Many of the resources this week come from recent Twitter posts. Honestly, if you are an educator and you are not on Twitter, you don't know what you are missing. I remember when Twitter first came out and I could not see any use whatsoever for that "nonsense". But that was over 13 years ago! So much has changed since then. If all the political posts annoy you- don't follow those people! I understand that social media certainly has its negative aspects, but Twitter is the primary source of a wealth of information for all educators. There are now "Clubhouse Communities" for educators as well (not Twitter, but a relatively new platform). I know time is scarce, but aside from the few times when I still fall down the Twitter rabbit hole, it's doable.
Pick some educators to follow and see what you can learn. Make a time for this, once a day, once a week- just carve out 15 minutes. To help you out... here's a couple of tweets with lists of K-12 educators and a list of edu blogs to follow.
Google Apps for Primary Educators
I was fortunate to attend Thursday's Napa Learns presentation featuring Christine Pinto and Jessica Twomey. They gave a resource- packed hour with a plethora of tried and tested resources to use with younger learners. You need to check out their blog, as well as follow them on Twitter. They also have a new book out- check that out here. Here are 2 of the fabulous resources shared, Playing with Works Centers- 45 slides with 5 great resources ready to use or adapt on each; and Connected Play Centers, currently with 52 slides and 5 resources on each. Your planning is done for the rest of the year. Microsoft Reading Progress Tracker
I know I wrote about this last week, but I got to listen to Mike Tholfsen talk about this and demo it on Leslie Fisher's Friday night webinar. I love Google for education, but this makes me want to find a really good way to make this work for our Google Classroom students and their teachers. Mike says No, have to use Teams. I want to find a way to integrate this without adding another layer! It is the best Reading progress system I have seen. Check out the walk-through to see how it all works.
Ideas to Share
Amplify STEM is also offering some interesting webinars. Check it out here. http://go.info.amplify.com/getintouch-webinar-fy21_science_lhs_national_springwebinar
0 Comments
FREE PD
I was actually going to write about a couple of the really good sessions of the Untamed Learning Conference I attended on Saturday and am happy to say- now you can attend any of them- and I can catch the ones I couldn't attend. My favorites, so far - Digital Tools for STEM with Eric Cross and Mari Venturino, and the Student Engagement for Primary Learners (TK-2) with Jennifer Dean and Ben Cogswell. I only got to one of Jennifer and Ben's and plan to catch the other 3. Note: Click on the image or the link below it to register for free access... scroll all the way down to the bottom of their page til you see "Are You Ready?" "Get your free ticket". It's way further down the page than you would expect. What I liked about the sessions I attended... these are educators, who are in the classrooms, either directly teaching or directly supporting teachers. The ideas they present are not theoretical, nor do they generally require paid apps, fancy equipment, etc. You can actually do these with your students.
We've opened up our live, virtual conference - Untamed Learning for FREE to all educators! We want this to be a day of learning that supports educators where they are now and in preparation of moving into the Next Normal. So, at Untamed Learning you'll get:
Google Updates
Trying to keep up with Google updates has always been kind of like herding cats, but this last month or so... pretty close to impossible. I depend on the Google Edu pages and try to catch the folks from Fried.Tech every week. Below is today's slide deck- just click on the image and the recording on Youtube.
What really stood out today: 1. Originality reports. This is rolling out for the next school year, and the free version only gets 5 reports, but paid is unlimited (I think). The part that I liked- it is not just for teachers to say "gotcha!" If the teacher has enabled it, the students can check their work before turning it in. It is meant to be a learning experience, not just a way to catch cheaters. The other part that will be rolling out is a way to check student/student work. Not really sure how this will work- but essentially is meant to prevent kids from last year's class just passing along their papers to a new class. But- no work is shared outside of your district... unlike turnitin, etc. This will use your data, in your accounts to check. 2. Rubrics There was a lot of good info shared, and they did a demo of how to create a rubric, but the cool piece, you and your department can create a shell class- no students- and work together to create rubrics, which you can then access and attach to your assignments/edit as needed.
Micro:bit PD
I attended this virtual training last week and thought it was one of the best Micro:bit trainings I have seen so far. Excellent ideas, great pacing. Whether you are new to Micro:bit or if you have some experience-check out the slides and the great opportunities from Project Invent. This is theslide deck, therecording, and a link to thepadlet with all the referenced links.
Ideas to Share
BreakoutEdu
I love this quick little puzzle you can play with your students. It a perfect 5 minute do now or as something for students to work on while waiting for the Zoom or Meet to begin. If you want to do the digital version, it's quick and easy to assign (HES- we have a subscription) or try the kit version- way more setup and probably not something we can do right now... Adam says they will be putting one of these out every week.
UnboundEd
Having conversations in your school about race and equity? This bias toolkit may help. Or check out the resources on the Wakelet below, shared recently by Terri Eicholz.
You can download the free bias toolkit from Unbounded.org. Click the image below to find out more.
Jamboard Version History
Alice Keeler, as well as Richard Byrne and others wrote about the new version history for Google Jamboard. This is rolling out over the next couple weeks. One thing that is different about jamboard version history, compared to docs, is that it will not show you who did what- only who was on the document, as well as allowing you to restore to a previous version.
Wordtune
Richard Byrne recently wrote about this chrome extension, one that I have not tried. It is called Wordtune and can help students revise their writing. Check out his post and the video below.
LightSpace is an app which came out a couple years ago, but that I had never heard of until I read this blog post from @MerrillsEDU. Check it out.
Here's the short version: " LightSpace is an AR (augmented reality) iOS app that allows you to turn your surroundings into a canvas. Using LightSpace’s tools, you can record a video and add things like drawings, shapes and various effects right into the shot. The best part is if you walk away from your drawing, LightSpace maps the room. So, if you walk back towards your drawing, it will reappear! This is a great way to capture engagement and build interACTIVE activities."
Although I agree that we shouldn't need to have a Black History month or a Women's History month or a Hispanic history month, etc., we still have a ways to go to teach in a more inclusive manner, to tell all the history, of all the people. So, you can click on this link to see past entries, if you'd like, but I pulled together all of the links I had saved more recently into a Wakelet.
Ideas to Share
TEMPLATES
Ideas to Share
Elementary STEM with Ms. Crosman YouTube channel has STEM challenges, STEM read alouds and more. Worth checking out.
Tony Vincent tweeted about a new extension that lets you take notes on YouTube videos- side by side.
More Jamboard Ideas from Alice Keeler and Kim Mattina
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
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!
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.
As always, things change rapidly in the online world. One website that I love, but haven't featured is
The Kid Should See This. "The Kid Should See This is an unprecedented collection of 4,500+ kid-friendly videos, curated for teachers and parents who want to share smarter, more meaningful media in the classroom and at home. " And... it's free. Not just for little kids, all ages will love these videos.
|
|
|
Originality reports & Google Citation Tool
Plagiarism comes up over and over again across all grade levels and disciplines. Google Has tools to help right in Google Classroom. You can find out more about it here.
|
Google Workspace also recently came out with built-in tool for citations. You no longer have to use a 3rd party add-on or extension. Check out Richard Byrne's video below.
|
|
|
Whiteboards, again...
|
|
New Microbit
|
|
Free Google PD
Inspire Creativity through Learner Engagement
This one looks really good, uses lots of different tools and explores student choice and voice. If you haven't checked out the Teacher Center, it is worth your time. You can filter by time required, by topic and by level of difficulty. An easy way to up your game.
If this is something of interest, sign up, and go in and register for any mini course of interest as the registration dates close after the initial presentations.
|
Welcome to Google Tools for Remote and Hybrid Learning! In this series of 6 mini-courses, attendees will gain the confidence and skills they need to effectively lead students through a remote and/or hybrid learning model by taking full advantage of Google tools for Education. Attendees may opt to receive all 6-hours of instruction or choose which mini-courses to attend based on their needs and level of comfort with these tools. If you have no experience with Google's Suite of tools for education, we encourage you to attend all 6 mini-courses.
|
STEM |
Ideas to Share
Interactive Google Slides
GC CleanUp
| Eric Curts, as always, has a great tutorial on cleaning up your Google Classroom. You can read his whole post here, and/or watch his video. Just an FYI, if you are at HES, I will archive your old classes sometime this summer. I will not walk through any of the other steps listed- so if you want to tidy things up, go for it. |
Google TakeOut
I would be remiss if I didn't mention Google Takeout at the end of a school year. This is a service provided by Google to save or transfer all of your Google stuff. Please pass it along to others who are changing schools, graduating, etc. Click here for the link for Takeout. Please note that transfer is only for edu accounts, not personal accounts. | Here's another post I wrote about it in the past, don't think much has changed. https://hadleytechtuesday.weebly.com/tech-tuesday/category/googletakeout |
Chromebook Videos
Another of my go-to sources, Richard Byrne, shared a quick video to show you how to create and share videos on a chromebook without adding any apps or special extensions. Richard shares:
| |
NetsBlox
Here's the NetsBlox info: "NetsBlox is a visual programming language and cloud-based environment that enables novice programmers to create networked programs such as multi-player games. Its visual notation is based on Scratch and it uses the open source JavaScript code base of Snap! NetsBlox opens up the internet with its vast array of public domain scientific and other data sources making it possible to create STEM projects, such as displaying seismic activity anywhere on Earth using an interactive Google Maps background. Similarly, weather, air pollution, and many other data sources such as the Open Movie Database and the Sloan Digital Sky Server are available. NetsBlox also supports collaborative editing similar to Google Docs"
Virtual PD
Google's EduOnAir PD is offering a new 6 week Distance Learning Course. The first one is this week and I am planning to attend. It looks interesting and Jennie Magiera is one of the presenters, so it should be good. Check it out here. https://educationonair.withgoogle.com/distancelearning-series |
This morning I saw the email come through about the national parks session... which I cannot attend, but have added to my watch later list. Check out some of the other things for the week, and sign up to get access- every day for a couple months- and they are recorded.
Author
Maureen Tumenas
Archives
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015