EdTech by Emily

Have you heard about Flipgrid? IT’S AMAZING! Flipgrid is an online video discussion platform. I made a Google Slides presentation about its features. If you’re the type of person who wants PD in your pajamas, feel free to explore it and I’d love to hear how you implement it! If you’re the type of person who wants an in-person demo, feel free to schedule some time with me !

Research proves that using graphic organizers improves student learning. (Read more about that in this Cult of Pedagogy article .) Did you know you could have students complete graphic organizers DIGITALLY?! Eric Curts gives us not only a tutorial but also 30 free templates to copy, modify or use as needed. Check out his tutorial and templates HERE . EXAMPLES:  

I came across this cool tool from Alice Keeler that would support our writing goals this year. It is a Google Slide with some Alice Keeler magic. Students can write the different parts of a piece on each slide. Then they click “Slides Essay” and “Create a Doc” to automatically create one writing piece from each part they typed on the Google Slide. You can read more about Alice's cool tool on her blog .

This tech tip comes from my friend, Kim Estes, who works at Burleson ISD. Her team has developed a collection of learning resources that are based in Google apps. You can find the collection of resources here. There is a filter you can use to search through the collection. For example, this document could be assigned as an exit ticket for students to show 5 things learned about a certain topic:

As illustrated in the image above, Grammarly checks your text, as you type, for hundreds of common and advanced writing issues. The checks include grammatical errors, contextual spelling mistakes, phonetic spelling mistakes, and others. Grammarly also provides synonym suggestions to make your writing more readable and precise. To use Grammarly, click this link and then click the green Add to Chrome button in the upper right-hand corner. (Note: you will want to be signed into Chrome to make full use of your extensions and bookmarks. 😊)

Image Credit: here Are you one of those people who likes to keep your digital files organized? Have you ever wanted to keep a file or document in MORE THAN ONE folder? You can do that! Check out Schooled in Tech ’s article titled Save a Google Doc to Multiple Folder Locations within Google Drive .

Language Is A Virus-But in a good way!!! I made the above image with a visual poetry tool on languageisavirus.com . That tool alone is pretty cool but it’s not all that Language Is a Virus has to offer. It also has daily writing prompts, writing games, exercises, techniques, text generators and text manipulators. Here is what Language Is a Virus has to say about their purpose: “Languageisavirus.com exists to cure writer's block and inspire creativity. You can choose from a multitude of writing games, gizmos, generators, writing prompts and exercises, tips, experiments and manifestos from infamous avant garde writers and how-to articles on fiction writing and poetry.” Language is a Virus is a tool I think every language arts teacher would love to have in their collection.

Tab Snooze If you have a problem with too many tabs like I do, then check out the Tab Snooze Chrome Extension . It allows you to put a tab to sleep and set when you want it to wake up . Whenever you set it for, that tab will wake right back up on whatever machine you are logged into. BTW, Google Docs all have a url so you can set these to wake up at a certain time too!

Looking for STEAM activities to implement in your classroom? Then you MUST check out Campbell USD out of California’s STEAM resource page ! Their “STEAM task force” put together a website full of STEAM activities and resources. You will especially want to take a peek at their STEAM Integration Lesson Menu that gives suggested STEAM activities for each grade. If you see something of interest that I could assist with, give me a shout!

Imagine Forest is a free, online resource that makes writing stories easy and fun. They have created a collection of inspirational creative writing resources for kids. They also have a creative writing community where students can publish their work. You can read more about Imagine Forest on their blog . One caveat: kids under 12 need an account under an adult. ( Read here for the specifics.) Don’t let that scare you away. Contact me and we can discuss the best way to set it up for you and your students!

Workbench is an innovative one-stop shop for teachers to find and share projects that support STEAM curricula. It is a project-based learning platform where students can complete STEAM tasks in class or individually, using everything from basic art supplies and recyclable materials to innovative technologies such as Sphero & Makey Makey. Resources are free for teachers to access. If you’re interested in STEAM or the Maker movement, Workbench is a great place to start!

Here is an app that fits two needs: STEAM challenges AND quick, time fillers! The Instant Challenge app by Destination Imagination gives ideas for fun group activities that must be solved within a short period of time. Students can use their imagination, teamwork skills and a few everyday materials, to be as innovative as possible. Click here to download Instant Challenge Shaker on your Apple device. For Android devices, click here .

DID YOU KNOW… You can do MORE with BrainPop/BrainPopJr. than just watch videos! You have probably seen that each video has accompanying activities. You can also assign these activities to your students through BrainPop/BrainPopJr. To find out more, check out BrainPop’s FAQ here ! I’d love to partner with you on getting the most out of BrainPop!

Image credit: here If you use any of the Google apps with your students, you will want to check out this resource ! It is a collection of ready-made templates for you to use in your lessons. It is even divided by grade level! I particularly like the newspaper templates on the front page. Check out this resource today!

FREE Skills Practice with Studyladder.com Are you looking for a way for students to practice skills but short on budget?  Studyladder.com provides educational resources across many subjects, not just math and literacy, and for ages 3-12+. Studyladder is free for teachers. Studyladder will work on any device that has internet access, including mobile devices. (For the record, they claim that over 90% of their activities work on iPads and other mobile devices.) If you’re thinking you’d like to try Studyladder.com, I’d love to help you get started!

TeacherLed.com is a website full of teaching and learning resources. All are compatible with desktop and mobile devices and no subscriptions or log-ins are needed. Here are some of my favorites: Letter Reveal : Scratch off one box at a time as students guess which letter is underneath. Virtual Dice : Roll 1, 2 or 3 die at a time to work on subitizing or addition. Hundreds Chart : I especially like this hundreds chart because you can “roll” it forward or backward to reveal negative numbers or numbers past 100. Magnetic Numbers : I like that the “flip cards” reveal random numbers. For example, for the image above you could work on mentally adding 45 and 30. Then you can click either the 4 or 5 in 45 and work on counting by decades from a different number. There are many more interactive activities for both math and language arts. You can check out their resources here as well as a collection of all their resources here .

Powerpoint Classroom Management FIRST OF ALL, let me credit this idea to AMBER DIXON. I think she’s genius for using technology to manage her reading rotation schedule. She uses this timed powerpoint to tell her students what rotation they should be at, manage how long they should work, give them a timer for clean up, embeds brain break videos and ends with a fun activity to get the wiggles out. The powerpoint does all the work. She starts it at the beginning of her reading block and doesn’t have to click again to manage all of these processes. Genius, I tell you! One note: This idea will work with Powerpoint which you do have on your Acer. It will not work with Google Slides as Google Slides does not have some of the same features such as timed slides. You will need to download the file and open with Powerpoint to get the full effect.

Halloween Activities with StoryboardThat StoryboardThat is a free, online software that lets you create storyboards with an easy, drag and drop interface & hundreds of pieces of customizable clipart. It can be used on a Chromebook or on an iPad. StoryboardThat is an excellent tool for student content creation. You can see more examples of lessons involving StoryboardThat and Halloween activities here .

Do you ever see things for sale on Teachers Pay Teachers and think to yourself, “I could make that myself and not have to pay anyone.” I’m not saying I did that, but here are some directions you could use with your students to do a little virtual jack-o-lantern decorating and writing. Happy October! (A little note…these directions assume your students have used Google Docs and are working on a Chromebook. Also, this activity would be a PERFECT one to share out via Google Classroom.) To view the directions CLICK HERE! Example of student work:

Book Creator...on a Chromebook! Book Creator is a versatile tool that can be used to create books or projects in any subject area. Book Creator was formerly only available as an app on iPads but now is available for use on Chromebooks! To find out more about using Book Creator with your students you can check out this Google Slide .

Quick, Draw! is a fun, new tool by Google that uses a “neural network” to guess what you’re drawing. The user is given a word to illustrate and as the image is drawn Google’s fancy artificial intelligence engines guess what is being drawn. You really just have to try it to see it’s magic! I think this tool would be a great ice-breaker or time filler, a fun way to introduce devices to students, a tool for practicing drawing skills as well as practice reading and vocabulary development. Quick, Draw! will work with both iPads and Chromebooks. To get started, head to quickdraw.withgoogle.com and see if your drawing skills are up to par!