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Using Google Chrome Extensions to Support Struggling Readers and English Language Learners

Google Chrome has so much to offer teachers and students, AND there are so many fantastic apps and extensions to support struggling readers. Text-to-speech is a great way to support struggling readers-it's reading with your ears!

Benefits of Text-to-Speech for Readers

Relieves the burden of decoding

Focus on comprehension

Improve fluency and endurance

Identify and correct more errors

There are several text-to-speech apps and extensions. Below are three that I find useful for the classroom.

Chrome Speak It!
I like this one for its ease and simplicity. Simply highlight the text, right-click and choose, "SpeakIt!"

Announcify
This is probably one of the more popular text-to-speech extensions among educators. This cute little birdie sits in your extension toolbar. When you find an article or selection of text on the web that you would like it to read, just click on the little birdie.There is an added bonus with this one! Not only does it read the text, but it opens the article in a new window and it gets rid of the ads and chaos around the article so that young readers can stay focused. But wait, there's more! It also blurs out the paragraphs that are not being read so it keeps the readers on the correct paragraph. The audio in the video below is not great, but will show you what it can do.

Read&Write for Google

This last one if my favorite, and is made by Texthelp, who makes a lot of great tools for education! While I am just sharing one feature of this tool today, it is loaded with other features to support learning! (We will revisit those later.) The Read&Write for Google extension is free for teachers. Be sure you follow the directions in the Chrome Web Store.

This little beauty has a purple puzzle piece as its icon, and it resides in the Omnibox (search box) in Chrome. Click it to open the toolbar, and then click the play button for it to read the text on the screen. BONUS! This feature works on websites as well as Google Docs! Below is a quick video overview of the tool.

What are your favorite Chrome Apps and Extensions to support struggling readers? Please share in the comments below!Kasey Bell will be presenting at the following upcoming events:

© Shake Up Learning 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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3 Text-to-Speech Chrome Extensions to Support Struggling Readers and ELL

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Using Google Chrome Extensions to Support Struggling Readers and English Language Learners Google Chrome has so much to offer teachers and students, AND there are so many fantastic apps and extensions to support struggling readers. Text-to-speech is a great way to support struggling readers--it's reading with your ears!

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As a primary teacher, one of my biggest challenges throughout the school day is Center Time. My kiddos are still learning what it means to be an independent worker and often need a lot of support to make smart choices and move their learning forward.

One center that I find particularly challenging is our technology center. I am fortunate enough to have a bank of a few classroom computers for my students to use during their daily rotations. Even though it is only 20 minutes a day, I want to make sure that they are utilizing their time wisely and meeting our curricular goals.

Over the past few years, I have tried several ways to help guide my students' computer use.

I have finally landed on one that I love:

MentorMob is a free web tool that allows users to create structured learning playlists. Each playlist is comprised of a series of steps or articles. Students simply follow the steps to complete the playlist. Teachers can add specific directions for each step and even include challenge questions.

I love this tool for a few reasons:

1. They are SUPER easy to make....

2. You can copy content from other playlists- this is a huge timesaver!

3. Users can embed videos, links, images, or even response items into the playlists.

4. For Chrome users- they even have an easy-to-use extension to create playlists!

Once the playlist is created, you can simply embed the playlist into your classroom blog or website. On my personal classroom website, I have a page called "Center Activities for the Week"- I simply add some instructions and embed the playlist- viola!

This tool is especially great because most games and videos stay within the "frame" of the MentorMob website, so students are not exposed to unnecessary advertising or extraneous links. Also, playlists are saved in the cloud, so once you've created a playlist for antonyms, you don't have to worry about it again!

1. Spelling and phonics games

2. Youtube Videos

3. Digital games from our curriculum

Kate Peila is a third grade teacher from Montana. She is passionate about integrating technology in the classroom to increase student engagement, improve lesson efficacy, and enhance classroom management. She is a content expert for Appolearning and she blogs at Purely Paperless.

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Centering Around Technology | Organized Classroom

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As a primary teacher, one of my biggest challenges throughout the school day is Center Time. My kiddos are still learning what it means to be an independent worker and often need a lot of support to make smart choices and move their learning forward.

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Google Slides is such a versatile tool in G Suite (Google Apps). It goes much further than creating a slide presentation to show on the screen to the entire class.

Mix in images - the visual tools that make instant connections in our brains - and you've got an engaging activity in the making.

I want to show you two brand new tools that will mix those two elements - slides and images - in ways that you haven't been able to in the past. They're quick and easy to use if you have the Google Chrome browser on your computer or Chromebook.

DriveSlides

DriveSlides is a Google Chrome extension created by Alice Keeler and me. We created this extension to pair with our new book, Ditch That Homework. (For more information about Ditch That Homework, visit DitchThatHomework.com.)
Note: Are you thinking, "Wait a second ... I don't even know what a Chrome extension is!"? Don't worry! They're easy to use and I'll show you what to do step by step. You will need the Google Chrome browser for your computer (laptop, desktop or otherwise ... doesn't matter) or Chromebook. If you need to install it, click here (it's free). It's my favorite way to surf the Internet.
Here's what DriveSlides does: It uses a folder of photos in your Google Drive. It creates a new Google Slides presentation and adds each photo in that folder to its own slide in the presentation. (i.e. A folder with 15 photos has 15 slides ... one for each photo.)

This makes creating presentations with images super easy. It does all the photo uploading, adding and sizing for you.

It also lets students pull in photos of their work - or of the content they're studying - and add text, speech bubbles and comments. The sky's the limit with this tool, and I'll share several ways you can use it in the classroom later in the post.

How do I use DriveSlides?

Want to see how this tool works? Check out this step-by-step tutorial video that shows you how to do it, start to finish, click by click.

Here are links to the two Chrome extensions mentioned in the video:

Or follow these directions:

1. Install extensions. You'll need the DriveSlides Chrome extension (click here) and the Save to Google Drive extension (click here).

2. Go to your Google Drive (drive.google.com). Create a folder for images to go to in Drive and name it something related to the activity you're doing.
Pro tip: You can have all of your images automatically saved to that folder you just created. Right-click (or two-finger tap with Chromebook or Mac) the Save to Google Drive extension in the top right of your browser. Choose options. Change the destination folder to the folder you created for this activity. (Just remember to change it to a different folder next time you use the Save to Google Drive extension!)
3. Start finding images. Some suggestions for places students can search for images they have the rights to use:
Note: If you're doing this from Google Images, you'll want to click on the image you want to save to see the full-size version of it. Then right-click (two-finger tap) this bigger one to save to Google Drive. Otherwise, you'll save the smaller thumbnail-sized image, which won't look as good on the slides.
4. For each image, right-click and Add to Google Drive. This will save your image directly to your Google Drive.
Pro tip: If you used the previous pro tip and you set where you wanted Save to Google Drive to put your images, you can skip this step!
5. Put images in the right folder. When done, go to your Google Drive and click "Recent." Find all the pictures you just added. Hold in Shift and click the ones you want to use to highlight them. Right-click one of those files and click "Move to ...". Select the folder where you want the images moved (or create a new one). Then click "Move here."

6. Run DriveSlides. Open the folder with your photos in Google Drive. Click the DriveSlides icon.Voila! Your slide presentation is created.

Are there other ways to get images on my DriveSlides slide presentation?

Definitely! Here are a couple of ways.

Option 1: Use the Google Photos app. If you're going to shoot your own photos on a smartphone/tablet/iPad, the Google Photos app will automatically upload photos taken on that device to your Google Drive. (Be sure that smartphone/tablet/iPad is connected to WiFi.) Shoot the photos you want and then, once the photos are uploaded to the Google Photos folder in your Drive, jump to step 5 above.

Option 2: Use the Awesome Screenshot extension. It's a pretty easy extension to use. ( Here's a video tutorial if you'd like to see how to use it step by step.) You can install the Awesome Screenshot extension by clicking here.

You can take a screenshot of your device (a picture of what's displayed on your screen). With Awesome Screenshot, you can even add things to that image like:

drawing with a pen

boxes, circles and arrows

text

blurring

highlighting

You an also crop the screenshot you just took. Once you're done, you can save the image right to your Google Drive. (Once you click "Done", choose "More options ..." and "On Google Drive". You'll give it permission to access your Google Drive account and then Awesome Screenshot will save your image to Google Drive.

When you're done saving screenshot images to your Google Drive, you can jump to step 5 in the DriveSlides instructions above to add those images to a slide presentation.

Is DriveSlides the only way to add images to slides?

No way! Alice Keeler, with whom I co-created DriveSlides, also created a different Chrome extension: SlideShot.

Once you click the SlideShot extension icon and turn it on, SlideShot will automatically take a screenshot of your screen every minute until you finish. When you click "Finish", it will add all of those images to their own slides in a slide presentation (much like DriveSlides). You can even click the SlideShot icon and have it manually capture a screenshot whenever you want.

This is a great tool to help students reflect on their work or show their work for the day. They can revisit the steps they took to complete an activity. They can also see how they've used their time during the day since SlideShot will take screenshots every minute.

How can you use DriveSlides or SlideShot in class?

There are tons of options! Here are some ideas. If you can think of another way it could be used, please add it to the comments below, and check there to see if anyone has suggested something you could use!

1. Lab reports - Students could take pictures of what they're doing in a science lab (or in any class that does labs). With the Google Photos app installed (see above), students take images of their various steps with a smartphone/tablet/iPad. (Be sure the device is connected to WiFi.) When finished, they move the images they want into a folder and run DriveSlides from there.

2. Field trips - Take the lab reports idea above beyond the school! Have students take images of a field trip. When they return, they can run DriveSlides from a folder with the photos to put them all on slides in a slide presentation. Then, they can add text and annotate the images to explain what they learned.

3. Reflection on work - Students can use the SlideShot extension to take a screenshot of their work every minute and put them on a slide presentation. They can then go back over their work for the day, reflecting on what they did and what they created/shared.

4. Quick photo-based reports - Students can easily create a quick text-and-images report in a slide presentation with DriveSlides. They gather images (see the DriveSlides steps above). Then they create a slide presentation using DriveSlides. In the presentation, they can add text and annotate the images to explain the concept of the day.
Pro tip: Share that presentation with students in an announcement or assignment in Google Classroom. In the presentation, click the blue "Share" button and "Advanced," then choose "Anyone with the link can edit" or "Anyone with the link can comment." By giving anyone the ability to comment, students can jump to each other's slides and peer edit by adding comments. By giving them the ability to edit, students can jump to each other's slides and add text, images and other elements to work collaboratively.
5. Take photos of student work for peer review - Take photos of student work (projects, written activities, anything in the real, non-digital world). With the Google Photos app installed, those images are automatically uploaded to Google Drive. Use DriveSlides to create a slide presentation of all of those images of student work.

6. Step-by-step directions with screenshots or photos - Give a step-by-step explanation of how to do something online. Use the Awesome Screenshot extension (above) to take pictures of each step. Add those screenshots to slides with DriveSlides to provide a step-by-step tutorial.

7. Photos of math problem step by step - Let students take a deep dive into a math problem. By adding screenshots or pictures of each step of a math problem, they can explain each step in detail in a DriveSlides presentation.

8. Storytelling - Let students create a story, finding images to illustrate it with one of the image sources listed above (i.e. Creative Commons search, Photos For Class, Google Images). They save the images, then use DriveSlides to put them all on individual slides. They can then write the story by adding text boxes to each slide.

9. Finding example images of a concept from class - A picture is worth a thousand words. When students find example images of what you're studying in class, they see that subject in a different light. Have them find six, 10, 15 ... any number of images that are relevant.
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:
10. Bell ringer activity - If you're about to dig into a new topic in class, have students do a little research of their own first. Have them find some images and and important facts about that topic on their own. Students can save those images and create a slide presentation with DriveSlides. Then, they can add the facts with text boxes.

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2 BRAND NEW tools to help students display work, reflect

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Google Slides is such a versatile tool in G Suite (Google Apps). It goes much further than creating a slide presentation to show on the screen to the entire class. Mix in images - the visual tools that make instant connections in our brains - and you've got an engaging activity in the making.

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This is a guest post, authored by my friend and colleague, Cody Holt from Royse City ISD in Royse City, Texas. After 11 years as a high school Language Arts teacher, Cody made the transition to the world of instructional technology and his toughest challenge ever-teaching teachers. As a Digital Learning Specialist for Royse City ISD, Cody gets the privilege to help teachers navigate instruction in a digital age; specifically, how to incorporate digital tools to positively impact learning. Cody is also the Director of C4L Operations and the Chrome Squad Internship (C4L is our district 1-1 initiative). When not neck deep in Chromebooks Cody spends his time with his wonderful wife Jennifer and their three amazing kids: Kollyn, Reese, and Tucker.
Supporting a 1-1 Initiative is no small feat, and Royse City ISD is setting the bar high with great leadership, and an amazing idea for a student internship program called, "The Chrome Squad." In this three-part series, learn what makes this program such a success! Be sure to check out the Connected 4 Learning website that these students created to support teachers and students on their campus.

Great Leadership is the Key to a Successful 1:1

In this three part series I would like to share the journey of how the Chrome Squad, an elite group of student interns that support my district's 1-1 program, came to be, but first a disclaimer.

Someone asking me to talk about the success of the Chrome Squad feels like being asked to not only tell your life story but to tell the life story of your parents as well. What I mean is the Chrome Squad is less than a year old and is the product of not just my efforts, but of many others. To start with the conception of the Chromies (as they call themselves) is to miss so much of what makes them work. It is like explaining what makes me, well me, without talking about those that influenced me. Some people don't like sharing their stories, but I find it encouraging to share, so share the Chrome Squad life story-with all its caveats and flashbacks-I will.

Let's talk about what you can expect out of this series of articles so you have an idea of what you are getting into.

I won't be giving ten tidy steps to creating a student internship program, though I would love to help you create one.

I will be sharing our journey to where we are and where we are going.

I will also talk about the hiccups

I will share and invite to ask more questions

Leaders Set the Foundation for 1:1 and The Chrome Squad

Six years ago (or maybe longer-kids have killed my memory) Kevin Worthy came to Royse City as our Superintendent of Schools and a vision in tow. It was a simple, but powerful vision: be all about the kids and be innovative. It took a few years and a strategic plan, but we progressed as a district on those two fronts. Part of that strategic plan was to move 1-1 with our students. We saw districts that tried and failed because of poor planning, poor training, poor infrastructure, or a combination thereof. It was decided to take a more measured approach. The first step was to get the right people in place. Three years ago RCISD hired Zach Snow as the Instructional Technology Coordinator and did the crazy thing of placing him not in the technology department, but the newly reorganized curriculum department head by Assistant Superintendent Julia Robinson. This is a seemingly small distinction, but if the focus was going to be on instruction and not on the technology, then department placement is key.

Over the next two years, Zach created and groomed a team of classroom teachers on each campus to provide professional development for teachers. The team, the iCoaches, focused on training teachers to effectively use technology to impact student learning. They were provided training and support by Zach and the always awesome Kasey Bell. This is where I enter the narrative. At the time, I was in my sevenish year (can you tell I'm not good at remembering dates) of teaching high school English. I became part of the iCoach team as one of the three members from the high school. As a teacher, I believe my job is to inspire my students and facilitate their learning, so I stir their appetite and set the table for learning. The students do the rest. That mindset and the ability to work with and train teachers made me a great fit for the vision that Kevin and his team had for Royse City.

The last missing member of the team was a CTO, who embraced and supported the vision of RCISD. That came with Stuart Burt a year ago. With Stuart and myself added we were able to move forward with a 1-1 and empower students to be leaders. Finally, the silent partner in all of this is our awesome school board who caught the vision early and supported it all the way.

While this is all happening research, testing, upgrading of infrastructure and training were being done to prep the district to go 1-1. We also realized early on that the conversation needed to switch from 1-1 to resourcing students. After all, it is about the students, not the technology, leading us to developed the framework for our program (we never call it an initiative) Connected for Learning (C4L): connecting students with the resources to Collaborate, Create, think Critically, and Connect with the world.

I know what you are thinking at this point: "that is a whole lot of backstory, and you haven't even mentioned the Chrome Squad." That is a good point, but I hope you see there is no Chrome Squad without the right leadership in place to support such a program. But, fear not I am ready to tell you about the Chrome Squad and will happily do so in the next installment: Part 2 - Building the Chrome Squad, and Part 3 - Build Your Own Student Tech Team.

Follow these Royse City ISD accounts on Twitter:

© Shake Up Learning 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

18 Challenges for Teachers in 2018 FREE eBook!

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Student Chrome Squad (Part 1): Great Leadership is Key for 1:1 | Shake Up Learning

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PinterestThis is a guest post, authored by my friend and colleague, Cody Holt from Royse City ISD in Royse City, Texas. After 11 years as a high school Language Arts teacher, Cody made the transition to the world of instructional technology and his toughest challenge ever-teaching teachers.

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As a teacher, you probably know about Google Docs. You've probably even been using pieces of it for years! But there's a lot more to it than just sharing documents and having an easy, cloud-based solution for your classroom. Over the years, I've gotten to learn about some pretty sweet features that have made my life as a teacher easier. These functionalities are built into Google Docs, and they are fantastic. Even though they might not be on your radar, take a look. You'll be glad you did!

1. Template Gallery

Why start from scratch when you could use a well-designed template? Whether you want to use Google Docs to draft your course syllabus, design a student certificate, formalize teaching notes, or plan a project for students, it's almost for sure you can find a template for that. Template Gallery is the place to go. In fact, there are hundreds of beautiful templates here for you to choose from. You can preview a template or use it directly, and it will open as a new file in Google Docs. This feature is often overlooked but isn't exactly hidden.

2. Offline Editing Mode

How many times you are working on a Google document and you can't type anymore because it says there is no Internet connection? What if you can still create, edit or view files even if you aren't connected? Introducing offline mode-a feature that allows you to save a copy of your edited documents on your computer and sync when you are back online. To enable offline mode, all you have to do is check this option (see the screenshot above) and click Done to continue. Note: offline access is only available in Chrome web browser, according to Google .

3. Extract Images in Batch

Despite being the most powerful online word processor, Google Docs doesn't make it easy for users to directly save images embedded in the content (nope, copy and paste doesn't work in most cases). So if you want to reuse lots of images in a Google document, it can be cumbersome to extract them one by one. But there is still a way to get this done a lot quicker. On the menu, select File > Download as > Web page (.html, zipped) , a zip file will be downloaded. Double-click to open it, and you'll see a folder called "Images." Yep, all images should be there. Courtesy to SoftwareHow for this fantastic tip.

4. Research via Explore

For those who don't know, back in September, the official Google Docs blog announced several updates , one of which was the old Research tool being replaced by Explore. You can access the feature via Tools > Explore , or click the Explore icon at the bottom right of any documents. Just type a keyword in the search box, alternatively, you can highlight a few words in your document, right click and select "Explore '(highlighted words)'", then you'll see a list of resources showing up. These include web results and images. You then can add or insert those results you like for reference. For web results, you can "cite as footnote" and the Explore tool allows you to change citation format (MLA, APA, Chicago).

5. Suggesting Mode

While the ability to directly edit or make changes in a Google document is great, it is sometimes rude to change others' text. There are times (for example, when you and your students are collaborating on a project or doing peer evaluation) you may only want to suggest changes-without actually making any, unless the person accepts the changes. That's what Suggestion Mode has to offer. To enter the mode, first look in the toolbar with an editing pencil icon, click on the arrow next to the pencil icon and select "Suggesting." Only the author of the document has the power to approve or disapprove any suggested changes.

6. Make PDF files (even scanned) editable

PDFs offer many advantages over other file types, but they are not easy to work with because PDFs are essentially images and they are much restrictive. Scanned PDF files are even harder to handle. Chances are you'll have to convert them into editable texts. Thanks to Optical Character Recognition, a technology built in Google Docs, allows you to convert PDFs and images into pure text formats. On Google Drive Settings, simply check the option called "Convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format," and you're ready to go. I discovered this technique while exploring guides to convert PDF to Word on Mac .

7. Voice Typing

Google Docs also supports voice typing. All you need is the Chrome browser and a working microphone built into your computer or connected externally. To get to voice typing, open a document, on the menu, select Tools > Voice typing . Select the language you'll speak (by default, it's English). When you are ready, click on the microphone image to enable the voice recognition. Click on it again to toggle it off. Although I feel it's a little bit like talking to a robot, I love the feature and hope you do, too.

8. Create Your Own Shortcuts

Google Docs have already provided a number of shortcuts for us (like changing (c) to ©), but what if you want to make a few of your own? For instance, it might be a good idea to add frequently misspelled words, mimic popular text expansion applications, or autocorrect your errors without running a spell check. You can do all of those via Google Docs Preferences ( Tools > Preferences > Automatic substitution ). Just fill in the "replace" and "with" blanks and you are good to go.

9. Image Editing

Normally you have to rely on third-party tools to edit an image, such as crop it, add colorful borders or adjust transparency, etc. But in Google Docs, you can do all of these without leaving the app. Once you insert an image (from the menu, or just drag and drop it) and select it, you'll see an editing toolbox becoming available on the menu. To crop an image, select it in your document and click the crop icon in the toolbar. From there, drag the blue handles to your desired locations and hit "Enter" on your keyboard. The Image Options are also very useful, and they allow you to recolor and adjust transparency, brightness, and contrast. Don't forget that you can reverse any operations by clicking the "Reset Image" icon and this will restore the image to its original state.

10. Browse Education Add-ons

Google Docs offer tons of basic word processing and editing functions, but it's unrealistic to integrate all tools and features to the menu. What's the solution? The Adds-on is a place for those whose needs stretch beyond the most basic functions. To access the Adds-on Store, click Add-ons > Get Add-ons from the menu. Select "Education" from the dropdown list; you'll be surprised with the massive extensions you can use, most are free. For example, EasyBib Bibliography Creator allows you to generate citations quickly. Easy Accents is a great tool to insert accents for different languages directly from the sidebar in Google Docs.

What are your Google Docs tricks?

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10 Ways to Use Google Docs in the Classroom - WeAreTeachers

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Learn how to use google docs in your classroom to make learning interesting for your students and life a lot easier for yourself!

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2017 is shaping up to be a big year of what-if's. The President just called and is asking for advice on shaping the U.S. education technology agenda. What do you say?

Much work remains to be done to realize the full potential of education technology. While device penetration is increasing and edtech products are proliferating, adequate infrastructure in schools lags behind. Additionally, educators and school leaders need further support in identifying the best technology solutions, effectively integrating edtech in the classroom, and ensuring edtech helps, not hinders, the development of social, collaboration and teamwork skills.

Continue Efforts to Improve Connectivity In Schools

Just last week, one of my portfolio company founders was excited to pilot a new literacy tool in a school in Richmond, Calif., only to discover that there wasn't adequate broadband to execute the lesson. Unfortunately, this happens all the time-especially in rural and high-need communities. Initiatives like ConnectED are thus critically important to equip schools with high-speed internet so that all students can benefit from the latest learning innovations like media-rich, personalized content, live remote tutoring and mentoring, and content creation and publishing tools.

'Tis the season of giving, eating and reflecting, a time to look back on 2016 and to make bold predictions about what next year may hold. In our fourth year-end personal statement roundup, we've again asked thought leaders to share their outlooks on education, but with a twist. They have to frame their thoughts as a response to some of the finest college application essay prompts, inspired by the very same ones that high school seniors are feverishly working on now!

Help Schools Identify What Works

As more schools get connected to high-speed internet, it is imperative that the most effective technology solutions get implemented. What if we could provide all schools with affordable consultants and researchers to aid in the edtech selection process? Edsurge's Concierge fills the consultant need by helping schools find edtech solutions aligned to their needs. Mathematica's Rapid Cycle Evaluation (RCE) Coach fills the researchers' needs by helping schools execute low-cost evaluations and make evidence-based decisions. In working with the RCE Coach team, I have seen schools begin to ask more informed questions like "Will usage of X tool under Y conditions lead to Z outcomes?" This type of questioning and analysis will drive schools toward selecting better products for their classrooms.

Support Teachers in Effectively Integrating Technology

Getting the best products into the classroom is only half the battle; we need to support teachers and administrators to effectively integrate these products to achieve the intended outcomes. Teachers need the time and space to learn and share best practices around technology integration, especially amidst the sea of change of Common Core, Next Generation Science Standards, and ever increasing demands on schools. Teachers are hungry for collaborative learning experiences as evidenced by the growth of Edcamps, and they need more opportunities to reflect on their practice, especially as it relates to the use of technology in the classroom.

Advocate for Technology that Increases Connectedness

The best technologies often enable the most human aspects of teaching and learning such as inspired pedagogy, collaborative problem solving and authentic ways to "show what you know." In an era where kids are often glued to devices outside of the classroom, the classroom should provide opportunities for social and emotional learning and collaboration. The Holberton School, for example, has leveraged technology to adopt a peer-based learning model where future software engineers "learn to learn" and solve challenges collaboratively. To prepare students to thrive in an increasingly globally connected world, it is critical that technology is used to facilitate collaborative problem solving and allow students to create and "show what they know" beyond standard assessments.

I look forward to 2017 and the potential that education technology has to continue to impact learning by engaging students with high quality, relevant content, empowering educators to differentiate and better assess learning, enabling school leaders to make data-driven decisions, and engaging families on what happens during the school day. For all of these education technology solutions to reach their full potential, educators and schools leaders need support to navigate the on the ground realities and help edtech live up to its promise of improving access and opportunity in education.

Shauntel Poulson is a General Partner at Reach Capital, an investor in EdSurge.

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Edtech Needs More Infrastructure, Educator Support in 2017 - EdSurge News

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Much work remains to be done to realize the full potential of education technology. While device penetration is increasing and edtech products are proliferating, adequate infrastructure in schools lags behind. Additionally, educators and school leaders need further support in identifying the best technology solutions, effectively integrating edtech in the classroom, and ensuring edtech helps, not hinders, the development of social, collaboration and teamwork skills.

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Part 2: Building the Student Chrome Squad
This is a guest post, authored by my friend and colleague, Cody Holt from Royse City ISD in Royse City, Texas. After 11 years as a high school Language Arts teacher, Cody made the transition to the world of instructional technology and his toughest challenge ever-teaching teachers. As a Digital Learning Specialist for Royse City ISD, Cody gets the privilege to help teachers navigate instruction in a digital age; specifically, how to incorporate digital tools to positively impact learning. Cody is also the Director of C4L Operations and the Chrome Squad Internship (C4L is our district 1-1 initiative). When not neck deep in Chromebooks Cody spends his time with his wonderful wife Jennifer and their three amazing kids: Kollyn, Reese, and Tucker.
Did you miss Part 1 in this series: Great Leadership is Key to 1-1 Success?

In the previous installment of this series, I extolled the leadership of my district and how they were pivotal in the creation of the Chrome Squad. ( See Part 1: Great Leadership is Key to 1-1). Having the right leaders creates the bedrock to build a solid program. It is on that foundation that I started building the Chrome Squad. So at long last here is their part of the story. Be sure to check out the Connected 4 Learning website that these students created to support teachers and students on their campus.

What is the Chrome Squad?

This time last year I was hired as the Digital Learning Specialist for Royse City High School. (Don't worry I am going to talk about the Chrome Squad; promise). I would have to manage an inventory of 1500+ Chromebooks, student and teacher GAFE accounts, ongoing and regular teacher training (small group, large group, and individual), and help the student body with any and all issues they may have with their Chromebooks and/or GAFE and Windows accounts. Oh, I also got the "privilege" to handle all the paperwork for acceptable use policies, user agreements, and other extraneous paperwork. They did tell me I could use students to help-that was nice. (On a side note, I found out later they originally planned on hiring three people for my position).

Enter the Chrome Squad...(Cue intense walk-in theme music)

I quickly decided to take up Zach and Stuart's offer to use students. I needed students to not only help, but effectively take over the management of the Chromebooks, and teacher/student support so I could focus on working with teachers to integrate technology in an effective manner. So it was decided the Chrome Squad would be a hand selected group of high school students that works as a team to manage every aspect of Connected 4 Learning. They would be elite customer service and technology ninjas. I shall dub them Teenage Mutant Ninja Chromies. Who knows, it might catch on...

Selecting Students for the Chrome Squad

I have researched how other schools set up their student programs. Some retrofit existing programs/classes like computer maintenance. Some created after school positions via the technology department. The common denominator was the kids were selected because of technological prowess. I decided to go a different route. My program was going to be a legitimate internship with a focus on customer service and business skills. It was also going to be student focused. That meant I would be playing the part of the manager, and the students would handle all the operational details. Feel free to freak out now if you wish; I gave it 50/50 odds it would blow up in my face.

If it was going to work, I would need to hand select the interns. (Like a real internship, go figure). I decided not to start with applications, but with teacher nominations. I asked teachers to nominate students that demonstrated:

Consistent, quality work

Respect for peers and respected by others

Teachability and ability to learn quickly

Self-Control

I recommended but did not require, tech savvy because I can teach the tech skills; the others not so much. I also only took nominees that were current Freshmen-Juniors. I did this because I want the students to have a year on campus. Of the nearly 1600 students at the high school, I received 60ish nominations. I then created a committee of teachers to vet each of the nominees. If anyone on the committee question the nominees on any of the characteristics above I took them off the list. This brought the list down to around 30. I then interviewed each nominee (this year, year two, the Chrome Squad helped with interviews) and selected the top 21 nominees. I got the best all around students in the school. In our first meeting after being selected, they dubbed themselves the Chrome Squad and created their moniker.

What Does the Chrome Squad Do?

The Chromies are the front line of tech support for both the students and the teachers of RCHS. This requires that they are versed in Windows, peripheral troubleshooting, Chromebooks, Chrome OS, GAFE, basic computer networking, blogging, social media, video production, inventory management, and customer service. I was talking with a 30-year education veteran about all I would be asking from the Chrome Squad, and he thought I was out of my mind. In his words, "There is no way they can do all that." The truth is I'm probably a little crazy, but I've seen crazier so why not put the bar on the highest rung I can reach and see if my kids can reach it too.

With a bar set that high, I needed to spend some time setting the team up for success. The Chrome Squad met with me over several days in August, and we spent time talking about expectations, team building, and training. I pushed heavily for great customer service and responsibility. They were taught to think of the Connected 4 Learning Lounge (their base of operation) as their home and everyone who entered as a guest. It didn't matter if the Chrome Squad had all the technical answers if their guests didn't leave with a smile on their face and desire to come back next time they needed help. Once I successfully beat a dead horse in regards to customer service we switched to GAFE, Chromebooks, troubleshooting, and the rest. The Chrome Squad also trained on how to create blogs and videos, edit a website, and all the other procedures of running this size of operation. The goal was to have them so well trained that they could operate day-to-day without me because there would be days I wouldn't be there. They also unboxed, tagged, and enrolled 1500 Chromebooks in 4 days. When it came time to hand out Chromebooks to the student body, the Chrome Squad was on hand to check out Chromebooks, reset passwords, and give students a tour of their new device. They showed themselves capable of reaching the bar I set and then they decided to move it even higher.

Evolution of the Team

As the year began the Chrome Squad focused on everyone doing the same job: helping teachers with technical issues, repairing broken Chromebooks, resetting passwords for students, and writing whatever blog or making whatever video I assigned to them. We were focused on building up the content on our website, so our teachers and students had resources readily available as well as providing prompt and quality face-to-face support. Then around Thanksgiving, as things slowed a little, I decided to give the interns a week of "20% Time." I didn't hand out assignments. Instead, I let them work on any project they wanted as long as it benefited C4L and they didn't overlook their standard duties.

Students Developed the Following Ideas:

Build a charging station for students to charge their Chromebooks

Create an online system for course registration

Create a public relations team to publicize Chrome Squad and C4L resources

Create a teacher badge system to reward and challenge teachers to integrate technology

Tech Tips posters, table tents, announcements, and commercials

A student-run store that sales electronics and accessories for Chromebooks

A Google Classroom for the campus that provides a back channel for asking questions and posting tips and tricks

The ideas they came up with were huge and had far-reaching effects. That is when I had the idea to form departments around these great ideas. The Chrome Squad members decided on the department they wanted to work, and I set department leads to help organize the flow of information. The teams now create 3-week and 6-week goals to keep themselves accountable, and I check in on them each week during our "Staff Meetings." Here is the crazy thing-the members of each team often don't see each other on a daily basis. They have to communicate and work together digitally. It's like magic.

We are now preparing for year two for the program, and I let the Chrome Squad help me with the interviews, and the team is going to be really strong next year despite losing nearly half the team to graduation. This summer we are going to revamp the website and create an all new inventory system that streamlines our back end process. We are going to be awesome, and I can exhale now that I am confident it isn't going to blow up in my face.

Well, I only have two more promise left to fulfill in this series of posts: What would I change and where can you get help creating your own group of interns? Check the next and final installment to get the answers you seek...hopefully. Part 3 - Build Your Own Student Tech Team

© Shake Up Learning 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

18 Challenges for Teachers in 2018 FREE eBook!

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Student Chrome Squad (Part 2): Building the Team | Shake Up Learning

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PinterestPart 2: Building the Student Chrome Squad This is a guest post, authored by my friend and colleague, Cody Holt from Royse City ISD in Royse City, Texas. After 11 years as a high school Language Arts teacher, Cody made the transition to the world of instructional technology and his toughest challenge ever-teaching teachers.

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Let's get organized! I've found 3 awesome Chrome Extensions and 3 awesome iPad Apps to share with you today. Do you have others that you love that you think teachers should know about? Leave them in the comments for us!

By the way, I'm Brittany, and I'm the founder of Technology Tools For Teachers. I would love to connect with you through social media. Find me on Facebook!

* Disclaimer- the links to the iTunes apps are affiliate links. This means that, at no extra cost to you, if you click through and download the app I receive a small commission. The opinions are not paid though, they are my own 🙂

Stay Focused- if you're crunched for time but easily distracted by email and social media then this is the extension for you. With Stay Focused you can temporarily block your own access to websites. This is serious though, you cannot get to them no matter what while the time is ticking down. Even if you really need that picture of you off of Facebook in order to finish your project- you can't get it until the time is up! This extension works perfectly as designed but is super frustrating, for good reason.

2. Todoist - I am a big fan of paper planners, but they do make it so easy to just draw an arrow from one unfinished task onto the next day. Todoist is a task list manager for the Chrome browser. What I like so much about it is that it emails you every day letting you know what you didn't accomplish. It is a quick, but effective, reminder to wake up with. Adding events and to dos is really simple. Definitely check this one out.

3. Live Start Page - Ahhhhh my favorite Chrome extension of all time. The Live Start Page takes over a new tab when you open one and has some great motivational stuff to help get you through your day. I chose a paradise beach scene for myself, but there were zillions to choose between. The things that are displayed are very customizable. Now every time I open a new tab I stop and watch it for a moment before going to my next task. I know this post is about liming distractions, but this one is purposeful. Without the right mindset, that task you were doing would not be nearly as enjoyable 🙂

1. Pocket - I am obsessed with this iPad app. Store all of the essentials. Links to websites you want to access again, articles, videos, etc. are so easy to save and get back to when you're ready. You can save them directly from the apps you're in, too! My favorite part is that things you save on one device are there and waiting on every device. No more sending links to yourself through iMessage or email.

2. Seesaw - If you're not using Seesaw yet, you will definitely want to check this out. This is the description on the app; "Seesaw is a student-driven digital portfolio that empowers students of any age to independently document what they are learning at school and share it with their teachers, parents, classmates, and even the world." This is a really fancy way of saying that is stores all of your students files so that you can access them to review later. It is awesomesauce.

3. Toodledo - I know that the iPad comes with a built in task manager, but this one is so much better. Toodledo tracks your habits and helps you out by making outlines and lists. It even works with Apple Watch if you have it.

So there you have it. 6 productivity and organization tools to help you be your best teacher self possible! Did I leave anything out?

Teacher, blogger, and teacher author. My passion is teaching with technology and I aim to bring you tips and tools to help you do the same! View all posts by Brittany Washburn

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Teacher Organization Technology Tools to Drown Out Distractions

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Let's get organized! I've found 3 awesome Chrome Extensions and 3 awesome iPad Apps to share with you today. Do you have others that you love that you think teachers should know about? Leave them in the comments for us! By the way, I'm Brittany, and I'm the founder of Technology Tools For Teachers.

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By Jessica Sanders

It seems like every day there's a new educational buzzword floating around between your fellow teachers.

With so much on your plate at all times, it's hard to keep up with what they all mean.

Use this list as your personal edtech buzzwords guide so you'll know what to say next time someone's talking about using MOOCs in their classroom.
Terms are in alphabetical order for your convenience.
1:1 Classroom: A 1:1 classroom provides each student with their own device, allowing learning to be more individualized and independent.
Resource: 5 Steps to Implement a Successful 1:1 Teaching Environment
Adaptive learning: The use of technology-computer or online system-to modify the learning experience and materials based on students' performance. Many popular edtech tools use this as a way of naturally progressing students along a learning path.
Resource: Adaptive Learning Technology: What It Is, Why It Matters
Asynchronous learning: Student-centered learning style that gives students access to assignments and necessary resources online, and includes chat and videoconferencing. The benefit: You don't need to be in the same room to facilitate the learning. This is often referred to as "e-learning."
Resource: Asynchronous E-Learning vs. Synchronous E-Learning
Blended learning: The technique of using both online and offline resources to facilitate learning, in and out of the classroom. Many teachers who are new to technology have found this to be a valuable way of bringing engaging opportunities into the classroom without spending a lot of money on tools and resources.
Resource: 10 Benefits of Teaching in a Blended Classroom
Competency-based learning: Used in teaching concrete skills, rather than abstract concepts, competency-based learning provides students with flexibility in how credit can be earned for learning and mastering new skills. "By enabling students to master skills at their own pace, competency-based learning systems help to save both time and money." - U.S. Department of Education
Resource: 3 Key Characteristics of Competency-Based Learning
Course management system (CMS): A tool that allows teachers and students to organize online resources and documents. It can also facilitate homework submissions, the class calendar and even grading. Google Classroom is one of the most popular, (and free) CMSs available to K-12 teachers.
Resource: The Google Classroom Quick-Start Guide
Differentiated learning: The method of tailoring instruction, resources, assignments and projects for each student. This differs from personalized learning in that you cater certain aspects of classroom time or a lesson to each individual rather than connecting an entire learning program with students' passions and aspirations. Check out this great breakdown from TeachThought for a full list of differences.
Resource: 10 Ways to Differentiate Instruction With Technology
Digital storytelling: The act of combining narrative with digital content, i.e. music, video and sound, to create a short movie. These movies can be interactive and used to portray specific concepts students are learning about.
Resource: 9 Steps to Use Digital Storytelling in the Classroom
EdTech: Short-hand for educational technology, this term refers to any tech-based program that's used for learning, in and out of the classroom, including apps, software, videos and more.
Resource: 20 Awesome Ways to Use Technology in the Classroom Tomorrow
Flipped classroom: A pedagogical model that flips the traditional method of learning: students watch video lectures and review materials at home before putting their knowledge to the test in the classroom with projects, discussions and group work.
Resource: The Teacher's Guide to Flipped Classrooms
Gamification: The use of game-playing elements in learning, such as point earning, leveling up, competition with others, and rules of play.
Resource: 12 Educational Games to Boost Productivity
MOOC: This stands for Massive Open Online Course. An MOOC is available to large numbers of people, without any cost, via the Internet. Some of the most popular MOOC websites include Coursera.org, MOOC.org, and Udemy.com, among many others.
Resource: The Future of MOOCs in the Classroom
Open educational resources: Openly licensed and freely accessible documents and media that can be used in teaching, research and assessing.
Resource: 7 Things You Should Know About Open Educational Resources
Personalized learning: An approach to learning that allows you to individualize learning for students based on their needs, preferences and interests. Many educators believe this is the future of learning.
Resource: 10 Best Apps for Personalized Learning
Virtual classroom: An online learning space, often facilitated through a web- or software-based portal. The learning in this case is usually still synchronous, meaning teacher and students are engaging with one another at the same time.
Resource: 5 Teaching Techniques for the Virtual Classroom

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15 Educational Technology Definitions You Should Know

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By Jessica Sanders It seems like every day there's a new educational buzzword floating around between your fellow teachers. With so much on your plate at all times, it's hard to keep up with what they all mean.

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I have been using several Google Drive Add-ons with my students over the past few years including Mindmeister mind maps, Flubaroo to grade quizzes and Flippity flash cards. OpenClipArt is another add-on for Google Drive and it offers many amazing copyright free images .

There are more than 50,000 images in their library to enhance your document. This lesson shows students how to access OpenClipArt from a Google document and how to insert images . The people who have contributed images have waived all copyright rights to their contributions.

Click on the link below to download this lesson...

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I have been using several Google Drive Add-ons with my students over the past few years including Mindmeister mind maps, Flubaroo to grade quizzes and Flippity flash cards. OpenClipArt is another add-on for Google Drive and it offers many amazing copyright free images .

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For this report, the researchers asked millions of high school students in dozens of countries about their access to computers both in the classroom and at home, and compared their answers to scores on the 2012 PISA. Here's the money quote:

"Students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes, even after controlling for social background and student demographics."

That's right. Lots of computer time meant worse school performance - by a lot.

A little bit of computer use was modestly positive, the authors found. But countries that invested the most in technology for education in recent years showed "no appreciable results" in student achievement.

And, striking at the root of one of the biggest claims made about tech in education, "perhaps the most disappointing finding in the report is that technology is of little help in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students."

Now let's move to the U.S. In April, the research firm SRI published a report at the behest of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a supporter of NPR Ed). It looked at college courses that are using so-called "adaptive learning" software as an enhancement to blended courses.

NPR Ed has covered adaptive learning before. The creators of one of the products looked at in this report compared the technology to "a robot tutor in the sky that can semi-read your mind."

The results in this study were a bit more prosaic. Researchers looked at course grades, course completion and in some cases scores on common assessments across 14 colleges and 19,500 students.

"We saw no effects, weak effects, and modest positive effects," says study co-author Louise Yarnall.

Finally, a study published in July looked at high-achieving eighth-graders across North Carolina who had the opportunity to take Algebra I online. The study found that they did much worse than students who took the course face-to-face - about a third of a letter grade worse, in fact.

The study author, Jennifer Heissel, a doctoral student at Northwestern University, noted that across education research, "There's not a lot of cases where you see these big of drops in high-achieving students. Usually you can throw a lot at them."

A note of caution: These studies are all very different in their settings, their designs and the types of technology examined.

What they do have in common, besides results that would disappoint most ed-tech cheerleaders, is that they were field studies. They looked at how technology is really being used, beyond the hype.

"This is technology that people have been developing for 30 years in the lab," Yarnall observed. "This is one of the first chances to see how it looks out in the wild, with real students, real instructors and all the variables."

The authors all told NPR Ed that their studies are not perfect, with a lot of gaps in the data. But here are some observations we can make.

Implementation is really important, yet it's often ignored.

In the SRI higher education study, "The major concern expressed by instructors was getting students to use the adaptive courseware frequently enough."

In other words, these colleges had: applied for grants, invested in the software programs, invested in retraining their instructors and redesigning courses, invested further time in adapting the software to individual courses, and spent time participating in the evaluation. But they didn't go the last mile, or the last thousand feet, to ensure that students were actually using the software, or perhaps make it clear to them why it was potentially helpful.

Learning software collects lots of information on student usage, which could in theory have made it possible to relate the time that students actually spent on the software to outcomes. But the organizers of this study faced logistical and ethical hurdles in actually getting ahold of that data.

It's as if you tried to do a medical evaluation on a bunch of new headache medicines, but with no information on whether, or how much, the patients took.

Imperfect data and inadequate evaluation make it hard to understand or improve the use of ed-tech.

The OECD survey asked about the availability of computers and the frequency of computer use in math lessons and for homework. But it leaves very little idea exactly what various countries are doing with all those computers in the classroom: what software they are using, what training teachers get.

In the SRI study, despite its size and the resources devoted to it, the researchers faced a lot of "challenges to validity," as co-author Yarnall observed.

Colleges each designed their own impact evaluations. They didn't always find it feasible to administer a pre- and post-test, which is considered a better measure of student learning than course grades.

In the seven cases where Yarnall's team could make side-by-side comparisons of common learning assessments, they found a "modest but significantly positive effect" of the adaptive software.

In the algebra study, Northwestern's Heissel says she had no information on which students took the course in which setting. She couldn't differentiate between students who: studied at home on their own time; or in a computer lab with lots of students doing different courses and an adult who's simply there to supervise; or in a computer lab with other students who were also taking Algebra and a certified math teacher on hand to answer questions.

That last scenario for teaching math, sometimes called the "emporium model," has proven very successful in other studies. "I would love the chance to study teacher quality," as a factor in online courses, says Heissel.

Computers are enhancing access. There's less evidence that they're enhancing learning.

In the North Carolina study, the students taking algebra online in eighth grade would otherwise not have had the chance to take it until ninth grade. Even if they knew they might pass with a lower score or learn less, it's possible that they would still choose to the online course online, either to get it out of the way or to accelerate.

"It's up to the parents, the districts, and the students to weigh the lower grade against the increased access to courses," Heissel says.

Similarly, the four-year colleges in the SRI study were specifically using adaptive courseware to let more students into so-called gateway courses.

These are the general-education requirements that are often oversubscribed at large public universities. Again, in this situation, colleges and their students might prefer to have the increased access that software provides - even if their results are no better.

"I was chatting with one of the grantees at a four-year that had underwhelming impacts," says Yarnall. "I asked, 'Are you going to keep going?' And they said, 'Absolutely.' I have students who can't get into courses in the timeline they need to. So they want these options. Colleges are looking to become more flexible."

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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The Connections Between Computer Use and Learning Outcomes in Students

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For this report, the researchers asked millions of high school students in dozens of countries about their access to computers both in the classroom and at home, and compared their answers to scores on the 2012 PISA.

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The Lowdown on the New Google Sites

Here's the lowdown on the New Google Sites: The Good, The Bad, and Nothing Ugly! As I mentioned in an earlier post, There's a New Google Sites Coming, what is now being referred to as the "classic" Google Sites was long overdue for an update. I usually referred to Google Sites as an acquired taste because it was so antiquated and most users are turned off within the first few minutes of trying it. However, "classic," sites was and is still a powerful tool for teachers and students. The new Sites is slick and beautiful, and very easy to use, BUT it is still missing some of the features that make the "classic" sites so powerful.

Both classic sites and the new Google Sites are available now, so to help you decide whether you are ready to make the leap to the new Sites. And given that the new Google Sites biggest strength is the beautiful design, I am breaking this down into The New Google Sites: The Good, The Bad, and Nothing Ugly.

First of all, Google doesn't want you making ugly sites! Yep! It's all but impossible to make an ugly site with the new design features in Google Sites. You have to use a theme, which includes a set of colors, fonts and other design elements that cannot be customized.

The Good:

Access

Accessing the new Google Sites is even easier now that it's a part of Google Drive. Create a new Google Site from the "New," button in Drive. You will also see your sites listed in Google Drive. (Sweet!)

You can also access via the new homepage, which looks similar to other Google Drive counterparts' homepages: sites.google.com/new. If you still see the classic sites homepage, you can click on "New Google Sites," from the menu.

Navigation

One of the most confusing parts of classic sites is navigation. The new Google Sites has a very simple and clean navigation. Google has made use of the same design elements we see in other products, like using the predictable three lines to represent the menu and the three dots to represent more actions.

Responsive Design

The new Google Sites is a responsive design website, meaning it will adjust and resize to the size of the screen on your device-a much-needed update! Responsive design means this will be easier for students to view on mobile devices. You can click on the preview button (eye icon at the top of the page) to see what your site will look like published. There are also icons in the bottom-right to let you preview how it will look on tablets and phones.

Beautiful Themes

So remember, Google is making it hard to make an ugly Google Site. Part of that requirement is the use of themes. They are clean, professional, and combine complementary colors, fonts, etc. This makes formatting a breeze! Classic Sites requires a lot of work to create something that is not only clean but beautiful.

Click and Drag Editing

To add elements to your pages, simply click and drag what you want onto the page. This is how you add text, images, embed Google Drive files, etc. Easy peasy!

Auto-Save

I have gotten used to my auto-saving Google Docs, Slides...everything! So it always felt antiquated and cumbersome to have to remember to click, "save," in classic sites. Auto-save in the new Google Sites is expected and greatly appreciated. (Keep in mind that although your site will auto-save, it doesn't auto-publish. You will have to publish your site for others to view.)

Create a Site in Minutes

With everything so streamlined and easy to navigate, you can create a site with little to no training in just a few minutes. I like things that save me time!

The Bad:

Very Little Customization

With forced themes, fonts, formatting, you have very little room to customize. You can upload your own header images, but not the kind of control and customization that we have come to love about classic Google Sites.

What's Missing (and it's a lot!)

Editing HTML and CSS

No true embed code

No page types, which means no blog page, no file cabinet option, etc.

No external links in the navigation

No table of contents option

Nesting of pages is limited to one level, meaning one level of subpages.

Editing still requires the desktop version of Chrome or Firefox.

The Ugly:

While technically there isn't anything ugly about the new Google Sites because they actually have made it hard to make an ugly Google Site, but the missing features will make it hard for me to make the switch just yet. I use Google Sites for workshops and training, and I just can't do the things that I need to do.
I will forgo the beauty of the new sites for the features I need until Google gives us more of what's missing. What about you? Have you made the switch? Please share in the comments.
Resources for Learning the New Google Sites:

© Shake Up Learning 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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The New Google Sites: The Good, The Bad, and Nothing Ugly! | Shake Up Learning

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Pinterest The Lowdown on the New Google Sites Here's the lowdown on the New Google Sites: The Good, The Bad, and Nothing Ugly! As I mentioned in an earlier post, There's a New Google Sites Coming, what is now being referred to as the "classic" Google Sites was long overdue for an update.

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Technology provides a powerful way to engage students, inform individual and group instruction, differentiate instruction, document work and empower students to direct their own learning. But if you want technology to be a transformative force in your classroom, school or district, you have to start with "why?"

At Bullis School in Potomac, Maryland, we strive to use and implement cutting-edge technology, but we fully realize that while technology can be a solution to many of our problems, we must start with the pedagogy.

As both a teacher and technology coordinator, I know the importance of finding simple solutions that keep the focus on the learning. One way to ensure we start the conversation with the pedagogy is to identify go-to tools that teachers can learn and know well.

Maintaining a small suite of tools also helps our students become comfortable and fluent with tools that will boost their learning and productivity and serve them well in the long run.

One of our big aims at Bullis - or the "why" behind the tool - has been finding ways to personalize the learning experience using analytics to inform class and individual needs. Two tools that I heavily rely on for this are Pear Deck and EDpuzzle.

EDpuzzle is a site that allows users to select a video and customize it by editing, cropping, recording audio and adding questions to make an engaging and interactive lesson. Students can watch the video at home, and teachers can access details such as when the student watched, areas a student skipped or had to rewind, and responses to the free-response and multiple-choice questions the teacher has embedded.

When I review the analytics dashboard in EDpuzzle, I am looking for both how the class is doing as a whole (in the Questions tab), and how individual students are doing (in the Students tab). This gives me a sense of how to customize instruction before students even walk into the room, and I can determine who needs individualized attention and who might be able to lead a small-group discussion.

Pear Deck allows teachers to ask questions within a presentation and display the responses of the class on the board anonymously. Teachers can create a guided activity in Pear Deck to ramp students up to thinking about and answering bigger picture questions.

They can also gauge the tone of the classroom, see where students are leaning on a debate topic or just run a quick warm-up activity to identify where students are at on any particular day.

Pear Deck requires each student to engage and respond, but allows them to do so anonymously, ensuring that students feel comfortable and safe from ridicule or judgment.

In a traditional class discussion, students must raise their hands to respond and might be conscious of what their peers think of their answer. Pear Deck removes this barrier by displaying responses without names (teachers can go back later to a separate dashboard to review by individual). Thus, the teacher can talk about and analyze the incorrect answers without calling any individual student out.

Here are the primary reasons Pear Deck and EDPuzzle are go-to tools in my school:

They provide each student in the classroom an equal voice. In a traditional classroom discussion, students are called on or raise their hands to respond. As a result, teachers often repeatedly hear from the same students. In contrast, Pear Deck and EDpuzzle provide each student an opportunity to respond individually.

They engage each student in the room. With these tools, each student is required to actively participate and respond to each question, form an opinion, and submit an answer.

They create a safe space for each student to honestly respond and make mistakes. Answers are anonymous to the group so students don't have to worry about how their peers might perceive their answers or worry about answering incorrectly.

They allow educators to efficiently and effectively target class and individual student needs. The analytics provided show class trends and also provide indicators of individual students who are struggling.

They differentiate how students can respond to questions. While some students are wonderful with oral discussion and on-the-spot responses, other students are best when they have time to process, collect their thoughts and type an answer.

Something I value most about working at Bullis is how our technology training is integrated into a big-picture discussion about learning and teaching. Therefore, our training goes beyond how to set up activities in EDpuzzle and Pear Deck. We focus on how to use the analytics to inform class and individual instruction.

This is an ongoing process. We started the school year with some training on both tech tools, focused just on getting everyone familiar with the teacher and student experience in each of these platforms.

From there, we talked about possible classroom applications, from doing a quick warm up to assessing the classroom climate to creating an advanced fully interactive presentation with opportunities for revision and reflection.

Our next step will be professional development focused on what formative assessment means. We will infuse the tech training into our discussion so that teachers can practice using Pear Deck to gather real-time analytics by applying the best teaching practices shared in the discussion about formative assessment. I look forward to moving to this next step and seeing where our discussion will carry us!
Stacey Roshan is Upper School technology coordinator and math teacher at Bullis School. She has a keen interest in discovering and bringing innovative tools into the classroom to engage students. She can be found tweeting and blogging at techiemusings.com.

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Technology provides a powerful way to engage students, inform individual and group instruction, differentiate instruction, document work and empower students to direct their own learning. But if you want technology to be a transformative force in your classroom, school or district, you have to start with "why?"

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What are the best apps for teachers? We asked TED-Ed Innovative Educators and the TED-Ed community. Below, 25 awesome apps recommended for teachers, by teachers.

For teaching students how to present, create and code

TED-Ed
More than 250,000 teachers use TED education tools to spark student curiosity and explore presentation literacy skills. "TED-Ed is an outstanding resource in my classroom," says TED-Ed Innovative Educator Jennifer Hesseltine. "I use the online platform to add engaging content to topics that we are studying. I have also given students the opportunities to help in the process of creating TED-Ed Lessons by choosing videos and creating questions to include."

Students can create beautiful presentations with this app. "It's great for pairing short poems and images," says TED-Ed community member Jessica Dawn Kaiser.

Duolingo
If the benefits of a bilingual brain motivate your students, try this app. "Duolingo revolutionized the way people learn languages," says TED-Ed community member Dhruv G. Menon.

Draw and Tell
This app can increase creative confidence in kids of all ages. Just draw something, tell a story about it and share your creation. For TED-Ed community member Ginnie Harvin Pitler, this app is a classroom favorite. "I'm an elementary teacher and believe in creation apps over consumption apps," she says.

Animoto
Students can easily create and share their own beautiful videos with Animoto. "I'm a huge fan of this simple yet powerful digital storytelling tool for iPad and the web," writes TED-Ed Innovative Educator Jennifer L. Scheffer in an this ed tech roundup. "The app allows students to select a theme, music, images or videos, add captions and/or two lines of text, and within minutes a slick video is created. The finished product can be shared via social media, uploaded to YouTube, or embedded in a student's e-portfolio. For a great introduction to Animoto, with a built-in lesson in digital citizenship, have students create an 'About Me' or 'Year in Review' Animoto."

This popular app is another teacher-recommended choice for student video creation. "My students enjoy using iMovie for group projects," says TED-Ed community member Chris Gilley Callaway. Check out the Apple apps for educators, too.

Hopscotch
Students can learn computer science fundamentals - via game design - using this app. For more ways to teach core coding concepts, check out Scratch.

Tinkercad
After students get inspired by the open-source wonderland at Thingaverse, turn them loose to start designing their own 3D objects with this app.

For everyday classroom needs

Evernote
Teachers love this notetaking app - for good reason. "Evernote has allowed me to get rid of handouts. I just don't make them anymore," writes TED-Ed Innovative Educator Nicholas Provenzano in this blog post. "All of my projects are shared with my students through our shared notebooks, and all assignments are posted on the Assignment shared notebook that is available for parents on my website. Traditionally, these handouts would be viewed by students then trashed. Now they can view them on Evernote and trees can be saved." To learn more from Nick about how to use Evernote in the classroom, read The Epic Evernote Experiment.

Oxford Dictionaries
Every classroom needs a good dictionary or two. For TED-Ed community member Nuria Carballal, Oxford Dictionary works well. Meanwhile, TED-Ed community member Chie Sipin Bjarenas recommends Dictionary.com. "It's a quick way to answer 'what does [insert unfamiliar word] mean?'" she says.

For collaborating on school projects

SlackWhether you're collaborating with other teachers or assigning group project work to students, this app can make communication easier for teams in a variety of settings. "I've experimented quite a lot lately with Slack," says TED-Ed Innovative Educator Dylan Ferniany. "It has the benefits of a Facebook group, plus wonderful integration with Google Docs and Google Hangouts."

For communicating with students (and their families)

This digital communication tool is in a league of its own, according to TED-Ed Innovative Educator Jennifer L. Scheffer. "The privacy (no personal phone numbers are required) and message scheduling features are top-notch. For a high school teacher, Remind is an essential digital tool, since most teens have cell phones with texting capabilities." Read Jenn's full review here.

A WordPress blogging platform designed with teachers in mind. "I love my Edublog app for a.m. documentation and communication," says TED-Ed community member Louise Sciulli MacKinnon. "It's user friendly and makes uploading and sharing images simple."

For giving (and receiving) student feedback

EdmodoFor providing clear feedback, many teachers like this learning management system. "The app makes it possible to give students constructive feedback in a 1:1 manner," says TED-Ed Innovative Educator Jennifer Hesseltine. It's also easy for students to respond.
For more innovative education tips and tools, sign up for the TED-Ed weekly newsletter here >>

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25 awesome apps for teachers, recommended by teachers

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What are the best apps for teachers? We asked TED-Ed Innovative Educators and the TED-Ed community. Below, 25 awesome apps recommended for teachers, by teachers. TED-Ed More than 250,000 teachers use TED education tools to spark student curiosity and explore presentation literacy skills. "TED-Ed is an outstanding resource in my classroom," says TED-Ed Innovative Educator Jennifer Hesseltine.

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*The Tech Edvocate is pleased to produce its "Best of the Best" resource lists. These lists provide our readers with rankings for edtech related blogs, twitter accounts, influencers, products, etc. These lists are meant to be fluid, and for that reason, they are regularly updated to provide up to the moment information.*
Keeping up with changing technology in the classroom is almost a full-time job on its own! That's why subscribing to a few good edtech blogs is a convenient and time-saving way to remain knowledgeable about this constantly evolving landscape.

Edtech blogs exist for almost every purpose you can imagine. There are blogs dedicated to the teaching of math, reading, science and virtually any other discipline that you can think of. There are blogs about coding and blogs about blogging, geared towards every grade level from kindergarten all the way up through high school.

But how do you know which of these are worth your time?

We decided to do this work for you.

Generally, there are four key qualities of a good edtech blog. They must be:

1. Activity (25%). Information should be updated regularly to reflect the very latest trends in edtech.

2. Originality (25%). It should add value with content that's different from all the other blogs out there.

3. Helpfulness (25%). A good edtech blog should teach you a new skill, direct you to a useful resource, or at least get you to think in a new way about something.

4. Authority (25%). The author/authors have the authority and credentials to blog about the topic of edtech.

Each category was assigned an equal weight in our evaluation. They were averaged together to determine the final score in order to come up with our list of the top 50.

This blog is updated daily with current educational news. Recent articles explored the role of teachers in the evaluation of technology and the role of edtech in educational research.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 24, Helpfulness 25, Authority 25

Total Score: 99%

Email: feedback@edsurge.com

The blog provides free courses and other professional development resources for technology leaders. Recent topics include the future of artificial intelligence and the use of social media in job searches.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 24, Helpfulness 24.5, Authority 25

Total Score: 98.5%

The site is full of inspiring stories about young women who have found success in the world of coding. You will find stories of young women who used coding to start businesses or to find hope in homelessness.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 24, Helpfulness 24, Authority 25

Total Score: 98%

Email: communications@girlswhocode.com

Renowned for his insightful tweets and retweets, Steve Anderson blogs about powerful ways to use technology in the classroom. Most recently, he posted about the power of TED talks and how to teach kids to evaluate news sources.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 24, Helpfulness 24.5, Authority 25

Total Score: 97.5%

Email: steven.anderson@web20classroom.org

Twitter: @web20classroom

Advice and practical suggestions for instructors of online courses. This blog will be helpful for administrators seeking meaningful professional development opportunities for staff.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 24, Helpfulness 24.5, Authority 25

Total Score: 97%

Twitter: @elearnindustry

Vicki Davis interweaves her practical suggestions for student engagement with profound reflections on what it means to be a teacher. For a shot of affirmation, this is the blog to visit.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 23, Helpfulness 23.9, Authority 25

Total Score: 96.9%
Twitter: @coolcatteacher
Eric Sheninger reflects on digital leadership and how it affects parental communication and student and faculty engagement. He connects trends in technology with changes in the larger culture.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 23, Helpfulness 23, Authority 25

Total Score: 96%

A recognized leader in educational technology, ISTE analyzes current trends in areas such as coding and Virtual Reality. Updated daily, the blog will keep you up-to-date on the changing world of edtech.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 23, Helpfulness 23, Authority 24.5

Total Score: 95.5%

9. Free Technology for Teachers.

Richard Byrne provides an array of resources, such as free apps and other tools, to help teachers find cost-effective solutions for introducing technology in the classroom.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 22, Helpfulness 22.9, Authority 24

Total Score: 93.9%

The sheer volume of resources available at this site will blow you away. It's a gold mine of new ideas and lesson plans.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 22, Helpfulness 22, Authority 24

Total Score: 93%

Email: contact@edudemic.com

A certified Google trainer, Alice Keeler will help you keep up with Google's constant expansions. She's exceptionally skilled in the use of Google Classroom.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 22, Helpfulness 22.9, Authority 24

Total Score: 92.9%

Author and award-winning educator Erin Klein provides practical strategies to increase student achievement and engagement with technology. She earns top marks for her engaging and relevant website.

Score: Activity 22, Originality 23, Helpfulness 22.9, Authority 24

Total Score: 92%

Nicholas Provenzano shares his ideas about being a connected educator. Recent articles outline how to create a meaningful Makerspace program.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 21, Helpfulness 21.5, Authority 23
Twitter: Email: OneNerdyTeacher@gmail.com @thenerdyteacher
Total Score: 91.9%
Email: kathy@kathyschrock.net
Educational technologist Kathy Schrock shares her discoveries and insights about educational technology and its impact in the classroom. Recent blog posts offer ideas for using Pokemon Go in the classroom and for creating 360° images with a cell phone.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 21, Helpfulness 21.5, Authority 23

Total Score: 90.5%

The bloggers at Tech & Learning ponder issues around technology as well as practical tips for making the most of Google Classroom and the integration of STEM. One of their recent offerings: an exploration of whether or not paper has become obsolete.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 21, Helpfulness 21.5, Authority 23

Total Score: 89.5%

Use this blog to follow professional development events and listen to podcasts about educational technology and leadership. Recent topics include school transformation and leadership development in the classroom.

Score: Activity 22, Originality 22, Helpfulness 22, Authority 23

Total Score: 89%
Email: dr.scott.mcleod@gmail.com
Email: info@gettingsmart.com

This blog addresses issues of social and ethical concern as they relate to the use of technology in the classroom. Frequent topics include the development of self-actualization and leadership.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 21, Helpfulness 21, Authority 22

Total Score: 88%

Tony Vincent's technology blog has been around since the 1990s, and it's still a treasure trove of advice and resources today. Recently he provides tips for teacher iPad use and formative assessment tools.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 20.5, Helpfulness 21, Authority 22

Total Score: 87.5%

Email: tony@learninginhand.com

Wesley Fryer documents his work with students and educators around the globe in the creative use of multimedia. Recently he offered a digital literacy challenge to create an information filter bot.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 20.5, Helpfulness 20.5, Authority 22

Total Score: 87%

Innovation consultant Lucy Gray curates resources, conferences, and professional development opportunities for innovative educators. Her posts include weekly roundups of new edtech resources.
Email: Twitter: @ClassTechTips info@classtechtips.com
Score: Activity 23, Originality 20, Helpfulness 21, Authority 22.5

Total Score: 86.5%

Edtech consultant Dr. Monica Burns provides a rundown of all the latest technology tips and tricks. Recently she demonstrated an app called Kinvolved for taking attendance, as well as the annotation of images using an iPad.

Score: Activity 22, Originality 20, Helpfulness 21.5, Authority 22.5

Total Score: 86%

Steve Wheeler, a professor of educational technology, explores our changing culture and the ways teachers must adapt to it. His blog features periodic interviews with education influencers.

Score: Activity 20, Originality 20, Helpfulness 22.5, Authority 23

Total Score: 85.5%

Lisa Nielsen's daily blog posts focus on ways to make education more relevant for students by embracing technology and channeling their passions. Recent topics include how to teach students to evaluate the accuracy of the news, and how to tell if your students are digital learners.

Score: Activity 20, Originality 19.5, Helpfulness 22.5, Authority 23

Total Score: 85%

Twitter: @InnovativeEdu

Med Kharbach shares free tutorials and reviews of apps and tools. Topics include how to convert PDFs to editable text and basic Google Classroom tips.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 18, Helpfulness 21, Authority 21.5

Total Score: 84.5%

A pioneer in the field of educational technology, Steve Hargadon offers timely suggestions for things like turning PCs into Chromebooks and even has the occasional fun giveaway. Articles focus on edtech as a vehicle to drive meaningful learning.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 17.5, Helpfulness 21, Authority 20.5

Total Score: 84%

Email: steve@hargadon.com

Twitter: @stevehargadon

Officially the blog for the Texas Computer Education Association, this website is crammed with great ideas and resources for educators everywhere. Most recently, it offers tips on photo editing and a roundup of leadership courses.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 17, Helpfulness 21.9, Authority 21

Total Score: 83.9%

Email: tceaoffice@tcea.org

This blog offers a candid exploration of different solutions for blended learning. Recent offerings explore the pros and cons of co-teaching.

Score: Activity 19, Originality 22, Helpfulness 20.5, Authority 22

Total Score: 83.5%

School administrator Liz Davis chronicles her adventures in leading technology innovation in her school and her region. Her recent posts tell a story of inspiring students to lead through an Edcamp program.

Score: Activity 18, Originality 22, Helpfulness 21, Authority 21.5

Total Score: 82%
Email: Twitter: @hackeducation mail@audreywatters.com
The official blog of the Consortium for School Networking presents occasional "Trusted Learning Environment" articles, in which they focus on the technology implementation efforts of member school districts. This will inspire you to think of ways you can make your own school a "Trusted Learning Environment."

Score: Activity 18, Originality 21.5, Helpfulness 20.5, Authority 21.5

Total Score: 81.5%

Email: membership@cosn.org
Email: jeff@lightupedu.com
This blog discusses how current policies and issues impact the future of education technology. Recent articles ponder the potential effects of the Trump presidency on edtech.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 18.5, Helpfulness 18.7, Authority 20

Total Score: 81.2%

A tech integration specialist presents his real-life trials and triumphs. He also shares ideas for unique Makerspace projects.

Score: Activity 17, Originality 18.5, Helpfulness 18.5, Authority 20

Total Score: 81%

Jeff Herb presents a potpourri of videos, podcasts, and articles about the effective use of technology tools. Recently he has shared strategies for using Ozobot, as well as tips for the use of online videos in the classroom.

Score: Activity 17, Originality 21.5, Helpfulness 21.5, Authority 20.5

Total Score: 80.5

Daily posts include thoughts on how to use technology to improve reading. Articles focus on edtech as a vehicle to drive meaningful learning.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 18.5, Helpfulness 19, Authority 18.5

Total Score: 80%

Twitter: @EmergingEdTech

This blog focuses on the integration of technology in grades 4-8. It offers tools to revamp organizational systems and deepen student connections.
Twitter: @tammyworcester
Score: Activity 24, Originality 18.5, Helpfulness 18.5, Authority 18.5

Total Score: 79.5%

Email: ask.middleweb@gmail.com

Australian e-learning manager Ryan Tracy blogs about e-learning as a route to deeper thinking. He frequently ponders "cognitive reality:" the influence and potential of Virtual and Augmented Reality.

Score: Activity 18, Originality 20.5, Helpfulness 20, Authority 20.5

Total Score: 79%

Tammy Worcester works independently as an instructional technology specialist and curates hundreds of tools, tips, and ideas on her website. She is especially savvy at tricks for using Google apps in unique ways in the classroom.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 18, Helpfulness 18, Authority 17.9

Total Score: 78.9%

Email: tammy@tammytang.com

Ramsay Musallam relates how he uses unique approaches to technology to make instruction more meaningful to students. Definitely a blog worth checking out.

Score: Activity 18, Originality 20, Helpfulness 20, Authority 20.5

Total Score: 78.5%

Digital learning specialist Kerry Gallagher shares tips for safe and ethical use of technology in the classroom. Recent provocative topics include the spread of fake news and the prevalence of "sexting" among teens.

Score: Activity 16, Originality 20, Helpfulness 21, Authority 21

Total Score: 78%

Email: kerryhawk02@yahoo.com
Email: mirtschin@gmail.com
Doug Levin blogs about the current legal and political scene, and how policy affects the availability of technology in the classroom. Most recently, he discussed possible FCC changes and how schools will be affected.

Score: Activity 15, Originality 20, Helpfulness 21, Authority 21
Twitter: @cyndidannerkuhn
Total Score: 77%

Email: dlevin@edtechstrategies.com

This blog offers regular updates to news about efforts to implement technology in public and private schools. Warnings about email scams and posts about mobile devices in schools will keep you up-to-date on issues affecting edtech.

Score: Activity 23, Originality18, Helpfulness 18, Authority 17.5

Total Score: 76.5%

Twitter: @centerdigitaled

An Australian Information Technology teacher shares her ideas and experiences around fostering global connections in the classroom. She is especially masterful in her use of Skype as a tool to teach about culture.

Score: Activity 18, Originality 20, Helpfulness 19, Authority 19

Total Score: 76%

A self-described "educational futurist," Cyndi Danner-Kuhn shares specific ideas and strategies for integrating technology into all aspects of learning. Most recently, she wrote about how to integrate Google apps into the Rigor Relevance framework.

Score: Activity 23, Originality 18, Helpfulness 17, Authority 17.5

Total Score: 75.5%

David Andrade shows teachers a variety of options to access free tools and resources for effective technology use in the classroom. Recently he shared a framework to help education leaders pilot new technology.

Score: Activity 23, Originality 18, Helpfulness 16.8, Authority 17.5
Email: glennw@essdack.org
Total Score: 75.3%

Just as its name implies, this is a weekly "roundup" of all the latest edtech news and developments. This blog is ideal simply for staying informed about breakthroughs and trends.

Score: Activity 24, Originality 17.5, Helpfulness 16.5, Authority 17.5

Total Score: 75%

Email: mike.carlin@gmail.com
Email: pamelashoemaker@wlcsd.org
Technology teacher Jacqui Murray provides lesson plans for technology integration and tips on practical matters such as backing up files and speeding up your computer. She also curates a variety of helpful resources.

Score: Activity 22, Originality 18, Helpfulness 17, Authority 17

Total Score: 74%

Email: askatechteacher@gmail.com

Twitter: @AskATechTeacher

Social studies teacher and technology guru Glenn Wiebe ponders the many ways in which technology can give students a deeper understanding of history. Among other things, he offers ideas to help students understand the interconnectedness of history and current events.

Score: Activity 25, Originality 17, Helpfulness 15.5, Authority 16

Total Score: 73.5%

Educational Technology Specialist Tim Stahmer reflects on the need for change and reform in public schools and suggests relevant literature.

Score: Activity 16, Originality 19, Helpfulness 20, Authority 18.5

Total Score: 72.5%

A technology instructional coach, Pam Shoemaker, blogs about the ways in which technology is changing the face of education. She will inspire you to take on challenges such as learning to code or becoming a Google trainer.

Score: Activity 21, Originality 19.5, Helpfulness 17, Authority 14.5

Total Score: 72%

Bethany Petty shares tips and ideas that she learned from the trenches of her own "flipped, blended and gamified classroom." Posts range from the philosophical (global collaboration) to the practical (creating "view only" folders in Google Drive).

Score: Activity 21, Originality 19, Helpfulness 17, Authority 14.5

Total Score: 71.5%

As you can see, there is no shortage of great edtech blogs to choose from! Subscribe to those that meet your needs best, and watch your knowledge of edtech expand in no time.

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The Tech Edvocate's List of 50 Must-Read K-12 EdTech Blogs

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Spread the love*The Tech Edvocate is pleased to produce its "Best of the Best" resource lists. These lists provide our readers with rankings for edtech related blogs, twitter accounts, influencers, products, etc.

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Listen to this post as a podcast (sponsored by Kiddom):

To celebrate the launch of my brand-new, fully redesigned Teacher's Guide to Tech, I'm hand-picking six ed tech tools that deserve more teachers' attention. These are not all brand-new tools, but I thought each one offered something pretty special for the classroom.

Check them out.
nearpod.com
Picture you and your students in class. Every one of you has an iPod or other tablet. You open up a PowerPoint presentation and it appears on every student's tablet, with you controlling the pacing of the slides from your tablet. So far, it already sounds like a pretty nice way to keep students more focused because they can all see it equally clearly.

But then imagine adding more interactivity: An open-ended question students can respond to right on their tablets. A poll. A quiz. A drawing activity where students sketch or diagram something. When students respond on their tablets, you see the results on your own.

Two new additions have taken Nearpod lessons to entirely new heights:

Nearpod 3D offers a library of over 100 stunning 3D objects that can be used in Nearpod lessons. Learn more.

Nearpod VR allows students to take virtual field trips to over 100 different locations, no headsets required! Learn more.

It's easy to build lessons on your own, using materials you've already created, or you can browse the Nearpod Market to purchase beautiful ready-to-use lessons created especially for this platform.
planboardapp.com
Part of Chalk.com's suite of productivity tools, Planboard makes lesson planning a breeze. Individual blocks of time show what you're doing on each day during each class period. Within each cell you can create a rich, dynamic lesson plan:

The full text editor allows you to create bulleted lists, add horizontal lines to break up sections, and format the text size and color to make it easy to find the information you need.

Add links to outside resources, embed videos, or attach files.

Add standards to a lesson with the click of a button. As you add standards and sub-standards to various lessons, Planboard keeps track of your progress, so you have a record of which standards still need to be covered.

After a lesson is created, you can easily move it to a different day or copy it to repeat on subsequent days or just reuse at a later date. Whole units can be planned and mapped out over a semester, and you can reuse semesters with just a few clicks.

And because Planboard is also available as a mobile app, you can make use of these handy tools anywhere, whenever it's convenient.
slack.com
Slack is a team messaging platform that is much more efficient and user-friendly than email for team communication.

Messaging takes place on Slack through channels, which are like separate chat rooms for different conversations. A channel can be public or private, making it flexible for all kinds of communication needs. And it's more than just messaging: Users can also attach files and hold side discussions about these files within the larger conversation.

This tool would be wonderful for staff communication, where channels could be created for different uses: one for the whole school, smaller channels for departments or grade-level teams, and even smaller ones for special projects.

Slack would also work for students working on group projects, participating in clubs, student government or sports teams, or staying in touch with their teacher or classmates about class assignments and due dates. And because so many workplaces are shifting away from email and toward platforms like Slack, getting students used to this type of environment will make it easy for them to transition to the workplace.
peergrade.io
Peer review is an integral part of many courses, and students learn a lot from evaluating the work of their peers. Unfortunately, setting up a peer review system has its challenges: It's not easy to teach students how to give each other effective feedback. It's also difficult to hide student identities, making truly unbiased feedback hard to accomplish. And if you have a large number of students, keeping track of who has given feedback to whom can be frustrating and time-consuming.

Peergrade takes care of a few of these issues. Originally created for use at universities, it's a platform where students can evaluate each other's work anonymously. After the teacher creates an assignment and a rubric, students submit their work. Next, Peergrade randomly distributes the assignments to different classmates for evaluation. Students give feedback to their classmates using the rubric set up by the teacher; they can add written comments as well as selecting options from the rubric. Finally, students can view the feedback given to them; they can rate the comments as helpful or not, and even flag problematic comments.

This would be an outstanding addition to any class where writing or project-based learning are core activities. Some teachers might want to use this tool as a step students take before "officially" submitting their work. Although Peergrade can't teach students how to give quality feedback, it definitely makes it easier to systematize the process. The quality control is still up to you.
newsela.com
Have you ever found an article that you wanted to share with students, only you knew the reading level was too difficult for some? What did you do? Did you just give it to some students, or try to find an easier article on the same subject to give to the remaining students?

With Newsela, this dilemma is a thing of the past. The site houses a big collection of current events articles from sources like the Washington Post and the Associated Press. For each article, the Newsela staff has adapted it for five different reading levels, allowing readers to simply select the level they want and read the same content written in language that's the best fit for them.

With a free account, teachers can create classes of students and assign specific articles to those students, or students can find articles on their own. All readers can use the annotations feature to take notes on the text, organize articles into their own personal text sets, and take the built-in quiz that goes with each article and get immediate feedback on how they did.
sketchboard.io
The first thing you'll notice about Sketchboard is that it actually looks like a sketch, as if someone drew it by hand. This makes it feel like you're working on paper, but better, because it's all saved in the cloud.

Sketchboard has a lot of the same features and functionality as other mind mapping tools: Users can collaborate on the same sketch, you can add unlimited items to a map, and individual parts can be moved around at will. But the items can take all kinds of shapes: squares, circles, computer screens, people; you have over 50 icons to choose from. If your idea can't be represented with one of the icons from the Sketchboard library, you can just switch to the freehand tool and draw it yourself. This makes your map a whole lot more visual, so your ideas become even clearer.

Another nice touch: Sketchboard is integrated with Google Drive, so you can open a sketch from right inside your Drive, then go back into it later and edit it. It's also integrated with Slack, so if you use that for group discussion, you can also use Sketchboard maps to enhance the collaboration.

Take a look at everything you can do by browsing the Sketchboard Gallery.

If you're not yet familiar with the Teacher's Guide to Tech, let me introduce you: It's my encyclopedia of educational technology, a 265-page PDF you can keep on your home computer, work computer, or any device that will read a PDF.

The whole purpose of the guide is to make it fast and easy for you to navigate the world of ed tech. Once you start using it, you won't believe how much you'll learn, or how FAST you'll learn it!

Where to Get It

Single-User Licenses:
If you just want a copy for yourself, you can get a copy atTeachers Pay Teachers or on Teachable.

Multi-User Licenses:
To get the guide for your team, school, or even district, you can save a lot by getting multi-user licenses. Although these are available onTeachers Pay Teachers, I am offering deeper discounts for multiple licenses on Teachable.
Purchase on Teachable Purchase on TpT

Learn something new every week.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll also get access to my members-only library of free downloadable resources, including my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading!

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Listen to this post as a podcast (sponsored by Kiddom): To celebrate the launch of my brand-new, fully redesigned Teacher's Guide to Tech , I'm hand-picking six ed tech tools that deserve more teachers' attention. These are not all brand-new tools, but I thought each one offered something pretty special for the classroom.

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In my own high school Spanish classes, this happened all the time. We talked in class. I wrote and drew notes on the board, creating a great summary of our discussion.

Guess what the students wanted to do at the end of class.
Yep, you guessed it: take a picture of the whiteboard.
I'm not opposed to that in general. If students are going to actually access my whiteboard notes if they have a copy of them on their phone, I say go for it.

However, let's think differently about this.
What if we didn't use the classroom whiteboard? What if the whiteboard was on everyone's digital devices?
There's a tool that lets teachers and students do that. It's called AWW (A Web Whiteboard), and it's at awwapp.com. AWW defines itself as ...

a touch-friendly online whiteboard app that lets you use your computer, tablet or smartphone to easily draw sketches, collaborate with others and share them with the world.

Sounds pretty cool. It's easy to use, and the ways to implement it in the classroom are vast. In this post, I will ...

show you the basic features of AWW,

give you some tips for using it, and

suggest some ways it can be implemented in the classroom.

Basic features of AWW

As mentioned earlier, AWW can be loaded in your web browser whether you're using a computer, Chromebook, tablet, smartphone - practically any Internet-ready device. Just navigate to awwapp.com.

(You can check out these basic features in the tutorial below ( click here to see it on YouTube), or read the description below the video.)

Once you're at awwapp.com, you can click the "Start drawing" button to get started or create an account/log in.

Once you've done that, you'll see the AWW whiteboard. Most of what you'll need is in the toolbar on the left side of the screen:

1. Change the color of drawings and text.

2. Change the size of drawings, text and the eraser.

3. Draw freehand with your mouse, touchpad or finger.

4. Erase what you've created. (Change the size of the eraser with #2.)

5. Draw an area you want to cut from the whiteboard.

6. Write text. (Change the size of text with #2.)

7. Insert an image. You can resize, rotate and move it before clicking the check button.

8. Undo your previous action.

9. Clear everything on the page.

10. Move the visible area on the whiteboard. (Note: The entirety of the whiteboard is much bigger than what you can see. You can use the hand to move to different parts of it.)

The collaboration happens when you click the share button. Choose the "Invite to board" option to bring others into your whiteboard space with:

Using that same share button, you can download your image as a PNG image file or share it on Facebook, Twitter or Reddit.

GAME CHANGER: AWW App integrates with Google Classroom. You can share AWW boards to create assignments. See more on connecting AWW App to your Google Classroom here.

Note: The whiteboards you create expire after two hours of inactivity. You can save permanent boards with a premium account. A teacher premium (as of publication of this post) account is $9 per month, which lets you save three permanent boards and unlocks advanced tools. A school account is $810 per year, which includes 10 teacher subscriptions.

Tips for using AWW

After playing around with AWW, here are some things I've found handy:

If you're using a computer, laptop or Chromebook without a touch screen, using a mouse (if possible) is much easier than using a touchpad. (Touchpads will work, but they lack the precision of a mouse.)

If multiple students are working on the same whiteboard, they can use the hand to move to different parts of the whiteboard so they're not working on top of each other.

Or, if you have multiple students in a whiteboard, they can help each other work on the same creation in the same part of the whiteboard.

If you're coloring in a part of a drawing, use the largest tip to color it faster.

When coloring, don't hold down (or click) too long. If you keep your finger clicked or held down for a long time and make a mistake, you can undo, but that undo will remove a lot of your work.

Change the size of the text by changing the size of your tip (#2 in the image above).

Collaborating digitally + visually in class

AWW can let students collaborate with each other and with others in the same digital space. Here are some ways you can use AWW in class. (Note: Many of these ideas will also work with other digital tools that allow for simultaneous collaboration, like Google Apps, Padlet, etc.)

1. Display a whiteboard on all students' devices. Instead of teaching traditionally from the front of the room, try teaching from your device. Instead of just working with a marker, using AWW to teach lets you draw with multiple colors, pull images onto the screen and type text. Plus, you can always save your whiteboard when you're done as an image file to keep it for later.

2. Tell stories. Students can work together to draw an image of a story or historical event they've studied to show what they know. They can even extend the activity to tell a different ending to the story/event or hypothesize what might have happened if certain things happened differently.

3. Diagram new ideas. Certain new ideas lend themselves well to a visual diagram, like a cell or conjugating a verb in a new language (see below). Students can create their own visual diagrams to show their understanding and to cement the new concept in their minds.

4. Show thinking with graphic organizers. Give students a graphic organizer template (i.e. Venn diagram, KWL, Frayer model). Have them draw it on their whiteboards or import a picture of one from the web. Then, they can work together to think through a new idea and fill in the graphic organizer.

5. Create charts. Turn numbers into reality. Have students take data from whatever they're studying (Census/demographic data, science lab data, student survey data) and create charts in a whiteboard. They can use the text feature to add their observations and reflections.

6. Create storyboards. Movie creators use this to show the flow of a new movie concept. Students can create storyboards on an AWW whiteboard, adding small drawings for different scenes of a story or retelling steps from something they've done. They can use the hand tool to move around the whiteboard to make use of all of the space.

7. Make digital posters. Because students can pull in images, AWW makes a great space to create impromptu digital posters. Have them insert images they find and add text captions under them. They can add text blocks to display what they know. When they're done, they can download the posters as image files.

8. Collaborate at a distance. Imagine taking any of the ideas above and bringing in other students, either locally or globally. A web whiteboard can be a great place for students to share their visual ideas with others and create something in tandem with colleagues from somewhere else.

9. Make an opinion meter. Share a whiteboard with the entire class and ask a question. Put two, three or four options for answers on a whiteboard. Then, encourage students to add their names to the whiteboard under the option they'd choose. It's an instant opinion meter, showing the pulse of the class.

10. Annotate an image. Bring in an image to a whiteboard and resize it to make it really big. Then, have students add text and draw on the image, highlighting important parts and showing concepts they've been learning in class. This goes well with historical photos, diagrams and historical artwork.
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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10 ways to collaborate digitally + visually in class

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In my own high school Spanish classes, this happened all the time. We talked in class. I wrote and drew notes on the board, creating a great summary of our discussion. Guess what the students wanted to do at the end of class. Yep, you guessed it: take a picture of the whiteboard.

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After seeing my browser in one of my tutorial videos or one of my presentations, people often ask me about the extensions that I have installed. Here are five Chrome extensions that teachers should try.

1. Nimbus screenshot - Rather than answering the same question dozens of times, create a screencast video to explain how to use a website. Or use the extension to make a flipped classroom video.

2. Bitly - Create a free Bitly account and you can create custom, shortened URLs for any webpage. Rather than relying on a randomly generated shortened URL, which is often hard for students to copy correctly, choose the characters that you want to appear in your shortened URL. This is a great way to direct students to specific webpages.

3. Hootsuite - Use Hootsuite to schedule updates to appear on your school or classroom Twitter and Facebook pages. Schedule your Tweets and Facebook posts to appear even when you're not online. Don't forget to repeat your Tweets because not everyone that follows you will see your Tweets the first time around.

4. Google Keep - This has been my preferred bookmarking and note-taking tool since Evernote essentially eliminated their free plan.

5. Share to Classroom - If your school uses G Suite for Education, then you need to try the Share to Classroom extension. With the Share to Classroom extension installed you will be able to push webpages to your students' devices by simply opening the extension and specifying which of your Google Classroom classes you want to receive the page. Students do not need to do anything because the page will automatically load in their web browsers. You can also have students push pages to you through Share to Classroom.

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After seeing my browser in one of my tutorial videos or one of my presentations, people often ask me about the extensions that I have installed. Here are five Chrome extensions that teachers should try. 1. Nimbus screenshot - Rather than answering the same question dozens of times, create a screencast video to explain how to use a website.

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Add Animated GIFs to your Google Presentations and Google Docs!

In case you haven't noticed, animated GIFs, those moving pictures that are almost like videos, are ruling the world. It's not enough anymore to just have a cool image in your presentation; you need to engage them with a little animation. Better yet, GIFs offer an excellent way to show step sets to help teachers and students learn new skills!

This post is Part 2 in a series on Google Presentations. Did you miss Part 1? How to Make Your Google Presentations Shine.
Note: This works in the entire Google Drive suite of apps! Just kept it to Docs and Slides for the purpose of titling this post. 😉
It's not hard to insert GIFs in Docs and Slides, but there is only one way to make them work. If you try to import, you will notice, they do not animate. Here's how to insert GIFs correctly:

Find a GIF

You can use the advanced search filter in Google images to find GIFs. Watch the animation below for an example.

1. Go to images.google.com and enter your search terms

2. Click on the "search tools" button

3. Under type, select "animated"

Copy the Image Address of the GIF

Locate the URL (or Image Address as it's called in Chrome) of the GIF you wish to use. Simply right-click to copy the image address as shown in the animation below. (Note: this will vary in other browsers, but you should be using Chrome anyway!)

Insert By URL in Docs, Slides, Sheets, Drawings, etc.

The only way to get the animation to work is to insert by URL.

1. Inside your document/slide, go to the Insert menu.

2. Select Image

3. Select By URL

4. Copy and paste the image address you copied above.

5. Click Select to insert the image.

6. Voila!

So take the time to spice up your presentations, documents and more with animated GIFs. It's a great way to engage students (and adults). Your animations can be for humor and other emotional responses, or they can be to show how-to complete tasks as I did above.

Note: I used the SnagIt Chrome extension to creates these animations, but the extension will be discontinued in August. What do you use to create GIFs?

This post is Part 2 in a series on Google Presentations. Did you miss Part 1? How to Make Your Google Presentations Shine.

© Shake Up Learning 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

18 Challenges for Teachers in 2018 FREE eBook!

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How to Insert Super Cool GIFs in Google Docs and Slides | Shake Up Learning

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PinterestAdd Animated GIFs to your Google Presentations and Google Docs! In case you haven't noticed, animated GIFs, those moving pictures that are almost like videos, are ruling the world. It's not enough anymore to just have a cool image in your presentation; you need to engage them with a little animation.

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85+ Awesome Apps that Integrate with Google Classroom

Check out this list of more than 85 Awesome Apps that Integrate with Google Classroom!

Did you know that Google Classroom plays well with others?

Yep! Google is known for making their applications open to working with third-party applications, and Google Classroom is no exception.

I have put together a list of 85+ Apps that Integrate with Google Classroom, making it even easier to create lessons and announcements with your favorite apps and resources.

Use this list to explore apps you may already be using, or find new ones that will allow you to share easily to Google Classroom.

Ready to find apps that make Google Classroom even better? Check out these 85+ Applications that Integrate with Google Classroom.
Listen to this article: Episode 115 Episode 53

Hundreds of education applications work with Google Classroom. These integrations save teachers and students time and make it seamless to share information between Classroom and their favorite apps.

Use this list to explore apps you may already be using, or find new ones that will allow you to share easily to Google Classroom.

Actively Learn works seamlessly with Google Classroom. Teachers can easily sync Classroom rosters to Actively Learn and sync Actively Learn assignments and grades back to Google Classroom.

Additio App is a productivity suite for teachers to stay organized and efficiently contact students and families. It offers many helpful tools, like a powerful gradebook and a robust lesson planner.

Teachers can link to or create new Classroom classes based on their Aeries classes, and import scores into the Aeries grade book.

With this integration, Classroom classes can automatically be created based on classes in Aladdin. Assignments and grades can also be synced between Aladdin and Classroom.

Alma is the first Student Information System to integrate directly with Google Classroom. With this integration, teachers can synchronize assignments and grades, and tech teams can batch create and manage Google Classroom classes across their schools and districts.

Educational K-12 programs and resources from the American Museum of Natural History. Use the Share to Classroom button to share relevant articles, curriculum, and resources.

Empower students to become savvy, safe digital citizens with this all-in-one classroom management, content filtering, and reporting solution.

ASSISTments is a forever free online math platform that makes it easy for teachers to assign online from their curriculum, and assess student progress in the classroom or remotely. When working on assignments within ASSISTments, students get immediate feedback as they go and teachers get actionable data, which they use to focus instructional time where students need the most support.

Automate the tasks you do outside of the classroom! Bakpax uses AI to grade assignments in seconds and convert content to digital. Save time and give instant feedback.

BookWidgets provides templates for interactive exercises. Teachers can choose between more than 40 different widgets or templates to engage students.

With BrainPOP, teachers can import their classes directly from Google Classroom into My BrainPOP. SSO-ready student accounts are automatically created when a teacher imports a class, allowing students to log into BrainPOP through the Google launcher menu.

A creation and presentation tool for students and educators to create interactive classroom content, allowing learners of all ages to visualize concepts and communicate creatively. Simply create your assignment, note, class reminder, activity, or project, and share it to the students in your Google Classroom.

CK-12 Foundation provides a library of free online textbooks, videos, exercises, flashcards, and real-world applications for over 5000 concepts from arithmetic to history.

With the Classcraft integration, teachers can pull rosters from Google Classroom and provision accounts in a single click. Teachers can give students points in the game for turning in assignments on time and convert their Classroom results into game points.

CodeHS is a comprehensive platform for helping schools teach computer science. We provide web-based curriculum, teacher tools and resources, and professional development.

CurrikiStudio is a rapid authoring tool that allows content creators to easily build interactive content for today's learners with no coding required.

Engage students in grades 6-12 with data in science and math including making publication-quality graphs of data in seconds and conduct animated hypothesis tests.

A collection of unique and engaging digital math activities, which are free for you and your students.

Discovery Education ignites student curiosity and inspires educators to reimagine learning with award-winning digital content and professional development.

DOGO Media is the leading online network empowering kids to engage with digital media in a fun, safe and social environment. Used by millions of students and teachers from around the world, our websites have quickly grown into a community of kids and educators engaging positively with current events, books, and movies.

Explore ready-to-go free lesson plans or adopt Drawp with the existing curriculum as students use voice, text, art, and proven bilingual scaffolds to interact with content.

Increase reading engagement, improve literacy skills, and track students' progress with Dreamscape's adaptive literacy platform.

Many teachers and even entire governments around the world already view Duolingo as the perfect blended learning companion for their language classrooms. Duolingo lessons give each student personalized feedback and practice, preparing them to get the most out of classroom instruction.

Teachers can import their class rosters from Google Classroom into Edcite, and then send Edcite assignments to their students in Classroom. When students access these assignments, they are automatically logged into their Edcite accounts using single sign-on.

Make any video your lesson. Pick a video, add your magical touch and track your students' understanding. With the EDpuzzle integration, teachers can automatically import all Classroom courses and students at sign up.

Syncing with Google Classroom creates class rosters in Edulastic and keeps them up to date. Teachers can then share Edulastic assessments right in students' Classroom feeds, allowing them to access the assignment without entering another password or navigating to the Edulastic site.

An innovative and personalized way to use your existing textbooks.

Thanks to this Google Classroom integration, teachers and admins can seamlessly manage licenses via Explain Everything Discover.

Teachers can create music notation and composition assignments in Google Classroom using Flat Education, the online music notation software. Teachers can synchronize existing Classroom rosters and design new music activities accessible to students from Classroom.

Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to create "grids" of short discussion-style questions that students respond to through recorded videos. Each grid is effectively a message board where teachers can pose a question and their students can post 90-second video responses that appear in a tiled "grid" display. Easily share links to Flipgrids and add them to assignments in Google Classroom.

Fluency Tutor is a web-based application that provides tools to enable students to practice reading aloud and to record pre-assigned passages called "assessments" or tests. Easily assign reading passages as assignments in Google Classroom.

Let teachers see live student responses and track student growth to standards.

Gale's research resources include unique online databases, library primary sources, newspaper digital archives, eBooks, courses and large print books.

Monitor students behavior on G Suite and Chrome devices with this security and audit tool.

GeoGebra's K-12+ STEM curriculum materials can be inserted into Google Classroom as tasks with just a few clicks. More than 700,000 materials (plus more added daily!) are available to meet the STEM needs of students and teachers.

GoGuardian Teacher allows teachers to mirror the classrooms they've set up in Classroom, syncing student enrollment, class period, and subject across platforms. Students and teachers can benefit even more from their Chromebooks with streamlined setup and use.

Help students build executive functioning skills with this one-stop shop for digital school work.

InsertLearning is a Chrome extension that lets you turn websites into interactive lessons. You can add sticky notes, links, videos, discussion questions, multiple choice questions and more! Then easily share your lesson with students in Google Classroom.(See also 4 Ways to Blend Learning with InsertLearning.)

With the Kami integration, teachers can distribute assignments, worksheets, and curriculum resources in PDF format for students to complete and easily turn in.

Khan Academy supports teachers with rigorous personalized learning tools and data-driven insights - all for free. Now, teachers can import their Google Classroom rosters into Khan Academy and directly assign Khan Academy content to their students through Classroom.

Ignite the next generation of content creators with this safe publishing platform that empowers students to share their voice.

Kodable teaches kids to code at home or at school with fun games and gives teachers a complete K-5 coding curriculum for the classroom.

Kurzweil3000.com delivers anytime, anywhere access to key reading supports for those individuals with the cognitive ability, but not the literacy skills, to learn from age appropriate content.

Keep students engaged and learning in a safe digital environment with LanSchool Air's simple classroom management software -available on Chromebooks, Mac, and Windows.

LearnZillion is a website that provides teachers with a library of interactive math and language arts lessons, videos, quizzes, and assignments for students. LearnZillion tracks student progress and achievement on the lessons and quizzes and reports the results to the teacher's dashboard for assessment.

Little SIS for Classroom auto-creates Google Classroom classes and auto-syncs class rosters from student information exports, making it easier for schools to adopt and maintain Google Classroom at scale.

Listenwise is an award-winning listening skills platform. We harness the power of listening to advance literacy and learning in all students. Our collection of podcasts and public radio keeps teaching connected to the real world and builds student listening skills at the same time.

Lucidpress is a web-based drag and drop publishing app, enabling anyone to create stunning content for print and digital.

Makers Empire 3D is designed to help K-8 teachers integrate 3D design and printing into their teaching practice effectively and efficiently.

This integration syncs Classroom with MathGames.com, a source for math games and skill practice online. Teachers can automatically create and sync math assignments within Classroom and track students' progress.

Mote is a FREE Chrome extension that allows you to leave voice notes and feedback on the web and in Google Classroom, and much more! ( Learn more about Mote.)

Shake Up Learning listeners can get an exclusive 3-month trial for Mote Unlimited by going to justmote.me/shakeuplearning.

Nearpod is an interactive presentation and assessment tool that can be used to amazing effect in the classroom. The app's concept is simple. A teacher can create presentations that can contain Quiz's, Polls, Videos, Images, Drawing-Boards, Web Content and so on.

Allows teachers and students to search 360,000+ educator-vetted, standards-aligned, open education resources-all in one place.

With the Google Classroom integration, teachers using Newsela can sign up, import classrooms, and share assignments directly with Google Classroom. This makes it faster and easier for teachers to get started using Newsela.

Explore, assign, and track K-12 lessons that integrate coding and STEAM into all subjects and get students working beyond screens-in school and at home.

Padlet is an online virtual "bulletin" board, where students and teachers can collaborate, reflect, share links and pictures, and more. (Share to Classroom available in Padlet Backpack version.)

PBS LearningMedia™ is your destination for direct access to thousands of classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted digital resources. PBS LearningMedia builds on the strength of public media and is designed to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Resources are aligned to Common Core and national standards and include videos and interactives, as well as audio, documents, and in-depth lesson plans. You can browse by standards, grade level, subject area, and special collections. You can also favorite and share resources with your class and colleagues. Best of all, PBS LearningMedia's basic service is free for PreK-12 educators.

With Pear Deck and Google Classroom, it's easy for teachers to connect all of the devices in the room together in an interactive lesson. There's no need for codes or URLs that take students so long to type!

A sophisticated similarity detection tool that helps both teachers and students to automate the writing assessment process. It catches synonyms, word rearrangements and word substitutions.

This integration makes it seamless for teachers to assign Quizizz games to their class. Students can join a Quizizz game with one click and all their performance data is sent back to Classroom.

Quizlet makes simple learning tools that let you study anything. Start learning today with flashcards, games and learning tools - all for free.

Wonderfully intuitive and easy-to-use, Read&Write for Google Chrome™ provides personalized support to make documents, web pages and common file types in Google Drive (including: Google Docs, PDF, ePub & Kes) more accessible. It's designed to help everyone engage with digital content in a way that suits his/her abilities and learning styles.

SalamanderSoft Active Directory will automatically create and maintain Google Classroom classes directly from your management system, including calendar timetables and guardians.

Integrates with Google Workspace for education to share content, assessments, and rosters with single sign-on access.

The award-winning, non-profit Science Buddies empowers K-12 students, parents, and teachers to quickly and easily find free project ideas and help in all areas of science from physics to food science and music to microbiology.

Schoolytics helps educators and administrators generate insights on student learning by connecting the dots across tools like Google Classroom, Meet, Drive, assessment data, and more.

Schoolrunner is a tool for data analysis that unites academic and cultural insights within one intuitive system. With this integration, teachers can load student grades from Classroom directly into Schoolrunner's grade book.

Screencastify Submit allows you to request videos from anyone (including your students). To use it, just create an assignment, share the link wherever, and watch the videos roll in to your Google Drive.

Leverage this MIS to G Suite tool to sync users and teaching groups, and timetables to Google Calendar. You can even manage Classrooms, reporting, and room booking.

Create music, podcasts, language exercises and much more in Soundtrap. With the Google Classroom integration, teachers can invite students, follow their progress and create assignments.

Transform teaching materials of speech or text into animated videos for effective learning that keeps students' attention longer.

Make writing projects more inspiring by enabling students to publish and narrate their own books, individually or with students around the world.

Studyo is a complete planner solution for schools, incorporating centralized timetables, workload management and integration with an LMS as well as Google Classroom to pull assignments. Students can also enter their own tasks or plan all steps of teacher-published tasks together.

Take your curriculum and put it to music to drive engagement, retention, and achievement in and out of the classroom.

Sutori is a collaborative presentation tool for the classroom for all age groups and content areas. It provides a canvas for assignments and lesson plans.

Sycamore syncs class rosters, assignments, attachments, and grades into the Sycamore gradebook to produce reports for teachers.

Use this powerful gradebook and school portal to get help with grades, assessments, attendance, lesson plans, skills and standards, and more using Administrator's Plus SIS.

Make learning fun with Tes Teach with Blendspace, the free and easy edtech tool teachers love for lessons, projects, presentations, and more. No planning needed. (Learn more: Create Interactive Lessons for Google Classroom.)

Today displays all of a student's Google Classroom Classwork and provides planning tools to decide when the student will accomplish next steps.

Tynker's Google Classroom integration streamlines the process of importing students to Tynker, assigning Tynker lessons, and viewing grades.

TypingClub is a typing and keyboarding website (and Chrome and mobile app) with lessons and incentives that help kids learn to touch-type (typing using all fingers, without looking at the keyboard).

Blend classroom lectures with interactive assignments, make distance learning more effective, or use Versal at the administrative level for student orientation and professional development.

IXL provides unlimited practice in more than 7000 topics, covering math, language arts, science, social studies, and Spanish. Interactive questions, awards, and certificates keep kids motivated as they master skills.

Unicheck is a plagiarism checker for Google Classroom. Reports compare student work with internet sources and databases and highlight similarities.

Save, organize and share content from across the web with Wakelet. Find out how Wakelet can transform the classroom for teachers and students.

WeVideo is the complete, feature-packed video editing and digital storytelling platform for today's classrooms. You can easily share your finished videos to Google Classroom with a click of a button.

Writable is a guided writing practice program for grades 3-12. With hundreds of customizable assignments, Writable helps teachers save time on instruction and feedback. The program works alongside Google Classroom/Docs to scaffold writing, deliver feedback, speed up grading, and monitor growth.

The Google Classroom Master Class

Learn all about the new updates to Google Classroom and take your skills to the next level.

This course will give you everything you need to get started using Google Classroom and best practices to help you make the most of this tool.

Perfect for beginner to intermediate skill levels! Consider this your video guide to Google Classroom!

Learn All About the Course

Who Should Join the Google Classroom Master Class?

Beginners can learn everything they need to get started.

Intermediate-level users can focus on learning more advanced features, tips and tricks, and best practices.

Go at your own pace.

Let's dig in! This class is for all skill levels!

What's Included in the Google Classroom Master Class?

Self-paced

Video-based lessons

6 BONUS Lessons

PDF Downloads

Supporting Resources

Best Practices and Tips

6 hours of professional learning credit

Purchase orders are accepted

Bulk license discounts

Get your whole team, campus, or district on board

© Shake Up Learning 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.
Click here to learn more and to ENROLL TODAY!

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85+ Awesome Apps that Integrate with Google Classroom

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Check out this list of over 85 Apps that Integrate with Google Classroom! Did you know that Google Classroom plays well with others? Yep! Google is known for making their applications open to working with third-party applications, and Google Classroom is no exception.

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Google Forms is a great tool for surveying others and collecting data from them. By using Forms in that way, it can save us tons of time.
It can save us even more time when we survey ourselves.
I can hear your response to that one ...
Wait, Matt ... survey ourselves? Have you gone crazy?
Let me explain with an example.

There was a time when I wanted to input grades in my gradebook quickly as I walked around the room checking student work. Our gradebook program just didn't have a good option for that.

So I created my own with Google Forms. Instead of using a Google Form for others to fill out, I used it for myself. I made a form with the following data fields:

... and on and on and on. I bookmarked the form on my iPad. When it was time to grade, I clicked on that bookmark, filled in the date and the assignment, and started logging grades.

The grades were saved automatically in a spreadsheet. It was easy to transfer them over to my gradebook afterward.
Afterward, I started thinking, "How else can I collect data from myself using Google Forms?"
And the logical follow-up question was, "How can my students use Google Forms to collect data from themselves?"
In this post, I'll show you ...

The simple steps to create a form for collecting data from yourself

Tips to create them quickly and make them efficient

Ideas of how you can use Forms to collect data from yourself

How to create a new form in 2 seconds

Creating a new Google Form isn't hard. But I've recently learned of a faster way to do it ...
http://forms.google.com/create
Enter this URL in a web browser and it automatically creates a fresh, new Google Form for you. No going to Drive and clicking the "New" button. No hassle. Just gets you started.

PS: This works with most Google file types. Some examples:

Docs: http://docs.google.com/create

Slides: http://slides.google.com/create

Sheets: http://sheets.google.com/create

Drawings: http://drawings.google.com/create

If you use your bookmarks bar in Google Chrome or create home screen shortcuts on an iPad or a tablet, you can add these URLs as bookmarks or shortcuts. That means one-click creation of a new Google file. Time and effort saved instantly.

Creating a form for yourself

If you aren't super familiar with creating Google Forms, they're not too hard to figure out. Start a new Google Form (see above). Then, use the circle "+" button in the top right of your screen to add new fields to the form. (If you're using an iPad, tablet or mobile device, that button may be at the bottom.)

A field could be a place to fill in a short answer, choose from multiple choices, choose the date, etc. You'll see all of the options when you click on the circle "+" button.

Just create the form out of the fields you'd like to include. It can be more advanced than that, but that's the gist of it.

The data is saved in the Google Form ("Responses" tab), but it can also be saved in a spreadsheet. (Click the "Responses" tab, then the little green spreadsheet icon.)

An example Google Form

I recently created a workout log. As a sort of New Year's resolution, I'm getting in the habit of working out several days a week. (I started typing that sentence by saying, "I'm trying to get in the habit ..." and changed it. The power of stating your goals as fact!)

I figured it would be really easy to do if I just had to click an icon on my phone, enter a couple items and click submit. I wouldn't need a paper log, so I could access it anywhere. And I'd be done in a matter of seconds.

Here's what my form looks like:

I used the "+" button (#4 in the image above) to add new fields. Some notes from this screenshot:

1. The date field makes it easy (and fast) to select from a calendar instead of typing it in.

2. This is a short answer field so I can type in an answer. (Pro tip: I used data validation to make sure that what I typed in was a number. Click the three dots in the bottom right corner of the text field, then choose data validation. In the dropdown box, I used: "number is a number." Sounds silly and redundant, but it works!)

3. This is a dropdown answer field. I just added all the possible options. (Note: Another way to save time in Google Forms: When you're done typing an option and want to skip down to a new line, just hit enter.)

4. This is where it all happens. The "+" button adds new questions and data fields to the form.

5. When you're done - or want to see what it looks like - click the eyeball icon to preview.

6. The settings button. There are lots of options here, but for our purposes (making forms to gather data from yourself), the two most useful are:

"edit after submit" to let you change your answer right after you submitted it (if you made a mistake)

"see summary charts and text responses" to see a chart of all of your responses after you've submitted something new

(Note: Depending on what you're trying to do, some of these options might not be that useful ... but in some instances, they're really nice!)

Google Forms creation tips

These are some ideas that will help if you're making forms to gather data from yourself. (Really, in any type of Google Form, these tips can be useful!)

1. Choose wisely. The dropdown menu, the multiple choice and the checkbox options are similar, but you'll want to use them in unique situations:

The dropdown menu is nice if you have LOTS of options and you don't want to take up lots of space on your form displaying them all. I used dropdowns in my workout log above to save space.

The multiple choice saves you clicks and time if you only have a few options. Instead of clicking on the dropdown and choosing an option, you can just choose your option. (One click instead of two.)

The checkbox option lets you choose multiple choices for one question (i.e. select three or four from a list of eight).

2. Required is your friend. There's an option at the bottom of a question/data field to make that question required. If an answer is crucial to have and you want to make sure that you don't accidentally forget to add it, make that question/data field required.

3. Get the right data with data validation. When you create a new question/data field, use the three dots in the bottom right corner of that field and choose data validation. This sets up a rule for data typed into that field. If the rule is broken (i.e. it must be an email address, it must be a number greater than zero), the form gives an error and you can't submit. This is an easy to way to prevent typos.

4. Shortcuts/bookmarks = game changers. When you create a button or bookmark to a form, you save yourself time exponentially over digging it out of your Drive. A few easy ways to create a button on your phone or a bookmark in your browser:

When you have the form open ...

Google Chrome: Click the star button on the right side of the address bar. Make sure you have your bookmarks bar turned on (laptop/Chromebook/desktop) and add it to your bookmarks bar. That puts a clickable button on your browser.

iPhone/iPad (Safari): Click the share button (looks like a box with an arrow coming out the top) and click "Add to Home Screen."

Android smartphone/tablet: In Chrome, click the three dots in the top right and click "Add to Home screen."

You can also create a bookmark/home screen button for the spreadsheet with all of the results if you want to pull that up quickly as well.

5. (PRO TIP) Prefilled links save you even more time!: What's faster than filling in a quick form to gather data? Having some of the questions/data fields already filled in for you.

These are called "prefilled links." Click on the three dots in the top right of the screen. Choose "Get prefilled link". Fill in the form the way you'd like to load it up every time. (i.e. If most students get a 10/10 on an assignment, you can prefill the form with all 10's and change any that aren't 10's.) When you're done, click submit. The form gives you a link you can use to load up that prefilled survey.

And yes, you can create a bookmark or home screen button to that prefilled link, too.

How to use forms to gather your own data in the classroom

Instead of giving you 20+ ways to use these forms in class, just ask yourself this question:
When do I write down data I need to hold onto? (Especially on a regular basis.)
Then create a form that gathers that very data. Pretty simple.

Here are some examples to help generate some ideas. Click the links above the screenshots to see the forms in action.
If you have ideas of your own - either theoretical you just thought of OR something you or students have actually tried - PLEASE let us know in the comments! My workout log (Yes, I know this isn't a classroom use for most people, but, again, it's an example to help you brainstorm) A meal log (to go along with the workout log) Student notes (used to write down feedback or documentation for particular students) Parent call log
Other ways this could be used include a textbook log (if you haven't ditched your textbooks yet!), saving random ideas that come to mind (like using sticky notes ... although Google Keep is a GREAT digital sticky note tool) or student reading logs, exercise logs or nutrition logs.

The blog post below has lots of other ways to use Google Forms in the classroom. They could inspire you with new ways to use Forms yourself:

20 practical ways to use Google Forms in class, school
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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Quick Google Forms time savers for teachers

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Google Forms is a great tool for surveying others and collecting data from them. By using Forms in that way, it can save us tons of time. It can save us even more time when we survey ourselves. I c...

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Virtual Reality in the Classroom - Part 2

*This post is sponsored by Samsung. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*

Virtual Reality has the power to transform the future of learning. By giving students an interactive, three-dimensional learning environment, we have the potential to reach learners in ways previously never conceived. For a closer look at the future of virtual reality in education, dive into this article from the Samsung Insights blog: Immersive Virtual Reality: The Next Frontier in Education. The article explores the growth of virtual reality and the implications in both K-12 and higher education.

Imagine for a moment immersing your students in the ultimate learning environment for your lesson...What does it look like? How can students interact with the environment? How can this environment better engage students and help them form a deeper understanding of the content? Imagine the possibilities of virtual learning environments and transporting your students to places they could never go before!
Did you miss Part 1 in this series? Getting Started with Virtual Reality and Google Expeditions
Part 3: How to Choose a Virtual Reality Device for Your Classroom
The Ultimate Google Cardboard and Expeditions Resource Guide
[Tweet "How to Use Virtual Reality and Google Expeditions in the Classroom #ARVRinEDU #edtech #googleedu"]

Playing around with VR, Google Cardboard, or another headset is easy on your own or sharing with a couple of students or friends, but how do we bring this to the masses-the entire classroom of students? This part is not so easy, but many are beginning to find ways to make it happen. Let's explore the application of virtual reality in the classroom.

The Impact of Virtual Reality on Education

Below is a great TEDx Talk by Alex Faaborg, a virtual reality designer for Google who talks about designing virtual reality for education.

How to Use Virtual Reality and Google Expeditions in the Classroom

As you begin to dip your toes (and your students') into the virtual reality waters, you will discover an ever-burgeoning supply of resources and videos to support your curriculum and learning goals. Let's first explore what Google Expeditions has to offer.

In case you missed Part 1 of this series, Google defines this product as, " Google Expeditions enable teachers to bring students on virtual trips to places like museums, underwater, and outer space. Expeditions are collections of linked virtual reality (VR) content and supporting materials that can be used alongside existing curriculum. These trips are collections of virtual reality panoramas - 360° panoramas and 3D images - annotated with details, points of interest, and questions that make them easy to integrate into curriculum already used in schools. Google is working with a number of partners, including: WNET, PBS, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the American Museum of Natural History, the Planetary Society, David Attenborough with production company Alchemy VR and many of the Google Cultural Institute museum partners to create custom educational content that spans the universe."

The video below will help you see the possibilities of Google Expeditions in the classroom, as we see it from the eye of a middle school student.

[Tweet "Reach learners in new ways with Virtual Reality and Google Expeditions @SamsungEdu"]

There are HUNDREDS of Google Expeditions now available and shared on this spreadsheet. Here you can discover all of the virtual field trips that are available, as well as additional lesson plans and materials that are available and crowd-sourced from other teachers. You can also share your own. So not only can you explore the globe with your students, but you can also take college tours (see also: Virtual Reality Tours Can Help Every Student Pick the Right College from the Samsung Insights blog), and explore career expeditions as well.

You can use the Google Expeditions app without Google Cardboard or any type of VR headset. It is not technically VR or immersive, but high definition 360 video exploration. This is not quite as engaging, but still a useful tool if you do not have access to a class set of devices and headsets. 360 videos can be shared by two or three students on one compatible device or part of a learning station.

Take the time to explore the spreadsheet of Expeditions to see if any of these expeditions fit well into your curriculum.

We will explore additional ways to use virtual reality beyond Google Expeditions later in this series. So stay tuned for even more resources.

Be Cautious with Their Young Eyes

When you open the Expeditions app on iOS or Android, you will first see the guidelines that you must review and accept. Google Expeditions is only for users older than age 7, and should not be used without adult supervision.

A Note About Age Restrictions: There are applications for VR at any grade level. However, most manufacturers do not recommend extended time with VR headsets for those under the age of 12-13.
Oculus Rift and Samsung's Gear VR headset have a 13+ age rating. Sony's PlayStation VR is not to be used by children under the age of 12. And though some do not specify an age limit, most encourage you to be cautious with children under 12. This is just like any device that requires your eyes to stay focused on something up close for extended periods of time. There's nothing inherent to virtual reality itself that has been found to be harmful. Remember to TAKE FREQUENT BREAKS when using VR with students. If you would like to learn more, check out this article from Digital Trends: Is VR Safe for Kids?

After accepting the Expeditions guidelines, you have the option to "learn more," which will take you to the Google Expeditions support page which was also shared in Part 1 of this series.

[Tweet "Remember to TAKE FREQUENT BREAKS when using VR with students @SamsungEdu"]

Be a Guide or Be An Explorer

Once you have identified an Expedition to integrate into your classroom, take the time to play and explore on your own so you know what to expect before trying it in the classroom. This could be a fun experiment during a department meeting!

After you have accepted the Google Expeditions guidelines, the app will prompt you to choose your role. You can choose to be the leader of an expedition (the teacher role) or be an explorer (the student role). Then you will confirm which Google account you wish to use. Next, the app will begin looking for "explorers" that are on your wifi. Although VR requires a smartphone device, they only need wifi access. The app is very user-friendly and will walk you through each step. As the leader, you can see where your explorers are in the expedition, as well as highlights and details that you can share with your students along the way. There are even guiding questions to help engage your students in the content.

For a great step-by-step guide, please visit Michael Fricano's awesome blog, Edtechnocation, and check out the awesome Expeditions Guide he created for teachers. (Thanks, Mike!)

Where you decide to go from here, is up to you. Will Google Expeditions enhance the learning in your classroom? Only you know the answer to that. It is definitely a great place to start.

Virtual Reality Resources for Teachers (and more coming soon!)

I have been curating VR resources, including those for Google Expeditions on a Pinterest Board, and a YouTube Playlist. I will share more resources in the coming posts in this series, but if you are ready for more, feel free to explore!

[pinterest-master]
In the next post in this series, we will look at moving beyond Google Expeditions. Stay tuned for more, and subscribe to Shake Up Learning to get all the updates! Did you miss Part 1 in this series? Getting Started with Virtual Reality and Google Expeditions
Part 3: How to Choose a Virtual Reality Device for Your Classroom
The Ultimate Google Cardboard and Expeditions Resource Guide
Want to Shake Things Up in Your School or District? Bring Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning to You!

Ready to shake things up in your school or at your event? Email me at Kasey[at]ShakeUpLearning.com, or submit this PD request form to bring Shake Up Learning to your 2017 event.
Below are just a few of the keynote presentations and workshops that I deliver across the globe:

Change is the New Black: Embrace the Digital Learning Revolution (keynote)

Geeking Out Over Google Classroom

How to Get Google Certified!

Transform the Learning with Google Expeditions and Virtual Reality

Interactive Learning with Google Drawings

G Suite for Administrators

Digital Differentiation with G Suite

and many more!

Testimonials

Here is what others have said about Kasey Bell's presentations:

" Thank YOU for an outstanding presentation this morning. I received so many wonderful comments about your keynote at our conference. These attendees didn't just say they "liked" it; they each offered a specific point from your presentation to share with me that impacted their thinking about "change" or the integration of technology & instruction. Now that's an effective presentation! " - Jane McKinney

" Great session. Loved the 'treasures' theme throughout. Great, quick overview of tools and classroom applications for Google Apps. " - Chad Kafka

" If you are attending a conference, follow these steps:
2. Find Kasey Bell. 3. Put all her sessions on your schedule!
You will learn so much and have a great time doing it! " - Stacy Menifee

" Best session I went to.....So much wonderful information and every bit of it useful! " - Luanne Rowland

© Shake Up Learning 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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How to Use Virtual Reality and Google Expeditions in the Classroom

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Virtual Reality in the Classroom - Part 2 *This post is sponsored by Samsung. All thoughts and opinions are my own.* Virtual Reality has the power to transform the future of learning. By giving students

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Help your children to become confident and safe digital citizens with our Internet Safety pack! Includes a wide range of eSafety teaching resources, interactive classroom activities and eye-catching display resources!

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Two of my students stared at me, and then at each other. Each held up a sheet of graph paper, but their graphs were different. And then, one of them asked the question I knew was coming.

"But, who is right?"

I looked at them and said, "You tell me."

The activity I had planned for that day involved showing a video of a man running around a baseball diamond in typical order: home, first, second, third, back to home. I gave the class some guidelines: independent variable was time, they chose the dependent variable, and they had to be able to explain their reasoning. There were things in that lesson that I expected to, and did, see that day. This disagreement between the two students wasn't one of them. They had chosen the same dependent variable-why were their graphs different, they asked?

In the world of personalized learning, it's no longer good enough to preach to students about how to solve problems, nor should teachers rely on complicated tech tools for instruction. Rather, it should be about allowing students to get there on their own-which requires a couple of key mindset changes, my fellow teachers.

Using Language Students Already Know to Teach Math

Traditionally, math education has been based on teaching students algorithms to explain how things work. Two plus two equals four because someone along the way showed us that this is true.

But a few years ago, I realized that as a math teacher, if my job is supposed to be to help students learn and develop the math skills they need after they leave my classroom, and ostensibly after they walk out of the doors of the school they attend, then my goal shouldn't be algorithms. Rather, my goal should relate to relationships that already exist, and the language that describes those relationships.

My classroom today is different from what it used to be even just three or four years ago. Trying to change the way students not just think about math-but also how they communicate about it-has challenged me in a way that I hadn't expected.

When I started teaching at Research Triangle High School, a STEM charter school, I found an opportunity for personalized learning that set me up to encourage more students to lean towards using language to describe mathematical relationships. The problem I've always had was that I can't expect all my students to come into my classroom knowing all the same algorithms and processes; traditional teaching doesn't always allow for me to address that effectively.

On the other hand, I do know that they'll come in being able to use some kind of language, and so we start there. When it comes to personalized learning, I spend less time talking at my students and more time talking to them, using the language they already have to help them develop the language of mathematics they need to know.

Take, for example, drawing lines. Almost all students know what a line is and how to draw one, but the struggle comes with how to describe a line mathematically and with precision. Thus, students come in knowing the words "slant" and "straight," and through conversation, eventually evolve to using words like "slope" and "linear function." By creating direct connections between what they already know (slant) and what they need to know (slope), they find that the latter is a much more precise and specific way to get at the concept they're trying to describe.

Letting Students Discuss and Determine Their Own Conclusions

Personalized learning in my classroom doesn't always take on a specific form, but it always takes on a specific purpose: to meet my students exactly where they are and to give them what they need. Even though they don't all start at the same place, as students develop their math knowledge and start to apply it in the classroom, we eventually-and organically-develop a common language with each other.

Then, we really start to talk. We talk about why something works or why it doesn't, we talk about why they think they're right or wrong, we talk about how to understand and describe relationships that already exist using math. But we talk. The students talk to each other and to me. We talk a lot. And when we do, my classroom is loud and boisterous and full of students pushing each other to understand better.

As I watch my students work through their own fear of an algorithm, they start to increase their own descriptive vocabulary. They gesture. Sometimes, they draw or stand up to try and describe what it is they're thinking. They're explaining it to each other, and in doing so, are developing both skills and mathematical knowledge.

While my class was once built around me telling students what algorithms they needed and why, it's now built around the students wanting to know what the algorithms are because they already know why as the result of our classroom conversations. In most cases they have some idea of what the algorithms are and sometimes the connection there is faster and much deeper. In some cases a recognition of the algorithm is all they have and the discovery of why happens mid-conversation. The students eventually learn that these algorithms give them another way to talk about something, a way that's more efficient, more elegant, and more purposeful than what it was they were using before and so they're linking those algorithms to the language they're already using. They all reach this point at different times. Some of them might not reach it this year and others will reach it more quickly.

But that's the purpose of personalized learning: for students to get there on their own, using what they already have and know.

And what was the end to that debate between those two students, you ask?

My students ended up getting into a pretty heated debate about who was right. But over time, their conversation slowly turned from general descriptive terms to math-specific descriptive terms. I listened to their exchange and at first heard words like, "Going this way," and "Turning over here ... ," and then eventually, "Distance directly from..." and "... comparing distance to time."

Both students were right about their graphs. One student had graphed distance as the base runner ran from base to base; the other had graphed distance from home plate directly to the base runner. In the end, though, I didn't have to tell those students who was right.

They figured it out together.

Angela Cooper (@angecooper) teaches math at Research Triangle High School, a STEM charter school in Durham, North Carolina.

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How Personalized Learning Starts with Less Teacher Talk, More Student Voice - EdSurge News

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Two of my students stared at me, and then at each other. Each held up a sheet of graph paper, but their graphs were different. And then, one of them asked the question I knew was coming. "But, who is right?" I looked at them and said, "You tell me."

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One of last week's most popular posts on FreeTech4Teachers.com was 3 Tips for Using YouTube Videos in Your Classroom. After I published that post a handful of people correctly pointed out that I should have added, " always preview the video before showing it to your class. " Along that same line, try to refrain from conducting YouTube searches in front of your class. That was a lesson that I learned the hard way in 2006. My other tips of using YouTube videos in your classroom are included below.

Remove distractions by using ViewPure.
ViewPure is a service that allows you to watch and project YouTube videos without seeing the related sidebar content typically seen on YouTube.com. ViewPure offers a free browser bookmarklet that you can use to clear the sidebar content while viewing a video on YouTube.

You can search for YouTube videos through the ViewPure website. When searching for videos through ViewPure you don't see sidebar content, you only see videos. You can choose to use strict filtering while searching through ViewPure.
To be clear, ViewPure is not a filter work-around if your school blocks YouTube and it is not a tool for downloading YouTube videos. (Downloading YouTube videos is a violation of the YouTube terms of service).
Show just a portion of a video by using TubeChop.
TubeChop gives you the ability to clip a section from any YouTube video and share it with others via a link or via an embed code added to your own blog or website. TubeChop lets you select a start time and an end time for an video that you share.

Create a playlist of videos.
Save yourself some classroom downtime by having a playlist of videos ready to go when you need them. You can create playlists directly in your YouTube account. A video on how to do that is embedded below.

Another way to create a playlist is to use Diigo. You can share videos within Diigo groups. Your students can watch the videos directly inside the Diigo group and don't have to go to YouTube.com to see the videos.

Here are this week's most popular posts on FreeTech4Teachers.com:
1. Three Helpful Google Docs Updates Released This Week
2. 3 Tips for Using YouTube Videos In Your Classroom
3. Literature Map Helps You Find Authors You Might Like
4. AC/DC and Other Lessons on Electricity
5. Cloudschool - Create & Distribute a Variety of Multimedia Courses
6. Three Google Slides Features New Users Often Ask About
7. PrepFactory Helps Students Prepare for the SAT & ACT

Professional Development Opportunities!
There will be two Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps this year. There will be one tailored to schools that have 1:1 Chromebook programs and one for everyone else. Both Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps will be held in July. You can learn more about them here. Discounted early registration is available now. The Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp has sold out every year for the last three years.
Would you like to have me speak at your school or conference?
Click here to learn about my professional development services.

Register for the Practical Ed Tech BYOD Camp by April 30th and you can save $50 off standard registration. Subscribers to the PracticalEdTech.com newsletter can save an additional $25 by entering the code "subscriber" at checkout.
Have a colleague or two who wants to join you? Special rates are available for two or more people registering from the same school district. Email me richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com for details.

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Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week - 4 Tips for Using YouTube Videos in Your Classroom

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One of last week's most popular posts on FreeTech4Teachers.com was 3 Tips for Using YouTube Videos in Your Classroom. After I published that post a handful of people correctly pointed out that I should have added, " always preview the video before showing it to your class.

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DIGITAL NOTEBOOK TEMPLATES FOR PAPERLESS CLASSROOMS AND GOOGLE DRIVE™

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PAPERLESS DIGITAL NOTEBOOK TEMPLATES FOR GOOGLE DRIVE™ Great for creating digital interactive notebooks. Totally a time saver! Get ready for your technology infused 21st-century classroom! Your common core lessons will be alive with enthusiasm when you bring digital notebooks to your

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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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February 7, 2017
After Google Docs poster, here is the one we promised to prepare for Google Sheets. Our purpose behind these visuals is to highlight basic features teachers (and students) need to know to make the best of Google Drive services in their teaching (and learning). These are especially helpful for novice users. All of the data we include are taken from guidelines provided in Google Drive Help Centre. Today's post features what we think are the 10 basic Google Sheets tips to help you make better spreadsheets. Again, feel free to download, print, share or distribute the visual the way you want provided you credit our blog as the source and keep it free of charge. You can also download it in PDF format from this link.

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10 Important Google Sheets Tips for Teachers

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February 7, 2017 After Google Docs poster, here is the one we promised to prepare for Google Sheets. Our purpose behind these visuals is to highlight basic features teachers (and students) need to know to make the best of Google Drive services in their teaching (and learning).

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With such a need for teaching and supporting media literacy within our libraries, classrooms and home, there are lots of great resources, lessons and project ideas being shared.

I brought them together on this Padlet and made it public so you can add your media literacy resources too!

You will find it here.

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Media Literacy Resources, Lessons and Project Ideas!

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With such a need for teaching and supporting media literacy within our libraries, classrooms and home, there are lots of great resources, lessons and project ideas being shared. I brought them together on this Padlet and made it public so you can add your media literacy resources too!

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SMARTePlans Digital Socratic Seminar Google Drive Resource

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Digital Socratic Seminar. Google Socratic Seminar. Conduct a Socratic Seminar in your 1:1 classroom with this digital, interactive Socratic Seminar Google Drive resource.SMARTePlans are digital, Google-based, interactive lessons for the technology-driven classroom.Why Choose SMARTePlans?- Create a d...

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Hi everyone! Today I thought I would start a new feature call "Classroom Technology in 3 Minutes or Less!" Today I am featuring the website Create A Graph. This website is great and fun for almost any grade level. I see it being utilized all year as a practice site so that those graphing skills remain fresh all the way through the spring! After watching the video, you will remember that I discussed using it for center practice work and having the students complete independently and print out the graph. You are then able to assess correctly and place students in small groups to remediate or enrich as needed.

Shown below the video is a template for some simple story problem cards (along with some blanks for you to customize). Print out on card stock, laminate, and keep the cards in a card file box next to the computer. As students head back for the week, they can randomly pick out a card, and show a graphical representation of the math scenario and print it out for your review.

Click Here for your Freebie

Using real-life situations in math is so important, and now you have an easy way to integrate it all together! Enjoy!

~Charity

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Classroom Tech in 3 Minutes or Less! | Organized Classroom

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Hi everyone! Today I thought I would start a new feature call "Classroom Technology in 3 Minutes or Less!" Today I am featuring the website Create A Graph. This website is great and fun for almost any grade level.