Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are this past week’s amazing blog posts!

• How To Have Better, Sharper Routines Next School Year – Smart Classroom Management

  Routines are the lifeblood of a well-run classroom. Because, done right, they save tons of learning time. They keep students focused and on task. They cut way down on misbehavior.

• Smiling About Bitmoji Books

  My favorite avatar creator Bitmoji, which I’ve been blogging about since 2015 (links to those posts below) has recently added a few NEW cartoons featuring books! But, as my Twitter & PA friend Ms.

• Education Websites Face Pending ‘Mark of Shame’ – K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center

  Cross-posted on the EdTech Strategies blog: https://ift.tt/2s3xgci. Chrome is the most popular** browser, and later this month it will be making a change in the way it communicates the safety of websites to users.

• The lives of salmon are complex, leading to threats but also hope | Watching Our Water Ways

  Salmon have a tough life. Not only must they escape predators and find enough food to eat — as do all wild animals — but they must also make the physiologically taxing transition from freshwater to saltwater and then back again to start a new genera…

• WellPlayed Pod: Game Plans! – Classroom Powerups

  I always have a blast talking with Mr. Matera and this episode was no different! I would suggest opening up this video in YouTube and leaving a comment (actually I would hope you leave a comment below too). Mr.

• School Directory – Collegiate Esports Governing Body – NAC Esports

  tags:esports gaming education edtech

• College esports – a list of varsity esports programs in North America

  tags:esports gaming education edtech

• tnl.media/esportsnews/2017/5/19/collegiate-esports-report-q2-2017-40schools-4million

  tags:esports gaming education edtech

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Great Place to Find WordPress Tutorials

  Creating a classroom or personal blog on hosted services like Blogger, Weebly, or Edublogs is rather quick and easy process. Services like these provide easy-to-follow templates and manage all of the software and security updates that a lot of peopl…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Monster Heart Medic – A Game for Learning About Heart Health

  Monster Heart Medic is a free iPad app produced by the Lawrence Hall of Science with funding from the National Institutes of Health. The purpose of the app is to help students learn about the cardiovascular system through a game environment.

• What if we don’t know what we don’t know? | My Island View

  Several decades ago I read an article that I believe was in Time Magazine on the most difficult jobs in America. The article defined a difficult job based on the number of impactful decisions a person had to make in a day.

• ditchthattextbook.com

• Free Technology for Teachers: New Metaverse Tutorials – Build Your Own Augmented Reality Games

  Over the last year Metaverse has become a popular tool for creating your own augmented reality games. Many teachers have used it to create digital breakout games. Like many other tools that quickly rise in popularity, Metaverse has made some changes…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Profound Impacts of Fireworks on Visibility and Air Quality

  The visibility this morning was greatly reduced compared to yesterday and fireworks smoke played a major role. Here is view from the Seattle PanoCan looking towards the Cascades at 9:30 AM this morning (Thursday, July 5). Very hazy with the foothill…

• U.S. Court: Detroit students have no right to access to literacy | News Hits

  “If they are unable to educate their students, that’s a shame, but court rulings have not established that “access to literacy” is “a fundamental right.””

• MTC Expands Membership to Public Schools – Mastery Transcript

  tags:mastery based transcript high school schools education reform edreform

• Free Technology for Teachers: Learn About Lake Ecosystems on DIY Lake Science

  For the Fourth of July holiday I took my daughters to play at a little beach on a local lake. My older daughter enjoyed gathering snail and mussel shells in her bucket while my younger daughter enjoyed playing with some beach toys.

• Schools Matter: Dweck’s Brainology = School Budget Drainology

  Largely in response to the demands of paternalist school reformers fixated on training the poor and children of the poor to be immune to their own poverty, non-cognitive behavioral interventions aimed at “character building” have proliferated within…

• Our Notion of Being Literate or Illiterate Calls for an Update | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  What does it mean to be literate? What does it mean to be illiterate? I think about the definition and the notion of literacy quite a bit. Looking back at history, we know that the ability to read and write were in the hands of the clergy (male) and…

• This Land Is Your Land – Practical Theory

  This song has been on my mind a lot lately — not just the verses they teach in elementary school, but all the verses. It strikes me that this song, in many ways, speaks to the heart of the divide in this country.

• Learning from Fortnite about Exclusivity in Gamification – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Recently, gaming phenomenon, Fortnite ran an event that signalled the end of their current season and a whole new set of clues to what may be coming next.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Be More Than a Hashtag

  I’ve been on an off social media since ISTE. One of the things I have seen is more asinine tweets that either take veiled shots at teachers or are just nonsense.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 4-H STEM Lab – A Good Place to Find Hands-on STEM Activities for K-12

  The 4-H STEM Lab is a good place to find hands-on STEM activities for students of all ages. Activities in the 4-H STEM Lab are organized according to topic and grade level. The topics are alternative energy, chemistry, electricity, engineering, and …

• Enhance Literacy with Comics

  tags:comics literacy reading

• New TED-Ed Video & Lesson: “Are there universal expressions of emotion?” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  I’m a high school teacher in Sacramento, CA.

• Signs of serious progress for digital citizenship – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org

  It has been a big year for digital citizenship, and what better time – at least here in the United States – to check in on its practice this July 4th week, one year since the Obama Foundation issued a call to look more deeply into its meaning (here‘…

• Impressive ARKit Apps in Education | ARVRinEDU | Jaime Donally | Professional Development

  tags:ar edtech app apps

• Free Comics – Comics by comiXology

  tags:comics free literacy reading

• Reading Activities for Students Using Book Creator – Class Tech Tips

  How do your students respond to reading in your classroom? Well, this summer I’ve teamed up with the folks at Book Creator for a handful of special events. One of the webinars I hosted this summer focuses on reading activities for students.

• Free Technology for Teachers: NRICH – Another Good Place to Find Math Activities

  In response to yesterday’s post about MathsLinks a handful of folks reminded me via email and Facebook of another good place for teachers to find mathematics resources. That place is NRICH which I initially reviewed almost eight years ago and then a…

• Kapwing – Create and Edit Video Online

  tags:video image editor photo photos

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Crash Course on Independence Day

  Tomorrow, July 4th, is Independence Day in the U.S. In the video below John Green offers a short overview of the history of Independence Day and the ways in which Americans have celebrated the holiday since 1776.

• What Can Video Games Teach Us About Instructional Design? – John Spencer

  When I was a kid, I used to spend hours playing Tetris. I would zone out everything else and hit a state of hyperfocus. I was fully engaged. I could spend hours playing Tetris. Over the years, the trending games have changed.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Chemistry of Fireworks

  Tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States. Cities and towns all over the country will feature fireworks displays to celebrate the day. I’m sure that many of you will be enjoying a fireworks display tomorrow. (My kids are too young and my dog…

• From virtual reality to ebooks, the future of digital media in schools is a total toss-up – GeekWire

• GameOn.World – Online Trivia Game

• Polyup: The world’s first Casual Modding platform

• 3D Printing: One Step Closer to a Star Trek Future? – Best Computer Science Schools

  tags:3d printing 3dprinting infographic infographics

• ISTE | Infographic: Citizenship in the digital age

  tags:digital-citizenship DigitalCitizenship infographic infographics

• What Your Font Says About You – Blog About Infographics and Data Visualization – Cool Infographics

  Join the DFW Data Visualization and Infographics Meetup Group if you’re in the Dallas/Fort Worth area! What Your Font Choices Say About You infographic from GetVoip is a comical explanation of why we choose what font we use.

• Free Technology for Teachers: MathsLinks – A Good Place to Find Resources for Math Lessons

  MathsLinks.net is a great site created by a mathematics teacher for mathematics teachers. On the site you will find collections of games, interactive demonstrations, and lesson ideas for use in elementary, middle, and high school mathematics lessons.

• The Importance of Educating Educators | My Island View

  I recently returned from my yearly trek to ISTE, one of the largest education technology conferences to be held annually. This year better than 22 thousand educators were in attendance in Chicago for three days.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 110 Videos About Careers

  For nearly a decade I have been referring folks to Next Vista for Learning as a place to find and to share educational videos made by students and teachers. The Light Bulbs section of Next Vista is where you will find most of the videos on the site.

• Google adds new Classroom features. Use them responsibly. | History Tech

  All the MCU fans out there know that this phrase was first used in the 1962 Amazing Fantasy #15 issue and then later by Uncle Ben in the 2002 Spiderman movie. But history nerds know that different versions of the phrase have been around for much lon…

• Backchannel Chat: My Choice to Replace TodaysMeet |

  I’m still mourning the loss of TodaysMeet. I used it regularly as a teacher and presenter. It was the rare tool that was easy to use and free. I’ve been on the hunt for a viable replacement. Richard Bryne posted a blog with six potential alternative…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Gates & Teacher Effectiveness: Duh

  If you’re an innovative educator, the news about teacher effectiveness having little impact on student achievement is no surprise. The Gates Foundation spent a whooping $575 million buckaroos, when they could have just been listening to teachers who…

• Zoomtastic | A game about guessing countries

  The map zoom outs slowly giving you more information over time. After 15 seconds, 4 possible answers appear.

• Come Teach Again – On Teacher Guilt and the Platitudes that Grows It – Pernille Ripp

  For a while, I have been noticing a trend in my Twitter feed, or rather what Twitter wants me to see.

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

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Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Check out these great blog posts from last week:

• “Skype A Scientist” Brings…Scientists To Your Classroom | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Skype a Scientist matches scientists with classrooms around the world! Scientists will skype into the classroom for 30-60 minute Q and A sessions that can cover the scientist’s expertise or what it’s like to be a scientist.

• 11 Things Not To Do This Coming School Year – Smart Classroom Management

  Via negativa is a method of improvement whereby one focuses not on what to do to become more proficient. But on what not to do—which, for many, is an easier proposition.

• Re-envisioning Roles – Reading By Example

  It’s easy to get caught up in the quick fix of doing the task, presenting the question that gives one quick response, and providing the immediate answer when a student approaches us.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Random Name Selectors

  If your students are like mine, at one point or another you’ve asked for volunteers and not had any students raise their hands. In that situation using a random name selection tool is an easy way to choose students to call on.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Last Day to Get Five Practical Ed Tech Webinars in One Package

  As many of you know, Practical Ed Tech is the site through which I offer professional development webinars. I host those webinars on a regular basis throughout the school year. For the last week I’ve offered the five most popular of those webinars i…

• Free Technology for Teachers: ABCya’s Number Chart Is a Fun Math Activity for Kids

  ABCya’s Number Chart is a simple but fun online activity for elementary school students. The chart offers “beginner” and “challenge” activities. In both activity levels students have to drag numbers into their proper places on a number line.

• What are Esports – YouTube

  tags:games gaming gbl esports

• ISTE Standards for Students & Esports: Standard 1: Empowered Learner – YouTube

  tags:games gaming gbl esports iste tech standards

• ISTE Standards for Education Leaders & Esports: Standard 1: Equity & Citizen Advocate – YouTube

  tags:games gaming gbl esports iste tech standards

• Commentary: Game to Grow: Esports as a Learning Platform | STEM Solutions | US News

  tags:games gaming gbl esports

• Fortnite Game A Win for Librarians Looking to Boost Teen Attendance | School Library Journal

  tags:games gaming gbl fortnite

• KQED

  Adapted from Game-Based Learning in Action: How an Expert Affinity Group Teaches with Games by Matthew Farber Professor Karen Schrier, Founding Director of the Games & Emerging Media program at Maris College, developed the Ethics, Practice, and Impl…

• Power Searching with Google

• Why do airlines sell too many tickets? – Nina Klietsch – YouTube

  View full lesson on ed.ted.com: https://ift.tt/2IABvUs you ever sat in a doctor’s office for hours, despite having an appointment? Has a hotel turned down your reservation because it’s full? Have you been bumped off a flight that you paid for? These…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Measuring Worth – A Lesson on Inflation

  Do you remember when a cup of coffee didn’t cost $3? Or when ten dollars bought you enough gasoline to drive for a week? How about buying a pack of baseball cards for 25 cents and getting a piece of gum in the pack too? I remember those days. My mon…

• Free Technology for Teachers: This RWT Template Helps Students Craft Persuasive Essays

  Developing persuasive writing skills is a process that students start in elementary school and continue to develop through high school and beyond. Read Write Think offers a good interactive guide that can help students craft a good persuasive essay.

• The Global Problem Solvers Series Challenges Students to Tackle World Issues – Teacher Reboot Camp

  At the recent ISTE conference, I was excited to be part of the team to help spread the word about the new, Global Problem Solvers: The Series (GPS: The Series), a free educational initiative that introduces adolescents and preteens to real world pro…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ways to Blend Technology Into Outdoor Lessons

  By the time that many of you read this, I’ll be fly fishing on one of my favorite rivers in Maine. Where I’m going there isn’t any cell phone reception. Even though there won’t be reception, I will still have my phone with me to take pictures.

• 5 Fun Reasons to Have a School Library Photo Booth

  I’ve noticed lately that Photo booths—in all shapes and sizes—are becoming increasingly popular at events. From fairs, community outreaches, dances, weddings, even Bat Mitzvahs, the photo booth is providing more than fun and games.

• 3 Ways to Develop a Shared Path Toward One Vision – The Principal of Change

  There was an interesting conversation between two participants in a workshop that I was facilitating that I have been thinking about a lot over the last 24 hours.

• Control Alt Achieve: 4 Fantastic Rubric Tools for Google Docs

  On the 4th day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me… four rubric writers. 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 …

• SNEAK PEEK: Kasey’s 2018 ISTE Presentations! #ISTE18 #notatiste | Shake Up Learning

  Pinterest SNEAK PEEK: Shake Up Learning’s ISTE Presentations 2018! Hey, y’all! I promised that I would be sharing EVERYTHING from the ISTE conference this year, and guess what? You get to see my presentations before I even share them at ISTE! Yep! Y…

• Using Crosscutting Concepts to Prompt Student Responses | Science for All

  OVERVIEW: The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) recently released a document to support and encourage K-12 educators to provide clear and explicit language and prompts to integrate the Crosscutting Concepts into instruction and assessme…

• A Gullible Population Is a National Security Issue @coolcatteacher

  The hair on my arm prickled up like porcupine quills, but there was no breeze. It was a discussion about a digital literacy issue at the U.S. Army War College National Security Seminar that caused this response. Suddenly, information literacy became…

• Free Technology for Teachers: What is a Storyboard? – History and Use Cases

  Over the years I’ve written many blog posts about using storyboards in a variety of classroom settings. I’ve even hosted webinars on the topic. But until today I never wondered about the origins of storyboards. That changed when I read Aaron Sherman…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 PD Webinars in One Package

  Throughout the year I offer many professional development webinars on PracticalEdTech.com. The sales of those webinars help to keep this blog running. This week I’ve been running a sale on PracticalEdTech.com webinars and many people have taken adva…

• Classroom Games and Tech: Our Completed Interactive Comic Story

  Last fall I wrote about an interactive story experiment I started with some students a our middle school. They enjoyed our usual Google Slides comics assignment, so we decided to start an ongoing story based on input from the rest of the school.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Photo Roulette – A Library of Congress Game

  Photo Roulette is a fun little game from Library of Congress. The game shows you a randomly selected pictures from the LOC’s digital collections and you have to guess the year in which the picture was taken. You have ten guesses before you’re out of…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create, Use, and Embed Lino Boards Into Blog Posts

  This morning on the Practical Ed Tech Facebook page I had a question from a reader who was looking for an alternative to Padlet. My recommendation was to take a look at Lino.

• 10 tech tools that will make you a super teacher! | @mcleod | Dangerously Irrelevant

  Just kidding. Because there are no tech tools that will make us super teachers. Pencils didn’t make us super teachers. Textbooks didn’t make us super teachers. Chalkboards and whiteboards and overhead projectors didn’t make us super teachers.

• Badass Teachers Association

  The Supreme Court’s decision in the Janus vs AFSCME case has overturned a rule that is a blow to an educator’s ability to effectively advocate for what is best for all students in this country.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Key Updates to Microsoft’s Education Products

  During the ISTE conference this week Microsoft showcased many features of their varied education products. If you, like me, were not able to attend the conference, you can get a full run-down of all of the updates in What’s New in EDU. Here are the …

• Free Technology for Teachers: More Ways to Add Content to Book Creator Projects – Coming Soon!

  Thanks to Amy Burns I just learned about a great, new feature that is soon to be available in Book Creator. The new feature will let you embed content from third-party sites into your Book Creator books.

• News: Supreme Court Rules 5-4 to Support Janus vs. Unions | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  As widely anticipated, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a law in Illinois requiring non-members of public sector unions to pay fees for the benefits they receive from collective bargaining.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use SeeSaw’s New Activity Library

  Earlier this week SeeSaw unveiled a new activity library for teachers. The new library contains more than 1500 activities that you can assign to your students in your SeeSaw classroom. You can use the activities as they are written or modify them to…

• HyperDoc Templates | HyperDocs.co

  tags:free google-slides google slides templates template presentation googleslides

• KQED

  To understand the debate that’s raging now, between the “hards” and the “softs,” you have to go back first to March 31, 1994. That’s when President Bill Clinton signed the Gun-Free Schools Act. The law mandated that if a student brought a firearm to…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Google Classroom Improvements Announced During ISTE

  The week of the annual ISTE conference is when many of the biggest purveyors of technology products unveil their latest and greatest offerings. Google is not an exception to that rule and so uses this week to showcase their latest product updates.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Beautiful AI – Create Better Slideshows

  Beautiful.AI is a neat service that helps you design better PowerPoint presentations. Beautiful.AI provides more than fifty slideshow templates that automatically adjust when you type or add media to them. Beautiful.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Complete Guide to Making Videos in Microsoft Photos

  Windows Movie Maker is no longer available for download and Microsoft now recommends using the video creation tools that are built into Microsoft Photos.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Flipgrid to Publish Instructional Videos

  In Sunday’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week I mentioned three ways to use Flipgrid now that all features are free for all users. One of those ways is to have students record and publish instructional videos. They can do this is a few ways.

• Does practice make perfect? | Learning with ‘e’s

  Does practice make perfect? Malcolm Gladwell’s claim that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is required to become world class in any field, has been challenged by a Princeton University study.

• How HyperDocs Can Transform Your Teaching | Cult of Pedagogy

  tags:hyperdocs edtech

• Virtual Reality Evolution Detailed Analysis Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  The technologies are the innovations of the previous discoveries. When the scientist discovered something for the betterment of someone, the discovery of new innovations and solutions comes up with technology for a better life. It is said that histo…

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Web Version of Google Earth Finally Gets a Measuring Tool

  Distance measurement has been a feature of the desktop version of Google Earth for as long as I have been using it. So I was surprised when it wasn’t included in the browser-based version of Google Earth that was launched last year.

• Tip of the Week: Questions, tasks, and resources. Oh, my! Covering content using the C3 IDM | History Tech

  Our current state standards have been around since 2013. Centered on five Big Ideas and a balance between content and process, the document is unlike previous standards documents.

• The Irreplaceables: What AR and AI Mean for the Future of Teaching #iste18 @coolcatteacher

  Augmented reality and artificial intelligence are on the horizon. What do they mean for education and teachers? What kinds of teachers will be irreplaceable and what kinds of teachers will lose their jobs? Today, we seek to answer this question.

• Free Technology for Teachers: SeeSaw Unveils a New Activity Library – 1500+ Activities to Use Now

  SeeSaw is a great digital portfolio tool that students can use on Chromebooks, iPads, Android tablets, and on any computer that has an updated web browser.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a Virtual Tour That Includes Audio Narration

  One of the many things that Google announced to coincide with the ISTE conference was the addition of an option to add audio to virtual reality tours created with Google’s VR Tour Creator. This is an update to the VR Tour Creator that was launched j…

• Anchoring Phenomenon and Osmosis |

  The Next Generation Science Standards recommends using anchoring phenomenon as a way to teach scientific concepts.  There’s a lot of information and ideas from NGSS Phenomena  and  Next Generation Science Storylines .

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Lesson for Beachcombers – How Seashells Are Made

  If your summer plans include going to the beach, you may be interested in a new video from Reactions about how seashells are made. In How Seashells Are Made viewers learn that seashells are made of 95% calcium carbonate and 5% protein and sugar.

• 3 Fun Ways To Improve Your Observational Skills This Summer – Smart Classroom Management

  Good teachers are observant. In fact, their students swear they have eyes in the back of their head.

• Control Alt Achieve: My 2018 ISTE Sessions

  I am excited and honored to once again present at the 2018 ISTE Conference in Chicago this June 24th through 27th. I always look forward to this opportunity to see old friends, make new friends, share some ideas, and learn so many new things from ot…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Simple Tip for Quality Posting & Consuming 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…

• 2 Questions to Focus on Long-Term Learning in Classrooms – The Principal of Change

  It is “conference season” for many educators, and I have seen the wave of “60 Tools in 60 Minute” sessions being posted online.  The promise is often made that there will be ideas that you can implement “the next day!” for your classroom. Is this a …

• A Principal’s Reflections: Backchanneling: The Why, How, and What (Best Tool)

  As I wrote previously, digital tools can support and enhance discussion among learners and adults. As a supplement to traditional discussion strategies technology can serve as a catalyst to increase engagement by getting more people actively involve…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are this past week’s amazing blog posts that I’ve curated:

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: How Climate Change Exaggeration Can Hurt People and the Environment

  As readers of this blog know, I believe that communicating hype, exaggeration, and false information about human-caused climate change is a bad idea, if not highly counterproductive.

• KQED

  Rogoff and Correa-Chavez wanted to see what the waiting child did. Would she pay attention to the research assistant. Or did she goof off?

• Free Technology for Teachers: Plastics 101 – National Geographic Lesson

  From the top of your coffee cup to the laptop or phone you’re using right now, our daily lives are full of plastic.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Soccer Physics Lesson

  If you watch the World Cup or any other professional soccer game you’re bound to see some incredible kicks that make the ball curve through the air.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Vynchronize – Watch Videos and Discuss Them in the Same Window

  Vynchronize is a new video discussion platform that I learned about through Larry Ferlazzo’s recent This Week in Web 2.0 post. Vynchronize lets you create an online room in which you can watch a video while chatting about it with other viewers at th…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two Lessons on Cloud Types and Their Names

  Meteorology is a science topic that affects all of us whether you like it or not. Look up at the clouds and you’re making a science observation.

• Tactical Combat, Fantasy Adventure, and Political Intrigue: Five Books About Intricate Games | Tor.com

  tags:games gaming books reading

• Stories of the Refugee – Josh Stumpenhorst

  Turn on any news station and undoubtedly, you will hear stories pertaining to immigrants and/or refugees. One thing I fear most Americans are struggling with is having empathy for these people. I don’t say that as a criticism, but more a reality of …

• 7 free edtech things. Cause free edtech things are always a good thing | History Tech

  A couple of days ago, I shared the great news that Flipgrid is now completely free for educators and it got me thinking: “What other tech stuff can I get for free?” I started poking around, asked some questions, did a little reading, reviewed some o…

• Robots4STEM | The Future of STEM Learning

  https://ift.tt/2K9scME   Cedar Hill ISD in Texas is known for its forward thinking and for dedicating its schools to providing the best education that will set their students up for success as early as elementary. The district offers innovative clas…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Finding Old Maps Online

  On Wednesday morning I shared a neat geography quiz that asks students to identify cities by looking at historic maps. In that blog post I suggested having students compare the historic maps shown in the quiz with other historic maps in order to com…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Exciting New Features Coming to Scratch Later This Year

  Thanks to a Tweet from Helen Maddox I found an announcement from the MIT Scratch Team about the new features that will be available in Scratch starting in August. Scratch 3.0 will roll-out as a beta product in August.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Ways to Create Mind Maps and Flowcharts Online

  Earlier this week Tony Vincent Tweeted an excellent graphic that he made to show the process of creating a flowchart in Google Drawings. Tony’s graphics are always top notch and this one was not an exception to that rule. Check it out.

• KQED

  Share your story of your school experiences. In Ghana right now there’s a lot riding on getting your child to read by age 5. No one can pinpoint precisely when these expectations started. But there’s a widespread sense that Africa is rising.

• Questions For Your Administrators – Josh Stumpenhorst

  I’ve been accused of being “anti-administration” once or twice before and have shared my thoughts on the topic previously. That’s really not true as I love working with and for effective administrators.

• Create Interactive Agendas with Google Slides |

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google’s “Be Internet Awesome” Curriculum is Now Available in Spanish

  At about this time last year Google introduced Be Internet Awesome. Be Internet Awesome offers an interactive site called Interland. Interland is a game in which students navigate a virtual world by correctly answering questions about internet safet…

• Free Technology for Teachers: New Google Forms Customization Options

  For years and years people have asked me if there is way to customize the fonts in Google Forms. And for years and years I’ve had to say no. That is finally going to change! Yesterday, Google announced the addition of new Google Forms customization …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Anchor Now Has an iPad App for Easy Podcast Creation and Publication

  Anchor is a free service that makes easy to record, edit, and publish your own podcasts. In fact, you can record and publish your first podcast in less than six minutes. You can use Anchor in your web browser, as an Android app, as an iPhone app, an…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Short Lessons on the Longest Day of the Year

  The summer solstice is just a couple of days away. Many refer to this as the “longest day of the year” when they really mean “longest period of daylight in a day.” But that’s beside the point of this post which is to share a few handy resources that…

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Myth of the Giant’s Causeway Explained

  The Giant’s Causeway is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites that I have had the privilege to see in person. It can be seen in Google Maps Street View too. It’s a unique geological site created by molten basalt. That’s interesting but not as inter…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 4 Fun Summer Science Activities

  Now that summer is here in the northern hemisphere it’s a great time to go outside for a science lesson. SciShow Kids has four suggestions for outdoor science lessons. In Fun Summer Science adults and children can learn about the science of bubbles,…

• Incredible Giveaways Whether You Are at #ISTE18 or #Notatiste18 – Teacher Reboot Camp

  This week my daughter, Savvy, Kelly Jake Duncan, and I are headed to the ISTE Conference as official ISTE media and to present.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: New Infographic: 12 Strategies to Manage the Modern Classroom

  Innovative educators know they have to update classroom management strategies in the modern classroom. Here are twelve strategies to do just that.

• ditchthattextbook.com

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Quick and Easy Way to Create Printable Mazes

  Maze Generator is a free site that does exactly what it says on the tin, it generates mazes. To make a printable maze on Maze Generator just select the shape, size, and style you want your maze to have. The shape options are rectangle, triangle, cir…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Huge Flipgrid News! – All Features Now Free

  Flipgrid has been acquired by Microsoft. That’s good news for the founders of Flipgrid and great news for all of us who enjoy using Flipgrid.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Tasks to Become a Core G Suite Service

  In late April Google launched a new stand-alone app called Google Tasks. Last week Google announced that at the end of June Google Tasks will become a core service of G Suite. It will be on by default for all domains. Google Tasks is kind of like Go…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Grackle – Assess the Accessibility of Your Google Docs & Slides

  Grackle is a service that will check your Google Documents, Slides, and Sheets for accessibility. It is available as an Add-on for Google Docs, for Google Slides, and for Google Sheets.

• Real teaching means real learning: Dice Chats

  Another way to bring conversations alive in your classroom is with “Dice Chats”!! These are similar to Dan Finkel’s Unit Chats.

• Flipgrid is free. No, seriously. Not like before. Totally, completely free for ALL the features | History Tech

  I really like Flipgrid. It’s easy to use. It’s collaborative. It’s visual. It works across all platforms. And now?

• Three Reasons to Try Video Prompts in Your Classroom – John Spencer

  When I was a kid, I loved to doodle. It’s how I took notes in class, how I made sense out of ideas, and how I kept busy when I slipped into boredom. I kept journals and notebooks with scrawling sketches all over the place. Now, as an adult, I do the…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: The Key to Differentiating Instruction – Develop Student Experts

  When you enter Dr. Lou Lahana’s Tech Cafe at PS/MS 188, you aren’t entering a classroom with a teacher preparing students for the future.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Using Feedback Logs to Empower Learners

  The most successful companies are successful because they are always looking for ways to improve. When it comes to their employees, there is no ceiling as they are continually pursuing pathways and allocating resources to help the best get even bett…

• Why We Need to Embrace Book Abandonment – Pernille Ripp

  In the spring of 2016, I asked 1,200 students aged eight through thirteen in North America to explain how they felt about book abandonment.

• Improving the Way We Teach About Slavery | Cult of Pedagogy

  Every couple of weeks, I hear someone repeat some version of this sentiment: “Slavery ended in 1865. Get over it.” And although I know this claim is riddled with problems, my ability to adequately refute it is limited.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Check out these great posts and resources from last week:

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Are Americans Losing Interest in Global Warming?

  There are many stories about global warming in the media, and some politicians are talking about the issue in increasingly strident tones.

• The danger of “not good enough” | Seth’s Blog

  That’s how we choose who to work with. We want someone who’s good at their job. And the ones we pass up are usually labeled as, “not good enough.” And we label ourselves as well. “I’d like to do that sort of work, but I’m not good enough.”

• Learning with ‘e’s: Future skills #metalearning

• Asking the right questions of ourselves… – One of Thirty Voices

  We question our students to elicit and engage, to push their sensemaking, to activate prior knowledge, and to get them thinking about their thinking. But do we question ourselves and our pedagogy with the same focus? Table taken from National Counci…

• Standardized Testing Battle in Seattle: Union votes for a complete moratorium on all standardized tests! – I AM AN EDUCATOR

  The Seattle Education Association voted at this week’s Representative Assembly to support a resolution calling for a moratorium on all standardized testing!  This vote comes in a long line of organizing and opposition to high-stakes testing in Seatt…

• “You’re a Doctor? I Thought You Were Stupid”: Stellar Grad Speech by Indy ER Physician | deutsch29

  The record a student leaves behind as he/she graduates from high school can be a poor predictor of the degree of responsibility evidenced in that student’s contribution to society in adulthood. Thank goodness.

• Ecosystems: An NGSS-Aligned Unit

  Every teacher seeks opportunities to engage students, but how often do you have the opportunity to truly immerse your students in the discipline you love? And how can you be certain that the resources you choose are high quality and grounded in best…

• $15 A Month is $180 a Year: How Much Do You Pay A Year for EdTech? – Teacher Tech

  How Much Is That EdTech Product Costing? The other day I spent hours looking up EdTech products that are freemium (or just outright not free) looking up their cost. First, I do not think free is sustainable or a good idea necessarily.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Educational Games for Elementary School Science Lessons

  Educational games can be useful in helping to reinforce concepts and content. A good game can keep students engaged while also helping them develop some thinking skills at the same time.

• Tech Tools and Tips for Think Alouds – Class Tech Tips

  Last year I met an inspiring educator with a passion for high-quality, literacy instruction. When I heard about the topic of her book, I was excited to find a resource that focused on an essential component of any lesson. Dr.

• Hood Canal changes color again, thanks to plankton bloom | Watching Our Water Ways

  Hood Canal has changed colors again, shifting to shades of bimini green, as it did in 2016, when satellite photos showed the canal standing out starkly among all other waters in the Northwest.

• What if You Knew Every Student’s Quit Point? – Hack Learning

  Quit Point. If there were a dictionary definition for the phrase, it would most likely say, “The moment when something or someone stops.” Pretty simple, right?

• Equity-Focused Science Leadership | Science for All

  My friend and colleague, Tom Hathorn (@thathorn), recently launched his own website and blog that is focused on telling the ongoing story of his equity-focused science leadership learning and professional development.

• Educator perceptions of district-mandated Edcamp unconferences – Miles’ Tomes

  For several years I have been exploring the Edcamp format and learning about Open Space Technology and unconference-style professional development.

• Tips for Encouraging Learners of All Ages to Read – Teacher Reboot Camp

  Today I was the guest moderator for #Edcontentchat thanks to Barbara Mascareno (@spanish4kiddos). The chat is only 30 minutes and we shared resources and ideas for encouraging learners to read. In case you missed the chat, I’ve included important id…

• Video: “This Map Shows Where American Accents Come From” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  I’m a high school teacher in Sacramento, CA.

• A Free Human Body Model for Your Classroom – Simplek12

  Would you love to have your own human body model for your classroom? With today’s limited resources, it can be difficult to find top-quality resources to use with students.

• 3 Picture Books about Our World – Waking Brain Cells

  Marwan is a little boy on a long journey filled with walking and heading to a place he’s never been. When his home was attacked by soldiers in tanks in the middle of the night, Marwan had to start walking.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Britannica Insights – A Chrome Extension for Encyclopedia Britannica

  Britannica Insights is a Chrome Extension that will show you entries from Encyclopedia Britannica in the right-hand margin of your Google search results.

• Throwback Thursday: Read and Follow Directions! – Philip CummingsPhilip Cummings

  We’re going through the Friday stack of papers. He’s a good student, so there’s not much to discuss as it relates to his school work from the past week. As I get near the bottom of the stack, out of the corner of my eye, I catch him trying to sneak …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Search Strategies Students Should Know

  If you have ever had a student tell you, “Google has nothing on this,” you know that students need help formulating good web search strategies. A few months ago I hosted a webinar on the ten search strategies that I think every student should know h…

• Why We Need To Embrace eSports In Education – Teched Up Teacher

  To say esports is booming would be an understatement. Esports, or electronic sports, is the term used to describe the sport of competitive video game playing.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Adverbs, Themes, and Labels – New Immersive Reader Features

  Immersive Reader is a free add-in for Word, OneNote, Outlook, and Edge enables students to have articles read aloud to them at pace that meets their needs.

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Easy Speech-to-Text Option for Word, OneNote, and PowerPoint

  This afternoon I tried the dictation option in both Word and PowerPoint on my desktop. It is easy to use and accurate as long as you speak clearly. Your text will appear wherever your cursor is placed so make sure to move your cursor if you want to …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Now You and Your Students Can Create Quizzes in Kahoot’s Mobile App

  Kahoot has released a major update to their free mobile apps. As of this morning you can now create a Kahoot game within the free app. The app also lets you distribute games to be played in your classroom or as “challenges” for students to play at h…

• Could a video game help us solve climate change? | Grist

  There’s a game for just about everything, from plumbers playing golf to LEGOs recreating sci-fi movies. But when it comes to climate change — arguably the greatest crisis to humanity — the playing field is pretty sparse. There’s one scientist trying…

• Access Denied

  California high schools encourage students to use online video games to learn science, technology, engineering and math – and a variety of soft skills as well.

• PD Pirate Style! – Teacher Tech

  Guest Post: Today’s blog post is from Marcia Carrillo, a passionate educator and teacher mentor. Marcia shares some of the ways she and her colleagues modeled #TLAP strategies for their teachers to implement. You can find her on Twitter @marciamento…

• Hands on Review: Sam Labs STEAM Kit – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog

  Thanks to MicroK12, I was able to spend some hands-on time with the STEAM Kit from Sam Labs. In this review, I put the STEAM kit through a variety of tests and scenarios. Overall, this product is a winner and a great learning material to integrate i…

• It’s Okay NOT to Reassess | All Things Assessment

  It’s okay NOT to reassess everything all of the time; there, I said it.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: ThinkFluency

  ThinkFluency is an innovative new iOS app that lets teachers assess a student’s Reading fluency in real-time. All a educator has to do after creating a account, is add students/classes, select a Reading passage or create your own, and then begin the…

• The Adventure Blog: Video: Whale Sightings Don’t Get Much Closer Than This

  A group of whale watchers off the coast of Australia got more than they bargained for when this large humpback breached right next to their boat. The clip below captures the moment perfectly, which was followed by a massive wave dousing the passenge…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Spreadsheet of Phones That Do and Don’t Support Google Expeditions

  Yesterday, I answered an email from a participant in my recent Intro to VR & AR webinar. She was having trouble getting Google Expeditions to work on one of her phones. I did a little research and found that the phone she was trying to use Expeditio…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Updated – 5 Online, Collaborative Whiteboard Services

  Online, collaborative, whiteboards can be great tools for hosting quick review sessions for your students. Your students can also use these tools to conduct online study sessions with each other. Here are five free online whiteboard tools to try.

• Being Innovative or Being Perceived as Innovative? – The Principal of Change

  If you look at schools and districts around the world, the term “innovation” is everywhere, with organizations and individuals clamoring to be deemed as such.

• Make Room For Both Types of Independent Reading – Pernille Ripp

  90 minutes.  This glorious amount of time awaits my students and me next year for our English classes. No more trying to cram everything into 45 minutes, no more rushing, no more skipping things.  90 whole minutes, and I cannot help but think of all…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Good PowerPoint Add-ins for Math Teachers

  PowerPoint has many features that students and teachers often overlook. That’s bound to happen with any program that has been around as long as PowerPoint has and includes as many features as PowerPoint does. One of those overlooked features is foun…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Aris

  Aris is a free iOS app that is ideal for educators looking to create robust learning experiences or games. Aris lets users create scavengers hunts, interactive stories, and location based games (i.e. Pokemon Go) using the latest tools.

• Tips for Using Nearpod with Early Learners – Class Tech Tips

  Can you use Nearpod with early learners? You bet! This year I’ve had the chance to visit classrooms and work with teachers in different parts of the country. One of the highlights of this year has been working with an enthusiastic group of early lea…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Human Resource Machine EDU

  Learning games their is a teacher dashboard to track student progress.

• #notatiste18 – LiveBinder

• #NotAtISTE? How To Participate In ISTE 2018 Remotely – The Edublogger

  ISTE is a non-profit organization that serves educators interested in better use of technology in education. The annual ISTE Conference and Expo is the biggest educational technology conference in the world, attracting over 16,000 attendees. It’s he…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Digitize Your Physical Sticky Notes

  Last week Padlet added a new feature to their free iPad and iPhone apps. That feature is the ability to snap a picture of a set of physical sticky notes then have those notes appear on a Padlet wall that you can manipulate in the app and or in your …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Free Alternative to GooseChase

  This morning I received the following email from a reader who wants to create a digital scavenger hunt for an upcoming conference. “GooseChase has the features that I want but would cost $200. That is a tough sell for a game no matter how great I th…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some excellent posts from this past week:

• Why Focusing On Details Is Effective Teaching – Smart Classroom Management

  I’ve occasionally been asked what one piece of advice I’d give to all teachers. It’s a daunting question.

• Why do we STILL have reports? – What Ed Said

  Why is it that, in this day and age of instant communication, most schools and parents still expect the kind of report card suited to another era?

• langwitches.org

  Schools, teachers and learners struggle with challenges in many shapes and forms when it comes to digital portfolios. When I work with schools, educators, and  learners around the world, I discovered that they have many of the same challenges in com…

• Mindful Literacy Assessment – Reading By Example

  A teacher came up to me in the hallway, holding printed reports. Her grimace conveyed her frustration before she even spoke.

• Consuming vs creating: Is there room for both? | Ditch That Textbook

  We all want our students to be creating in the classroom. But is there a place for consuming too? When should students be consuming? And what are the best tools for getting students creating? Consuming vs creating, sounds like it’s one or the other.…

• Orange plankton bloom is not a good sign for ecological health | Watching Our Water Ways

  If you notice an orange tint to the waters of Central Puget Sound, it’s not your imagination. It is a dense plankton bloom dominated by the dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ways to Make Stop-motion and Time-lapse Movies

  Creating a stop-motion video or a time-lapse videos can be a good way for students to tell a story in the style of Gumby. Making stop-motion and time-lapse videos can also be a good way for students to demonstrate how a lengthy process works without…

• I Want to Get Better at… Differentiation

  Differentiation is one of those things that never seems like it can be 100% mastered.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Flipgrid Password-protected All Grids This Morning

  This morning all teachers using Flipgrid were sent an email about privacy updates that they made to all accounts. Those updates included automatically password-protecting all Flipgrid grids that did not already have password-protection in place.

• “We can’t ask teachers to be innovative in their practice while administrators do the same thing they have always done.” – The Principal of Change

  Some things that I have been thinking about the idea of empowerment lately. I am not sure if any of these thoughts make sense, but these are just things I am thinking.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Turn a Set of Physical Sticky Notes Into Digital Ones With Padlet’s Catscan

  Padlet has added a new feature called Catscan to their iPhone and iPad apps. Catscan’s purpose is to let you take a picture of a set of physical sticky notes and then have those notes appear as individual notes on a Padlet wall.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Not Going to ISTE? – Join the “Not at ISTE” IGNITE

  Going to the annual ISTE conference can be a great way to learn about new and emerging trends in the field of educational technology. It’s also a great place to connect with other educators. Unfortunately, it’s also an expensive undertaking that man…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Good Templates for Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts Lessons

  Earlier this week I published a post about Read Write Think’s theme poem online activity. Obviously, that activity is a great fit for a language arts lesson. RWT is known for language arts interactive activities and templates.

• 3 Steps to Successful Student Collaboration

  Deep sighs, rolled eyes, slumped shoulders, and hanging heads, met with eyes yearning for hope… No, it’s not a summons for jury duty, it’s the reaction I get from teachers when I say, “student collaboration.” And yet, despite the complete exhaustion…

• STEAM Education: Making an Impact Across the Curriculum | Mr Andrews Online

  As a teacher in school, I didn’t focus on STEAM education, and yet, that is exactly what the Controllable Vehicle Project that I’m going to tell you about was! The learning was fun, motivating and engaging and covered science, technology, engineerin…

• Connecting Literacy and Science: A Self-Paced Online Course for Teachers – Class Tech Tips

  Traditionally the school day is carved into chunks of time for each subject area.

• Explore NASA’s New “Exoplanet Travel Bureau” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  NASA has launched the Exoplanet Travel Bureau, a visualization tool that allows users to explore the surfaces of three exoplanets: Kepler-16b, Kepler-186f, and TRAPPIST-1e.

• Learning from Space Invaders: Simplicitas est perfectum – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  To this day, Space Invaders is one of my all-time favourite games.  Born the same year as me (1978), it is a classic in every sense of the word. What I love is the simplicity, There is no heavy backstory, there is no complicated power-up system, no …

• If Fairy Tales Were Graphs – Math with Bad Drawings

  The Gingerbread Man The Midas Touch The Boy Who Cried “Literally” Little Blind Riding Hood Sour Grapes There Was an Old Woman Who Needed Somewhere to Live… The Tortoise and the Hare Hansel and Gretel Rapunzel’s Dilemma Pinocchio’s Curse Jack and the…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Microsoft Adds New OneNote and Teams Features for Teachers and Students

  This week Microsoft announced a handful of new OneNote and Teams features. These new features were all developed for the purpose of improving collaboration and transparency. Rubrics in Teams Back in February Microsoft acquired Chalkup.

• Free Technology for Teachers: New Layout Controls in Google Slides

  Back in April Google added some handy rulers and guides to Google Slides. Those tools make it a little easier to ensure that elements on your slides are aligned as you want to be. Today, Google introduced another little tool that will help you make …

• Using Microsoft Learning Tools in Inclusive Classrooms – Class Tech Tips

  Have you seen the new Learning Tools from Microsoft? The team at Microsoft has developed a set of inclusive capabilities in Office and Windows to support all learners.

• 50 Fun Things To Do As A Family With Digital Gaming » edurealms.com

  Inspired by @PeggySheehy‘s challenge, here’s my list:

• 5 Ideas for Improving Professional Learning Experiences – The Principal of Change

  It has been and always is, a blessing to be a part of district professional learning days.  These past two weeks, I have been so caught up in the passion of so many teachers who are on “summer break,” that are excitedly taking part in their professi…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Theme Poem Lesson Plans and Interactive Module

  Read Write Think is one of my all-time favorite resources for free language arts lesson plans and interactive activities. I’ve written about and published videos about many of RWT’s interactive tools over the years. But somehow the Theme Poems inter…

• The Nerdy Teacher: Legends of Learning Brings Game-Based Learning to Students

  In my younger days, I really struggled with Math. I remember having a Summer tutor one year to help me with my Math skills. It was awful. Taking away my Summer to work with a stranger to do Math was brutal.

• I will now tweet “Our Page” instead of “My Page” | Cybrary Man

  In the 1990’s while a classroom teacher I started bookmarking good educational sites.  When I became the teacher-librarian in my school I started a website of links for all subject areas. I was still finding the sites myself but I then found Kathy S…

• Homework Does Not Teach Responsibility – Sports Does – Teacher Tech

  If kids are doing homework, they are probably not actively moving around. The number one argument I hear from teachers on why they give homework is to teach responsibility. Homework does not teach responsibility.

• 4 Tips to Get Kids Coding this Summer – GeekDad

  Reading Time: 3 minutes Summer is approaching. If you’re a parent looking for a way to engage your kids’ brains and avoid a learning slump, coding is a great activity! As the director of Let’s Start Coding, I’ve introduced hundreds of kids aged 8 an…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Things You and Your Students Can Make With Canva

  During the weekend I received an email from a reader who was looking for advice on host to make a logo or graphic for her class and to use on social media. My recommendation was to try using Canva.

• Investigation: How Does Exercise Affect Heart Rate?

   This activity was designed for anatomy and physiology students who are studying how feedback loops work and also serves as a refresher on the scientific method and designing experiments (science and engineering practices).

• Classroom Tips for Biography Projects with Spark Page – Class Tech Tips

  Are your students content creators? Students can use their reading and research experiences to create a shareable website. If you’re looking for tips for biography projects, you’ll definitely want to check out the fabulous and free Spark Page websit…

• Bright lights hit Maggie Borland, the leader of Boise State’s Overwatch team

  LAS VEGAS — Maggie Borland stood on the sand in the Neon Museum’s North Gallery in early March with her arms folded across her chest and waited for her cue from the cameraman. Her Overwatch teammates from Boise State University joked with one anoth…

• Gamasutra: Seth Sivak’s Blog – Raising Venture Capital for Mobile Games Part 3

  This is Part 3 of a series on Venture Capital (VC) investment. Part 1 is about the basics of Venture Capital investment and Part 2 is about networking. I gave a talk similar to this at GDC Next 2013 and it is currently available on the GDC Vault. Th…

• Hansel, Gretel, and Little Red 4_30_18 (1).mcworld – Google Drive

• KQED

  Three factors, she says, have contributed mightily to this crisis. First: Where, how and how much kids are allowed to play has changed. Second, their access to technology and social media has exploded.

• 8 Reasons Why WordPress Is The Best Choice For Student Blogging – The Edublogger

  There are many tools and platforms available that allow students to publish online. Naturally, these options come with pros and cons. Edublogs and CampusPress are powered by a customized version of WordPress.

• A Principal’s Reflections: The Pedagogy of Digital Discussion

  I wasn’t an overly confident student when it came to engaging in open conversations during class. If one of my teachers posed a question, I only raised my hand if I was 99.9% sure that I knew the correct answer.

• 3 Questions To Challenge Practices That No Longer Work in Education – The Principal of Change

  Whether you’re trying to get your child to dress, do homework or practice piano, it’s tempting to use rewards that we know our kids love, especially sweets and screen time. You argue in the book: Be careful. Why? Yes.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: The First Imagery from the New Geostationary Satellite

  The new GOES-17 weather satellite has sent back its first imagery. But the excitement of these stunning images has been tempered by the revelation of a major problem that may not be repairable.

• Schools Matter: Republican Accomplishments Under Trump

  –> ✔Best Economy in 18 years, based on economic expansion begun 9 years ago under Obama. ✔Lower Taxes that primarily benefit the top 1 percent of earners, paid for by adding $2.3 trillion to the deficit.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are another great bunch of blog posts and resources from this past week:

• Connecting with MyMaps – Mari Venturino

  Google MyMaps is one of my favorite Googley gems! And, it doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. It’s easy to use, can be accessed from any mobile device, and it’s versatile for a variety of academic and fun uses. If you’re brand new to MyMap…

• Parents – How to Create Great Summer Reading Experiences for All – Pernille Ripp

  I know many of us educators (and those at home) have been working hard all year to try to cultivate or protect a love of reading in our learners.

• Badass Teachers Association: Pennsylvania’s Zombie School Voucher Bill is Back! And It Wants Your Tax Dollars! by Steven Singer

  Originally posted at: https://gadflyonthewallblog.

• Your 2017-18 Smart Classroom Management Report Card – Smart Classroom Management

  Before you peel out of the parking lot and into the summer sun, and while it’s still fresh in your mind, it’s smart to do a quick self-evaluation. To identify the areas in which you did well this past year.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Discover Primary Sources by Browsing the World Digital Library Maps

  The World Digital Library hosts more than 19,000 primary documents and images from dozens of libraries around the world.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Turn CSV Files Into Heat Maps

  Heat Map Tool is a tool for easily creating heat maps or incident maps from a CSV file. To create a heat map all you need to do is upload a CSV file then specify your desired display attributes like scale, colors, and opacity. You can edit the displ…

• What does GDPR mean for our kids? – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org

  You may be wondering what, if any, impact Europe’s sweeping new data law, GDPR (for General Data Privacy Regulation), has on parenting tech users in your life.

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

  Climate change in the United States presented in 123 red, white and blue stripes is from The Washington Post. Climate change and life events is an interactive that lets you show how your personal life events correspond to global climate changes.

• We Need to Stop Losing Immigrant Children and Taking Them From Their Parents – GeekDad

  There are very few things we’ll write about at GeekMom and GeekDad that touch on the political sphere.

• How To Tell Your School’s Story on Instagram with Spark Post – Class Tech Tips

  Earlier this year I had the chance to present at the Magnet Schools of America Conference in Chicago. If you’ve been following along for the past few years, you may already know that I taught at a magnet school in New York City.

• Digital Photography 101 – Blog About Infographics and Data Visualization – Cool Infographics

  The Digital Photography 101 infographic from The Backdrop Store is a great primer for newcomers to the basics of photography. I usually advise against full color photos in infographics because they are visually noisy, and multiple photographs add mu…

• Seven Strategies for Improving Student Feedback – John Spencer

  We know feedback is important. But what happens when students ignore it? In this article and podcast, we explore how to integrate feedback into every part of the learning process so that students can increase in metacognition during their PBL and de…

• 4 Reflection Questions for the End of the School Year

  Recently, I wrote the post “3 Reminders for the End of the School Year“, and asked for suggestions from readers. Joann Merrick sent me the following thoughts via email: With her permission, I wanted to build on her ideas, especially on the importanc…

• Tiltfactor | buffalo: the name dropping game

  I highly recommend Buffalo to all I speak to. It’s fast, fun, highly replayable, and always a challenge. It’s great for small or large groups, can easily be adjusted for time, can seamlessly add or remove players from the game without upsetting game…

• Photo editor online – Pixlr.com

  tags:online photo editor photos graphics

• BBC Sound Effects – Research & Education Space

  tags:sound sounds effects free

• Study finds popular ‘growth mindset’ educational interventions aren’t very effective – UKEdChat

  tags:growth mindset mindsets research study

• NatGeo Mapmaker Interactive

  tags:maps map mapping maker creator interactive edtech

• Using Google Forms to Streamline Feedback & Document Growth – Teched Up Teacher

  A few weeks ago, I was on our New Jersey Google Educator’s Group (GEG:NJ) show called The Suite Talk hosted by Kim Mattina.

• Train Your Students to Think Like Researchers |

  While reading Katrina Schwartz’s article titled “How Helping Students to Ask Better Questions Can Transform Classrooms,” I was struck by the line “many older students have forgotten how to ask their own questions about the world, afraid that if they…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Where Is That Summer Paycheck Going? – A Lesson for High School Students

  Summer is near and for many high school students that means it’s time to start working at summer jobs. For many students the first real paycheck that they receive comes with a surprise in the form of tax withholding.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Include a Flickr Slideshow in Google Sites

  This afternoon I spent time working with teachers to develop new websites through Google Sites. One of the things that many wanted to include was a slideshow of pictures from classroom activities and field trip activities. One way to do this is to e…

• How Group Therapy at School Helps Kids Manage Trauma Anxiety

  The idea of teaching social and emotional skills in school is more than 20 years old. Research has shown this kind of intervention is effective and has a lasting impact. One analysis published last year in the journal Child Development reviewed doze…

• Giving Students Feedback Through Video Instead of Text

  Fortunately, some simple, creative changes can help.

• Frontloading: The Great Equalizer – Reading By Example

  For years, one of my favorite subjects to read and study about has been the effect of background knowledge on reading comprehension and student achievement.

• The Nerdy Teacher: The #KnightsForge Maker Show Checks Out @MakeDo #MakerEd

  Students from the Knight’s Forge Maker Show explored Makedo and how it can be used to create amazing things with cardboard. Check out their latest video on Makedo in the Makerspace.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Speaker Deck – A Simple Way to Share Your Slides

  Google Slides, PowerPoint, and Keynote all have options for embedding your slideshows into a blog post or other webpage. But there are other methods for including your slideshow in a blog post or webpage. One of those options is Speaker Deck.

• 3 Reminders For the End of the School Year – The Principal of Change

  The end of the year can be a stressful time for educators, both work wise and emotionally.  As a principal and teacher, there was always this “I forgot to pack something for my trip” anxiety that I had at the end of the year.

• Straight White Male – Josh Stumpenhorst

  When a student is struggling with their sexuality or gender, I don’t know what to tell them. When an African American student struggles with society’s treatment of people of color, I don’t have an answer.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Offers a Sites Conversion Tool – Domain Admins Take Note

  Whether you like it or not, Google is slowly pushing everyone who uses the old version of Google Sites into the new version. For some people this is a source of great stress and for others it’s not a big deal at all.

• Creating active, engaged, civil, informed, educated, & competent citizens (Free infographic included!) | History Tech

  And I know other states and school districts are creating similar mission statements. These statements are important, they set a direction. But teachers like you still have to make it happen. So. What can it look like? 1.

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Interactive Story Building Lesson

  Word Tamer is a site for learning the process of developing characters, settings, and plots. Word Tamer is set up as an interactive journey through a carnival of literary devices. As students move through the carnival they develop characters, develo…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: The Cottonwood Revelation

  There is so much interesting structure to the lower atmosphere that we never see. Eddies and swirls. Deflection around buildings. Large wind speed changes in the lowest few feet above the surface. Generally invisible, with perhaps a hint evident in …

• Lawns are an Ecological Disaster

  Neil Tyson often conjectures that maybe aliens have concluded humans aren’t intelligent enough to contact. He’s probably referring to our capacity for war, but lawns may display our talent for fruitless carnage even better.

• Free Technology for Teachers: ClassDojo Introduces a New Digital Portfolio Option

  For the last couple of years ClassDojo has offered a digital portfolio feature called Student Stories. This summer ClassDojo is introducing a new portfolio option called simply ClassDojo Portfolios. The new ClassDojo Portfolios will be student-led p…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Develop Programming Skills This Summer

  Summer is almost here and it’s a great time to learn a new skill that you can bring into your classroom next fall. One of the skills that seems to be mentioned in almost every education periodical these days is programming or coding.

• The Best Books for Middle School According to My Students 2018 – Pernille Ripp

  Infiltrate. Befriend. Sabotage. World War II is raging. Michael O’Shaunessey, originally from Ireland, now lives in Nazi Germany with his parents. Like the other boys in his school, Michael is a member of the Hitler Youth.But Michael has a secret. H…

• How Helping Students Ask Better Questions Can Tranform Classrooms

  At its essence, the QFT is a structured way to help people generate questions, categorize them and reflect on how different types of questions elicit different types of information.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Quick Google Docs Formatting Tip

  Google Docs has lots of handy features that are “hidden” in plain sight. Many of those features address common formatting needs. For example, in the far right edge of the editor menu there is a function to clear all formatting.

• World Savvy

  Join us in supporting educators across the U.S., and building a generation of global citizens — we depend on your partnership. Give Now!

• 10 End Of Year Blogging Activities – The Edublogger

  The end of the school year is fast approaching in the Northern Hemisphere. Why not culminate all the wonderful learning that’s been happening in your classroom with some memorable blog posts? Here are ten ideas that you could weave into your end of …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Nine Fun and Challenging Geography Games

  Yesterday, I shared the City-Guesser geography game. That game was just the latest in a long list of online geography games that I have tried over the years. Many have come and gone over the years but the following are still going strong.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 8 Tips for Quality Posts During Conferences & Events

  · 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: Digital Leadership is Not Optional

  “Leadership has less to do with position than it does disposition.” – John Maxwell I am currently working on a new edition of Digital Leadership for Corwin and I am very excited, as it will be in color.

• Controlling the Solution – The Principal of Change

  I thought about this quote in a recent conversation I had with a few administrators. There were focused on some of the ideas being shared were things that would happen in larger organizations, not necessarily ones in divisions with smaller student p…

• April and Mid-May History and Games List | Gaming the Past

  Historical Video Games  Historical Board Games  Twine and Twine Histories Kathleen Crowther, Anne Boleyn Jeremiah McCall, Epoiesen, “Path of Honors: Towards a Model for Interactive History Texts with Twine” The first response essays is up.

• What Is the Point of a Makerspace? | 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. For as long as I’ve been aware of makerspaces, I haven’t quite understood them.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some more amazing blog posts and resources from this past week:

• My Latest BAM! Radio Show Is On What’s Wrong With Prof. Dev. & How To Fix It | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Why Is Professional Development So Bad: How Do We Fix It? is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio Show.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Google’s Tour Creator

  I’m a little late to the party but recently Google just announced their new Tour Creator for creating virtual field trips. This is done right from the browser and interacts w/ Google Maps while users select points anywhere in the world and get a 360…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Peergrade

  Peergrade is an all-in-one peer assessment platform. The way this works is an educator creates an assignment and rubric while students upload their work to Peergrade. Peergrade then automatically and distributes that work to other students.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Answerables

  Answerables is a wonderful new innovative site/game that is perfect for Game Based Learning (or more accurate Game Based Learning meets Learning Management System). It reminds me of Second Life but geared more toward kids w/ their fantasy/SciFi envi…

• Why Celebrating Our Students Is Worth It – Reading By Example

  I know I am not alone in this, but I absolutely love the idea of intentionally spending time on building community in our classrooms. When we think about engagement, all too often our minds go to students being engaged in a particular subject or act…

• 30 Free Google Slides Templates For Your Next Presentation

  tags:free google-slides google slides templates template presentation googleslides

• Listening to Themselves: Podcasting Takes Lessons Beyond the Classroom | Edutopia

  tags:podcasting education edtech students podcast

• Free Technology for Teachers: Play Code Fred to Learn About Circulation and Respiration

  Code Fred is a free online game developed by the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. The game helps players learn about the human body’s responses to trauma. The object of the game is to help “Fred” escape from the woods while he is chased by a…

• Free Technology for Teachers: City Guesser – A Challenging Map Game

  City-Guesser is a challenging map-based game. The game shows you a section of a map centered over a city. The labels are removed from the map so you have to guess the city’s name based on other clues like bodies of water and orientation. City-Guesse…

• Using Design Thinking to Innovate in Your Own Practice – John Spencer

  A few months ago, I had the opportunity to deliver an opening keynote and closing talk for EdEx, a conference in Eindhoven (in the Netherlands).

• How To Handle Aggressively Disrespectful Students – Smart Classroom Management

  They describe angry, argumentative, and aggressively disrespectful students. Students who tell them off and try to disrupt and sabotage their class.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Include a Discussion Element in Your Google Site

  The transition from the old version of Google Sites to the new version of Google Sites has left a lot of people longing for features of the old version. Commenting was one of the features of the old version that does not exist in the new version.

• Diagnosing Employee Development Needs Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Other Infographics Diagnosing Development Needs Gap Knowledge What It Is What they know The information they need to be successful Questions To Ask Do they need additional information? Do they need to increase their knowledge around a particular sub…

• Summer reading list 2018: Five books that will make me smarter | History Tech

  Long time History Tech readers already know this. Every summer, I make a list of books I plan to read between now and September. Long time History Tech readers also know this. Not once, not ever, a couple of times I came close but never ever, have I…

• I Don’t Mean to Alarm You

  Hey gang! So, because of the snow we had this year, we’re going all the way until June 19th! DOH! I mean, super! And if you’re out of school already….

• Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D. | User Generated Education

  Makerspaces, Maker Education, STEM, and STEAM are gaining lots of traction in Kindergarten though college level education. Articles, resources on social media, and conference presentations on these topics are proliferating at a rate that most educat…

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Stillmotion Method for Storytelling

  Stillmotion is an award-winning video production company. According to their website they focus on telling stories to which people have an emotional response. How they do that is revealed in a five part series that they published on Vimeo.

• Universal Design for Learning: Meeting the needs of all students | Ditch That Textbook

  What is UDL and how can we use it to design lessons that meet the needs of all of our students? Educators shared plenty of suggestions in a recent #DitchBook Twitter chat.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Collect Video Reflections from Students

  As the 2017-18 school year winds down for many of us, it’s a good time to have students reflect on what they learned throughout the year. You could have students write these reflections and post them on a classroom blog.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Use These Two Google Slides Add-ons to Create Audio Slideshows

  It’s that time of year when I get a lot of requests for recommendations on tools for making audio slideshows. I get these requests because people want to make slideshows to showcase some of the highlights of the year in their schools.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Few Good Videos for Learning About Memorial Day

  Memorial Day in the United States is ten days away. Many students associate the day with with barbecues, parades, and a day off from school. But that’s not what Memorial Day is about. As we know it’s a day to honor those who died in service to our c…

• 15 Ways to Use Book Creator for Reading Responses – Class Tech Tips

  Are you looking to energize and elevate reading responses in your classroom? Well, I am so happy to have partnered with my friends at Book Creator to make a special ebook just for you! This free ebook is full of ways to use Book Creator for Reading …

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create Staff Notebooks in OneNote

  Early this year I was finally convinced that Microsoft’s OneNote is a product that I should be using more often.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Place Videos Side-by-Side in a Google Sites Page

  In a post earlier this morning I mentioned placing videos side-by-side in a Google Sites page. Within minutes I got an email from a reader who wanted to know how to do that. The way to do it is to simply insert two videos into a page then drag and d…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Use Video in End-of-Year Review Activities

  The end of the school year is rapidly approaching. If you’re a high school teacher you probably planning for final exams and final exam review session. You might have in-classroom review sessions planned.

• Real teaching means real learning: Differentiating Assessment

  During this process I combined parts of one outcome with another, broke up some outcomes into smaller chunks, and then I created a list of “Rock, Sand and Water” objectives: Rock outcomes (outcomes that pass the endurance, leverage and readiness tes…

• Bloxels – Build Your Own Video Games

  tags:build create video game games gaming gbl

• Esports and the ISTE Standards for Students – e-O’Hagan

  On October 29, 2016, millions of people around the world will watch an event take place at a sold out Staples Center in Los Angeles. There will be more who watch this event online, via Twitch.tv, than watched the NBA Finals and World Series combined.

• A new generation of high school athletes will play eSports

  tags:esports game gaming games edu games4edu education gbl

• Tip of the Week: 7 Resources for the End of School | History Tech

  Good luck and have fun!

• Call for Proposals Now Open for NCCE 2019! – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog

  The NCCE 19 Conference Committee invites you to share your knowledge and expertise by presenting at NCCE 19, February 26 – 28, 2019 in Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How Coffee Affects Your Brain

  Like millions of people, I start my day by brewing coffee. On those rare days when I discover we’re out of coffee at home, it can totally throw my morning out of wack. Heck, I even pick hotel rooms based on whether or not they have in-room coffee ma…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How Does the Brain Work? – A Series of NOVA Lessons

  How Does the Brain Work? was a NOVA show that explored what scientists currently know about the human brain and the research that will help us to know more about the human brain in the future.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Science of Cookies

  I love cookies! In fact, I just had two warm chocolate chip cookies for dessert tonight. I bet that you have a student or twenty that enjoys cookies too. TED-Ed has a fun lesson that you can use to teach some science concepts through cookies.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Get Back to Me – A Wait Time Strategy

  The Teaching Channel has a vast library of videos that demonstrate and explain teaching strategies. One of the videos that I recently stumbled upon is about the “Get Back to Me” strategy.

• 9 YouTube Tips and Tricks for Teachers

  tags:youtube tips tricks teachers education edu

• GGJNext: A New Global Game Jam for Youth – BOOST Cafe

  tags:game jam middle school students gaming design iterate create creating

• Why Teens Should Understand Their Own Brain

  Blakemore has a new book, Inventing Ourselves, The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain — where she dives into the research and the science — and offers insights into how young adults are thinking, problem-solving and learning. Our conversation has been…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Student Work That Matters: Free Volunteer Now Kit

  · 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…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Map-based Stories from National Geographic

  GeoStories are short, map-based stories featured on National Geographic Education. The stories combine text, maps, and pictures to tell a story as a series of slides connected to placemarks on maps. National Geographic Education currently offers twe…

• 78 Foot Wave Recorded!

  At 78 feet tall, and churned by a fierce storm, it’s the largest wave ever recorded in the southern hemisphere, New Zealand scientists report.

• Evolution of the English Alphabet – Blog About Infographics and Data Visualization – Cool Infographics

  Matt Baker, the creater of the Evolution of the English Alphabet chart, traced the English alphabet all the way back to Proto-Sinaitic in 1750 BCE. This chart is a simplified version of his complete work called Writing Systems of the World and both …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Finally Removes “Next Blog” Link from Blogger

  For as long as I can remember people have complained about the “next blog” link that appears by default at the top of Blogger blogs. No one likes it because it can lead visitors to random blogs that may or may not be appropriate for classrooms.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Export, Save, and Re-purpose Your Edublogs Posts

  As the end of the school year approaches you might find yourself wondering what to do with all of the blogs posts your students wrote during the year. If you used Edublogs for your classroom blog, there is an easy way to export and save a copy of al…

• How do we create a community of readers? @StenhousePub #litessentials – Reading By Example

  I long ago lost count the number of mistakes I have made as a school principal and literacy leader. My errors are often the product of not practicing what I preach as it relates to effective literacy instruction for students.

• Encourage Students to Reflect on Their Growth with This Free Slides Portfolio Template – Teacher Reboot Camp

  One of the most important ways to end the year is by getting students to reflect on the learning journey in your class. They need to reflect on the purpose of different tasks and projects.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Add Points of Interest to Virtual Reality Tours in Google’s Tour Creator

  Last week Google introduced the new Tour Creator for making virtual reality tours. I published a tutorial last week that shows you how to create a basic tour. Today, I made a new tutorial that shows you how to include featured points of interest wit…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Install and Manage Chrome Extensions

  From time-to-time the icons in my Chrome browser prompt questions from viewers of my YouTube videos. Usually, the questions are about which extensions I’m using.

• Free Stories! | Mark Cheverton

  Here are some stories I’ve written over the years. I hope you like them. These stories are free to download, use, duplicate . . . Teachers/librarians, you can printe these up and give them out to your students, of you can email the PDF to a colleagu…

• The Edublogger’s Guide To Global Collaboration – The Edublogger

  One of the many advantages of having a class blog is the potential for global collaboration. Global collaboration has always been one of my very favorite aspects of blogging with students.

• Playlists: A Path to Personalized Learning |

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Apple, Google, & Microsoft… Oh my! Which is Best for Your School?

  This week the #NYCSchoolsTech Team brought innovative educators a chance to hear directly from “The Big Three: Apple, Google, and Microsoft” (listed alphabetically).

• 5 Myths About Classroom Management in PBL – John Spencer

  I want to make something clear before we dive into this topic. I made huge mistakes in classroom management as a teacher. I let certain disruptive behaviors go unchecked because I was tired and I didn’t want to put out another fire. I had moments wh…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Twelve Tools for Building End-of-year Review Activities (That Aren’t Kahoot Games)

  The end of the school year is quickly approaching. At this time of the year I start to get a lot of requests for suggestions for tools to create review activities. Here are twelve good options for creating review activities.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Northwest Sudden Drying: The Rapid Transition to Dry Soils in May

  People think of the Pacific Northwest as being a wet place, with wet, sodden soils. But something startling happens in May in much of western Washington: a rapid drying of the soils. A transition so rapid that some folks begin irrigating their garde…

• 10 questions in pursuit of learner agency… – What Ed Said

  1. What is your ‘image of the child’? How do you view the learners in your class? Do you believe children are inherently intelligent, curious and creative? Do you recognise their rights and their capabilities? Do you trust them to learn? 2.

• What Should Your Teacher Book Club Read? | 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. When people talk about teachers having summers off, most teachers laugh.

• NEW BOOK! Standards-Based Learning in Action | Tom Schimmer

  Very excited to announce that my new book (co-authored with Garnet Hillman and Mandy Stalets) Standards-Based Learning in Action: Moving from Theory to Practice (Solution Tree) is now available!

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