April is right around the corner and will be bringing us National Poetry Month. More about that next time, but, a friend shared this article with me about a new anthology of Native poetry, with U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Check it out. I'm sure that with Amanda Gorman and poetry at the Super Bowl, we will have a lot to share in the upcoming weeks. Equity and Accessibility I tend to write about various tools for accessibility a lot as that was the biggest change for me when I flipped from private schools to public schools. I had never had kids with disabilities of any kind in my many years in private schools, either it wasn't a "good fit" or the kids had private tutors, so it did not impact my teaching. Then in the fall of 2013 I started working in a public school. I ended up taking a crash course- 36 credits in 16 months and an Ed.S later- now, I get it. This didn't even touch on equity issues relating to gender, race, digital access, etc... just physical and cognitive issues. I was thrilled to see the article and listen to the podcast that Katie Novak and Mirko Chardin did with Jennifer Gonzalez recently, called If Equity is a Priority, UDL is a Must Check out the article and podcast here: www.cultofpedagogy.com/udl-equity/ Katie and Mirko talk with Jennifer starting ~ 5 min in. More Accessibility Stuff
CAST presented a webinar today called : What It’s All About: Teaching, Learning and Assessment These frameworks are a work in progress. This is the slidedeck (ppt). The recording will post in the coming weeks. Torrey Trust et al, recently shared this really nice hyperdoc/choice board on the Foundations of the U.S. Political System. Please remember to make your own copy/ do not request edit access, and please credit the authors. Tall Tweets I highlighted Eric Curt's tutorial for Tall Tweets, back in 2018. Lately I have been seeing more and more folks using both Tall Tweets and the new version Studio Creator to quickly and easily create gifs and videos. Teachers have been assigning or offering this as an option... show mitosis as a gif, show the water cycle as a gif, etc. So, I added the new version, Creator Studio, the slides add-on, to our allowed marketplace add-ons. It has mixed reviews, so if you try it and want to share either your positive or negative experiences, let us know. It's an add-on, so go to slides, add-ons-get add-ons to find it. It looks like most of the features you may want to use may not be free. Ideas to Share
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Enable Live Captions This is a quick and easy accessibility feature, built right into chrome. Takes less than a minute to turn it on. These captions are not stored on the cloud, etc... just appear on your device for any audio or video. You can turn it off when not needed; you can even use it offline on audio or video you have saved. Read a bit more about it here. Tab in the Corner This is a handy little feature to know about. It's new and it is super easy to use. Like Alice, I often have multiple tabs open and at least 3 windows. This lets me quickly and easily navigate between them Flipgrid for Google? This is a new tool from Google to create short videos to share with others, and to have them respond. Richard Byrne does a nice job showing you the main features of the tool in the video below. We have applied to roll this out at HPS but it isn't available on your accounts as of this moment. However, I do have it on my personal gmail account. Not sure why they are asking us to jump through hoops on this one. It's not an IT holdup, it's a Google thing. You can read more about it here. Richard also compares this new tool, Threadit to Loom for recording right in your inbox in this video, which I also found interesting. Slides Toolbox I thought I had enabled this one in the Marketplace a while back, but realized that I was accessing via my personal account. It's available now. It allows you to reshuffle all your slides, to combine slide decks, to add a whole bunch of images at once, download all your slides at once, etc. Another handy tool. Quilgo Adding timed assessments to Google Forms (formerly called Timify Me). This is a freemium product- an add on from Google Marketplace. You get the first 100 tests for free. Each student gets their own test, so the numbers add up quickly. I agree that this is not the time to add more pressure to either students or teachers, however, this may be useful for students who will need to prep for timed testing. Another accessibility feature- the Lexend font. I didn't know that this is readily available to all of our students via the simplify page in Read & Write for Google Chrome. Try it out with your students. Does it help? I know that some kids like the Dyslexie font, others like the BeeLine reader chrome extension. Some need to use a color filters. Add this one to the mix and let students use what works best for them.
Just for fun...
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. 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
Who knew how much work it would be to transform what you do every day as an educator in a K-12 school and magically try to make it all work remotely? Well, we're all finding out. I continue to see colleagues in my district and around the world struggle, work harder, reach out and begin to come together, with, if not the same lessons done remotely, lessons that work. Even with my job in tech integration, doing it remotely is simply not the same- at all. Hilltown internet with speeds slower than dial-up (which, at least didn't drop continually), make it pretty challenging. I'm sure that you all have been overwhelmed with offers from literally hundreds of edtech companies, as have I. A couple that we will be offering district wide include Loom pro, WeVideo pro and access to all Texthelp edtech applications, including Equatio. Look for more information coming via email. We have also rolled out a new EdTech Tools site, with a curated list of tools to help you teach remotely, as well as some of the basic tutorials. The link was sent out yesterday and also lives in the shared drive in the ICP folder. Upcoming Webinar It feels like I am attending anywhere from 1 to 3, 4, or more webinars a day lately. One presenter, aside from Greg and Avra at EdTechTeachers stands out this week, Leslie Fisher. I attended one of her webinars on using Merge Cubes last week, enjoyed that one, so I signed up for one of her book creator webinars this week. Now, I have used Book Creator with kids, and honestly, didn't think I would learn a whole lot. I was wrong. Not only have they added over 200 accessibility features to Book Creator, but Leslie came up with very cool ways to use it- for all ages, not just elementary. I plan on attending another one this coming Friday- Book Creator and Accessibility. You can register for it here. The one I liked the other day is still open "on demand" til Monday 4/20. Resources to ShareHere are a few resources that you may find useful, either in your teaching or to share with parents who are looking for alternative activities.
Sorry I seem to have misplaced a week or two as we all scramble to get up to speed and to help one another figure out what we are actually doing and how we can do it. Now that I think we have some of the basics down, or at least have figured out some of the parameters, what's next? Hoping to get some guidance from the state level as to what we, here in Massachusetts, are doing- enrichment?- distance learning?-dealing with equity issues? Lots and lots of questions. My biggest concern at the moment is how to provide continuity- both academically and to maintain the fabric of community- while we deal with the many aspects of accessibility. So many of the edtech companies have come forward to offer their products for free as we try to reach out to all of our students and families. Although this is cool, a word of caution, don't introduce brand new tools if you can help it. Enrichment only, not for assignments if there is a learning curve. If your students have been using digital tools in class, try to stick to the known, as the whole method of lesson delivery is totally new to most of us. It overloads the teachers, the students and all of the families as we struggle to find the time, the tools and the means to distribute lessons or enrichment or just to reach out to build and sustain community. One of the many webinars I have attended over the last 2 weeks was the SEDTA webinar last night, Supporting Students with IEPs During eLearning Days. After registering, I , along with 8000 others tried to get onto the edweb system. Needless to say, it didn't work. Luckily there is a recording, which you can access at edweb. AEM is offering a series of webinars coming up to help teachers use UDL in their lessons to reach all of the learners. Here is more info from their page: The AEM Center is hosting a series of webinars, each providing a deeper dive into a specific topic related to accessibility. Visit our AEM Events page for full details about each webinar.
So where do you sign up for any of these? Right here. A word of warning- hop onto the webinars on the early side if you can- they fill up fast. They are recorded if these dates/times don't work for you. So what's next?Our district is working hard to take the continuity plan and pull the teacher resources into our shared drive and to look carefully at the resources we are presenting to parents. Right now it is pretty overwhelming. Hopefully by the end of the week, we can begin to have it a bit more organized and have all of the HPS teacher resources in one place instead of filling your inboxes. Ideas to ShareI could fill a book right now with all of the links I have collected, friends have shared, etc... It is a bit too much. If you like overwhelming - check out my Wakelets or this one. Here's a spreadsheet for all the spreadsheet lovers out there... and this is only the tip of the iceberg.
When I saw this article last week, it made me laugh at first, but then got me thinking... how many more powerpoint presentations will I have to sit through? You know the ones where the presenter apologizes in advance that you can't read the text on the slide, or god forbid, starts reading each slide to you. I remember showing Death by PowerPoint to students more than a decade ago. Here's the article- so you can laugh/cry...It's 2020. Why Are You Still Using PowerPoint? Don't miss clicking on the link to give you ideas of what you can do: Do This Instead.
New ways to capture and share learning seem to pop up on a daily basis, but these two tools are not the new kids on the block. Both Screencastify and Book Creator have been around for a while now and both keep on making more and more improvements. When I saw the tweet below and a blog post by Richard Byrne, it reminded that I need to go back and give Screencastify another look. Take a look for yourself here.
Embedded below is a Book Creator book with 50 Ways to use Book Creator in your classroom. This tool is easy to use, and if you happen to run into any problem, you know that you will get a quick, helpful response back. Just this week they announced some great accessibility changes too.Here's a great post to learn more about all the wonderful new features- 230+ accessibility improvements added to Book Creator.
This is a long one- but it show you all kinds of great ways to use Book Creator in Special Ed
UDL
You don't have to be a special educator to learn more about UDL. This is a Don Johnston webinar from last week with Hillary Goldthwaite-Fowles, who can help dispel some of the myths around UDL.
Ideas to Share
When I sat down to look at what I had bookmarked this past week- Assistive Technology was clearly on my mind. I had read this article about video games having to be compliant with AT regulations. Essentially, the law enacted in 2010 said all the communication technology - eg. instant messaging, etc, used in video games had to be accessible. In 2012, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted rules that required these communication devices services and equipment to be accessible to persons with disabilities. Until earlier this year, the FCC had waived the ACS accessibility requirements for video game software. However, and here's the good news- now it is required! Let's see if it is actually enforced.
New AT tools from Google
This is an excellent synopsis of 11 different Assistive Tech Tools that you can use with Chrome or with Android devices.
Action Blocks is a feature that is designed for people with a cognitive disability (or their caregivers) is basically a way to pull all the various steps of a command into one easy to identify icon. Very cool idea to make things more accessible for all and to provide necessary independence.
ReadWorks has Audiobooks!
ReadWorks offers excellent free resources and has now added audio books. Check out the video here. Remember, although ReadWorks is a great source of leveled reading books, and passages, it's not just for students who are struggling with decoding and comprehension. All students can benefit from ReadWorks. They make it easy for teachers to find appropriate materials and help to pair texts as well.
100 eBooks Promotion Video from ReadWorks on Vimeo. Use Makey Makey to Create AT devices
I caught a few of Richard Byrne's Creativity Conference presentations live, including this one. If you have never tried MakeyMakey, it's easy to use and lots of fun. I like the way Art Spencer, the presenter, emphasizes empathy in the design process and uses MakeyMakey to create devices that are more accessible to students.
Listenwise will have Lexile Levels soon
We all know that listening to reading passages almost always increases comprehension levels. The last time I did a uPAR test with students at my school more than 88% of students showed an increase in comprehension scores. ListenWise may be something for you to investigate. The basic teacher account is free- no student accounts, and the premium version is a bit pricey. Check it out, try a pilot, free trial and see if this is a tool for you.
Learning 4 AllJust something to put on your calendar. Learning 4 All (formerly known as 4T: Teachers Teaching Teachers about Technology), is a free virtual conference coming up in February. Check it out and register here. Although it is CS education Week and we are all doing the Hour of Code, rather than reiterate all of the great ideas and sites that have been shared already, we will look at some of the other things that are going on as well. However, I love the emphasis on #CSforGood! I just saw these posters and playing cards today. Wish I had seen them earlier! One more list of ideas to checkI knew I would forget at least one of the advent calendars or other lists that I had seen and of course I forgot the 12 Days of Innovation from Birdsville Schools. You can check it out here. AccessibilityRichard Byrne recently posted some ideas that you may not have seen before for accessibility. He did an excellent job of summarizing some of the major accessibility options for Safari, for Chrome and for Edge. Microsoft used to be a leader in accessibility options, lost the race to Apple, then to Chrome and has come back strong with all of the Immersive Reader adaptations. One thing to note- these are NOT just for students on IEPS, or 504 plans. I use some of these tools all the time. Want to get rid of all the clutter- use the Reader View, need to quickly adjust the font size, Ctrl+/- and then back to Ctrl 0. Do check out Richard's post. It's really useful. Research- Year in ReviewYou can always count on Edutopia to pull all the edu research for 2019 together into one article. From Growth Mindset to getting more sleep, they summarized many of the topics we have seen in the news this year. A couple things I found interesting- Paper did beat screens, but it wasn't a study that actually compared the two equally (not a real apples to apples kind of study) and the results were underwhelming. The other study mentioned that was interesting to me was debunking the decades old myth of the "summer slide". I found that one interesting, but challenging since we all know the reboots we end up doing after even short vacations- even long weekend! Check out the article here. Interested in 3D printing?I'm a novice when it comes to 3D printing. We have 2 small printers, one works, one doesn't... and the only software I have used for them is Tinkercad. I love Tinkercad and find it easy for the kids to use. I have used SketchUp in the past, but that was before we had 3 D printers. It has a pretty steep learning curve. So, when I saw this article comparing 3D software, I was happy to spend some time exploring and plan to spend more time trying out a few ideas. Still looking for Techy Gifts?Gary Stager posted his list to the ISED listserv and of course there are things on there that I have not seen yet. Check out Gary and the Invent To Learn team's list here. There are things for kids, and things for teachers too. One thing that I found last year and still really like is the Turing Tumble game. It is good hard fun for one and all. They also offer an edu discount, talk to them. I brought up to NH last year and played it with my niece. Luckily her uncle, who is a master electrician and a great puzzle solver, was there to help us out. One thing you'll probably find out the hard way if you play this game- put a container under it- otherwise you get to chase tiny marbles all over creation. Media Literacy Week
This week is Media Literacy Week in the U.S. October 24-31st is Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2019
What is it? Why is it important? From Wikipedia: Media literacy encompasses the practices that allow people to access, critically evaluate, and create media. Media literacy is not restricted to one medium. Wikipedia These stats are from 2 years ago- and I'm quite sure that they are worse today. At a time when misinformation and fake news spread like wildfire online, the critical need for media literacy education has never been more pronounced. The evidence is in the data:
GMail- Basics
When I saw this post by my old friend Wes Fryer, I knew I would have to share it with you. I first met Wes back in 2007 or maybe 2008 at NECC, now ISTE, spoke with him on most Saturdays on the Classroom 2.0 Live series for years and I have continued to follow his work online ever since. Wes is currently the Technology Integration and Innovation Specialist and Digital Literacy teacher at Casady School in Oklahoma City. This link is to an excellent post that Wes originally created to help teach his 5th and 6th graders. Great ideas for one and all. Click on the link or on the photo below. Thanks, Wes!
More Googley Stuff
When I first looked at my list of things to share this week, it seemed that 90% of them were ideas using something Googley. Easy to use, versatile. Check out some of the wonderful ideas folks have shared recently.
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AuthorMaureen Tumenas Archives
June 2021
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