Book Creator- One of the Best Tools Around!
I got an update from Book Creator this past week, and yet again- they are making their product better, more accessible and easier for students and teachers to use. Now they have added voice search, image attribution and the ability for teachers to block image results, if needed. You can read all about these wonderful updates here. They have linked up with Pixabay for CC images and now there is even a button for image attribution.
Voice search is very cool, especially for ELL students and our younger grades. It works in maps too! Oh, and did I mention you can search in over 120 languages? Check out the short little video below. Need to learn more about this great tool? They have free webinars coming right up! Genially
Matt Miller shared a blog post co-authored by Manny Curiel and Karly Moura called 15 Ways to Use Genially in the Classroom. Now, I have to admit, I don' t use this tool, but I was intrigued and checked it out. It is a presentation tool that you can use instead of/in addition to PowerPoint or Google Slides. It offers cool templates and if you take some time to go down through the 15 ideas presented, has lots of potential. So... if you are looking for another tool to use, want to add this one to your list of tools to check out this summer... here you go. There is a free version and then, of course, a premium version. Read more aboutthese ideas here, and check out the video below.
CodeBlocks
Note- I also found his excellent course on Circuit Playground on MakeCode, which is really cool as I am taking an all day course on the circuit playground this coming Saturday...
Scratch Jr Connect
This is a new online resource for teachers and students to both find projects in Scratch Jr and to contribute to the growing resource. There are projects from around the world!
Canva and TeacherMade
Richard Byrne recently posted an excellent idea- combining the worksheets from Canva with TeacherMade. What a great combination! You can read more about it here, and check out his video below.
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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!
FREE PD
I was actually going to write about a couple of the really good sessions of the Untamed Learning Conference I attended on Saturday and am happy to say- now you can attend any of them- and I can catch the ones I couldn't attend. My favorites, so far - Digital Tools for STEM with Eric Cross and Mari Venturino, and the Student Engagement for Primary Learners (TK-2) with Jennifer Dean and Ben Cogswell. I only got to one of Jennifer and Ben's and plan to catch the other 3. Note: Click on the image or the link below it to register for free access... scroll all the way down to the bottom of their page til you see "Are You Ready?" "Get your free ticket". It's way further down the page than you would expect. What I liked about the sessions I attended... these are educators, who are in the classrooms, either directly teaching or directly supporting teachers. The ideas they present are not theoretical, nor do they generally require paid apps, fancy equipment, etc. You can actually do these with your students.
We've opened up our live, virtual conference - Untamed Learning for FREE to all educators! We want this to be a day of learning that supports educators where they are now and in preparation of moving into the Next Normal. So, at Untamed Learning you'll get:
Google Updates
Trying to keep up with Google updates has always been kind of like herding cats, but this last month or so... pretty close to impossible. I depend on the Google Edu pages and try to catch the folks from Fried.Tech every week. Below is today's slide deck- just click on the image and the recording on Youtube.
What really stood out today: 1. Originality reports. This is rolling out for the next school year, and the free version only gets 5 reports, but paid is unlimited (I think). The part that I liked- it is not just for teachers to say "gotcha!" If the teacher has enabled it, the students can check their work before turning it in. It is meant to be a learning experience, not just a way to catch cheaters. The other part that will be rolling out is a way to check student/student work. Not really sure how this will work- but essentially is meant to prevent kids from last year's class just passing along their papers to a new class. But- no work is shared outside of your district... unlike turnitin, etc. This will use your data, in your accounts to check. 2. Rubrics There was a lot of good info shared, and they did a demo of how to create a rubric, but the cool piece, you and your department can create a shell class- no students- and work together to create rubrics, which you can then access and attach to your assignments/edit as needed.
Micro:bit PD
I attended this virtual training last week and thought it was one of the best Micro:bit trainings I have seen so far. Excellent ideas, great pacing. Whether you are new to Micro:bit or if you have some experience-check out the slides and the great opportunities from Project Invent. This is theslide deck, therecording, and a link to thepadlet with all the referenced links.
Ideas to Share
BreakoutEdu
I love this quick little puzzle you can play with your students. It a perfect 5 minute do now or as something for students to work on while waiting for the Zoom or Meet to begin. If you want to do the digital version, it's quick and easy to assign (HES- we have a subscription) or try the kit version- way more setup and probably not something we can do right now... Adam says they will be putting one of these out every week.
UnboundEd
Having conversations in your school about race and equity? This bias toolkit may help. Or check out the resources on the Wakelet below, shared recently by Terri Eicholz.
You can download the free bias toolkit from Unbounded.org. Click the image below to find out more.
Jamboard Version History
Alice Keeler, as well as Richard Byrne and others wrote about the new version history for Google Jamboard. This is rolling out over the next couple weeks. One thing that is different about jamboard version history, compared to docs, is that it will not show you who did what- only who was on the document, as well as allowing you to restore to a previous version.
Wordtune
Richard Byrne recently wrote about this chrome extension, one that I have not tried. It is called Wordtune and can help students revise their writing. Check out his post and the video below.
LightSpace is an app which came out a couple years ago, but that I had never heard of until I read this blog post from @MerrillsEDU. Check it out.
Here's the short version: " LightSpace is an AR (augmented reality) iOS app that allows you to turn your surroundings into a canvas. Using LightSpace’s tools, you can record a video and add things like drawings, shapes and various effects right into the shot. The best part is if you walk away from your drawing, LightSpace maps the room. So, if you walk back towards your drawing, it will reappear! This is a great way to capture engagement and build interACTIVE activities." Yes, I know this is our February vacation week, but figured that many of you are stuck at home, iced in at the moment, anyway. I spent much of my free time last week attending the virtual MassCUE conference and a bit of the Ohio conference as well. I'm really glad I have til July to get through some of the many excellent recorded presentations for MassCUE as there is simply not enough time in the day. But before I share some of the presentation material that I found really useful, I wanted to share this video from Greg Kulowiec. Record to Slides now has screen recording! This can be a game changer for some of you. MassCUE favs...so farIt's hard to pick out favorites as there are seriously so many to choose from and I have only started to go through all the pre-recorded sessions. A few that stood out for me include Torrey Trust et al's Inspiring Children’s Writing Through STEM Activities & Digital Storytelling, Christina Scilingo's G Suite Sweets (The Sequel), Laura Tilton's Google Forms and Data Studio presentation and I learned a lot about using Microbit classroom from both Melissa Zeitz's presentation as well as Katie Henry's. Katie also showed the integration with Tinkercad, which maybe useful. I cannot share the actual presentations- but have permission from Torrey and Christina to share their slideshows and resource docs. I have referenced some of Torrey Trust's hyperdocs in the past, but had not seen her or the co-authors, Robert W. Maloy, and Sharon A. Edwards present. This was an engaging presentation with excellent examples, which I hope you can glean from the Google Slides link. One of the incredible resources accompanying this is a 30+ page doc of their Digital Connections Toolkit. Don't be overwhelmed... keep the link and check out parts of that interest you as you have time. G Suite Sweets I enjoyed Christina Scilingo's G Suite Sweets presentation; always pick up a few new tricks seeing how others use these tools. The link to her slides is here. Christina also included a link to her incredible Digital Resource Guide. This is yet another document to save and check out. Well rounded list of resources with great examples to follow. Here's another link to some useful example documents. You can follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/msscilingonps Google Forms and Data Studio I have learned a bit about Google Data Studio in the past, but haven't had time to play around with it. This looks like an excellent, easy to use tool. I find it more intuitive than pivot tables, and will make a great replacement for Awesome Table, which is no longer free. This is the link to the slide deck that Laura presented. Check out the links on the slides for great examples to play around with. Laura was careful to give the tips needed to make data cleanup a whole lot easier. This can help you explore and walk you through the steps, or take the FREE beginner's course offered by Google online
And from Ohio- Eric Curts I was lucky to catch Eric Curts' presentation at OETC Ohio Ed conf 21. Now, if you're thinking, ah- I've seen this before... Eric updates his resources- all. the. time. I, too, have looked through all of the resources in Google Tools for Struggling Readers. They change, all the time and I really appreciate a chance to revisit them and pick up some new idea. If you go to his site, just add the document to your google drive. If you make your own copy, you won't get all the updates in the future. Ideas to Share
Jake Miller has a new way to present Google Slides in a partial screen.
Handy tip to have. 2019 STEM for All Video Showcase
Every year NSF sponsored video projects are displayed in a giant video showcase. Enjoy, learn, get new ideas...
From the website:stemforall2019.videohall.com/ "More than 240 federally funded projects, highlighting innovations in STEM education, share short videos of their work. Researchers, practitioners, policy makers and the general public are invited to post to the discussions. Share your perspectives, ideas and feedback. Vote for your favorites. Voting and discussion ends on May 20 at 8PM EDT." Build a Better Book
Related to the STEM for All showcase, I watched a webinar today which featured presenters who have a video in the showcase. The webinar was with Colleen Graves and Stacey Forsyth
and part of the focus was using the Makey Makey. What I really liked about this project- it involves students in improving accessibility for others. This is a blurb from the project website to give you a brief overview: "The Build a Better Book project works with school and library Makerspaces to engage youth in the design and fabrication of inclusive media, including picture books, games and graphics. Using both low- and high-tech Makerspace tools, such as 3D printers, laser cutters, Makey Makeys, conductive boards and craft materials, youth design, fabricate, test and refine multi-modal books, games and STEM graphics that incorporate tactile and audio features. These products are designed by and for learners with visual impairments as well as other physical and learning disabilities. Through the project, middle and high school youth develop technology skills and learn about STEM careers as they design and create multi-modal picture books, graphics and games that can be seen, touched and heard!" The link to the showcase presentation is https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentations/1438. The project website link is: https://www.colorado.edu/project/bbb/ Don't miss the project gallery https://www.colorado.edu/project/bbb/design-gallery DreamBig
This film has been around for a couple of years. I have yet to see it in an IMAX theater. Next time someone takes a class to the Boston Science Museum... Anyway, the film is inspiring and they have created an excellent pool of resources for educators. They have free teacher's guide with step by step lesson plans. " It includes multidisciplinary activities for students in grades K–12 and has been written to meet Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), as well as common state science objectives. Each lesson presents students with an engineering challenge inspired by the work of real engineers and can be used to help introduce the engineering mindset to the classroom or your home. " Access the guide from the website. They also have a series of short videos to introduce topics as well as 10 hands-on activities. You can go even further with an additional 30 activities from film partner DiscoverE’s website:
http://www.discovere.org/dreambig/activities. Well worth your time! Global Problem Solvers
Science Buddies has teamed up with Cisco to create a free STEM Superheros video series. Here's the blurb: "A free animated series from Cisco emphasizes teamwork, social, and creative skills in solving world challenges. With a team of teens each with a real-world superpower, the GPS series educates kids about STEM-based problem solving and social entrepreneurship and inspires them to find and use their own superpowers."
Check out what they have to offer here. Ideas to ShareGlobal Accessibility Awareness Day
BreakoutEdu
National Day of Action
Teach With Tech Conference
Using Google Tools to Support Writing
Wait! I Can Run Linux on a Chromebook??
Understanding History
As I look at all of the amazing resources for students and educators that are online today, a couple words come up regularly, regardless of age group, regardless of discipline- choice and empathy. When I look at resources for digital design or STEM- first thing on the list- empathy; and the same thing happens when I look at ELA resources. They are all about choice and empathy, not just the subject matter. The two resources I have been looking at are ostensibly for "History" or "Global Culture". Both seem to me to be about people, empathy and the choices we make, even when we don't actively make a choice. Check them out, see what you think.
Facing History and Ourselves
The intro states: "Through rigorous historical analysis combined with the study of human behavior, Facing History’s approach heightens students’ understanding of racism, religious intolerance, and prejudice; increases students’ ability to relate history to their own lives; and promotes greater understanding of their roles and responsibilities in a democracy." I embedded a few of their intro videos below, but do check out all the resources available on theweb site.
Global Oneness Project
I love the stories on theGlobal Oneness Project web site. The imagery compliments the rich stories about culture, about climate and more. This is from the site: "Committed to the exploration of cultural, environmental, and social issues, we offer a rich library of multimedia stories comprised of award-winning films, photo essays, and articles. Companion curriculum and discussion guides are also available. All for free.
We aim to connect, through stories, the local human experience to global meta-level issues, such as climate change, water scarcity, food insecurity, poverty, endangered cultures, migration, and sustainability." Ideas to Share
Matt Miller at CUE
WriQ
GAfE 4 Littles
NGSS Navigator
NGSS put out a new newsletter the other day with lots of resources to teach the new science standards, especially focused on ESL/ELL learners. Check out the link to see more.
Writable
Last week I attended an NEISTE webinar called Making Rough Drafts Easier: Integrating Writing, Review, and Revision with Writable. "Writable is a writing practice tool for 3rd-12th grade students that uses feedback to drive more purposeful revision. Troy Hicks and Heidi Perry have an excellent product to help teachers help develop strong writers. You can find the webinar recording here. Troy also shared links to his wiki.
Welcome to Writable from getwritable on Vimeo. 826 National
Another writing/teaching writing resource that I hadn't seen, was mentioned recently by Heather Marshall (on Twitter @MsMarshallCMS). Not being an ELA or English teacher, I hadn't seen this site before. "826 National is a network of seven nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping underserved students, ages 6-18, with their creative & expository writing skills." Follow them on Twitter, but check out their web page and join for access to some great lessons. The book store looks great too. You can learn more about the organization here.
What got me really interested was this book: From STEM to Story! Check out the promo:
National Writer's Project
You can check out more resources for teaching writing here- with the Educational Innovator project. Western Mass is fortunate to have an excellent program and a very accessible liaison via Kevin Hodgson, who teaches sixth grade in Southampton, Massachusetts, and is the technology liaison with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project. You can catch up with Kevin on Educational Innovator webinars or @dogtrax on twitter, on his blog or class website.
Book Snaps?? How to...
For those of you who haven't used BookSnaps as a way to have kids quickly show what they have been reading... Kevin had one on his site that I will show as an example.
How to create Book Snaps Tara Martin is the booksnap guru. You can find all the how tos here... Don't worry, they do not have to be created with snapchat... lots of ways to do this! You can use SeeSaw, BookCreator, Google Slides and more. Tara has step by steps for you!
Got Grammar?
Both No Red Ink and Quill offers both free and premium accounts.
Excellent PDI've been enjoying the opportunity to catch a few of the great presentations available- free- online from Matt Miller's Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit. 9 days with 9 great presentations. For nine days (Dec. 16-24), a new presentation will be available each day. It’s recorded video, and will be available til December 31st. They are available online, on demand- but when the summit is over, the videos will also go away. So don't miss out. They run about an hour each. These are real teachers, who are working in schools, much like yours-not just talking heads telling you how it "Should be". If you have a few hours over the next week or so- take some time to check them out. GOogley FUnOne expression I've been hearing more and more about is "machine learning". What the heck does that mean? Is it AI (artificial intelligence)? Is it something new and different? We have seen some of this in the new "explore" button on Google Slides- using our content to make presentation design suggestions. So, is this big brother, peaking in at everything we do? Kinda, sorta... Google has some great experiments you can check out online and learn a little more about what is coming down the line. Here's the link. I liked the Quick Draw myself. Here's an article that you may find interesting as well from SAS... Machine Learning- what is it and why does it matter? WhaT COULD BE MORE FUN THAN SNOWMEN?As usual Eric Curts has some great ideas over on his site. The other day it was Build A Snowman- Google slides- with a template and used as a writing prompt. Check it out here. VICKI DAVIS presented an excellent webinar this afternoon called 15 Best Tools for G Suite for Education. I was late, but she went over a couple tools that I hadn't heard of/tried before. She also shared a great PDF with her tool list! One tool, a Google Doc add-on that I am planning to try, is Pro Writing Aid, which "... is a Google Doc add-on that assists students by checking their writing for consistency, grammar mistakes, cliches, acronyms, and more. " I've tried Grammarly and although I know that many, many teachers and students love it, it kind of drove me crazy and I felt like it was in my way. But, please try it! Everyone likes different things. I also didn't know that Easybib now does a web site credibility check. I still like the SAS Writing Navigator Tool from SAS Curriculum Pathways to help students organize their writing, even if it didn't make the top 15 list. It's a chrome app as well as being a Google Docs add-on. She also shared some really cool math tools, some basic teacher tools and one last one I want to mention- the educational templates in Lucid Charts. Need a graphic organizer- they've got 'em and they are pretty cool. Read more from Vicki, and don't forget to check out the extra goodies from this webinar- The Hemingway App. Thanks, Vicki! Improved Voice Typing in DocsGoogle also recently announced yet more changes in Voice Typing in Docs. It is the best speech to text I have seen, especially for young voices. And... it's free! Here's the list of commands. If you haven't tried it.. super easy, but the commands will take a bit of getting used to. Here's a quick video as a refresher or an intro. TEXTHELP newsTextHelp continues to add more functionality to Read & Write for Google Chrome with a new Read-Aloud feature. Remember this is free for everyone in our domain- all staff, faculty and students. It's a pretty robust tool. I got an email from them the other day as they are looking for teachers to help develop a new writing assessment tool. It sounds really cool and if you help them out, you may get the tool free- forever! Check it out here. LAST, but not LEast...I spent the day at #EdCampAccessNY on Saturday. Among the many resources shared, were a couple that I plan to check out in the coming weeks. One for Early Readers got glowing reviews from a NY teacher who is using it. She claimed it was better that RAZ kids. Now, that's going some. Check out Reading Eggs and let me know what you think. The other web site is Literably, a site to help assess reading fluency and comprehension. Check it out and see if it can help you.
As the school year draws to a close, I would like to share a few of the many vendor emails I get on a daily basis. These actually have something to offer busy teachers. Check out new developments at ReadWorks, Symbaloo, JoeZoo and EasyBib.
ReadWorks
There are 2 new, exciting updates from ReadWorks coming next fall. There will be a new digital website and a new K-5 Article-A-Day program.
The new ReadWorks Digital website will be available for all teachers and students.
Read Works - Article a Day
"ReadWorks Introduces Article-A-Day for Kindergarten - 5th grade In just 10-15 minutes each day you can dramatically improve your students’ reading comprehension by systematically building their background knowledge and vocabulary with Article-A-Day. Learn more about Article-A-Day" Symbaloo Edu Lesson Plans
Symbaloo, which we use at HES for a start page for students ( with a separate start page for teachers), recently rolled out a new service using their platform- Lesson Plans for students. Essentially this is like a pathfinder. Here's their promo:
Engage your students with truly personalized learning by creating your own lesson plans and fully customizing the look and feel. Simply add videos, documents, quizzes and educational games that guide students through custom learning paths from start to finish. View the progress of your students in real time, chat with them to help them with the assignment and utilize the built-in grading tool to make your life easier. You can now get started with creating your first lesson plan. How? By taking your first lesson: A lesson plan explaining Symbaloo Lesson Plans. See what we did there? ;-) Joe Zoo
Joe Zoo is a Google Add On, built for teachers to help with rubrics, grading and feedback. It is relatively new and has made some good upgrades recently. It is integrated with Google Classroom.
Check it out here. The video below is just a short promo video, but there is a complete playlist of how to videos on YouTube Easy Bib Edu
I got this from Easy Bib recently. Easy Bib is an easy to use citation service and has a Google Docs add on. Click on the link to the form to get this for free if you would like to be able to view and manage student accounts. They also have a helpful resource for educators- with articles like Teaching Students How To Summarize and Paraphrase in their Own Words, or How to Conquer the Dreaded Blank Page with Writing Prompts
Questions? Check the FAQ page To get right to it: we heard you when you said that your students loved using EasyBib, so we’re excited to let you know that you and your students can have FULL ACCESS to EasyBib EDU for free, starting with the 2016-2017 school year and beyond! This means:
We’ll keep improving EasyBib throughout the upcoming school year, adding enhancements such as a new and improved notebook, an annotation tool to help your students find and capture important information, and an improved Google Docs add-on with notes and outline support to assist students throughout the writing process. Stay tuned for more updates and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let us know, and don’t forget to sign up for EasyBib EDU here. Thanks and we will be in touch! The Imagine Easy Team |
AuthorMaureen Tumenas Archives
June 2021
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