National Poetry Month and more

National Poetry Month

From : https://www.poets.org/sites/default/files/npm-poster-border.png For the first time, the official National Poetry Month poster features artwork by a high school student: tenth grader Julia Wang from San Jose, California, who has won the inaugural National Poetry Month Poster Contest.

Yes, it's April and it's  National Poetry Month. I wrote a long post on this last year, see this link.  One new link to add is theListenwise Blog. They have an excellent selection of poetry and lesson plans. Best of all, you can listen to them!  I had never explored this web site before and am really impressed with the breadth of the offerings across disciplines, including social studies, science, ELA and current events.  If you're interested in hearing a new poem every day, be sure to check out the Poetry Foundation.  NYPL is posting a new poem every day . You can find many more ideas on Twitter #NationalPoetryMonth.

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A post shared by The New York Public Library (@nypl) on Apr 1, 2019 at 8:00am PDT

Enjoy a book about A Poem That Heals Fish...

Learning and Movement

Jennifer Gonzalez wrote an excellent blog post on learning and movement. I embedded her podcast below, but her actual blog post has real examples, links and a whole batch of great video examples. Don't miss this one!  Some of her videos referenced TPR, which I had never heard of, as well as a web site that was new to me- Teacher ToolKit.  So, after you finish listening to her podcast, and reading her great ideas on her blog, watching all the videos, you can go check out Teacher Toolkit, too. 

Microbooks

Now this sounds like a really cool idea from Book Creator and Elevate Books Edu.  Here's a short version: "​They have a growing library of hard copy books that we’ll be converting into microbooks – short, bite-size, multimedia versions that give a glimpse into the concepts contained within the book. This gives teachers an opportunity to sample the book before committing to a deeper dive into the full book."  
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Read more about it in this month'sBook Creator newsletter, and check out an example below.

The Google Infused Classroom Microbook

Click to read this book, made with Book Creator

https://read.bookcreator.com

ScreenTime

You know all those articles you've read arguing about screen time?  How about all the ones about digital equity? Well, it seems that the latest thing is that the "elite" schools are moving away from screens and putting value on human contact.  This has been a hot topic on the independent school list servs of late. I think it is just a pendulum swing myself.  What do you think?  Here's a recent NY Times article to get you thinking. Love the subtitle. Human Contact Is Now a Luxury Good Screens used to be for the elite. Now avoiding them is a status symbol.

Ideas to Share

 Voice Dream Scanner

This is a new app from Winston Chen. You can use it in conjunction with Voice Dream or separately.                    Cost- $5.99

Here's a bit more info: 
"Scan paper documents with the camera and recognize text. Listen using built-in text-to-speech. Save and export. Unlimited use: no subscriptions or additional charges.

State-of-the-art A.I. for OCR and text recognition: Fast and accurate, even in poor lighting conditions. Works entirely on device: No need for internet and your data stays private."

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ChromeBook Accessibility

Check out the whole Chrome Accessibility Video series here.

John Sowash's blog post focuses exclusively on the built-in Chromebook accessibility features and covers a myriad of features including: ChromeVox, Select to Speak, Dictation, High Contrast Mode, Full Screen and Docked Magnifiers, Automatic Clicks and On Screen Keyboard and many more. Check it out here. 

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Micro Credentials

Digital Promise is one of many sites which offers free professional development and gives you a micro-credential, a badge, for each course you complete. I'm not a fan of the whole badge system. I learn what I want, what I need and don't care about the creds, but I know this is important to some folks and is also a motivation for some.  So, check out Digital Promise and let us know what you think.