Among Us
Among Us is one of the latest game fads making the rounds. I am not a gamer- at all- but recognize that gamification can really work in the classroom as an educational tool. I have never played this game, as the first and last game I played was pong and that was an arcade game, before video games existed. But... in the interests of great teaching, I created a Wakelet of Among Us resources to use in the classroom, scrounged from educators on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Among Us themes can be used for all subjects and grade levels from using it in GimKit to Desmos to Escape Rooms.
I did not create these resources and when I could find the name of the original creator, have added it. More Jamboard
Tom Mullaney will show you how to insert animated Gifs into Jamboard.
I have enjoyed watching many of this year's Ditch Summit videos. You're running out of time if you haven't checked it out yet, as it will close Jan 8th. My favorite this year was Jamboard with Maria Arkfanakis. She shared so many excellent ideas- across all grade levels and disciplines. I really appreciated her slide deck too. Check it out here. If you can find the time, watch her whole presentation with Matt Miller, and check out all the others before they disappear!
This is a link to a wealth of Jamboard Ideas stored in Google Drive was recently shared online. I didn't catch who shared it, but... it looks like it came from Liz Stroud over at Fairmount School in Downer's Grove, IL . Thanks Liz! (She just emailed me and gave her OK to share.) She curated the links- see her tweet below. Follow Liz for more great ideas like this one that she retweeted about app smashing with Canva... twitter.com/LRCFairmount
Need more ideas and templates? Check out this post from Slidesmania.
Ideas to Share
Free PD
Ditch Summit
As I have mentioned before- this closes on January 8th. Lots of great ideas, excellent presentations. Check it out here.
Ben Collins Spreadsheet Courses
Leslie Fisher Friday Nite Webinars
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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
Good Changes in JamboardThis past week has brought a couple of great changes in Jamboard. First you can customize backgrounds... and the one everyone was waiting for- revision history! To access revision history on the chromebook: Ctrl Alt Shift H Need to lock items in place on Jamboard? Check it out... Yet more templatesWe are Teachers shared a great collection of 25 Google Slides templates recently. You can check them out here. There have also been some amazing holiday themed google slide decks shared on social media. This Grinch choice board came from [email protected] This Grinch Pear Deck template came from Dalton Tedder on Twitter. You can get your own copy here - https://t.co/4je10gu8sU?amp=1 Or try some Grinch Pixel Art ( addition and Subtraction) I haven't tried this one yet, but love the idea of Green Screen Snow Globes NewsLitCampI can't say enough positive things about NewsLitCamp PD. I attended one last week and plan to attend the next one with CNN on Jan 26th. Especially in today's uncertain times, we need to help ourselves, our students and our communities parse out the truth in the media we consume. I was hoping that it was recorded, but John SIlva did share the resource folder link with us. The one I just attended was the Texas Tribune, but all of them are in the resources, and sooo much more. However, hearing this stuff live, discussing it; we need to do more in schools to promote media literacy. Join the next one on January 26th. Sign up here!
STEAM Advent Calendar
This is from @ShellTerrell's Teacher ReBoot Camp. Check it out and make your own, or use the one embedded below.
CS Education Week- Hour of Code
We celebrate Grace Hopper's birthday every year with a week of Computer Science celebrations and an Hour of Code. This year, working remotely, when 80% of the students in the elementary school are in person, we can't really collaborate and share materials the way we have in the past. I have simply passed along choice boards, with only minor changes from Shannon Miller. There is a wealth of information online atCode.org and at Hour of Code.com as well as on a myriad of other sites. Do you want to use block coding, or javascript or python? Do you want to try AI or make an app? Are you brand new at coding or an expert? There are so many choices! This is a pretty cool one from Minecraft- making 2 villages get along with one another! Novel concept.
Or you can try making old fashioned arcade games with MakeCode.
Or make a tree with codeblocks from TinkerCad...
Do you need unplugged activities? Try these from Code.org
https://code.org/files/Hour-of-Code-Unplugged-Activities.pdf
The cool thing about coding with Microbits is that there is an online simulator. That means you can work on the code and see how it works, without having a physical microbit at home. Here's an example of coding Microbits for good. There's more info and tons of ideas here. Microbits are inexpensive, work with block code, javascript and python. Check out all the things you can do with the new version too.
Ideas to Share
Julia Dweck @GiftedTawk continues to amaze me with all of her great Jamboard ideas. Can't wait til she shares the details on how she made this fairy tale jamboard or the Racing game. Check her twitter feed for more details.
Canva
If you haven't explored Canva yet, or it's been awhile... please check out all that Canva can do for education. Teachers can apply for a free Pro account. You can set up classes. Kids can collaborate on projects and ohhh so much more. Start by spending some time with Leslie Fisher, as she goes through some of the wonderful things you can do.
The Gifted Guide
I first started to check out this link for the engineering resources offered. As we try to maneuver through the COVID restrictions, finding hands-on projects to do, and stay within health guidelines is a challenge. So- this site- Gifted Guide. However, the more I explored this, the more resources I found, across the grade bands and curriculum. So, check it out, I loved the unit on Ancient Greece, although I would make it much more open-ended than a typical webquest.
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!
Google sunsetting Tour Creator and ExpeditionsMany of you probably got the email from Google stating that they are retiring Google Tour Creator and Google Expeditions this summer. These are great tools to use, but rather than be sad about the sunsetting of them, Donnie Piercey created this nice tutorial to show you how to do something very similar in PearDeck. Check it out. Wizer AddonFor those who are using Wizer.me for pdf annotation, you may have already seen this, but Wizer just added a Google Drive add-on that lets you quickly convert PDFs that are in your Google Drive into online worksheets on Wizer. Richard Byrne of FreeTech4Teachers explains it all here. Looking for new dramatic ways to present science topics? Check out Frank Gregorio's YouTube channel. "This channel is dedicated to providing teachers and students a powerful new resource to combat student apathy. Here, you will find dramatic, visually stunning video "trailers" in the natural sciences choreographed to powerful music, designed to motivate and inspire students at the beginning of a lesson to the wonders of Biology, Earth Sciences, Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Environmental Science and Math. Over 90 million students and teachers worldwide have seen these videos to date, and their comments highlight their exceptional value to education. " Free Stories and EbooksThis was a new resource for me- Clarkness.com. It is a site with tons of free stories and free ebooks for the beginning reader. There are 1,519 online stories, 117 ebooks and 64 personalized stories available. A similar site: Reading Hawk Library also has free downloadable ebooks and Dolch sight word story collections for the beginning reader, offering 4 ebooks, and 45 story collections. Another incredible teacher created resource for free read alouds is Mrs. Lemansky's Library. Check it out here. These are accessible via Google Slides. She has even more on her YouTube channel. FlipGrid ARHave you explored AR in Flipgrid with your students yet? Try it out with this free offer to make Thanksgiving "REALI-Turkeys" Help your students focus on things they can be thankful for with this fun writing activity. Flipgrid "REALITurkeys" gives students the chance to showcase their voice through the fun of Flipgrid's augmented reality. Simple write, record and then batch download student AR codes from the educator dashboard. Cut, paste and hang to share! Grab the free template here! How do you create FlipgridAR videos? Resources from PBS Learning MediaPBS always offers quality programming and great resources for educators. Have you seen the Learn Along Bingo packets? The Teacher Planning Kits? If not, check them out here.
Need more Turkey?Maytal, over at CreateCodeLoad is offering a free Scratch game, along with complete directions, even videos to help you and your class create a Thanksgiving turkey game in Scratch. Check it out here. Professional Development
I had already double booked myself this past Saturday, but then saw that Nadine Gilkison was presenting 2 webinars. I ended up flipping between KernCUE and Educator Alex webinars, skipping one other venue entirely. 5 hours of PD on a Saturday? It was worth it. Especially in the strange COVID world we are living in, I am constantly looking for ways to help teachers. Nadine had great content, and I will share the links to her work at the bottom of this post. Wanda Terral, once again, had great ideas to share and I even caught a great presentation on using Microbits to collect data on rocket launch experiments.
So, what's on tap?
Need to learn more about how to use Pear Deck? Looking for more ideas on incorporating this great tool into your classroom? Pear Fair, the Fall edition is coming up this Saturday, Nov 14.
"We’re thrilled to bring you another round of fresh, free professional development! This special, weekend-edition Pear Fair will feature two different learning tracks, one for educators and one for administrators. Both will be filled with carefully curated presentations on topics relevant to today's teaching community. You'll find sessions focused on building classroom culture remotely, app-smashing, leveraging tech tools in your hybrid classroom, Pear Deck for professional development, and much more. Pour a cup of coffee, settle in, and join us for some fun, mid-semester PD!" Sign up here.
Looking for great ideas on using FlipGrid/ Student Voice?
"Join the Flipgrid and Adobe for Education teams for an epic kick off to ISTE 2020: Creativity + Student Voice. In this event, we will share some exciting new announcements from team Flipgrid and Adobe -- wait until you see what we unveil for teachers! (Plus, some fun giveaways for your at-home or in-person classroom!" Sign up to attend on Nov 21 here.
As we are a Texthelp for Google Chrome district, how about checking out some of the pre-recorded webinars to help you get a handle on how to best use these tools? We have Read & Write as well as Equatio. You can check out the offerings here.
Birdsville Nest presents 12 Days of Innovation Dec 2-17. There will be some great speakers including Dr. Catlin Tucker, Matt Miller, Kim Hicks-Foster, and many more. Register here.
Steve Hargadon's Emergency Home Learning Summit is still ongoing. You can check out the schedule here. This summit is a 2 month long free PD opportunity. There are over 150 speakers, and more are added all the time.
Nadine's Resources
Nadine Gilkison is an amazing Google Innovator. Check out the resources I got to see live on Saturday, links in the tweet on the left, and then take an hour or 2 and explore her Twitter feed. Nadine freely shares her work- no TPT, no freemium... just freely shared. She has a pinned tweet with an absolutely phenomenal resource, especially for these times. "Teaching Digitally- A free resource guide to help any K-12 educator." Check out the resource on the right.
CurioasisWhat is this site? Curioasis is a site that you can use with your students or assign to them via a live video call. "Teachers and students can play live learning activities in a group video call, ideal for game based learning, virtual team building, and online playdate." There are lots of free resources to check out. Here's a video lesson of making music with Scratch. Lots of great ideas to explore, games to play. ChecklistsI tend to use Google Keep for checklists, but the other day saw a short little tutorial that Alice Keeler put together for making checklists in Sheets. So- first- Google Keep... oh and just in case you missed it, they are dropping the "app" and keeping it as an extension. Alice has a short video or you can go step by step through her directions. Google SheetsHave to say that I spent an inordinate amount of time today trying to make Excel save a file as a csv file and not trash my leading zeros in one column. I gave up. For whatever reason, it was not keeping my formatting changes. Looked like it was saving correctly, but when it was opened... they were gone again. I am so not an excel expert, but truly enjoy learning new ways to use this incredible tool. I tend to go to Excel rather than Sheets simply because I usually know where they hid the tool I need, but either one works. This is a link to help you discover some really cool things about spreadsheets. I also subscribe to Ben Collins' tech tips and just started getting Alice Keeler's Slow drips on spreadsheets. You can learn from the replays of Sheetscon 2020 for free. My other go-to person for data and data displays is Wanda Terral. Wanda has been presenting on Google Data Studio of late, which is something that I want to learn. Not enough time to check all this stuff out? Just click on the Explore Star- down on the bottom right of your next sheet of data- lots to play with. Wanda is presenting twice at the KernCUE's Tech Fest this Saturday. Check it out here. One of her presentations is called Don't Fear the F Word, the other is Build an Info App with Google Slides. She recently presented on Data Studio, sharing her slide deck and a YouTube video. PDFsThe tools I get asked about the most lately have to do with editing pdfs. I am not going to go back over how to make worksheets interactive by using pdfs or images in google slides, as you can check back to this post. But I did come across a new tool the other day that you may like called PDF24 Tools. It also has a chrome extension which I will add to the whitelist. It looks a lot like pdfcandy, and I don't know if one is better than the other. Please remember, at HES, we have a copy of Adobe Acrobat- full version- on the computer in the STEAM lab attached to the scanner. Same at HA, the computer that is attached to the Fujitsu Scanner- probably in sped room, should also have a full version of Adobe Acrobat. The full version of adobe acrobat will let you do all the editing, scan with OCR, delete, move pages, etc., that you may need. This is Media Literacy Week. The past several years, in particular, have shown us that we need to become much more aware of media literacy and we need to teach our students how to ferret out what is and is not true online and to examine the influences of social media on the way we look at the world. Need a little refresher? Here are the key questions to ask in a downloadable pdf. Check out the educator's resources from the New York Times. They have a great lesson, contributed by a teacher on media literacy. I still remember the first time I ever learned about the "filter bubble". This was back before I ever noticed that I was being inundated by ads for things that I spent 30 seconds on, or had searched for. If you haven't seen the video- check it out. It has gotten worse. Your confirmation bias is just compounded, even within search. This is not news... video is almost 10 years old now! One of my favorite resources is actually from Canada. Media Smarts has put together lessons, divided by grade band for each day of Media Literacy Week. Short, and to the point, they communicate all the basics and leave room for exploration. There are now many sites out there to help you and your students become more media literate. One of the latest is The Media Manipulation Casebook. This is another effort from the Harvard Kennedy School, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Social Policy. They also produce Meme War Weekly (MWW): a newsletter dedicated to addressing political messaging that comes from the wilds of the internet, BIG, If True: a webinar series, hosted by Dr. Joan Donovan and presented by the Technology and Social Change Research Project, as well as research papers like Canaries in the Coal Mine: COVID-19 Misinformation and Black Communities by Brandi Collins-Dexter PBS has put together an excellent collection on media literacy for grades 6+. You can access these resources here.
Looking for something for younger children? Check out Soul Pancake's Kid Correspondent series. There are 5 videos so far. There are also excellent resources available from Common Sense Media. 5 Essential questions is an excellent beginning of these lessons. Check out the News and Media literacy toolkit, here. KQED is another great resource. Check out their Analyzing and Evaluating Media course here.
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AuthorMaureen Tumenas Archives
June 2021
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