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https://indiana.pearsonperspective.com/perspective/home?passCode=Indiana_edu
Pearson Perspective is a website with instructional material ​available to the public, curated by Pearson, and sorted by grade level and subject.

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https://wordswithfriendsedu.com/

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https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12
NBC Learn is a collection of over 20,000 standards-aligned resources designed for use in the classroom.

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https://indiana.pbslearningmedia.org/
Numerous free videos geared for each grade level and subject

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TONS of activities and ideas here - check it out!

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Math Education Teacher Resources Common Core Cool Video Lesson Free Worksheets Elementary Middle High School Homeschool Algebra Geometry Lessons Help Tutor Homework

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https://sites.google.com/a/gshare.blackgold.ca/engagingstudents/home
This link provides access to hundreds of doc templates for all subject areas. Locate learning needs quickly by using the filtering options of grade level and interest.

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Not your computer? Use a private browsing window to sign in. Learn more about using Guest mode

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A web tool that allows you to record a video in your browser using your webcam and upload it to Google Drive.

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Record a video with your webcam and upload it directly to Google Drive

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Whisper by EdTechTeam lets you send quick messages to your class without interrupting the work. Whisper imports your list of students from Google Classroom, making setup super easy. Each message a teacher sends is also sent to his or her email (and automatically marked read and archived) so that Whisper is compliant with districts that archive teacher emails.

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Think of it as the best parts of Instagram and Snapchat, but your control! Students can flip the camera and pause while recording with unlimited retakes. Students can draw or use custom stickers to design a fun, creative selfie for the Grid. Finally, students can add a title and linked file to videos to verbalize their thinking on projects. Your Grid transforms into a shared, community portfolio!

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Desmos is a graphing calculator and much more. You can design your own digital worksheets or use precreated ones. Interactive, easy to use. Powerful mathematics visualization tool!

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Turn Videos, Pictures, Text, and more into QR Codes

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Free QR Code Generator and online QR code creator. No sign-up required. Create unlimited non-expiring free QR codes for a website URL, YouTube video, Google Maps location, FaceBook link, contact details or any one of 22 QR code types.

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Students can turn poetry into pictures

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Create your own or retell stories by making comic strips you can save to your camera roll and airdrop to the teacher's iPad or MacBook. * They also offer PRINTABLE comic templates.

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Create Your Own Comic Strips Online with MakeBeliefsComix

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We Offer Support and Resources.

From Richard Byrne, editor of Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week -- ''Creating Comics for Comfort'' -- Living in Maine and father of two school-age children, Richard wrote the following item for teachers and students dealing with the terrible tragedy of the recent mass shootings in that state. He thought this an appropriate time to review and use Social and Emotional Learning resources, such as those offered by MakeBeliefsComix.com.

Make Beliefs Comix offers a library of fantastic, free ebooks for SEL. The library hosted by Make Beliefs Comix contains fillable PDFs that you can download for free. The latest addition to that library is 50+ Ways to Talk to Yourself and Find Healing. And for something a bit lighter, take a look at Pet Words: Conversations With Your Animal Friends.

"Here's a video overview of the Make Beliefs Comix ebooks and here's one about how to create comic strips on the Make Beliefs Comix website."

For many LGBTQ+ kids, especially when they're figuring things out, finding accepting spaces online can sometimes feel safer. Seek out creative opportunities and modes of self-expression, with this section in Make Beliefs Comix.

READ ABOUT US IN THE NEW YORK TIMES!

ARTICLE #1: (click on the link below)
MakeBeliefsComix encourages students to create their own visual pandemic diary.

ARTICLE #2: (click on the link below)
One easy way to start playing with ideas is through the free, online tool at MakeBeliefsComix.com.

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Create Comics Online, it's Fun & Free at MakeBeliefsComix!

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Create comics online at MakeBeliefsComix. A fun way educators & parents can empower students to express ideas and stories in comix!

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Create and Publish Amazing Books. Include Video Links, Table of Contents, Glossary, etc. Also possible to use as an interactive book report!

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Available free on the Mac App Store, iBooks Author is an amazing app that allows anyone to create beautiful textbooks - and just about any other kind of book - for iPad, iPhone, and Mac. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, mathematical expressions, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.

Download iBooks Author free from the Mac App Store

You might want to begin with a blank page and let your imagination guide you. But if that's a little intimidating, just start with a beautiful Apple-designed template. Choose from a variety of styles, like classic textbook, cookbook, or photo book, in both landscape and portrait orientations. And you can choose from a number of page layouts in each template or create one of your own.

iBooks Author makes it simple to add text, graphics, movies, and more, so your book looks exactly the way you want. Drag and drop a Pages or Microsoft Word document to the Book pane to add it as a new section. Then, when you drag and drop in images, your text automatically flows around them. You can even import Adobe InDesign and EPUB files and edit them to perfection in iBooks Author.

iBooks Author has everything you need to create a great-looking book - beyond the written word. Add shapes, charts, tables, text, and widgets anywhere on the page with a single click. Style your text down to the letter with custom fonts, write elegant mathematical expressions using LaTeX or MathML, and add video or audio elements to liven up the read.

Widgets add Multi-Touch magic to books on iPad, iPhone, and Mac. They bring your reader swipe-friendly photo galleries, animations that burst off the page, scrolling sidebars to linger over, Pop-Over widgets for an element of surprise, and engrossing 3D objects that are entertaining and interactive. And widgets can be set to play automatically, offering your readers a fun surprise when they turn the page. With iBooks Author, it's easy to create a book that's as much fun to explore as it is to read.

Add beautiful, interactive elements to your book with just a few clicks. See all widgets

iBooks Author lets you create books that people with disabilities can read and experience. The table of contents, glossary, widgets, main text, and more are built to automatically take advantage of VoiceOver technology. Add accessibility descriptions to any widget or media - including movies and reviews - so those with vision impairments can use them.

As you're editing, use iBooks Author to preview your book on iPad, iPhone, or Mac. When you're ready to publish, iBooks Author walks you through a step-by-step process to help you submit it to iBooks for purchase or free download. And to keep your work current, add updates by publishing new versions of your original title. iBooks will automatically notify your readers that a new version of your book is ready to download.

You can also export your book to share on iTunes U or to give to anyone with an iPad, iPhone, or Mac. Learn how to publish to iBooks

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Available free on the Mac App Store, iBooks Author is an amazing app that allows anyone to create beautiful textbooks - and just about any other kind of book - for iPad, iPhone, and Mac. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, mathematical expressions, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.

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Skill Practice for Math, Language, Grammar, Foreign Language, Geography, Science, and SAT Prep
*For each correct answer this site donates 10 grains of Rice to the World Food Programme to help end world hunger.

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Teachers Create Your Own ONLINE - MadLibs, Flashcards, Trivia Game, Spelling Words Manager, etc.

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Flippity.net: Flashcards and Other Resources for Educators and Learners

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Create an interactive virtual breakout activity.

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https://kaizena.com/
Provide students with verbal feedback based on their writing

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Collect real time data using only one device.

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Teachers can assign quizzes for students to take at any given time (does not have to be done whole class) Feedback is given to students on every quiz questions once completed. Great for assessing skills!

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"I love all of the information about student performance I get as a teacher. It helps me to quickly identify stronger students and weaker students, as well as concepts at the class level that students struggle with. Thank you so much for providing such a useful platform for teachers to use to engage our students and measure their performance!!"

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Quizalize - The best quiz platform for remote or real classrooms that delivers game-changing results

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Engage your class with fun, standards-tagged quizzes. Get instant data on student mastery. Automatically differentiated follow-up activities.

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Recap is an app that allows teachers to see how students learn (literally). Students explain their thinking to the question(s) that you've asked via an iPad or MacBook Camera.

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Last Fall, Synth was shut down

Thank you for believing in the power of audio, from podcasting in the classroom to building relationships asynchronously.

We've turned our attention to Focusable, a new tool for students, teachers, and those seeking to improve their ability to focus.

If you need help getting access to your content please reach out by June 14th, 2023 at support@gosynth.com

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Last Fall, Synth was shut down Thank you for believing in the power of audio, from podcasting in the classroom to building relationships asynchronously. We've turned our attention to Focusable, a new tool for students, teachers, and those seeking to improve their ability to focus.

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Free Videos to engage and enhance lessons.

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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https://www.studystack.com/

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https://quizlet.com/

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https://www.commonlit.org/
FREE reading passages and progress tracking tools for grades 5-12

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http://www.memrise.com
Memrise specializes in combining memory techniques and gamification in order to make language learning recreational.

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educational technology education technology companies technology and education how important is technology in education educational technology tools learning educational technology educational technology in schools educational games educational games for kids free educational games for kids free educational games educational games online classroom games online classroom games halloween classroom games 5th grade classroom games classroom games for students games to play in the classroom kindergarten classroom games learning games for kids learning games free learning games kindergarten learning games free kids learning games

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Breakout EDU gamifies learning to create an engaging and empowering experience for students of all grade levels.

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Essay "grader" - free and simple to use!

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Create digital graphic blogs - use for book reports, summaries of important concepts, info boards on a country or topic, etc.

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Try this free word cloud generator to have students analyze word usage in their writing, summarize the mood of a poem, or decorate a graphic blog!

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WordArt.com is an online word cloud generator that enables you to create amazing and unique word clouds with ease.

Professional quality results can be achieved in no time at all, even for users with no prior knowledge of graphic design.

Word clouds (also known as tag cloud, word collage or wordle) are visual representation of text that give greater rank to words that appear more frequently.

Word clouds are perfect for creating stunning personalized gifts. No sign up required!

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WordArt.com is an online word cloud generator that enables you to create amazing and unique word clouds with ease

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Have your students create digital comics / timelines with this tool.

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Toondoo.com and Toondoospaces.com have been shut down permanently, effective immediately.

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Digital Whiteboard

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An online search engine that charts frequencies of any set of comma-delimited search strings using a yearly count of n-grams found in sources printed between 1500 and 2008

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Engage students with live powerpoint lessons that include built in assessment.

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When you and your students install this extension, you can push the contents of a webpage or your entire desktop to all your students!
[NOTE: We are still testing this out and it's a bit buggy - you might want to wait for awhile on this one...]

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When you and your students install this extension, you can push websites to them with the click of a button!

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Keep your units/thoughts in one space.

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Rap Videos and Quizzes to Accompany. Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, and Current Events!

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Language Arts Digital Content and Student Practice

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Improve your students' reading comprehension with ReadWorks. Access thousands of high-quality, free K-12 articles, and create online assignments with them for your students.

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Organize your daily websites.

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Language Arts Practice

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Store all your great ideas in one place. (You're looking at one now!)

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Legos and Google Map had a baby! Create a digital lego build of any place youstudy and place it on a map!

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Now you can build with LEGO® bricks using Google Maps as your baseplate. Imagine. Explore. Build online in Chrome.

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Math and Language Arts Practice

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Full Algebra course, Foreign Language and Language Arts lessons, all free!

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Curriculum Pathways provides interactive, standards-based resources in English language arts, math, science, social studies, and Spanish (grades K-12).

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Use this Sheets Add-On to Auto-Grade your next Google Form

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Have students use a Google Drawing to create a media-rich, hyper-linked poster / book report / interactive map. The possibilities are endless!

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Use your iPad to interact with your MacBook and annotate on top of ANYTHING

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Practice skills in a game-based environment.

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Create awesome presentations for your professional audience in half the time by combining AI-enhanced features, word clouds, and brainstorms. Available on Kahoot! 360, from $29/month.

Buy before July 31 and unlock one-month free access to Kahoot! Kids for unlimited learning through play!

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Kahoot! | Learning games | Make learning awesome!

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Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that brings engagement and fun to 1+ billion players every year at school, at work, and at home.

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Like Kahoot for student practice? You'll love Quizizz for student assessment!

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Create ISTEP-like questions and get real-time objective data. No more grading!!

# data[].attributes.body
Organize articles and websites while planning for units. This is a great web tool to build binders and link articles and other websites for information on your units.  It is helpful for when you encounter something and think, "I hope I remember this when I teach _____."

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Best Note Taking App - Organize Your Notes with Evernote

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Our note taking app helps you capture and prioritize ideas, projects and to-do lists, so nothing falls through the cracks. Start your free trial today!

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If we want to use technology in the classroom, we can't just do the same kind of learning we did before it. Technology should improve the learning. Kick the lesson up a notch.

Otherwise, our technology isn't any better than our paper and pencil lessons, right?

If your students are studying anything that connects to locations on a map, Google MyMaps is a great tool. It lets students create custom maps and add pins to certain locations.

Imagine dropping pins on locations for a historical event. Or a novel or short story. Or where animal or plant species can be found. Or even where students' families live in your community! ( Check out this post for 20 ways Google MyMaps can be used in the classroom.)

But that's just the beginning.

What students can do with those pins is what's really incredible. When you click on a pin in MyMaps, it displays a box that students can fill with information, images, links and more.

Identifying locations on a map is simple, low Bloom's Taxonomy learning. Digging deep into the details of each location pushes us past that superficial stage.

Below are some of the things students can add to a custom MyMaps map, either to their own individual maps or to a class map that includes everyone's work.

Plus, check out how they all look on this example MyMaps map I created! (Click here to see it if you're having trouble seeing the embedded map below.)

1. Text - This is the easiest feature to add to a MyMap, but it's probably the most useful. Students can gather facts or other data and add it to the text field in a pin (see right). Plus, they can change the title, too.

2. Images - When you click the little camera icon (see right) when editing a pin, it brings up the image and video menu. From there, you can add images from your device, using the webcam, from your Google Drive, and even Google Images.

3. Sketches with Paper - Paper is my favorite iPad app. It's free, and it's like a digital sketch pad with all these drawing tools. It's great for drawing pictures, but it also lets you create great flowcharts and sketchnotes. These can be included in a map to add depth to a pin. Save your sketches as an image file on the iPad when you're done. Then upload them to your Google Drive. Click the camera icon to add an image and use the Google Drive tab to pull those sketches in.

4. YouTube video - You can add a YouTube video directly on a pin. When someone clicks on that pin, he/she can watch the video directly from the pin without jumping off to YouTube in another window. Click the camera icon and then use the "More" tab to find YouTube options. You can add more than one video by clicking the "+" button in the bottom right of the video you just added. (If students have a mobile app, it's easy to record and upload their own videos with the YouTube Capture app.)

5. Screencast video - Don't just rely on what you can find on YouTube. Let students create their own videos with a screencast tool like Screencastify. Screencasting lets you take video of what's on your computer screen (with audio and your voice if you want). Once it's complete, upload it to YouTube and add it to your pin. (Or if YouTube isn't an option for students, upload it to Google Drive and provide a link to the video in the pin instead.)

6. Video, image or web story with Adobe Spark - Adobe Spark is a web tool that lets you create beautiful text/image visuals, eye-catching webpages and animated videos. When you're done with any of these, they can be included in a map by uploading the image, adding the video to YouTube and then to your map, or providing a link to what you've created. See the kinds of educational content you and your students can create in this post.

7. Gone Google Story Builder video - Create fun videos that look like people are interacting with each other in a Google document using Gone Google Story Builder. These videos are easy to make and are great for dialogue, among other things. When the video is done, include a link to it in a pin in your map.

8. Custom website with Weebly - Want to really get deep? Students can create their own websites using Weebly (or you can create a website for them to view). These free websites can include multiple pages and subpages, visually appealing themes and lots of content. Provide a link to student websites (or individual pages on a site) in a map.

9. An infographic through Canva or Piktochart - Infographics are super popular because they present a ton of information in a fun, stimulating way. Students can create these infographics with the text, icons and visual elements provided. Plus, they can upload their own pictures or Creative Commons pictures they find (that they already have the rights to use) to these infographics. When finished, a link or a copy of the infographic image can be uploaded to a pin on a map.

10. A Padlet wall - Padlet makes collaborative information gathering easy. Plus, it lets you organize and arrange that information as if it's on a digital bulletin board. Students can gather lots of links to various informational sites, videos, blog posts, articles, etc., on a Padlet board. Then, they can share the link to them in a pin on the map.

11. An interactive activity - SAS Curriculum Pathways has these interactive, multimedia activities that are hands-on and really make new topics crystal clear. (Here's a great example: this activity digs into whether the Electoral College is a fair method for selecting a president.) Add a link to an activity like this from a pin on a map.

12. Digital resources from PBS LearningMedia - PBS LearningMedia hosts more than 100,000 digital learning resources, including videos, multimedia activities and more. Chances are there's a good resource to help students dig deeper there. Have students add a link to one of their videos or resources to a pin on a map.

13. Google document, slide presentation or drawing - A MyMaps map can be a great jumping-off point to viewing files in Google Docs, Slides, Drawings and more. If students have already created those files in Google, they might as well share them in a related MyMaps map! Use the blue "Share" button in the Google files to generate a link that you can share in a pin on a map.

14. Survey - This is another easy way to make a map interactive. Create a survey using Google Forms and add a link to it in a pin on the map. Also, consider clicking the "See summary charts and text responses" option in the settings button (looks like a gear) when you're done creating the survey. That lets everyone see what everyone else has voted for and written while taking the survey.

15. Wikipedia article (or other encyclopedic article) - Wikipedia is a dirty word to some teachers, but with being a collaborative site with millions of eyes on it, the community keeps it as accurate as most encyclopedias. Linking to a Wikipedia article is an easy way to put an additional layer of basic facts about a topic at the fingertips of students.

16. Historic newspapers (Google News Archive) - Google has archived centuries of newspapers from around the world. Looking back at how newspapers have covered history through the centuries can give a unique perspective. Links to individual newspaper articles ( like this one from 1845 that describes a fire that destroyed $6,000,000 in property) can be added to a pin on a map.

17. Views from the street - Google Maps Street View lets viewers see what life is like on the streets and sidewalks of cities all around the world. From MyMaps, it's pretty easy to access. If you add a pin by searching a location in the search bar at the top, that pin will automatically have a "View in Google Maps" link. Click that link, then drag the yellow "peg man" in the bottom right corner of the screen onto the map in that location. If there are images of that location, you'll be able to see it from the street in 360-degree panoramic glory. (Note: If you're using an iPad, other tablet or smartphone, you'll want to download and use the "Street View" app to make this work.)

18. Twitter account or hashtag - See what's happening up to the moment by including a Twitter account or hashtag in a pin. If there's a leader, a celebrity or any other important person connected to a location, include a link to that person's Twitter profile to see what he/she is up to.

19. Layers - This is a great feature of MyMaps for organizing alike content. By organizing pins in layers, you'll be able to see a list of pins in each layer. Plus, by unchecking a layer in the list, you can turn all of those pins on and off. If there are a few (or several) major categories for the pins you're creating, you may want to organize them in layers. (Use the "Add layer" button and then drag pins to the corresponding layer.)

20. Driving, biking or walking routes (with destinations) - Want to see how long it will take to travel from one pin to another? Click the button at the top with three circles connected by lines. This will let you create walking, biking or driving routes. You can also generate step-by-step directions and even see you how far apart they are.

21. Lines and shapes - Use the same button for routes, but choose "Add line or shape". Draw a line to see how far it is from one location to another. Or draw a shape to display the area in square miles and the perimeter in miles.

By pulling several of these options and resources into a MyMaps custom map, students will be able to make their learning deeper and draw better conclusions. Plus, they can generate new questions they wouldn't have considered if they hadn't seen the data plotted on a map.

Wondering how this could connect to your own classroom? Check out that post on how to use MyMaps in the classroom that I mentioned earlier. There are lots of ideas there!

[reminder]How could these maps be used in the classroom? What else could you add to them?[/reminder]
For notifications of new Ditch That Textbook content and helpful links: Interested in having Matt present at your event or school? Contact him by e-mail! Matt is scheduled to present at the following upcoming events:
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How to create media-rich, interactive maps for deeper learning - Ditch That Textbook

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If we want to use technology in the classroom, we can't just do the same kind of learning we did before it. Technology should improve the learning. Kick the lesson up a notch. Otherwise, our technology isn't any better than our paper and pencil lessons, right?