backchannel Chat and GoSoapBox, but as of this morning I have a new alternative to TodaysMeet that I…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Another Small, Convenient Update to Google Sites and Google Forms

  Earlier today I shared the news of the new option to add buttons to Google Sites. This afternoon Google announced another small update to Google Sites that is based on a small update to Google Forms.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Sites Has a New Design Component

  The “new” version of Google Sites (it has been out for two years) has a new design component that you can use to make navigation of your site a little bit easier for visitors. As Google announced yesterday, you can now add buttons to the pages of yo…

• International Dot Day 2018: Your Guide To Getting Involved – The Edublogger

  International Dot Day is coming up on, around, or during the week of September 15-ish. Every year, millions of students and educators connect on International Dot Day to celebrate creativity, courage, and collaboration.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create an eBook on Book Creator

  On Tuesday I shared five ideas for making ebooks with your students. Book Creator is a great tool for making those ebooks. With Book Creator your students can make ebooks that include text, images, audio recordings, videos, and even maps.

• 10 tips for great classroom video calls

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Quickly Add Page Numbers to Long Google Documents

  Since Sunday evening when I published the 2018-19 Practical Ed Tech Handbook I have had a couple of people ask how I added the page numbers to it and kept them straight in Google Docs. The answer is found in a simple, but often overlooked function i…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Anchor Adds New Ways to Craft Podcasts

  In the last year Anchor.fm has become my go-to recommendation for easily creating podcasts with students. The web version of Anchor.fm lets you record, edit, and publish podcasts in a matter of minutes. The Anchor mobile apps are even easier to use.

• Old School Doesn’t Work | My Island View

  If a doctor, who is faced with a patient exhibiting multiple symptoms of an unknown disease, were to address each of the symptoms rather than addressing the disease itself, he/she might find the outcome for that patient to be disastrous in the long …

• Blended Learning: Designing a Whole Group Rotation with StudySync |

  The term “blended learning” is an umbrella that encompasses many different models that combine active, engaged learning online with active, engage learning offline.

• Diverging Plots: My current story – Classroom Powerups

  In my first year gamifying a student suggested that the students actions during a unit should have an impact on the game narrative. This was a fantastic idea but seems very overwhelming – even now. Imagine 95 independent and concurrent stories in on…

• The Best Advice For Student Founders, From Student Founders

• Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices | Edutopia

• Free Technology for Teachers: View Upcoming Google Classroom Assignments in Google Docs

  A new little side panel option recently appeared in my Google Docs. In fact, it appeared while I was in the middle of a workshop in which I was showcasing some Google Docs add-ons. The new side panel in Google Docs provides quick access to Google Ca…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A New Way to Add Google Keep Notes to Google Documents

  Last year Google added the option to insert your Google Keep notes into your Google Documents. That feature made it easy for students who use Google Keep to bookmark resources while conducting research to then insert those bookmarked resources into …

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ideas for Making Multimedia eBooks With Students

  For many years Book Creator was my go-to recommendation for teachers who wanted to have their students create multimedia ebooks on iPads. So when the folks at Book Creator launched an online version to use Google Chrome I quickly added it to my list…

• Analyzing Teamwork with Google Forms – Mari Venturino

  A few weeks ago, I blogged about Saving Sam, one of my favorite teamwork challenges. It’s one of the activities my kids talk about all year! And, it’s how we begin our discussion to build our teamwork foundation for the year.

• 25 Things You Didn’t Know Google Slides Could Do | Shake Up Learning

  I talk about the wonders of Google Slides CONSTANTLY and frequently refer to it as the Swiss Army Knife of G Suite. It can do all kinds of things! In this post, I will show you 25 Things You Didn’t Know Google Slides Could Do. The more I learn about…

• Control Alt Achieve: Multiple Correct Answers in Google Form Quizzes

  One of the most popular uses for Google Forms is creating online assessments for students. It is a quick, easy, and powerful way to create auto-grading quizzes. As with all Google tools, new features are continually being added, making Forms even mo…

• What do you want school to be? [VIDEO] | @mcleod | Dangerously Irrelevant

  A wonderful video from the Early Learning Alliance. Some of my favorite quotes include: I want school to do no harm. I don’t want my kids coming home less interested in their world than when they left. [YES!!] I wish I felt like I had somewhere to g…

• Profile Of A Modern Learner In 2018 Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Learning is the #1 reason why people want to join organizations. And they give just 7 seconds to decide if it’s for them or not.

• 5 ways to use adobe spark video in your classroom

• Welcome To Fair Haven Innovates • Teched Up Teacher

  What a wild summer. I took a break from blogging because my summer has been jammed packed. I started out by going to ISTE in Chicago. After I got back, I went on my honeymoon in St. Lucia. Then, it was back to Chicago for the amazing Our Voice Acade…

• About ‘Momo’ & dealing with viral media scares – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org

  There’s no rhyme or reason to these things. They start in different parts of the world, but they don’t always take off in regions where they started.

• Are your equity efforts aimed at test scores or life readiness? | @mcleod | Dangerously Irrelevant

  I have an assignment for you.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Get Your Copy of the 2018-19 Practical Ed Tech Handbook

  Last night subscribers to the Practical Ed Tech Newsletter were sent copies of the 2018-19 Practical Ed Tech Handbook. This annual publication is a free, 36 page PDF that highlights my favorite educational technology sites and apps. The Practical Ed…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Worddio

  Worddio is a free mobile (iOS/Android) app for for learning a new language. Worddio has over 30 libraries of languages w/ over 8000 words spoken by native speakers to help students learn.

• Free Technology for Teachers: G Suite and Chrome Accessibility

  Accessibility options for G Suite for Education services and Google’s Chrome browser have improved in the last couple of years. If you use these services with students who need improved accessibility options, the G Suite user guide to accessibility …

• Five Practices for Building Positive Relationships With Students – Education Week Teacher

• Effectiveness of student incentive programs depends on design | Education Dive

• Why incentives don’t work in education—or the business world | Opensource.com

• Seven Reasons to Rethink Educational Incentives | EdSurge News

• Control Alt Achieve: Learn your New Students’ Faces, Names, and More with Google Slides

  One of the first things every teacher wants to do each year is memorize their students faces and names. This makes a personal connection to each of your students and helps them feel welcome and valued in your class.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Use Reflection Signs to Sum Up & Celebrate Learning

  Looking for a time efficient and effective way for classes to reflect upon what they’ve learned that works for introverts and extroverts alike. Then you might want to try this fun reflection sign technique.

• Deeper Class Discussions with the TQE Method | Cult of Pedagogy

  So much of the learning we do comes from texts: articles, textbooks, novels, and all kinds of online publications. Sometimes, those texts come in less traditional forms; in fact, our use of the word “text” has broadened over time to include things l…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some more great posts from this past week:

• Board Game Icebreaker: Relationship Onboarding – Classroom Powerups

  Wednesday was the first day of the 2018-19 school year and all of those half-baked plans and ideas are finally getting BETA tested.

• “Best” Lists Of The Week: Classroom Management | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Tips on What to Include in Digital Portfolios

  During the course ​​of ​​the ​​school​ ​year ​​our​ ​students will ​​create ​​some ​​fantastic ​​digital artifacts.

• 25 Attention Grabbing Tips for the Classroom

  Upcoming SlideShare Loading in …5 × 25 Attention Grabbing Tips for the Classroom 1. 25 Attention-Grabbing Tips for the Classroom from the Edutopia Community 2.

• Great Rebuke To “Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can’t, Teach” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Who hasn’t heard the age-old insult to educators: “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”? Adam Grant writes a great rebuke to that saying in The New York Times today in his column, Those Who Can Do, Can’t Teach.

• Microscope Introduction – “e” Lab |

  This lab is similar to the “e” lab used with freshman biology, but designed for students in the vocational track.  It has less reading and more detailed steps for using the microscope as well as a larger font and bigger spacing.

• Why Consistency Is Everything The First Two Weeks Of The School Year – Smart Classroom Management

  The first two weeks of the school year is the honeymoon period. Students are eager and wanting to please.

• Ranking Quests: A Narrative Based Voluntary Leader Board – Classroom Powerups

  tags:gamification quests narrative rank

• The Scott Pilgrimage Project: Global Culture, Psychogeography and Gaming the City — OnEducation Podcast

  tags:class create game arg ar gbl

• How Games Can Be a Centerpiece for Student-Driven… | PBS Education

  tags:game gbl games gaming learn learning student

• Reacting to the Past | Reacting to the Past

  tags:history game gbl simulation past games gaming learn learning react reacting rttp

• (PDF) Stories, Games, & Learning Through Play The Affordances Of Game Narrative For Education

  tags:stories games gaming play learn learning gbl

• Anders Tychsen – Google Scholar Citations

  tags:games gaming gbl research

• GooseChase – Scavenger Hunts for the Masses

• “Linkage Bingo” to summarise and connect key factors | Tarr’s Toolbox

  This whole-class game is a great way firstly to summarise issues of cause or effect, and then (most importantly and most challengingly) to link them together in a meaningful way prior to students producing a written essay.

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Back To Basics: Device Tips For #BackToSchool

  When I was a Director of Instructional Technology it was always a fun day when we could deliver brand new devices to a school. The students and teachers were always excited and ready for the new possibilities ahead. Then after a few weeks frustratio…

• Free Technology for Teachers: New Artifact Collections Added to DocsTeach

  DocsTeach is one of my go-to recommendations for anyone who teaches U.S. History at a middle school or high school level. The site offers a dozen tools that you can use to create interactive history lessons based on primary and secondary sources.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Northwest Wildfires: Are We Seeing a “New Normal” Due to Climate Change or and “Old Normal”?

  Some of the news media, politicians, and environmental advocacy groups have claimed that the smoke hitting western Washington during the past two summers are a “new normal.

• 7 ninja google keep tricks for teachers and students

• After Accelerated Reader – Pernille Ripp

  One of the questions, I am asked the most often is, “What do you do if you don’t have Accelerated Reader?” Or insert whatever computer program here.  It is a question filled with emotion, after all, change is hard, and for some kids, AR and programs…

• Not using DocsTeach!? We need to talk. | History Tech

  Okay. I know some of you are using DocsTeach. And why not?

• Learning with digital games

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Google Slides Editing Tips

  Google Slides has come a long way since its early days as a bare-bones slideshow tool. Today, it is packed with features. Some of those features are obvious and others are hidden away in menus that are frequently ignored.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a Bibliography With MyBib

  Earlier this week I learned about a new bibliography creation tool called MyBib. MyBib is an open source project.

• Middle School Writing Rubrics |

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

• The Nerdy Teacher: Applied Robotics for Middle School from @WonderWorkshop #MakerEd

  I’ve seen my students play with Dash and Dot as well as the Cue from Wonder Workshop over the past school year. They had so much fun working with the Sketch Kit and learning to code to create art. They loved it so much, they featured it on their new…

• The Adventure Blog: Video: Ancient Scotland

  Shot over a seven month period, this short video takes us on a breathtaking journey across Scotland, from as far north as Muckle Flugga at the very top of Shetland to Britain’s highest sea stacks near St Kilda, some 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrid…

• ditchthattextbook.com

• Free Technology for Teachers: Kahoot Adds New Features for Teachers

  Kahoot has just announced a feature that teachers have requested for a long time. You can now upload a spreadsheet of questions to create a game in Kahoot. To do this you have to use Kahoot’s spreadsheet template.

• The 2018-19 Game Manual – Classroom Powerups

  Lets Face it… No one reads the video game manual. We all just jump right in and start playing and learn the rules and physics of the game that way. Still, most games still come with at least some sort of a quick start guide and most major games have…

• 3 Phrases I Have Been Rethinking – The Principal of Change

  Inspired by my good friend Tony Sinanis and his post, “5 Phrases I’m Letting Go,” I decided to think about three phrases that I am removing trying to rethink in my work in both education and leadership.  Here are expressions I have been thinking abo…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Chrome Extensions for Teachers and Students

  Extensions for Google Chrome can do all kinds of helpful things for you and your students. This is the time of year when teachers who have Chromebooks for the first time ask me what they should add in addition to the standard things that their IT st…

• Join a Game

• #ARVRinEDU Summer Recap | ARVRinEDU | Jaime Donally | Professional Development

  WOW! This summer has flown by with many #ARVRinEDU happenings. To catch up with the community, I’ve listed some resources below that were shared in the #ARVRinEDU chat, conferences and district presentations. Don’t miss the codes that will score you…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Another Surge of Wildfire Smoke Hits Puget Sound: The Worst on Record

  Folks were surprised how quickly the air quality deteriorated Sunday afternoon, rapidly going from moderate air quality to unhealthy conditions with a profound loss of visibility.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Code Kingdom: Treasure

  Code Kingdom: Treasure is an excellent free iOS app to introduce coding/programming to young students. The way this works is a user drags-n-drops code (i.e. Scratch) to have their character/troll maneuver around a board and collect an item or treasu…

• Zapitalism – Best Business Simulation Games Math Financial Game

  tags:economics game gbl games gaming learning edtech

• 5 digital tools to save time in the classroom

• The Nerdy Teacher: What would your letter say? #EdChat

  I took some time to reflect on my first few years of teaching and was thinking about the advice I would give myself. Here is the letter I would write to First Year Nick. You do not realize it now, but you are in a for a world class butt-kicking.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Code Karts

  Code Karts is a fun iOS game designed for kids 4 on up to introduce them to programming and coding. This is done by using pre-coding logic to program a car through a racetrack to finish a race.

• Amusing Monday: Finding new ways to ride a bike across the water | Watching Our Water Ways

  When a man rides a bicycle across the River Thames in London, people stop and stare — and that’s exactly what 35-year-old Dhruv Boruah wants them to do, as he picks up trash floating on the river. His message is about plastic pollution.

• Free Technology for Teachers: MyBib – A Free Citation Generator

  MyBib is a free, open source citation generator that rivals similar services that charge a subscription fee. MyBib can create citations and bibliographies in a wide range of styles including the popular MLA, APA, Chicago, IEEE, and Harvard styles.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Back-to-School Tech Tips for Teachers

  The new school year has now started for almost everyone. And if it hasn’t started in your area, it will be starting soon. In the last few days before school starts take some time to make sure that your tech is in order just like the rest of your cla…

• Free Technology for Teachers: What To Do When Your Classroom Technology Fails

  In my previous post I highlighted five things that you can do to make sure that your classroom technology is ready for the new school year. But even if you do all of those things, there will still be times when things don’t go as expected.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Actively Learn

  Actively Learn is a site I’ve blogged about in the past that is ideal for increasing reading comprehension or adding “depth” to any text. AL reminds me a lot of EDpuzzle but instead of “making a video your own” it is “making reading material your ow…

• A Principal’s Reflections: The Case for Coaching Leaders

  Growing up as a child I played numerous sports recreationally and in high school. Upon entering high school I was not the best athlete by any means, but football was one sport where I excelled more than others, and this led to some time playing in c…

• 3 Ways to Build the “Energy” in Your Schools – The Principal of Change

  The Environment is about the space(s) around us and the “stuff” that is needed to serve students learners. The Experience is about what we design for learning and what we empower others to create for themselves.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Some more great blog posts from this past week:

• 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…

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 …

• 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.

• 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 …

• 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…

• 10 ways to use flipgrids newest features in the classroom

• 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.

• 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…

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Supporting Writing In Every Classroom With ThinkCERCA

  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.

• 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…

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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…

• “Your Life In Another Country” Is A Simple, But Useful, Comparison Tool | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  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…

• Lessons from the “Bad” Kids – Pernille Ripp

  “I think of the children who make trouble at school as miner’s canaries.

• Learning with ‘e’s: State of play

  tags:game games play playing fun learning learn gbl

• factitious

  tags:fake news fakenews fake_news fake news fake-news

• 10 Ways to Make Google Classroom Assignments Better

• Be Internet Awesome – Slides

  tags:digital citizenship digital-citizenship pear deck peardeck slides lessons interactive gsuiteedu edtech

• 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…

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 …

• 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…

• 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…

• 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.

• 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…

• 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.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Toss the Smartboard. Here’s The Best #BacktoSchool Teaching Tool: @ClassroomScreen

  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.

• 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.

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