Google Take Out- choices
Before I forget... if you are leaving your district, retiring or graduating- you can transfer your Google docs, etc. to a new personal account. You have a couple options, which Jenn Judkins explains in detail. Please check out her post here.
Richard Byrne also posted on his blog about this topic this week. He has similar ideas and included a couple short videos. Check out his post here.
Schoolytics
Schoolytics is a data dashboard that integrates with Google Classroom. It is free for teachers. I know that "data dashboard" may not sound really cool, but this one is! The information is presented clearly. The graphics give you tons of information at a glance. I can't see why any teacher or administrator would pass this one up.
In an interview last fall, Erin Sailor, Director of Professional Learning for Eduscape, stated, “Schoolytics provides the data insights needed to integrate educational technology and understand how to support students in any type of learning environment. Administrators and student support teams can identify learners in need of remediation and determine trends in technology use. Educators can access their Schoolytics Google Classroom information to gather insights on student progress and make informed instructional decisions." Check out the live demo of Schoolytics Keen
Keen... Google's answer to Pinterest?
I saw a post aboutKeen this week; I hadn't heard of it. I am not a Pinterest fan, as I get lost within seconds just about every time I use it. Yes, great ideas, etc... but I generally find a whole page of cool stuff to check out, click one link and can't get back to the rest... So, check this out, see if it makes you happy. It's another way to organize your favs, to share and collate collections. Wakelet for Students
Graspable Math
Graspable Math allows you to "Assign algebra tasks to your students and see live feedback of their step-by-step work. Discover, create, and share engaging math activities for 4th to 12th graders.
GM Activities is free for K-12 school teachers"
Ideas to Share
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As the school year starts to wind down for many, it seems like we are caught in a whirlwind of trying to get "it" all in, trying to finish up projects, tying up loose ends, etc... all while trying to "finish strong". This has been the strangest school year on record for most of us. Hopefully a few of these tips, and articles can help you finish up and have fun doing it.
This has been all over Twitter and FB over the last week.
26 Great ideas for the End of the Year! Click thru to the shared doc and make yourself a copy. Thank you to @candytechideas, @MongelliMegan and @the geoffwagner!
Backyard Bio
BioBlitz is really fun, whether you do it with your class, your school, your club or your family. There's still time (not much) to sign up for this! Check it out here. STEM for ALL Video Showcase
Coming up next week. Check out more info here.
Save the Dates! May 11th - 18th Climate Action Kit
My latest "thing". I love microbits and have tried several types of bit boards to extend the pins and make it easy for elementary kids to use. This one has it all so far.
It has an easy to access Microbit board and an excellent curriculum linking to UN SDG goals with STEM content. I have attended several Inksmith webinars to learn more about the Climate Action Kit, after getting one a year or so ago. It pretty much sat on the shelf for a while, but after the webinars, and building my own plant watering system, I am hooked. These are easy to use, give very clear instructions and diagrams, are inexpensive and are linked to Ontario curriculum. Check out the Climate Action Kit here. Teams scores big on this one!Imagine if the developers of the Flipgrid Shorts Camera, Immersive Reader and Microsoft Teams all sat down to come up with an idea. Well Reading Progress is just that! Learn more about automatic running records and how this new tool can be in used in reading classrooms everywhere!
I drank the Google koolaid years ago and love all of the ways we can connect with our students, collaborate, etc. But- that doesn't mean that I don't love Flipgrid, Immersive Reader, etc- all in the Microsoft realm. So when I saw this come out the other day, I had to investigate. It looks GREAT! Honestly, I am not sure how to integrate it all into our googlesphere, but we should. As teachers and students we can get free Microsoft teams accounts. I don't know how crazy it would be to assign the reading passages in Teams through Google Classroom, but there must be a way. So- check out the videos above and visit the blog post to tell you all about it.
Ideas to Share
Poetry Month This link comes from a Terri Eichholz post. I love the interactive google doc with lesson plans that she shared from Scott Bayer (@LyricalSwordz). With yet more unsettling news on the rise of hate and racism, here are some resources from KQED. Click here or on the image. WordtuneLooking for a new way to improve student writing? Try this Chrome extension- Wordtune. Eric Curts wrote up a great explanation on his site, and created this how to video, as well as detailed written instructions. I tried it out and like having a lot of choices, although, as with most of this type of tool, like Grammarly, I found that having it pop up to be intrusive and used the little dot in the top left to shut it off, unless I asked it for advice. I am curious to see how well the AI works. We all know that the auto-correct can be a godsend or make really funny mistakes. BreakoutEDU's free game of the week is Breakout THE ZOOM!
Math Whiteboard As many of you may know, math is not my favorite subject. This 30 min webinar on a new tool called Math Whiteboard honestly made the tool look really cool, but not being a math teacher, I don't know. He demo'd cool tricks with graphs, etc... made it look easy. He also seems to be available for questions and more demos. Try it and see! Let me know in the comments. Here's a couple of example images from his site. I just saw that Eric Curts is having a webinar on this next week 4/20/21 MakeCode Skill Map This one is in development, but go ahead and give it a shot if you don't mind that there may well be some bugs. I enjoyed the intro webinar and found most of it to be fun and easy to follow along. You can also check out the MakeCode Arcade platform, but this skillmap has potential as a teaching tool. One big plus- MakeCode Arcade has Immersive Reader! Canva If you haven't tried Canva, you're missing out. This platform has grown so much over the last year or so! I guess I'm not the only one who is so impressed with Canva. Richard Byrne just put up a new blog post 19 Canva Tutorials for Teachers and Students - Certificates, Comics, and More! Check out all the great tutorials he has created here. Here's a link to Canva's OnBoarding for Educator's presentation with step by step from setup to presenting remotely and more. Canva offers free pro accounts for educators! You can create classrooms. It is integrated with Google Classroom. Students can collaborate on work. The amount of resources available to teachers is simply amazing! Remove bg is part of the platform... You can find, reuse, recreate worksheets, comics, infographics and so much more. The Canva video below is a bit long, but worth the time. I have sat through several of Leslie Fisher's webinars on Canva and will be back for more. You can also check out Holly Clark's ideas here. I also took a couple of quick video tours ( less than a minute) below to show you some of what is available to teachers- for free!
Yet More Jamboard I attended a Fried.Tech webinar recently on Jamboard, not really expecting to learn anything new. Much of it was the same old, but I did learn more about the differences in using Jamboard on a tablet vs the web version (~ 11:28 on the video) There are some pretty cool things you can do with the app. Check out their presentation and slide deck. Just in from Eric Curts I thought I was done, but just saw this tweet from Eric. Now I have to go check out Monster Mash!
This has been a crazy couple of weeks. Emotions run high, lots of uncertainty, COVID numbers increase... hard for both teachers and students to get back into a rhythm of learning. I actually learned a lot this past week, attending the STEM 4 Innovation conference, the Future of CS conference and a Friday night Leslie Fisher webinar on what's new with FlipGrid. Next week brings FETC, a free virtual conference.
Attending virtual conferences, while not at all like meeting people and talking with them in person, has been a great way to stay in touch with other teachers, with what is new in the tech integration world and learning more about how to help teachers with the pivot from f2f to remote learning. I was fortunate enough to snag a ticket to the Future of CS conference and 2 things really stood out to me. One was the role of AI or artificial intelligence in our everyday lives and how we can best begin to or continue to teach these basics to K-12 students. The other was the fact that technology is inherently biased along racial and gender lines. I attended an incredibly informative workshop run by Vicky Sedgwick, Alexis Cobo and Kelly Powers. Vicky has kindly given me permission to share the slidedeck. There are embedded links on the slides and an amazing amount of additional resources linked on the last few slides.
The other takeaway from this conference was from Dr. Nicki Washington's final keynote called, Do You *Really* Want an Inclusive CS of the Future? She points out in example after example that “Racism isn’t a BUG, it’s a FEATURE.” I hope to get access to a shareable recording of this one, as I think everyone would benefit from hearing more about this issue. It was a very powerful presentation. We also received complimentary passes to view Coded Bias- which I also highly recommend.
Ideas to Share
Teaching Social Justice is More than One Lesson
Hyperdocs to help teach social justice. This blog post includes 5 hyperdocs to help students process the recent events and to work through ideas on social justice.
Teaching Social Justice is More than One Lesson
Big Deal Media published a series of articles on Media Literacy today. Images are linked to the resources.
If you are interested in media literacy, be sure to sign up for NewsLitCamp with CNN, coming up on Jan. 26. https://newslit.org/updates/all-educators-newslitcamp-with-cnn-worldwide/
More math...Mathigon is an excellent online math resource. It's "the textbook of the future".
Would you rather play with Santa or read the blog post? Safe SearchOne thing that caught my eye this past week was the Safe Search info posted by Shelly Terrell on her Teacher Reboot Site. This is part of the 25 Days of Free STEM Resources Digital Advent Calendar that was shared previously. We have a tab on our symbaloo start page for safe search, but this reminded me that that tab as well as the multimedia resources tab both need to be refreshed. Here's a screenshot of Shelly's safe search, and a link to more info. Shut the Box GameLove this game that Alice Keeler coded in Google Slides. Try it with your class- virtual or in person. How does it work out for you to have lots of kids playing at once? Or did you try it with pairs of students? Here's the link to make a copy of the document. It has the video as well, if you need to follow along a bit. If It Were My HomeAnother site that I noticed, thanks to Wanda Terral, was this one- If It Were My Home. The topic initially reminded me of the children's book, If You Lived Here: Houses of the World, but this site is all data driven and aimed at a much older audience. Really interesting site, making it easy to make comparisons. I remember a site, years ago, that took students around the world, looking at images of how people live, but cannot remember the name! If you know the site, please leave the url in the comments. World Read Aloud Day is coming!World Read Aloud Day is coming up in February and that will be here before you know it. Kate Messner has a great list of volunteers on her site who can virtually visit your class. Check it out here. Scholastic, a major sponsor of the event, has lots of ideas (and books). You can learn more about their #WRADChallenge here. You can download a packet of activities and sign up at LitWorld, here. Chromebook Handwriting InputAs I am testing out the new 2n1 chromebooks we have for grade 2, I was really interested in the handwriting on a chromebook video I came across. I tried it and yes, it works, but... I didn't find it quite as easy as shown. I was just using my finger, though, not a stylus. It also works on a regular chromebook on the touchpad, but it was wicked hard to do- at least for me. So, try it out and see what works for you. I am also hoping to get some of the Google Play Store open for us, so then both teachers and students could more easily annotate in Google Classroom via the app. More Techmas GiftsThis presentation was shared by NVUSD's Promethean Education Consultants- Ashley Green and Xan Roberti. Thank You! (yes, it is pretty graphic heavy and may take a bit to load) Still Struggling to make Interactive PDFs?Social Studies anyone?Richard Byrnes from FreeTech4Teachers wrote a nice post the other day about CNN bell ringers for social studies class. You can read his post here. Another post that caught my eye was from Larry Ferlazzo, who introduced me to a new site called Enslaved.org. Time Magazine has introduced a new video series called The History You Didn’t Learn. The purpose is to help fill in the gaps on a moment in history or a historical figure that’s often misrepresented in K-12 classes. They have one video on YouTube with more to come. Take a Break, and enjoy Free PD in your PJs!Ditch Summit videos will be up thru January 8th! They are worth your time. Sign up for FETC- FREE virtual conference! https://www.fetc.org/register
Canva for Education Summit- TODAY @ 5 EST
This should be good. Never tried Canva? Great tool- and it's free. You can use it with students, create infographics, comic strips and more. https://www.canva.com/events/education-summit-2020/
Accessibility
Tech & Learning recently partnered with the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) to offer the Beyond Access Forum: Inclusive and Individualized Education, an interactive and thought-provoking virtual event focused on digital accessibility, inclusion, and teaching information fluency.
You can watch this presentation below or simply check out the great ideas for using assistive technology in remote and blended settingshere. STEAM
CS Ed Week
Computer science education week is right around the corner. I spent some time yesterday on a Kodable webinar and will be putting together information for HES later this week. In the past we have been able to use physical coding, partner coding and more. Today, we need to plan on remote learning, or at the least social distancing and not sharing materials. Most of the major CS sites are putting out even more unplugged activities than usual and expanding their selections. If your students have Tinkercad accounts, this may be a great time to explore coding with codeblocks. If you have a 3D printer available, perhaps you can print some of their designs, or use merge cubes to visualize them in 3D. More on this next week.
Game Board
Alice Keeler created and shared this great game board template to use in google Slides. She gives complete instructions, as well as a link to the template on her blog. You can modify this, assign it to students to create review games, and more.
Math Resources
Useful Chrome Extensions
Do More with Google Classroom
Matt Miller is a rockstar educator who freely shares so much every week. This compilation of Google Classroom resources, all in one place is amazing. Check it out here. Pretty soon he will have another book out. But, do sign up for his mailing list and get ready to use great tips and strategies delivered to your inbox and get free ebooks
PearDeck vs NearPod
OK, I get a lot of questions about these 2 applications. Which is better/ What are the similarities and differences? Which one should I use? Is it worth it to get the premium version? So... I found a spreadsheet from TCEA that compares the two. Here you go.
Honestly, you do not have to choose. Our district went with the premium version of PearDeck. That does not mean that you cannot use NearPod. There are some really cool features of NearPod. Check them out- compare for yourself... but don't feel like it has to be one or the other. Google Slides Trick
I saw this tweet the other day and saved it, but then realized that I didn't really get it. Lucky for me, a whole bunch of other teachers needed clarification as well. Check outcomments on the tweet and watch the video explanation as well.
Stuck on Fractions?
I have no idea why, but all of a sudden, I have a ton of teaching fractions resources saved. So here you go...
MathCurious made a slide with Fractions favorites from PhET
Looking for more Jamboard Ideas?
Julia Dweck has amazing ideas that she freely shares on her Twitter account.
Or even more from Candace Buchanan candyTechIdeas
Handy Bookmarklet
"This bookmarklet installs a javascript code to your bookmarks bar that will allow you to go fullscreen while in editing mode in Google Slides.
This allows you to move objects and add text while presenting the slides to your students whether through a Meet or in-person on a projector. " Learn more about it here. Turn Docs into Quizzes and Flashcards
Richard Byrne shared new information about Knowt teacher platform to turn documents into quizzes and flashcards the other day. I didn't know that this was possible. Check out his blog post and the video below.
25 Days of Making is coming
Aaron Maurer is once again doing maker projects for 25 days this year. Check it out here. Lots of great ideas; many that the kids can do at home with found/free materials.
Looking for more great FREE PD?
If you've always wanted to attend FETC, but never had the chance, it's your lucky year. FETC is virtual this year- and it's FREE. Sign up today to have 4 full days of great PD- for FREE!
Still trying to convert paper to digital?
Texthelp can help... Click the link to read more, or if you have math worksheets- you can use Equatio- see the video below. We have subscriptions- for the district, including HA and HES. Try it!
Converting Worksheets
Putting aside the question of why use worksheets for the moment... many of the questions I have been getting are around converting paper worksheets of one sort or another over to digital worksheets that remote students can complete. I was hedging away from using Wizer.me, mostly because I just hate worksheets, although many claim that it is a game changer for them. But lately I have seen many teachers online claiming that Teacher Made is the cat's pajamas... so- I tried it. It is easy to use for what I was doing- just the basics. I did not try assigning it, collecting or grading it- although it says it does all that. Why don't you check out the 2 main contenders and then some other workarounds using Google Slides?
An example below from WIzer. I found Wizer a little harder to figure out what I needed to do, but that is just my take. It also seemed like they were trying to get me to upgrade to premium, whereas Teacher Made is just plain free.
Annotating PDFs
Some folks like to use various chrome extensions to annotate on top of pdfs. You can use Kami, you can use Doc Hub online , but...
If you are at HPS- you have the tools you need already!
Everyone has Read and Write for Google Chrome... the pdf reader allows kids to annotate.
Here are a couple of quick how to videos... essentially save the pdf as an image or screenshot it, upload to background ( not insert image) or master slide. Then use tables or text boxes for kids to fill in.
Never used Master Slides or have slides that you want to convert?
What about Math?
Put your worksheet on Jamboard as the background and you can do the same thing. Or use equatio on slides, etc...
Math Manipulatives
Kris posted this intriguing view of Mathigon polypad on Twitter. I went to check it out- and it's a whole textbook, plus a whole bunch of courses- many still under construction and some really cool games. Even if you're not a math teacher, these are really fun!
Check out his tweet, but beware, you may also fall down the rabbit hole.
Another math site I found interesting this week is Math Curious. Here you will find worksheets, puzzles, math storybooks and task cards. There are lots of great sites if you need to find manipulatives for games that you are making, or for student use at home. My favorites- Toy Theater for manipulatives and Math Playground for games. (Just to note- Colleen King Whalen is really strict about ads and the kinds of games she puts on Math Playground, making it a great educational, safe site.)
Free Math Manipulative Sites
https://toytheater.com/category/teacher-tools/virtual-manipulatives/ https://www.didax.com/math/virtual-manipulatives.html https://www.mathlearningcenter.org/apps https://www.mathplayground.com/
Before I got lost in the math manipulative world, I actually wanted to share a quick video with a tip on duplicating objects in Google slides or even Jamboard.
Online WhiteBoards
I saw a new whiteboard recently and here's Richard Byrne to walk you through it.
Of course you know there are several options now for online whiteboards. You can go back to AWWapp the online whiteboard, orGoogle's Jamboard, or the whiteboard.fi. You can even add draw features in a Pear Deck Slide. Check them out and see what works best for you.
Stuff to Share
This came from Wes Fryer- on Media Literacy. I hadn't seen it before. Spot the Troll.
I have a giant pile of bookmarks to share, but have a feeling that most of us are still a bit overwhelmed as we adjust to a new year with more changes. So, what would be useful right now? A little bit of YouTube, a few Google Slides Tips and some more on the new features in Jamboard. I also wanted to share EdTechTeacher's new RemoteLearning Guidebook.
YouTube Tips
Many teachers are creating and posting videos to YouTube. A couple things about YouTube that I find useful are being able to embed a video without all the ads and nasty stuff. It was a bit disconcerting earlier in the week when safeyoutube was hacked and teachers around the country found links to inappropriate videos instead of the edu links expected. This short video from Brigid Duncan will show you how to get rid of the junk. Essentially: put_popup in between the word watch and the question mark in the url.
One other site that I find useful gives me a way to set the start and end time for a video I want to share with students. Yes, you can poke around in the url and set the times, but this is easier. Just go to YouTube StartEnd.com and input your times and it pops out the correct url for you.
Richard Byrne also put out a short video this week about ways to show clean videos. Math Reps
Jon Corippo has a great collection of Eduprotocols Math Reps that you may want to check out. If you haven't started using Wakelets for bookmarking and making curated collections, it's time to check it out! Easy to use and at least for me- I don't get lost down the rabbit hole like I do on Pinterest.
Google Slides
I love using Google Slides,as they are incredibly versatile. Our district purchased Pear Deck, so that we can use so many of those interactive features as well.
Jamboard
Back in July Kris Szajner wrote an excellent guest post on Matt Miller's blog and shared some great templates- all ready to use in Jamboard. Here's the post. Check out the templates!
Richard Byrne has a nice short video on using Jamboard in Google Classroom
Tom Mullaney just put out a series of real short videos to help you use the new features.
Want to get fancy and do some app smashing? Check out Greg's video.
This week I will simply share a few of the resources that have come across my email, twitter, and various pln groups. A couple tools that stood out this week, Pear Deck and using Google Slides to create various games for students. I've also been seeing lots of choice boards, and have included some for math. The lists of "stuff" are, as always, overwhelming.
Don't miss out on Netflix documentaries- now available in "your classroom"!
Here's the info: "For many years, Netflix has allowed teachers to screen documentaries in their classrooms... However, this isn’t possible with schools closed. So at their request, we have made a selection of our documentary features and series available on ourYouTube channel. If you are a parent or teacher, please check the ratings so that you can make informed choices for your students and children. For more information and to download accompanying educational resources please visit the Netflix Company Blog."
One email that did attract my notice was from the UK, a weekly update on keeping kids safe online. I guess this should have been on my radar as we are asking kids to spend more time on screens, but there is a definite uptick in accounts of predators on the various sites that kids have been using more now for socializing. We are often asking kids to post video responses, but many kids, at least in the surveys I saw, are not supervised and are sharing personal videos online, talking with strangers, etc. The esafety advisor also shared links to ThinkUKnow activities for students. These are UK based, but applicable here as well.
Creating your own games? There are lots of ways to do this. Richard Byrne offers 3 ways, in addition to MIT App Inventor to create sorting and matching games in his recent blog post. I think my favorite is Educandy which has recently added a memory game template that you can use by providing a list of words or terms. Check out some of the other options he mentions in his blog as well.
Kasey Bell from Shake Up Learning demonstrated some great ideas for creating Drag and Drop Games in Google Slides. You can listen to thepodcast here, or watch the video below to learn how. The steps are also written out on her podcast/blog page.
New to Google Classroom?
The To-Do List I wasn't going to include this one, but then realized that with everything else that you have going on , you may not know that it is there. Check out theshort blog post and share with your students if you are just starting out in Google Classroom.
Math Choice Boards
Living Maths has posted 2 versions of each grade band. Make sure you go to File>Make a Copy and DO NOT request access.
https://bit.ly/MathChoiceBoardsK-2 https://bit.ly/ChoiceBoards3-5 https://bit.ly/MathChoiceBoards6-8
More K-5 Math Choice Boards
Laura Rogers K-5 Click here Rob Baier from Pennsylvania made:Math Choice Boards K-8! Here is the Crosswalk Document so you can see which CCSS standards these match up with: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WMVie3DAhf71Wq5Km-HWKUeD9OMI7-qb/view
Problem of the Day
Illustrative Math https://tasks.illustrativemathematics.org/content-standards YouCubed https://www.youcubed.org/tasks/ NRich https://nrich.maths.org/11993 Dr Paul Swan https://drpaulswan.com.au/teaching-at-home/
Manipulatives and More
I was used to using VM for virtual manipulatives, but have seen a lot of posts lately that mentioned Toy Theater. This is a treasure trove of manipulatives, games and so much more. Check it out. If you need printables visit https://classplayground.com/category/math/ This is just a screenshot of some, not all, of the vitural manipulative available. |
AuthorMaureen Tumenas Archives
June 2021
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