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.
0 Comments
Everyone Can Create
Apple released this relatively new curriculum back in March, but just this month announced that these teaching guides/ideas are now available in iBooks. Yes, they are free.
This is the original post, from back in March, which gives you the basic info and links to download each book on iTunes. So what is covered: " Everyone Can Create project guides introduce the language, fundamental skills and techniques of video, photography, music, and drawing." "The Everyone Can Create collection is designed to allow teachers to easily incorporate creativity into their existing lesson plans in any subject, including language arts, math, science, history, social studies and coding. " "A new teacher guide helps bring these projects to life in the classroom with 300 lesson ideas across media, projects and subjects" Quotes from : Apple Newsroom Update 10.1.18 Real Time Captions in Google Slides!
As part of Accessibility Awareness Month, Google is adding a new captioning feature to its Google Slides. This could be a real game changer for many of our students, as well as a huge boon to educators and their virtual audiences. This news just came out today. You can read the article here. I have not tested it out yet, but the word on social media is that is has great potential. It is currently only in US English, but the plan is to add other languages. It will be rolling out over the next few weeks. To activate it, using the Chrome browser, simply click the CC icon at the bottom of the slides and click Present. It will be interesting to see if this lives up to its potential.
Remind me
I don't know how everyone stays organized and remembers all the myriad details of their day to day work. I know that I have tried so many ways to do this- Google Keep, Livescribe Pens, Alexa, and more. I saw this article the other day and I think I may well try it. I still use post-it notes- both physical and virtual. Have you tried printing on Post-Its? We Are Teachers has a nice tutorial to follow and free templates.
FlipGrid Mix Tapes
I love FlipGrid. It is an easy tool for both educators and students and has an amazing community of educators who share tips and ideas to use in the classroom. In addition to #GridPals (Think penpals, only digital) and the "Disco" library ( as of today over 4662 topics are listed in the library!) a new feature is Mix Tapes. Flipgrid can actually be a great way to build a portfolio. Now teachers can go through all the various grids and pull an individual student's work out and compile it all into a new "mix tape". Check out the video below. If you are new to FlipGrid or if you want to catch up with all the new changes- Karly and Sean have once again compiled a new Teacher Guide- check out the link, make your own copy.
Flipgrid Tip - Create a Mixtape from Flipgrid on Vimeo. Alice Keeler-Infographics Tips
Alice Keeler has an excellent post with easy to follow tips to help you or your students make great infographics with Google Slides or Drawings. Check it out here.
Screenshot of Alice Keeler's tips. Please visit her site for more info and to download the pdf. Tips to Organize Google Drive: Miguel and friends
Once again our Texas friend, Miguel, has posted useful, practical information! I think I first tried to organize my Google Drive when I read a post a while back from Jenn Judkins and learned about "Shift-Z". Check out Jenn's easy to follow tutorial here. Miguel Guhlin takes Google Drive organization and breaks it down into 3 pieces : Tip #1 – Create File Shortcuts Tip #2 – Copy Folders in Drive Tip #3 – Backup & Sync Read all about it on the TCEA blog, here.
Still looking for more ideas to organize your Google Drive? Richard Byrne has a great little gif to show you how to use emojis and icons to organize... check it out here.
Digital Distraction
The topic of digital distraction in the classroom has circled around, yet again.
Is it getting worse? Is it a problem of tech or of classroom management? Have we collected new research that says screens are making us dumber? Are we losing touch with one another, lacking empathy? Yes, depends on who you ask; yes, but it depends on which research you look at; yes, but... One article that many have seen and chimed in on- on both sides, is the WAPO article about putting all devices into little protective pockets while in school. Business Insider has Stanford University computer science students protesting at Apple around cell phone addiction issues. Need to read more... Here's a few to get you started- One article: Hechinger Report Another: WAPO- to ban or not WAPO: Screens are not evil So, are we all talking about the same thing? Distraction in the classroom=screen time=cellphone addiction... Nope, I think that there are various threads to the discussion that kind of blend together, depending on age group or student/parent/teacher and this ends up clouding our discussion. In school- they can be used as learning tools. If they are not being used as learning tools- put them away. In social situations- talk to the real people you are with. When you see beautiful scenes in nature, at concerts, walking down the street- look and enjoy with your eyes and your other senses, instead of always holding up a phone and looking through a lens. I liked this tweet from a Canadian friend, Alec Couros. He is a professor at the University of Regina and has spoken on and written about The Age of Distraction for about a decade.
As usual, one of my personal go-to sources is CommonSense Media. You can read a lot more about Digital Distraction here... and check out the video below.
Google Keep
I wrote a week or so ago about Google Keep, as well as here, and here. I went to #EdCampNQ this past weekend and in a session about chrome extensions, once again Google Keep came up. This time an AT from a neighboring district (@OsborneAllegra) demo'd how she uses Keep in her job. Because she goes from school to school, her Google Keep for work is arranged with a note for each school-but the cool thing for all you visual learners was the way she used a different photo for each note. Using her phone, she could see by quickly scrolling thru the notes exactly what she needed to accomplish at each school- with color coded notes and checkboxes. She also has a Google Keep extension that she uses for her personal account and is quite literally using it as a planning and organization tool for her summer trips. Another participant, @jrowebbrsd, also uses it for its OCR capabilities. If you've never tried to pop an image into Google Keep and then pull the text out of it... check it out in this short video. Imagine having a student who may struggle to get all the assignments written down. A quick image with a phone or other device, pop it into Google Keep, grab the text, pop it into a Google Doc and have it read to you by Read and Write for Google Chrome. If you haven't checked out Google Keep, you're missing out. It just keeps getting better.
Google Forms
I love the versatility of Google Forms. They can be used for so much more than surveys! I use them all the time when I am making digital breakouts for students to use. Data validation turns a form into a way to require the "secret password" or gives feedback with additional clues. Today I was reading/listening to Matt Miller and Kasey Bell's podcast and blog posts about using Google Forms for differentiation.
What I really liked about Kasey and Matt's podcast/posts was that it reminded me of 2 things. One: Use forms as a learning tool. By using branching you can give a formative assessment with the learning reinforcement built in. When a student gets a question wrong, he moves on to a video or other lesson material to reteach/reinforce the concept vs. just getting it wrong. If the student is correct, he moves to the next question. Here's the link to Kasey's post with some great step by step directions for you to try out. Just in case you don't have time to read her whole post, buried way down at the bottom is alink to (French teacher) Sylvia Duckworth's blog post on using forms for a choose your own adventure story. Check it out...it's fun to do a story this way.
Here's the podcast if you'd rather just listen along...
Reshare of Google Forms Teacher Tips... this is updated every Tuesday
#GAFEchat on Forms
This evening I participated in a #GAFEchat and the topic was Google Forms. So, it's not just me who loves Google Forms. So many interesting resources were shared...
Here's thelink to the collection of links from this #gafechat or the curated collection is listed below (use Participate.com to quickly gather all links from fast moving chats)
Google Forms Ninja Moves and Secret Passwords
Using Tables in Forms
As the school year draws to a close, I would like to share a few of the many vendor emails I get on a daily basis. These actually have something to offer busy teachers. Check out new developments at ReadWorks, Symbaloo, JoeZoo and EasyBib.
ReadWorks
There are 2 new, exciting updates from ReadWorks coming next fall. There will be a new digital website and a new K-5 Article-A-Day program.
The new ReadWorks Digital website will be available for all teachers and students.
Read Works - Article a Day
"ReadWorks Introduces Article-A-Day for Kindergarten - 5th grade In just 10-15 minutes each day you can dramatically improve your students’ reading comprehension by systematically building their background knowledge and vocabulary with Article-A-Day. Learn more about Article-A-Day" Symbaloo Edu Lesson Plans
Symbaloo, which we use at HES for a start page for students ( with a separate start page for teachers), recently rolled out a new service using their platform- Lesson Plans for students. Essentially this is like a pathfinder. Here's their promo:
Engage your students with truly personalized learning by creating your own lesson plans and fully customizing the look and feel. Simply add videos, documents, quizzes and educational games that guide students through custom learning paths from start to finish. View the progress of your students in real time, chat with them to help them with the assignment and utilize the built-in grading tool to make your life easier. You can now get started with creating your first lesson plan. How? By taking your first lesson: A lesson plan explaining Symbaloo Lesson Plans. See what we did there? ;-) Joe Zoo
Joe Zoo is a Google Add On, built for teachers to help with rubrics, grading and feedback. It is relatively new and has made some good upgrades recently. It is integrated with Google Classroom.
Check it out here. The video below is just a short promo video, but there is a complete playlist of how to videos on YouTube Easy Bib Edu
I got this from Easy Bib recently. Easy Bib is an easy to use citation service and has a Google Docs add on. Click on the link to the form to get this for free if you would like to be able to view and manage student accounts. They also have a helpful resource for educators- with articles like Teaching Students How To Summarize and Paraphrase in their Own Words, or How to Conquer the Dreaded Blank Page with Writing Prompts
Questions? Check the FAQ page To get right to it: we heard you when you said that your students loved using EasyBib, so we’re excited to let you know that you and your students can have FULL ACCESS to EasyBib EDU for free, starting with the 2016-2017 school year and beyond! This means:
We’ll keep improving EasyBib throughout the upcoming school year, adding enhancements such as a new and improved notebook, an annotation tool to help your students find and capture important information, and an improved Google Docs add-on with notes and outline support to assist students throughout the writing process. Stay tuned for more updates and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let us know, and don’t forget to sign up for EasyBib EDU here. Thanks and we will be in touch! The Imagine Easy Team One of the organizations I have been involved in for years is Classroom 2.0. As a member of the advisory board we work together to come up with topics and presenters for the Saturday noon EST shows. I was very happy to get a positive response from Eric Curts when I asked him if he would be interested in presenting, but then he ended up being scheduled on the same Saturday that I would be in Boston for edcampBoston all day. I just finished listening to the recording of the show and want to share some of the highlights with you. Google Drawings have so many uses- graphic organizers, teaching math and even as a desktop publisher. Eric has a ton of resources that you can access at his website. These are CC licensed- so you may copy, adapt and reuse them as long as you give him attribution and don't use them commercially. One of the fabulous resources he has shared is a folder with 40 templates you can use. To adapt and use these, simply open in Google Drive and click file/make a copy. Graphic organizers are easy and fun with Google Drawings. Click on the image below to access Eric's Slideshow Classroom 2.0 compiled a livebinder with tons of resources for Google Drawings. You can access the livebinder here. Just a note- the links are arranged on the left hand side. All of the other notes about the show can be accessed via the Classroom 2.0 archives. The videos below are all complete webinars, each about an hour long , but have lots of examples.
No time to watch complete webinars? Avra Robinson from Edtech teacher has a great playlist with short videos to help you learn more Executive Functioning? What is that?Simply put, executive functioning covers all the tools that an "executive" would need to carry out his/her job- all those planning skills, organizational skills, working memory, impulse control and more. Not just for executives, these tools are used everyday by each and every one of us. Here's the quick video version: You can get a whole lot more information from Understood.org and even download a free ebook. ""Executive Function 101 is a free e-book from founding partner the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Download the e-book to find out what executive function is and how it impacts kids with learning and attention issues. This e-book also includes an illustration of a day in the life of a child with executive functioning issues." Click here to go to Understood.org to access the ebook. They also have a great, short article by Amanda Morin explaining 8 Key Executive Functions Another viewpoint- Understanding the Adolescent Brain from Sarah-Jayne Blakemore in this TED talk The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain TOOLSOne of the best resources online to find ways to help your students or yourself with executive function issues- like organization, is Karen Janowski's EF Toolikit. Karen has organized these tools into
More Executive Functioning Tools!Dr. Cheryl Temple and Lisa Givens down in Fairfax County-Assistive Technology Services have put together an amazing resource in this powerpoint . Further InformationGoogle Slide Template with Horizontal Navigation
Actually this whole post was going to be about this template, because I think it has so many uses in the classroom, by both students and teachers, but then I decided to make an example to show you... so now you get a twofer. There are tons of comic makers online- these are a few examples to get you started.
You can even use Google Slides to create comic strips- check out Eric Curts' work here.
What I like is the way this opens up options and helps to visually organize your presentation:
I did not create this template. The incredible team at Cherry Creek schools in Greenwood Village, CO created the templates and shared this and many other cool tools on their tech blog.
If you want the templates... they are shared online by Cherry Creek Schools. You can access them here. There are are a bunch of different colors/sizes. I would recommend opening the link your drive. These files will still be "view only". That means that in order to edit or use them, you will need to open the one(s) you want, choose File>Make a Copy> name it and save it. One last thing to remember- the navigation works by linking the slides to the text boxes on the top- so if you edit- pay attention to those links.
Over the weekend I was listening to several SimpleK12 webinars on Google Tools. One presenter showed a Jeopardy like game, made with Flippity.net. Now if you've ever used the online templates, PowerPoint, etc. to make Jeopardy quiz games for your students, you know that can be a pain in the neck. This looked easy. So, I checked it out, and not only was it easy to do, but their flashcard maker would be a great way for you/your students to collaboratively study for exams. Just download the templates, open in Google Sheets and follow the step by step instructions. The quiz show game.. Here's a short video from Richard Byrne to show you how to do it and there are also complete directions on the site as well. The Flash Card Generator What I really like about this 1. You can add images 2. You can add video 3. It can be collaborative! Because it is made from a Google Sheet, you can share the sheet to your entire class, assign each student/group of students one section and they make the cards for the group...remember to update the link when adding to the published card deck 4. Options- card, list, cloud, quiz
Time to spare? Time to breathe? Most of us find that we rarely have a spare minute in the day. Sometimes it feels like you can barely keep your head above water with deluge of information we get from all the various media in our lives. I've often heard the expression of drinking from the firehose to describe the experience of learners trying to filter online content.
That's why learning how to curate and save and share online content can be a real time saver. Don’t you hate it when you know that you saw a great image, or precisely the right article or video online and then can’t find it again? Curation may be one answer. Curation combined with collaboration may help your whole grade level or department. You all know what collaboration is, but what about curation? Isn’t that just for libraries and museums? No. Curation of online content can be done by anyone. There is simply too much information available today and aside from web site authentication, this flood of information is an ongoing issue, it’s just plain overwhelming. This is where your PLN, your peers, and the global network of educators can help. Fourth grade teachers across the country are all using very similar curricula. AP bio teachers all need to get through the same material. Teachers across the world routinely create, curate and collaborate. There are as many ways to curate information as there are people, so I will just go over a few of them. Teachers today can demonstrate and model the use of these tools to help students make sense of the information that they are inundated with. Social Bookmarking is an excellent way to save resources, to share to friends, a group or a class. Most social bookmarking platforms are set up so that you can use them across devices and access them anywhere that you have an internet connection. Teachers at HES are familiar with one of the tools, Symbaloo as we use it as a start page for students, as well as a start page for teachers. Here’s a short video from Beth Holland at EdTechTeacher to explain a little more about one of these tools- Diigo, which just happens to be my favorite. You can set up a class to use Diigo, set up or join Diigo groups, etc. Introduction to Diigo from EdTechTeacher on Vimeo. Social Bookmarking Tools:
These are a few of the popular curation and collaboration tools:
Diigo Symbaloo Evernote Aside from these tools I often use curation tools to pull from social media online. These are tools you may want to check out.
Does this take time? Yes. It is generally time well spent. Although I think that social media can sometimes be an enormous time suck, it is also critical to at least take a peek outside the bubble of Pioneer Valley and learn from other teachers around the globe. Hadley has plenty of silos already- open up your classroom walls and create, collaborate and curate with others. I spend about an hour a week on Twitter, look at the headlines from some of the other feeds and if something catches my eye, will investigate further. I learn something new every day- and it's not just about tech- it's about teaching. The tool I use constantly, on a daily basis, is Diigo. Everyone is different. Pick one tool, try it out. Model it with your students. |
AuthorMaureen Tumenas Archives
June 2021
|