Media Literacy Week
This week is Media Literacy Week in the U.S. October 24-31st is Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2019
What is it? Why is it important? From Wikipedia: Media literacy encompasses the practices that allow people to access, critically evaluate, and create media. Media literacy is not restricted to one medium. Wikipedia These stats are from 2 years ago- and I'm quite sure that they are worse today. At a time when misinformation and fake news spread like wildfire online, the critical need for media literacy education has never been more pronounced. The evidence is in the data:
GMail- Basics
When I saw this post by my old friend Wes Fryer, I knew I would have to share it with you. I first met Wes back in 2007 or maybe 2008 at NECC, now ISTE, spoke with him on most Saturdays on the Classroom 2.0 Live series for years and I have continued to follow his work online ever since. Wes is currently the Technology Integration and Innovation Specialist and Digital Literacy teacher at Casady School in Oklahoma City. This link is to an excellent post that Wes originally created to help teach his 5th and 6th graders. Great ideas for one and all. Click on the link or on the photo below. Thanks, Wes!
More Googley Stuff
When I first looked at my list of things to share this week, it seemed that 90% of them were ideas using something Googley. Easy to use, versatile. Check out some of the wonderful ideas folks have shared recently.
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Choose Your Own Adventure
With the new Black Mirror: Bandersnatch getting rave reviews, (So I hear: no TV reception where I live & no broadband to stream anything) I thought that it sounded an awful lot like "Choose Your Own Adventure". Since many of your younger students have probably never made their own choose your own adventure story, it seemed a good time to review what is out there to do this.
Sylvia Duckworth has an excellent presentation on using Google Slides to create your story. You can access her work here. Sylvia has built a wonderful set of resources; check out her web site for more. Alice Keeler has directions for this as well. If you're looking for a Dragon Quest, try following Eric Curts' directions here.
Another option is to use a Google Story Speaker add-on. This is fun, gives you a template to start with. The caveat- you need to have a Google Home device. Google Forms is a great option to try. Justin Birckbichler shared a template to do this with his class. You should check out his blog post for the whole story. Sylvia also has agoogle doc with step by step directions for this type of story. Wes Fryer worked with teachers on this at a VT workshop. You can get the templates and a lot more information on his blog post. New ToolsSteve Wick sent out a 12 Days of Techmas to occupy all of your spare time over the holidays. If you didn't get a chance to check it out: Here's the link I finally watched all the new Ditch Summit videos. I liked most of them, but I learned the most from Tony Vincent's presentation. If you missed it- maybe Matt will put it up again next year, but thepdf with his links is still online. He has lots of great, really practical ideas you can use. My favorite links: Draw your own Illustrations, and somewhat a complementary resource to the Noun Project was the link he shared- Visuals for Foreign Language. Jen Giffen produced a series of sketchnotes to go along with the Ditch Summit. You can see themhere. Full resolution available here. But here's the one from Tony's presentation, since it was my fav. Thanks for sharing your work Jen @VirtualGiff! New Resources Available
Random Video
Not really random... this was shared with me recently by a friend as we talked about immigration. I found it really interesting, maybe you will too.
Win!
Eduporium, one of my favorite STEM retailers, since they really try to help you find the best STEM products for your school, has been running a contest every night since May 1st. It's an educational trivia contest- with a $100 coupon prize to the person who has the right answer the fastest. I have been incredibly lucky and have won 5 times! However, they have decided to revise their rules and get more people involved- so if you win once, lucky you and then you are done. So, now that I am out of the running... here's the info you need. Sign up here and they will send you a reminder email at about 6:45 pm EST with the link for the contest which is at 7 sharp. Some of the questions are common knowledge... eg. the chemical formula for table salt, where others are not so easy- eg. the country completely surrounded by South Africa (Lesotho) and you have to google really fast! (Use OK Google voice search) So- it's fun and you can win a prize. Go for it, have your students go for it. Some questions are tough for a high school student, others are OK for elementary... and it's fun.
Google Slides
I spent some time today with one of the 6th grade classes, helping students use Google Slides for their yearbook pages. Using Google slides gives you way more flexibility than docs and the page size is easily adjusted to 8.5 by 11 (File>page setup>custom) and can be exported as a pdf. It reminded me that I wanted to share this Google Slide info, which I didn't know til this week. Alice Keeler and Matt Miller have created a new chrome extension called DriveSlides for Google Slides that allows you to take a folder of images and create a Google Slide show with a press of a button. The functionality reminds me of the ability to create a slideshow out of a folder in powerpoint. Quick and easy. Alice wrote more about it here. She also has a really cool screenshot to slideshow extension that she explained in a previous post. It automatically takes a screenshot every minute and saves it to a folder for a slideshow.
Looking for more ideas with Google Slides? Check out Matt's post here. Summer PD- Google DrawingsI'm excited to take a class with Tony Vincent on Google Drawings this summer. Tony is an internationally known educator and speaker. His blog Learning in Hand has been a staple in the edtech world for years. When I saw the notice about the class and went to sign up, I also learned something new...you can present a clutter-free image of a google doc by changing the url. Tony explained it here. Last, but not least ReadWorks!
ReadWorks, as many of you know, is a fantastic resource for students and their teachers. Many teachers have tried their Article-A-Day series with great success. ReadWorks does a great job of pulling together text sets for you. Here's a couple of promo videos to give you some ideas.
I haven't been able to find the summer packets collection on the new site, but will write and ask them if they are offering this again- or something similar. This is last year's page. www.readworks.org/rw/beat-summer-reading-slump Cate, 2nd Grade Teacher, NYC from ReadWorks on Vimeo. Lisa, Principal, FL from ReadWorks on Vimeo. Google DrawingsGoogle Drawings doesn't get the attention it deserves. You can use drawings for so many things! Recently I was reading about HyperDrawings! You've heard me talk about hyperdocs... well- now there's hyperdrawings. Joli Boucher recently wrote about this on her blog. Here's a screenshot of one of the many examples she shared. Click on the image to see Joli's work. You can also even embed streaming video right in a Google Drawing! Google Quick Draw and now AutoDrawIf you haven't taken the time to check out Google's AI drawing program, take a few minutes ( caution, may be addictive) to see the latest in machine learning. This AI experiment has now evolved into a new tool called AutoDraw. Eric Curts has written about it here. Google Drawings for Graphic OrganizersAmy Roediger ( A Lever and a Place to Stand) recently posted about using Google Drawings for text structure work. She has an excellent blog post here. She also made a bunch that she is willing to share (File>make a copy), that you can find here. The image below is from Amy's blog. Pattern Blocks with Google DrawingLast, but not least, another H/T to Eric Curts for his great explanation of how to use Google Drawings for Pattern Block work. He even shares templates. Check it out here. 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 |
AuthorMaureen Tumenas Archives
June 2021
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