Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Great blog posts from last week:

• ‘Dragon man’ fossil may replace Neanderthals as our closest relative — ScienceDaily

  A near-perfectly preserved ancient human fossil known as the Harbin cranium sits in the Geoscience Museum in Hebei GEO University. The largest of known Homo skulls, scientists now say this skull represents a newly discovered human species named Homo…

• Scientists Identify New Human Species That Is the Closest Ever to Us

  A newly-discovered ancient human fossil known as the Harbin cranium could offer new insight into our evolution and it now sits in the Geoscience Museum in Hebei GEO University. It represents a never-before-seen human species named Homo longi or “Dra…

• GeekMom: ‘Tappity’ Your Way to K-5 Science Learning – GeekDad

  App and software makers are always trying to find new ways to engage kids with educational material. The educational software market is incredibly huge, and those publishers that adhere to national education standards often find their way into class…

• Inquiry Teacher Spotlight

  PDF templates and worksheets from the book: Experience Inquiry.

• Preparing for the Future: Creating Supportive Digital Learning Spaces

  As we head back to our classrooms and prepare for the upcoming year, there are many things we need to consider.

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

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

• The New Graphic Novel ‘The Flutist of Arnhem’ Tells the Story of a Bridge Too Far – GeekDad

  One of the first war movies I ever watched was A Bridge Too Far. It told the story of the paratroopers who dropped into the Netherlands during World War II as part of Operation Market Garden.

• Super Dave and Connect, Extend, Challenge | History Tech

  I had the opportunity this spring to spend time learning together with about 35 middle school ELA and social studies teachers as part of a Library of Congress TPS mini-grant project.

• UDL and Blended Learning: Removing Barriers with Design – Dr. Catlin Tucker

  If you want to do a deep dive into universally designing blended learning to remove barriers and create flexible pathways, you can order your copy of : Thriving in Flexible Learning Landscapes from Amazon or request a bulk order for a team of teache…

• Classroom adapts for the future of learning and teaching

  Over the last year, the use of education technology skyrocketed as schools hustled to keep students learning.

• What Is Cheesing in Gaming?

• Critical Race Theory Hysteria Continues – Here Are Eight New Useful Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  What the hysteria over critical race theory is really all about is from Vox.

• why-most-effective-leaders-embrace-rule-of-but-therefore

  Most great leaders are great communicators.

• In Teachers We Trust: The Finnish Way to World-Class Schools with Professor Pasi Sahlberg by The Viewpoints Podcast • A podcast on Anchor

  Professor Pasi Sahlberg is a Finnish educator who has worked as a schoolteacher, teacher-educator and policymaker in Finland and advised national education reforms around the world. Pasi has published over 100 articles and books about education and …

• The Best Travel YouTube Channels In 2021 | The Adventure Blog

  International travel is starting to become a reality for many weary travelers with itchy feet and an all-consuming sense of wanderlust. It’s time to dust off the backpack and get hyped for a future of travel that could potentially be mere months awa…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Track Updates to Students’ Google Sites

  Google Sites can be a great platform for students to use to maintain digital portfolios. In fact, I did that last year with my computer science principles students. The challenge for a teacher when students use Google Sites for portfolios is keeping…

• 5 Parent Hacks for Discussing a Novel You Haven’t Read – Teacher Created Tips

  Your child is reading a novel. That is a good thing! But you might actually like to know a bit more about the subject: What lessons or ideas does the novel have to offer? What is my child taking from it? How well is my child understanding it? Why th…

• learninginplaces.org

• Newly Discovered Books for Kids – Stager-to-Go

• What is SEL?

• Bury Me, My Love: Identity in Crisis

• Modern Classroom Essentials

  Discover an approach that helps every student learn — with blended, self-paced, mastery-based practices that you can implement today. A new and innovative approach to online teacher professional development, from The Modern Classrooms Project.

• LEGO prototype brick made from recycled plastic is a leap towards sustainable goals [News] | The Brothers Brick | The Brothers Brick

  Today LEGO announced a new type of brick: One made from recycled plastic. It has been made out of discarded PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottles, and it’s a product of three years’ work, over 150 materials scientists and engineers, and m…

• Is Earth’s core lopsided? Strange goings-on in our planet’s interior | NSF – National Science Foundation

  For unknown reasons, Earth’s solid-iron inner core is growing faster on one side than the other. It’s been doing so since it started to freeze out from molten iron more than half a billion years ago, according to seismologists at the University of C…

• scitechdaily.com

  Biologists in the UK and Austria have discovered 71 new imprinted genes in the mouse genome.

• three-strategies-for-advancing-antiracist-practices

  “The water we’re swimming in” or “The smoggy air we’re breathing” are two well-known metaphors for talking about racism. They describe how racism is both everywhere and constant, which means it’s also present in classrooms, even when teachers have t…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Share Google Slides Without Sharing Speaker Notes

  Earlier this week I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a way to share his Google Slides with his students without them being able to see his speaker notes. Unfortunately, there isn’t an add-on or extension that will do that for you.

• How DNA Fingerprints Are Used to Solve Crimes

  Crime dramas like CSI often solve the case by using a technology called DNA fingerprinting, so most students are familiar with it. They have a lot of misconceptions about how DNA fingerprints are made, possibly because the word “fingerprint” isn’t v…

• 11 Teacher-Recommended PreK-12 Math Apps and Online Tools | Edutopia

• 21st Century Teaching and Learning: Data Science – YouCubed

  Our new online course is designed to help anyone teach – and learn – with a 21st century approach to knowledge and teaching. Lesson 1 of the course shares important evidence we now have about the working of the brain, that is meaningful for all subj…

• Add text to photos with Picfont

  No need to know how to use image software just upload a picture and use a text model. Then just explore new or classic font, add stunning effects to improve your design. Download result as image for FREE.

• 20 ideas for exit tickets in the classroom – Ditch That Textbook

• for the love of learning: Abolishing Grading

• for the love of learning

• 22 must-have templates for teachers and students – Ditch That Textbook

• Key piece of the puzzle: Australia’s ‘Safety by Design’ tools – NetFamilyNews.org

  A vital piece of the global online safety puzzle has just fallen into place: Australia’s eSafety Commissioner’s Office this week unveiled its Safety by Design tools for Internet companies everywhere.

• Four (Maybe) Counter-Intuitive “Takeaways” From Teaching & Learning During A Pandemic | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The United States is second in the world in number of hours teachers spend in the classroom.  In many other countries, teachers spend three-to-five times the amount of time we do in those other tasks that can improve what we actually do inside the c…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a Thumbnail for Your YouTube Videos

  In the last week or so I’ve had a couple of people ask me how I create the thumbnail images for my YouTube videos. I make all of my thumbnail images, AKA cover images, from a simple template found in Canva.

• Free Technology for Teachers: What to Try When a Web App Isn’t Working

  Two weeks ago in my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I outlined six things to try when a website or web app isn’t working as you expected it to.

• Innovation in Teaching Through #Edtech @Flipgrid @usekamiapp @PearDeck | techieMusings

  Bullis School teachers redesign lessons to keep collaboration alive and engage all learners – whether face-to-face or remote. As this school year comes to a close, I wanted to celebrate some of the amazing work of my colleagues at Bullis.

• Control Alt Achieve: 40 Google for Education Updates for Summer 2021

  Summer is a nice time to take a break and relax, but Google has instead been busy working on new updates and features for schools. On June 22nd Google hosted their “Anywhere School 2021” event (http://goo.

• 2020-21 Reflections – Classroom Powerups

  At the end of the year I asked students to reflect on the year. The answers were interesting. Note: Last March 13th my school went into a “Distance Learning” setting that lasted through April, May, and the first week of June when school ended.

• The U.S. Has a Long History of Banning Controversial Topics and Blaming Teachers | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Historians Gillian Frank and Adam Laats write in Slate about the long history of suppressing textbooks that discuss race and class and investigating or firing teachers who veer away from the standard patriotic view of American history.

• How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory | The New Yorker

  Remote work turned out to be advantageous for people looking to leak information to reporters. Instructions that once might have been given in conversation now often had to be written down and beamed from one home office to another.

• Wizardly STEM! (Awesome Summer Science Experiments) | Science Buddies Blog

  Check in each week at Science Buddies this summer for our Awesome Summer Science Experiments series! Each week, we’ll highlight a few activities for awesome science and engineering kids can do at home. We’ve got a whole summer of fun STEM themes lin…

• “Comics for Inclusive English Language Learning” Is An Amazing Resource For ELLs & Others | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Thanks to Sandy Millin, I just learned about Comics for Inclusive English Language Learning. It’s an amazing site with high-interest comics with audio support provided to the text.  They are leveled based on English proficiency.

• CIELL

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Short Overview of Google Sites Publishing and Sharing Settings

  During a webinar that I hosted earlier today the topic of Google Sites access settings came up. That topic usually does come up whenever I talk about using Google Sites with students.

• Google Workspace Updates: Use the Classic Sites Manager to download archived backups and control editing of sites in bulk

  In the Cloud Connect Community, discuss the latest features with Googlers and other Google Workspace admins like you. Learn tips and tricks that will make your work and life easier. Be the first to know what’s happening with Google Workspace.

• Why White Students Need Multicultural and Social Justice Education | Cult of Pedagogy

  These last few weeks have been especially difficult for me as the news continues to reflect that racism still exists in 2020.

• What to Keep from Remote Teaching and Learning

  During the pandemic, we had no other choice than to shift how we facilitate and engage in learning. Sure, it was stressful, exhausting, and overwhelming, but educators everywhere did what they had to do to ensure students received what they needed.

• Fireflies.ai – Free Meeting Recorder

• Amped Up Learning

  Toggle menu (817) 721-4720 Featured Items SALE Quick view “This is what actively monitoring looks like” $14.95 $10.00 Choose Options Quick view Absolute Value Equations (Color Mosaic) $2.50 $1.75 Add to Cart Quick view Eggtastic $1.

• Stanford Study: High School Students Lack Digital Skills to Spot Fake News | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  We live in an age when politicians, advertisers, and others develop and distribute fake news to sell their wares. It’s more important than ever for people to have the digital skills to check the accuracy of what they see online.

• Cliff Mass Weather Blog: Humid Air Makes Ice Cream Cones Melt Fast!

  Recently, I was walking along the south shore of Long Island with another meteorologist, Nick Weber, and we decided to purchase some ice cream cones. Nothing fancy… a sugar cone with two scoops. The market was air-conditioned and the ice cream was…

• A Principal’s Reflections: Outlier Practices Make or Break the Learning Experience

  We learn, and remember for that matter, from experience. Thus, it is critical that the culture in your classroom and school positively impacts learners while adequately preparing them for their future, not our past. I shared the following in Chapter…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

More great blog posts from last week:

• Using @PearDeck w/Embedded @Flipgrid Question to Develop Deeper Connections – Modeling Optimization Problems #edtech #mathchat | techieMusings

  If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll see that I recently tweeted that one of my new goals is to use Pear Deck to create student-paced activities with questions that ramp up in difficulty to help students discover new ideas & promote higher-order thin…

• Google Classroom Popsicle Sticks – Call on Students – Teacher Tech

  If you use Google Classroom you can call on students randomly from within the Google Classroom App. This works only on your phone or iPad (or using the Google Classroom android app on a Chromebook.) This currently does NOT work on the web version of…

• Inspire Science K–5 | STEM Career Kids

• Career Profile Cards | Pacific Education Institute

• Natural Inquirer >> Science Journal for Students >> Scientist and Engineer Card Series

• WISC – Washington Invasive Species Council

• Gaming’s Not Just for Kids: What Educators Need to Know About eSports — Mike Washburn

  League of Legends, DOTA 2, Heroes of the Storm and—of course—Fortnite. You may recognize these as titles of popular video games, even if you aren’t strictly a “gamer.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Add Shapes and Drawings to Google Docs

  Yesterday morning I had a colleague come into my classroom to ask me how she could create a document that had some arrows and boxes in it. Basically, she was trying to replicate and then slightly modify a diagram she’d seen in a textbook. I showed h…

• 12 social media-inspired Google Slides templates – Ditch That Textbook

  Students use social media all the time. Let’s put those skills to use! In these social media-inspired Google Slides templates, they can show what they know with their favorite apps. No matter the age — kindergarten to high school senior — students…

• The Smallest Ideas that are Helping Me During VIrtual Teaching – Pernille Ripp

  I don’t think I have ever gone so long without writing on this blog. Through job changes, house moves, the birth of our twins, and then the birth of a very premature baby, this blog has been constant.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Good Video Lessons About Cyberbullying and Digital Privacy

  Students in my school district, like students in many other school districts, have more unsupervised time on their hands than ever before.

• Transform Worksheets Into Interactive Online Activities for Students – Class Tech Tips

  This post is sponsored by TeacherMade. All opinions are my own. How can you turn passive learning into a more active and interactive experience? More students are working online than ever before and more teachers are looking at ways to use classroom…

• 5 Classic Halloween Specials (That Aren’t ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’) – GeekDad

  Today is October 1st or, as we call it in my house, the 1st of Halloween. For many families like mine, this marks the true arrival of autumn and a solid 31 nights of decorations, costumes, seasonal music, and monster media. For those with smaller ch…

• Free Word Cloud Generator – Results

• History Mysteries for the littles: Inquiry resources and materials for your elementary classroom | History Tech

  Well, it’s been a while. Between some unplanned family obligations and a variety of work related stuff, History Tech got pushed off the front burner, then the back burner, and eventually ended up somewhere into one of those cabinets where you store …

• 6 ideas for infusing choice into the math classroom – Ditch That Textbook

  This post is written by Mandi Tolen a math teacher from Missouri. You can connect with her on Twitter @MandiTolenEDU and check out her blog infinitelyteaching.com. I love the idea of giving students choices in the classroom.

• Using Scavenger Hunts to Get Students Moving in Virtual Learning – John Spencer

  When we hear the terms “virtual learning” or “remote learning,” it’s easy to imagine students spending eight hours a day in front of a screen. However, as educators, we know that this approach isn’t developmentally appropriate.

• What can food trucks teach us about virtual and hybrid learning? – John Spencer

  When we think of innovative companies, it’s easy to imagine an open-air tech startup with ping pong tables and free drinks and huge windows and chairs so modern you’re not sure how you’re supposed to sit in them or look at them.

• Control Alt Achieve: Using Rubrics in Google Classroom

  Rubrics are a popular and helpful tool for assessment.

• How to Teach When Everyone is Scattered | Cult of Pedagogy

  Let’s go back for a moment to a simpler time, back to 2019 when you may have “struggled to differentiate.

• Peel The Fruit Slides Activity | Engage Their Minds

  I am a gigantic fan of Harvard’s Project Zero Thinking Routines. As distance learning has become a necessity for many teachers and students, I have been pondering what these routines might look like when conducting virtual discussions.

• Mapping Climate Risk in the United States – The Map Room

  Climate change isn’t just one thing: rising temperatures, or sea level rise. It’s also changes to rainfall, increased risk of wildfires, more powerful hurricanes.

• Free Technology for Teachers: “Whoa!” – This Is Why We Should Review Search Strategies Every Year

  During last week’s episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff I shared a little story from earlier that day in my classroom. The story provides a good reminder of why we should review search strategies every fall even if we thin…

• Search-Icon

  The past seven months have been a big strain on families like Mandi Boren’s. The Borens are cattle ranchers on a remote slice of land near Idaho’s Owyhee Mountains. They have four kids — ranging from a first grader to a sophomore in high school.

• For Some Kids, Remote Learning Round 2 Is A Dream Come True | HuffPost Life

  Newsletter Sign UpRaise the kind of person you’d like to knowSubscribe to our parenting newsletter.

• psycnet.apa.org

• Why We Need to Open Our Virtual Classroom Doors and See Each Other Teach – KATIE MARTIN

  I asked a group of teachers how they were feeling. At first one asked, do you really want to know? Yes, I responded, I really want to know how you are feeling. One teacher shared, It’s up and down like a roller coaster.

• G Suite Updates Blog: Google Meet attendance reports available now for education meetings

  Participant’s name Participant’s email Length of time a participant was on the call, including when they joined and exited Once a meeting is finished, you’ll receive an attendance report via email.

• Is it time to kill calculus? | Salon.com

• 10 Google Tips for Remote Learning | Shake Up Learning

  Remote learning has sent teachers and schools into high gear! We are all trying to figure out what works. In this post, I’m going This has never been done before, not like this, so cut yourself some slack. We are all learning together!

• Support Online Learning with Powerful Thinking Routines |

  Project Zero at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education has created a collection of Core Thinking Routines as part of their Visible Thinking Project. Teachers can view the entire collection on the Project Zero website, where each routine is described…

• Precision In Language – The Reflective Educator

  “Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on. “I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least-at least I mean what I say-that’s the same thing, you know.” “Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter.

• A Principal’s Reflections: High-Agency in the Remote and Hybrid Classroom

  Educators desperately want and need support. They need practical strategies that are not just effective but also can be developed in a reasonable amount of time.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Check out these blog posts from last week:

• Our Distance Learning Classroom FAQ Template

  Welcome, families, to another fantastic school year! Do you have questions about the technology in our classroom? Use this guide as a helpful resource. Print out and post the cheat sheet for quick reference. Contact me at any time if you have other …

• Games For Learning

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create, Share, and Collaborate on YouTube Playlists

  As the school year begins you might find yourself looking through a lot of YouTube videos that you’ll share with your students throughout the coming months. Creating playlists on is a great way to organize those videos and share them with your stude…

• How To Ensure Students Wear Masks And Socially Distance – Smart Classroom Management

  First off, whether and when schools open and under what conditions is a decision school districts will make. I’m not advocating one way or another. Here at SCM, we deal with what is in front of us.

• A simple exercise for (digital) parenting – NetFamilyNews.org

  This is inspired by all the families in Parenting for a Digital Future, the book I reviewed earlier this week (I also added this as a sidebar in that post for readers’ convenience).

• Case Study – Gluten

  This case study was created for distance learning and is a short exploration of how celiac disease affects the digestive system. This is not a long case, and should probably only take 20-30 minutes to complete. I plan to use it with breakout groups …

• How Social Emotional Learning Can Take Center Stage This Fall

  Let’s face it: this is not going to be a typical Back to School season. With the tumultuous events of COVID-19, economic issues, and antiracism efforts nationwide, students are coming back to us with questions and concerns that are weighing heavily …

• How Schools Are Taking SEL and Mental Health Online | EdTech Magazine

  CJ Reynolds, a ninth grade teacher and HMH ambassador, said in a press release about the report that educators are not only responsible for teaching — they must also help “nurture students’ minds, bodies and souls.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Journey Into the Deep Sea – Neat Nat Geo VR Experience

  Earlier this year I featured National Geographic’s fantastic playlist of 360 degree immersive videos that can be experienced with or without a virtual reality viewer. Recently, National Geographic added another excellent video to that collection. Th…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 50 National Geographic 360 Videos

  Watching 360 degree videos is probably my favorite thing to do with my Google Cardboard viewer. A lot of people don’t realize that a Cardboard viewer can be used for more than just Google Expeditions.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Direct Students to Videos Based on Answer Choices in Google Forms

  This morning I answered an email from a reader who wanted to know if there was an easy way to direct students to videos based on how they answered her quiz questions. My answer was to make the quiz in Google Forms and use the built-in answer feedbac…

• how-to-help-young-children-sleep-better-during-covid-19

  Most days, Jen Lamott would describe her daughter, Katie, as cheerful and kind. Lately, though, the 7-year-old has been acting moody and sometimes grunting instead of talking. “It’s like we have a teenager suddenly,” Lamott said.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Seven Zoom Tutorials to Watch Before School Starts

  As the new school year approaches I’ve been getting a lot questions about Zoom. I have published some tutorials on my YouTube channel that address most of those questions. Until this morning I haven’t put them all together in one place. Here are my …

• Tips For Parents Of Online Students – e-Learning Infographics

  Tips For Parents Of Online Students—Infographic Stay connected with the teacher Why wait for a parent-teacher conference? Connect with your child’s teacher by text, email, call, or video chat.

• Remake of 2.0 Session 4

• Reimagine Choice Boards

• Create a Community Quilt Google Classroom Banner – Mari Venturino

  Back to school is an exciting time! Back to school during a pandemic where we are teaching 100% online is exciting, but in a completely different way! As we head back to school, I am trying to find as many ways to connect with my students and build …

• 4 Ideas for Empowering Students During Remote Learning – George Couros

  In my newly released, self-paced course, “Developing the Innovator’s Mindset Through Remote, Face-to-Face, and Blended Learning,” I discuss the importance of empowering learners in any environment, online or offline.

• How to Run an EdCamp via Zoom – Copy / Paste by Peter Pappas

  I recently ran a edcamp style morning session for our incoming MATs at the University of Portland’s School of Education.

• Free Technology for Teachers: New Google Classroom and Google Meet Updates to Note

  This afternoon Google announced the launch of some helpful new Google Classroom features. Some of these were teased back in June. A couple of the new features will require some work by your domain administrator while others are available right now t…

• Video Conferencing: Establishing Routines and Structuring Online Time with Students |

  I had the pleasure of chatting with Linwood Paul, an executive coach, for an episode of my podcast, The Balance. In the final moments of our conversation, I asked him what advice he had for achieving a work-life balance at this moment when many of u…

• How to Make Virtual Meetings More Interactive for Students – John Spencer

  Video conferences can be exhausting. You might notice that students who are highly engaged during an in-person session suddenly disengage in a virtual meeting. Often, there are challenges with video lag or simply the inability to see the room entire…

• Google announces a ton of new tools and features to ease online education for everyone | Pocketnow

  Google has today kicked off its global The Anywhere School event, as part of which, the company has made a ton of announcements to make virtual education easier for students as well as teachers.

• Wearing a neck gaiter may be worse than no mask at all, researchers find | Boston.com

  As the number of novel coronavirus cases continues to rise nationwide, the recurring message from many public health experts and doctors has been simple: Wearing masks saves lives.

• HyperDocs Templates for Getting Started | HyperDocs

• (7) Cameras Be Damned | LinkedIn

• Strategies to Build Engaging Digital Lessons for High… | PBS Education

• Blended and Online Learning | Center for Teaching | Vanderbilt University

• 8 Easy and Fun Back-to-School Online Activities (Part 2) | Shake Up Learning

• How to create learning pathways – The MDN project | MDN

• List of Online Tools for Distance Science Learning (OpenSciEd & Inquiry Hub) | Science for All

  Teachers using OpenSciEd & Inquiry Hub materials have assembled a Google Sheet with a variety of online tools and how those tools might be used by science teachers during distance learning.

• #P4DF: The book about (digital) parenting – NetFamilyNews.org

  Family context eclipses screen time. If you get nothing else from the new book Parenting for a Digital Future, that one takeaway would help so many educators, policymakers, pediatricians and advocates trying to get “Internet safety” and “digital wel…

• Free Technology for Teachers: SciShow Kids Returns Next Week!

  A little over a year ago SciShow Kids, one of my favorite YouTube channels, announced a hiatus. I thought that was going to be then end of the channel. Much to my surprise this afternoon I saw an update from the channel announcing its return.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Explore the News Through Maps

  One of the things that I liked about the old version of CNN Student News is that it almost always included a map to show students where a story is taking place in the world. I tried to do the same whenever I taught current events by showing students…

• Here’s How I’m Setting-Up My iPhone As A Doc Cam | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The Internet is awash with ways teachers can turn their iPhone into a document camera. Here’s how I’ve done it – I can’t guarantee it’s the cheapest, but I would be surprised if anyone found an easier way.

• ‎Minecraft: Education Edition: Minecraft and Esports | Liminal’s Carrie Linden & Will Partin and Stephen Reid on Apple Podcasts

  Minecraft and Esports | Liminal’s Carrie Linden & Will Partin and Stephen Reid Minecraft: Education Edition

• Copy of Student TECHtorials – Google Sheets

• Ward’s World

• Free Technology for Teachers: All About Zoom Breakout Rooms

  Breakout rooms is one of the best features of Zoom. If you’re anticipating using Zoom this fall and you haven’t tried the breakout rooms function, you need to try it. Breakout rooms will let you create small group work environments within your Zoom …

• A Principal’s Reflections: Keeping Kids Engaged in Remote Learning

  With the pandemic not letting down in many places, schools are beginning to focus less on re-entry and more on starting the year with remote learning.

• cooperative-learning-practices

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are great blog posts from this past week:

• Zoom Teaching: How To Improve Learning, Attentiveness, And Self-Discipline – Smart Classroom Management

  How to be a good student—one’s physical and mental preparedness—is absolutely critical to academic success. Sadly, teaching these skills have been thrown into the dust bin alongside sentence diagramming and mathematical algorithms.

• Meet the Teacher Template – Teacher Reboot Camp

  This week is Meet the Teacher. I created a slideshow to guide the virtual meet-up with parents and students. I was really touched when my toddler looked at the slideshow and said, “I want to be in that classroom.

• Game-Based Learning: Preparing Students for The Future | EdSurge Guides

• Class of 2030: What do today’s kindergartners need to be life-ready? | Microsoft EDU

  • while automation replaces today’s lower-skill jobs – the fastest-growing occupations will require higher-level cognitive skills in areas such as collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity

• Heaven’Lee Slime: It’s about time for Heaven’Lee Slime! – Mindstream

  Everyone becomes a chemist when you create Slime! Heaven’Lee and the Triogrlsss will demonstrate how to mix, measure and create the perfect chemical reaction for a batch of gooey slime.

• Building Classroom Community – Google Slides

• Saturday’s Three Must-Read Articles & Must-Watch Videos On Reopening Schools In The Fall | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The Risk That Students Could Arrive at School With the Coronavirus is from The New York Times. These kids are getting left behind when schools go online is from CNN.

• Gamification Trends In 2020 – e-Learning Infographics

  Here is a list of 5 gamification trends in 2020, packed with tips and ideas you can use to engage your learners better. For each gamification trend, we have provided practical tips on how you can leverage it.

• TeachVid – Home: Teach languages with videos

  Create language learning content with interactive text reconstruction activities and quizzes based on short videos. Search for resources to use with your classes, or use our unique resource-creation tools to create your own TeachVid resource based o…

• APOD: 2020 July 31 – Mars 2020 from 5,000 Feet

  Explanation: On Thursday this snapshot from a small plane 5,000 feet above Florida’s Space Coast caught a rocket’s trail rising into the blue morning sky. It was July’s third launch of a mission from planet Earth bound for Mars.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Check the Accessibility of Your Google Slides

  Yesterday afternoon I saw someone on Twitter ask if there is a way to evaluate the accessibility of a slide presentation. My answer was to try Grackle Slides.

• The-Cell-Game.com

• 5 tools for remote learning with Chromebooks – Ditch That Textbook

  Schools have been making the transition to a reduced-paper learning environment. Students learning remotely need to have their work all in one place. Book Creator is an incredible resource for students to help organize their work and ideas and inter…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Phidgets – A Fun, Free, Hands-on Way to Learn Python, Java, and More

  Disclosure: Phidgets is an advertiser on this blog. As the new school year approaches Phidgets is one new thing that I’m excited to use with my students. Phidgets provide a fun, hands-on way for students to learn to program in Python, Java, C#, and …

• Improving Student Collaboration in Remote and Hybrid Learning – John Spencer

  In this latest article, we explore how to improve collaboration in distance learning by empowering students to own the collaborative process.

• Classroom Games and Tech – Ed-Tech to Engage and Inspire: Improved Google Sites Headings Using Slides

  Recently I saw a teacher ask online about better font options in Google Sites. Actually I have always appreciated the limited fonts in sites, so students don’t get “lost in fontland” looking for the perfect one among hundreds.

• What if we focused more on Reading Engagement and less on Reading Levels…especially with struggling readers? – Practice What You Teach

• Pear Deck

• TPACK in 2 Minutes – YouTube

• What are the 4Cs? – YouTube

• Home | InCtrl

• 142 distance learning tools

  Distance learning is more important (and common) now than ever before. And while it certainly brings a fair share of its own challenges for both students and teachers, it also has a number of benefits. For students, these tools are new and novel, so…

• A Better Plan for Fully Reopening Schools This Fall | Tech & Learning

  Districts around the country are sharing plans for the reopening of schools this fall. In many cases the plans are rather complex and impractical for working families.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Preparing for the Worst With Zoom, Dual Monitors, Microphones, and More

  In the last couple of weeks I’ve received a bunch of emails and Tweets from people who are panicking about going back to school and having to simultaneously teach students in their classrooms while also live-streaming and or recording their lessons …

• Google Meet Breakout Rooms – Enterprise Feature – Teacher Tech

  Breakout rooms are exciting because we should not be coming together to let one person do all the talking. The person doing the talking is the person doing the learning.

• Gutenberg

  From Project Gutenberg, the first producer of free eBooks. Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. You will find the world’s great literature here, with …

• Edutopia – essential-apps-physical-and-digital-classroom

  With face time at a premium, formative assessment is moving even more to the forefront of excellent teaching. As knowledge is forming, teachers need to review the data on student understanding so that they can make the most of face-to-face instructi…

• Classroom Activities to Start Your Online or Hybrid New Year Strong

  Katie Hull Synieski and I share a book excerpt offering ideas on building relationships as our online or hybrid school year begins, including question starters and

• Key SEL report from UNESCO, insights from youth in 6 countries – NetFamilyNews.org

  In what video panel discussion could you watch a high school student in Bhutan lead his peers in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Japan and South Africa, along with their adult moderator, in a mindfulness practice – after which you’d hear from a neur…

• 7 sites with ready to use lesson plans and 9 perfect primary source icebreakers | History Tech

  Today you get a two for one. I’ve got my quick favorites. SHEG. Library of Congress. National Archives. All can be adapted to a remote learning environment. But a few minutes of brainstorming and the list quickly grew.

• Educator who taught kids this summer outlines the reality of reopening schools – The Washington Post

  Some schools have now opened their doors for the start of the 2020-21 school year, and a new experiment in coronavirus education is beginning. Alcoa City Schools in Tennessee, for example, opened last week in a region with low infection rates on a s…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Historical Scene Investigations – A Great Way to Get Students to Use Primary Sources

  Historical Scene Investigation is one of my favorite resources for U.S. History teachers and students. I’ve used it and referred people to it for years. HSI presents students with historical cases to “crack” through the use of evidence found in the …

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Make a Digital Bookshelf in Google Slides

  This summer I’ve had more requests for book recommendations than I ever have in the nearly thirteen year history of this blog. I’ve also had a ton of requests for help making things like digital choice boards.

• How Not to Hijack Black Lives Matter | Psychology Today

  It’s hard for some Americans to understand the slogan, mantra, and heart behind, “Black Lives Matter” (BLM).

• #NGSSslowChat – Wakelet

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

• A Principal’s Reflections: Preparation for What Comes Next

  It is a stressful time for everyone. COVID-19 cases are increasing in many places, and social distancing measures are being extended. Through it all, there is anxiety and fear as it pertains to what comes next.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are more amazing posts all from last week:

• Stain Solutions | U of I Extension – Chemistry

  We have put together a comprehensive list of stain solutions. Each solution contains the supplies you will need and the preferred method for cleaning the stain. You can browse through the list below or use our search toolbar.

• Tools To Use For Students To Set Up Teacher Appointments | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Now that the state of California has decided most schools are beginning the year with distance learning, my mind is beginning to plan and to race… One question I’m dealing with is how to schedule students for virtual individual meetings.

• In-Person School Is Not Happening; Make Remote Learning Better

  There are few places in the US where the level of COVID-19 in the community is low enough to manage with the available testing and tracing capacity.  In those areas, it could actually be possible for schools to return to in-person teaching.

• Gina Bellafante: Schools Beat Plagues with Outdoor Education, Why Can’t We? | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  This is a terrific article that appeared in the New York Times by the regular city columnist Gina Bellafante. It is about how schools beat plagues in the early 20th century by opening outdoor classes.

• Practical Strategies for Flipping Our Classrooms this Fall with Kate Baker

  Blended learning and distance learning will be different this fall. Dig into flipping your classroom and how it looks when you teach effectively in an online classroom. How do you use video effectively? Get Credit! Some schools, districts, and organ…

• formative-assessment-distance-learning

  Focus on feedback: When checking for understanding, it’s important to communicate the feedback that comes from it. As a teacher, you can provide written and/or oral feedback through videos or sound recordings.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Lessons on the Chemistry of Coffee

  One of the things that I’ve missed the most over the last few months is going to my local coffee shop (Cafe Nomad) and having some of the excellent coffee that they brew. Try as I might, the coffee I brew at home just isn’t the same quality of what …

• CER – Data Analysis

  Many of my freshman students come to my class with only limited skills in graphing and data analysis. I spend time during the first chapter (scientific method) giving them practice with making graphs and analyzing data.

• Teach with Fortnite Creative Resources – Wakelet

• Endeavor RX, the First Prescription Video Game, Won’t Be the Last | Observer

  Late last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved the marketing for the first prescription video game to treat ADHD in children, a game titled Endeavor RX from Akili Interactive.

• Flatten Island – Manage the emergencia with your decisions!

• Esports in School – Where is the Learning Potential?

• Esport Notebook Preview

• Immersive Problem Solving with Esports

• STEM Esports Challenges | Minecraft: Education Edition

• Explore Esports with New Minecraft: Education Edition Lessons and Teaching Guide | Minecraft: Education Edition

• Digital Media, Resilience, and Well-Being

• Avoid magical thinking: ‘Design for online’ this fall | @mcleod | Dangerously Irrelevant

  As coronavirus cases continue to increase across the country, numerous school districts are reluctantly announcing that they will be doing ‘remote learning’ again this fall.

• What Teachers Want You to Know About Reopening Schools | by Sarah Gross | Jul, 2020 | Medium

  All over the country, schools are developing reopening plans. All over the country, teachers want nothing more than to go back to normal. But what happens when a teacher is asked to choose between their health and their livelihood?

• Yup. New ‘Blue Whale’ with a Momo-style twist – NetFamilyNews.org

  Here we are again. Remember “Blue Whale,” then “Momo”? Well, the B.W. challenge, or self-harm “game,” has been warmed over and repackaged with a new name and face with the creepiness of a Momo. This time it’s a weird, scary version of the cartoon ch…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ways to Make Whiteboard Instructional Videos in Your Web Browser

  Over the last few months I’ve written a bunch of blog posts and made a handful of videos on simple ways to make whiteboard instructional videos in your web browser. These have been popular, in part, because this style of video can be made using tool…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 500+ Icebreaker Questions

  Believe it or not we’re closer to the start of the new school year than we are to the end of the last one. Whether we’re going back into our physical classrooms or staying in an online environment, we’re going to need to get to know our new students…

• What These 6 Food Cravings Really Mean, According to an RD | Nutrition | MyFitnessPal

• Learning, Leading and Reflecting: You should read: No More Telling As Teaching

  Direct instruction or lecturing have always played a significant role in classrooms, but is it really the best way to engage students in the content? No More Telling As Teaching does not demonize lecturing like the title may imply.

• 10 Jamboard templates for distance learning – Ditch That Textbook

  This post has 10 engaging ideas for using Jamboard in your class that will get your students working together, even though they may not be face to face. This post is written by Kris Szajner, a tech integration specialist and former kindergarten teac…

• You need this simple Google Doc of Social Studies skills goodness (and maybe this huge doc of competencies) | History Tech

  We are one day away from the release of the Kansas State Department of Education’s Navigating Change document. The document is currently in the hands of the state board of education for final approval and if they sign off on it, then we’ll all final…

• Engaging Writing Prompts and a Platform for Publishing Student Work

  Write About is a “classroom writing community and publishing platform.” What makes it a powerful EdTech tool is a combination of engaging writing prompts and a flexible platform for publishing student work.

• Fortnite Creative Mode Rube Goldberg Machines – YouTube

• HistoryMaker VR | HistoryMaker VR | Schell Games

• Plasma Games

• Homepage – Hair Trigger

• Free Technology for Teachers: Doozy – Create and Play Fun and Educational Quiz Games

  Doozy is a neat service for creating online quiz games that you can share with anyone and they can play without having to register for an account. The quiz games that you create on Doozy can be multiple choice or short answer questions.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Book Creator Adds New Options for Copying and Re-using Pages

  Book Creator is one of my go-to tools for making ebooks and digital portfolios. In fact, I like it so much that it’s one of the featured tools in my Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. And now there is a new feature that makes Book Creator better…

• Wednesday’s “Must-Read” Articles About School Reopening | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Most Big School Districts Aren’t Ready to Reopen. Here’s Why. is from The NY Times. Israeli Data Show School Openings Were a Disaster That Wiped Out Lockdown Gains is from The Daily Beast.

• Fabricius by Google Arts & Culture

  A tool using the power of AI to help decode ancient languages

• 302 Found

  Historian and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois also discovered his blackness — and its undesirability — at school.

• Library Journal

• Home | TGR EDU Explore

  Learn how you can improve your instructional strategies and engage your students straight from the experts.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Updated and Easier Way to Schedule Events in Google Calendar

  This morning Google announced a small but helpful change to Google Calendar. The web browser version of Google Calendar will now present you with more options when you initially schedule an event on your calendar.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Anonymous Users Blocked from Google Meet in G Suite EDU

  A couple of weeks ago Google announced that seven new features would be added to Google Meet over the coming months. According to an announcement on the G Suite Updates Blog the first of those started to roll out today.

• 3 Types of Learning Crucial for Educators – George Couros

  These three ideas are something that I believe schools should be intentional about in their practice, as it is beneficial to learning now and in the future. “The classroom as a whole is always way smarter than the teacher as an individual.

• Learning is Feedback: And how to do it online – Joel Speranza

  Let’s imagine you walk into a class of 25 students and begin teaching. You are about to receive ALOT of feedback. The moment you finish that sentence, you’ll be receiving feedback. It’s in the student’s eyes.

• 5 reasons why online learning is a crucial part of education

  Education technology refers to a range of technology, programmes and software that are used to facilitate learning.

• Dynamic Learning v. Static Learning (DO THIS, NOT THAT) | Shake Up Learning

  Do This, Not That! Here’s a handy infographic to help you see ways to create more dynamic learning experiences!

• GitHub – QuirkyCort/gears: Generic Educational Robotics Simulator

  Generic Educational Robotics Simulator. Contribute to QuirkyCort/gears development by creating an account on GitHub.

• Robot Virtual Worlds | ROBOTC | VEX & NXT Simulator

  The Virtual Brick for MINDSTORMS is a tool designed to help educators teach mathematics, computational thinking skills, and programming through simulation. The Virtual Brick is compatible with the NXT-G, EV3, and LabVIEW for LEGO Mindstorms programm…

• GearsBot

  GearsBot ▶ World Reset

• Today’s Four Articles About School Reopening That Are Worth Your Time | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The media blitz about school reopening continues. Here are four from the past twenty-four hours that are worth a read.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Purchasing Devices Does Not Equate to Learning

  The COVID19 pandemic unearthed many harsh realities for education across the globe. One of the more glaring issues was the vast digital divide that still exists in many places, especially the United States.

• Four Pandemic Resources Useful For When We’re Teaching About It | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  How 2020 Remapped Your Worlds is from Bloomberg and is a good lesson idea – have students draw maps of how “their” world looks right now.

• Full Sail Science: The Twitch Inspired Classroom

  I’ve been streaming on Twitch for almost a year now. The experience has been amazing. My online connections to wonderful people has expanded and strengthened. I had several goals when starting the journey as a streamer. One was to improve my practic…

• If the coronavirus is really airborne, we might be fighting it the wrong way | MIT Technology Review

  Airborne transmission would mean there are certain solutions we really need to focus on.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are more great blog posts in case you missed them last week:

• A Better Fall Is Possible – The Atlantic

  States with low rates of the virus are in a position to reopen their schools this September—but they should do so very carefully, and with a focus on younger kids. The sirens have quieted in New York City.

• No One Wins, But No One Dies: What School Must Look Like in Fall of 2020 | The Suitcase Scholar

• Jack Schneider: Why Study History? | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Jack Schneider is a historian of education and a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. He wrote this essay at my request. Why study history? It’s a legitimate question during times like these, when the future seems so uncertain.

• But How Do We Build Community? Ideas for Virtual and Hybrid Learning – Pernille Ripp

  While my district has yet to release its plan for the fall here in Wisconsin, things are not looking so good.

• How To Thrive During The Upcoming Covid-19 School Year – Smart Classroom Management

  Ready or not, it looks like most of us will be teaching on campus next month. What that will look like is still up in the air. There are many more questions to be answered and policies to be ironed out—and probably will be up until the first day of …

• Cliff Mass Weather Blog: Watching Comet Neowise at 3:30 AM

  I got up at 3 AM this morning to view COMET Neowise. The COMET had passed the sun on July 3, getting as close as 27 million miles, and is now moving back out into the solar system. Its orbital period, the time to complete a loop from near the sun to…

• Equity versus Equality (Triple Participation) – CES 101 Fall 2018

• ‘Outdoors Act’ would repair national parks, protect land and address recreation needs | Puget Sound Institute

  It appears that the political stars are lining up for what some people are calling the most significant environmental legislation in decades. Billions of dollars have been laid upon the table for parks, recreation facilities and environmentally sens…

• FREE Chapter: Toward More Equitable Learning in Science | Science Education for Antiracism

  The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) currently has a FREE chapter from the book Helping Student Make Sense of the World using Next Generation Science & Engineering Practices. This book is a compilation of chapters from multiple authors.

• Digital Learning: Best Practices for Educators – Educating Through Crisis

• Optimizing Concurrent Classrooms: Teaching Students In The Room And Online Simultaneously

  As students head back to campus, teachers face an unprecedented challenge: managing students in the room and online in the same class at the same time. Four teaching practices can elevate student experiences and outcomes in the “concurrent classroom…

• Learn How to Teach Online with This Free Course

  Do you need help in learning how to teach online? Here’s a free 3-hour course, Launching Online Learning, to get you started. Advancement Courses is a sponsor of my blog and podcast. They also shared in the 10 Essential Online Learning Best Practice…

• Using tradebooks to make your life easier and your students smarter | History Tech

  Long time readers know how much I love maps. I don’t really know for sure when the infatuation started but Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton may have had something to do with it.

• Khan Academy and the Features You Might Have Missed – Class Tech Tips

  I’m not sure when I really came across Khan Academy for the first time. In many ways it seems like it has been around forever, at least where conversations on EdTech integration, video tutorials, and flipped learning is concerned.

• 8 Ideas Designed to Engage Students In Active Learning Online |

  I’ve spent the last four months working with teachers all over the country (virtually, of course) as they navigate the uncharted waters of online and blended learning. The majority of teachers I have spoken with did not enjoy their initial experienc…

• How to Use Fortnite in the Classroom @coolcatteacher

• Upcoming Virtual Races at Virtual Strides

  Original Race Period: Oct. 1 – 31, 2017*** Medals Are Still Available! ***Distances: 5k, 10k, Half MarathonCost: $25 during early registration; Then $29FREE Shipping!To Benefit: The Bone Marrow Foundation Register Now!

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Know Your Core 4 for Online Learning

  · 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…

• STEAM Scope and Sequence – Classroom Snapshots

  I teach elementary STEAM, as a specialist.  Students in Kindergarten – 5th Grade visit the STEAM Makerspace for 60 minutes, once a week.  I also see 4-year-old Kindergartners for 30 minutes a week.

• Funding Your STEAM Program – Classroom Snapshots

  Starting your STEAM program from scratch?  I was in your position when our program was started. While outfitting your program can seem like a daunting task — it is doable.

• 5 Things You Might Not Know About Adobe Spark – Class Tech Tips

  Have you used Adobe Spark with your students? If you’re passionate about creativity in the classroom, you’ve probably heard of the Spark tools. They make movie-making, website creation, and graphic design possible for students.

• How We Began Online Learning Successfully @coolcatteacher

  As we began distance learning, I started writing and reflecting. I wrote this piece back in March as this began and in the hustle and bustle, I didn’t publish it. I just forgot it was there.

• 42 Distance Learning and Inspiring Resources for Educators @coolcatteacher

  Note that I shared these last week in my newsletter. I always share my best items and a personal note of encouragement each week in the newsletter. Go to https://ift.tt/3f8kNwG to sign up. In 2017, Forbes named Vicki the number 2 edupreneur in the U…

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: A Feedback Loop with Floop

  In my live classroom, when students encounter a new concept, I check homework for completion and provide feedback (correct answers, worked solutions, answers to their questions) in real time. In my remote pandemic classroom, this was something I let…

• The Wonder of Science

• How To Launch An Esports Team During COVID-19 • Teched Up Teacher

• NGSS science promotes phenomena-based learning

• Adapting Middle and High School Science Lessons for Distance Learning | Edutopia

• Genially, the tool for bringing your content to life

• mobile.twitter.com

  So, I had not heard a single plan for reopening schools that addresses the realities of both parents and teachers and also keeps kids safe. Until today. It is FAR from ideal, but it sounds to me like it COULD work and we could start planning for tod…

• Read to Lead | 21st Century Literacy Games and Curriculum

  Your students are about to discover that SIGN UP FOR FREE LOG IN SIGN UP FOR FREE LOG IN arrow_downward arrow_upward 3 digital learning games in careers relevant to students (450 minutes of reading time!) 180,000 potential words read per student (eq…

• How to Weave in Backstory Without Stalling Out Your Story

  Please welcome back Tiffany Yates Martin to Writer Unboxed today! Tiffany has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and bestselling authors as well as newer writers.

• GameChangineer Login

  GAMECHANGINEER Create, Plan, Write, Play, and Learn. Unleash the Power of English to Computational Thinking and Programming… …Discover the Logic and Critical Thinking Behind Popular Games.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Alternatives to Smore

  Over the weekend I answered an email from a reader who was looking for an alternative to using Smore to create online posters and newsletters to share with teachers and parents. Smore is great for some people, but it can get a little too pricey for …

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: #CampYouTube for Summertime Activities for Youth

  In many places traditional summer camp is not in session, but that doesn’t mean that summertime activities have to stop completely. YouTube is bringing #CampYouTube to everyone this summer.

• 9 Ways Online Teaching Should be Different from Face-to-Face | Cult of Pedagogy

  It’s a pretty safe bet that most teachers will be doing some form of online teaching in the coming year. Maybe you’ll do it full-time, maybe it will be some kind of hybrid model, but one thing is for sure: This time around you won’t be dropped into …

• educate.bankstreet.edu

• We can fix the climate as we reboot the economy – here’s how | New Scientist

  The drop in carbon emissions due to coronavirus lockdowns won’t last. But as we rebuild, we have a unique opportunity to make the structural changes required to hit net-zero targets, says Corinne Le Quéré

• The Nature of Games — University XP

  What is a game? What makes a game? Games have been part of human history for many years. But do we even know what we are playing? What makes them fun, interesting, unique, and engaging? What’s in a game? (a name)

• Control Alt Achieve: New Pear Deck Critical Thinking Templates for Google Slides

  Pear Deck is an awesome add-on for Google Slides that lets you add interactive elements to your presentations including multiple choice, text entry, numeric entry, drawing, and draggable activities. Now Pear Deck has added a whole new set of slide t…

• Remotely: Push Slides to Students Slides – Teacher Tech

  Using Google Slides for Remote Learning is a great idea!! I have seen a ton of people posting choice boards and agendas using Google Slides. You can create ONE Google Slides and share the link to that. Update your Slides (new ones at the TOP) and au…

• Scheduling the COVID-19 School Year

  Five days a week, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. That traditional school day-so coveted now for its normalcy and essential contribution to how our families, communities, and economy function-probably won’t make a full comeback this fall.

• Is it safe to send kids back to school? | MIT Technology Review

  It might depend on the answer to these three questions.

• Teachers Are Living in a Tinderbox of Stressful Conditions. These Scientific Approaches Can Help. | EdSurge News

• A Principal’s Reflections: Don’t Forget About Educator Safety When Reopening Schools

  We are all in the midst of some very challenging times, regardless of our profession. When it comes to education, schools are grappling with reopening safely here in the United States. There are no easy answers or choices here.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

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

• Student File Bookshelf – A template created by Tanya Price | SlidesMania

  Tanya loved the File Cabinets and Mangai’s vault of options but neither were enough for the number of students she usually has. So she created a bookshelf with 26 slots.

• Free Edu Digital Planner made with Google Slides with hyperlinks – From July to July | SlidesMania

  By popular demand, this time, I started the week view on Monday, and even though a lot of people voted for it to go from August to July, a lot of teachers teach all year round, and their calendar starts on July, so many gave me the idea to make it a…

• Classroom Games and Tech – Ed-Tech to Engage and Inspire: Back-to-School Classroom Game – Say Whaaat?!

  Don’t actually click the Present button to show the first slide to the class. You have to be able to drag words around, so it can’t be in Presentation Mode. Choose one student to be the Judge. Or you can be the Judge the first time if you like.

• Free Technology for Teachers: 7 New Google Meet Features for Teachers

  In a move that clearly is an attempt to match the functionality of Zoom and Microsoft Teams, Google has announced some new features that will soon be coming to Google Meet for G Suite for Education users.

• How schools and teachers can combat systemic racism

  Evidence of systemic racism in American society and the education system persists in schools even in progressive cities such as New York and Chicago, where “Black and brown” students are still too often labeled as underperforming, says Gholdy Muhamm…

• Upshot

  Public schools are increasingly filled with black and Hispanic students, but the children identified as “gifted” in those schools are overwhelmingly white and Asian. The numbers are startling.

• We Cannot Reform Prisons without Reforming Education! – EdLANTA

  Many Metro Atlanta school districts are returning back to school on today. But how many of these schools will actually decrease the number of Black students impacted by bias in policies designed to throw them into the school to prison pipeline?

• Gifted and Talented Programs Separate Students by Race – The Atlantic

  The segregation of America’s public schools is a perpetual newsmaker. The fact that not even 1 percent of the incoming freshman class identifies as black at New York City’s elite Stuyvesant High School made national headlines last month. And New Yor…

• NGSS Phenomenon — The Wonder of Science

• Five New Resources For Teaching About Racist Monuments | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Protests target Spanish colonial statues that ‘celebrate genocide’ in US west is from The Guardian. What persuades white Southerners to remove Confederate flags and monuments? is from The Washington Post.

• New TED-Ed Video & Lesson: “First person vs. Second person vs. Third person” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  This new TED-Ed video and lesson is a decent tool to use with students when teaching the difference between first, second and third person:

• Mixiply

• Guardian Adventures Training Center

  Guardian Adventures has created immersive, exciting, and interactive programming for your organization that provides everything you will need to host your summer camp, afterschool, or recreation programs completely online – any time during the year.

• Turing Tumble Educator Guide 1_0.pdf

• Education – Turing Tumble – Build Marble-Powered Computers

• jstumble

• Tumble Together

• Using MOUSE TRAP Game to Explore Force and Energy – Mensa for Kids

• Welcome to the MLAB – YouTube

  tags:vr industry

• The Oregon Trail

• State officials scramble to protect streams and wetlands in wake of federal rule | Puget Sound Institute

  Federal protections for millions of small streams and wetlands across the country were eliminated on Monday, following an unsuccessful legal effort to block new regulations that redefine “waters of the United States.

• Which Way Does Electricity Flow?

• Turing Tumble Simulator

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: Always Wear Protection: A Quest to Convince People to Wear Masks

  When you go to college in the middle of nowhere, you probably attend the programs in your residence hall, especially if you are a freshman, because there isn’t really much else to do. So it was that I ended up at a program about AIDS awareness in th…

• Debunking PBIS myths: Why does PBIS work?

  One of the reasons it can be so difficult to get a PBIS initiative off the ground or get buy-in from your staff is the assortment of myths surrounding PBIS. Certain fundamental aspects of PBIS are misunderstood, and this affects the way it’s perceiv…

• Visual organizer platform with circles | CirclyApp

  Sign up for free! Create with our revolutionary simple and intuitive interface Alone or in a team, it is easy and quick to sketch stylish lists about your tasks, ideas, projects, leads and customers with circles. The drag and drop based canvas of Ci…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Video: The Solar System to Scale

  I guess I’ve been a bit of a space kick lately as over the weekend I shared an augmented reality app about spacecraft and yesterday I featured the NASA selfies app. This morning I found an interesting video about creating a true-to-scale model of th…

• Jesse Hagopian: Why Seattle Educators Demand Cut to Police Budget | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Jesse Hagopian is a high school teacher and social justice activist in Seattle. He has been a leading force on behalf of Black Lives Matter Movement. He wrote this opinion article for the Seattle Times to explain why Seattle educators want money red…

• Live from NCCE Archive: “Coding with MakeCode in Minecraft Education Edition” – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog

  Dr. Jason Neiffer is the NCCE Tech-Savvy Administrator in Residence. Jason is the first Assistant Director/Curriculum Director of the Montana Digital Academy, Montana’s public state virtual school.

• Equity & Diversity Resources Pt. 1 | Science for All

  I know that a lot of educators are digging into books on equity and diversity this summer. Here are a few resources that have been key in my personal journey as a white male looking to become more culturally aware, equity-focused, and anti-racist. I…

• How To Introduce Gamification (or anything new, really) • Teched Up Teacher

  Introducing change like a new idea, routine, or workflow to anyone can be difficult. Introducing gamification to students is no different. I remember when I started gamifying seven-ish years ago, introducing gamification was actually harder than cre…

• Lumen: City Challenge in Minecraft Marketplace | Minecraft

• June’s Quest of the Month: Preparing for middle school – Classcraft Blog

  Your students have navigated through the perils of elementary school, kept learning during a pandemic, and finished their school year … virtually! … now their next great adventure awaits! But are they ready to venture to … middle school?!?

• Virtual Charter Industry Expecting Big Growth and Profits Due to Pandemic | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  The virtual charter industry is anticipating growth in enrollments and profits, thanks to the pandemic. The largest of the virtual charters is the K12 Inc. virtual charter chain, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, whose revenues exceeded $1 bill…

• Free Technology for Teachers: NASA Selfies – Put Yourself in Space and Learn a Bit About It

  NASA Selfies is a fun and free app for “taking a selfie in space.” What it really does is just put your face into the helmet of a space suit that is floating in space. You can pick the background for your space selfie. Backgrounds are provided from …

• Video: “Who Is Responsible For Climate Change? – Who Needs To Fix It?” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  I’m adding this new video to The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change. You can see all the data appearing in the video here.

• It was 100ºF in Siberia This Weekend — The Adventure Blog

  At this point, I think it is safe to say that 2020 is working hard at becoming one of the worst years in human history.

• talking-math-with-tweens-how-to-bring-math-into-daily-life-with-middle-schoolers

  Is a dump truck a vehicle? What about a skateboard? An elevator? A hamster wheel? These are some of the questions math educator Christopher Danielson has asked — or been asked — while playing a reasoning game he calls “Is It or Not?” The game began …

• Coronavirus trends – Yummy Math

  Johns Hopkins University of Medicine has a team that maintains current maps and data about the Coronavirus.  They record changes and show trends of the virus activity throughout the World. Enjoy exploring the data, all of the visual mappings, and th…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Spacecraft AR – Explore NASA Spacecraft With Augmented Reality

  Spacecraft AR is a free iPad and Android app offered by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The app enables students to learn about various NASA spacecraft including the Curiosity rover, Voyager, Mars Exploration Rover, and a handful of other spacecra…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Story Spheres – Create Audio Tours of Immersive Imagery

  Story Spheres is a free tool for adding audio to 360 degree images that you own or have the rights to re-use (Creative Commons licensed or public domain). With Story Spheres you can add audio narration and ambient audio to your 360 images.

• How PBL Gets All Kids in the Game | Mike Kaechele

  School is a game with official “rules” for how to play: Show up every day. Do all of your work (even if it is mindless, busy work). Test well (this is the ultimate part of the game where we decide the “winners”). Figure out what each teacher wants a…

• Backward Design: The Basics | Cult of Pedagogy

  In their book Understanding by Design, which was originally published in 1998, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced us to backward design, an approach to instructional planning that starts with the end goal, then works backward from there. Here …

• It’s Not Children’s Education We Should Worry About, It’s Their Mental Health

  The decision on when to re-open schools has become one of the most hotly contested issues around easing the coronavirus lockdown. But while the debate has largely focused on the loss to children’s education while schools have been shut, a bigger con…

• Station Rotation in an Era of Social Distancing |

  Teachers are preparing for an uncertain future. Many are unsure if they will be returning to school on a traditional schedule, a blended learning schedule, or completely online.

• The beginning of the end of our obsession with standardized tests – The Washington Post

  America has been obsessed with student standardized tests for nearly 20 years. Now it looks like the country is at the beginning of the end of our high-stakes testing mania — both for K-12 “accountability” purposes and in college admissions. When Pr…

• A Principal’s Reflections: Moving to a Hybrid Learning Model

  We don’t know for sure what education will look like in the future, but one thing is for sure, and that is the need to adapt and evolve. The pandemic shuttered schools across the globe, and lessons, some of which were very hard, were learned.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

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

• The Best Thing You can Do Now to Prepare Next Years’ Students for the Flipped Classroom! – Flipped Learning Simplified

  One of the most important things to do as you flip a class is to get student buy-in.  Students need to see how the flipped classroom benefits them.  They also need to know how to operate in a flipped classroom.

• flipped-classroom

  Video lectures at home? Homework in class? Welcome to a new world of active learning where teachers can be there when students need them.

• Planning for Effective Online Learning Takes Months Not Days. Let’s Get Started – Flipped Learning Review Editors Features May 20 %Flipped Learning Review

   – Dan Jones – For so long, the idea of creating digital lessons, learning new computer programs, or looking at new methods of instruction was put on hold because we were comfortable doing what we had always done, and if it isn’t broken, why fix it?…

• Homepage – Flipped Learning ReviewFlipped Learning Review

  On Monday, April 16, 2018 The Flipped Learning Global Initiative (FLGI) will publish the 2018… –  by Dan Jones – Our classroom is a sacred space. We can decorate our classroom, structure…

• Texas A&M Study: Face Masks Critical In Preventing Spread Of COVID-19 – Texas A&M Today

  A study by a team of researchers led by a Texas A&M University professor has found that not wearing a face mask dramatically increases a person’s chances of being infected by the COVID-19 virus. Renyi Zhang, Texas A&M Distinguished Professor of Atmo…

• How Systemic Racism Infiltrates Education | Ben & Jerry’s

  Go to school, do well, get into college, and you’re on your way to a good job and a happy life. You put in the work, and you’ll be rewarded. That’s the promise of education. Sounds great. Like it should be true.

• Remote teaching resources – my best tips and ideas on one page

  The Coronavirus is impact schools across the world.

• Youth in Quarantine: How prolonged school closures may affect young students – Marin Independent Journal

  Editor’s note: This is the second in our new series Youth in Quarantine, which elevates the voices of Marin’s youth. Samantha Parr is a reporter for the Jolly Roger, Drake High School’s newspaper, and a sophomore.

• Reopen schools with a ‘golden age of play’ (opinion) – CNN

  William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg are co-authors of “Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save our Schools and Help Children Thrive.” They are the fathers of children in public schools in New York and Sydney, respectively, and are founding member…

• Federal Appeals Court Rules: No Right to Education | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  A federal appeals court overturned a landmark ruling that affirmed the right to an education. Education is necessary for full citizenship, so voters can be fully informed. However the appeals court did not agree. In April, a 3-judge panel of the U.S.

• Flipped Classroom 101 | Edutopia

• Innovating in the classroom with real-time tools – Unreal Engine

• The Flipped Classroom – Education Next : Education Next

• What blended learning is – and isn’t – Blended Learning Universe

• Free Technology for Teachers: The Smithsonian’s National Zoo’s Activities You Can Do at Home

  My daughters are currently obsessed with a book titled On the Loose in Washington D.C. It’s a book created in the “Where’s Waldo” style, but instead of having to find Waldo you have to find animals.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Canva Now Has a Desktop App for Windows and Mac

  Canva is a tool that I use almost daily for everything from creating YouTube thumbnails to designing full presentations like the one that I’m giving this afternoon. And as I wrote earlier this year, there are at least ten good ways to use Canva in y…

• Protests are as American as . . . well, America. And, sadly, so is racism. Resources for teaching about both | History Tech

  Let’s be clear. I really have no idea what I’m talking about.

• It’s a Hoax! Teach Critical Thinking and Analysis Through Online Hoaxes – Creating Lifelong Learners

  What follows are three of my favorite hoax links, shared in a Google Workshop for Educators.  Use these to teach students that not everything posted on the internet is true.

• 3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive | Cult of Pedagogy

• Confronting Bias in Schools: Classroom Conversations on Race, Ethnicity, and Identity, American Educator, Fall 2019, Vol. 43, No. 3, AFT

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Free iPad Apps for Learning Programming Basics

  An iPad isn’t the ideal device for practicing coding and programming principles. I prefer to have students use a full-size Windows or Mac computer as they can split their screens to see lessons and practice in side-by-side windows.

• Live from NCCE Archive: “Using Minecraft Education Edition Build Challenges to Connect with Students During Remote Learning” – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog

  Dr. Jason Neiffer is the NCCE Tech-Savvy Administrator in Residence. Jason is the first Assistant Director/Curriculum Director of the Montana Digital Academy, Montana’s public state virtual school.

• Enigma machine / Tom MacWright / Observable

• List of Ciphers

• Pigpen Cipher (online tool) | Boxentriq

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: 3 Reflections and Considerations For Teaching and Learning In 2020

  In March 2020 nearly the entire world’s education systems were thrown into the unknown when the COVID-19 Global Pandemic shuttered schools and teaching and learning moved to remote means. Still to this day in many parts of the world schools are shut…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Sharing vs. Publishing Google Docs

  I have published more than 1,000 tutorials on my YouTube channel over the last ten years. Some of those videos feature older versions of tools that many of us every day.

• The Ultimate Guide to Copyright, Creative Commons, and Fair Use for Teachers, Students, and Bloggers

• Free Technology for Teachers: Create Virtual Class Pictures With Pixton EDU

  As the school year winds down those of us who still have classes in June may be looking for some ways to replicate our typical end-of-year activities. One of those activities could be a class photograph.

• Carbon Dioxide Levels Hit New High Despite Coronavirus Lockdowns — The Adventure Blog

  Over the past few months, while we have been in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown, there have been a number of stories about how the Earth has been benefiting from reduce human activity.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Acoustic Atlas – Sounds of the Wild West

  Acoustic Atlas is a Montana State University Library project that features an ArcGIS Storymap. The Acoustic Atlas storymap is an audio and visual tour of Montana’s four ecosystems. As you scroll through Acoustic Atlas you will see read text and see …

• A Principal’s Reflections: Are Schools Ready for What Comes Next?

  At the beginning of 2020, no one could have foreseen the impact of the pandemic. In the face of a myriad of obstacles, educators have stepped up to implement remote learning to get through the remainder of the academic year.

• when-teachers-choose-to-escalate

  Let’s look at a scenario that I think we will all find familiar (I, for one, am guilty of this choice). A student, let’s call him Mike, comes to class agitated.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: 5 Tools for Virtual Yearbook Signing – All Free!

  Virtual yearbook signing provides a great way for students to have those they care about from near and far share kind, inspiring, and important memories that marked their year. There are several ways to create a way to sign a personalized virtual ye…

• beyond-protests-5-more-ways-to-channel-anger-into-action-to-fight-racism

  Protests against the violent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others are emboldening and expanding the movement to fight racism. But to make progress, many of us may need to adjust our thinking — and our actions.

• Core Open Alpha: Create and Play for Free Now

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

More amazing blog posts from this week on current topics and needs:

• Free Technology for Teachers: Milanote Offers Nice Templates for Creating Multimedia Storyboards

  Milanote is a neat tool that I like to think of as being part storyboarding tool, part bookmarking tool, and part task management tool. For this post I’ll focus on the storyboarding aspect of Milanote. Milanote offers dozens of templates for making …

• Learning from Home – Teaching Matters

  Copyright Teaching Matters, Inc. Our subject-specific experts partner directly with teachers, teacher leaders and school leaders to develop deeper content knowledge and master instructional strategies that lead to better student outcomes.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Norms in the Online Classroom

  · 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…

• State Of California Releases School ReOpening Guidelines – It’s Going To Be A Hell Of A Fall | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The State of California just released school re-opening guidelines. Of course, the state is also cutting the education budget by 10-13%.

• Automatically Remove Background from Image – PhotoScissors

  PhotoScissors interactive cutout tool for foreground segmentation enables new smart ways of removing backgrounds from still images. Go to our Tutorials page and see for yourself how easy it is for anyone to do with just a few simple steps.

• Hornets, crabs and rodents: setting traps to locate and contain invasive species | Puget Sound Institute

  While media reports were raising alarms about an invasion of dangerous “murder hornets,” Washington state entomologists were quietly planning a trapping program, which will mark the beginning of a search-and-destroy mission against the Asian giant h…

• I Know Schools Are Facing A Budget Crisis, But It’s A Huge Mistake To Not Have Summer School For Our Most Vulnerable Students | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  As I’ve written earlier, I think most students are going to be fine despite missing the last two or so months of school (see I’M NOT CONVINCED THAT STUDENT LEARNING LOSSES THIS YEAR ARE TRAUMATIC, BUT THEY WILL BE BAD IF WE’RE ONLINE NEXT YEAR).

• If all we offer is uninspiring learning, we’re in trouble | @mcleod | Dangerously Irrelevant

  What about learning? Yes, that’s a reason too… for some. But engagement data show that many/most of our students are not coming to school because their learning is engaging.

• how-nyc-students-and-teachers-are-making-sense-of-george-floyds-killing

  Teachers are creating space for students to talk about protests, anti-Black racism and police violence. They’re also holding space for those who don’t understand Black Lives Matter.

• Classroom Games and Tech – Ed-Tech to Engage and Inspire: 3 Tips for Getting Started With Game Design

  These videos were already shared in previous posts from my game design club series, but I wanted to get them in them one place. (I compiled some related interviews in this post.) My goal with these videos was to concisely state three tips that would…

• Getting Ready to Teach in K-12 Schools Next Year | Edutopia

  • their first foray into online learning raised issues about pacing, structure, and the lack of interactivity and rigor, and the sometimes confusing plethora of communication and instructional channels (Google Classroom, Zoom, YouTube, email, and various apps). Most found the largely asynchronous nature of learning a “lonely” experience.
  • Technology alone cannot make learning engaging, so in developing online systems, schools will need to map out their curricula, ensure articulation and complementarity between face-to-face and online learning, and intentionally design for both these environments, seeking a balance
  • “High touch” learning: involving more collaborative activities and synchronous interaction with teachers and classmates.
  • Greater interactivity: games, web-based simulations, and interactive videos—and fewer worksheets.
  • Personalized learning: a range of activities that address students’ skills, abilities, interests, and home situations—from choice boards to personalized learning pathways to individual projects.
  • More challenging activities: projects and activities that address real-world challenges and involve students creating versus simply consuming information.
  • • Direct instruction: transmitting information about concepts, skills, and procedures via demonstrations, lectures, screencasts, videos, or online presentations.
    • Cognitive models of learning: structured activities that don’t just put information in students’ heads but get knowledge out—inductive reasoning, open-ended questioning, experiments, metacognitive strategies, and problem-solving.
    • Social models of learning: collaborative instructional methods we can still use in online learning—jigsaw approaches, reciprocal teaching, discussions, debates, and peer tutoring
  • one of the most important things we can do is prepare our students to be successful online learners.
  • Personal characteristics related to successful online learning: motivation, time management, digital citizenship, persistence, self-regulation skills, and help seeking.
  • Parents and guardians who don’t speak English and those who lack digital skills, who cannot assist teachers with home instruction, or whose homes may not be conducive to learning online will need additional assistance.

• how-teachers-and-schools-can-help-when-bad-stuff-happens

  “I would recommend that they address issues from the beginning. Talk to the students about: You know, we’ve all been through a difficult experience. I know that some of you may have lost your home. Some of you been in a shelter and been in very unus…

• QuizWhizzer – Fun, gamified quiz races

• Interactive Worksheets | Wizer.me

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Anti-Racism Lessons & Videos

  Educators who want to engage with students about the death of George Floyd and racism in America, may find helpful these resources compiled by The New York City Department of Education.

• Classroom Games and Tech – Ed-Tech to Engage and Inspire: How to Start Making Games – Advice from Game Designers – Spring 2020

  I already shared three of these four short videos in other posts, but I wanted to collect them in one. The past two months I ran a virtual game design club for middle school students and I interviewed two of my friends. (All posts in this series can…

• Sacramento County Office Of Education Releases Fall Re-Opening Guidelines, Apparently Without Talking To Unions? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  The Sacramento County Office of Education today released their guidelines for re-opening schools in the fall. You can read about it at the Sacramento Bee article, Sports canceled. Students in masks. Sacramento health officials urge big changes for s…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: 30 Sites/Apps for Digital Storytelling

  Digital Storytelling is the process of telling a story through the use of digital means.  Also, it happens to be one the easiest ways to int…

• Music Synchronizes the Brains of Performers and Their Audience – Scientific American

  When a concert opens with a refrain from your favorite song, you are swept up in the music, happily tapping to the beat and swaying with the melody. All around you, people revel in the same familiar music.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Make Short Audio Recordings – No Accounts Required

  Since late last year when Google finally added native support for audio in Google Slides I’ve fielded a steady stream of questions from readers looking for suggestions on the quickest and easiest ways for kids to record audio on their Chromebooks.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two New Google Docs Features in G Suite for Education

  Back in February Google added Smart Compose and Autocorrect as new features in Google Docs. However, those features were only available in Google Docs in G Suite for Business accounts.

• Student Self-Assessment: Now More Than Ever | All Things Assessment

  When I wrote my last blog post in January, and made self-assessment my personal learning resolution, I did not know that in a few months my brain would be incredibly tired from learning way too many things in a short amount of time.

• Citizen science games: the ultimate list | Citizen Science Center

• Bad News

• Arcademic Skill Builders – Math Games, Language Arts Games, and much more

• Math Games for Kids | Kidopo | Page 2

• MemoMoti

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Collaborate on a YouTube Channel

  Like many other schools, this spring my school held our awards ceremonies virtually. A colleague and I managed the distribution of the recordings of those ceremonies. We did this by collaborating on one YouTube channel.

• The Best Video Creation Tools for Teachers and Students | Free Video Editing Software and Apps Ranked

  A good video creation tool is a must in every teacher’s toolbox. But what’s the best editor or program to use? This question has plagued me for a long time.

• Transcribe Audio to Text | Transcription Company & Website – Rev

  ServicesTranscription 99% accuracy, by human professionals $1.25 PER MINUTE Rough Draft 80% accuracy, machine generated transcript 25¢ PER MINUTE Captions English captions for videos $1.

• Very Good Interview: “What’s motivating nationwide protests?” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  GDJ / Pixabay This is a very good ABC News interview with Marc Lamont Hill:

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ways to Edit Images in Google Slides

  A decade+ ago when I started using Google Slides it was a rather bare bones alternative to PowerPoint. That is no longer the case. Today, there are tons neat little features that you can use in Google Slides to improve the appearance of your present…

• New TED-Ed Video & Lesson: “When is a pandemic over?” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  MirceaIancu / Pixabay I’m adding this new TED-Ed lesson and video to A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS:

• Kids will need recess more than ever when returning to school post-coronavirus

  School leaders globally are tasked with the unenviable challenge of planning for school reopenings after COVID-19 pandemic shut downs.

• Yours for the making – Instructables

• ‘You get engagement from everyone’: Mott Haven teacher incorporates baseball in science curriculum – Bronx Times

• ‘Teaching for Black Lives’ — a handbook for educators to fight racism – The Washington Post

  On July 10, 2018, I wrote about a book that had just been published titled “Teaching for Black Lives,” a collection of writings that helps educators humanize blacks in curriculum, teaching and policy and connect lessons to young people’s lives.

• What if we liberated the learning from report cards – What Ed Said

  Every time we’ve thought about how we might improve our reports, we’ve failed. The barriers to major change have somehow seemed insurmountable.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Creating Breakout Rooms with Google Meet

  It’s easy to create breakout rooms using Google Meet. Start by creating a hyperdoc agenda that lists each topic and with that topic provide a link to the breakout room agenda. It’s also a good idea to have a main room / lounge where participants can…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Lots of great blog posts from last week to help teachers deal with quarantine teaching!

• The Circle is Broken: Forced Distance Learning and the Magic Circle – Classroom Powerups

  I have started of several gamification talks telling the story of my then 7 year old son getting into a fight before he got home on day. He was punched, kicked, and knocked down and all of this took place in front of a teacher… and the kid that knoc…

• Offline Choice Boards: How Are You Integrating Offline Learning into Your Online Class? |

  Schools in California will not reopen this year. Teachers are scrambling to move their offline courses online to ensure that students continue learning for the remainder of the school year.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Now You Can Use Flipgrid to Make Screencast Videos

  On Wednesday afternoon Flipgrid announced the launch of a new recording feature for teachers and students. You can now create screencast videos within Flipgrid. The feature is kind of hidden so I made a screencast video to show you where Flipgrid’s …

• Time to spare? Why not conduct some real online research to advance science | Puget Sound Institute

  If you are looking for something constructive to do in this stay-at-home period of our lives, I might suggest joining a team of scientists conducting real online research.

• Document Handling from a Phone or Chromebook | Science, Education, and Science Education

  Hints to make your learning opportunities easier: Here’s a link to how to take a picture with your chromebook camera. How to insert a picture from your camera right into a Google doc: In the doc, click the INSERT menu and then IMAGE and then CAMERA.

• 10 Free Classroom Activities for Your Distant Learning Classroom – John Spencer

  In my last article, I wrote about using a vintage innovation approach to create meaningful distance learning lessons. Being creative often means designing these activities and projects from scratch. However, creativity doesn’t always work this way.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use PDFs in Google Classroom

  On Thursday afternoon a reader asked me about using PDFs in Google Classroom. She was having a little trouble with students not being able to access the PDFs she was trying to share.

• Control Alt Achieve: How to Create Self-Grading Quizzes in Google Classroom

  Google Forms is a fantastic tools for making self-grading assessment for students. Google Classroom is a wonderful way to assign and collect work from students. Wouldn’t it be great to put these two great tools together?

• CREY

• Kind Words in Uncertain Times – Games For Change

• Video games: A prescription for solace during coronavirus pandemic

• Epidemic Simulation on Scratch

• With the right standards, video games can boost science proficiency

• How robots could help hospitals manage coronavirus chaos

• Working From Home Tips For Teachers – The Edublogger

  The statistics around school closures due to COVID-19/Coronavirus are nothing short of staggering. In mid-February, China was the only country in the world with school closures.

• Observation vs. Inference: A learning adventure – Mari Venturino

  Over spring break, I have been doing a lot of relaxing AND a lot of fun work. For me, creating and planning is fun, so I don’t always mind it when I’m on a break. That being said, I constantly check in with myself to see if this is something I want …

• Grace is Greater Than Grades | Shake Up Learning

• The Power Of Visuals In Online Learning – e-Learning Infographics

  The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. In fact, it takes only 13 milliseconds for the brain to process an image. Visuals are more likely to be stored in our long-term memory, leading to better retention. According to a stud…

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: Student Paced Flashcard Factory for Distance Learning

  Run flashcard factory as student paced.

• 5 Tips for Teaching Online

  As teachers embrace their new roles as designers, instructors, and facilitators of online learning, many are grappling the details associated with teaching remotely.

• This 300,000-year-old skull may be from an African ‘ghost’ population | Science News

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Wide Open School from @CommonSenseEd

  · 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…

• Teachable Moment Episode 16: Curating Web Resources for your students with Wakelet – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog

  Mike is currently the Instructional Program Director for the Montana Digital Academy, Montana’s state virtual school.

• We are in the Midst of Making History | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  Are you aware that we are in the middle of making history? It is March of 2020. We are living through a pandemic of global scale. The COVID-19 virus has put citizens in social distancing, physical isolation, and quarantine.

• Connecting Remotely – Ideas for Reaching students Individually from home – Meredith Akers

  As we all try to wrap our minds around teaching and learning remotely, a major concern is how to continue to connect individually with each and every student (or staff member if you are a school leader) when we are physically so far apart.

• 10 Trauma Informed Principles for Educators During the Coronavirus with Dr. Eric Rossen

  Students experiencing the coronavirus crisis are experiencing trauma. So are teachers and parents. In today’s show, learn the ten principles (and a bonus) to help us encourage and help others as we work through this crisis together.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Day One Remote Learning Expectations #EdChat #covidEDU

  Tomorrow University Liggett School will start our Remote Learning Adventure. I spent my Spring Break with our Admin team to create a system that will allow teachers and students to connect in synchronous and asynchronous ways.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Learn to Make Remote Content Accessible to Those with Disabilities

  Rushing to create online curriculum and activities? That content must be made accessible. If you are taking screenshots or pictures of documents that you share or post online, it’s probably not accessible.

• Control Alt Achieve: See Everyone with the Google Meet Grid View Extension

  Google Hangouts Meet is a great video conference tool for connecting people… but what about when there are a lot of people in the meeting? Normally when you are in a Google Meet video conference, you can only show at most 4 people at a time.

• How to Teach Students Effective Learning in an Online Classroom

  How I teach students to be effective learners in an online classroom. This episode is an audio version of my presentation to students about how to be effective learners in an online classroom. Get Credit! Some schools, districts, and organizations a…

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: Standards Presentations Using Flipgrid

  Using Flipgrid as a Platform for students to present evidence of mastery

• Tips to Deter Zoom-bombers (general audience) – Google Docs

• image-creation-tools

• Free Technology for Teachers: C-SPAN Classroom Offers New Lessons on the Economic Impact of COVID-19

  C-SPAN Classroom is a free resource that anyone who teaches U.S. History or civics should have bookmarked. I’ve written about many of their great resources and programs over the years including their annual student video contest and annual summer wo…

• How Do We Do Common Formative Assessments in a School of Singletons? | All Things Assessment

  When schools define themselves as professional learning communities, one of the hallmarks of that work is to work with a collaborative team with whom teachers learn together. Determining how to organize singletons, then, in a PLC school is an import…

• no-internet-remote-learning

• Distance Learning: A Gently Curated Collection of Resources for Teachers | Cult of Pedagogy

  Disclaimer 1: This post was written in the Spring of 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 outbreak, so a lot of the information here is discussed through the lens of distance learning launched by a global pandemic.

• 3 Strategies to Engage Students Remotely with StudySync Using Google Classroom |

  English teachers using StudySync have a wealth of online resources they can use to keep students learning remotely.

• 8-interactive-google-slides-activities-for-classroom-excitement

• 10 Essential Online Learning Best Practices – Free Webinar

  We took our school from a physical school on a Friday to a distance learning campus by Monday. We didn’t miss a day – not yet. And the learning continues. I was asked today if I’m sharing and certainly, I am. However, I want to share and talk more a…

• with-schools-closed-kids-with-disabilities-are-more-vulnerable-than-ever

  Updated at 9:31 a.m. ET With school closed, Marla Murasko begins her morning getting her 14-year-old son, Jacob, dressed and ready for the day. They have a daily check-in: How are you doing? How are you feeling? Next, they consult the colorful, hour…

• All-purpose enzymes boost CRISPR’s powers

  Newly developed enzymes allow the CRISPR–Cas9 genome-editing system to target a huge range of mutations in human cells — an advance that could lead to the development of CRISPR-based treatments for human disease.

• How to Teach Students to Manage Themselves | Mike Kaechele

  One reason why a large subset of students struggle in school is that they lack organization. These are the kids who do their homework but never turn it in. It is probably “lost” somewhere in their backpack.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Remote Meeting Tips

  In 2017 MarketWatch predicted 50% of the workforce would be working remotely by now. They were wrong. An unforeseen pandemic has made remote working an essential component for much of today’s workforce. Many, who had not worked this way previously, …

• A Principal’s Reflections: In Times of Crisis Self-Care is More Important Than Ever

  The majority of us did not see the COVID-19 pandemic coming. Up until this point, our lives were dominated by both professional and personal routines.

• The Differentiator

  Depth and Complexity adapted from The Flip Book by Sandra N. Kaplan, Bette Gould & Victoria Siegel. Content Imperatives adapted from The Flip Book, Too by Sandra Kaplan & Bette Gould. Adapted from David Chung and The Flip Book, Too by Sandra N. Kapl…

• When Non-Disabled People Get Accommodations, Who Benefits? Things to Think About as We Work Remotely – FAKEQUITY

  Settle in folx, this is a long post, filled with a lot of important information. Read it, then file it so you can refer back to the tips in it as needed over the next few weeks of COVID19 stay-at-home mandates continue. Many people across the countr…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some great blog posts:

• How To Get Your Students To Show Up For Online Learning – Smart Classroom Management

  Forgive me if I ramble or am way off base with my article today. I’m learning just like you. But I do have some thoughts.

• Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Does it Work? The Most Meaningless Question to Ask about Online Education

  Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. ? Voltaire One of the most frequently and persistently asked questions about online education is “does it work” or “is it effective.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Free K-8 #RemoteLearning Curriculum from @TeachingMatters

  Teaching Matters gives us another week of remote learning materials. Get a weeks worth of student-facing home learning resources aligned to the NYC schools’ remote learning curriculum. It’s also available in Google Classroom.

• Making a Game of It

• How long can the virus that causes COVID-19 live on surfaces? | Hub

• “Doing School” In The Time of Coronavirus – Practical Theory

  A lot of folks have reached out asking me to write about what learned about moving online when you can’t be in your building because of what happened to SLA in the fall.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Quickly Turn Any Document or Webpage Into a Practice Quiz

  On Tuesday I wrote about the new version of Knowt that will let you import any of your Google Docs, Word docs, or any public webpage into a notebook. Once in your notebook it just takes one more click to have a practice quiz created for you.

• Using RAMP to keep kids learning during lockdown – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  This week Motivait published a blog I wrote all about using RAMP to help managers keep employees engage and motivated during these odd times of forced home working. (Click here as you may find it really useful if you run any teams!)

• Free Technology for Teachers: Anchor Offers a New Way to Remotely Record Podcasts With a Group

  Anchor is the service that I have been using since last August to produce my weekly Practical Ed Tech Podcast. I use Anchor because Anchor makes it incredibly easier to record, edit, and publish my podcast to all of the major podcast networks at onc…

• Classroom Games and Tech – Ed-Tech to Engage and Inspire: Creating Simple Google Sites to Keep in Touch With Students

  When schools were closed in Michigan some elementary teachers in my district wanted to keep in touch with students using a website. I made these two short videos to help them get started. They are meant for beginners. Also, please understand they we…

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: 3 Tools for Virtual Learning

  Resources for 3 tools to help support virtual learning

• Free Technology for Teachers: Free Course – A Teacher’s Guide to Creating Common Craft Style Videos

  For more than a dozen years Common Craft videos have been used by teachers to help students understand topics including digital citizenship, personal finance, and many big technology concepts.

• Where’s the Silver Lining for Education? | My Island View

  With the cloud of the Corona Virus hanging over us and growing by the hour, it is difficult to see any silver lining. Health and safety are our greatest concerns. The stakes are high and the consequences may be fatal to too many.

• Taking Distance Learning Away from the Screen – John Spencer

  In education, we often use a metaphor  of content delivery. We use terms like “deliver a lesson.” We ask, “did the students get it?” But the last week and a half has proven that teachers are not merely content delivery machines.

• Stay-at-Home Mad Libs! – Mari Venturino

  My goal for my blog over the next few weeks is to share out as many resources that will keep education light, fun, and easy on everyone involved. Mad Libs is one of my favorite classroom activities. It’s a goofy review activity that sneaks in parts …

• A Principal’s Reflections

• Holding Class on Zoom? Beware of These Hacks, Hijinks and Hazards | EdSurge News

• Free SEL Resources

  The Team at SiLAS has put together some free Social Animations, SEL Lessons and Parent Sheets. If you are a school district, teacher or parent, and would like a Free SiLAS account until the end of this school year, please fill out the google form at…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Practical Advice for the Remote Teachers & Families

  The most important thing to know about remote learning is that it is not simply doing school at home. It’s different. Throw the bell schedule out! Instead: The teacher posts assignments with support materials like instructions and videos. Students f…

• A Principal’s Reflections: Tips for Engaging Families in Remote Learning

  Throughout my #remotelearning series, I have tried to provide practical ideas and strategies that can be used now. One aspect that needs more attention, at least in my opinion, is how we can assist parents throughout this ordeal.

• slow-internet-tips

• iorad – the tutorial builder

  This new app is confusing. Can I get a quick 10 mins? Got a deadline and a line of users ahead of you. Next week?

• Cooped Up With Kids During COVID-19 – Teacher Created Tips

  These are uncertain and unprecedented times. You’re doing your best to adhere to all the rules and regulations. You’re following all the safety and health precautions. You’re staying home and hunkering down. You’re also about to lose your mind.

• 7 virtual resources and a few NARA distance learning suggestions | History Tech

  The new normal is fast becoming the normal normal. But it’s always nice to hear what others are doing and using. And I love Jenifer Hitchcock’s suggestions about structuring our normal normal distance learning instruction.

• The Do’s & Don’ts of a Quick Switch to Remote Learning – Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo – Education Week Teacher

  Optimized Mobile Web Page for EdWeek developed by Mobiletech

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Remote Presenting Guidance

  Presenting through online platforms requires unique skills. Presenters need to be able to multitask and know how to troubleshoot in the moment. Below are some best practices to keep in mind while presenting remotely. Roles Roles can be combined depe…

• Day 25: Reality Composer

  The Reality Composer app was released by Apple last September as an augmented reality creation tool. The app is available to create on an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook.

• MIT Full STEAM Ahead – Sharing MIT STEAM Learning with the World

  Each week we will provide a “package” for K-12 teachers and learners. The package will be a thematic set of videos, resources and online/offline activities for different grades.

• google-forms-magic-with-pre-filled-links

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two Ways to Find Free Ebooks to Download

  Every day I’m hearing from teachers who can’t get back into their classrooms because their school buildings are completely closed. My own school building has very limited access and only by administrative approval right now.

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Option for Making Sure Students Know They Have Google Classroom Assignments

  Yesterday afternoon a friend texted me to ask if there was a way to check to see if students have looked at announcements or assignments in Google Classroom. Unfortunately, there isn’t a “read receipt” type of feature built into Google Classroom.

• Control Alt Achieve: Video Series: How to Use Google Hangouts Meet

  Google Hangouts Meet is an easy but powerful tool for video conferencing. With Meet you can connect with other people using any device including a PC, Mac, Chromebook, smart phone, or tablet.

• 4 Ideas to Consider for Online Learning – George Couros

  Not only have educators been inundated with information on COVID-19, but they have had to retool, refocus, and rethink completely how they are going to connect with and teach their students.

• Ask Science How | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

  All Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., including the National Zoo, and in New York City are temporarily closed to support the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19. We are not announcing a re-opening date at this time and will provide updat…

• Search-Icon

  Schools across the nation are closing in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19 and in the scramble to provide at-home learning, a major problem has risen to the forefront: millions of American students don’t have reliable access to the internet.

• Day 23: 3D AR Maps Mapbox

• Next Generation Assessment: Increasing Student Voice and Choice | All Things Assessment

  The vital position education holds in the future of a society is rarely debated. However, the nature of this position is a constant source of discourse.

• Free Technology for Teachers: WriteReader Templates Can Help Students Start the Writing Process

  WriteReader is a great tool for creating multimedia stories that I’ve featured a half dozen times or more over the years. The last time I wrote about it they had just added some new page styles. Last week WriteReader unveiled a new feature that I th…

• An Appeal to Educators and Scholars of Color: Please Sign This Statement! | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Kevin Kumashiro, leader of a Deans for Justice and Equity, has written an appeal addressed to Educators and Scholars of Color. It invites their endorsement of a statement opposing failed “reforms” that have stigmatized and harmed children of color a…

• google-meet-elearning

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Solution to Zoom “Not Responding” on Windows 10

  On Friday morning I started having problems with every Zoom meeting that I tried to launch or join on my Windows 10 computer resulting in the annoying “application not responding” message. I didn’t have the same problem on my Mac.

• Day 24: LightUp

• 7 Interesting Ways To Use Instagram In Classroom – e-Learning Infographics

  Share works of students, their creative arts, and let other students and families see them. Create a school community and make it a private account for your school only if you don’t want others to see your shares. Let students share photos related t…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Knowt Will Turn Your Notes and Favorite Webpages Into Quizzes for You

  Knowt is a great service for turning notes and documents into practice quizzes. When I wrote about last summer you could only use notes that you either wrote in Knowt itself or imported from Google Drive. I gave it another look this morning and saw …

• This Time is Our Opportunity | All Things Assessment

  There is an English proverb, “necessity is the mother of invention,” that fits in education today as teachers are forced to become digitally innovative in the face of immediate, and possibly an extended, period of need during the COVID-19 lockdown. …

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Overview of How Students View and Return Assignments in Google Classroom

  Over the last week I’ve spent a lot of time helping some of my colleagues get up and running with Google Classroom. One of the things that they’ve asked about is what a student sees when he or she receives an assignment in Google Classroom.

• A Principal’s Reflections: 8 Non-Digital Remote Learning Ideas

  Before our eyes, we are watching districts and schools valiantly roll out remote learning plans to support all students during extended closures. Equally as important have been the many innovative ways to make food available to our most disadvantage…

• Coronavirus Chronicles 002 – American International School of Guangzhou | @mcleod | Dangerously Irrelevant

  I am talking with schools to see how they’re responding in the wake of this global pandemic. I invite you to join me for the Coronavirus Chronicles, a series of 10-minute check-ins with educators all over. Episode 002 is below.

• My Latest BAM! Radio Show is On Teaching Online In The Face Of School Closures | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Maslow Before Bloom’s: Clarifying Our Priorities As Teaching Goes Online is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio Show. Lorie Barber, Cathleen Beachboard, Amy Roediger and David Sherrin join me in the discussion, and they have all also contri…

• How to Set Up Virtual Office Hours with Google Meet – Classroom Powerups

  I have many thoughts about this new “eLearning” model we have had suddenly thrust upon us. I absolutely DO NOT see this as any sort of opportunity. We are making the best of a terrible Coronavirus situation.

• We’re Only Getting Out of This Together – dy/dan

  Desmos closed its San Francisco office on March 9, about a week before the surrounding county issued a “shelter-in-place” warning.

• Getting Started with Google Forms – Mari Venturino

  My most popular blog post is my Daily Check-in with Google Forms post, which includes a force-copy template of my daily check-in Form.

• Social Distance Learning, or So You Want to Record Your Lectures, huh? – Classroom Powerups

  I have been Recording and “Flipping” my lectures in some variation for almost a decade. This is all completely anecdotal but I have developed a few guiding principles. These principles come from my limited data in student completion, testing data, a…

• I’m Releasing a Free Audio Book for Middle Grade Students – John Spencer

  Before getting started, I just want to point out that teachers have been amazing over the last few weeks. I’ve watched entire districts mobilize to provide online and long-distance instruction while also providing a safe way for kids to get breakfas…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Timixi

  Timixi is an excellent site for finding or creating timelines w/ lots of robust features. For example. a user can create a timeline by adding a detailed description w/ images, switch between a detailed view and general overview, and much much more.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Hatch

  Hatch is a wonderful educational iOS app that combines game based learning w/ studying/reading/homework to help increase a student’s love of learning. The way this works is once Hatch is launched a student selects between 5 – 120 min to read/study/h…

• 3 Ways to Use Video Conferencing with Students Learning Remotely |

  Thank goodness for Zoom and Google Hangouts! During this time of social isolation and remote learning, these video conferencing tools are lifesavers. They make it possible for teachers to maintain a human connection with their students and guide the…

• Resources for Supporting Science Learning During School Closures | Science for All

  Our friends at STEM Teaching Tools have organized some resources from Council of School Science Supervisors (CSSS) to support families with science learning while practicing social distancing at home.

• Video: How to See Germs Spread | Science for All

  This video by Mark Rober (Check out some of Mark’s other science videos) is nicely done and could be pushed out to students as part of some online science learning.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Free K-8 #RemoteLearning Curriculum from @TeachingMatters

  Launching remote learning? Get a weeks worth of student-facing home learning resources aligned to the NYC schools’ remote learning curriculum. More coming…next week. Visit the Teaching Matters Site to download the curriculum for your grade and sub…

• Day 22: Adobe Aero

• A Principal’s Reflections: Creating Interactive Lessons Through App Smashing

  Remote learning has been thrust upon school districts. The result has been disruptive change like we have never seen before. In a previous post, I shared some broader ideas to help navigate these uncharted waters.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two Collections of Hands-on Science Lessons Students Can Do At Home

  Online lessons and virtual meetings with students and parents can be good, but at a certain point students are going to want to do more than just look at their screens and answer questions.

• CHECK OFF Student Participation – Teacher Tech

  You’ve asked students to complete several things digitally. Digital, unlike paper, can be completed at different times. This can make it challenging to keep track of what students have and have not done. Google Sheets can help with keeping track.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Check out these posts from last week:

• FINALLY! Dragging Assignments in Google Classroom – Teacher Tech

  An update to Google Classroom now allows you to more easily reorganize your assignments and topics in Google Classroom. Go to the Classwork page and simply DRAG assignments to the topic or position you want them. New material at the top! Every websi…

• Not Just Playing Games: Game Inspired Dialectic Journal Project – Classroom Powerups

  Gamification is often be caricatured as just playing games. Frankly, some of the signals we send in the gamification community can lead to the confusion. Much of the buzz-i-ness of the term comes from leaders in the edu-world pushing Kahoot, Quizlet…

• A TEACHER Writes a Great Review of SLAYING GOLIATH in the Washington Post! | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Melanie McCabe, an English teacher at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia, and an author, wrote this terrific and accurate review of SLAYING GOLIATH.

• Does It Have To Look Good? – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Often in conversations with gamification muggles, I hear comparisons with games and gamification that make me a little twitchy. We have all seen video games and how far they have come on since the days of Space Invaders (pretty much where my journey…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Great Set of Videos for Teaching Networking and Computer Hardware Concepts

  As some of you know, I’m took over a computer science program at my local vocational/ technical high school this year. It has been fun and, at times, has made me feel like a brand new teacher again. When I took the job I told my director that I’d be…

• Should Schools Ban Homework? – WeAreTeachers

• 5 Steps to Gamify Your Elementary Classroom @coolcatteacher

  How could you take your whole elementary classroom year and gamify it? What if everything students learn could gain them XP (experience points?) What if you can reach those strugglers by making a classroom on mission? Today, Heather Marrs, a teacher…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Extraordinary Women

  Extraordinary Women is a excellent iOS app to help students learn about some of the most amazing women in the news today as well as throughout history. This is done through state of art illustrated stories and covers 9 important women, such as: J.K.…

• Valentine’s Day Paper Wreath – Teacher Created Tips

  Love is in the air! Here is an easy Valentine’s Day activity for your students to make and display in your classroom to add a festive feel for the holiday.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Two Ways to Make Progress Trackers With Google Sheets

  In my previous post I mentioned that Google Sheets can be used for all kinds of interesting things. It can also be used for practical things like keeping tally of your progress or that of your students toward a goal. There are two ways that I usuall…

• Buying Parts | FLL Tutorials

• Drowning in Plastic — Cool Infographics

  Simon Scarr and Marco Hernandez at Reuters created Drowning in Plastic, visualizing the amount of plastic bottles we consume, recycle and throw away every hour, day, month, year and decade. Around the world, almost 1 million plastic bottles are purc…

• Skyrim Inspiration: Skill Tree Power Plan – Classroom Powerups

  In my previous post, Powered Up XP pt3: Look to the Stars, I described my concerns with XP Grinding and outlined a plan to counteract this student hack. I am bit further along in the concept now. To start I am adding the Google slide above to the st…

• Do You Have the Backbone for a PLN? | My Island View

  The discussion around technology in education often revolves around what technology can or can’t do in regard to affecting kids’ learning. The fact of the matter is that technology in education only works for kids, if it works for their teacher.

• How air pollution becomes water pollution with long-term effects on Puget Sound | Puget Sound Institute

  When thinking of air pollution, I used to think only of breathing toxic chemicals into our lungs, with uncertain health effects. That’s bad enough, but air pollution — which is everywhere — is also getting into our waterways and penetrating deep int…

• Commands and Cheats in Minecraft

• California: School Districts Sue JUUL for Vaping Crisis | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Anaheim Union High School District Files Suit Against JUUL Labs, Inc. for Creating the E-Cigarette Epidemic that Disrupts District-Wide Education Anaheim, California – January 28, 2020 – Today, the Anaheim Union School District filed a lawsuit again…

• How To Design Visual Aids For Teaching Purposes – e-Learning Infographics

  Simple design tips for stunning visual aids in the classroom. Be aware of all the kinds of visual aids you can use in class and find out which one fits your purpose and budget.

• Free Technology for Teachers: It’s Not You, It’s Me – How to Check If a Website is Working Correctly

  Yesterday morning Charles asked me via Twitter about a site I had previously mentioned for checking whether or not a website is up or down. The site Charles was looking for is Down for Everyone or Just Me. It’s a simple site that will tell you if a …

• Auditing Your Read Aloud – A Whole School Conversation – Pernille Ripp

  In 2010, I created a project called The Global Read Aloud, for the past 11 years I have been the driving force behind this global literacy initiative. For 11 years, I have asked educators to recommend books for us to read aloud on a global scale.

• Recognition and Rewards: How to Honor Your Hard-Working Employees – nancyrubin

  There are many factors to the success of any organization, but one of the most important factors in your business’s performance is employee morale.

• PDF my Folder – Add-on – Teacher Tech

  If you would like to print student work to post on the wall you will need to Control P print one document at a time. Alternatively, you can use PDF my Folder Add-on by me (Alice Keeler) to turn a folder of Google Apps Documents into PDF’s.

• Badge Wiki

  This is a new resource for the Open Badges community being built by We Are Open Co-op and made possible by Participate. We’re currently building this out, so why not join our Loomio group to get updates? Note that by using this wiki you agree to abi…

• OpenBadges.me

  Thank you! Your message has been sent and somebody from the OpenBadges.me team will be in touch shortly. Design and Issue Open Badges Open-access tools from MyKnowledgeMap to support all of your Open Badge needs Share OpenBadges.

• google-classroom-to-the-rescue-blogging-vlogging-and-podcasting

• Tracking the Wuhan Coronavirus – The Map Room

  Johns Hopkins University’s CSSE has created an interactive map and online dashboard to track the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. Details at their blog post: The case data visualized is collected from various sources, including WHO, U.S. CDC, ECDC, …

• Free Technology for Teachers: Quickly Create & Share Transcripts of YouTube Videos

  VidReader was one of my favorite new tools in 2019. It’s a tool that makes it easy to create an interactive transcript of any YouTube video. This morning I used to to create a transcript of a video. When I used VidReader this morning I noticed two n…

• Powered Up XP pt3: Look to the Stars – Classroom Powerups

  At the end of last year I decided to experiment with a new Grading system. For years I had championed XP Grading but was trying to overcome the problem with GRINDING. The benefit of XP Grading is that all XP are equal.

• The Effectiveness of Classroom Meetings | Stories From School

  Last year I implemented classroom meetings once a week with my 6th-grade classroom. My experience began by doing a lot of research on the topic.  There were several formats to select from and even more opinions on the effectiveness of using valuable…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Cotton and the Life Cycle of a Tee Shirt

  Last week TED-Ed published a new lesson titled Why Is Cotton In Everything? The lesson begins with an explanation of why cotton was used by the Inca in suits of armor. From there the lesson delves into the properties of cotton that make strong, soft…

• ‘Era: Medieval Age’, A Roll and Build Game – GeekDad

  Build your very own miniature city in Era: Medieval Age! Era: Medieval Age is a roll and build game for 1-4 players, ages 10 and up, that takes about 45-60 minutes to play. It’s designed by Matt Leacock and published by Eggert Spiel. You can purchas…

• Learning with ‘e’s: Python’s got legs!

  No, this is not some new discovery about the evolutionary development of snakes – nor is it a reptile dysfunction. I’m referring to 2Simple Software’s new offering Python In Pieces which was launched last week at the BETT Show in London.

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: Learner Portfolios 2020: Upgrades & Revelations

  Overview of the latest iteration of student portfolios using Google Sites in my Physics Classroom.

• Of digital social: A regrettable headline – NetFamilyNews.org

  Talk about confirmation bias (or ageist clickbait)! This headline in the Education Week blog (which also headlined Ed Week’s email newsletter) is a great opportunity for a media literacy discussion, in school or over dinner at home: “Social Media is…

• How to Inspire the Next World Changers – Teacher Reboot Camp

  “Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.

• How to Find Games for Classroom Learning | Edutopia

• (45) (PDF) Teacher Pioneers: Vision from the Edge of the Map | Paul Darvasi, PhD, Trent Hergenrader, Caroline “Caro” Williams, Urthona Hunter, and Steven Isaacs – Academia.edu

• Gamification Research Network

• ludodemia [licensed for non-commercial use only] / Welcome to Ludodemia

  tags:game games gaming research database

• Ludodemia | Dr. Rachel Kowert

  tags:game games gaming research database

• As Esports Take Off, High School Leagues Get In The Game : NPR

• Typical Super Bowl Scores – Yummy Math

  In this activity students study historical Super Bowl data to reflect on average (mean, median, and mode), losing scores, winning scores, and range of scores. They are asked to judge which of these central measurements seem the most meaningful and e…

• Keeping Behavior Expectations High | Stories From School

  We sat in the thick of a heated discussion. Faced off in our groups of four, we discussed what approaches our schools would take in response to a student repeatedly refusing to comply with a teacher’s request to do their work. “We can’t expect the s…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are more great blog posts from this past week:

• #TechTeamwork: Taking Tech Integration Higher! – Technology Chatter

  Does technology improve learning or hinder it? A lot has been written and will continue to be written about whether technology improves learning or hinders it.

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: Pear Deck & Immersive Reader

  What is Immersive Reader & How Can You Get It In Pear Deck?

• Tools, Platforms and Visible Thinking Routines: Upgrade your KWL Chart to the 21st Century | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  This is the third post in a three part series of posts around the KWHLAQ chart and its use for reflection, metacognition and documenting learning.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Mostly Complete Guide to Classroom Blogging

  Over the last couple of weeks I’ve published some lengthy blog posts about classroom blogging activities and tools for classroom blogging. Those posts were excerpts from a longer piece that I’ve been working on. That longer piece is almost done.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Use the New Creative Commons Chrome Extension

  Earlier this week Creative Commons released a new Chrome extension that enables users to find Creative Commons licensed images without having to leave the browser tabs their currently viewing.

• Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » PISA Peculiarities (3): More Fear, Better Scores

  Fear of failure improves academic performance. That’s a conclusion one can draw from PISA’s analysis of its data. This is true at the system level.

• Lawnmower Parents Are the New Helicopter Parents

• LIGO Hanford’s twin observatory makes important detection | Tri-City Herald

• 5 Video Projects for Student Readers (feat. Adobe Spark) – Class Tech Tips

  How do your students share their reading experiences with the world? Movie-making activities help students talk about favorite books. They can use this format to share what they’ve learned from reading.

• The Rural Schools Conundrum – Have You Heard

  Have You Heard heads to rural Wisconsin to investigate a puzzle. Communities in the “reddest” parts of the state keep voting to hike their own taxes to pay for schools, even as they elect and re-elect politicians who enact cuts to school funding.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Dozens of Fun, Hands-on Science Lessons

  Science Snacks from Exploratorium is a great collection of hands-on science lessons for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. I’ve been recommending it for years and recently revisited it to discover that more activities have b…

• 4-classroom-test-quiz-strategies-to-avoid-the-gotcha-game

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Discovering (Again) The Awesomeness That Is #FETC!

  January 14-17, 2020 brings us another awesome gathering of educators from all over the U.S. and beyond. Descending on sunny Miami, Florida the FETC Conference kicks off with tons of opportunities for all of us to learn, share and grow.

• NCLB Was Signed into Law By President George W.Bush on This Day in 2002 | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  On January 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind law. Thus began an unprecedented federal intrusion into state and local education.

• My SBG Journey: Fall 2019 1st Semester Reflections – Classroom Powerups

  We are finishing up my 1st semester using Standards Based Grading and boy was it a learning experience. Here are a few quick thoughts and reflections as I prep for next semester. 1. SBG worke well for skills based stuff.

• Are Schools Ready for Competitive Video Gaming? By Including Girls and Downplaying First-Person Shooters, Cleveland Teacher Hopes to Chart New Course for ‘Esports’ | The 74

• Why Struggle Is Essential for the Brain — and Our Lives | EdSurge News

• Quick Ideas for Getting Started with Augmented Reality – Class Tech Tips

  What augmented reality apps for kids can you use in your classroom? In this blog post, you’ll learn about some of my favorite augmented reality apps for students — along with quick ideas for getting started with augmented reality this school year.

• Rate of ocean acidification may accelerate, scientists warn | Encyclopedia of Puget Sound

  Ocean acidification, which threatens sea life throughout the world, is affecting Pacific Northwest waters — including the Salish Sea — sooner than most regions around the globe, according to ongoing studies.

• 6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 2020 | Cult of Pedagogy

  As I do every January, I’m releasing an all-new update of my Teacher’s Guide to Tech. If you’re not familiar with the guide, here’s a quick video I made last year to give you an idea of what it is:

• Type with your voice – Docs Editors Help

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: 50 Sites/Apps for Educational Games

  Game Based Learning is a great way to integrate technology into the classroom as well generate excitement for students. This list not only covers a wide range of subjects, some of these sites have educational portals that allows educators to track a…

• Reconsidering College as “The Goal” | Stories From School

  Let’s say a prototypical U.S. graduating class has one hundred students. Of that hundred, sixty-seven enroll directly into a two- or four-year college. (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)

• An Alternative to Standardized Tests for School Accountability | Multiple Pathways

  What if we had a better choice than standardized test, that could tell educators useful information about what actions really needed to happen to help students learn better? What if we could focus on assessing what really matters in schools? I recen…

• Top 2019 ARVRinEDU Resources

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Comparison of Multimedia Timeline Creation Tools – Updated

  Making a timeline is a “classic” history class assignment. When I started my teaching career my students made timelines on big sheets of paper. Later I had them use some online programs that let them include some pictures and links.

• New Year Resolution: Trim the Fat on Your Lessons

  For many, the new year inspires new resolve to move more, eat better, and shed excess weight. I have never been a big fan of drastic new year resolutions, but this year I began to think about how teachers can trim the metaphorical fat on their lesso…

• The 2010s of Math Edtech in Review – dy/dan

  EdSurge invited me to review the last decade in math edtech. Entrepreneurs had a mixed decade in K-16 math education. They accurately read the landscape in at least two ways: a) learning math is enormously challenging for most students, and b) compu…

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Writing Pal

  Writing Pal is an excellent site for students looking to strengthen their essay/writing skills. This is done through video lessons, game based learning, and individualized formative feedback.

• Speaking to G12s about Digital Wellness | Tip of the Iceberg

  When I was first asked to speak with G12 students about Internet Safety and Security, I’ll admit I died a little inside.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Answerables

  Answerables the innovative educational tool that combines the best features of game based learning w/ a learning management system has just released their free iPad app.

• Mandolorian vs Star Wars Sequels: Begin with the End in Mind – Classroom Powerups

  I was listening to Chris Ryan and Sean Fenessey on The Watch podcast as the were talking about the Disney+ series The Mandalorian and of course it gets me thinking about lesson planning .

• Physics Simulation: Newton’s Second Law

• Force, Mass, Acceleration | Zona Land Education

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Combine Multiple Google Forms Into One

  Import questions is one of the many useful, yet often overlooked functions in Google Forms. The import questions function lets you draw questions from your existing forms to use in a new form.

• Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » PISA Peculiarities (1): Why doesn’t growth mindset work for Chinese students?

  Having a growth mindset is negatively associated with academic performance for participating students from China (Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang or B-S-J-Z China), according to the 2018 PISA results.

• How to Teach Presentation Skills, New Technology and Research Using CES @coolcatteacher

  The Consumer Electronics Show is in Las Vegas this upcoming week, January 7-10, 2020. In the fall semester, students present about historical figures in computing. However, in January, we turn the spotlight on analyzing new technologies with a criti…

• Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Is Coming Up – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Martin Luther King Jr. Day will take place on January 20th this year.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Tips for Creating Translatable Content

  If you work in a school where English is not the first language of all students then families may have a hard time understanding what is happening in schools. This is because families are unable to access content due to language barriers.

• Jeff Bryant: Has the Democratic Party Really Reversed Course on the Failed Agenda of Charters and Testing? | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Jeff Bryant attended the Presidential Forum for Democratic candidates in Pittsburgh, and he watched to see how the candidates reacted to the Bush-Obama-Duncan agenda. Michael Bennett was the only one to endorse it, and he got a tepid reception.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

• Please, Don’t Assign Homework Over Winter Break – WeAreTeachers

• Meet the Mighty Women of NASA’s New Astronaut Class | A Mighty Girl

  “Meet the Mighty Women of NASA’s
  New Astronaut Class”

• A Mighty Girl | A Mighty Girl

• Meet the Mighty Women of NASA’s New Astronaut Class | A Mighty Girl

• Please, Don’t Assign Homework Over Winter Break – WeAreTeachers

• This 12-year-old boy made a video game in Roblox to cope with his father’s suicide – The Washington Post

• New Video Game Puts You In The Shoes Of A Refugee : Goats and Soda : NPR

• Irish Teenager Wins Google Science Award for Removing Microplastics From Oceans – EcoWatch

• Math Card Games That Will Help Students Practice Their Skills

• Subscribe to read | Financial Times

  Gain a global perspective on the US and go beyond with curated news and analysis from 600 journalists in 50+ countries covering politics, business, innovation, trends and more.

• Game Design Concepts | An experiment in game design and teaching

  This course was originally offered in real-time from June 29 – September 6, 2009. If you are just finding this now, does that mean you missed out on everything? Not at all. The course content is still here and available for you. Going through the co…

• This 12-year-old boy made a video game in Roblox to cope with his father’s suicide – The Washington Post

  In partnership with Facebook Gaming, The Game Awards’ Gaming Global Citizen recognizes individuals who inspire change and positivity through the power of games.

• 4 Empathy Activities For Any Classroom • Teched Up Teacher

  A design process is a creative problem-solving process that can be applied to any activity in your classroom.

• Microsoft Word – Cooperative Fundraising Activities white paper.doc

• The Thinking and Creativity That Goes Into Game Design – Teacher Reboot Camp

  Students can design a game in any subject to assess their peers. When students design games they use a lot of creativity and critical thinking skills. Students must imagine and design worlds, characters, levels, sound effects, game elements, and mor…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Dozens of Outline Maps You Can Print for Free

  Even with tools like Google Earth and Google Map there is still a need for students to learn some basics of where things are in the world lest they think that Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon are near each other. To that end, a classic geography…

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Innovative Ideas for Reducing Laptop Loss / Theft

  Jenith Mishne, Director of Education Technology in Newport-Mesa Unified School District (USD) takes personalizatoin to a whole new level. She provides time, accessories, and stickers for students to use to personalize their device.

• ditch-channel-12-video-tutorials-strategies-and-lesson-ideas-for-educators

• A pivotal book for digital safety & citizenship – NetFamilyNews.org

  The importance of the new book – Young People in Digital Society: Control Shift – cannot be exaggerated.

• Free Technology for Teachers: The History of Comic Art

  The Library of Congress currently has an exhibit on display called Comic Art – 120 Years of Panels and Pages. The exhibit is both a physical exhibit and an online exhibit. Comic Art – 120 Years of Panels and Pages has five sections.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Disable and Remove Chrome Extensions – And Why You Should

  I try a ton of Chrome extensions every year. In fact, I try so many that I sometimes look in my Chrome settings and wonder, “why do I still have that extension?” That’s not a good habit because I really should be uninstalling the ones that I don’t n…

• How a Sword and Sorcery Camp Uses Immersive Role Play to Teach STEAM | MindShift | KQED News

• six-thinking-scaffolds-that-can-move-students-toward-deeper-levels-of-understanding

  Grotzer and a team (Nancy Oriol, Stephanie Kang, Colby Moore Reilly, and Julie Joyal) looked at the Harvard Medical School MEDscience curriculum, founded by Oriol, that uses technology-mediated, problem-based learning simulations to enrich the exper…

• Formative Assessment Tools and Apps – Teacher Reboot Camp

  Ongoing assessment is necessary for student success. These assessments provide data on our learners’ progress and knowledge of the content.

• How Does Impeachment Work? — Cool Infographics

  With Impeachment in the news every day lately, Curtis Newbold (The Visual Communication Guy) put together a handy explanation infographic, How Does Impeachment Work? A FREE downloadable PDF is also available from his website.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Find and Install Google Slides Add-ons

  Google Slides on its own has some great features in it. For some examples see Tony Vincent’s recent webinar on how to use the drawing tools that are built into Google Slides. You can add even more features to Google Slides when you install Google Sl…

• Free Technology for Teachers: Need Some Classroom Blog Ideas? Try These Edublogs Resources

  For years Edublogs has hosted a list of active classroom blogs. The purpose of the list to offer a place for teachers to find examples of classroom blogs and potentially find blogging buddies for their students.

• Students in esports championship focus on leadership over competition – WISC

• 2019 Education Research Highlights | Edutopia

• Comic Creation Tools to Engage Learners – Teacher Reboot Camp

  Students of all ages enjoy learning with comics and creating comics. When students create comics they use props, scenery, dialogue, text, and characters to visualize and contextualize vocabulary and knowledge.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Digital Citizenship: The New Consequences for Inappropriate Use

  Remember the good old days of inappropriate use? The teacher would just take away the student’s privilege of using a computer and give them paper instead. Those were the days when many educators using computers were just in the first stage of SAMR: …

• Collaboration in Technology Integration – Technology Chatter

  I have said many times technology integration, whether in a 1:1 environment or with shared devices should never be 100% 1:1, a student in the screen all the time. I have referred before to this notion of 1:world when you are thinking about technolog…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some great blog posts from this past week:

• The Sham Of High Expectations – Smart Classroom Management

  Every school talks about high expectations. Only a small few actually live it.

• Stepping Into Inquiry – How to Use Google Search Better and Whose Voices are Missing? – Pernille Ripp

  Note: This is a continuation of the blog series I am doing detailing the work I am doing with students in an inquiry project into how to research better. The first post detailing the set-up and our first module, How to Write an Inquiry Question, can…

• Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Google Product Updates for Teachers to Note This Week

  As I mentioned in this week’s episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast, Google released a handful of updates to products that teachers and students frequently use. A few of those I reported on earlier in the week and a couple I haven’t mentioned exc…

• What educators need to unlearn… – What Ed Said

  Looking at the curriculum (program of inquiry) and the timetable through the courageous lens of ‘what if’, has allowed us to explore possibilities that sit outside of traditional models.

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: Sphero Chariots 2019: Design, Fabricate, & Program to Race

  Overview of our Sphero Chariot Project from design day to race day.

• Historypalooza 2019 – Here’s what I learned today | History Tech

  It comes but once a year. The National Social Studies Supervisors Association and National Council for the Social Studies combined conference. For a history nerd, it’s the winter holiday break, the Final Four, and fresh out of the oven chocolate chi…

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create a Google Earth Tour – Updated Web Version

  The web version of Google Earth has been available for more than two years now. Over those two years it has lagged behind the desktop version in terms of feature availability. That is starting to change now that Google has finally added the option t…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A New Way to Collect Feedback Through Google Sites

  Google Sites has always made it easy to insert Google Forms into the pages of your Google Sites websites. Embedding a Google Form into a page can be a good way to gather feedback from students, parents, and other website visitors.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Quick & Easy Way to Combine Audio Tracks

  Last week I published a video that outlines how I produce my podcast. Within that video I included some tips about using Garage Band to extract audio from a video and how to combine audio clips in Anchor.fm.

• Epic launches the “Teach with Interactive 3D” contest for secondary educators

• Learning, Education & Games, Volume 3 — ETC Press

• Why Gone Home is the most important game of the decade – Polygon

• Classroom Game for Vocabulary with a Home Connection! – Class Tech Tips

  Are you looking for a classroom game for vocabulary that can cover any subject in the K-6 curriculum? Futaba Classroom Games is an iPad app game for kids. In this blog post, I’ll share some key features of this multi-player app.

• Solar System | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids

• Help Name 20 Newly Discovered Moons of Saturn! | Carnegie Institution for Science

• Latest Updates from NASA on 3D-Printed Habitat Competition | NASA

• NASA Artemis

• For Students K-4 | NASA

• Space Launch System (SLS) Infographics | NASA

• What Is the Artemis Program? | NASA

• New Spacesuit Unveiled for Starliner Astronauts | NASA

• Moon 2 Mars Part II – The Lunar Gateway Coding Challenge | Tynker Blog

• Nearly All Mass Shooters Since 1966 Have Had 4 Things in Common – VICE

• A High School Teacher Scrapped Homework. Here’s What Happened Next.

• Miles M. Harvey – Google Scholar Citations

• Mental Health and Esports – FTW! For the Wellness Blog

• Why You Should Consider Ditching Reading Logs | Edutopia

• Designing Balanced Lessons |

  The theme of balance has been top of mind for me lately. I have a book Balance with Blended Learning coming out in January. I started a podcast called The Balance focused on exploring issues related to balance in education.

• Next Generation Assessment: Moving from Counting to Quality | All Things Assessment

  In Growing Tomorrow’s Citizens in Today’s Classrooms: Assessing 7 Critical Competencies (2019), Cassandra Erkens, Nicole Dimich, and I outline how critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, communication, self-regulation, digital citizenship, and…

• Rough but useable – Roman Republic Political Competition Game | Gaming the Past

  This is a quick game I threw together to teach about Roman politics and political competition in the Republic. This assumes you’re familiar with those topics. I’m just posting it in case anyone is interested.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Create a Sorting Game With a Free ClassTools Template

  In last week’s episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I answered a question about tools for creating sorting games. The Dust Bin game template from ClassTools was one of the tools that I suggested using for creating a sorting game.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Now You Can Reuse Google Classroom Rubrics

  A few months ago Google started rolling-out a rubrics tool for some Google Classroom users. To get access to the rubrics tool your domain has to be enrolled in the Google Classroom Beta Program. I was fortunate to get access to the beta a couple of …

• how-can-students-self-assess-when-teachers-do-all-the-grading-and-work

  Among the many things students are expected to do, self-assessing their learning is part of the suite of metacognitive tools that are valued in today’s society. This skill enables the student to think about their thinking, identify what they’re doin…

• we-dont-do-tests-using-gimkit-for-assessment

• TPS Inquiry Kits just became my new fave for primary sources | History Tech

  You’re looking to create an Inquiry Design Model lesson and need some resources. Maybe you and your kids are getting ready to start a problem-based project. Perhaps you need some really good thinking or writing prompts. Or four or five engaging prim…

• The Anti-Calculator Puzzle – Math with Bad Drawings

  It’s a charming problem. I’m charmed, anyway, and I don’t charm easily. (“Immune to charm,” doctors have called me, with a tearful eye.) Ironically, some experimental button-mashing is actually a pretty good way to get started here.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Collaboratively Create Maps on Padlet

  Padlet has been in my list of top collaboration tools for nearly a decade. I started using it with my students back when it was still known as Wallwisher.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: KidCitizen

  KidCitizen is an excellent site for teaching students about political history through interactive primary resources. KidCitizen is designed for grades K-5 and where student’s view photos/videos to learn about primary resources.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: ThinkFluency

  ThinkFluency is an oral reading fluency assessment app developed by a teacher for teachers. ThinkFluency replaces the tedious paper, pencil and timer assessment with an app that enables teachers to quickly assess students’ Oral Reading Fluency Rate.

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Blog posts from the past week:

• Setting Up Writing Circles in Middle School – Pernille Ripp

  This summer, I read the amazing book, Comprehension and Collaboration, 2nd Edition by Stephanie Harvey and Smokey Daniels as I knew I wanted to focus more on building true inquiry into our classroom.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Win Chromebooks and ISTE Registration in Book Creator’s “A Better Future” Contest

  Book Creator is a popular tool for creating multimedia ebooks on an iPad or in the Chrome web browser. Students can use Book Creator to create ebooks that include pictures, text, voice, video, maps, and drawings. I have a couple of tutorials on it h…

• How To Handle Students Who Complain – Smart Classroom Management

  You pour your heart into your job. You love your students, even when they’re not so lovable. You plan and create interesting lessons and deliver them with energy.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Book Review Videos Made in the Common Craft Style

  Years ago I came across a video which someone reviewed The Art of Explanation by making a video in the Common Craft style. The Art of Explanation is a book that was written by Lee LeFever who is the voice behind all of the Common Craft videos.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Science Fiction, ELA, and #MakerEd #NCTEVilliage

  I’m super excited about the next project in my Design class. I will always be an ELA teacher at heart and really wanted to find a way to incorporate reading fiction into my class.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Poe Animations and Lessons

  It wouldn’t be October without language arts that mention Edgar Allan Poe. It seems that October is the time that a lot of students are introduced to the work of Edgar Allan Poe. If that describes your classroom and you’re looking for a few Poe reso…

• Instagram-Ready Graphs (Made of String Cheese, Hairpins, and Burnt Matches) – Math with Bad Drawings

  When I came across Michelle Rial’s images, I couldn’t tell if they were webcomics, infographics, or just the quirky brainchildren of a peculiar mathematical hobbyist. Now I know: they’re all three.

• Excellent free video content from PBS LearningMedia – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog

  If you are new or haven’t visited PBS LearningMedia in awhile, it is time to revisit this wonderful teaching resource. PBS LearningMedia contains thousands of free educational videos, lesson plans, and interactive lessons to use in your classroom.

• Yup. You’re gonna have to talk about it. 22 impeachment resources that can help | History Tech

  We’ve chatted before about ways to introduce, talk about, and integrate controversial topics on our classrooms. Today I’m flashing back to a conversation I had with Charles Vaughan, a high school teacher from South Carolina.

• Mo Physics Mo Problems: Reducing Barriers to Instruction

  Providing a place for all learners to succeed required identifying barriers and reducing them with learners.

• The Best Websites For Learning About Halloween & Day Of The Dead | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Check out my New York Times post on using The Day of the Dead to help students learn about literal and interpretative questions.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Math & Science Halloween Lessons

  This afternoon one of my students asked me what my daughters are going to be for Halloween. That question reminded me that Halloween will be here soon. If you find yourself starting to look for some Halloween-themed math or science lessons for eleme…

• CURMUDGUCATION: A Good Teacher Is Not Like A Candle

  First of all, is there any other profession that has to put up with this. Substitute “lawyer” or “plumber” or even “doctor” for “teacher” in this meme, and it just sounds dumb. “Nurse,” maybe. (Hmm. What do nursing and teaching have in common as pro…

• 3-ways-to-shape-math-into-a-positive-experience

  As a teenager, Vanessa Vakharia never expected math to factor into her future. “I wanted to be a rock star and marry Keanu Reeves. Still do,” Vakharia says in a phone interview as her band drives across Canada for a multi-week tour.

• should-we-use-auto-graded-multiple-choice-quizzes

• 6-things-that-make-auto-graded-google-forms-quizzes-better

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Randomize Question and Answer Sequences in Google Forms

  On Tuesday afternoon I published Google Forms Features You Should Know How to Use. That post and corresponding video has prompted a slew of emails from people either asking or suggesting that I make a video about how to have Google Forms questions a…

• How Do You Give Individual Feedback To Students When Everyone Wants Your Attention? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  As any teacher of English Language Learner classes (and teachers of many other types of classes, too) knows,  after students have been given an assignment, it’s not unusual for many of them to subsequently have lots of questions or want individual w…

• “Legends Of Learning” Adds A Ton Of Math Games | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Legends of Learning is a fairly well-known science games site that is free for students to create virtual classrooms and monitor student progress (see It Appears That The Exceptional Science Site “Legends Of Learning” Is Now Really Free).

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Halloween-themed Physical Education Program

  In last week’s episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I mentioned a great blog for physical education teachers. That blog is called Keeping Kids in Motion and it is written by Justin Cahill. One of the free resources available on his blog is Fitne…

• Every Student Deserves Access to Project-Based Learning – John Spencer

  Years ago, my friend Chad started the 21st Century Classroom initiative in our district.

• Building The First Middle School Esports League • Teched Up Teacher

  My school year is off to a great start. My Fair Haven Innovates program is entering its fifth year of existence, the second year with the program looking like I want it to. Students are doing an outstanding job building their edcorps in FH Innovates.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Make Beliefs Comix

  Make Beliefs Comix is a excellent site that educators around the world are using for digital storytelling, project based learning, reinforcing vocabulary, and more.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Attention! @iamkidpresident is back on @Soulpancake!

  Adults might not realize it, but we need Kid President more than ever and I could not be happier to have him back. Brad and Robby are back in a new series of videos entitled Are We There Yet. They are going to travel the country in Brad’s minivan an…

• Hands on or minds on? – The Reflective Educator

  Children think with their minds, not with their hands. So when we assign activities because they are “hands on” it is more appropriate to think of these activities as being “minds on”.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Google Forms Features You Should Know How to Use – Video

  After Google Earth, Google Forms is the Google product that I get the most excited about helping other teachers use. From gathering survey data to organizing event registration to creating online quizzes there are lots of things that can be done eff…

• how-students-would-improve-their-school-lunch-experience

  School lunchtime is when kids can eat and recharge before getting back to learning. But at many schools across the country, kids don’t have much time for lunch.

• Book: Thing Explainer- Complicated Stuff in Simple Words by Randall Monroe | Science for All

  File this one under “fun” but I’m sure most science educators can find several uses for this book with students. I have owned Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words by Randall Monroe (Creator of xkcd) for a couple of years.

• A Framework to Evaluate Cognitive Complexity in Science Assessments by Achieve | Science for All

  Achieve just released A Framework to Evaluate Cognitive Complexity in Science Assessments. This short document features a rubric for rating scenarios and the 3 Dimensions in assessment items and item sets.

• 10 Easy Instagram Photo Book Challenge

  I’ve grown fascinated lately with the Instagram #BookChallenge and the #BookBento photo technique. So, here’s my rendition, see above graphic or make a copy of my GoogleDoc. Feel free to take, use, share, make it yours – with attribution please.

• Google Sites Scavenger Hunt

  Scavenger hunts are one of my favorite strategies for encouraging students to explore, be curious, and think critically. I use scavenger hunts at the start of the year to foster community building, and I use them to keep students engaged during fiel…

• Free Technology for Teachers: What’s in Pumpkin Spice?

  Walk into a Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, or Tim Horton’s at this time of year and you’re bombarded with offerings for pumpkin spice this and pumpkin spice that! According to this CNBC report pumpkin spice is a $600 million flavor.

• How World Language Teaching Has Evolved | Cult of Pedagogy

  “I took French for three years, but I can’t speak any French.” Some version of this is expressed by so many of us who took a language class in school.

• 15 NFL Math activities! – Yummy Math

  Do teams that spend a lot win a lot? (just updated!) –  Students compare team wins with team salaries in the four major North American sports … the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL.  Students use data from recent seasons to create scatter plots comparing win…

• ‘Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones’ for PC/Steam – GeekDad

  Cultic games releases the long-awaited Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones for PC. This has been a banner year for fans of cosmic horror and specifically cosmic horror videogames.

• A Principal’s Reflections: 6 Ways to Improve Professional Learning

  No matter your position in education, you have gone through some form of professional development. In many cases, the act of being “developed” comes in a variety of standard types such as workshops, mandated PD days, presentations, conferences, book…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are more great blog posts from this past week:

• Classes Register Here: October 2019 – Student Blogging Challenge

  Registrations are now open for the next Student Blogging Challenge! This is a way for classes to learn about publishing online while connecting with other classes around the world. The challenge is 100% free. Read more about the challenge here.

• Tips for Starting a Podcast | 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. I have had my own podcast for six years now.

• 5 Tips for Creating Infographics with Students – Class Tech Tips

  Do you use infographics in your classroom? Student readers should be able to gather information from infographics. Student creators should be able to make one. In this blog post, I’ll share five tips for creating infographics with students, along wi…

• A Few Suggestions for Newer Inclusive Short Story Collections – Pernille Ripp

  One of the questions I am posed a lot is where others can find amazing short stories to use with their students and while I have a file folder that I keep myself, I am also thrilled that there are so many amazing newer collections that we can use to…

• New TED-Ed Video & Lesson: “What makes a poem … a poem? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  cromaconceptovisual / Pixabay I’m adding this new lesson and video from TED-Ed to The Best World Poetry Day Resources – Help Me Find More:

• The Difference Between False And Worthy Praise – Smart Classroom Management

  Last week’s article struck a nerve with some readers. I’m not surprised.

• Early Discoveries in Science – CER Practice

  Students who are just learning how to do CER’s (claim, evidence, reasoning) often struggle when they are required to develop their own claims and evidence statements.

• The Nerdy Teacher: Minecraft and Design Thinking #MakerEd @PlayCraftLearn

  My first lesson for my Design and Innovation class needed to be something that would engage the students immediately. Minecraft is huge in our Middle School and I thought that would be a wonderful way to get students thinking about design.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Now You Can Share a Link to Jump to a Scene in Google Expeditions

  In a Tweet yesterday afternoon Google announced a neat little addition to Google Expeditions. You can now share a link to a specific scene within an Expedition.

• Patterns and Algebra – The Reflective Educator

  Visual patterns are a way to introduce and extend students’ understanding of algebra and functions. As such, there are a number of principles for helping students better understand algebra by examining visual patterns that have the same structure as…

• F.A.I.L.W. | @mcleod | Dangerously Irrelevant

  We see this saying in classrooms all over. And I’ve never liked it…

• slide-into-science-demonstrating-learning-with-google-slides

• On Misconceptions – The Reflective Educator

  Misconception: a view or opinion that is incorrect because [it is] based on faulty thinking or understanding1; a wrong or inaccurate idea or conception2.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Mozilla Is Shutting Down X-Ray Goggles

  Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggle’s is a service that I’ve been promoting for years as way to help students understand how HTML works. Students can use it to view and change the HTML behind almost any webpage that they find.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Free Tools for Creating Mind Maps and Flowcharts – Updated for 2019-20

  Creating a mind map is an excellent way to generate and write down ideas connected to a central topic. I frequently use mind maps to generate ideas for blog posts and for workshop topics.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Diving Into Google – Learn Search Techniques from Dan Russell

  Longtime followers of this blog may have picked up on my appreciation for Dan Russell’s excellent Search ReSearch blog where he posts interesting search challenges designed to help readers become better web researchers. His forthcoming book, The Joy…

• Students Are Often Terrified About Launching Their Work. Here’s How We Can Fix It. – John Spencer

  Picture this. I’m standing up front at the front of the class, an awkward high school freshman new to Arizona. I’m shy. Painfully shy. I don’t know anyone in my class. Every part of me wants to crawl up into a ball and hide.

• Claim, Evidence, & Reasoning (CER) Resources Part 1 | Science for All

  For the past several years I have been supporting pre-service and inservice teachers with the use of the Claim, Evidence and Reasoning (CER) framework for scaffolding students’ writing and talking about scientific explanations and arguments.

• Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Heading Structure Guidance to Make Content Better & Accessible

  · 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…

• Check for Understanding: What Are You Learning About Your Students During the Lesson? |

  Teachers often focus on what students will learn during a lesson. Rarely, do we stop and ask ourselves, “What will I learn about what my students know or can do during this lesson?” This is a critical question that teachers should ask themselves as …

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Check out these great blog posts:

• Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog: My Forecast Discussion for Saturday, July 13: An Experiment

  I wanted to try a new way to interact with all of you, doing a narrated description of the weather situation, with lots of weather graphics and loops. Check the video below out, and let me know if you think this is something I should try again.

• Is Gamification Manipulation – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert

  Is gamification a form of manipulation? This is a question that comes up over and over again in my world.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Answerables

  Answerables the innovative educational tool that combines the best features of game based learning w/ a learning management system has just released their free iPad app.

• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Kami

  Kami is a very handy learning tool that acts as a digital pen/paper to let students annotate on assignments, PDFs, ebooks, and more to interact w/ their peers and teachers. Also, there are a lot of tools that lets students, draw, comment, etc. to he…

• Getting to Know Our Students Survey – Pernille Ripp

  Every year, I do several surveys at the beginning of the year, I don’t think I am the only one.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Free Service That Lets You Print Almost Any Poster

  Canva is a great service for designing all kinds of graphics for online and offline use. Canva includes a gallery of templates for making classroom posters. Once you have designed your poster you can use Canva’s print-on-demand service to have it pr…

• Larry Cuban: AltSchool Collapses, Reborn as a “Learning Platform” | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Larry Cuban recounts the short history of AltSchool, which was intended to be a progressive moneymaker but flamed out  and has been replaced by another company called Altitude Learning. Another chapter is added to the annals of the for-profit educat…

• Free Technology for Teachers: NowComment – A Good Tool for Hosting Online Discussions

  NowComment is an interesting tool for creating online conversations centered around shared documents. While you could do something similar in Google Docs, NowComment was designed for hosting threaded discussions and works with a wide variety of docu…

• Grade 1 NGSS Unit Exemplar: How Does Light Help Me See Things and Communicate with Others? | Science for All

  The Nextgenscience.org site continues to highlight exemplars of NGSS-based instructional units with their Quality NGSS Units. One of the latest is a 1st grade unit– which is great because many of the initial science units to arise have tended to be …

• Inclusion as the Norm – The Reflective Educator

  At a conference in Burnaby last Spring, the keynote speaker, Shelley Moore, shared a graphic similar to this one. The green circles are typical learners and the red, yellow, and blue circles are people with learning differences.

• DIY community care: 1 sign of a new Net safety era – NetFamilyNews.org

  It’s a sign that we’re in a whole new era in online safety now: young users increasingly taking things into their own hands. You might call it “DIY Internet safety.” It’s not all good news, but it’s also not all bad (not that DIY is the all of the n…

• How Gamification Can Support Typing Practice – Class Tech Tips

  This post is in partnership with Typing.com. All opinions are my own. Do you use a typing practice program in your school? Typing.com is a popular typing tutor, used by millions of students, educators, and professionals worldwide.

• Hubert The Chatbot Could Be An Engaging Tool For Students To Use To Evaluate Classes | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Hubert is a new – and free – chatbot that teachers can have students to use to evaluate classes. Then, the site uses Artificial Intelligence to analyse the results.

• The humanities are “useless.” (Unless you want a job. Or to change the world.). | History Tech

  As my two kids weaved their way through middle and high school, they experienced the first waves of STEM, Career Pathways, and the focus by school districts on specific technical skills.

• Princeton University: Climate Stabilization Game | Science for All

  If you are a high school science teacher looking for some engaging and thought-provoking climate science learning activities, then here is a great resource for you.

• Google Translate Gets An Impressive Upgrade Today! | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  As most of us know, Google Translate is pretty amazing, and it’s camera translation ability (show an image of a sign or text and get it automatically translated) got even more so today.

• Scientists solve long-standing mystery: Why atmospheric carbon dioxide was lower during ice ages | NSF – National Science Foundation

• Free Technology for Teachers: Satellite Observations of Arctic Change

  Satellite imagery gives students, teachers, and professional researchers access to lots of information to analyze and interpret. Through timelapses of satellite imagery students can see how landscapes and seascapes change over time. Some timelapses …

• Classroom Games and Tech – Ed-Tech to Engage and Inspire: My Updated Animation and Interactive Stories Projects

  I updated two of my popular lessons recently: Simple Animations Using Google Slides Interactive Stories Using Google Slides Students love both of these simple projects and the lessons come “ready to assign”.

• Books for Teachers to Read – Josh Stumpenhorst

  I struggled with suggesting a book for this given that it truly is a “new” phenomenon within young adult literature. I am sure more books will come out with this topic but two jumped out at me as critical reads for two different reasons. The first i…

• Mitchell Robinson: Tax Credits Are a Zombie Idea | Diane Ravitch’s blog

  Mitchell Robinson of Michigan State explains why “tax credit scholarships” are a zombie idea. They are consistently rejected by voters, they fail to educate students, yet they never die.

• Scavenger Hunt: Get Kids Talking on the 1st Day of School |

  Relationship building needs to start on the first day of school if teachers are going to cultivate a community of learners willing to take risks and engage with one another.

• Hacking the Marshmallow Challenge – Shifting Phases

  I use the Marshmallow Challenge at the beginning of every year. I used to do it the way it’s proposed by its originator, Tom Wujec, and widely written about. (TL;DR: you have to build a tower out of spaghetti, string, and tape, with a marshmallow on…

• 12 Ideas for Amplified Forms of Digital Storytelling | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog

  Storytelling fascinates me… Digital storytelling even more. Over the years, I shared my thinking and experiments around digital storytelling here on Langwitches, to one post in particular, I keep coming back to: Digital Storytelling- What it is and …

• History and Game Links April – June 2019 | Gaming the Past

  Historical Video Games  From Village to Empire Steam blurb: “From Village to Empire is an indie turn based strategy game with a historical setting.

• Think Twice Before Doing Another Historical Simulation | Cult of Pedagogy

  *Cult of Pedagogy is an affiliate for ProWritingAid. If you sign up for a paid account through the provided link, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

• A Lever and a Place to Stand: A Crash Course in Newton’s Laws

  When I started teaching, my assignment was 4 sections of physical science; one of my favorite lessons was the science of seat belts. We used Newton’s First Law as a starting point for trying to convince kids to wear seat belts by presenting data and…

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are some great posts from last week:

• • Chromosomes and Cancer

    This is a good follow-up activity to the Tasmanian Devil Karyotype, where students examine how the chromosomes of cancerous cells can be altered. It is a short read about a transmissible cancer found in Tasmanian devils which causes facial tumors.

  • How To Not Quit Teaching – Smart Classroom Management

    Four of every ten new teachers leave the profession within five years. That is a staggering number.

  • Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Ways to Quickly Create Audio Slideshows for End-of-Year Events

    Around this time every year I start to field a bunch of emails from readers who are looking for advice on how to quickly create audio slideshow videos for end-of-year events. Here are five options that I like for making audio slideshow videos.

  • Celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week by Watching and Sharing This Great Video by Stevie Van Zandt | Diane Ravitch’s blog

    Teacher Appreciation Week begins on May 6! His stage name is Little Steven; he played in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street band and has received many honors.

  • Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Google Earth Pro Tips for Teachers and Students

    Google Earth is currently available in a few different versions. There is the web browser version that was built for use in Chrome and Chromebooks. There is an iOS version and an Android version for use on tablets and phones.

  • Was the Common Core Successful? | Diane Ravitch’s blog

    It is probably far too soon to know whether the Common Core succeeded or failed, but the studies are beginning to appear. The adoption of the Common Core standards was a central requirement of the Obama-Duncan Race to the Top program.

  • Free Technology for Teachers: How to File a Copyright Claim With Google

    In my previous post I detailed the copyright debacle that has consumed way too much of my mental energy and way too much of time over the last week.

  • Free Technology for Teachers: How to File a Copyright Infringement Complaint With Facebook

    I frequently deal with websites that are plagiarizing my work. Usually, I deal with sites that are plaigiarizing my work by simply sending them a notice that they’ve been caught and that they should stop. Seven times out of ten it ends there.

  • Teach Students to Track How Many Words They Read Per Minute Using Voice Typing and Google Forms |

    As elementary students learn how to read, teachers administer reading fluency tests and listen to students read passages. During these reading fluency tests, teachers listen for speed, accuracy, and expression.

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

    There is a lot of buzz around using AR/VR technology in education, often as a technology that is soon to emerge as a powerful tool. The fact is, the tools are currently in place to get students started building with AR/ VR technology NOW, and many o…

  • 20-ways-to-analyze-text-images-with-edji

  • Kathy Schrock’s Kaffeeklatsch: Fake news: Fact or opinion?

    Becoming a good digital citizen commonly includes the mastering of a multitude of skills. I like this image, created by Wesley Fryer and Marcia Moore, which provides a visual overview of the components. https://www.flickr.

  • My SBG Journey: Mastery Level Calculation Methods – Classroom Powerups

    I have written previously about my interest in using the Power Law as a grading method in a Standards Based Grading class. I am still quite interested but I have come across a few other common SBG grading practices and this post will be my way of wo…

  • 3 Ideas for Dealing with “Pushback” on Your Ideas in Education – The Principal of Change

    Instead of answering this question with the idea that had pushback (because I have had a ton), I want to focus more on answering what I have shifted my thinking on for this context. First of all, assume positive intent of the other person you are wo…

  • Free Technology for Teachers: ICYMI – Google Team Drives Are Being Renamed to Shared Drives

    From the department of, “Google’s always changing something,” yesterday Google announced that Team Drives are going to be renamed as Shared Drives. Depending upon the device you’re using and your domain, this change will happen as early as May 21st.

  • how-mindfulness-can-help-teachers-and-students-manage-challenging-situations

    Excerpted from “Mindfulness in the Secondary Classroom: A Guide for Teaching Adolescents,” (c) 2019 by Patricia C. Broderick. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company.

  • Making Creativity Easier Than Ever with Buncee Ideas Lab – Class Tech Tips

    Have you heard the news? Buncee recently launched a brand new feature to help promote creativity in your classroom, Buncee Ideas Lab. This new feature gives classrooms the tools they need to easily innovate learning in your school, by featuring a va…

  • An Open and Extended Response (On Testing Season) | The Jose Vilson

    I laid my lesson plans on top of the roller tray. I pulled off my “problem of the moment” off my printer and put scissors on top of them. I turned on my Promethean board and connected the AppleTV to it.

  • The Evolution Of Flexible Workspace – e-Learning Infographics

    Workplace customs and trends have shifted over the years. The typical workspaces as we knew it 10 years ago appears different from what companies offer today. Businesses are acknowledging the changes and seeing the advantages of adopting a modern of…

  • A Breakdown Of Blended Learning – e-Learning Infographics

    A Breakdown Of Blended Learning – Infographic A breakdown of Blended Learning – What it is, models, stats and what the future holds. What is blended learning? Today’s classroom blends traditional methods of instruction with digital instruction for a…

  • Tips for Using Social Media to Tell Your School’s Story – Easy EdTech Podcast 012 – Class Tech Tips

    In this episode I share ten tips for using social media to help you spread the word about the great work happening by students, teachers and families in your school community.

  • Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Tips for New Google Expeditions Users

    Google Expeditions is often the first educational virtual reality tool that I introduce to teachers who come to one of my workshops. Here are five tips that I frequently pass along to teachers who are preparing to use Google Expeditions for the firs…

  • Taskade – Team Tasks, Notes, and Video Chat. Team Productivity.

    Taskade is on web, mobile and desktop! Log in AboutPricingAppsTemplates Log inSign up free Work together Team task, notes and chat. Get Started — Free ForeverGet Started Anywhere, Anytime Work on any device and keep everything in sync.

  • Control Alt Achieve: Google Slides Short and Long Vowel Sounds Audio Activity

    In my most recent post I shared a collection of web-based audio recording tools that you and your students can use to record and add your voice to Google Slides, or any project. There are many fun and engaging ways this new feature for Slides could …

  • Many Flavors of Neurodivergence – GeekMom

    I take two different kinds of neural reuptake inhibitors: one works on serotonin, the other on norepinephrine. Those two neurotransmitters like to mess up my brain in different, yet related, ways.

  • How to Add Music to Spark Video with Soundtrap – Class Tech Tips

    If you’ve ever watched a movie or television show and felt moved by the music, you know how powerful a soundtrack can be for a viewer.

  • Making Strengths (and Needs) Analysis Count in the Classroom | All Things Assessment

    I have long believed that if assessment doesn’t immediately impact learning in the classroom, it has fallen short of both its purpose and its potential.

  • Teaching All Students – The Reflective Educator

    Here are four videos that represent the perspectives of students with various learner characteristics. Imagine you have these four students in your class. How might you support them?

  • What We Assess Often Drives Teaching – The Principal of Change

    Is it a means to an end or is there a bigger purpose?

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

Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly)

Here are this past week’s blog post selections:

• Teens Organizing Around Climate Change | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

  Belgian Students Protest For Action On Climate Change is from NPR. Meet the teens leading a global movement to ditch school and fight climate change is from CBS News.

• Climate Sense: Concerns rise over methane and auto-emission rules | Watching Our Water Ways

  Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, capable of trapping far more heat than the same amount carbon dioxide, at least in the short term.

• 30-google-classroom-tips-every-teacher-must-know

• The Viking Warrior – 2¢ Worth

  In 1878, archaeologists excavating the Viking town in current day Sweden, uncovered an ornate 10th-century burial tomb.

• YouTube Channels about History – 2¢ Worth

  Here are several YouTube channels that tell stories about our history. There were compiled by Reddit user, Texas_Rockets.

• So you need a compelling question? How about a couple hundred? | History Tech

  For whatever reason, I’ve gotten into a ton of conversations lately around the topic of compelling questions. Some of the conversations have focused on the creation of quality sample questions as part of the ongoing revision of our current state sta…

• Free Technology for Teachers: ClassHook’s Pause Prompts Let You Add Questions to Existing Videos

  ClassHook is a great service for finding video clips to use in your classroom. ClassHook clips come from well-known movies and television shows. You can search for those clips according to subject area and topic. Earlier this month ClassHook introdu…

• Badass Teachers Association Blog: An Open Letter to Teach for America Regarding Teacher Strikes by Seth Khan

  Originally posted at: https://ift.tt/2GFH5IG.

• Every Student Should Publish for the World! | Shake Up Learning

  Pinterest Give Your Students the World! Give them a Global Audience! Part of your Dynamic Classroom Should Include Going Global! Bring the world to your students, and bring your students to the world. It’s also our job, as teachers, to give students…

• We Know Brad’s Wife – She Got Fired From the Cracker Barrel – Teacher Tech

  Last week I blogged about a math problem about “Who the Heck is Brad” and his grooming. While Brad is of course nobody, apparently his wife is famous.

• Overly Cluttered Classrooms and EL Learning | TESOL Blog

  Many teachers believe that the physical environment of the classroom can serve as an additional teacher. Look around your classroom.

• How to Use Metaverse: Awesome Augmented Reality and New Features

  etaverse is a powerful augmented reality (AR) programming app for classrooms. I first wrote about this app Min December 2017 shortly after launch. Metaverse has come a long way and is specifically focused on becoming an amazing AR app for classrooms…

• Control Alt Achieve: Google Tour Builder for any Subject

  Google Tour Builder is one of my favorite lesser-known Google tools. If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you have probably seen me mention it a number of times including posts such as “Hipster Google” and “Create your own Lit Trips”.

• the-digital-gallery-walk-collaboration-on-their-feet

• how-schools-spark-excitement-for-learning-with-role-playing-games

  The use of simulations and role-play in education is not a recent development. Model United Nations, historical re-enactments, mock trials and other types of dramatic simulations have been in the teacher toolbox for decades.

• Wonder Park | ymiclassroom.com

• 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 …

• Looking to Build Your Empathy Experience? Shadow a Student! | Dr. Neil Gupta

  There’s a lot of talk about the need for empathy, so leaders spend a lot of time developing lessons and opportunities for students to engage them in experiences to be more empathetic to situations and each other as well as how to use it in taking ac…

• Google Slides + Forms: Update Chart – Teacher Tech

  Actually, this trick is to insert charts into Google Slides from a Google Sheets spreadsheet. However, it’s highly likely that where the spreadsheet data came from is Google Forms. A key element when considering EdTech is interactivity.

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Find More Free Images to Use in Adobe Spark Videos

  Adobe Spark is one of my favorite free tools for creating videos. It works well on Chromebooks and any other laptop that is using a modern web browser. One the excellent features of Adobe Spark Video is the integrated image search tool.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Comparison of Blogging Services for Teachers and Students

  The Edublogs Student Blogging Challenge kicks-off two weeks from now. You don’t need to be an Edublogs user in order for your students to participate in the challenge. If you’re new to blogging or new to having students blog, Edublogs is a solid cho…

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Helpful Search Refinement Option for Students Studying Trending Topics

  Earlier this month I published Ten Search Strategies Students Should Try. An eleventh strategy that students can try when they are researching current events, trending topics, or any rapidly changing topic is to refine results according to publicati…

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Visible Learning in Literacy: 3 Takeaways from John Hattie and Nancy Frey

  Opportunity to learn with renowned education researchers and practitioners rejuvenates the mind and reignites the passion in many educators.

• Stack Overflow: Learning with Comics – GeekDad

  Reading Time: 6 minutes First Second Comics already has a line of Science Comics (which I highlighted a while back, with one more included in today’s column), but this month they also introduced a new series: Maker Comics! Both series convey a lot o…

• Simply Deep: Designing Authentic Assessments that are Meaningful and Relevant | All Things Assessment

  “Being able to recall scientific concepts, identify historical events, or memorize mathematics facts and algorithms, while acutely impressive, is no longer sufficient to prepare students for the challenging world they will face.

• 3-tips-for-creating-a-positive-ar-and-vr-experience-in-every-classroom

• A Principal’s Reflections: The Two Most Important Questions to Ask to Determine if Learning is Taking Place

  There are so many thoughts and ideas as to what learning really looks and feels like. From these conversations, educators form their own perspectives and opinions that best align with the vision, mission, and goals of their classroom, school or dist…

• Time to Take a Look at Your Dress Code | Cult of Pedagogy

  A couple months ago, I saw two different news stories that broke my heart. Both were about dreadlocks. The first story was about Andrew Johnson, a high school wrestler in New Jersey who wore his hair in cheekbone-length dreadlocks.

• Free Technology for Teachers: An Online Lab for Learning About Weather Patterns and Forecasts

  The Smithsonian Science Education Center’s Weather Lab is one of many online learning activities produced and hosted by the Smithsonian. The Weather Lab is designed to help elementary and middle school students learn about weather patterns.

• Six Tools To Create Interactive Learning Content On Your Blog – The Edublogger

  This is a guest post from Roslyn Green who is a secondary school (high school) teacher from Melbourne, Australia. Roslyn uses Edublogs and CampusPress to blog with a number of her classes a variety of ways which she explained in a popular post on Th…

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