Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some great blog posts from this past week:

• A Principal’s Reflections: It Won’t Work…Or Will It?

  When we look at various aspects of society, there is always an innate desire to improve through innovation. However, there seems always to be impediments to this process.

• Echoes of the Past: Game Pieces – Classroom Powerups

  Coastal Carolina is once again square in the middle of the Cone of Uncertainty. Being in this cone gives me the same feeling as the few times I have been in car accidents. Instead of sitting in worried anticipation I am choosing to write a little.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create and Distribute Google Docs Templates

  At the beginning of the school year you might find yourself reviewing or introducing to your students the best way to take notes. You might also find yourself teaching them things like to how complete a science lab report.

• A Little-Known Trait Every Teacher Needs – Smart Classroom Management

  It’s something never mentioned in educational circles but is present among the most effective teachers. Those who don’t possess this trait nearly always struggle.

• Interactive History Class 2019 – Teacher’s Log #2 | Gaming the Past

  Disclaimer: shockingly little/ sometimes no proofreading; just trying to get the ideas out fast and frequently for those interested In the first log, I ended by talking about the board game Court[iers] of Versailles, an outstandingly-designed game o…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Wonderopolis Now Includes Immersive Reader

  Wonderopolis is a great site for finding interesting articles to spark your students’ imaginations. I’ve been a fan of the site since I first discovered it more than six years ago. At its core Wonderopolis offers more than 2400 interesting articles …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Google Product Updates for Teachers to Note

  Every month Google rolls-out updates to many of the products that teachers and students use through G Suite for Education. Some of those updates happen in background on the administrative side of G Suite for Education. Those updates usually don’t ha…

• Assessing Prior Knowledge: What Do Your Students Already Know? |

  Designing a one-size-fits-all lesson assumes that every student is starting from the same point. The reality is that students enter our classrooms with varied skillsets and prior knowledge.

• Humanizing Math Class Means Teaching Math Like The Humanities – dy/dan

  Here are a couple of terrifying tweets from my summer.

• ditchthattextbook.com

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: The Grade Is Not the Goal: Innovate Inside the Box Reflection

  How can I hope to make the learning important beyond “winning” the assessment?

• Interactive History Class 2019 – Teacher’s Log | Gaming the Past

  So as some of you may know, I launched the second iteration of my Interactive History class, a senior elective at Cincinnati Country Day School. Last year it ran as a third quarter elective.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Chindogu and #MakerEd

  As an added element, I will have students user Adobe Spark to create promo pages for their products to encourage people to buy them or show other how to make their own. I think Chindogu is a wonderful project for a Makerspace and classrooms looking …

• 10 Book Creator SEL Projects for Your Classroom – Class Tech Tips

  Is there such a thing as an SEL project? We know that students interact with a variety of content across the school day. These moments provide rich opportunities for them to learn about new topics in any and every subject area.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Stick Pick

  Stick Pick is a nice iOS app that replaces the “old” popsicle sticks on a teacher’s desk by helping teachers guide classroom instruction in a nice convenient way.

• The 23rd Student Blogging Challenge Begins October 6 – Student Blogging Challenge

  I’m Sue Waters. This October, Kathleen Morris and I will be guiding you through the next Student Blogging Challenge with support from challenge founder, Sue Wyatt, and the Edublogs team. The Student Blogging Challenge runs twice yearly beginning in …

• 7-ways-to-ditch-those-traditional-assessments

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: while True: learn()

  while True: learn() is an innovative new iOS game that educators can use to not only integrate Game Based Learning into their teachings, but introduce STEM skills such as: programming, coding, and logical thinking.

• Getting to Know You with Quizlet Live! – Mari Venturino

  After the first few weeks of school, I struggle to keep the “getting to know you” activities going. In middle school, as much as I try to collect student information and spend time chatting with all of my students, it can be difficult to sustain thi…

• International Dot Day 2019: Your Guide To Getting Involved – The Edublogger

  Have you heard of International Dot Day? It’s BIG! This year, over 14 million students and educators in 181 countries will be celebrating. International Dot Day is coming up around the week of September 15-ish.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Time-saving Tip for Testing iPad and Android Apps

  As you might expect, I test tons of apps every year. Some of those apps are brand new ones and others are older ones that people suggest that I try.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Chrome Extension to Help With a Facebook Fast

  I’m going on a bit of a Facebook fast. Like many people I say that I’m going “just check Facebook for a minute” and then find that I’ve wasted twenty minutes going down a rabbit hole following interesting links or commenting on friends’ posts.

• Video: “6 Teacher-Approved Tips for Faster, More Effective Feedback” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  geralt / Pixabay I’m adding this new video from Edutopia to The Best Resources For Learning How To Best Give Feedback To Students:

• The E4Effort App: Working to Add a Measurement that Works

  Today I’m writing a blog post about the E4Effort app. This system works to acknowledge and reinforce student effort during class learning activities and discussions. Think Class Dojo for older kids.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Four Good Places to Find Audio Files for Multimedia Projects

  Whenever I talk to students or teachers about using music in multimedia projects I emphasize that just because a song is available to stream or download through the Internet, doesn’t mean that you have the rights to re-use it.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Couple of Good Places to Find Icebreaker Activities

  Every year at about this time I get a handful of requests for ideas for icebreaker activities. In fact, I found of one of those requests this morning in my inbox. Here are the two sites that come to the top of my mind when I’m asked for places to fi…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources

• Interactive History Class 2019 – Teacher’s Log #2 | Gaming the Past

  Disclaimer: shockingly little/ sometimes no proofreading; just trying to get the ideas out fast and frequently for those interested In the first log, I ended by talking about the board game Court[iers] of Versailles, an outstandingly-designed game o…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Google Product Updates for Teachers to Note

  Every month Google rolls-out updates to many of the products that teachers and students use through G Suite for Education. Some of those updates happen in background on the administrative side of G Suite for Education. Those updates usually don’t ha…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Wonderopolis Now Includes Immersive Reader

  Wonderopolis is a great site for finding interesting articles to spark your students’ imaginations. I’ve been a fan of the site since I first discovered it more than six years ago. At its core Wonderopolis offers more than 2400 interesting articles …

• Assessing Prior Knowledge: What Do Your Students Already Know? |

  Designing a one-size-fits-all lesson assumes that every student is starting from the same point. The reality is that students enter our classrooms with varied skillsets and prior knowledge.

• Humanizing Math Class Means Teaching Math Like The Humanities – dy/dan

  Here are a couple of terrifying tweets from my summer.

• 3-easy-strategies-to-organize-your-google-classroom

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: The Grade Is Not the Goal: Innovate Inside the Box Reflection

  How can I hope to make the learning important beyond “winning” the assessment?

• Interactive History Class 2019 – Teacher’s Log | Gaming the Past

  So as some of you may know, I launched the second iteration of my Interactive History class, a senior elective at Cincinnati Country Day School. Last year it ran as a third quarter elective.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Chindogu and #MakerEd

  As an added element, I will have students user Adobe Spark to create promo pages for their products to encourage people to buy them or show other how to make their own. I think Chindogu is a wonderful project for a Makerspace and classrooms looking …

• 10 Book Creator SEL Projects for Your Classroom – Class Tech Tips

  Is there such a thing as an SEL project? We know that students interact with a variety of content across the school day. These moments provide rich opportunities for them to learn about new topics in any and every subject area.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some great blog posts from last week:

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Easy-to-Search Index of Teachers on Twitter

  Twitter can be a good place to connect with other educators to exchange ideas and resources. The trouble is that it is not always easy to filter through all of the accounts that Twitter automatically suggests to find the people that you really want …

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Treating Workplace Attachment Disorder

  · 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…

• My Favorite Back to School Picture Books for 2019 – Pernille Ripp

  One of my favorite parts of our classroom is our use of picture books to create community, to settle into routines, to get to know each other, and so much more.  This means I am always searching for great new picture books to share during those firs…

• 2019-20 Game Inspired Syllabus – Classroom Powerups

  This year I decided to get a bit cute with my syllabus and chose to use PowerPoint as the document creator rather than Word or Google Docs.

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: Answers for Action: Innovate Inside the Box Reflection

  A Reflection on Innovate Inside the Box by George Couros and Katie Novak

• Unsplash for Education

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Add an Animated Clock to PowerPoint Slides

  This afternoon I received an email from a reader who had watched my video about adding timers to PowerPoint slides. My video features a timer with a digital countdown display. She wanted to know if there is a way to add an analog clock countdown dis…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Annotate Webpages With Seesaw’s Chrome Extension

  Seesaw recently released an updated Chrome extension that makes it easy for students to save and annotate articles in their digital portfolios. With SeeSaw’s free Chrome extension installed students can save an entire webpage or select a portion of …

• Google Makes Another Big Announcement Unveiling Updated “Socratic” App To Help Students With…Just About Everything | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Less than twenty-four hours after unveiling two major new tools to help teachers and students (see GOOGLE UNVEILS TWO BIG TOOLS FOR SCHOOLS: “ASSIGNMENTS” & “ORIGINALITY REPORTS”), Google announced yet another one.

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal – Flat Earth Alternatives

• So You’ve Been Hired as a Science TOSA | Part 1 | Science for All

  This is the time of the year when a new group of science TOSAs (teachers on special assignment) tend to enter the realm of school district office science support.

• creating-a-blended-back-to-school-night

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Making Art Accessible

  Amanda Guest works with teenage art enthusiasts who are a part of ArtsConnection. The organization provides students with engaging and authentic art experiences such as exhibiting their work in fancy New York City offices.

• Racism, intolerance, and teaching the Holocaust as a current event | History Tech

  I’ll be honest. I’m having trouble processing the recent hate inspired events in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.

• how-to-create-a-pdf-ebook-with-google-slides

• Best Tools for Back-to-School 2019 | Common Sense Education

  If you’re looking for ways tech can boost your teaching in the 2019-2020 school year, this list is here to help. These top-rated apps and sites — ranging from instructional supports to organizational tools to social networks and beyond — help make…

• 20-ways-to-ditch-that-textbook-in-k-2-with-templates

• Free Technology for Teachers: Unsplash for Education – Free Photos for Your Lessons

  Unsplash is one of my go-to recommendations for finding public domain pictures for classroom projects. Thanks to Rushton Hurley’s latest Next Vista for Education newsletter I just learned that Unsplash now has an Unsplash for Education section.

• Why Trust Is Vital to Peer Feedback – John Spencer

  I still remember a moment in my fifth year of teaching when I invited my colleague, Javier, to observe a lesson I was teaching. “Colleague” doesn’t quite describe it. Javi and I ran a project-based service learning together.

• Video Game Fantasy Continues To Be The Easy Scapegoat For Violent Reality | David Mullich

  After the two recent mass shootings in Ohio and Texas, politicians were once again quick to blame video games as a cause of the violence. During an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” program, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Cal…

• The Nerdy Teacher: Back to School Blues #EdChat

  I wanted to take a moment and let the teachers of the world that are feeling guilty about the small amount of dread they are feeling about going back to school know that it is ok to have that feeling and you should NOT feel guilty about it. This doe…

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Tweet, Snap and Gram Your Way To Better School Communications

  My oldest daughter, Reaghan, is getting ready to be a 5th grader while my youngest, Chesney, will be a 1st grader this year. Heading back to school with them is one of the busiest times of year. There are lots of meetings, papers to read and fill ou…

• Back to School Special

  A decade or so ago I started a series of Back to Special webinars with wonderful partners like my sweet friend Shannon Miller and for several years my two favorite mentees (who have since surpassed me!) Tiffany Whitehead and Jennifer LaGarde on the …

• Geniventure | STEM Resource Finder

• https://dashboard.codespark.com/

• Classcraft & Engagement – The Inquiring Teacher

• Free Technology for Teachers: Certify’em Now Has a BCC Option for Distributing Certificates

  Certify’em is one of my favorite Google Forms add-ons. It lets you automatically distribute personalized certificates to students when they pass a quiz in Google Forms. I use it at the end of all of my PD webinars as a way to distribute certificates…

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: Is Global Warming an Existential Threat? Probably Not, But Still a Serious Issue.

  During the recent presidential debate, a number of candidates suggested that global warming represents an existential threat to mankind, and thus requires dramatic and immediate action. Governor Jay Inslee has been particularly generous in the use o…

• I Used to Think – Josh Stumpenhorst

  I used to think bad teachers needed to be fired. Now I realize bad teaching largely exists because of a lack of exposure to good teaching. I used to think being “color blind” was a good thing and helped me in working with my students of color.

• Video games don’t cause mass shootings, Trump must face facts

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some fantastic blog posts from this past week:

• Yong Zhao: The Achievement Gap Mania in America | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Yong Zhao is one of the scholars I admire most. He turns out book after book, each saturated with remarkable scholarship and learning. He is also a superb speaker, who fills his lectures with learning and humor.

• 25-beginning-of-the-year-activities-you-can-use-right-away

• Free Technology for Teachers: NASA Artifacts for Schools

  Thanks to my friend Steve Dembo this morning I learned about a U.S. General Services Administration program that lets schools acquire artifacts from NASA’s space program. The program has two parts. One part lets schools, museums, and similar organiz…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Add Video Comments to Google Documents

  e-Comments is a Google Chrome extension that offers three great ways to add comments to Google Documents. You can use e-Comments to add canned text comments, you can use it to add audio comments, and you can use it to add video comments to Google Do…

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: Experimenting with Google Science Journal

  This month I familiarized myself with Google Science Journal in preparation for a session I led at the annual SPARCC conference. Evidently, Google Science Journal has been around for a while, but I have never explored it until this summer.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Try This! – A Series of Hands-on Science Lessons for Kids

  Try This! is a series of videos produced by National Geographic Kids. Each of the videos in the series presents a hands-on science lesson or experiment that elementary school and middle school kids will enjoy.

• Courses | ampeduca

  Get them before the site closes down!

• Beware of Right-Wing Groups Promoting Union-Busting Shell Called “Free to Teach” | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Jonathan Burdick, a history teacher in Pennsylvania, wrote on Twitter about a new group called “Free to Teach,” which encourages teachers to abandon their union and form an “independent” union. He can be found @JonathanBurdick on Twitter.

• What To Say To A Needy, Dependent Student – Smart Classroom Management

  Neediness can seem amplified the first month of the school year. Your new class is younger than the group you finished with just weeks before.

• 10 Upcoming Picture Books I Cannot Wait to Read Aloud #PB10for10 – Pernille Ripp

  I wanted to publish my post about the picture books I plan on using with my students at the beginning of the year, but I don’t have 10 selected yet, not even close, I have 4, because I haven’t met the kids yet and so I don’t know which books we will…

• Guest Post: “The Welcome Back to School Letter I Wish I had Received” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  This is a guest post by Victoria Trujillo Onodera. Victoria Trujillo Onodera is a Culturally Responsive Education Coach, educator, and teacher leader with over 25 years of classroom and instructional coaching experience.

• How to Play Crumple & Shoot | Cult of Pedagogy

• Project Hero – to help the planet in need

• Tip of the Week: 13 history podcasts that you actually want to listen to | History Tech

  Maybe it’s just me. But I have a hard time listening to fiction audio books. It’s a little better with non-fiction but it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even try. But listening to history podcasts? No problem, love ’em.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two Important Changes Coming to Google Classroom

  Google seems to always be working on changes to the products that teachers and students use most. One of those products is Google Classroom. Two important changes are happening to Classroom this fall. First, the old version of Google Classroom is go…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Kahoot’s New Question Bank to Create a Game

  Earlier this summer Kahoot gave a preview of some new features including a question bank for making quiz games. Today, Kahoot made that question bank available to all users.

• A Quick Way to Make Groups @coolcatteacher

  Here are two random quick ways to make groups in the classroom. I used the first one for a while, but then, got even more creative to create some small laminated cards.

• Google Classroom Level Up Game – Teacher Tech

• Thursday Tutorial: Flippity.net (A FULL breakdown of this AMAZING site)

• Introduction to Gamification Part 8: User Types – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  There are many tools available to gamification designers to help them with their designs. One of the most useful for me, for reasons I will go into here, is the concept of User Types. There are many views on user profiling and many ways to do it. So…

• key-takeaways-from-iste-19

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Clear the Ambient Noise from a Podcast Recording

  One of the things that can ruin an otherwise good podcast is an annoying hiss or similar ambient noise in the background. Fortunately, there are ways to remove or replace that noise in post-production.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Creative Commons Search

  Whenever I talk to students and teachers about creating multimedia projects I always encourage using images that are either owned by them or are in the public domain. Doing that avoids infringing on someone’s copyright.

• Innovation Focused on the Ability to Improvise – The Principal of Change

  Something I have been focusing on quite a bit as of late is the idea of innovation in education being more focused on depth rather than being something new.

• 5 Ways to Bring #Breakoutedu into Your Classroom (on a budget) @coolcatteacher

  Escape rooms or breakout boxes (which you really break into) have led to the Breakout EDU movement. If you want to get started with your breakout edu experience, here are some resources to get you started.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 6 Tips for A More Accessible Classroom. Advice from @HabenGirma. The First DeafBlind Graduate of @Harvard_Law

  · 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…

• Defining a Personal Path to Success – The Principal of Change

  I received a really great question the other day from a teacher regarding the notion of “innovation” and how I see it as something that is both “new and better” (with the emphasis on the “better”).

• What’s Up with TikTok?

  What do you get when you mash together Instagram, Vine, Flipagram, and Musical.ly? My middle school students introduced me to TikTok this past school year when I noticed that my 6th grade girls were glued to it during recess.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: All Students & Teachers Have Special Needs

  · 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…

• Makerspaces 101 • Teched Up Teacher

  Last month, I was part of the Teach with Tech conference. I was asked to give a twenty minute overview on what makerspaces are and how teachers can get started with making. I wanted to share my video here for anyone who may be interested.

• A Few Ideas for Dealing with Late Work | Cult of Pedagogy

  This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

• A Few Picture Books to Teach Memoir – Pernille Ripp

  We are starting the year, and the creation of our writing portfolio, with a unit focused on memoir and personal essay.

• Classroom Engagement Goes Wireless with Vivi – Class Tech Tips

  Engagement in the classroom can look different from one corner of the school to another. One thing that classes with high engagement have in common is a strong focus on student learning. Vivi is a classroom engagement solution that uses screen mirro…

• Until We Meet Again: Jumpstarting the Impact of Common Assessments with Post-Assessment Routines | All Things Assessment

  When I chat with teachers about the power of common formative assessments, the conversations are generally positive. Almost universally, teachers see the value of identifying whether students are learning the concepts and skills that they are target…

• 7 Ideas for Student Genius Hour and Passion Projects

  Genius hour and passion projects are transformational. Now, I strive to have personal interest projects for just about everything.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Create a Directory App for Your School

  Last week’s most popular post was Dozens of Apps for Physical Education. In that post I highlighted the work that Kevin Shephard at Support REAL Teachers has done to develop apps through the free Glide service. Glide enables anyone who can create a …

• Free Technology for Teachers: QuickCite – A Site That Helps Students Properly Format Citations

  From the developer of the popular Flippity service comes a new tool designed for students. That tool is called QuickCite and it helps students properly format MLA 8 citations. Students can also use QuickCite for less formal citation needs like those…

• Use Comics or Graphic Novels to Teach English and Social-Emotional Skills | Edutopia

• GURPS Traveller

• Star Trek Adventures – Modiphius Entertainment

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some amazing blog posts from last week:

• Video: Travel Deep Inside a Leaf | Science for All

  Back in the day (or a couple of years ago) I used to post lots of cool science videos on this site. I got away from that in order to focus on more “important” science education resources. Well- I think it’s time to start sprinkling in some fun scien…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Flipgrid to Create Whiteboard Videos

  A couple of days ago Flipgrid released some new features that all teachers can use in the new school year. Those new features include tools for creating whiteboard-style instructional videos. You can use this feature to create whiteboard videos for …

• What Every Educator Needs to Know About Artificial Intelligence – Education Week

  • Right now, all sorts of technology, including educational software, is “adaptive.” That means it’s pre-programmed to take certain steps, based on what a user—say, a student—does. In simple terms, if a kid taking an adaptive test gets an answer right, the system knows to give that kid a tougher question next. (Think of this as a much more sophisticated, computerized version of those choose-your-own adventure books you might have read as kid.)
  • Plenty of experts would call those systems “AI” and plenty of vendors market their educational software that way. But these so-called “rule-based” systems aren’t the “fancy, sexy AI” that’s grabbing headlines
  • Cutting-edge AI relies on systems that can actually learn, usually by analyzing vast quantities of data and searching out new patterns and relationships. Instead of following one already predetermined pathway, these systems can actually improve over time, becoming more and more complex and accurate as they take in more and more information.
  • the McKinsey Global Institute predicts that 40 percent of the tasks that elementary school teachers now perform—mostly noninstructional job responsibilities, like tracking student progress and communicating with parents—could be automated by 2030 with the help of AI.
  • AI will ultimately help educators perform rote tasks, not replace them.
  • “My hope for AI is we actually will expand teaching,” Oranje said. “No teacher ever lost her job because every kid had an iPad. We need more teachers, not fewer. The nature of teaching will change. But it doesn’t mean that 40 percent of teachers will lose their jobs.”
  • One big problem: Human biases can be written right into the algorithms that power AI and then amplified by the technology.
  • facial recognition software, which is currently used for airport security and may even be deployed for school safety, is notoriously bad at identifying women and people of color. More troubling: Studies have shown that risk-assessment algorithms used to figure out criminal sentences tend to make harsher predictions about black defendants than white defendants. And Tay, a chatbot developed by Microsoft, was supposed to figure out how to emulate natural conversation by interacting with Twitter users. Instead, it began communicating in vulgar and racist hate speech.

• United Nations wants to promote peace, sustainability through mobile games – CNET

• Creating Digital Notebooks with Google Slides |

  In my role as a blended learning coach, I work with a lot of teachers who are intrigued by the idea of digital notebooks. They recognize the value of having student integrate text and media in an online notebook.

• Free Technology for Teachers: What is Two-Factor Authentication? – And Why You Should Use It

  Last night I had a chat with someone who had her Netflix account hacked. The hacker changed her password and the email address associated with the account. This prompted a bigger conversation about how accounts get hacked and some simple steps to pr…

• Free Technology for Teachers: ClassHook Gets a New Look

  ClassHook is a service that I recommend trying when you’re looking for video clips to illustrate a concept and don’t want just another “how to” video. ClassHook provides a search tool for finding clips from well-known television shows and movies to …

• ditchthattextbook.com –

  transitioning-back-to-the-classroom

• On Trigger Warnings and Potential Censorship – Pernille Ripp

  Warning: This post contains me changing my mind as well as unfinished thoughts. Read on to see what happens when you open your discussion to the expertise of others. You may have come across them if you read adult books.

• How Girls Make Games Is Inspiring The Next Generation Of Game Developers

  “How Girls Make Games Is Inspiring The Next Generation Of Game Developers”

• How Getting More Girls to Make Video Games Will Change the Gaming Industry | Teen Vogue

• Free Technology for Teachers: Great New Features Added to Flipgrid

  Just in time for the start of the new school year Flipgrid has rolled-out new features for teachers and students. I tried them out this afternoon and plan to make a video overview of them soon. In the meantime, here’s a run-down of what’s new and wh…

• Humanizing The Mathematics Classroom – The Reflective Educator

  I can remember exactly where I had my first major mathematical discovery. We were driving up the highway toward the nearby town for a night out for dinner. I was sitting in the back of the car playing with sums of numbers in my head. “Wow! It works!…

• 100% Online Data Science Degrees | Data Science Programs

• Uncontroversial: Online porn in sex ed – NetFamilyNews.org

  The other day, prominent UK professor Sonia Livingstone tweeted that the latest post in the Parenting for a Digital Future blog (which she helped create) has proven controversial. That’s not a huge surprise.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Seven Microsoft Product Updates for Teachers to Note

  Over the last six or seven weeks Microsoft has rolled-out some notable updates to their products that teachers and students use most. I’ve covered some of those updates in blog posts here and some I have only shared on social media.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five Google Product Updates for Teachers to Note

  Every month Google pushes updates to all of their products. The ISTE conference is held in June so there were a lot of updates made then that directly impact teachers and students.

• Andrea Gabor: What to Do When the Testing Madness Ends | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Andrea Gabor, The Bloomberg Professor of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York, is one of the nation’s worthy and thoughtful education writers. Her book about W.

• Google Expeditions VR + AR | ARVRinEDU | Jaime Donally | Professional Development

• Fake news: 3 things we can learn from Finland (And 3 cool tools from right here in the US of A) | History Tech

  We all get smarter when we all get smarter. Pretty simple concept. It’s the whole idea behind PLCs, #sschat, and, well . . . school in general. Learning together makes a lot of sense.

• Book Study: STEM Lesson Essentials | Science for All

  Well, it’s that time of year where the ongoing countdown of number of days to the end of the summer is reaching just a few weeks for most of us. As such, I’ll be posting some recommendations for last minute professional summer reading related to sci…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Dozens of Apps for Physical Education

  Glide is in my top five favorite new tools in 2019. Glide makes it incredibly easy for anyone who can make a spreadsheet to make a mobile app. We had fun using at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp and many other people have shared their apps with me…

• Kids Should Read – Josh Stumpenhorst

  I work in a predominantly white school with what most people would consider high achieving students. Our free and reduced lunch number is small and most people would consider our community a stereotypical suburb.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Announces Transformation Reports for G Suite for Education

  Earlier today Google announced the launch of a new product called Google for Education Transformation Reports.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 8 Ways to Prepare & Connect at Conferences: #NYCSchoolsTech Summit

  · 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…

• Visual Histories Of World Wars I & II | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The American Battle Monuments Commission has tons of interactives related to both World War I and World War II. The best ones are: The Great War: A Visual History World War II: A Visual Hist…

• STEM Design Challenge: Building Earthquake Proof Buildings AND a Shake Table – Mrs. Harris Teaches…

  I created an Instructable for building a simple shake table and instructions for an engineering design challenge. I have a modifications for this activity below that make it more of a real world challenge utilizing budgets and analyzing costs per sq…

• A New Tech Wave? – 2¢ Worth

  When I had taught social studies for a few years I started to hear talk about personal computers. They were fully programmable systems that could be instructed to perform a multitude of functions and could be had for prices ranging from a few hundre…

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• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Educandy

  Educandy is a wonderful site for creating educational games. Educandy is a very easy to use and all a educator has to do is enter the questions for and Educandy turns them into educational games/activities (i.e. matching, word search, memory, etc.).

• Climate Sense: Arctic burns as climate issues gain political attention | Watching Our Water Ways

  It’s next to impossible to keep up with all the new information coming out about climate change, but I thought I would share some new reports that I found interesting. For the first three months of this year, I provided a weekly report called “Clima…

• Varsity eSports at Boise State University

• Gamasutra: Celia Hodent’s Blog – Understanding the Success of Fortnite: A UX & Psychology Perspective

• Home : The Academy of Esports

• Build Relationships Throughout the Year With These Awesome Icebreakers! Free Template! – Teacher Reboot Camp

  Relationships are the most important factor in your effectiveness as a teacher and your student’s success! Knowing students and them confiding in us and working with us and their peers helps us figure out their interests, strengths, insecurities, st…

• Why Writing Sucks and We Need to Talk About It – Pernille Ripp

  Six years ago, I wrote a piece on here called, Why Reading Sucks and It’s Ok to Talk About It. It has shaped my work ever since. It has become a defining feature of what I believe in when it comes to the work we help students do in our year of readi…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Design Posters and Print Them With a Standard Printer

  I got my first “back to school” email this week which was a jolting reminder of just how quickly time flies during summer break. The “back to school” email that I received was from a classroom supplies and classroom decorations vendor.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Lewis & Clark in Google Earth – And Lesson Plans for K-12

  This morning while browsing through Google Earth looking for a resource about sharks for Shark Week (I found it) I came across a Google Earth voyage about Lewis and Clark.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Five More Handy Features of Google Keep

  Last week I published a video that highlighted ten handy features of Google Keep. Since then a few people have emailed me to point out other features that I should have included in that video.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three More Recommended Resources for Teaching Civics and Government

  Earlier this week I published a blog post in which I shared the resources that I shared with a reader who had emailed me seeking my recommended resources for teaching civics and government. I made that list completely from memory.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Quick Rubric

  Quick Rubric is the wonderful site for creating rubrics from the creators of Storyboard That. This is far and away the easiest site I’ve seen for creating a beautiful rubric where a user can add a row or a column w/ a tap of an arrow button. Everyth…

• Tip of the Week: Six Super Sweet Social Studies Strategies for Back to School | History Tech

  It’s been an awesome week! Jump started it on Monday working with a small group of middle school and elementary teachers in the great state of Arizona. And am bookending it today and tomorrow with the fantastic staff at Rockdale County schools outsi…

• Sewage spill in Seattle triggers warnings in Kitsap County | Watching Our Water Ways

  It was a tale of two health advisories that created a bit of confusion in Kitsap County following a major sewage spill last week from King County’s West Point treatment plant.

• Interactive step-by-step guides and troubleshooting | Stonly

• SCS Ignite Camps – SCS Ignite Camps

• EPIC Academy » edurealms.com

  tags: pd professionaldevelopment professional_development professional development professional-development gamification

• My First Esports Camp – Reflections » edurealms.com

• Our Activities | DiscoverE Engineering

• Innovation is all about keeping up with the tech, right? – Inspiring learning

• What I am Learning from Playing Fortnite with my Daughter – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  It all started when my 12-year-old daughter noticed it was on my PC. I had downloaded when it first came out, but after one go, decided it wasn’t for me. However, it had been quietly updating in the background, just waiting for my return.

• How to Empower Student Writers this School Year – Class Tech Tips

  When you think of the word empower, what comes to mind? Well, I often think of helping someone find their voice or independence, or giving someone space to grow and shine. I sat down with the folks behind Empowering Writers at the ISTE Conference in…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Recommended Resources for Teaching Civics and Government

  Yesterday I received an email from a reader who was looking for my recommendation for a few resources for teaching a government or civics course. The following are the recommendations that I made.

• Single Post | ARVRinEDU | Jaime Donally | Professional Development

  Some elements on this page did not load. Refresh your site & try again. Recent Posts Some elements on this page did not load. Refresh your site & try again. Archive Some elements on this page did not load. Refresh your site & try again. Tags Some el…

• Free Technology for Teachers: The 6,000 Calorie Challenge – A Lesson in Sports Nutrition

  At the end of June I completed a double century bike ride and in the process ate as much as I possibly could without feeling sick. What I ate was nothing compared to what a professional cyclist consumes during the Tour de France which I’ve been watc…

• Jan Resseger: Eight Essential Facts About Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  The Charter Industry has led a sterling marketing campaign to persuade the public that they are public schools, that they are far better than “traditional” public schools, and that they are hotbeds of innovation. None of this is true. They are priva…

• The Nerdy Teacher: Don’t Forget the Introverts #EdChat

  I’ve been seeing lots of tweets flood EduTwitter about reaching out to the shy students and engaging every single child because they just need that one teacher to be the one to save them from their silence. The savior complex is just gross at this p…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Add Alt Text to Images and Videos in Google Slides

  Alt text is text that you can add to images and videos to describe what they are and or what they contain. Adding alt text can make your materials that you post online more accessible to more visitors.

• Fisheries innovations credited with West Coast groundfish recovery | Watching Our Water Ways

  The dramatic recovery of many groundfish species along the West Coast is a testament to the innovation, cooperation and persistence by fisheries managers and fishermen alike under the landmark Magnuson-Stevens Act of 1976.

• Developing a Community of Inquiry in Your Blended Classroom |

  A consistent theme in my work on blended learning is shifting students from passive consumers in the classroom to active, engaged members of a learning community.

• Randi Weingarten: Corruption and Mismanagement in Puerto Rico | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  WASHINGTON—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement on the mismanagement of Puerto Rico’s public schools by Gov. Ricardo Rossello and former Secretary of Education Julia Keleher:

• Free Technology for Teachers: Crowdsourcing Civil War Document Transcription

  Last fall the Library of Congress launched a new online initiative called Crowd. As the name implies, it’s a crowdsourcing project that anyone who registers on the LOC Crowd site can participate in.

• Summer Reading: Ambitious Science Teaching | Science for All

  If you are anything like me, then the very end of July and beginning of August is a time when you start thinking about getting back to your “school brain”.

• Starting With Writing Identity First Rather than Writing Skills – Pernille Ripp

  As I plan our first exploration for the coming year, one that dives into personal essays, I have been thinking about the writing experience itself. About how personal it is. About how draining it can be.

• Tools for Social Annotation in the Digital Age | Edutopia

  There are many tools for social digital and web annotations, including Genius, which is built into the Washington Post’s digital platform. (Genius began as Rap Genius, where a community of rap music fans interpreted, debated, and annotated lyrics.

• Avatar and Star Wars in Social Studies | Using Comics in the Classroom

  In my social studies class, we often discuss how pop culture mirrors events in society and that comics, tv shows, music, art, literature, and movies can thus be considered as societal artifacts.

• Assessment Practices and Transforming Our Relationships to Power – Shifting Phases

  Today at the American Association of  Physics Teachers summer meeting, I presented a 30 min talk on how assessment practices can start to transform our relationships to power — inside and outside the classroom.

• 10 Ways To Integrate Technology In Your Class – e-Learning Infographics

  If location is out of reach due to logistical issues, you can simulate a virtual trip by using a wide variety of augmented reality apps. To make it easier to give lessons and presentations, use a tool that tracks and displays classroom noise.

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Managing And Protecting Digital Identities

  It started with some tweets. I was hurt, confused and shocked. What had I said or done to make people say these things to me? And they came in a flood. Over and over for several days, several years ago.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: BitDegree

  BitDegree is a nice site for online tutoring where students can go to find a tutor on a wide range of subjects (i.e. programming/coding, etc). Also, this is a great place for educators looking to earn some extra income by becoming an online tutor.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Stonly

  Stonly is an innovative new site that educators can use to create interactive step-by-step guides for their students. This is great way for teachers to introduce topics, create digital handouts, and reinforce for student’s learning.

• Steve Hargadon: Announcing the Library 2.0 “Emerging Technology” Mini-Conference

  Ida Arlene Joiner is the Senior Librarian at the Universal Academy in Texas. She is the author of the book Emerging Library Technologies: It’s Not Just for Geeks (Elsevier, 2018). Her forthcoming book on Drones in Libraries will be available in July…

• How I use comic books as a learning tool in my social studies classroom | PBS NewsHour

• Column: How bringing comics into the classroom made me love teaching again | PBS NewsHour

• COMICS IN THE CLASSROOM: How one Wissahickon teacher uses comic books to connect with his students | News | montgomerynews.com

• The Surprising Benefits of Student-Created Graphic Novels | Cult of Pedagogy

  This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. There is no shortage of ways we all can benefit from teaching graphic novels.

• Representation In Comics | Using Comics in the Classroom

  On 7/21/2019, Marvel announced, at San Diego Comic Con, that a new Thor movie would be released in 2021, starring Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, Thor.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are more great blog posts:

• Five Aspects of PBL Teachers as Coach | Mike Kaechele

  Note: I wrote this post last winter before Coach Beilein left for Cleveland. I decided to post as is, without changes, because Beilein is still the same amazing coach even though he broke our hearts when he left.

• Youtube Transcripts

  Make a transcript of a Youtube Video.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Neil and Buzz Go For a Walk – A Tour of the First Hours on the Moon

  This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. By now you’ve probably seen Google’s Google Earth story about the mission. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.

• Start Building Virtual Reality NOW: A dive right in guide to get students creating – Go Where You Grow

• Don’t Blame the Designers for Your Digital Addiction

• Gaming meets school in Age of Learning’s new app ‘Adventure Academy’

• You’ve Conquered the Escape Room. But Can You Escape the Lab? – The New York Times

• GBL 285: Renaissance Italy: Video Games versus Reality | bessary

• I Taught With Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

• Reading as an adventure | District Administration

• Some misunderstandings about play / NZC Online blog / Curriculum resources / Kia ora – NZ Curriculum Online

• Children and Minecraft: A survey of children’s digital play – Jane Mavoa, Marcus Carter, Martin Gibbs, 2018

• https://storage.googleapis.com/files.gamefroot.com/users/71078/games/149349/gamefroot-2019-5-7T0-38-17.605Z/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1f3s1thAtPHwjxMIbuUd7zwWc1pvNDz1Q5b0_9oiutsXDc2KWfFjhatvA

• Gamification Fails: Negotiating Points, Badges, Levels, and Game Play in the Basic Writing Classroom /

  • Quest-Based Learning, which offers choices, might fit better in this instance.
  • Intrinsic motivation might best be addressed by means other than gamification. In the writing class, this might involve a choice of reading or writing topics.

• Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach, 1st Edition (Paperback) – Routledge

• Sydney’s World Student Site

• Attentat 1942 | A World War II game through the eyes of survivorsAttentat 1942 | A World War II game through the eyes of survivors

• Gaming: The Future’s Language; Richard Duke; SAGE Publications, 1974

• Her Story or their own stories? Digital game-based learning, student creativity, and creative writing | ReCALL | Cambridge Core

• Bad News

• Fake news ‘vaccine’ works: ‘pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation | University of Cambridge

• The Video Games That Made People Question Their Beliefs

• Zachtronics | Zachademics

• Teaching With Video Games | Hey Listen Games

• Game Design Studio Kicks Off on Campus for Two Weeks

• Vol. 19, No. 1, 2009 of Children, Youth and Environments on JSTOR

• Video Games as Learning Environments for Students with Learning Disabilities | Early Child Development

• Google’s free game creation tool lands on Steam

• Outer Wilds is a brilliant sci-fi game that trades guns for a compass – Polygon

• (PDF) Overstated Evidence for Short-Term Effects of Violent Games on Affect and Behavior: A Reanalysis of Anderson et al. (2010)

• Play is a Child’s Work – or is it – Marc Armitage

• Newzoo | Games & Esports Analytics and Market Research

• Google Maps AR | ARVRinEDU | Jaime Donally | Professional Development

• Learning with ‘e’s: Makeshift reality

  learning, technology, education, steve, wheeler, social media, internet, mobile, school, teachers

• Word Wednesday: ‘Ask a Scientist’ – GeekDad

  Reading Time: 3 minutesThe UK and US and covers side by side. The great Bogie v Booger debate.This Week’s Word Is “Question.” I’ve already had “scientist” as a Word Wednesday word, and whilst I doubt anybody is checking, I’m trying not to repeat mys…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Quik – Quickly Create Audio Slideshow Videos

  Quik is a free app from GoPro for quickly creating videos on your Android or iOS phone or tablet. With the app installed on you can import pictures and videos that you have stored on your phone, in Google Photos, or in a GoPro Plus account.

• Free Technology for Teachers: What’s the Fastest Tire Pressure? – A Science Lesson

  Global Cycling Network is a popular YouTube channel that produces high-quality videos about all aspects of bicycle riding. The videos are hosted by retired professional cyclists.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Handy Google Keep Features for Teachers and Students

  Google Keep is a great tool that students and teachers can access through G Suite for Education and through Gmail. Google Keep works just as well in the Chrome web browser as in the mobile apps.

• Video: What the Apollo Missions Meant to Mankind — The Adventure Blog

  Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On Saturday, we’ll celebrate 50 years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.

• Thinking in a White Room: Learning from EduTwitter challenges

  I was distracted from my online course on FNMI cultures yesterday though I did stay on topic. A Twitter thread caught my eye and I followed the discussion throughout the day and well into the night.

• Oakland Parent Jane Nylund Writes a Letter to Governor Gavin Newsom | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  It is with profound disappointment that I heard that your office was responsible for essentially gutting the main features of these charter reform bills.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Pros and Cons of Using Social Media for School Announcements

  Today at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp I was asked for my opinion about using Facebook as the primary tool for posting information for the parents of your students. Answering that question reminded me of an article that I wrote a few years ago o…

• 10 Back to School Tips for An Awesome Year! – Teacher Reboot Camp

  The new school year is approaching fast. I will miss spending all day with my toddler, Savvy, but I am looking forward to trying new ideas with my elementary students. I work with all grades at my school and this is my second year with this group of…

• Don’t ever pay for someone to come tell your organization about ‘generational differences’ | @mcleod | Dangerously Irrelevant

  What takes this little game from merely silly to obnoxious is the following rule: You must attribute unflattering adjectives to cohorts younger than your own – even though yours was on the receiving end of similar disparagements not so long ago.

• The Missing Piece of Coding Education • Teched Up Teacher

  Just about any teacher who has incorporated Scratch into her classrooms knows that students love this free block-based coding language. Invented by MIT, Scratch allows users to drag-and-drop blocks that snap together to form “lines of code” that the…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Zip Tapestry – Demographic Data and More, Mapped

  Zip Lookup is an interesting use of the ESRI mapping platform. The map allows you to enter any US zip code to discover demographic data about that area. Whenever I see something like this I am skeptical of how well it will work for very small towns …

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use Feedly

  I’m often asked how I keep up with what’s new in educational technology. Part of the answer to that question is social media and part of the answer is press releases. The biggest part of the answer is Feedly. I use Feedly to subscribe to a couple hu…

• High School Esports LeagueHome

• “Don’t ‘Steal the Aha’ From Science Instruction” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Don’t ‘Steal the Aha’ From Science Instruction is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. In it, Linda Tolladay, Patrick L. Brown, James P. Concannon, Ross Cooper, and John Almarode share their “nominations” for the biggest mistakes…

• A Principal’s Reflections: The Ascent to Growth

  I genuinely believe that most people want to get better in their professional role and they find comfort in growth.

• WCP: ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ Review – GeekDad

  The third second Spider-Man movie has arrived! Jake + Mitch sling back into the MCU to dish on Peter Parker’s latest adventure abroad.

• How to Use Video Portfolios this School Year – Class Tech Tips

  How do students share their learning in your classroom? Perhaps there is a bulletin board full of fantastic student writing on display or maybe their are pictures with science experiments featured outside your classroom. There are so many ways to sh…

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