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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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
Do Something!
Last week I wrote briefly, about some of the issues we all deal with in education. Apparently, I am not the only one feeling like there are some gaps, with an undue emphasis on acquiring and regurgitating information, instead of doing and learning. As a strong believer in UDL, I believe that we need to look at how we are teaching, how students are learning and how they are showing their mastery. Jennifer Gonzalez of The Cult of Pedagogy, blogged about this and created the podcast embedded below.
Modern Learners shared this viral video and responded to it in their post back in September. Check out the blog post for the video response to Prince Ea. What's your response? Mine has been to create the STEAM space at HES. Still a work in progress, students can come in and DO something.
Three Quick Shares
Add Math Playground to Google Classroom
Richard Byrnes wrote a great blog post about this back in September. I love Math Playground games. I've been a fan of Colleen King for years. She is an amazing educator, math wiz, web design and coding magician and a wicked nice, shy, unassuming person. She was my hero about 10 years ago as I was struggling to get through a workshop that was simply not working for me. I had no clue about what I was trying to do, coding stuff etc... and Colleen took me under her wing and very gently showed me how to do some basic things. She also allowed me to use her as a mentor for one of my former students when he wanted to learn flash and I didn't know it. But... back to Richard's post. He noticed that you can put Math Playground games right into Google Classroom and referenced Tony Vincent's post about how one could add materials. Check out Richard's post here and start adding more fun, educational Math Playground games to Google Classroom. If you've never tried the Logic games, be sure to check them out.
Eduprotocols
I've been hearing more and more about Eduprotocols for the last 6 months. The book, by Marlena Hebern and Jon Corippo came out in March and everything I have heard about it is wonderful. Hate to admit it, but I haven't purchased a copy yet. I tend to buy paper copies of edu books, so I can lend them to people. The trade-off is not being able to click on the links. Check out the videos below. The first big one is a review of the book. Vicki Davis did an interview with Jon and Matt Miller takes on one of the protocols in his video. It may be something that some of us can look at for a PD session. Interested? Check out some of the templates- for free. See if this would help you in the classroom.
Don't Miss the Latest FlipGrid NewsletterBrain Pop
Brain Pop has a new movie maker! I liked the way you could pull images from the movies before to help show learning, tell your story with the materials, but this is even better. Here's a quick tutorial from Joli Boucher. We have the premium version for HES, in case you're worried about the access level. See me if you do not know how to access Brain Pop at the elementary school. You can read more about it on BrainPop Educators - and go thru the step by step tutorial or print out a guide if you'd like. They have resources on using Brain Pop's Make a Movie tool with ELL students and more, complete with curriculum connections and rubrics. Check it out!
Pixar in a Box
"Pixar in a Box is a behind-the-scenes look at how Pixar artists do their jobs. You will be able to animate bouncing balls, build a swarm of robots, and make virtual fireworks explode. The subjects you learn in school — math, science, computer science, and humanities — are used every day to create amazing movies at Pixar. This collaboration between Pixar Animation Studios and Khan Academy is sponsored by Disney."
Using the Khan Academy interface, which many of our students are already familiar with and have accounts on, Pixar in a Box goes through lessons step by step. Teaching storytelling? Teaching animation? Writing? Science? It's all available in an easy to digest format. Try it!
CoSpaces
CoSpaces is a relatively new platform. Using a 3D modeling system- online or Android or iOS app, students can make simulations, tell stories, model cell structures and much more. It is 3D/AR type system, which on first look will kind of remind you of Second Life (another one of my least favorites). I am not a big AR fan, but for many kids this a brilliant way to show what they know or to explore new content. It is a bit of a bandwidth hog, as you may imagine, but it was easy to use. I showed this to some 5th and 6th graders this fall, just for fun and they had no problem using it with little instruction.
So, if I compare this with SketchUp- it is far easier to use, is online and free (altho there is a premium version) and is collaborative and dynamic. You can use this on an ipad, on a phone and on the web and it updates almost automatically as you make changes. Oh... and it now lets you use Blockly to program your space. Very cool! Take a quick look at the videos below, and then head over to check out the platform online. They have some great examples of student work you can check out. This first video below is a bit on the long side (10 Min)- but it's a good, fair review of the system.
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AuthorMaureen Tumenas Archives
June 2021
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