Poetry Month This link comes from a Terri Eichholz post. I love the interactive google doc with lesson plans that she shared from Scott Bayer (@LyricalSwordz). With yet more unsettling news on the rise of hate and racism, here are some resources from KQED. Click here or on the image. WordtuneLooking for a new way to improve student writing? Try this Chrome extension- Wordtune. Eric Curts wrote up a great explanation on his site, and created this how to video, as well as detailed written instructions. I tried it out and like having a lot of choices, although, as with most of this type of tool, like Grammarly, I found that having it pop up to be intrusive and used the little dot in the top left to shut it off, unless I asked it for advice. I am curious to see how well the AI works. We all know that the auto-correct can be a godsend or make really funny mistakes. BreakoutEDU's free game of the week is Breakout THE ZOOM!
Math Whiteboard As many of you may know, math is not my favorite subject. This 30 min webinar on a new tool called Math Whiteboard honestly made the tool look really cool, but not being a math teacher, I don't know. He demo'd cool tricks with graphs, etc... made it look easy. He also seems to be available for questions and more demos. Try it and see! Let me know in the comments. Here's a couple of example images from his site. I just saw that Eric Curts is having a webinar on this next week 4/20/21 MakeCode Skill Map This one is in development, but go ahead and give it a shot if you don't mind that there may well be some bugs. I enjoyed the intro webinar and found most of it to be fun and easy to follow along. You can also check out the MakeCode Arcade platform, but this skillmap has potential as a teaching tool. One big plus- MakeCode Arcade has Immersive Reader! Canva If you haven't tried Canva, you're missing out. This platform has grown so much over the last year or so! I guess I'm not the only one who is so impressed with Canva. Richard Byrne just put up a new blog post 19 Canva Tutorials for Teachers and Students - Certificates, Comics, and More! Check out all the great tutorials he has created here. Here's a link to Canva's OnBoarding for Educator's presentation with step by step from setup to presenting remotely and more. Canva offers free pro accounts for educators! You can create classrooms. It is integrated with Google Classroom. Students can collaborate on work. The amount of resources available to teachers is simply amazing! Remove bg is part of the platform... You can find, reuse, recreate worksheets, comics, infographics and so much more. The Canva video below is a bit long, but worth the time. I have sat through several of Leslie Fisher's webinars on Canva and will be back for more. You can also check out Holly Clark's ideas here. I also took a couple of quick video tours ( less than a minute) below to show you some of what is available to teachers- for free!
Yet More Jamboard I attended a Fried.Tech webinar recently on Jamboard, not really expecting to learn anything new. Much of it was the same old, but I did learn more about the differences in using Jamboard on a tablet vs the web version (~ 11:28 on the video) There are some pretty cool things you can do with the app. Check out their presentation and slide deck. Just in from Eric Curts I thought I was done, but just saw this tweet from Eric. Now I have to go check out Monster Mash!
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Valentine's Day
Just in case you still need a little something for ♥ Valentine's Day, here you go...
Christine Dixon and Marla Rosenthal have a Valentine's Paper Engineering Challenge for you. Click on the screenshot below. Remember you can find all of their STEAM challenges here.
♥ Or, how about using some of Christine Pinto's ideas with the littles? Check out her link here.
♥ Need more? Here's a bunch of quick, easy ideas for your classroom.
♥ Or, how about just a kindness challenge? Click on the image, then go to the three dots on the top right to make your own copy.
3D or VR Field Trips
This site was new to me today. It offers you a great way to explore monuments and international treasures. It is from Cyark, which I had never heard of. Explore the National Mall virtually with Monumental Ideas! cyark.org/monumentalide… "Engage students in STEAM based learning with a set of tools to discover and investigate the Lincoln and MLK Jr memorials. Comprehensive lesson plans are provided for K-12 @NationalMallNP"
Click on the link for the game and the lesson plans This is their mission: Ideas to Share
SafeYouTube is now Video Link.
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
Good Changes in JamboardThis past week has brought a couple of great changes in Jamboard. First you can customize backgrounds... and the one everyone was waiting for- revision history! To access revision history on the chromebook: Ctrl Alt Shift H Need to lock items in place on Jamboard? Check it out... Yet more templatesWe are Teachers shared a great collection of 25 Google Slides templates recently. You can check them out here. There have also been some amazing holiday themed google slide decks shared on social media. This Grinch choice board came from [email protected] This Grinch Pear Deck template came from Dalton Tedder on Twitter. You can get your own copy here - https://t.co/4je10gu8sU?amp=1 Or try some Grinch Pixel Art ( addition and Subtraction) I haven't tried this one yet, but love the idea of Green Screen Snow Globes NewsLitCampI can't say enough positive things about NewsLitCamp PD. I attended one last week and plan to attend the next one with CNN on Jan 26th. Especially in today's uncertain times, we need to help ourselves, our students and our communities parse out the truth in the media we consume. I was hoping that it was recorded, but John SIlva did share the resource folder link with us. The one I just attended was the Texas Tribune, but all of them are in the resources, and sooo much more. However, hearing this stuff live, discussing it; we need to do more in schools to promote media literacy. Join the next one on January 26th. Sign up here!
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
If you have no interest in Google Meet changes, scroll down... I feel like I could fill a book with just the recent week's changes from Google! We are an Education Enterprise district, so all of the promised changes are coming along. Although the promises were for "October", no date was given. What have I seen come thru the pipeline?
(https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/introducing-some-new-meet-features. accessed 9.29.20)
Handy ToolsThis Google Classroom popsicle stick video was posted online and although I like the idea, it is only on the mobile app, not on the web. So, if you use Google Classroom on a phone or an ipad, perhaps this is just what you need. If not... there's always Flippity.net. I love this site- so many easy to use tools. Check out this whole site filled with cool ideas using Flippity.
If you love Slidesmania, you will love this post "by Paula Martínez, the creator of Slides Mania. Paula has a 9 to 5 job that has nothing to do with design or creativity or education! Making presentation templates has become a fun hobby that allows her to express her creativity. This led to SlidesMania being born." Check out the 20 free Google Slides or PPT templates with lesson ideas and activities. Even more Google Slides templates, collected by Eric Curts. Incredible Teachers Sharing on LinktreeLooking for collections of read-alouds? Check out Ms Menji's digital library. https://linktr.ee/ms.menji Check out the amazing creations from The First Grade Creative.
https://linktr.ee/thefirstgradecreative . She got special permission from Unite for LIteracy and created leveled reader libraries, among a ton of other great resources.
I have a giant pile of bookmarks to share, but have a feeling that most of us are still a bit overwhelmed as we adjust to a new year with more changes. So, what would be useful right now? A little bit of YouTube, a few Google Slides Tips and some more on the new features in Jamboard. I also wanted to share EdTechTeacher's new RemoteLearning Guidebook.
YouTube Tips
Many teachers are creating and posting videos to YouTube. A couple things about YouTube that I find useful are being able to embed a video without all the ads and nasty stuff. It was a bit disconcerting earlier in the week when safeyoutube was hacked and teachers around the country found links to inappropriate videos instead of the edu links expected. This short video from Brigid Duncan will show you how to get rid of the junk. Essentially: put_popup in between the word watch and the question mark in the url.
One other site that I find useful gives me a way to set the start and end time for a video I want to share with students. Yes, you can poke around in the url and set the times, but this is easier. Just go to YouTube StartEnd.com and input your times and it pops out the correct url for you.
Richard Byrne also put out a short video this week about ways to show clean videos. Math Reps
Jon Corippo has a great collection of Eduprotocols Math Reps that you may want to check out. If you haven't started using Wakelets for bookmarking and making curated collections, it's time to check it out! Easy to use and at least for me- I don't get lost down the rabbit hole like I do on Pinterest.
Google Slides
I love using Google Slides,as they are incredibly versatile. Our district purchased Pear Deck, so that we can use so many of those interactive features as well.
Jamboard
Back in July Kris Szajner wrote an excellent guest post on Matt Miller's blog and shared some great templates- all ready to use in Jamboard. Here's the post. Check out the templates!
Richard Byrne has a nice short video on using Jamboard in Google Classroom
Tom Mullaney just put out a series of real short videos to help you use the new features.
Want to get fancy and do some app smashing? Check out Greg's video.
One Small Step
My friend, Victor Tam, shared this online recently. As educators, we often don't realize how much we influence our students every day, helping them take that one small step. I didn't realize that this story was also nominated for an Oscar. Producer, Shaofu Zhang also hopes that One Small Step can help inspire young girls and women to pursue their dreams in the STEM fields.
Moment AR
Merge cubes have been in the news for the last year or so. They recently won an Award of Excellence for Classroom at TCEA. I picked up a bunch of merge cubes when they went on sale last year, but have not had time to dig into how to integrate them into general ed classes. Also- all of the AR/VR stuff makes me seasick- instant vertigo. I've tried sitting, tried using the fancy Oculus goggles, etc., but I can't do it. Lucky for me, the art teacher next door, Ken Richards, took the materials I have on hand and started exploring to show his grad class. The HES students he has shown this to loved it. We don't have devices to fit into googles for all, and only have a few pairs of them anyway, but we do have ipads. Many of the apps are free. You can learn more about Merge Cubes here... and here. If you have a project you'd like to try out, or if you just want to test it out yourself, stop by and see me. We don't currently have a subscription to co-spaces, which is a topic for another day, but it is easy enough to get trial access.
One of the new free apps that is getting a lot of press and some rave reviews from folks who do AT and SEL is Moment AR. Here is a full demo of Moment AR, an evidence and research based tool using the Merge cube for Autism, Mental Health, Language, and Social Skills. Moment AR: Full Demo from Kevin Chaja on Vimeo. Chromebook Gestures
This was shared recently on twitter by Don Yerks. It is a nice little graphic to show a trackpad checklist with all the basic gestures you and your students can use on chromebooks. Click the image to see the shared gsheet with more info
Finding Images Online
This is probably the topic I get asked to help students with more than just about anything else. Yes, images must be cited. Yes, not all images online are available for you or your students to use. Jennifer Gonzales wrote about this recently and did a really nice job covering all the currently available options in this post. Although I have to say that when students are using Gsuite products the image search feature can be set and I think the default is CC or PD images. But, that said, students often just do a Google Image search and forget to use the filter dropdowns to target their search. I tend to use Pixabay and Unsplash when I am searching for my work.
Ideas to share
*Apex Review
How do you get unstuck?
With the new year many of us try to figure out new goals, and new ways to reach our goals in the new year. You may be interested in checking out the Innovator's Compass.
New Year- New Goals
Many of us have students do some sort of reflection or goal-setting for the new year. This can be #OneWord2019 or a word cloud to represent goals or more. I shared a hyperdoc last year for #oneword and for MLK Jr , and had students make bracelets with their word. This year I saw that Lisa Highfill posted some new hyperdocs for #oneword. Check them out.
One other idea, along these same lines came from Sarah Kiefer. Her class inspiration quilt idea is to use slides, with images, goals and quotes. Check it out here.
Templates
Although Google Docs has some great templates for education, I am always on the lookout for more. This week I was looking at Sarah Kiefer and Beth Kingsley's Templates for Teachers google site. What I like about the site, aside from currently displaying 44 cool templates, easy to sort through by age and format, is an additional page with links to other great template collections for educators. Start here and I'm sure you'll find something that you can use tomorrow.
Book Reports
I seem to be stuck on sharing templates of one sort or another. I saw a post by Heather Marshall, a reading teacher in California. In addition to being the author of some excellent hyperdocs, she was also chosen as one of the CLMS teachers of the year in 2016. Heather, on her blog, THE BOOK SOMMELIER, posted a great idea for students to try- a BookaKucha. She gives all the directions for this Pecha-Kucha style book talk. "The lesson is from Jon Corippo and Marlena Hebern's book Eduprotocols."
She goes on to give great examples, and some slide templates to try and leaves us with a quote:
"The impact of a good book cannot be measured through one-dimensional, cardboard cutouts of a single scene from a narrative. Something this big can not fit in a shoebox, but it may fit into a BookaKucha."
This is a student example she shared: About 2 minutes long
More Resources
Yet one more opinion on ScreenTime
NPR put out an article featuring Jordan Shapiro. "In his new book, The New Childhood, his argument is that we're not spending enough screen time with our kids." You can read the whole article here.
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AuthorMaureen Tumenas Archives
June 2021
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