New Podcast for the New Normal
Tom Daccord, founder of EdTechTeacher, has a new podcast series which you may find useful as we move forward into unknown educational territory, "Schooling, Accelerations & Innovation". He speaks to the challenges of the new normal. I liked his first foray and look forward to more.
In episode one, Tom tackles both the challenges and opportunity presented by our new learning environment: "While the threat of coronavirus looms, students are stuck at home and educators are left rethinking the role of technology in teaching and learning. A silver lining of this global pandemic is the huge opportunity it provides to rethink the student learning process. Yet, teachers can’t be expected to change without a galvanizing vision of what beneficial change actually looks like. Right now, we need leadership in formulating tech-infused and student-centric learning environments." Listen on Anchor, Spotify and all major podcasting outlets. Books for STEAM/STEM
I've mentioned this site before- Heyworth Elementary Leap Labs Books and Mentor Texts. They have an excellent collection for reading to kids, or as jumping off points for STEM projects and more.
I wanted to add a couple of other sites to also check-STEM Read and STEM Storytime FlipGrid STEM Read is offering read alouds with some lesson plan ideas. "During social distancing and school closures, STEM Read is releasing Canned Goods: non-perishable e-learning activities teachers can drop into lessons and parents can use to keep kids engaged. Look for the Canned Goods posts to find quick, fun, stemtastic activities that adhere to state standards. As always, you can find more ideas in our other posts and full lesson plans and videos on our Book and Educator pages. "
STEM STORYTIME FLIPGRID This is a great idea. So far there are 41 topics. Some have a ton of student videos, others only a few. You can steal these ideas and make up your own Stem Storytime or if you're comfortable with your students adding to these, go for it. You could even combine some of the ideas from LEAP lab, and STEM Read to make up your own STEM Storytime FlipGrid.
New from Prezi
This is from a recent email from Prezi CEO, Péter Árvai
Prezi Video - Unlike screen-sharing apps that toggle between you and your content, this video maker shows you alongside your graphics in real time (like a TV newscaster), so you don’t lose your face-to-face connection. Use it live with your video conference app of choice or record to share later with a simple link. Prezi Design - Our new design tool helps you create interactive infographics, social media posts, charts, maps, and reports that add meaning to your message when you can’t be there to explain it in person. Realizing it would be useful to you now, we’ve released it ahead of its scheduled launch date.
Greg Kulowiec shares a short video to point out some of the new features of Google Earth. "Google Earth allows educators and students to create projects that can be shared with anyone on the web. Educators can use this tool to create custom global tours in Google Earth that point students to specific locations around the world." Upcoming PDPECS AT Conference
This virtual conference is happening tomorrow!- May 20th.
PECS-AT Conference 2020 Join us May 20, 2020 for our Virtual Event! With funding support provided by the New Hampshire Department of Education, Inclusive Technology Solutions is proud to announce this exciting day long virtual event. The event runs from 10:00am – 3:00pm eastern. This event brings together New Hampshire based practitioners and organizations; national AT presenters and vendors. The day is comprised of 25 minute Assistive Technology presentations; 25 minute Edcamp-style conversations; and, 25 minute vendor presentations. Over 40 sessions will be available throughout the day and the best part of all – the event is FREE! To register for the event and explore the on-line schedule, visit bit.ly/atexpo520
Fun PD from Lesson Pix
Coming up Wednesday and Thursday. Learn to leverage Lesson Pix for all your students. Streaming on YouTube and FB. Check it out.
New England ISTE is offering a free webinar this Thursday to learn how to use Equatio- for digital math. Register here.
Science is Cool- Virtual Unconference
This unconference is happening this Friday- May 22, from 12-8pm. It is kind of vendor driven, but interesting nonetheless. http://www.scic-conference.com/
KEYNOTE EVENT NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON HOSTS A LIVE STARTALK: COSMIC QUERIES PODCAST
Edgenuity via NYSCATE (free to join) is offering a free SEL workshop on June 17th. Learning how to support students, staff, and families through social-emotional learning (SEL). Take a deeper look at the impact on mental health, learning and teaching, and how SEL frameworks can support and engage all stakeholders back to a healthy learning environment."Click here for more info.
Recorded webinars for STEM
Eduporium recently sent out an email with lists of STEM webinars to check out. I have checked out the Hummingbird ones, as well as some of the MakeyMakey webinars. Worth the time.
Learning from Home- Book Creator Webinars
This is an excellent series of webinars from Dr. Monica Burns to get you up and going with Book Creator. This is a diverse tool with a robust set of accessible features. Highly recommended!
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Starting out with a little social studies. Did you see the article inThe Washington Post the other day? Ken Burns has come out with a new collection for educators. Here's the gist of it: "Created for sixth- to 12th-grade educators, the new one-stop destination houses a full library of classroom-ready content — aligned to state and national standards — about historical events and issues that Burns has highlighted in his films.“Ken Burns in the Classroom” includes hundreds of video clips, lesson plans, activity suggestions, discussion questions, handouts and interactives to help educators integrate the films into their classroom instruction.
I checked out the site- part of PBS Media and loved what I saw. I also learned about his other site "Unum" which I had never seen before. It was inspired by the motto of the U.S.
KEN'S NOTE "E pluribus unum was chosen as the motto of the United States in 1782. It means “out of many, one” which captures the very soul of this project. It’s all one story. It always has been."
EdSurge ran an article about a renaissance for Social Studies. Their 3 major points to focus upon are :
1. Focus on student engagement above all. 2. Ensure a diversity of voices. 3. Listen, build, learn, repeat . Read the whole article here.
And of course, a little geography too. Richard Byrne wrote a blurb about this the other day, so I went over to the Google blog to check it out. https://www.blog.google/products/earth/new-google-earth-creation-tools/ "With new creation tools now in Google Earth, you can turn our digital globe into your own storytelling canvas, and create a map or story about the places that matter to you."
On to Science articles this week: We hear about/talk about diversity and equity a lot lately. These articles relate these topics back to STEM.
Kathy Renfrew and Amber McCulloch did a NSTA blog post recently where they discussed "Ensuring All Elementary Students Have Access to Science Learning". The problem, as most of us are aware is that teachers in elementary school have little time for science. The students are tested in Math and ELA on the state tests, thus most of the teaching time is devoted to those core subjects. One of the resources they mentioned is easy to access and worth 22 minutes of your time. It's called Elementary Science Video Workshop and will "walk you through some learning tools centered around why elementary science, what does good science instruction look like, and how building leadership teams can best implement changes to what science instruction looks like in your school." Check out the blog post for more tools to explore, including this one about integrating STEM into the curriculum. The NGS Navigators podcast did an encore of Jay McTighe and Dr.Judy Willis talking about Upgrading Your Teaching: Understanding by Design Meets Neuroscience
A bit about accessibility. I noted an interesting article and a great resource shared online by Dodie Ainslie over at BT BOCES in NY state. Dodie shared an excellent resource to help access learning through #Chromebook and #Google accessibility features. She said to feel free to share and adapt. I really appreciate having all these tools listed in one handy slide deck. Thanks @djainslie! Just click on the image below to make a copy for yourself. (File>Make a Copy)
Edutopia shared a nice article on Developing Executive Function back in January. Don't you just wish that we could go through a checklist and miraculously all have perfect executive function? This article is aimed at the middle school student and walks you through setting up priority lists with students. The with is important, not for the students. Here's the article and here's the video
And last but not least esports.
I have seen several articles of late raving about the importance and popularity of esports. Within the last year this has become a hot topic. Since the first and last video game I played was pong, gotta say, not up on this topic. But- if you are into video games, or even if you're not, you need to understand a bit more about esports. Here to help you out..
EdTech Magazine with the recent article: Fact or Fallacy: Why Esports Are Here to Stay in K–12 Schools Tech & Learning University also ran an article about esports in highered. Growth Mindset
Some of you may remember that I wrote about this about ayear and a half ago. To be honest, my opinion has not changed... still think it's a buzzword. However, recently when doing a breakoutedu session in second grade I was talking with them about grit, persistence... and the students called it their growth mindset- so it looks like the lingo is sticking. I saw a blog post by Lee Araoz, who made this pretty spectacular collection of growth mindset materials. So- here you go:
Digital Citizenship
Every time I hear about problems around digital citizenship at our school or others, I wonder how, we as educators can possibly think that kids magically know how to use all this emerging tech as tools. We are hard pressed to find examples of civil discourse and good use of social media in the news. Of course students will make mistakes, they are kids. Of course we could/should help them figure it all out, just like we help with all the other facets of education. But we don't. Is it because we think that this is "outside of school"? It isn't. We have seen this in both schools in our district. These actions affect our school communities. Is it because we think that the kids know more about the tools than we do? Yes, in some cases. I'm quite sure that a typical high school student knows way more about snapchat and some of the nasty places online that teens go to pick on one another than I do. But, that's not an excuse not to have a comprehensive digital citizenship program in place. Commonsense media has one... it's free. Mary Alice Curran created digcitkids and ran her own digital citizenship conference down at St. Joe's in CT. Wes Fryer and Marcia Moore created this drawing, showing how all encompassing digital citizenship in today's educational world actually is. EdSurge has an excellent article with some great resources here. Yes, it's one more thing. Yes, it's important. We can see what happens when we don't have a comprehensive program.
Choices, choices. More Google Earth
I've been seeing more and more about the new version of Google Earth- almost all positive. I went to the EdTechTeam Geo webinar tonight and they shared the slides and lots of information. You can get thelink to the recording in the slides. If you're really into geography, apply to the Google Geo Institute- this summer- in California and it's free. Google has a new site to help you learn all the ins and outs and how best to use this tool in class. Check it out here.
Upcoming PD
Simple K12 is offering a free day of workshops on Google Tools- coming up on Saturday May 20. Learn more about it here.
Upcoming Free PDThis week brings some great free resources your way with a webinar from CAST on UDL: UDL Stories from the Field http://castprofessionallearning.org/free-udl-webinars/ Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 26 from 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. EST. EdTechTeam is sponsoring a live webinar on Tuesday May 6, featuring the new Google Earth RSVP HERE LIVE Webinar LINK
Google Earth NewsMany of you have probably heard/read about the great new changes in Google Earth. It is now accessible online- like on chromebooks. I have not tried this at school with a class of students and have no notion of how the bandwidth holds up. But it is good news. You can get the gist from EdTechTeam's blog post here. I wanted to share a couple of the blog posts and videos that have been posted about this change and that you may find helpful. First- Richard Byrne's video overview One thing that Richard notes is that it is hard to create tours in the new online version- but he followed that up today with a blog post about GE Teach Tour "a free tool that you and your students can use to create tours to play in the new web version of Google Earth." See his full informative post here. Google Lit Trips on Chrome: Another interesting post about using the new Google Earth came from Eric Curts. Eric will explain in detail in the video below and in a great step by step tutorial on his site- how you can now use Google Lit Trips on chromebooks. Check it out below and be sure to vist Control, Alt, Achieve to get the full picture. You have to try Voyager!This is the coolest thing I have seen in awhile. Remember way back when you could find your house on Google Earth? You thought that was cool, right? Bet you spent a lot of time just spinning the globe around, checking things out. Voyager is way cooler. They have created these fantastic lessons- cooler than lit trips (sorry). Before you click on the links- know that you will be sucked in, so get your "work" done first. But, as you immerse yourself in Voyager, imagine what you can do with this tool with students, what they can do... It is really fantastic. Check them out here. Here is the NY Times article about it. Solar Eclipse ResourcesI attended an excellent webinar from WGBH Education on the upcoming solar eclipse. This will not be an total eclipse for us, and it will be just before school starts up again. So, if you are interested, you will need to plan ahead. PBS Learning Media has you covered with a solar eclipse toolkit You can get more information here. |
AuthorMaureen Tumenas Archives
June 2021
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