Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

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

• How to Increase Student Success in Online Learning: 5 Tips

  Some links in this blog post may be affiliate or “Pay Per Click (PPC)” links, meaning we make a small commission if you click them and buy anything. Learn more. You know the look. Glazed eyes, a phone hidden under the edge of the table, the reluctan…

• Badges Find Their Way to San Jose – Wrench in the Gears

  Yesterday I watched a May 7, 2018 meeting held by the City Council of San Jose on education and digital literacy efforts related to the LRNG program, an initiative of the McCarthur Foundation-funded Collective Shift. Philadelphia is also a City of L…

• Getting little respect, kelp could be the key to survival for some fish | Watching Our Water Ways

  It is all too easy for us to forget about Puget Sound’s productive kelp forests, which have been slowly vanishing from numerous places where masses of vegetation once proliferated. I never fully appreciated the value of kelp until I began writing ab…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Dozens of Online Games Kids Can Play to Learn About Engineering

  Try Engineering is a site that hosts lesson plans and games designed to get students interested in engineering. The lesson plans are arranged according age and engineering topic. The lesson plans can be downloaded as PDFs. The games section of Try E…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Video Guides to Common Fallacies

  The Guide to Common Fallacies is a resource that I wish I had back when I was teaching ninth grade students to recognize bias, propaganda, and logical fallacies. The Guide to Common Fallacies is a series of nine short videos from the PBS Idea Channe…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Google Maps and Earth Activity for Art Classes

  When I conduct workshops on Google Maps and Google Earth I always point out that the uses for those tools extend beyond the realm of geography and history.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Fun Game for Learning About Physics

  Simple Machines is a fun game from the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. Simple Machines is a game that is designed to help students learn about the basic physics principles involved in the use of levels, pulleys, planes, axles, and wheels.

• Scaffolding an introduction to Scratch | The Tinkering Studio

  In anticipation to Scratch Day we have been experimenting in the Tinkering Studio with the awesome video sensing ability that is built into Scratch 2.0.

• Awesome Teacher Summer: 12 ways to grow and learn | Ditch That Textbook

  Summer is full of opportunities to grow as an educator. Here are 12 ideas to check out for Summer 2018. Our lives as educators totally change in the summer, don’t they?

• Oculus Go and Education – Part Deux » edurealms.com

  Yesterday, I wrote about my early impressions unboxing and using the new Oculus Go and considered the potential impact on K-12 education.  Today I had the opportunity to take some students into VR with the Oculus Go.

• Do You Teach With a Paper-Based Mindset? | Tech Learning

  tags:tech edtech education samr paper mindset

• Alexa and Siri Can Hear This Hidden Command. You Can’t. – The New York Times

  BERKELEY, Calif. — Many people have grown accustomed to talking to their smart devices, asking them to read a text, play a song or set an alarm. But someone else might be secretly talking to them, too.

• Science Activity With Two Quarters | A Moment of Science – Indiana Public Media

  Put a quarter on the table, with George Washington’s head right side up. Hold the quarter down with your finger. Now, put another quarter flat on the table, again with Washington right side up.

• Should learning be hard? | Ditch That Textbook

  The Calvin Cycle was the bane of my existence as a high school freshman. I was in a biology class. In the midst of surviving swimming practices, working part-time at Burger King and trying to navigate all of my other classes, I was required to learn…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Will Hawaii’s Vog Head Our Way?

  Bellamy Pailthorp, my colleague at KNKX, and I have gotten several emails from folks worried about the effluent from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano and whether it might be heading our way. The amount of SO2 emitted by Kilauea is immense, with some days th…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Microsoft Teams for Education Gets Five New Features

  This week Microsoft announced the release of five new features for Microsoft Teams for Education. The two of the more significant of the five new features are the ability to schedule assignment postings and the ability to give assignments to individ…

• Can an app spark student curiosity? Curiosity in the Classroom – Class Tech Tips

  Regular readers of this blog know I love the phrase tasks before apps.

• Oculus Go – A Practical VR Solution for K-12 Education? » edurealms.com

  I’ve been exploring Virtual Reality and its applications for K-12 Learning for many years now.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Six New Features Coming to Google Forms

  Google Forms has long been a go-to tool for teachers to create surveys and give quizzes online. Today, Google announced six new features that are going to make Google Forms better than ever.

• Poster: How To Write A Quality Blog Comment – Primary Tech by Kathleen Morris

  I’ve recently set up a blog for a class I’m teaching and I’ve given my old quality commenting poster an update! I’ve found that when commenting is not explicitly taught, modelled, and reinforced, the standard of writing ends up being poor.

 

• The Nerdy Teacher: The #KnightsForge Maker Show Shows of SAM Labs

  The third episode of the Knight’s Forge Maker Show is up. In this episode, Gabby shares her thoughts on building a car with the SAM Labs Alpha Kit we have in the Knight’s Forge.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Changes Coming to the Google Drive User Interface – Web Version

  Earlier this week I posted the reminder that the Google Drive desktop app is being phased out this month. Yesterday, Google announced that there’s another change coming to Google Drive.

• Adobe Spark: Creativity with Visuals (It’s Free) – Teacher Tech

  Adobe Spark is a free tool to create visual graphics and videos. Adobe Spark for Education allows students with G Suite or Microsoft 365 accounts to login easily. Go to spark.adobe.com/edu to sign up.

• 3 Reasons to Use EduKids Connect in Early Ed Classrooms – Kleinspiration

  Early childhood programs have an important role in preparing children to elementary school and encouraging their love for learning. As a teacher you want your little ones to not only eat and sleep well, but also learn and grow. But working with kids…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Animaker Edify – Easily Create Animated Videos In an Online Classroom

  Disclosure: This is sponsored content. Animaker Edify is an excellent service for teachers and students who want to create animated videos. In reviewing Animaker Edify it hit on all of the things that I look for in a video creation tool for classroo…

• 3 Fascinating Facts About How Edtech Will Affect The Education Sector Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Educational technology is constantly evolving, as a natural consequence of the improvement going on in technologies that can be used.

• Practical Play Framework – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Rate this item: No votes yet. Please wait… Serious games and serious play both have an issue. The issue is, the word serious. It sounds far too, well, serious! I have heard lots of people complaining about this, somewhat misunderstanding what the …

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Google’s New VR Tour Creator

  A few hours ago Google announced the launch of their new VR Tour Creator. This free tool lets everyone create their own virtual tours to view in Google Cardboard and or in the Chrome web browser.

• How To Integrate And Manage Video Games In Your Classroom – Teched Up Teacher

  That escalated quickly! My post on using Fortnite in the Classroom became my most popular article ever. I was also lucky enough to be asked to chime in on EdWeek’s article on Fortnite and video games in the classroom.

• Great Tool For Creating Sequencing Activities | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Russel Tarr’s ClassTools site is on a zillion of my “Best” lists, and he keeps on making it better and better! It can be used in lots of lessons, and I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Creating Sentence Scrambles.

• This 6-Step Routine Will Get Your Glutes in Shape | Runner’s World

  tags:glutes strengthening strength exercise run running

• Hip Flexor and Hamstring Stretch | Runner’s World

  tags:hip flexor hamstring stretches run running exercise

• The Nerdy Teacher: Playful Ways to Help Students Transition from Tablets to Laptops

  Playful Ways to Help Students Transition from Tablets to Laptops Today’s students grow up with smartphones and tablets in their hands.

• Google My Maps: Lesson Ideas – Teacher Tech

  Google My Maps allows students to create using customized maps where they create the content. Students can they locate places around the globe and see them at street view. Students can drop markers onto the map and embed text, photos or YouTube vide…

• Fortnite Minecraft Week 2

  This week me and my partner got a lot done. We finally finished Rocking Rapids, complete with a Bait and Tackle store, church and a few fishing houses.

• Game in Progress: Reflection #2 – Advaith’s Reviews

  Just a overview of our Minecraft Game, Stranded, you play a trader who has to survive on an island and defeat a pirate. This week, we have improved many bits. Some were major improvements, others minor. There were many challenges in the game.

• What is a backchannel? Replacements for Today’s Meet – Class Tech Tips

  If you’re also someone who embraces the power of digital tools in the classroom, you might have received the same sort of text messages and emails filling up your inbox last month.

• 5 Chrome browser extensions that you probably haven’t heard about but need to be using | History Tech

  It’s not a secret. I say it a couple times a week: And not just for it’s money. (Though that would be nice.) I love how the Google universe has something for everyone. Elementary. Middle and high school. Different content areas. A variety of tools f…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Collect Registration Information for School Fundraiser Events

  Our class will be doing a dine to donate night at Applebee’s on May 31st and manager would like estimate for number of attendees and suggested we use something online for people to signup. I thought I saw something that allowed more details that jus…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Lensoo Create – Create Whiteboard Videos on Your Phone or Tablet

  Lensoo Create is an app for creating whiteboard videos on your phone or tablet. The app is available in an Android version and in an iOS version. To create a video on Lensoo Create just open the app and tap the record button in the top of the screen.

• Home – MakingComics.com

  tags:comics make create making drawing writing comic comicbooks

• The Nerdy Teacher: ELA + PBL + Makerspace = Awesomeness!

  A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to cover a 7th grade English class for the week and I was allowed to do any mini unit I wanted. I decided I would dive into symbolism using one of my favorite short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper”.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Weebly vs. Google Sites

  Twice in the last few I have chatted with a school technology coaches who wanted my opinion about which platform their teachers should use to create classroom websites for the next school year. In one case I recommended Weebly and in the other I rec…

• 16 Gmail Hacks to Boost Your Productivity |

  In a blog titled “6 Shifts to Maximize Productivity and Happiness,” I encouraged teachers to designate specific windows of time during their day to check and respond to email.

• Badass Teachers Association: Grades and Test Scores Don’t Matter. A Love of Learning Does by Steven Singer

  My daughter probably would be shocked to discover what I truly think about grades. They don’t matter all that much. The other day she brought home a pop quiz on sloths from her third grade class. It had a 40% F emblazoned on the top in red ink.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Capsure – Share Collections of Images With Audio Notes

  Capsure is a photo sharing service that lets you create private and public collections of photographs. Lots of other services do the same thing. What makes Capsure a little bit different is that you can add audio notes to your collections.

• Free Technology for Teachers: What’s Going On With Flippity? – I Found Out for You

  A few weeks ago I was giving a presentation that included a demonstration of Flippity’s Google Sheets Add-on. A few minutes after the presentation a bunch of people told me that they received a security warning when they tried to install the Add-on.

• Updated List: Check Out These Class Blogs! – The Edublogger

  Class blogs are more popular than ever! Many educators realize the advantage of having an online space that complements their physical space. It can be so inspiring to take a virtual peek into other classrooms by checking out class blogs.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Force Copy: The G-Suite Tip Every Teacher Needs To Know

  You know those simple tech tips that make a big difference? For me it was learning Ctrl+K is the shortcut to hyperlink a word. I use this one constantly. I’m going to share one with you that you probably never knew you needed, but once you learn it …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Easy Accents for Google Slides

  For the last couple of years I have recommended the Easy Accents Add-on for Google Docs. It’s a free Add-on that gives you access to a virtual keyboard to use to write non-English characters in your Google Documents. Recently, the Easy Accents Add-o…

• Free Technology for Teachers: History and Literature Text Messages

  ClassTools.net is one of my favorite places to find templates for online activities for middle school and high school students. One of the templates on ClassTools.net that I’ve recommended for years is the Fake SMS Generator.

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

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Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Did you catch these posts last week? Check them out:

• 9 Things To Do When You’re Feeling Burned-Out – Smart Classroom Management

  Burned-out is the worst place you can find yourself as a teacher. Exhausted, stressed, craving time off. Every day feeling like the day before. It chips away at your peace and makes you dread getting out of bed in the morning.

• Exploring our World with Google Expeditions AR – Mari Venturino

  In May 2016 we welcomed Google Expeditions Pioneer program to our school (read about it here), and our students and teachers loved it. I am so excited that we were able to host the Google Expeditions AR Pioneer program at the end of April.

• STEAM Up Learning Outdoors! 15+ Ideas to Try Now or this Summer! – Teacher Reboot Camp

  “[Science] is more than a school subject, or the periodic table, or the properties of waves. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change that world.” – Bara…

• Our Work | Pacific Education Institute

  tags:pei field guide environmental science environment outdoor ed education

• Week 10: End of journey – Student Blogging Challenge

  Thank you all very much for taking part in this ten week blogging journey with me. As something comes to an end, we usually reflect back on what we have learnt, what we will change next time and so on. So this is what the activities will be about th…

• How should students revise? A brief guide | chronotope

  One of the biggest lessons from research is that many students don’t really know how to study.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Sourcera for Google Slides – Historical Images to Use In Your Slides

  Sourcera is an Add-on for Google Slides that lets you search for historical images and insert them directly into your slides. Sourcera pulls images from eleven sources including Flickr’s Commons, the British Library, and the Digital Public Library o…

• Free Technology for Teachers: GeoGebra for PowerPoint – Access and Insert GeoGebra Within PowerPoint

  GeoGebra is a favorite ed tech resource of math teachers all over the globe. PowerPoint is the default presentation tool on millions of computers in schools. You can use the two together through the GeoGebra PowerPoint Add-in.

• Let’s Play Add-on – Students Collaborating on the Same Doc – Teacher Tech

  One of the coolest things about Google Docs is the ability to be on the same document at the same time.

• Google confirms new social gaming startup | GamesIndustry.biz

  The company confirmed the startup to Bloomberg, explaining that Arcade was, “focused on mobile gaming with friends.” Arcade is being developed within Area 120, a division of Google where employees can create startups that might eventually become par…

• Gamasutra – Devs share personal touches they’ve hidden in games

  Devs share personal touches they’ve hidden in games

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Free Webinars About Assistive Technology

  At the beginning of this year I made a decision to spend more time and effort getting to know all of the free tools that Microsoft provides to teachers and students.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Glue vs. tape – A TED-Ed Science Lesson

  The back windshield in my truck is currently being held in place by some clear packaging tape. There’s a big crack in it and my local glass shop can’t fix it until Tuesday.

• [Free Digital Citizenship Webinar] The 9 Key P’s of Digital Citizenship @coolcatteacher

  On Thursday, May 10 at 5pm ET, join me for a free webinar on the 9 Key P’s of Digital Citizenship. Digital citizenship is a range of behaviors our students must learn.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Docs Teach Adds New Primary Sources About WWI

  Docs Teach is a fantastic resource for US History teachers that I have shared many times over the years. I like it so much that I include it in my Teaching History With Technology course.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Decreasing Cold Waves: The Most Potent Sign of Global Warming in the Pacific Northwest?

  I have spent quite a bit of time dealing with excessive claims regarding current global warming impacts made by the media, politicians, and some activist organizations. This comes at some personal cost (e.g., folks at the Seattle Stranger start call…

• 10 great education books for summer reading | Ditch That Textbook

  Summer is a great time to hone your skills and pick up new ideas for next school year. Here are some of my top picks for summer 2018 reading. Summer … the time when all teachers spend carefree days sitting by the pool and drinking fruity drinks, rig…

• Gamification: Is Activity as good as Engagement? – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Rate this item: No votes yet. Please wait… Gamification is often accused of creating activity rather than engagement. Whilst this can be true, is it a bad thing? First, let’s look at the difference between activity and engagement.

• On Selecting Better Read Alouds – Pernille Ripp

  When the Global Read Aloud was founded, I added the word “Global” because I wanted to connect kids around the world.  I wanted to make the world smaller.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 300+ Printable Comic Templates

  Make Beliefs Comix is a great multilingual comic strip creation service that I’ve featured many times in the past. One of the features of Make Beliefs Comix that I like is the collection of printable comic strip templates.

• Star Wars in the Classroom | Science Resources

  tags:science fact fiction star wars starwars education

• PSA: There’s a new fake Flash Player installer for Macs, and it’s nastier than usual | 9to5Mac

  Macs are not immune to malware, but they are pretty well-protected. By default, macOS won’t allow unrecognized apps to be installed, and it needs the user to agree to override this.

• Book Creator Webinar Series for Summer – Class Tech Tips

  Well, it has finally warmed up here in the northeast and I’m excited to continue a summer tradition with the folks at Book Creator. From May through August of this year, I’m hosting 10 (that’s right – ten!) Book Creator webinars all about this open-…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: 10 Sites for Online Tutoring/Teaching

  Over the last few years online tutoring sites have really boosted in popularity. The reason for this is people just don’t have the time or the money to spend at an actually tutoring center.

• Three Education-Related Star Wars Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  First, awhile back I wrote a column for Education Week headlined What ‘Star Wars’ Can Teach Educators About Parent Engagement. Thirdly, Latest ‘Star Wars’ Teaches The Value Of Failure is from NPR.

• May the 4th Be With You! 20+ Ideas for Teaching and Learning with the Force – Teacher Reboot Camp

  May 4th is Star Wars day and what better time to teach and learn with the Force as you end the school year! Students of all ages enjoy Star Wars.

• Free Technology for Teachers: MOOO – Museum of Obsolete Objects

  Do you remember using the end of a pencil to dial your rotary phone? Did you have an answering machines that used cassette tapes? Do you remember the annoyance of having your mouse connected to your computer? If you said yes to any of those question…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Create Your Own Geography Game With Mission Map Quest

  Mission Map Quest is a free tool for creating geography games. The concept is simple, you create a series of clues that your students need to follow to identify places around the world. You can add as few or as many clues to your Map Quest as you li…

• Apps in Education: CoSN Driving K-12 Innovation Advisory Board

  You may be aware that the Horizon Report was recently discontinued. I have previously published an infographic on the Horizon Report 2014. It was always an insightful read each year when it was released.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 17 Audacity Tutorials for Beginners

  Audacity is a free, open-source program for recording and editing audio. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. For classroom podcasting projects or other classroom audio recording projects, it is hard to beat Audacity.

• StoriumEdu

  tags:gamification writing story gaming elements education collaborate gbl

• 5 Reasons Why your Technology-infused Lessons Don’t Work . . . and How to Fix Them – Teach with Tech

  We’ve all been there.  We learn about a new technology tool and we pick the perfect lesson in which to use it.  We are excited to see what the students produce and then, suddenly, the whole lesson falls apart.

• geekdad.com

  The Seattle Avengers (of which I am a member) were invited to help Seattle Cinerama with their Thursday night premiere of Avengers: Infinity War.

• Bad PD is Sometimes Your Own Fault – Ideas and Thoughts

• A book for wise (digital) parenting – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org

  The Art of Screen Time, by NPR’s Anya Kamenetz, could not be more timely. What with hearings and headlines about digital privacy, so much talk about “tech addiction,” and bad advice about “screen time,” parents deserve this haven from the storm.

• How To Increase Teacher Pay – No More Summers Off! – The Edublogger

  I’ve been watching in awe and admiration of the teacher walk-outs around the US as we grapple with the results of decades of underfunding (and a more recent all-out attack) of our public schools.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Old Google Sites vs. New Google Sites

  Last week I published a video about converting old Google Sites to the new version of Google Sites. That post prompted a lot of emails from readers who wanted to know what would happen when they switch from the old version to the new version of Goog…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Automatically Issue Certificates When Students Pass a Quiz in Google Forms

  The quizzes setting in Google Forms makes it easy to quickly score quizzes and return quiz scores to your students. The Google Forms Add-on called Certify’em makes it possible to not only give students their grades right away, it also issues them a …

• Best Books of 2018 (part 1) – Josh Stumpenhorst

  It is that time of year when lots of folks share their “best of” posts for the 2017-2018 school year. I love looking at the best books lists just to see what others are reading and enjoying.

• ESASky 2.2

  Loading ESASky 2.

• KQED

  So whether the project will ultimately result in a website, a speech, a three-dimensional model or an academic paper, there are certain thinking skills like identifying evidence or choosing a focus that can be embedded across subjects.

• Stack Overflow: 10 Comic Books for Kids – GeekDad

  I’ve been reading a bunch of comics lately, so many that I can’t fit them all into one column! But I’ll dig into some of them today, starting with those for younger readers and middle grade readers. Here are ten titles that I enjoyed!

• Resources for Primary and Secondary Students – ABC Education

  tags:education science life biology animal videos video

• Animals: Facts, Pictures, and Videos — National Geographic Kids

  tags:national geographic kids online animals science biology life

• Science Journal

  tags:science journal app

• outstanding-lesson-plan-template.pdf

  tags:lesson planning plan template pdf

• The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Choice Boards

  tags:student choice boards guide

• Free Technology for Teachers: TodaysMeet Is Shutting Down – Six Alternatives to Try

  TodaysMeet is shutting down. James Socol, the creator and only developer of TodaysMeet, has announced that he’s shutting it down on June 16th. I’m going to miss it and I know that a lot of you will too.

• This company wants to send kids to college by putting esports in high schools – Polygon

  tags:gbl esports schools gaming gamer games

• Week 9: My best work – Student Blogging Challenge

  Well, this is our second last week in the March challenge for 2018. Over the last 8 weeks, you have learnt a lot about blogging if you have done most of the activities and checked out the links included in my posts.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Preparing Learners for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

  Do you like change? If you do, then living in the present is an exhilarating experience. For those who don’t, buckle up as we are only going to see unprecedented innovations at exponential rates involving technology. You can’t run or hide from it.

• Legends of Learning Science Games for Kids – Class Tech Tips

  What does gaming have to do with test prep? The team at Legends of Learning have created a set of online resources for students and teachers.

• A Little-Known Teaching Strategy That Makes Learning Easier – Smart Classroom Management

  I’ve spent many years observing teachers. And there is an odd phenomenon I’ve noticed among a large percentage.

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 and resources:

• How to Assess Student Reading Skills Without Knowing the Book They Are Reading |

  A question I am asked often is how do I know what my readers know when they are all reading their own self-chosen books?  How do I keep them accountable for their reading?  How do I know what they can do without knowing the book they are reading? An…

• Free Technology for Teachers: TED-Ed Lessons About Every Element on the Periodic Table

  For years I have referred readers to the University of Nottingham’s Periodic Table of Videos. That table provides a video about every element that is in the Periodic Table.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Watch Live – Bison Calves in Yellowstone

  A few minutes ago I was browsing Facebook when I noticed that the Yellowstone National Park page was livestreaming images of bison and their new calves. You can view the stream here right now.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Book Creator Now Offers “Read To Me” Mode Online

  Last summer the Book Creator team launched a web-based version of their popular iPad and Android apps. The web-based version, called Book Creator for Chrome, has been a hit with teachers and students. The latest update to Book Creator for Chrome inc…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Convenient G Suite Update

  On Thursday Google announced a small update to G Suite that could prove to be convenient and reduce confusion for folks who have more than one Google account. In the next few weeks G Suite administrators will be able to add custom images or logos to…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Convert Old Google Sites to New Google Sites

  Google Sites users who want to switch to the new version of Google Sites have two options. The first option is to create an entirely new site in the new version of Google Sites and then copy and past content from your old site.

• Get a Summary of Student Work | 50 Things Book

  Google Classroom makes it easy to see an overview of students work. Click on the “Students” tab to open up the class roster. From the “Students” tab, you can email individual students by click on the three dots.

• Dear Administrators – A Few Ideas to Motivate Teachers |

  I was asked about how to motivate your teachers just the other day.  How do you help them stay invested?  How do you stave off burn out?  An earnest question and also one that deserves a thorough answer.

• How to enable the new Gmail right now – The Verge

  Google just updated Gmail with one of its biggest redesigns in a long time. The update brings several security features like confidential mode, which allows you to add two-factor authentication and / or set expiration dates for individual emails.

• 6 new ways to play a Quizlet Live game | Ditch That Textbook

  Vocabulary is important for every subject and even more so in the age of high stakes testing. Early on in my teaching career, I moved rather quickly towards using Quizlet to create and manage the vocabulary that my students would need to learn.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Tasks – A Very Simple Task Management App

  On Wednesday Google announced a bunch of updates to Gmail. That story was covered by every blog under the sun and garnered lots of commentary on social media. What didn’t get nearly as much attention was Google’s launch of a new task management app …

• 10 low-prep, high-return activities for class TOMORROW | Ditch That Textbook

  There’s no shame in low-prep! Here are 10 solid teaching ideas for tomorrow that will free up some time in your life. Low-prep doesn’t have to mean less learning. Technology allows us to be more efficient and effective in the classroom in many ways.

• Quick Gamification Advice: The 70/30 Rule – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Rate this item: No votes yet. Please wait… One of the best bits of advice I was given at Capgemini revolved around the idea that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. It was the 70/30 rule of engagement.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Embed Flipgrid Topics Into Google Sites

  One of the good things about the new version of Google Sites is that Google has made it much easier to embed content from third party services. Flipgrid is one of the popular ed tech tools that you might want to add to your Google Site.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Quick Guide to OneNote

  Over the last few months I have come to appreciate all of the things that OneNote does that my trusty old Google Keep can’t do.

• Tinkerine U: Learn and teach 3D printing – iLearn Technology

  What it is: So you have a 3D printer…now what?! Introducing Tinkerine U the place where you can learn (and teach) 3D printing. Tinkerine U is a great starting point (no matter what brand of 3D printer you have!).

• A Teacher’s Guide to Surviving Fortnite – Teched Up Teacher

  Quick: name the highest grossing entertainment product of all time. No, it’s not Titanic or Avatar. It’s not the Beatles’ Abbey Road. It’s a video game. Grand Theft Auto V. GTA V has sold 85 million copies and grossed more than 5 Billion dollars.

• 5 Useful, Free Photo Apps for Teachers and Students – Primary Tech by Kathleen Morris

  I remember the excitement of upgrading to a phone in the early 2000s that had a camera. Imagine! Being able to take photos on-the-go without carrying around your camera. Of course, back then the quality of photos taken on phones was really poor.

• How I Read as a Literacy Leader – Reading By Example

  Schoool leaders cannot know literacy without being a reader. Therefore we have to read. Here, I share five suggestions for becoming a more intentional reader. This means reading across a variety of genres and modes. Both online and offline.

• “The Waiting Game” Simulates The Challenges Facing Someone Seeking Asylum In The U.S. | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Choose Your Own Adventure games often have to be careful balancing respecting the experiences of those who are being simulated and portraying it sensitively with a social conscious.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Workplace, Teams, or Slack, Oh My! What’s Right for You?

  If you haven’t heard, and it’s likely you haven’t, Microsoft launched a product called Teams in 2017 following the company’s decision not to sink 8 billion dollars into the purchase of Slack. Instead, they decided to build out their Skype product an…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Grasshopper

  Grasshopper is the new free mobile app (iOS/Android) that Google just released to introduce students how to code. Grasshopper teaches users how to code in Javascript by playing through fun games and puzzles. Here are more details…

• Ilearntechnology.com

  What it is: Inkscape is like the open source version of Adobe Illustrator. What really sets Inkscape apart is its use of  Scalable Vector Graphics as it’s native format. Oh yeah, and it’s free.

• Five + One Ideas for Redefining the Whole Class Novel Experience for All |

  I knew I had to teach reading when I was first hired as a 4th-grade teacher.  After all, every teacher teaches reading.  Yet, I didn’t know how to really teach reading.

• InsertLearning: Transform Any Web Page into an Interactive Lesson |

  I frequently use online articles and resources with my students to supplement our curriculum. I want them reading, thinking about, and discussing hot topics that impact their lives; however, engaging students around online articles hasn’t always bee…

• Free Technology for Teachers: WikiWhere – A Challenging Map Game

  WikiWhere is a neat map-based trivia game. The goal of the game is to identify cities based on their descriptions. The descriptions come from Wikipedia entries.

• Superhero Activities to Empower Students – Teacher Reboot Camp

  Every student can find a superhero to admire and learn from. Superheroes help empower students to be brave enough to stand up for what they believe is the right thing to do.

• Adobe Spark Activities for Elementary Students – Class Tech Tips

  Creation in the classroom is essential at every age. All students have stories to tell about their learning, and I’m so excited that the Adobe Spark creation tools are now available for students under 13 years old.

• Rockwell’s Four Freedoms in the 21st century and rethinking art as history | History Tech

  How great is the Smithsonian? Seriously. Take a few minutes to think about all the teaching goodness that they provide. Learning Lab. History Explorer. Lesson plans. Podcasts. Webcasts. It goes on and on. But there’s always been a bit of old school …

• Free Technology for Teachers: PhET PowerPoint Add-in – Add Science & Math Simulations to Slides

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

• Free Technology for Teachers: Storyline JS – Turn Your Spreadsheets Into Stories

  In yesterday’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week I featured the storytelling tools produced by Knight Lab at Northwestern University. One of those tools is called Storyline JS. Storyline JS lets you create an interactive, annotated line chart.

• Student collaboration in shared Google Slides | Ditch That Textbook

  Teamwork is a desirable job skill in today’s economy. When we let students collaborate, we prepare them for the future! Here’s how Google Slides can help. Part of the reason social media has taken off so much are the connections. Seeing other people…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Dig Into Mining – Virtual Field Labs and Field Trips About Copper Mining

  Dig Into Mining is a free resource from Discovery Education and Freeport-McMoran (the world’s largest copper mining company). The purpose of Dig Into Mining is to help students understand how copper is mined and processed for use in products like pi…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Record and Share Observations of Nature on iNaturalist

  iNaturalist is a community website for sharing pictures and observations of plants and animals. To enable easy sharing of observations, iNaturalist offers a free Android app and a free iOS app.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Motion Comics

  Motion Comics is a nice site for digital storytelling that I just found out about from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. Motion Comics lets users upload images and audio files to create a stunning digital comic.

• What It’s Like on the Inside: Words, Words, Words

  I found an administrator crying in the hallway today. It was because of this: These are lists of words found on our K – 5 report cards. The words in each list only appear for students in those populations.

• The Current State of Educational Blogging 2017/2018 – The Edublogger

  Each year we conduct a survey on how educators are using blogs. Our goal is to document the trends in educational blogging. This post summarizes what you told us in our sixth annual survey.

• Flipgrid for every classroom – iLearn Technology

  What it is: Flipgrid is a video discussion platform for your classroom that lets you engage and capture learning in new and awesome ways. It’s simple (and free) to get started, just create a grid and add a topic to spark some discussion.

• How Accurate Are Your Grades? | Cult of Pedagogy

  My daughter was recently given an assignment to create a model of a volcano. It was a group project, meant to be done entirely at home, and the main criteria was that it had to look like a volcano, with extra points if it could actually erupt.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Resources to Help Parents Raise Empowered Digital Citizens from @CommonSenseEdu

  Kids today. They’re addicted to their phones. Distracted. Cyber bullied. Right? Well not quite. Kids today are living in a world more connected then ever before.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are last week’s great posts full of ideas and resources:

• Books That Celebrate Diversity

  A few of my MHMS friends & colleagues are taking a Cultural Proficiency course. Having taken that course a couple years ago, and as a passionate ally of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks movement, I was offered to help them with their final project!

• Week 8: Games – Student Blogging Challenge

  Before playing the games, make sure your blog is ready for visitors. Remember one of  the main aims of blogging includes commenting and carrying on conversations with the author of posts and their other readers.

• Dangers of the “New Homework System”… | WJU EdTech

  Have you heard about the new homework system? When I was young, I went home and quietly did my homework in our family room. I guess I was naive to think that students still did this. Perhaps some do. Yet, many don’t…at least those I have spoken with…

• Control Alt Achieve: Making Learning Transparent – Finding, Making, and Using Transparent Images for Learning

  As educators and students we use images all of the time in the projects we create. Most of the time any picture will do, but sometimes we’re looking for an image with a special quality… transparency.

• Ilearntechnology.com

  What it is: Plus Happy Numbers is a free kindergarten through second-grade site with monthly math challenges. Teachers can sign up for a free classroom account and assign the monthly math challenge for students to solve.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Fun App That Helps Kids Learn How Animals Adapt to Their Environments

  As the weather warms students start asking, “can we have class outside today?” If you’re an elementary school teacher who has heard this recently and you’re ready to get your kids outside for a lesson, take a look at Plum’s Creaturizer.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ways to Improve Your Next Video

  Today we have more tools to record, edit, and share videos than ever before. With the tap of an app or the click of a link, you and your students can be making videos to tell stories, to teach lessons, or to share news.

• Stump The Teacher: New Space

  After nearly 9 years of Stump the Teacher, it is finally time to say goodbye. I have moved my content and my rambling to joshstumpenhorst.com Please update readers, links, etc.

• Learner agency and classroom management… – What Ed Said

  How does learner agency influence the need for ‘classroom management’? After listening to Derek Wenmoth’s video, our teachers collectively came up with a list of words that characterise agency.

• 5 Math Games and Activities That Help Make Learning Fun

  No kid wants to do homework after school, but math games help to make it that bit more enjoyable. My family has been using these math games and activities recently when my son is asked to practice his math skills at home.

• How To Create Infographics That’ll Knock People’s Sock Off Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  A change is upon us. What this change is most visible in, is the way we communicate online. The entire face of communication is almost unrecognizable today. It seems that the way we communicate today – through Tweets, DMs, shares, pins, and likes ha…

• 10+ tips for ensuring success for your flipped classroom | Ditch That Textbook

  Starting to teach in a flipped classroom environment can be daunting. Here are tips to help it succeed start to finish. This post is written by Nate Ridgway, a history teacher at Beech Grove High School in Indianapolis.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Enable These Google Forms Settings to Save Time When Making Quizzes

  Making quizzes and giving quizzes is a common use of Google Forms. If you have ever built a quiz and given it to your students only to notice after the fact that you forgot to assign a point value to a question, then you need to watch my video about…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Now You Can Include Google Slides In a Google Document

  Inserting charts from Google Sheets has been an option in Google Documents for quite a while. This week Google added the option to add a slide from Google Slides into a document. Your chosen slide essentially appears as an image within your document.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Animated Map of First Foliage Appearances

  Last Friday I was in Greenwich, Connecticut to give a presentation. Greenwich is roughly 300 miles south of my home in Maine. Greenwich was in full spring bloom with green grass and foliage starting to bud on the trees. Meanwhile back home in Maine …

• Apps in Education: Implementing a BYOD Program

  Making the decision to move a school towards a BYOD model can be fraught with danger. This is especially true if you are using table devices. Unfortunately many people still hold the belief that laptops are for working and iPads are for playing or s…

• 301 Moved Permanently

  So you’re curious about game based tutoring, eh? Congratulations and welcome to the future of on-demand learning! Nexed tutors come in 3 flavours; the first thing to do is to choose which type best describes you:

• Free Technology for Teachers: Guides and Rulers for Google Slides

  If you’re like me, you might need a little help making things line up the way they should in your presentations. If you’re a Google Slides user, one of the things that can help you with that is using the guides and rulers.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Pixorize

  Pixorize is a nice site for US History students that I just learned about from Larry Ferlazzo’s excellent blog. Pixorize is an innovative that uses pictures to remember facts (i.e. similar to ThingLink). This is done by linking images together w/ fa…

• Snakes and Ladders: Gamification Hell or Heaven? – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

• 7 Design Trends That Are Here To Stay In 2018 And Beyond Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  It’s a style of interface designing, with minimal use of shadows, textures, gradients, or any other element that give a three-dimensional look. Its potential popularity was observed when it was first used by Microsoft.

• 10 Survival Skills You Need To Know

  “If you have a whistle, use a one-two-three, pause, one-two-three pattern. This is more recognizable to the human ear. Mirrors are also important. Nothing in nature can be mistaken for a signal mirror. Same goes for brightly colored construction tap…

• Coding and storytelling with video sensing | The Tinkering Studio

  Video sensing is a type of augmented reality that allows a software to “see” objects in front of the camera and respond to them on-screen with animations, sounds, or any code one can imagine. We use a video feed instead of using a MakeyMakey or othe…

• 10 ways Google tools can make the end of the year ROCK | Ditch That Textbook

  The end of the year is unique. Google tools can help! Here are 10 ways to use them in class. When the end of the school year is in sight, it’s a time of excitement coupled with the importance of finishing the year STRONG.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Adds New Security Features to G Suite for Education

  This morning Google made a couple of significant announcements regards G Suite for Education. First, there is a new G Suite Enterprise for Education which is designed for college and university deployment although K-12 schools can also get it.

• Free Technology for Teachers: See What’s New in Microsoft EDU

  About a month ago I shared the news of the addition of a picture library to Microsoft’s Immersive Reader add-in for Word, OneNote, Outlook, and Edge. That’s not the only thing that Microsoft has recently added to their list of education products.

• Apps in Education: Why would I buy my child a tablet device for school?

  In my job I often get asked by schools to participate in their BYOD Parent Information Nights. These can be interesting events depending on the amount of preparation that has gone on with the school community.

• The Power User Guide to Gmail

  tags:gmail google mail tips

• Edu Game Jam #1 – itch.io

  Welcome to the first Edu Game Jam! We are aware that there are multiple game jams named as “Edu Game Jam”, but this one is the first one run in Finland.

• Gamification “Badges”

  I think the most fun I had when gamifying my year long math class was making the badges. After figuring out what System I was going to use and my Theme the next step is creating or finding Badges that correlate with the concepts expected for mastery.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Group Insights Help Admins Build Community & Bring The World Closer Together

  · 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: A Replacement for the Deprecated “Announcements” Element in Google Sites

  Google’s replacement of the classic version of Google Sites with a new version has left some people wishing that Google had left Sites well enough alone. The new version doesn’t, yet, have all of the features of the classic version and it may never …

• Station Rotation Model: Alternative Group Formations |

  When I lead blended learning workshops or work as a 1:1 blended learning coach, I field a lot of questions about the design of station rotation lessons. Teachers see my examples which show four separate groups and assume that all station rotations m…

• Combating the Chaos: 3 Cs for a Well-Managed Classroom

  Classroom management provides for us perhaps the greatest of juxtapositions between frustration and comedy. When we take the time to look back on some of our classroom management challenges, the stories come pouring out.

• Apps in Education: Apps to Create Beautiful Colour Palettes

  I was originally a Visual Arts teacher and spent many hours working with students to finalise colour schemes for particular artworks. It is amazing how the colour combinations can change a work and help to create an emotional response. Combining col…

• Resources for Educators – Pop Culture Classroom

  tags:comics comic pop culture educators classroom

• LHS GEMS: Teacher’s Guides by Topic

  tags:gems science curriculum biology chemistry earth environmental physical physics math maths mathematics

• Earth Week: Giant group of octopus moms discovered in the deep sea | NSF – National Science Foundation

  We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the bottom of the ocean. The seafloor is an alien landscape, with crushing pressures, near-total darkness and fluids wafting from cracks in the Earth’s crust. It’s also home to weird animal…

• Open Badges in Elementary School: Get Kids Excited About Learning

  Some elementary classrooms are using self-directed badges for competency acquisition by students. In today’s show, Amy Cooper talks about how this is done, the advantages, and insights on student motivation.

• What students say about creating podcasts on WeVideo and Flipgrid | Ditch That Textbook

  Students are motivated when they get to work on something they’re passionate about. These fifth graders are creating podcasts about their passions. Fifth-grade students in Andrew Fenstermaker’s class in Iowa are creating podcasts about what they’re …

• It’s Okay To Be Smart • Where Did Life Come From? I just realized how long…

  I just realized how long it’s been since I posted on here! I want to share my latest video with you fine people. This is part of a killer three-part collaboration with the folks from Eons and PBS Space Time exploring the origin of life and the commo…

• What just happened: ‘Big data’ got personal – NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org

  What the Cambridge Analytica story and last week’s congressional hearings with Facebook’s CEO are really all about is that people – not even “just” social media users, voters and policymakers – are waking up to the meaning of “big data.

• DocsTeach

  Help students form a connection to the past. Find Primary Sources and Online Teaching Activities. See “Popular Topics” in the Menu.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a Custom Google Forms Theme

  A couple of years ago I published a video tutorial on how to create a custom Google Forms theme. More than 10,000 people have since used that video tutorial to customize the appearance of their Google Forms.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Podcast Recording and Editing Tips

  Podcasting has made a resurgence in recent years. Many teachers are now including podcasting projects in their classrooms. Edublogs recently published a great guide to help you get your classroom podcast started.

• Amusing Monday: Do swimmers close their eyes in Houston pool? | Watching Our Water Ways

  If you haven’t seen the “feet video” demonstrating a new swimming pool in Houston’s Market Square Tower, then click on the video (below) right now and shift to full-screen mode.

• georgecouros.ca

  I applied for a job at a historical park when I was in university, and I was excited about the opportunity to be a tour guide and share some of the history with visitors. Eager to get the opportunity, I went through the interview and thought I was d…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 2000+ Recordings of Poets and Fiction Writers Reading and Discussing Their Work

  A few years ago the Library of Congress published an online collection of audio recordings of poets and fiction writers reading and discussing their works. At the time of its launch the collection contain 124 recordings. Since then the collection ha…

• Modelling change… – What Ed Said

  It was interesting to be part of a gathering of 1800 IB educators at the recent IB Global Conference.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 6 Steps to Get Going with Infographics from @Eileen_Lennon

  · 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…

• iFit: A Fitness Program Even Geeks Will Love – GeekDad

  Living a geeky lifestyle isn’t well known for going hand-in-hand with also being a fitness nut, but that doesn’t mean the two can’t go together.

• Free Technology for Teachers: By Request – Life on Minimum Wage Simulation

  Last week I received a handful of requests for the Google Docs version of my Life on Minimum Wage economics game. While I no longer grant print or edit access to my public Google Docs, I do make PDFs of my documents available to download through Box…

• Free Technology for Teachers: DIY Solar Updraft Tower – A Hands-on Elementary Science Lesson

  SciShow Kids has a playlist of videos titled Super Simple Machines. The videos in that playlist feature explanations and demonstrations of simple machines that students could make in your classroom. One of those videos is Spin a Wheel With Sunlight.

• Apps in Education: 10 Fun Apps for Learning About Fractions

  Fractions are like times tables, they are an integral part of every student’s basic maths education. I have always found that children who have a basic grasp of fractions quickly convert theses concepts when introduced to decimals and percentages.

• 4 Ways Microsoft is Making Learning More Accessible | Cult of Pedagogy

  This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Shifting from Passive to Active Learning

  “Nothing could be more absurd than an experiment in which computers are placed in a classroom where nothing else is changed.” – Seymour Papert When it comes to improving outcomes in the digital age, efficacy matters more than ever.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are another week’s collection of great blog posts with amazing resources:

• Free Technology for Teachers: My Go-to Tool for Making Stop Motion Movies

  This evening I received an email from a reader who was looking for a free tool to use to have his students make stop-motion videos. (By the way, I get emails from readers every day and I try to answer all of them).

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

  Math Rescue is a fun iOS game for grades 3rd-5th learning the concepts of Rounding/Estimation. This is done by running around a forest and putting out fires to save the trees and bridge while rounding to the nearest number. More info here…

• Week 7: Visiting and commenting – Student Blogging Challenge

  I wonder how many comments you have received on your blog? How many are from your teacher or classmates? How many from a commenter in the challenge? But most importantly, how many are from other people around the world?

• How Much Information? : 2¢ Worth

  Here is something from my seemingly endless preparation of The Quiet Revolution.  It’s a story that I often related to audiences to illustrate the changing nature of the information that we are using today and our need to redefine literacy.

• 5 Signs You’ve Lost Control Of Your Class (But Don’t Know It) – Smart Classroom Management

  After nine years of writing this blog and connecting with teachers all over the world, not much surprises me. I’ve heard just about every behavior issue and classroom management struggle under the sun.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Owl Eyes

  Owl Eyes is an innovative site that lets teachers create “classrooms” where their students can read and interact w/ texts. Student’s are able to select through a wide variety of literature and then annotate the text.

• Slide into Science Fun – Mari Venturino

  A while back I blogged about my newfound love for Google Slides. Slides has been such a versatile tool–it is very easy for my students to edit and insert photos/screenshots on their iPads, and simple for me to walk around and see we’re all on the sa…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Tube – A Distraction-free Way to Search and Watch YouTube

  Tube is a new tool providing a minimalist view of YouTube. When you go to Tube all you will see is “Tube,” a disclaimer, a link to the developer’s Twitter account, and a search box.

• New Stephen Curry Video On Resilience | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Here’s a new video Stephen Curry has done with Kaiser Hospitals. I’m adding it to The Best Ways To Use Stephen Curry & The Warriors For Teaching Social Emotional Learning Skills.

• Classroom tech: Geekery not required | Ditch That Textbook

  You DON’T have to be a tech geek to use tech in the classroom. A little goes a long way, and too much can actually be detrimental. There’s that teacher. Maybe she works in your building. Maybe she’s at another school in your district.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Project Based Learning Helps Makerspaces Thrive #MakerEd

  There is more to a makerspace than the tools that are in there and the pre-packaged projects for students to explore. I’m not knocking pre-packaged projects. I love them and have some in my makerspace that are perfect for students. I’m saying there …

• Creating Clickable Social Cards – Blog About Infographics and Data Visualization – Cool Infographics

  The How to Create Clickable Social Cards infographic walks you through the process of using the AnyImage.io site to create social media cards for any of the major social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

• Three Ways Digital Portfolios Shift Your Assessment Focus

  I hear this mantra often in the educational world. While some people might read it and sigh, thinking about all the testing our kids have to go through, I see it differently.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: 25 Social Networks/Media Sites for Education

  “A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes,” which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike,…

• Yoga for Kids – PAPERZIP

  tags:student kid yoga mindfulness

• Control Alt Achieve

• Legends of Learning: Science Games That are NGSS Aligned and Fun!

  Students love to play games, and they also need real-world examples to help science come alive. With this in mind, Legends of Learning is a fantastic platform full of NGSS aligned science games that does both. Kids in grades 3-8 will love these scie…

• Free Technology for Teachers: National Geographic Publishes Fun Facts About All National Parks

  As the weather warms in North America more visitors arrive in the 59 U.S. National Parks. Acadia National Park here in Maine is crowded in the summer so come visit in the winter to see another side of the first national park created from land donate…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Spin Spell

  Spin Spell is a fun iOS game for Spelling that reminds me a lot of Marble Madness. This game has users trying to spelling words while controlling a ball to roll over the correct letters. Spin Spell has over 25 levels and over 30 spelling lists for s…

• Stump The Teacher: The Belt Buckle

  Have you ever said, “I will never do that.”? Well, this time last year, I said those exact words to my father after he finished a 50-mile trail run. He had done a few 50K runs (31 miles) and that was his first 50 miler.

• The Nerdy Teacher: The Knight’s Forge Maker Show #MakerEd #Makerspaces

  I’m so excited to announce the creation of The Knight’s Forge Maker Show! A few students came to me and asked if they could start a show on YouTube to showcase the different things students are creating in the space.

• KQED

  GooseChase EDU Teachers set up missions for students that include scavenger hunt clues. Students can solve the clues on their phones by submitting a video or picture, adding text information, or by being present in a specific location through GPS.

• Just a moment…

• Leonardo Da Vinci’s Birthday Is On April 15th – Here Are Related Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Celebrate Leonardo Da Vinci’s birthday on April 15th by checking out The Best Sites For Learning About Leonardo Da Vinci. Feel free to let me know what I’m missing on the list!

• iPad App available – see www.NumeracyApps.co.uk

  tags:grid multiplication math maths mathematics flash

• Do More with Google Drawings – Templates

  tags:google drawing google-drawing templates

• No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down | World news | The Guardian

  tags:grades grading edreform

• Will Letter Grades Survive? | Edutopia

  tags:grades grading edreform

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Features of OneNote That You Won’t Find in Google Keep

  Earlier this year I shared that I have moved almost all of my online bookmarking and note-taking to OneNote. That’s not to say that don’t like Google Keep anymore, in fact, I still like and even have a whole lesson about it in my G Suite training co…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Jungle Jeopardy – A Game About Ecosystems

  Jungle Jeopardy is an online game produced by PBS Kids for students in first through fourth grade. In the game students have to construct a small ecosystem and keep it healthy for twelve days (a day refers to one round of the game).

• The Adolescent Brain: A Big Gulp Of Executive Function

  I wrote the book Attack of the Teenage Brain! Understanding and Supporting the Weird and Wonderful Adolescent Learner, because of an advocacy bias: as a neuroscientist, I felt educators should have detailed knowledge about a cognitive gadget called …

• The Nerdy Teacher: Focusing on Supporting Growth, Not Deficiencies #EdChat

  One of the favorite parts of my life as an educator was when I was a coach. I coached soccer on and off for a few years and it was something I still think of fondly. There is something about students calling me coach that just made me smile.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Now You Can Add Custom Links to Google Sites Navigation Bar

  At first I wasn’t thrilled with the switch from the old version of Google Sites to the new one. That was largely due to the absence of many useful features in the new version that had existed in the old version. Slowly Google has added those feature…

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Why All Educators Need SAMR And TPACK

  Lately, the work I’ve been doing with teachers and leaders has centered around the engaging and effective use of technology.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Good Resources for Teaching and Learning About the American Revolution

  This coming Monday is Patriots’ Day. It is an official state holiday here in Maine, in Massachusetts, and in Wisconsin. The day commemorates the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

• Merge Cube Mania in Middle School

  Karen Bosch explains why Merge Cubes are so hot, how they are being used in classrooms, and how she’s using them to build critical thinking and creativity in her school. Join Merge Cube Mania! A big thank you to Karen.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: 30 Sites/Apps for Learning how to Program or Code

  In today’s classroom STEM is a vital topic covered universally. With that being said, more and more students are being introduce to coding and programming earlier then ever before. Best of all, new technology and apps makes it easier and easier for …

• Free Technology for Teachers: JuxtaposeJS – Create Side-by-Side Comparison Frames

  JuxtaposeJS is a free tool for making and hosting side-by-side comparisons of images. The tool was designed to help people see before and after views of a location, a building, a person, or anything else that changes appearance over time.

• 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…

• Great Picture Books to Discuss Identity and Character |

  For our entire 4th quarter, we are diving into identity and how it fits within our social comprehension guided by the work of the incredible new book from Sara K. Ahmed, Being the Change.

• Ongoing Self-Assessments: Students Reflect On and Document Their Progress |

  For the last two years, I have published several blogs detailing my journey away from traditional grading and assessment practices. The purpose of this shift was three-fold.

• Control Alt Achieve: Free Tech Curriculum for all Subjects with Google’s Applied Digital Skills

  What skills do our students need to be successful in their future? What skills do adults need to be competitive in the job market?

• Free Technology Curriculum from Google – Applied Digital Skills

  By signing up, you’re opting into email communication from Google regarding the Applied Digital Skills program. You acknowledge that your information will be used in accordance with Google’s Privacy Policy.

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Animated Map of the Rise and Fall of Communism

  The Spread of Communism is an animated map that shows the rise and fall of communism from 1917 through 2017. When you visit the map you can press the play button in the lower, right corner to play the animation.

• The future of technology in education | Ditch That Textbook

  What will the future of technology in education look like? We’re starting to get glimpses of the possibility. It’s up to us to make sure it’s used in a right, ethical way. What is the future of technology in education? We really don’t know.

• Video: “If We Found Aliens, What Would They Look Like?” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

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

• Video: “How to build a Rube Goldberg machine” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

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

• Free Technology for Teachers: YouTube Makes Copyright Clear as Mud

  Larry Ferlazzo recently shared a video that YouTube produced about options for using music in videos. The video started out well but quickly became a muddy pile of confusion.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Adobe Launches Spark for Education

  Earlier this year at the BETT Show Adobe announced that they would launching a new version of Adobe Spark designed specifically for school use. That new version is finally here. Earlier today Adobe launched Spark for Education.

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: West Coast Precipitation Trends

  There is so much talk about heavy precipitation and drought along the U.S. West Coast these days, as well as claims about long-term trends, that I thought it would be useful to look at the actual data.

• Effective Integration of G Suite and Related Tools for Learning With The Triple E Framework

  Create paths for students to demonstrate their understanding of the learning goals in a way that they could not do with traditional tools?

• Let’s Hang! Collaborative Learning with Hangouts! – Teacher Reboot Camp

  With Hangouts and Hangouts on Air  you and your  students can collaborate through live video learning sessions and chat.

• The Video Games of ‘Ready Player One’ – GeekDad

  The Ready Player One novel is full of classic video game references and they also play crucial roles in the story (even more so with the novel).

• Differences Between Blog Posts and Pages – The Edublogger

  Blogs are composed of two main structures: posts and pages. Here’s our explanation to help demystify the difference between posts and pages.

• KQED

  Principal number six, Andrew Bott, arrived in 2010. People had told him that becoming principal at Orchard Gardens would be a career killer. He knew its reputation as one of the worst-performing schools in Massachusetts and admits that when he arriv…

• Holocaust Remembrance Day Is On April 12th – Here Are Related Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Holocaust Remembrance Day is on April 12th this year. You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About The Holocaust.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Relevance is the Fuel of Learning

  In a previous blog post, I wrote about the importance of focusing on the why as it relates to learning. Here is a piece of my thinking that I shared: The why matters more than ever in the context of schools and education. What all one must do is ste…

• The Debate is on: Historical Accuracy and Historical Video Games (Part 2) | Gaming the Past

  For this second post in a series, Adam Chapman and I dig deeper, continuing to discuss the ideas of historical authenticity in historical video games and debating whether the games like Wolfenstein 2: New Order and Call of Duty: World War II are rea…

• Free Technology for Teachers: What Makes a Poem? – A Lesson for Poetry Month

  This is National Poetry Month. “What is a poem?” might be the first question that students ask after, “why is it National Poetry Month?” The answer to that first question can be found in a TED-Ed lesson titled What Makes a Poem…a Poem?

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Why I’m Not Leaving Facebook & You Shouldn’t Either

  You’ve seen the dramatic posts of friends who are bidding Facebook adieu because Facebook knows too much or its too depressing or, on and on… I won’t be one of those leaving Facebook, unless something better comes along.

• Free Technology for Teachers: NASA’s Interactive Guide to the Solar System

  I have been reviewing and sharing sharing resources from NASA for almost as long as this blog has existed. Somehow, I missed NASA’s Solar System Exploration until it was mentioned last week on Maps Mania.

• Useful Video From YouTube About Legally Using Music In Your…Videos | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Learn how to find music you can use in your videos. We’ll explain some of the copyright issues you could face and introduce tools designed to make the experience easier for you.

• Equal pay for all! – Lily’s Blackboard

  How would you feel about having the same job, responsibilities, expertise and experience as the person next to you, but working for free several weeks out of the year? That’s essentially what the pay disparity between women and men amounts to.

• Fascism will be on our doorstep if we don’t act immediately: Yale historian

  How close is President Donald Trump to following the path blazed by last century’s tyrants? Could American democracy be replaced with totalitarian rule? There’s enough resemblance that Yale historian Timothy Snyder, who studies fascist and communist…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Check this past week’s blogs that I found helpful:

• “Use ‘Compassion’ When Planning for a sub or Being one” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Use ‘Compassion’ When Planning for a sub or Being one is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. In it, Roxanna Elden, Rachael George, Rachel Trowbridge, Kevin Parr, Amy Sandvold, William J.

• Adobe Spark for Education Now Available for Schools – Class Tech Tips

  This post contains affiliate links, I may receive compensation if you click on one of the links. I’ve had the pleasure of working with this company. All opinions are my own. It’s finally here, and I am so excited! Adobe Spark for Education is now av…

• Tech You Didn’t Know You Needed: RunPee – GeekDad

  Technology can solve many problems (and yes, it causes some too). Occasionally, it provides an answer to a common pain.

• Mad Libs get Googley – Mari Venturino

  Growing up one of my favorite games to play was Mad Libs, I would play with my friends during recess, or with my family on car trips. I still have a giant stack of half-used Mad Libs books in my classroom waiting for some more love.

• What Education Hashtags Should You be Using? – The Tech Edvocate

  tags:education hashtags

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Find & Make OneNote Templates

  The more that I use it, the more I think that OneNote is a fantastic all-in-one product for note-taking, bookmarking, and general organization of your digital life. Like any robust product, OneNote has some features that you might overlook unless so…

• Can you follow this “learning norm”? – The Principal of Change

  Recently, I had a conversation with Tom Murray and Katie Martin about professional learning.  The one thing that bothers me is often seeing principals or superintendents that are there to “learn”, walking out of sessions when their phone rings to ta…

• Four Student-Centered Tips for Teaching with Technology

  For many years, educators have used the SAMR model as a way to conceptualize technology integration. Districts and conferences alike have poured great amounts of money into training teachers to think about their planning through this lens.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Dimensions – An Academic Research Engine

  When it comes to searching for research studies and other academic articles many people turn to Google Scholar. But as your friendly librarian will tell you, there are still other databases that you should try. Dimensions is one such example of that.

• The war on cheating: Real talk about the copy/paste battle | Ditch That Textbook

  Cheating is a BIG problem. There are even tech tools out there to help us catch students doing it. But what motivates a student to cheat?  And how do we create activities or assignments that are different enough to reduce cheating? Cheating. It happ…

• Tip of the Week: Joe Harmon and shared Social Studies PLN goodness | History Tech

  I love Twitter. And I love Google. So when Dr. Joe Harmon posted his idea on Twitter for a collaborative Social Studies resource Google folder, it was the perfect day. Taking advantage of my Twitter PLN and the awesome #sschat hashtag.

• Puget Sound Foodweb_web.pdf

  tags:puget sound food web science environment environmental

• Explore climate change in Google Earth

  tags:climate change climate-change google earth science environmental environment

• Create Your Own Street View Images Tutorial – Google Slides

  tags:create 360 google maps map street view

• 4thewords: Online Writing Game

  tags:gamification game mechanics writing write online space

• Wakelet – Save, curate and share the things you love

  tags:curate curation share sharing

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 More Alternatives to Padlet

  Almost overnight 5 Alternatives to Padlet became one of my most popular posts of the year. Many of you Tweeted and emailed me to suggest some other alternatives. In no particular order, here are some more alternatives to Padlet. Netboard.me was sugg…

• How To Use Empatico to Connect Classrooms Across the World – Class Tech Tips

  What does it look like to connect classrooms across the world? Last year I shared Empatico on my blog and this year I had to chance to meet some folks behind this fantastic resource for educators.

• Empatico

  Empatico is built on the belief that all humans, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status or faith background share a common humanity.

• Stunning Child Literacy Stats Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Child literacy is one of the most important predictors of future academic and professional success. But these statistics tell a story that must be heeded by parents across the education, income and class spectrums.

• EdTech Nut – Kelly Fitzgerald: Designing Your Own Virtual Field Trips

  With the technology that we have now it is not impossible for students to be “standing” in Paris one minute and “scuba diving” around the Indonesia Islands the next. As educators we need to be deliberate about making our content come alive in the cl…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Drive is Not Going Away

  In the last 18 hours three people have emailed me with a concern that Google Drive is going away. To be clear, Google Drive is not going away.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Unsplash for iPad – Quickly Add Public Domain Pictures to Keynote & iMovie

  Unsplash is one of my favorite places to find high quality pictures to use in presentations. This week Unsplash launched a new iOS app. The new Unsplash app lets you search through the entire Unsplash collection.

• Create a low-cost, printed school yearbook with Google Slides | Ditch That Textbook

  Yearbooks that cost $100 or more are out of reach for many students. By using Google Slides and local printers, some schools are creating low-cost, gorgeous yearbooks instead. This post is written by Jennifer Scott, an English teacher and technology…

• Control Alt Achieve: Springtime Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings

  Spring is here, and April is National Poetry Month, so what better time to have your students work on their creative writing skills with a Springtime-themed writing activity.

• Fighting the battle of copy/paste cheating | Ditch That Textbook

  It’s so frustrating when students turn in activities that are copy/pasted. To solve the problem, we have to get to the root of it first. It was a simple activity. One that I thought my students would have no trouble completing.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Preposition Builder Master

  prepositions. PBM is a easy to play game where a user tries to put the correct preposition into a sentence in as fast as time possible. This game can be played online for multi-player and there are 4 different levels to choose from.

• 8 Great Citation Generators for Academics and Student Researchers | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  tags:citation citations generator generators

• Teaching the Value of Money with Games – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Rate this item: No votes yet. Please wait… We don’t give our daughters pocket money. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is a concern about their understanding of the value of money. This is especially true for our eldest daughter who…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Alternatives to Padlet

  For the last 24 hours the Twittersphere has been buzzing about the recent changes to Padlet. While none of the following tools have as many features as Padlet, they all provide the core element of a digital wall to which you apply digital sticky not…

• New Resources On Martin Luther King, Jr. | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Here are new additions to to the already pretty massive The Best Resources For Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 50 Years After His Assassination: The Best of Our Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Resources is from Teaching Tolerance.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Padlet Makes a Big Change to Free Plan

  Padlet is a tool that I have used and recommended for many years. In the last year the folks at Padlet have introduced a slew of great new features including built-in video and audio recording.

• Steve Hargadon: The Spring 2018 Global Education Fair (Online) – May 4th!

  Looking to take your school global? Working on a classroom global-connection project? Join us live on Friday, May 4th, for the Spring 2018 Global Education Fair, a free, virtual meet and greet for teachers and school districts to connect with global…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Quickly Create a Livestream on YouTube

  YouTube used to have a built-in option for creating a video with the webcam built into your laptop. That feature went away a couple of years ago. Now it’s back in a new form. You can now create a livestream on YouTube right from your laptop just lik…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Monet Was Here – Take a Google Earth Tour of Monet’s Works

  Monet Was Here is a new exhibit on Google Arts & Culture. The exhibit coincides with the opening of a new Monet exhibit at the National Gallery London. The Monet Was Here online exhibit features works that are on display at National Gallery London a…

• StoryBots Classroom Looks Like A Great Place For Teachers To Create Free Virtual Classrooms | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Perhaps I’ve been living under a rock, but I had never heard of StoryBots, which, apparently, is a very popular kids television program.

• Reset the Google Classroom Code | 50 Things Book

  My goal is to never hear “Keeler, the code is not working.” Oh… it’s working. You just typed it in wrong. On the Student’s tab is the ability to reset the Google Classroom code. Click on the tiny triangle next to the code and choose “Reset.” I reset…

• The 30-Second Book Talk |

  Student book talks are one of the many ways that students share recommendations for each other.  Recommendations of books are a natural way to grow readers and they help immensely in the classroom when peers can hear from each other rather than just…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Poetry Lesson Plans Incorporating Word Mover

  April is National Poetry Month. This is a great time to remind you of Read Write Think’s Word Mover app for iOS, Android, and web browser. Word Mover from Read Write Think is a free app that helps students develop poems and short stories.

• 9 No-Fail Tips For Giving Constructive Criticism At Work Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Providing negative feedback is challenging but cultures that prioritize constructive criticism benefit both companies and employees.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Realtime Board – Collaborative Whiteboard With Change Tracking and Voting

  Realtime Board is an online whiteboard tool that I have been recommending for the last half-dozen years. At its basic level Realtime Board provides a blank canvas on which you can type, draw, and post pictures. You can connect elements on your board…

• Free Technology for Teachers: ReCall Study Time – An Extension to Get You Back on Task

  ReCall Study Time is a Chrome extension that is designed to help you stop wasting time on social media sites and get back on task.

• edtechnut.blogspot.com

  The Remote for Slides Chrome extension allows you to control Google Slides remotely from another device. While I am not a big fan of constant lecture from endless words on a presentation, there are times when you need to show information, images, et…

• Parts-of-speech.Info – POS tagging online

  tags:parts speech grammar edtech

• Grouping students into ability-based sets holds back less able pupils – UKEdChat

  tags:ability group groups grouping edreform edchat

• The Edublogger’s Guide To Podcasting – The Edublogger

  Do you like podcasts? Chances are, either you or someone you know is a fan of listening to podcasts. According to a 2018 Nielsen study, not only is the number of people listening to podcasts growing rapidly, but the level of engagement is also incre…

• Create flashcards WITH students with Flashcard Factory | Ditch That Textbook

  Making flashcards with student-created images can be easy and fun! Check out the Flashcard Factory and make flashcards WITH your students. Flashcards on index cards can be useful, but creating them can be a drag. Plus, there’s the trouble of carryin…

• An Updated Stream | 50 Things Book

  A few things have been moved around in Google Classroom. They are minor changes but worth noting. The most notable for the Stream is that the “Students can post and comment” has been moved from the Students tab to the Stream.

• Amusing Monday: Wacky steelhead return for new ‘Survive the Sound’ game | Watching Our Water Ways

  “Survive the Sound,” an online game that features cute little fish swimming for their lives, is back for a second year with some new additions, including free participation for students and teachers in the classroom. The basics of the game remain as…

• 9 Ways To Focus A Wandering Mind Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  It’s probably no surprise that the human mind has a tendency to wander. Scientific research has discovered that this trait is almost ubiquitous among humans, and most of us experience it regularly.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two Easy Ways to Create Printable Storyboard Templates

  Next week Common Craft is hosting a free webinar about their video creation process. I attended one of their webinars last summer. In that webinar Lee LeFever stressed the importance of planning and using storyboards as part of that planning process.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Quickly Create a QR Code for Almost Anything

  Over the weekend I shared the news that Google is shuttering the Goo.gl service. In that post I shared a handful of alternatives to Goo.gl. This morning someone emailed me to ask about an alternative to Goo.gl for creating QR codes. My suggestion is…

• Free Technology for Teachers: By Request – 5 Task Management Tools for Students

  This morning I received an email from a reader seeking suggestions for to-do list management tools her students can use to keep track of assignments and other things that they have to do during the week. Here are my suggestions for task-management t…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Fast Advanced Google Search

  Google’s advanced search tools can help students find useful information that doesn’t necessarily appear at the top of search results pages. Unfortunately, students often forget about the advanced search options or don’t even know where to find them.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Earth Day Resources

  Earth Day is coming up in a few weeks. Here are a few resources that you might consider incorporating into your Earth Day lesson plans. I’ll be sharing more resources later this week. Google offers tours in its Explore Climate Change series.

• Control Alt Achieve: Copy Comments to Google Classroom Docs and Slides

  Several months ago I shared a blog post about “How to Force a Docs Copy WITH Pre-Loaded Comments to Help your Students”. The post explained a URL trick you can use to not only make a copy of a document, but to also copy any comments you have made in…

• EdTech Nut – Kelly Fitzgerald: URL Shorteners and QR Code Generators Worth Checking Out

  With goo.gl shutting down on April 13, 2018 (read more here) it is time for many to find a new replacement for the one they have adored for years. While I am sad to see another Google service die, I am not overly torn up about it because I know ther…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

More awesome blog posts from this past week:

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Generate Random Story Starters In Google Sheets

  Flippity offers great Google Sheets templates that can be used for all kinds of things from random name selection to progress tracking to generating random story starters. Flippity’s Mix & Match template can be used to create image-based and text-ba…

• SummarizeThis™

  SummarizeThis™ An Iris Reading productivity tool | Live Courses | Online Courses | Free Resources Just the facts Summary of content Close

• My Latest BAM! Radio Show Is On Writing In Science Classes | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Integrating Writing Skills Development into Your Science Class is the topic of my latest eight-minute BAM! Radio Show. I’m joined in the discussion by Maria C. Grant, EdD; Mary K. Tedrow; and Amy Roediger, who have all also contributed written comme…

• Science Infographics Breakdown STEM Subjects as Visual Maps

  It’s often easy to get stuck into a narrow view of what a particular field of study entails, but as Dominic Walliman reveals in his impressive science infographics, there’s much more than meets the eye when thinking of particular STEM subjects.

• Student-Created Games with Quizizz – Mari Venturino

  Quizizz is quickly becoming one of our favorite class games. My students enjoy the memes between questions and appreciate that they can work at their own speed while still being competitive. They’re always asking, “can I play again?” Of course!

• Did Pages Replace iBooks Author? – Copy / Paste by Peter Pappas

  Quick answer – no. Here’s more – Apple’s March 27th education event announced that Pages could now create ebooks using a variety of templates for fixed-format and free-flowing ebooks. (See templates below).

• What Happens When Teachers Take Creative Risks? – John Spencer

  I sit at the Starbucks, staring at the blinking cursor daring me to write another line. Fears swirl through my brain.

• Designing for Mathematical Surprise – dy/dan

  “Surprising” probably isn’t in the top ten list of adjectives students would use to describe math class, which is too bad since surprise lends itself to learning. Surprise occurs when the world reveals itself as more orderly or disorderly than we ex…

• Eastern Illinois University :: Instructional Technology Center – NoteStreaming

  tags:notestreaming

• Making Learning Visible: Doodling Helps Memories Stick | MindShift | KQED News

  tags:doodle. doodling memory learn learning edchat

• March History and Games Links | Gaming the Past

  Here’s the list for March.

• Minecraft Minute w/ Jeff Gearhart: Episode 1 Getting Started – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog

  We are happy to announce a new video series staring NCCE’s very own, Jeff Gearhart @Techjeff09. In Jeff’s first Minecraft Minute, Jeff shows Minecraft tools that are often overlooked when getting started.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Vintage Travel Posters, Advertisements, and Films

  In my post about Seward’s Folly I included the image of a vintage advertisement for an Alaskan cruise on Canadian Pacific. That poster came from the Boston Public Library’s Flickr collection of vintage travel posters.

• The Process is the Product – The Principal of Change

  Many educators are great at bringing “experts” into their classrooms. I always say that the best person to teach kids about space is probably an astronaut, not necessarily a teacher.  I have seen teachers do this over and over again and it is an exc…

• Capture Book Quotes with Spark Post Reading Responses – Class Tech Tips

  This post contains affiliate links, I may receive compensation if you click on one of the links. I’ve had the pleasure of working with this company. All opinions are my own.

• How To Look And Sound More Confident Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Confidence is one of the most important traits we can have, and it’s often lauded as being the key to promotions, good grades and general success in life.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Seward’s Folly Lesson Plan

  Thanks to this Tweet from the Library of Congress I was reminded that today in 1867 was the day that the United States purchased Alaska from Russia. At the time it was referred to as Seward’s Folly. The discovery of gold thirty years later changed t…

• Control Alt Achieve: 3 Tools for Making Memes in School

  On the third day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me… three meme makers. 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 …

• Update your browser to use Google Drive – Google Drive Help

• 50+ Fascinating Language Facts You Didn’t Know Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Looking for interesting language facts? The world is full of diverse and unique languages, from the exotic sounds of Japanese to the romantic expressions of French. How all of these languages originated is often debated.

• 11 tips for creating stop motion in Google Slides | Ditch That Textbook

  Creating stop-motion animation with Google Slides is easy! These tips will help your animations look phenomenal! This post is written by Jake Miller, a tech integration specialist from Ohio. He’s a Google for Education Trainer and a self-proclaimed …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Free Webinar – Behind the Scenes at Common Craft

  When it comes to producing clear explanations of tricky topics, no one is better than Lee and Sachi LeFever at Common Craft. Their videos, featuring paper cutouts and flat white backgrounds, have helped millions of people understand topics like RSS,…

• Free Technology for Teachers: NoteStreaming 101 – What You Need To Know To Get Started

  Earlier today on Twitter I posted a question about notebooks. Specifically, I wanted to know who still uses physical notebooks and, if so, if there is a preference for lined or unlined paper. By the way, I use a notebook with unlined paper and I dra…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Good Story Starters for Students

  On Tuesday morning I shared the idea of using the Story Dice apps (available for iOS and Android) as writing prompts or story starters for students. A few of you wrote to me and asked about similar options that will work on Chromebooks.

• Being ‘The Guide on the Side’ is not Enough. Become The COO. – Teched Up Teacher

  Alice Johnson said, “the teacher for the gifted and talented will be more of a ‘guide on the side’ rather than a ‘sage on the stage’.” As far as I can tell, Johnson was the first to use the terms ‘sage on the stage’ and ‘guide on the side’.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Pixabay Videos – How Have I Been Overlooking This?

  Thanks to Anthony St. Jean last night I learned that Pixabay hosts public domain videos that you can download for free. It’s an option that is right on the front page of Pixabay and I’ve just overlooked it.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Basics of Creating a Quiz in Google Forms

  Years ago I published a slideshow that demonstrated how to create a quiz in Google Forms. Even though that slideshow is now outdated, I still get requests for copies of it.

• Learning with ‘e’s: Integrity, credibility and plagiarism

• How an Indianapolis teacher is making fourth grade more like a video game

  tags:gamification elementary classcraft student motivation

• 7 Strategies to Make Grading Easier | Edutopia

  tags:grade grades grading strategies ease edreform hacks

• How Emotional Intelligence Helps Students Infographic – e-Learning Infographics

  Success in the classroom depends on more than just your child’s IQ. The way your child identifies, understands and manages emotions can have an impact on everything from his or her relationships with classmates to performance in the classroom.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Everything That Apple Announced Yesterday – In Under Three Minutes

  In case you missed it yesterday, Apple had a big marketing education event in Chicago. MacRumors made this video to summarize all of the things that Apple announced during the event.

• KQED

  For starters, there’s a growing sense among some scientists and educators that many science fairs aren’t actually very good at teaching kids about, well, science. The field of science is ever changing and advancing, but the fair sticks to fairly rig…

• Client vs User Needs – The Solution Sweet Spot – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Rate this item: No votes yet. Please wait… I have spoken a great deal about looking carefully at the needs of a project and exploring what the real issue is that you are trying to solve.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Brainstormer

  Brainstormer is a fun little iOS app that is ideal for brainstorming by spinning a wheel. This wheel has 3 categories such as: theme, setting, and location, and is ideal for generating writing prompts. For my Pinterest board on Educational iOS apps,…

• Native Knowledge 360: Culturally appropriate & historically accurate materials about American Indians | History Tech

  The Smithsonian is not the only collection of museums in the country. There are others. But I am gonna argue that the collection of 19 Smithsonian museums and galleries is the largest and most awesome and coolest and most educational and easiest to …

• Challonge – Tournament Brackets – Single & Double Elimination, Round Robin, Swiss, Group Stage

  tags:online tournament tracker winners competition

• Introduction to EV3

  tags:lego mindstorms ev3

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Mistakes Students Make In Online Research

  Whether it’s a simple question or a complex research task, the first thing students do is turn to Google for help. They might type a query into a Google search or, increasingly, they’ll speak their query into Google Assistant, Alexa, or Siri. That p…

• georgecouros.ca

  I have a passion for digital portfolios. I think that if we look at doing them in a way that is across grades, subjects, classrooms, and a shared platform in different teacher classes, they can be transformational to a school, district, and more imp…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Seven Good Resources to Help Students Learn the Periodic Table

  Learning the periodic table of the elements is not one of my fondest memories of high school, but it was a necessary experience to get through chemistry. My classmates and I memorized all of the elements, at least temporarily, by using flashcards to…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Story Dice – Roll the Dice to Get a Story Starter

  Story Dice is the name of two different, but similar apps that can be used to generate creative writing prompts. Story Dice for iOS is a free app that lets you select up to ten dice from four story categories.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create Animations With ABCya Animate

  ABCya Animate is a free tool that students can use to create animations. It can be a great tool for elementary school and middle school students to use to create animations to use to tell a short story.

• Frickin’ Packets | Cult of Pedagogy

  I saw a video a few months ago that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Brainstorming Warm-up Activities

  Ethos3 is a presentation design company that has worked with some of the biggest name brands in the world. The Ethos3 Slideshare channel is a good place to get some inspiration and tips for designing your own slideshows.

• Free Technology for Teachers: This TED-Ed Lesson Is Full of …!

  Why Isn’t the World Covered In Poop? is the latest video lesson published by TED-Ed. With a title like that, how could you not be curious enough to spend five minutes watching the video? And that’s exactly what I just did.

• EdTech Nut – Kelly Fitzgerald: Google Drive: Give Preview Access with Option to Make Copy

  Forcing people to make a copy of a Google document, spreadsheet, drawing, or slide is a nice feature if in fact you need everyone to make a copy. But the force copy feature can be annoying to those that want to see the file first and make their own …

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Zanifesto

  Zanifesto is a wonderful site for creating infographics that I just found out about from Richard Byrne’s award winning blog. Zanifesto allows users to easily add text or images to create stunning infographics. Also, there is a wide range of template…

• Station Rotation Model: Grouping Strategies |

  The Station Rotation Model is a blended learning model where students rotate through a series of online and offline stations. This model is an easier shift for elementary teachers who are already use learning stations with students.

• The Nerdy Teacher: In Defense of Worksheets #EdChat

  Another day on the EduTwitter and another blanket comment on a tool that many teachers use. It’s not so much that comments like this happen, it is more that they are used to shame teachers that are genuinely trying their best to help students.

• Control Alt Achieve: 12 Terrific Podcasts to Learn Something New Everyday

  As lifelong learners, we should always be looking for ways to learn something new everyday. One of my favorite tools for this is podcasts. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well. If there was an “Eric Curts Bingo Game” one of the …

• KQED

  This conundrum brings us to an important question: As an educator, how do you overcome the shortcomings of social media and network with other innovative teachers beyond the Internet?

• Video Creation Tips From Rob Kelly – The Edublogger

  Rob Kelly is the multimedia and robotics co-ordinator at Berwick Lodge Primary School in Melbourne, Australia. Rob is doing some amazing things with his young students which he showcases on his blog, LEARNING with DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY.

• Sketchnotes: A mini-course and #Sketch50 challenges! | Ditch That Textbook

  Sketchnoting is fun and very brain friendly, for you AND for your students! Learn how with a mini-course and #Sketch50 challenges. Let’s see if you sound like many people I’ve talked to about sketchnotes (and the former version of myself): “I’d love…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Virga Fest

  During the past few days I have received nearly a half-dozen emails with pictures and videos of beautiful tendrils of precipitation falling out of convective clouds, so this is a good time to show you some and talk about this stunning weather featur…

• Can people distinguish the taste of tap, bottled and recycled water | Watching Our Water Ways

  If you are thirsty and someone hands you a glass of water, you might or might not ask where the water came from. If you trust the person, you probably don’t worry much about the health risks of drinking the water.

• Updates STEM Teaching Tools: SEP Task Formats & CCC Prompts | Science for All

  OVERVIEW: The STEM Teaching Tools group recently updated two of my favorite resources and I want to make sure everyone has the “latest and greatest”.

• Out of My Hands… | Stories From School

  I teach middle school in the upper reaches of NE Washington.

• Contrasting Groups Study- WCAS Development Opportunity (WA Only) | Science for All

  I want to make sure that all grade 5, 8, & ll teachers of science in WA State are aware of this great opportunity to be involved in the development of the Washington Comprehensive Assessment of Science (WCAS) called the Contrasting Groups Study.

• Typing Tips: The How and Why of Teaching Students Keyboarding Skills

  Typing and handwriting can be fairly contentious issues in education. While there are a lot of opinions on the details, it really comes down to being able to communicate your ideas clearly.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 3 Musts-Haves During Virtual Meetings, Hangouts,, Chats, or Conference Calls

  · 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…

• 4 Fab Text Generators

  I really like this Ransom Note Generator…but it’s a bit tricky…you have to play with it to get good results, adding spaces and the like. But when you’re done you can download the image to your HD & I crop it with PicMonkey or Photoshop, but I th…

• The Curious Case of the Cape Town Water Crisis – Science Over Everything

  tags:water crisis drought science environment environmental

• 17 Little-Known Tips, Tricks and Hacks for Using Google in the Classroom | EdSurge News

• Focus 2 Achieve – Why Speaking Is A Skill Schools Suck At Teaching And How To Fix It

• How Blockchain Will Transform Credentialing (and Education) | Getting Smart

• Do we read differently on paper than on a screen?

  tags:reading read screen digital paper

• Which is better — reading in print or on-screen?

  tags:reading read screen digital paper

• This Is How The Way You Read Impacts Your Memory And Productivity

  tags:reading read memory productivity screen digital paper

• Raspberry Pi or Arduino? One Simple Rule to Choose the Right Board | Make:

  Here at Make: we see new, ingenious projects from our community every day. Many of these are made possible by the use of development boards. However, if you’re new to the subject, it can be confusing to parse out the differences between boards and t…

• How to Stop Facebook Giving Your Data to Third Parties

  The Cambridge Analytica fiasco wasn’t really a data breach. Everything collected was allowed by Facebook’s Terms of Service. So, how can you protect yourself against these sort of things? The real problem here is Facebook’s API and platform.

• Purpose-Driven Learning – The Principal of Change

  Seeing tweets, over and over again, regarding the villainization of “worksheets,” (I know I have been guilty of this as well) I tweeted the following: Teachers… If you give a worksheet in your class, you are not bad at your job.

• Learning with ‘e’s: Mythical beasts

• Free Technology for Teachers: Making and Understanding Paper Airplanes

  Making and Understanding Paper Planes is a short video that was produced by students for Next Vista’s Creative Flight video contest. Like a lot of the videos hosted on Next Vista, this video is a good example of students producing a video to teach a…

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