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Upcoming Free PD

This 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

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Steve Dembo from Discovery Education has teamed up Science4US to put on a 10 session Elementary Science series.   This sounds good, aimed at lower elementary, and I hope that it is not "vendor driven".  

"The webinar will be on Wednesday at 8pm ET.   It’s 100% free and open to anyone.   Even if you can’t make it, sign up anyway and you’ll get a link to download the archive!"

Google Earth News

Many 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!

Landing page on Google Voyager. Credit Google

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 Resources

I 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.

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