Here are this past week’s list of great blog posts!
-
-
Free Technology for Teachers: An Easy Way to Convert PDFs Into Word Documents
From time to time we all need to convert a document from one format to another. There are lots of online tools that will do that for you. Perhaps the simplest one that I’ve tried is a service called Easy PDF.
-
Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Extempore
Extempore is an innovative new app (iOS/Google Play) for Foreign Language instructors. Extempore makes it easy for teachers to manage student’s audio and visual assignments.
-
Control Alt Achieve: Social Studies Links
As I come across useful tech integration resources each month, I collect them together by subject area. Below is a Google Doc with the latest resources, news, blog posts, links, and other helpful technology integration items collected relevant to So…
-
Manage Multiple Google Accounts – Teacher Tech
If you are like me, you have more than one Google account. You may have your G Suite account from school plus your personal Gmail account. I was working with a teacher the other day and we were trying to create a TemplateTab.
-
Free Technology for Teachers: Four Podcasting Tutorials – From Basic to Robust
Earlier this morning I shared news about NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge that starts in January. While NPR does provide some good guides for students and teachers to use to plan podcasts, those guides don’t include tutorials on specific podcast reco…
-
25 Reasons to Use TED-Ed in Your Classroom – Class Tech Tips
How do roller coasters affect your body? Why don’t poisonous animals poison themselves? These are the type of questions tackled with the amazing TED-Ed videos for students and teachers!
-
Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Adobe Spark to Create Videos
Since the first day that it launched two and a half years ago, I knew that Adobe Spark would be a great tool for students to use to create videos. Like any good product it has evolved over the last couple of years by adding more features without eli…
-
Control Alt Achieve: 10 Writing Prompt Tools for Creative Inspiration
I love writing… blog posts, stories, poems, and more. As much as I love it though, writing can be a challenge. Often one of the most difficult parts is just getting started. Sometimes we just need a little inspiration, a jump start to get us thinkin…
-
Free Technology for Teachers: How to Edit the Captions on Your YouTube Videos
This morning on Twitter I was asked about the possibility of editing the captions that are automatically generated by the Google Slides captioning tool.
-
Free Technology for Teachers: Free Environment Data Fact Sheets and Posters from the UN
The United Nations Environment Program offers a series of free posters based on data from the UNEP’s Geo Data Portal. These posters use charts, graphs, and maps to display information about environmental data.
-
What are the positive effects of video games on students’ academic performance? – Classcraft Blog
If you’ve heard that video games rot your brain, think again! Video games have many positive effects on students’ academic performance, but some educators are still largely unaware of these awesome outcomes. Guess what? These effects are backed by s…
-
Teachers Urged to Instill Assignments with ‘Choice and Relevancy’ — THE Journal
A new report from the Education Trust looks at the role of two “powerful levers” — choice and relevancy — in motivating and engaging students. This national nonprofit works on issues that disproportionately affect students from low-income families a…
-
McNeil Island becoming known for fish and wildlife, not just prison | Watching Our Water Ways
If you’ve heard of McNeil Island, you are probably thinking of a former federal or state prison in South Puget Sound — not the rare and exclusive habitat that has won high praise from fish and wildlife biologists.
-
Real teaching means real learning: Trig Ratios animated
What do you notice? What do you wonder? After some conversations show them this one, with the side lengths being shown and ask again: What do you notice? What do you wonder? Lastly, show them this image and ask them “How could we analyze this?” Some…
-
Free Technology for Teachers: 120 Free Winter-themed Reading Lesson Plans
ReadWorks is an excellent service that provides teachers with free reading lesson plans. ReadWorks offers lesson plans that can be used in classrooms from Kindergarten through 12th grade. All of the lessons are standards-aligned.
-
Free Technology for Teachers: How to Add Videos to Google Slides Without Using YouTube
This morning I received an email from a reader who wanted to know if it was possible for his students to add their personal videos to Google Slides presentations without having to use YouTube.
-
Microsoft OneDrive – Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online.
-
Private colleges across the county have embraced this method: Amherst College in Massachusetts hosts job fairs and open houses for community college students; the University of Southern California has one of the largest transfer programs among elite…
-
Our Mock Caldecott List 2019 – Pernille Ripp
After winter break, we welcome our students back with one of our favorite units of the year; our Mock Caldecott unit. And while I have blogged about the process before, I see this as a great oppor…
-
Continuing with the standards-based grading (SBG) theme, I wanted to share one idea on how I might structure a system and one possible modification to that plan. As I noted before, I haven’t found an SBG system that I feel frames the outcomes quite …
-
Tech Resources for Your Next Science Experiment – Class Tech Tips
Can an iPad help out with a science experiment? What role does a Chromebook play in the science classroom? Well, this month I hosted a webinar for SimpleK12 that tackled these questions. And I wanted to share all of the favorites from the webinar wi…
-
Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Resources for Teaching and Learning About Pearl Harbor
This week is the 77th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That wasn’t the first military action of the Japanese during WWII. It’s just the event that finally got the U.S. to join the war.
-
Live Long and Prosper…: Listen to This
Recent quotes and comments… Public schools didn’t cause poverty, but policymakers expect schools to overcome all the out-of-school factors related to living in poverty. When was the last time legislators were graded A-F by the state government?
-
New Climate Change Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
The United Nations Climate Change conference is going on in Poland this week. Five myths about climate change is from The Washington Post.
-
Hamilton, music, and the power of emotion to engage your learners | History Tech
Almost exactly three years ago, away back in 2015, I wrote a short post about the Hamilton musical. My kids have a standing order that requires them to keep me updated with the latest pop culture from the youths.
-
When A Student Learns To Code – The Edublogger
This week, students around the world are participating in ‘Hour of Code‘ as part of Computer Science Education Week (December 3-8). Learning to code can be life changing for students which is why I’d like to introduce you to our colleague who is an …
-
Free Lessons for Teaching Computer Science on Ditch That Textbook
-
Control Alt Achieve: Self-Checking Assessments in Google Sheets with Conditional Formatting
There are so many excellent tools for online assessment including Google Forms, Quizlet, Kahoot, Flippity, Quizizz, and more. In addition to providing teachers with data on student performance, online quizzes can also be valuable simply for student …
-
Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Bensound to Download Free Music
A couple of weeks ago I posted a short review of a site called Bensound that hosts about 175 free instrumental music tracks that you can download for free. You can down the music for free and re-use it in classroom video projects provided that you f…
-
Why a Hacker Exploited Printers to Make PewDiePie Propaganda | WIRED
By now, you’ve probably heard of PewDiePie, a Swedish comedian and video game commentator who has been the most followed creator on YouTube for years. But you might not be as familiar with T-Series, an almost equally popular Indian media company.
-
I Am Connected, Therefore I Learn |
Is it possible to learn without being connected to a network of other people?Click To Tweet Before technology redefined the way information is developed, organized, shared, and archived, it might have been possible for an individual to learn without…
-
Free Technology for Teachers: How to Upload Videos to Reply to Flipgrid Topics
I love Flipgrid for the ease with which students can record videos with their webcams to reply to prompts that you give them. But not every student likes to appear on camera. And not every Flipgrid topic has to be a free-form response.
-
Innovative Science Teaching in Grades 6-12 @coolcatteacher
Isabella Liu is a science teacher in Hong Kong who is using technology with her grade 6-12 classrooms. From augmented reality to game-based learning and online portfolios, she has a variety of ideas to share about how she amps up her science teachin…
-
Tom Ultican: An Astonishing $61 Million Spent on Tuck v. Thurmond Race | Diane Ravitch’s blog
There has never been an election for State Superintendent of Public Instruction like the one recently concluded in California between Marshall Tuck and Tony Thurmond. Tom Ultican says that $61 Million was spent. It might eventually be even more.
-
In my last post, I mentioned that I would not use the NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs) as scoring categories for standards-based grading (SBG). The main concern I expressed was about the inconsistencies and confusion that generated in one distric…
-
UKEdMag: Every School needs a School Library by @ElizabetHutch – UKEdChat
-
Celebrating positives improves classroom behaviour and mental health – UKEdChat
-
This is Your Child’s Brain on Video Games | Psychology Today
-
geralt / Pixabay I’m adding this new BuzzFeed video to The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change:
-
How to Build a Trauma Sensitive Classroom
In this way, teachers are uniquely positioned to ameliorate some of the effects of early trauma. “The adults in the school environment may be the most stable and mentally well people [some children] have contact with,” said Jennings.
-
50 New Blog Post Ideas For Educators – The Edublogger
Do you have a professional educator blog? Many teachers start blogs with good intentions but keeping them active long term can be a struggle.
-
Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Our New Weather Satellite is In Position
GOES-17, the new National Weather Service weather satellite, is now in position over the eastern Pacific. And you should expect to see substantially improved weather imagery in the future….on this blog and everywhere else.
-
10 Ways Educators Can Take Action in Pursuit of Equity | Cult of Pedagogy
With every passing year, it seems that our collective awareness of educational inequity is growing.
-