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To get started, I often peruse resources such as these to get ideas. I can then better choose a tool that meets my needs. These are some basic considerations I make when choosing a tool:

Is it free?

Do I need an account?

Do my students need an account? If yes, what kind of information does the service ask for?

Does it offer teacher accounts?

What are the Terms of Service? Can my students legally use the site?

Can my students' finished products be easily archived or shared?

Once I have considered these questions and find the tool to fit my criteria, I begin playing around with the tool to see what it does. This is the final test of a tool. Can I envision my students using the tool? Do I think it will meet the requirements of the learning goal? If yes, then I move forward with the next step?thinking through the management of the tool and what it will look like in the hands of my students. Some of the considerations I have while playing around with the tool are:

How long will it take my students to set up an account or log in?

What are the most vital workings of the tool that I will need to show my students to get them started?

How long will it take to produce a finished product?

How will my students hand in their work?

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/best-tech-tools

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EarthCam is the leading network of live streaming webcams from around the world. Bring the world into your classroom.
https://www.earthcam.com/

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EarthCam is the leading network of live streaming webcams for tourism and entertainment. Explore unique and interesting locations around the world with 4K streaming technology. EarthCam provides complete infrastructure services to manage, host and maintain live streaming video solutions for its consumers and corporate clients.

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SBS has lots of great resources for teachers aligned to the Australian Curriculum.
https://www.sbs.com.au/learn/

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Teacher resources based on SBS / NITV programs and cultural celebrations, aligned to the Australian Curriculum.

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Using Microsoft to support diverse learners 

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Using Microsoft to support diverse learners 

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In today's classroom, diversity is the new normal. Teachers don their superhero capes every day, going to extraordinary lengths to reach every one of their students, from creating inclusive curriculum in core subjects like reading, writing, and math, to enabling every student to have a voice. We're honouring their work, and highlighting some tools to help, in this month's episode of What's New in EDU.
At Microsoft Education, we work to support teachers in their mission to create an inclusive classroom for all students. Here are 10 ways our tools support learning across unique needs and abilities 1.Understand word meanings more easily and improve vocabulary
Seeing a word and attaching meaning to it involves a number of cognitive processes. We're trying to support students learning to make those connections with Picture Dictionary and Read Aloud in Immersive Reader. Select a word and Picture Dictionary will show you a descriptive image, even providing multiple images for words with more than one meaning. Read Aloud connects the text to students with visual impairments and helps with pronunciation practice. Providing visual and audio inputs gives all students, and especially students with dyslexia, the multi-sensory experiences they need to ingrain that word into their vocabulary.

Try this: Next time you give a vocabulary quiz, try providing the list of vocabulary words in OneNote. Show students that they can click Immersive Reader, then click the vocabulary word to see a picture of what the word means and have it read aloud.
2.Make it easier to focus on reading
With the media multitudes that surround students, it's not always easy to prevent distractions online and across devices. Immersive Reader's flexible text sizing, line focus, and background colour options make any document, notebook or web page focus friendly. This is particularly helpful for students with ADD and ADHD as well as for students with dyslexia.

Try this: Next time you assign reading to be done from a device, show students how to select Immersive Reader in OneNote, make the font bigger, and select line focus mode. Learn more about Learning Tools like Immersive Reader!

3.Improve pronunciation of longer words
We know a time-tested tactic is breaking up words into syllables and sounding them out. Now, students have a tool that will do so automatically, helping them to nail the pronunciation. Students can even check their pronunciation by selecting Read Aloud and seeing how close they were. This is particularly helpful for students with dyslexia who often have trouble matching letters to sounds.

Try this: Next time you assign reading to be done at home, instruct students to break the words into syllables in Immersive Reader or, if they can't remember how to pronounce them, to use Read Aloud.

4.Understand grammar and sentence structure more quickly
Understanding parts of speech is critical for developing reading fluency. Immersive Reader can help by labelling or highlighting nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. This supports all students, especially those with dyslexia, as they develop their ability to find patterns in words.

Try this: Next time you assign grammar practice, let students know they can check their work by selecting the Parts of Speech toggles in Immersive Reader.

5.Empower students to improve the quality of their writing
When you spend long-time writing, you want to make sure the final work is polished. Read Aloud in Immersive Reader allows you to have the document you've written read out loud, so you can more easily catch mistakes. Editor in Word helps students identify misspellings, provides synonyms for those misspelt words and offers the option to have the suggested spelling correction and synonyms read aloud. This all helps students with dysgraphia who have a hard time reviewing their own written work.

Try this: During the editing and revising process, encourage students to use Read Aloud to listen to their work read back to them. This will help them identify revisions and improve their writing!

6.Make it easier to start writing, and kick writer's block
We've all stared down an empty page in fear wondering how we're going to fill it with beautiful writing. With Dictate, in OneNote and Word, students can have their speech turned to on-screen text. This is especially helpful for students with dysgraphia who struggle with writing.

Try this: When students are having trouble getting started, encourage them to turn on Dictate, then brainstorm out loud. Just getting some ideas and words on the page will build momentum and help them conquer the blank page! Check out more ideas for utilizing Dictate in the classroom!

7.Break down the language barrier
Students can use all the same tools above when they learn their first language-and then when they learn a second language! With document and word translation in Immersive Reader, you could start with a text in Spanish and translate either individual words or the entire document into English. This is helpful for students with dyslexia, who are learning new languages, and ESL learners, who can match the words they know in their first language with their second language more easily than ever before using sounds, pictures and text.

Try this: When you assign passages for reading, put a copy in OneNote and show students they can translate either by word or document in Immersive Reader.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/education/
8.Help students read, understand steps, and show their work in math
Math is all about showing your thought process and the steps you took to get to the answer. Math Solver shows students the steps to solve a math problem, giving a clear model for how to show your work. The Immersive Reader can also read the math equation notation, as well as the step-by-step instructions in Math Solver, aloud for students. This helps students with dyscalculia break down math problems and learn what to do with similar problems next time.

Try this: If a student is having trouble with a particular type of problem, encourage them to use the Math Solver to insert the steps into their OneNote page. They can reference the steps as they work on similar problems, helping them follow the same solution process but applying it to new equations.

9.Present to students, parents, and your colleagues inclusively
When you give a presentation to students, parents, or other teachers (or when teaching students to present), make sure to turn on live captions and subtitles in PowerPoint. Live captions help students with hearing impairments, or those who speak other languages outside the classroom, to follow along with the presentation.

Meeting remotely? Connect with parents or colleagues online in a Teams meeting, and turn on live captions to make sure no one misses a moment, whether it's a global PLC meeting or an online parent conference.

Try this: Use PowerPoint live captions and subtitles during your next parent-teacher conference. Those rooms get packed, and parents will appreciate being able to see captions. They can even download the Microsoft Translator app and translate it into the language they use most often.

10.Build student empathy with Minecraft: Education Edition
Minecraft: Education Edition offers several features that support inclusive learning, from classroom multiplayer for better collaboration to customizable game settings including a text-to-speech user interface. As New York City special educator and STEM coach Sean Arnold writes in this EdSurge article, "chat features are enabled with speech-to-text functionality, which lets struggling readers and writers participate with the community at their own pace." Minecraft: Education Edition gives students with physical and intellectual disabilities the opportunity to be creative, explore without fear of failure, and feel a sense of autonomy in the classroom. Arnold explains, "my students were no longer confined to wheelchairs or leg braces; they could walk, create and even fly. It's a world where they are free from ridicule, free from their real-world struggles and free to create a world that they desire."

We know that better student outcomes, teacher time, school budgets, and IT staff workloads are top of mind for every school district and school leader. That's why we partnered with Forrester Consulting to do a total economic impact analysis around Microsoft assistive technologies for education. Informed by interviews across four Microsoft 365 (M365) districts using our accessibility tools, the findings pointed to three key benefits: improved student learning reduced cost and effort, and saved time and increased effectiveness.

image: https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/Key-Facts-and-Quotes.png

Read more at https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2019/05/10-ways-microsoft-tools-can-help-you-build-a-classroom-that-works-for-every-student/#DYHGXOsuiQmqGiD7.99

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10 ways Microsoft tools can help you build a classroom that works for every student - Pugh Computers Ltd

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In today's classroom, diversity is the new normal. Teachers don their superhero capes every day, going to extraordinary lengths to reach every one of their students, from creating inclusive curriculum in core subjects like reading, writing, and math, to enabling every student to have a voice.

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OvG07JMYYpPBy1QwYcoJcbdWx_XnCCOO25Z2BdwYy4c/edit?authkey=COX05IsF#slide=id.g1d6f96916_00

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And while you're there check out the games, videos and all the other awesome resources available to you :)

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Looking for a particular resource? Search by title or keyword:

Why are koala numbers dropping, and what can we do about it? Join Professor Tim Flannery as he investigates. Come and meet researchers working to understand the threats koalas face, and learn how Australian science and ingenuity is helping to save koalas.

This digibook explores the threat of bushfires, habitat destruction and climate change. We discover an exciting new vaccine being used in the fight against a deadly disease. We learn how Bluetooth technology is helping urban koalas, and we get up close and personal with a koala poo smoothie.

Acclaimed actor Claudia Karvan embarks on an extraordinary literary adventure to explore the stories that have shaped our nation's identity in Books That Made Us.

In a 'who's who' of Australian storytelling, Claudia meets some of our most beloved and brilliant writers, finds out their secrets, and experiences Australia through the place, its people and the power of our stories.

Features more than 60 resources to help teachers and students navigate media literacy basics, including news literacy.

We've got some great resources for this new series which investigates the role of money in Australia's democracy. Students will learn how lobbyists, political donations, community participation and political advertising impact our democracy.

The ABC Education website is being refreshed, which means that some content is currently not available. We apologise for any inconvenience. For further assistance, please visit the ABC Help Centre.

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Looking for a particular resource? Search by title or keyword: Why are koala numbers dropping, and what can we do about it? Join Professor Tim Flannery as he investigates. Come and meet researchers working to understand the threats koalas face, and learn how Australian science and ingenuity is helping to save koalas.

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Check out the below links to the latest updates from Microsoft for Education.

https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2020/01/our-vision-to-close-the-broadband-gap-improve-teacher-training-and-boost-accessibility-in-the-classroom/

BETT 2020 Wrap-ups
https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2020/01/live-from-bett-whats-new-in-edu-expanding-student-broadband-access-and-free-resources-to-boost-engagement-and-collaboration/

https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2020/01/live-from-bett-whats-new-in-edu-change-within-the-microsoft-educator-center-and-fostering-future-ready-skills-in-students/

https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2020/01/live-from-bett-whats-new-in-edu-fostering-an-accessible-inclusive-classroom-that-works-for-all-students/

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Microsoft Education Team | | Microsoft EDU

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Collection of content by Microsoft Education Team

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This is a great website that will super charge your lessons with innovative ICT pedagogy and using Google Apps in your teaching.

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Technology Integration Resources for Teachers

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Technology Integration in the Classroom Resources: This website and blog provide resources to help teachers learn how to integrate technology in the classroom, including Google and G Suite for Education, Google Classroom, Google Certifications for Educators, free lesson plans, templates, downloads, tips, tricks, cheat sheets, online professional learning courses for teachers, and much more!

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https://shakeuplearning.com/blog/its-not-about-google-part-1-suls044/

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The Dynamic Learning with Google Toolkit

The toolkit is a Google Sheet that aligns the Dynamic Learning Characteristics with classroom tasks and recommended Google tools.

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10 Exciting QR Code Classroom Activity Ideas

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10 Exciting QR Code Classroom Activity Ideas

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QR codes are a super fun way to engage your students and incorporate technology into your classroom. While not all schools are 1:1 with tablets, all of the activities below can be used during small group rotations with whatever number of tablets you might have access to.
Make your classroom buzz! Create a free Teach Starter account and download hundreds of time-saving resources. Find out more
QR Code Activity Ideas

For each of the activities below, you will need to:

1. Google "free QR code generator" to find a website to create your codes. We used http://goqr.me/

2. Install a free QR Code reader app onto the set of tablets. We use the "Quick Scan" app. It is available for free through the App Store for iPads, and is also free to download for Android.

Have students bring in clean boxes, containers, packets and any other items to create a classroom shop.

Download, print and laminate these awesome QR Code Price Tags.

Attach each tag to an item

Students scan the code to reveal an item's price.

You can also download this resource in an editable MS Word document so that you can create your own price tags.

Extension Activity

Provide students with a scenario and a budget for which they need to shop.
E.g. It is your Mum's birthday and you need to get food for her party. You have $25 to spend.

Create a table for students to record their "purchases" and track their total spend.

#2 Learning Pop-Up Spots

Generate QR codes that link to videos, websites or information sheets about the topic or theme.

Print poster-size codes to use in the centre of a display, or in a special location in the school.

#3 Trip Around the World

Generate QR codes that when scanned, provide clues about a certain location from around the world.

Place these around your classroom, or around the school.

Provide students with a map where they can plot their trip around the world as they work through each of the clues, finding the next location.

#4 Homework Helping Tips

Create QR codes that link to the specific strategies or information needed to support student learning.
For example, reading strategies, spelling strategies, or mathematics strategies.

Add the QR code to reading folders or homework sheets as an easy way for parents to access information they can use to help their child with their learning at home.

#5 Anatomy of Anything

Place QR codes on the different parts of a model (e.g. a skeleton, a simple machine or globe).

Provide students with a variety of definitions on cards or on a worksheet.

Students scan the QR codes to reveal the name of that part and match the name to the definitions.

#6 Make Your Own Scavenger Hunt

#7 Extension Activities Corner

Create a fast-finishers corner or display where QR codes reveal an extension activity.

Colour-coordinate the activities for each key learning area.
- For example, codes on green paper reveal numeracy activities, codes on blue paper reveal literacy activities.

#8 Live Worksheets

Make worksheets live by adding QR codes that take students off the page and onto a relevant website, interactive game or video.

#9 QR Code Cubes

Use a QR code generator and our 3D QR Code Activity Cube Template to create QR code cubes.

Each code reveals a different question or activity.

Create cubes for reflection questions, journal questions, brain break activities or fast-finisher tasks.

We've created these QR Code Comprehension Question cubes using the Super Six comprehension strategies!

#10 Digitial Student Work Presentations

Use a shared space on your school intranet or website where students can upload their completed digital works.

Generate a QR code for each student's work.

Create a display incorporating the codes, where students scan to reveal and view each others' digital works.
E.g. share book reviews (display a picture of the cover with a QR code that links to a book review).

Here are some favourites from our QR Code resource collection:

Have you used QR Codes in your classroom?
What has been your favourite moment of QR code-inspired student engagement?
Make your classroom buzz! Create a free Teach Starter account and download hundreds of time-saving resources. Find out more

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10 Exciting QR Code Classroom Activity Ideas | Teach Starter

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QR codes are a super fun way to engage your students and incorporate technology into your classroom. While not all schools are 1:1 with tablets, all of the activities below can be used during small group rotations with whatever number of tablets you might have access to. Make your classroom buzz!

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8 Ways I Make Learning Fun by Using QR Codes in The Classroom

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8 Ways I Make Learning Fun by Using QR Codes in The Classroom

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Ever since I started using QR codes with my fifth grade students, it's made learning a lot more fun and interactive in my classroom.

You've probably seen or used QR codes before. They're those jumbled little boxes that companies have been trying to use for years as a marketing tool. You just scan the image with your smartphone or tablet, and it acts like a shortcut, taking you directly to a website or page.

While they definitely have a place in the business world, I've found them to be a great addition in the educational world. I've seen them engage struggling students and add instructional differentiation and technology to the classroom. They are super easy to create using free QR code generators. (My favorite places is the QR Code Generator website.) Then I create codes that I can link to specific websites or even text-based messages or files I have saved in Google Drive. Here are my favorite ways to use QR codes. I hope some of these ideas will work in your classroom, too.

1. Create a Scavenger Hunt

Get the students up and moving by creating a scavenger hunt. Place questions around the room, or better yet, around the school. Add possible answers to the questions and accompany each answer choice with a QR code that sends students to a new location. Only the correct answer will send them to a new question. Incorrect answers offer a hint and send them back to the question they missed.

2. Offer Extra Practice for Early Finishers

You can make matching games where students can self-check using QR codes. Place half of a QR code on the question and the other half on the matching answer. If the student successfully matches them, the QR code will respond with whatever positive message you created. If the student doesn't have a match, there will be no message at all. Another idea is to use codes for flash cards-another great way to self-check.

3. Simplify Research Projects

Provide quick and easy links to articles, videos, web sites, or podcasts that you want your students to be able to access.

4. Try a New Twist on Gallery Walks

Use QR codes to share student work. Students or student groups can make a video or audio recording about what they have learned. They can also use them to describe a process or show how to solve a problem. Upload their recording to an Internet source like YouTube, Dropbox or Google Drive. Link a QR code to the recording to make sharing their work with the rest of the class a snap.

5. Provide Support to S truggling Readers

Make audio recordings of material you need students to read and upload the recordings to your Google Drive or Dropbox. Link a QR code to the web address for the file and have the QR codes available for students who need a little extra help when reading content area material.

6. Add Pizazz to Your Word Wall

Make a video of your students acting out a new vocabulary word. Upload the video to your Google Drive or Dropbox and link the video to a QR code. Then add the QR code to the word on your word wall. Your students will love watching themselves and won't even realize how much they are practicing new words!

7. Give Tutorial Help for Homework

Add a QR code to homework assignments. Students who are struggling or who get stuck can watch a linked video tutorial that you have made that helps them recall what they learned during class.

8. New Take on Book Reports

Make video or audio recordings of students reviewing a library book. Link the recording to a QR code and attach it to the spine of the book. Students will be eager to check out what their friends think about books in the library.

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8 Ways I Make Learning Fun by Using QR Codes in the Classroom

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Ever since I started using QR codes with my fifth grade students, it's made learning a lot more fun and interactive in my classroom. You've probably seen or used QR codes before. They're those jumbled little boxes that companies have been trying to use for years as a marketing tool.

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10 easy ways to integrate Tech in your class

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10 easy ways to integrate Tech in your class

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eSafety Commissioner: https://www.esafety.gov.au/education-resources/classroom-resources

Digital Technologies Hub: http://www.digitaltechnologieshub.edu.au/students/cybersafetyhttps://www.digitaltechnologieshub.edu.au/search#/site-search?pageNumber=1&keyword=cyber%20safety

eSmart Schools: https://www.esmart.org.au/esmart-schools/resources/

Think u Know: http://thinkuknow.org.au/home

Cyber Strong Schools:http://friendlyschools.com.au/cyberstrong

Cyber Safety - An Interactive Guide To Staying Safe On The Internet https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/cyber-safety/

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Game based learning
Game-based learning involves students using game development concepts and software to create their own games. Game-based activities are highly engaging and motivating for students and, when embedded within the curriculum, can be a highly effective way for students to learn. When students create games, they have the opportunity to become involved with authentic collaborative projects that enhance their problem-solving, communication and teamwork skills.
https://www.digitaltechnologieshub.edu.au/teachers/topics/game-based-learning

Gamification
Gamification is the idea of adding game elements to a nongame situation. Corporate reward programs are a good example. They reward users for certain behaviours. Starbucks has done a fine job of getting me to spend more money through their rewards program. It’s not the most sophisticated form of gamification, but I am rewarded for making purchases and can earn extra levels by earning stars based on the program structure. Programs like this have added a scoring game mechanic to commerce.

http://inservice.ascd.org/the-difference-between-gamification-and-game-based-learning/

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Find out why digital literacy is so important now and in the future.

Articles

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/14/dont-believe-world-bank-robots-inequality-growth

https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/world-development-report-2019-changing-nature-work-finally-out-officially-0

https://www.forbes.com/sites/louisefron/2018/10/14/three-future-workplace-realities-you-must-be-prepared-for/#7b8274d3500e

Reports

https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/deag_final_report.pdf

http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2019

https://www.oecd.org/education/2030/E2030%20Position%20Paper%20(05.04.2018).pdf

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Screen capture software
Mac
Quicktime(installed)
Editing - iMovie (installed)

Windows -
Camstudio, https://camstudio.org/(free)

Chrome extensions –
Add to your Chrome browser
•Screencastify(https://www.screencastify.com/products/screen-recorder/) saves the video to Google Drive and then embed into the GSite,
•Loom (https://www.useloom.com/) can Embed the video or create a link to it to share on your Google site your Google Site.

Suggestions for your webinar
Write out what you want to say
◦Write an outline to get all your ideas in coherent sequence
◦For the video recording either have:
◦Dot points
◦Full script

Use a Teleprompter
◦You can use a teleprompter like on the news to narrate your webinar. ◦Use an online prompter like CuePrompter: https://www.cueprompter.com/(browser–based)
◦For the iPad -Teleprompter LiteiOS app https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/teleprompter-lite/id941620509?mt=8

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Create a Website
◦Google Site https://sites.google.com/  Build internal project hubs, team sites, public-facing websites, and more—all without designer, programmer, or IT help.
◦Wordpress  https://wordpress.com/
◦Weebly  https://www.weebly.com/au
◦Wix  https://www.wix.com/

Make an online repository
◦Microsoft OneNote;
◦Google apps –Doc, Slides; Keep,Drive;
◦Hyperdoc(Google Doc, Office 365 Word)
https://hyperdocs.co /

Resources:

https ://hyperdocs.co/about_ hyperdocs

https ://www.hyperdocs.co/samples

https://youtu.be/ d7zXqK9e5y4

https://youtu.be/ jfzD9BQp1G4

◦Evernote https://evernote.com

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Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality for critical thinking

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Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality for critical thinking

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Google Expeditions https://edu.google.com/expeditions/#about

Watch: https://youtu.be/mlYJdZeA9w4

Watch: https://youtu.be/3MQ9yG_QfDA

How to: https://support.google.com/edu/expeditions/answer/7375176?hl=en&ref_topic=6334250

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Video and Image apps for critical thinking

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Video and Image apps for critical thinking

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Edpuzzle (https://edpuzzle.com/ ) - quizzing embedded in watching a video

Videoant (https://ant.umn.edu/ ) - students annotate videos

ThingLink - ( https://www.thinglink.com / ) - images come alive by putting notes, interactive links, another images and even YouTube videos on top of them

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Webquests - Zunal (http://zunal.com/ )- web-based software for creating WebQuests.

Google Form w Add on (Form Publisher),

Form Publisher resources

Video https://youtu.be/lf0PRd0CMdk

Websites: https://mrblackwelder.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/giving-students-feedback-using-form-publisher/

https://sites.google.com/site/scriptsexamples/available-web-apps/form-publisher

https://player.fm/series/google-teacher-tribe-podcast/doing-more-with-google-forms-gtt049 Listen from 14:17mins for Form Publisher discussion

Interactive PDF (Watch this for how to make an interactive PDF - https://youtu.be/PgRFm_f70LA )

Nearpod ( https://nearpod.com/)

Padlet (https://padlet.com/)

HyperDocs  https://hyperdocs.co /

Resources:

https ://hyperdocs.co/about_ hyperdocs

https ://www.hyperdocs.co/samples

https://youtu.be/ d7zXqK9e5y4

https://youtu.be/ jfzD9BQp1G4

NowComment https://nowcomment.com/ - NowComment makes it easy to have rich, engaging discussions of online documents no matter how large (or small) your class or collaboration group.

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QUANDARY - ethics game teaches students to make tough decisions  https://www.quandarygame.org/play

SPENT  - Provocative, first-person look at poverty builds empathy

http://playspent.org/html/

The Republia Times - editorial sim game that exposes the business of bias in media

http://dukope.com/play.php?g=trt

Stop Disasters! – disaster simulation game

www.stopdisastersgame.org

More games with meaning - http ://www.gamesforchange.org/games /

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Icons

◦The Noun Project for free icons https://thenounproject.com / (from last week)

Free photos

◦Unsplash - https://unsplash.com /

◦Shutterstock - https://www.shutterstock.com /

Music

◦Youtube Music free – Audio Library -  https:// www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music

◦Bensound - https://www.bensound.com /

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PowerPoint/Keynote

Prezi  https://prezi.com/
the presentation software that uses motion, zoom, and spatial relationships to bring your ideas to life and make you a great presenter.

Google Slides  https://www.google.com/slides/about/
Create a new presentation and edit it with others at the same time — from your computer, phone or tablet.

Microsoft Sway https://sway.office.com/  Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more. Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, ...

Adobe Spark (Page, Post, Video) https://spark.adobe.com/

Show Me!, (tablet app) https://www.showme.com/
ShowMe is the easiest way to create & share lessons on your iPad, Android tablet or Chromebook.

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Scratch/Scratch Jnr https://scratch.mit.edu /

MicroBit Coding (Online)- https://microbit.org/code/ Let’s code

MIT App Inventor - http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/

Thunkable – Create apps – https://thunkable.com/#/

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Youtube VR  https://vr.youtube.com

360 Cities  https://www.360cities.net/

Getty Images 360 https://www.gettyimages.com.au/photos/360-degree-view?sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=360%20degree%20view

Kuula https://kuula.co/

Airpano http://www.airpano.com/

National Geographic 360° Videos

HistoryView VR https://historyview.org/ - HistoryView VR offers free virtual reality tours of many national and international historic sites

MYO
Story Spheres www.storyspheres.com
Google VR Tour Creator ( https ://vr.google.com/tourcreator /)

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PowToon https://www.powtoon.com /

Plotagon https://plotagon.com /

Pixton  https://www.pixton.com /

Storyboard Creator www.storyboardthat.com

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Canva https://www.canva.com/en_au/

Adobe Spark (Post, Page and Video) https://spark.adobe.com/

Editor Pixlr https://pixlr.com/editor/

Noun Project for icons https://thenounproject.com/

Piktochart https://piktochart.com /

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Use Microsoft 365 in the classroom to engage students with virtual learning, tools and resources that place everyone at the front of the class. From STEM majors to humanities teachers there's something for everyone in Microsoft 365. Learn more about Office 365: https://products.office.com/en-us/home

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Use Microsoft 365 in the classroom to engage students with virtual learning, tools and resources that place everyone at the front of the class. From STEM maj...

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Using Office 365 within an Education playlist

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Using Office 365 within an Education playlist

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A playlist of how you can use the Office 365 suite in your teaching.

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Using Microsoft Office 365 for Schools - A Teachers Guide - YouTube

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Using Office 365 within an Education setting. Setting up class groups in Microsoft Teams, the Assignment tool for setting homework in Microsoft Teams, ShareP...

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Check out their website with all the Microsoft for education training that you will need to make your lessons super engaging

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Educator Center Overview - Microsoft Learn Educator Center

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Microsoft Learn for Educators takes the best of Microsoft Learn online learning paths and helps you to bring instructor-led training materials from Microsoft into your courses. This program provides members with access to Microsoft ready-to-teach curriculum and teaching materials aligned to industry-recognized Microsoft Certifications.

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EduBlogs [free] https://edublogs.org
KidBlog [paid] https://kidblog.org/home/

Vlogs – use the camera app on their mobile device (iPad, smartphone) and collate in an app like iMovie (other similar video editing app)

Flipgrid https://info.flipgrid.com/
Flipgrid is simple. Educators spark discussions by posting Topics to a classroom, school, professional learning community, or public Grid. Students record, upload, view, react, and respond to each other through short videos. Flipgrid is video the way students use video ... social, engaging and fun!

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We express ourselves in different ways. On Flip, you can use our simple and fun built-in camera to record your thoughts, add effects and share within your Flip group as video, audio only or text in your web browser or mobile app.

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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Video

Screencastify https://www.screencastify.com/education

Shotcut https://www.shotcut.org

Portfolios

Presentation apps -PowerPoint, Google Slides, Interactive PDFs (Word->PDF with embedded links)

Seesaw https://web.seesaw.me/

Google Site https://sites.google.com/

Book Creator https://bookcreator.com/
Padlet  https://padlet.com

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Diagnostic and Formative Assessment Tools

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Diagnostic and Formative Assessment Tools

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Plickers - https://www.plickers.com/

https://youtu.be/-uxhlEkQpwY

Quizlet - https://quizlet.com/

https://youtu.be/7oJk0IBynoU

Quizizz - https://quizizz.com/

How to make a Quizizz https://youtu.be/-QH-Ch_3g0A

How to play https://youtu.be/ldFMh6kfmzs

Kahoot - https://kahoot.com/

https://youtu.be/PlXpKHH5kh0

What's a Blind Kahoot! https://youtu.be/KwGE758uWuc

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Apps for every aspect of SAMR and scaffolding

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Free Educational Technology for Teachers

Do you support Free Technology for Teachers? If Yes, I highly encourage you to share this Free Educational Technology Resource with fellow teachers interested in implementing Free Technology in Classroom.

I am a great supporter of Free Educational Technology. This is why I created a list of 321 Free Tools for Teachers separated in the following 18 categories:

19 Free Tools To Create Infographics For Teachers

19 Free Text To Speech Tools For Teachers

21 Free Digital Storytelling Tools For Teachers

15 Free Podcast Tools For Teachers

28 Free Survey, Polls, and Quizzes Tools For Teachers

17 Free Screen Capturing Tools For Teachers

30 Free Social Bookmarking Tools For Teachers

14 Online Bibliography and Citation Tools For Teachers

13 Free Sticky Notes Tools For Teachers

30 Free Photo and Image Editing Tools For Teachers

17 Free Testing and Quizzing Tool For Teachers

15 Free Web Conferencing Tools For Teachers

15 Free Authoring Tools For Teachers

5 Free Annotation Tools For Teachers

8 Free Video Tools For Teachers

6 Free PDF Tools For Teachers

34 Sites To Download Royalty Free and Creative Commons Music For Teachers

17 Free Stock Photos Sites For Teachers

19 Free Tools To Create Infographics For Teachers

1. amCharts Visual Editor This editor allows you to use amCharts as a web service. This means that all you need to do is to configure the chart and paste the generated HTML code to your HTML page.

2. ChartsBinCreate your own interactive map. It's free for now.

3. DipityCreate an interactive, visually engaging timeline in minutes. Use dynamic visualization tools to display photos, videos, news and blogs in chronological order.

4. Easel.lyCreate and share visual ideas online. Vhemes are visual themes. Drag and drop a vheme onto your canvas for easy creation of your visual idea!

5. GapminderGapminder is used in classrooms around the world to build a fact-based world view.

6. GliffyGliffy.com is a free web-based diagram editor. Create and share flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans, user interface designs and other drawings online.

7. Google Chart ToolsProvides several tools for making data more comprehensible. Special URLs can be used to embed graph and chart images in users' own web.

8. Hohli Charts Online Charts Builder

9. infogr.am Create infographics and interactive online charts. It's free and super-easy! Follow other users and discover amazing data stories!

10. Inkscape An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

11. Lucidchart With Lucidchart you can create flowcharts, org charts, mind maps, concept maps and many types of helpful visual communication. Lucidchart is completely free for students and teachers (no strings attached).

12. PiktochartPiktochart- Make Information Beautiful. Create infographics. Engaging presentation app.

13. PixlrWelcome to the most popular online photo editor in the world!

14. Stat PlanetStatPlanet (formerly StatPlanet Map Maker) is free, award-winning software for creating interactive maps which are fully customizable. In addition to maps, the software also has the option of including interactive graphs and charts to create feature-rich infographics.

15. Tableau PublicTableau Public is a free tool that brings data to life. Easy to use. Spectacularly powerful. Data In. Brilliance Out.

16. VenngageVenngage is built for people who work with data. From analysts who want to communicate their data better, to the executives who want to understand insights faster and everyone else who uses data to make their decisions, Venngage has been made to make insights easier.

17. visual.lyLike infographics and data visualization? Visual.ly is the world's largest community of infographics and data visualization. Come explore, share, and create.

18. What About Me?Create an infographic of your digital life and become inspired by the people you know, the things you see, and the experiences you have online.

19. WordleWordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

19 Free Text To Speech Tools For Teachers

1. AnnouncifyListen to your web. After Announcify conquered Android™ phones, it's now here to announcify your life at Google Chrome. Announcify reads out loud every website you want. For example, if you're too tired but still need to study one more Wikipedia entry, Announcify can help your tired eyes relax.

2. BalabolkaBalabolka is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) program. All computer voices installed on your system are available to Balabolka. The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV, MP3, MP4, OGG or WMA file. The program can read the clipboard content, view the text from AZW, CHM, DjVu, DOC, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, MOBI, ODT, PRC, PDF and RTF files, customize font and background color, control reading from the system tray or by the global hotkeys.

3. Chrome SpeakChrome Speak (App Version), select the text and right-click to speak with offline tts engine, TTS (text to speech). Chrome speak provides native support for speech on Windows (using SAPI 5), Mac OS X, and Chrome OS, using speech synthesis capabilities provided by the operating system. On all platforms, the user can install extensions that register themselves as alternative speech engines.

4. DSpeechDSpeech is a TTS (Text To Speech) program with functionality of ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) integrated. It is able to read aloud the written text and choose the sentences to be pronounced based upon the vocal answers of the user. It is specifically designed to quickly and directly provide the functions and improved practical usefulness that are requested by this kind of program. In the meantime, the evasiveness and resource consumption is minimal.

5. FoxVoxFoxVox will speak any text you highlight in a web page. FoxVox can also create audiobooks in mp3, ogg, and wav formats. You can now easily turn your blogs and articles into podcasts.

6. Free Natural ReaderIt can convert any written text such as Microsoft Word, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails into spoken words.

7. OdiogoOdiogo's media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device.

8. PediaPhonLearning during jogging and driving! E-learning and m-learning with MP3 players and mobile phones! A podcast and a winamp play list will be generated too. MP3 files, play lists and podcast automatically generated from Wikipedia! Let your computer read out the Wikipedia for you!

9. PowerTalkPowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. You just download and install PowerTalk and while you open and run the presentation as usual it speaks the text on your slides. The advantage over other generic 'Text To Speech' programs is that PowerTalk is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images.

10. QR voiceQR Code allows users to converts text-to-speech, generates QR Code for speech URL and Simplifies share text-to-speech files.

11. Select and SpeakSelect and Speak uses iSpeech's human sounding text to speech (TTS) to let you select text from almost any website and make it talk.

12. SpeakingFoxConverts text to audible speech on Mac OS X.

13. SpeakIt!Select text you want to read and listen to it. SpeakIt converts text into speech so you no longer need to read. SpeakIt reads selected text using Text-to-Speech technology with language auto-detection. It can read text in more than 50 languages.

14. SpokenTextSpokenText lets you easily convert text into speech. Record (English, French, Spanish or German) PDF, Word, plain text, PowerPoint files, and web pages, and convert them to speech automatically. Download your recordings as .mp3 or .m4b (Audio Book) files (in English, French, Spanish and German) of any text content on your computer or mobile phone.

15. Text to VoiceTTS gives Firefox the power of speech. Select text, click the button on the bottom right of Firefox window and this add-on speaks the selected text for you. Isn't it brilliant? Audio is downloadable.

16. text2speechFree online text to speech converter. Just enter your text, select one of the voices and download the resulting mp3 file to your computer. This service is free and you are allowed to use the speech files for any purpose, including commercial uses.

17. VokiVoki is a FREE service that lets you create customized avatars, add voice to your Voki avatars, post your Voki to any blog, website, or profile, and take advantage of Voki's learning resources.

18. vozMeVozme is an online text to speech program that lets you type-in any English or Spanish text and then play it as an audio stream.

19. WordTalkA free Windows text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word. It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary and a text-to-mp3 converter.

Listen Text-to-Speech Voices with the Right Authoring Tool Vendor

Find, choose and compare the top eLearning Authoring Tool Companies featuring Text-to Speech Voices!

21 Free Digital Storytelling Tools For Teachers

1. AnimotoUnlimited Videos For Educators. Enhance your digital classroom with Animoto, an ideal tool for creating videos and presentations. It takes just minutes to create a video which can bring your lessons to life. Educators can apply for a free Animoto Plus account for use in the classroom. Its powerful features can be used to create stunning presentations incorporating images, video clips, music and text.

2. BubblrBubblr is a tool to create comic strips using photos from flickr.com Begin searching images and add bubble to them.

3. CapzlesAll of your media, your life, your stories together like never before. Create rich multimedia experiences with videos, photos, music, blogs and documents.

4. CartoonistCartoonists is an online tool to create cartoons or personal digital stories, consisting of professional backgrounds, characters, props, images and text. With Cartoonist, you can create multimedia stories. You can use the tool to create comic strips or more personal digital narratives.

5. Comic MasterComic Master allow you to create your own short graphic novel. With Comic Master you can decide how you want the page or your graphic novel to look, to add backgrounds, choose characters and props to appear in your scenes, to add dialogue and captions, and much more

6. Domo animateImport your pictures, select a nice song to accompany the slideshow and you are done! Your pictures will be the hero of your own personalized Domo adventure. You can create your own Domo adventures in minutes with their easy-to-use animation studio.

7. GeneratorGenerator is a creative studio space, a space where you can explore the moving image, be inspired, create your own moving image works and share your creations with the Generator community.Gain a deeper understanding of the context of these inspiring stories through their Education Themes section. Try the Storyboard Generator and either choose a script or build your own storyboard and share it with your friends.

8. MakeBeliefsComixAt MakeBeliefsComix you can create your own comic strip with an easy and fun way. You have to choose a character and emotion. Then you have to add talk or thought balloons and start your character talking. You can add other characters and more conversation. Also, you can add colored backgrounds, objects and panel prompts to keep your viewers interested. Least but not last, you can continue to edit and make more changes, and when you are done you can print or email your comic!

9. MapSkipThe purpose of MapSkip.com is to create a weave of stories about the places in our lives. Users are invited to create a free account and to mark up places in Google Maps with their own stories and photos. Users can browse each other's stories and can rate and discuss them. MapSkip is free to use and free of ads.

10. PicLitsPicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.

11. PixtonPixton empowers the world to communicate graphically with comics. Pixton introduces the world to Click-n-Drag Comics™, a revolutionary new patented technology that gives anyone the power to create amazing comics on the web. From fully posable characters to dynamic panels, props, and speech bubbles, every aspect of a comic can be controlled in an intuitive click-n-drag motion. Pixton is free for fun but has paid version for Schools and Businesses.

12. SlidestoryCombine sharing pictures and narration and what do you get? Slidestory! Slidestory is a new, exciting and FREE way to make presentations and share them on the Internet.

13. SmileboxSmilebox lets you quickly and easily create slideshows, invitations, greetings, collages, scrapbooks and photo albums right on your computer. To get started, download and install the Smilebox application. Then simply, select the photos you want to use, choose a template add comments and music and voila, you've made a Smilebox! With more than 1000 customizable templates to choose from, you'll find inspiration around every corner.

14. Smories.comSmories are original stories for kids, read by kids. The idea behind Smories is to publishes stories for kids read by kids. Also, you will find a lot of stories in various subjects submitted by teachers and authors.

15. StorybirdStorybird lets anyone make visual stories in seconds. They curate artwork from illustrators and animators around the world and inspire writers of any age to turn those images into fresh stories.

16. Zimmer TwinsThe Zimmer Twins is a site devoted to kids and creative storytelling. Since 2005, the Zimmer Twins has invited children to create and share their own animated stories. It is free for Kids & Families to join, make and watch a movie and paid for Educators and Schools.

17. ZooBurstZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life. ZooBurst books "live" online and can be experienced on your desktop or laptop computer, or on your iPad via the free ZooBurst mobile app. Authors can arrange characters and props within a 3D world that can be customized using uploaded artwork or items found in a built-in database of over 10,000 free images and materials. Basic accounts are 100% free and let you get started using ZooBurst right away.Free apps for digital storytelling

18. Puppet PalsCreate your own unique shows with animation and audio in real time! Simply pick out your actors and backdrops, drag them on to the stage, and tap record. Your movements and audio will be recorded in real time for playback later.This app is as fun as your own creativity. Act out a story of Pirates on the high seas, fight as scary monsters, or play the part of a Wild West bandit on the loose. You can even combine any characters however you want!

19. ShowMe Interactive WhiteboardTurn your iPad into your personal interactive whiteboard! ShowMe allows you to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share them online. It's an amazingly simple app that anyone can use, no matter how young or old!

20. Sock PuppetsSock Puppets lets you create your own lip-synched videos and share them on Facebook and YouTube. Add Puppets, props, scenery, and backgrounds and start creating. Hit the record button and the puppets automatically lip-synch to your voice.

21. Toontastic: FREEToontastic is a storytelling and creative learning tool that enables kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons with friends and family around the world through simple and fun imaginative play! With over 2 million cartoons created in over 150 countries, parents and teachers rave about the app... and kids can't stop creating!

15 Free Podcast Tools For Teachers

1. Ardour Ardour is a free, fully-featured digital audio workstation, similar to other software like ProTools, Nuendo, Sonar and Logic, and capable of replacing analog or digital tape systems. Available for Mac OS X, Linux.

2. AudacityAudacity is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. Audacity is available for Windows, Mac, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.

3. BlogAmpBlogamp is a web-based audiocasting solution that combines a rich media on-demand experience with podcasting. Blogamp's robust administration utility and content manager allows site owners and bloggers the ability to customize the on demand presentation as well as utilize the many add-on features depending on who the target audience is.

4. EasypodcastEasypodcast is a GUI tool for easy podcast publication. Easypodcast is multi-language (english and spanish) and cross-platform: tested on Windows and Linux (kde). This is possible thanks to wxPython.

5. EvocaCreate and Share Digital Voice Recordings Using mobile, landline, Skype & smartphones, tablets and computers.

6. HuffDufferCreate your own podcast. Find links to audio files on the Web. Huffduff the links-add them to your podcast. Subscribe to podcasts of other found sounds.

7. MP3myMP3 RecorderSaves any audio you hear on your computer straight to mp3 or wav.

8. OdiogoOdiogo's media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device.

9. PodbeanPodbean.com is an easy and powerful way to start podcasting. Easy to publish your podcast in 3 steps. No tech to learn. Powerful promoting tools, iTunes Preview, Statistics. Wonderful income chances with ads, paid subscriptions.

10. PodOmaticRecord video and audio podcasts. Receive in-line calls from listeners.

11. SoundCloudShare Your Sounds. Capture a voice, moment or music in seconds or upload audio you've already created. Everyone has sounds to share. Now you can share yours. Publish to social networks or embed your sounds on your site.

12. StudioRackStudioRack is a modular live audio and video production system for the Windows O.S., intended for the more demanding podcaster, audio and video producers, DJ's, radio stations, tv stations etc.

13. TalkShoeCreate, schedule and run a live show. Integrate the recording on your website.

14. VozMeConvert text to MP3.

15. YAKiToMe!Uses the world's best text to speech (TTS) software. Upload documents, cut and paste text or link to feeds. Text reader converts text to speech automatically.

28 Free Survey, Polls, and Quizzes Tools For Teachers

1. addpollThe easiest way to create polls, surveys and html forms... on the web. Find out why we're the greatest online survey and poll software in the world with integrated form builder.

2. AnswerGardenAnswerGarden is a new minimalistic feedback tool. Use it as a tool for online brainstorming or embed it on your website or blog as a poll or guestbook.

3. Boo rooCreate online polls in minutes with our free polling tool. Use our comprehensive poll builder in order to create beautiful polling solutions in your browser, for free.

4. Jotform Quiz Maker - Our no-code tool lets you use custom conditional logic, tons of templates, and form analytics features to grade your quizzes automatically and efficiently. Share your quizzes with a link or embed them in your site.

5. DoculiciousEasily create embeddable web forms that generate PDF documents.

6. FluidSurveysOnline Survey Software & Form Tools at their best! Create forms & questionnaires with the best online survey software. Get started in seconds!

7. Forms on the FlyAmazing online forms made simple. Quickly create quizzes, tests, surveys, diagnostics & assessments for your website.

8. formsiteOur Drag & Drop editor, combined with over 40 question types, enables you to easily create almost any type of form or survey. Once you begin collecting results, we provide the functionality to email, analyze, share, and download your data.

9. FormspringFormspring is the place where you can share your perspective on anything. Members express their point of view and personality through engaging conversations and interact with friends, followers, and people they just find cool.

10. FoSpaceThe ability to publish self-calculating order forms, online surveys, contact forms, employment applications, rental applications or any type of online form imaginable, without having to hire a programmer, has finally been realized.

11. Freeonlinesurveys.comCreate your own Free Online Survey. Over 1 million users!

12. GFXPOLL.comThe best website to create free graphical polls for your website, forum or even email.

13. Google Forms (part of Google Drive)Collect RSVPs, run a survey, or quickly create a team roster with a simple online form. Then check out the results, neatly organized in a spreadsheet.

14. Kwik SurveysKwik Surveys makes your job easy. Design surveys,forms, polls and feedback forms. It's free!

15. MySurveyLabProfessional online surveys. Fastest online survey tool on the market. Beautiful yet simple color themes.

16. Orbeon FormsOrbeon Forms is your solution to build and deploy web forms. It handles complex forms typical of the enterprise or government, implements the W3C XForms standard, and is available in a free open source Community Edition, as well as a commercially supported Professional Edition.

17. PollDaddyThe most powerful and easy-to-use survey software around. Create stunning surveys, polls, and quizzes in minutes. Collect responses via your website, e-mail, iPad, Facebook, and Twitter. Generate and share easy-to-read reports.

18. PollhostIn a hurry? Create a free poll as a guest at Pollcode.com ... No need to sign up, quick free and easy!

19. ScattervoxScattervox is a new kind of poll! When you create a poll, you ask users to show how they feel about different people, places, or things by plotting them on a two-dimensional graph. It's like an interactive infographic!

20. SISsurveyCreate free online surveys and polls using SiS Survey. With SiS Survey you can now create surveys and polls for your website, blog and social network profiles.

21. SonarIf you need to feel the pulse of your community, or to get feedback on anything, SonarHQ is the easy and cost-effective way to get answers to your questions. The smarter, faster and easier way to create surveys.

22. SurveyMonkeySurveyMonkey is the world's most popular online survey tool. It's easier than ever to send free surveys, polls, questionnaires, customer feedback and market research. Plus get access to survey questions and professional templates.

23. Surveys EngineSurveys Engine is lightwheight online surveys server software. This tool enables you create various surveys and questionaires, from small and simple to large and complex. Surveys are hosted in our site so you and survey respondents don't need any software or server, just Internet browser.

24. SurvsCreate online surveys with simplicity and elegance. Survs lets you create, distribute, and analyze online surveys and questionnaires with a friendly interface and powerful features. Survs gives you everything you need to gather feedback.

25. Vizzual FormsVizzualforms is a web based service that will let you create forms and surveys, publish them online and see the results!

26. Web Form FactoryWeb Form Factory is an open source web form generator which automatically generates the necessary backend code to tie your form to a database. By generating the backend code for you, WFF saves you time... time you could spend doing more interesting stuff.

27. Web Online SurveysCreate questionnaires with point and click ease. This is an all in one service designed for people who are not computer experts and have the need to conduct surveys by themselves.

28. WufooWufoo is a web application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun.

17 Free Screen Capturing Tools For Teachers

1. Aviary Compatible with all modern browsers, including mobile devices which support Javascript and HTML5 or Flash. Customize with our code generator and integrate within minutes! Media creation tools: image editor, audio editor, screen capture.

2. Clip2NetThis free service allows you to upload desktop area image or files on the web really fast such as Desktop area capture and upload, Video capture and upload, Upload image from Clipboard, Upload text documents and much more.

3. Faststone Capture A powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. It also allows you to record screen activities and sound into video files.

4. Greenshot A free screenshot tool optimized for productivity. Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with key features such as quickly creating screenshots of a selected region, window or fullscreen; capturing of complete (scrolling) web pages from Internet Explorer, easily annotating, highlighting or obfuscating parts of the screenshot and much more.

5. JingSimple and FREE, Jing is the perfect way to enhance your fast-paced online conversations. Create images and videos of what you see on your computer screen, then share them instantly!

6. KingKong CaptureCapture onscreen images fast and easy. Quick capture of your desktop, selected areas and objects. Easy printing of screenshots. Automatic saving in various supported graphic file formats are some of the key features of KingKong Capture.

7. kwout"kwout" is a way you quote a part of a web page as an image with an image map. To use this service, all you need is to add our bookmarklet to your favorite browser. Takes a screenshot, cut out an aread, and then embed it anywhere that you want.

8. PrtScrScreen capture tool. Accessable through Ptr Scr, Ctrl+Prt Scr, or custom hotkey. Captures full screen, rectangle selection, freehand selection, or active window. Can capture mouse cursor. Supports multiple monitors. Much better than Microsoft's own Snipping Tool.

9. RumshotRumshot is an application for Windows similar to SnapShooter (Mac OS X) developed by Andrew Powell. Screenshots are a great way to show your desktop setup to friends and colleagues. But why settle for thumbnail of your carefully constructed desktop? Get classy - use Rumshot to automatically generate a themed and stylish screenshot preview!

10. ScreenDashCapture images from your computer screen with ease. If you can see it on-screen, you can capture it, including web-pages, PDF files, programs, etc.

11. ScreenhunterAward-winning screen capture solution to capture your screen, print and edit. Also with auto-scroll web pages, auto-capture, webcam and video screen capture.

12. ScreenpressoScreenpresso captures your screen (screenshots and HD videos) for your training documents, collaborative design work, IT bug reports, and more...

13. Screenshot CaptorScreenshot Captor is a best-in-class tool for grabbing, manipulating, annotating, and sharing screenshots. It's different from other screenshot utilities in several notable ways such as optimized for taking lots of screenshots with minimal intervention; highly configurable to make it work the way you want it to but stays out of your way in the system tray, excellent multi-monitor support, full set of scanner acquisition tools and scanner image correction, and perfect capture of Windows 7 partial transparency effects.

14. ScreenSnaprScreenSnapr's aim is to provide a simple and straight-forward approach to image capturing and sharing. Without any of the extra fluff, ScreenSnapr makes sharing images as easy as possible. Press the shortcut and go!

15. SkitchAnnotate, edit and share your screenshots and images... fast. Download now, it's free! Get your point across with fewer words using annotation, shapes and sketches, so that your ideas become reality faster.

16. TinyGrab:Social Screenshot sharing. Take a screenshot and share it with your clients or friends in less time than it took you to read this sentence! TinyGrab 2.0 makes simple screenshot sharing social. Taking the critically acclaimed original TinyGrab and building on it. TinyGrab 2.0 adds a tonne of new features and proves on the existing service.

17. Websnaprwebsnapr lets you capture screenshots of (almost) any web page. Allow your visitors to instantly visualize any web page before clicking. Increase site traffic, click-through rate and site stickiness.

30 Free Social Bookmarking Tools For Teachers

1. SymbalooeduOrganize and Share the best of the web with your students. Organize teaching resources all in one place. Encourage student to student communications. Promote innovation while maintaining simplicity in teaching.

2. PearltreesA place to collect, organize and share everything you like on the web. Add everything you like and organize it naturally. Enrich your collections and collaborate on your favorite topics. Discover millions of pearls to your interests.

3. 19 pencilsDiscover resources for your PreK-12 students from teachers around the world. Save thumbnails of web resources to a class page for easy student access.

4. A1-WebmarksA1-Webmarks is a free service that combines the convenience of a personal webmark server with the power of social webmarking.

5. All my favoritesShare your internet bookmarks. AllMyFavorites is free for personal use.

6. BibSonomyBibSonomy is a system for sharing bookmarks and lists of literature. Why dont you try it yourself? Collect, organise, and share bookmarks and publications.

7. BookmarkGSave and share interesting sites and articles

8. BuddymarksBuddyMarks.com has been called "The online personal, group and social bookmarks manager."

9. DeliciousDiscover, remember, and showcase your passions from around the web.

10. Diigo Education EditionDiigo is a powerful online research tool and collaborative research platform that integrates several key technologies, including social bookmarking, web annotation, tagging, and group-based collaboration, to enable a whole new process of online knowledge management and participatory learning in the 21st century.

11. EdshelfReviews & recommendations of tools for education. edshelf is a directory of websites, mobile apps, and desktop programs that are rated & reviewed by parents & educators, for parents & educators. We help you find the right educational tools for your specific needs.

12. EvernoteRemember everything. Save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see. Evernote works with nearly every computer, phone and mobile device out there. Search by keyword, tag or even printed and handwritten text inside images.

13. GivealinkShare your bookmarks with the community and help others navigate the Web. Use the GiveALink visualization tool to visualize and organize your bookmarks.Play the GiveALink games to create social links across the Web.

14. Historioushistorious saves you time by helping you find webpages you saw before. Bookmark sites with a single click, then find them again by searching for any word in the content of the page!

15. ikeepbookmarks.comiKeepBookmarks.com allows you to upload, and keep, your bookmarks on the web. You can access them at any time, from any computer... anywhere!

16. Jog The WebJOG THE WEB is a web-based tool that allows anyone to create a synchronous guide to a series of web sites. Its step by step approach of taking viewers through web sites allowing the author to annotate and ask guiding questions for each page is unique.

17. Learn FizzFind, organize and share the best free learning on the web.

18. linkaGoGoThe free Online Favorites manager and Social Bookmarking application. Storing your Bookmarks (also known as Favorites, Anchors, Links or Hotlists) online. Your bookmarks are available on any computer with access to the Internet, protected by a password. So you can access them from everywhere, not only from home, but also from work, when you are visiting friends, when you are traveling etc.

19. LivebinderCollect your resources. Organize them neatly and easily. Make an impression

20. NetvibesEverything that matters to you, all in one dashboard. Netvibes is a personalized dashboard publishing platform for the Web and digital life aggregation.

21. NetvouzNetvouz is a social bookmarking service that allows you to save your favorite links online and access them from any computer, wherever you are.

22. PinboardSocial Bookmarking for Introverts. Pinboard is a fast, no-nonsense bookmarking site. No ads, no fluff.

23. PinterestA content sharing service that allows members to "pin" images, videos and other objects to their pinboard.

24. RedditUser-generated news links. Votes promote stories to the front page.

25. Save ThisSave links to your favorite web pages from any site. Access your links from any computer or Web enabled wireless device. Organize your saved links into folders that you create. Share your saved links or folders with friends.

26. SharetivityShare, Save and Search. Your social network enhances your search experience

27. SmubSmub is the bookmarking, link-sharing & bookmark management tool for smartphones and any PC or Mac.

28. StumbleuponStumbleUpon is the easiest way to find cool new websites, videos, photos and images from across the Web. We make the best recommendations just for you.

29. TwoBrainsTwo Brains is an application that approaches the learning process in a different way. The application is built around goals, because in the end that's what you truly care about

30. Vi.sualize.usBookmark the pictures you like around the web. Enjoy people's favorite images

14 Online Bibliography and Citation Tools For Teachers

1. CitationGenerator -It's cloud-based, ad-free and quick (and easy) to use!

2. Citation Machine - FreeCitation machine helps students and professional researchers to properly credit the information that they use. Its primary goal is to make it so easy for student researchers to cite their information sources

3. Citefast - FreeCite your work at APA, MLA, and Chicago without leaving http://www.citefast.com/ in three easy steps. Your citations will be kept as long as you keep visiting the site. After four days of inactivity your citations will be deleted.

4. Citelighter - FreeStore, organize, and share your education and research for free. Creating internet-research bibliographies can be infuriating to say the least, so Citelighter grabs all relevant info to create accurate citations for you. Anything we miss you can add yourself, and we'll save your additions for future users.

5. Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy Citation Wizard - FreeOffer three Citation Styles: APA, CSE, formerly known as CBE, and MLA. All feature specific templates for citing online Journals, Web pages with and without authors, electronic Books and Databases.

6. Oregon Public Education Citation Maker for MLA - FreeDo you need to cite your sources? You can use this tool to create a Works Cited list of research sources following the MLA and APA standard citation formats.

7. Recipes4Success - FreeCreating a complete and correctly formatted citation is a challenge for many students, especially documenting sources such as art and music that aren't included in traditional citation formats. Create a citation formatted in either APA or MLA style. Students will still need to completely document the information, but the Citation Maker will format it for them.

8. RefDot - Chrome Extension - FreeMaking citation easy. Cite and store books or journal references. Add books automatically from amazon book pages. Cite books, journals and sites with this handy little extension.

9. Zotero - FreeZotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work-in the web browser itself. Whether you need to create footnotes, endnotes, in-text citations, or bibliographies, Zotero will do all the dirty work for you, leaving you free to focus on your writing. Create citations in Word and OpenOffice without ever leaving your word processor and add references to an email, a Google Doc, or some other editor simply by dragging one or more references out of Zotero.

10. EndNoteEndNote enables you to move seamlessly through your research process with flexible tools for searching, organizing and sharing your research, creating your bibliography and writing your paper. You'll save hours building and maintaining reference libraries and creating bibliographies. With unique features to maximize your time like automatically finding full text and updating records, EndNote lets you spend less time in the details.

11. NoodleToolsA powerful, integrated platform for research & literacy. NoodleTools is your instructional partner for differentiated teaching of literacy skills, critical analysis, sound reasoning, and collaborative group research.

12. ReferenceME - Android AppBetter essays, faster! Simply scan the barcode of a book using your mobile phone camera, and ReferenceME will create your bibliography and citations in moments. If there is no barcode you can find the book's ISBN or simply enter the details yourself, and turn them into references in any of the major styles used by universities and libraries. ReferenceME creates Bibliographies and Citations/Footnotes for Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, MHRA, MLA, Oxford and APA.

13. RefWorksRefWorks -- an online research management, writing and collaboration tool -- is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies.

13 Free Sticky Notes Tools For Teachers

1. CorkboardRemember and share what's important to you. Collaborate with others on a single Corkboard. Post and access on your computer or on-the-go. Organize your postings into Corkboards. Share what you post on your Facebook wall and get notified of new comments on your postings.

2. Hott NotesFree sticky notes reminders for your desktop. A simple, easy-to-use sticky notes software for Windows.

3. LinoitSticky and Photo sharing for you. A free sticky and canvas service that requires nothing but a Web browser.

4. ListingsOnline sticky notes. Take notes from your browser. Share and collaborate with others in real-time. Reach your notes from anywhere. Super fast, free and ridiculously easy.

5. Notepad2A fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry.

6. PadletPadlet gives you a blank page (a wall) and you put anything you want on it, anywhere. Perhaps the easiest site for children to use. Pose questions, get their answers, and give them feedback - all on the same page.

7. ScrumblrScrumblr is a web-based simulation of a physical agile sprint board that supports real-time collaboration.

8. Simple Sticky NotesWhat is Simple Sticky Notes? It's a simple, easy-to-use, absolutely free, fast and efficient note taking software.

9. SpaazeSpaaze (pronounced "space") offers it's users so called boards. Each board is an infinite space which resembles a virtual cork. On these boards, items can be put. Currently Spaaze offers 7 different items: Labels, Notes, Bookmarks, Images, Files, Videos and HTML. These items can be edited in place, moved via drag and drop and positioned freely on the board. Therefore it's possible to arrange a bunch of items any way you like, which makes it possible to use it for many different use cases.

10. StickiesStickies is a PC utility. Just like a real sticky piece of paper: Once on screen, stickies will remain where placed until closed, even through reboots. Stickies appearance can be customised; fonts, colours and buttons may be changed, and styles saved. Stickies can be resized and store text or images. Stickies can snap to each other and to the sides of the screen to keep them neatly lined up. Stickies can be attached to a web site, document or folder so they only show when it's on screen, and much more...

11. StickrWith Stickr you can create streams, subscribe to your friends' feeds, form and join groups, follow people you like, leave private comments. Stickr feed can be embedded to your homepage or blog, your account can be associated with accounts on other social networking sites.

12. StickyPadStickyPad is an invaluable, easy-to-use tool that lets you place sticky notes on your desktop. You can type notes to yourself, set meeting and appointment reminders, keep track of a to-do list, and anything else you would do with paper notes.

13. StixyStixy helps users organize their world on flexible, shareable Web-based bulletin boards called Stixyboards. Unlike most personal productivity or project management software, Stixy doesn't dictate how users should organize their information. Users can create tasks, appointments, files, photos, notes, and bookmarks on their Stixyboards, organized in whatever way makes sense to them.

31 Free Photo and Image Editing Tools For Teachers

1. Aviary A better photo editing solution for web and mobile.

2. Cacoo Cacoo is a user friendly online drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams such as site maps, wire frames, UML and network charts. Cacoo can be used free of charge.

3. Chart ChooserWe've rebuilt our favorite tool for improving Excel and PowerPoint with HTML5 goodness. Use the filters above to find the right chart type for your needs. Then download as Excel or PowerPoint templates and insert your own data.

4. ChartGizmoWith your free account from ChartGizmo you can now create charts for your website, blog and social network profiles.

5. ChartToolCharts and graphs are a great tool because they communicate information visually. On Onlinecharttool.com you can design and share your own graphs online and for free.

6. Colorcinch An intuitive photo editor that lets you transform your photos into stunning cartoons, characters, and animes! Creating your avatar can be done with just a single click. Photo editing made simple, beautiful, and for everyone. It's free, no sign-up is needed.

7. CoSketchCoSketch is a multi-user online whiteboard designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images.

8. Creately100's of thoughtful features to make creately diagramming quick and natural, its a joy to use.

9. Creative Docs.netCreative Docs .NET is a vector-based graphic design tool with support for rich text, ideal to quickly write short documents, manuals, posters, illustrations, schemas, plans, flow charts, and much more.

10. diagram.lyDraw Diagrams Online, free. draw.io is an online diagramming application and github project. It features the full range of visual configuration you expect, as well as web application features such as a full range of export options, a large collection of icons, real-time collaboration and embedded widget sharing.

11. DoppelMeWith DoppelMe you can create a cool graphical likeness of yourself, your friends, family or any group of people for use as an avatar in forums, instant messenger, blogs and almost anywhere else on the web. It's free and there are no Flash, ActiveX controls, downloads or toolbars needed - just your browser and a few mouse clicks. That's it!

12. Flash PAINTThis is an online full paint application. Draw online with paint tool. Save on your disk your drawings and send your drawing to the public gallery.

13. Flowchart.comFlowchart.com is an online multi-user, real-time collaboration flow charts service. It's Flowcharting made easy.

14. Gickr.comInstantly create Animated GIF online, free, right now! Just upload pictures or grab them from your Flickr.

15. GlogsterLooking for a new way to express yourself? Mash up music, photos, videos, & more to express what you care about. Your ideas, your emotions, your Glogster. Glogster costs 10 seconds to sign up. That's it! Everything on Glogster is free & always will be.

16. GoAnimateMake Amazing Animated Videos! Use our Video Maker to create videos for free.

17. Google SketchUpIntuitive and fun to use. Re-imagine your living space. Model buildings for Google Earth. Use SketchUp for free.

18. InkscapeAn Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

19. Paint.NETSimple, intuitive, and innovative user interface. Every feature and user interface element was designed to be immediately intuitive and quickly learnable without assistance.

20. PencilPencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.

21. PhotoPeachOur idea is to help you tell better stories online using photos. With PhotoPeach you can create a rich slideshow in seconds to engage your friends or family. We also support background music, captions, and comments so you can elaborate on your story further.

22. PicMarkrFree Watermark. Add Custom Watermark with PicMarkr! PicMarkr lets you to add custom watermark (image or text) to your images online and free.

23. PixlrWelcome to the most popular online photo editor in the world...

24. ReshadeHere you can resize images maintaining quality, edges and texture. This means Reshade reduces or eliminates most of the usual side-effects of photo enlargement.

25. Rich Chart LiveCreate for free enjoyable and captivating Flash Charts from your web browser.

26. Roxio PhotoShowMake Free Photo Slideshow. It's so easy that just about anyone can tell an engaging, one-of-a-kind PhotoShow story in just minutes!

27. Slidestory Combine sharing pictures and narration and what do you get? Slidestory! Slidestory is a new, exciting and FREE way to make presentations and share them on the Internet.

28. SplashupSplashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With the features professionals use and novices want, it's easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once.

29. SUMO PaintWeb's best image app, hands down! Our editor is full of unique features that let you unleash your creativity.

30. ToondooWorld's fastest way to create cartoons!

31. VokiVoki is a FREE service that lets you create customized avatars. Add voice to your Voki avatars. Post your Voki to any blog, website, or profile. Take advantage of Voki's learning resources.

17 Free Testing and Quizzing Tool For Teachers

1. ClassMarkerClassMarker's secure, professional web-based testing service is an easy-to-use, customizable online test maker for business, training & educational assessment with tests and quizzes graded instantly - saving hours of paperwork!

2. ClassToolsCreate free games, quizzes, activities and diagrams in seconds! Host them on your own blog, website or intranet! No signup, no passwords, no charge!

3. Easy Test MakerEasyTestMaker is a free online test generator to help you create your tests. You can create multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, matching, short answer and true and false questions all on the same test. You can also insert instructions and divide your test into multiple sections.

4. Hot Potatoes You can choose from the following six types of questions to create your interactive quiz: crossword, multiple-choice, short-answer, gap-fill, matching/ordering and jumbled-sentence.

5. iQuiz MakeriQuiz Maker is an easy way for you to create custom quizzes for the iQuiz game for the iPod. iQuiz Maker works seamlessly so you can write, create, package your very own quizzes. Download the free application today to begin putting the world to the test.

6. ProProfs Quiz SchoolCreate Online Tests & Quizzes Easily. Over 100,000 quizzes created. Over 1 million quiz takers.

7. QuandaryQuandary is an application for creating Web-based Action Mazes. An Action Maze is a kind of interactive case-study; the user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it.

8. QuedocOur quiz software not only plays quizzes, interactive lessons and revision aids; it also helps you create your own learning content and work cooperatively with others in the process of authoring.

9. Quiz RevolutionMake Free Facebook Quizzes and Free Online Quizzes. Interactive Multimedia Quizzes That Can Be Embedded On Any Site.

10. YacapacaIf you are a teacher you can use 15,000 quizzes in every subject or you can create quizzes, surveys, tests, eportfolios and more.

11. FunnelBrainFunnelBrain gives you and your friends a new way to learn. You can form study teams, play games, take quizzes, and show off your intellectual prowess. It's fun, it's free and you'll do better in class.

12. JeopardyJeopardyLabs allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. Building your own jeopardy template is a piece of cake.

13. EdgamesUse games to enhance your classroom teaching! On this site you will find more than just one or two games, we have categories of games for all types of classrooms.

14. QuizSlidesThe easy way to create stylish, interactive online test!

15. What2LearnThe fun and effective way to learn. Play some of our thousands of revision games and quizzes or make your own. Whether you are revising for examinations and tests such as GCSE and SATs, or simply looking for a powerful and engaging way to develop literacy and understanding, register today and start the learning fun.

15 Free Web Conferencing Tools For Teachers

1. AnyMeetingAnyMeeting is free with ads. It allows for meetings of up to 200 people, and has essential functionality like screen sharing, VoIP and phone conferencing, meeting recording and it even has a follow-up functionality.

2. BigBlueButtonBigBlueButton enables universities and colleges to deliver a high-quality learning experience to remote students.

3. Google+ HangoutWould you like to see, hear, and share information to your online learners. With Google+ Hangouts you can have a video group chat for up to 10 people for free! It is a powerful tool much better than a Web Chat.

4. ManagemeetManageMeet.com is a online service that enables teams to collaborate on tomorrows solutions in real-time. Share knowledge, collect ideas, analyze and decide.

5. Meetin.GsUnlimited meetings with 6 participants/meeting, material exchange, agenda & notes, 5MB size limit per file, and Skype integration.It's also a great place to edit documents together with a group and anyone can mail-in notes and other materials via email.

6. MeetingBurnerHost up to 10 webinar attendees for FREE with no ads - forever! Instantly share your screen with anybody. Works with iPhones, iPads, and Android Phones. You'll also get analytics for your meetings so that you can see how your guests interact with your content.

7. MikogoScreen sharing has never been so easy! Have an online meeting, give a presentation, or provide remote support with Mikogo. Sign up today and see how simple online meetings can be!

8. ShowDocumentShowDocument lets you do quick and easy real-time collaboration with others with no software required.

9. Sync.inSync.in is a web based word processor for people to collaborate in real-time. When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate with text documents, useful for meeting notes, brainstorming, project planning, training, and more.

10. TokBox Video ChatTokBox makes it easy to add video chat to your site using either the OpenTok API or OpenTok Widgets.

11. TwiddlaMark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo - it's all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly.

12. VyewVyew allows you to meet and share content in real-time or anytime. Upload images, files, documents and videos into a room. Users can access and contribute at anytime.

13. WebHuddleMeetings can be conducted either in conjunction with an enterprise's existing teleconferencing service, or utilizing WebHuddle's optional voice over IP.

14. YugmaYugma free web conferencing allows anyone, anywhere to instantly share their desktop and ideas online with others. To start hosting your own meetings, sign up today for FREE. Your Yugma Free web conferencing account allows you to invite up to 1 attendees with 30 minutes meeting limitations.

15. Zoho MeetingGet started with online meetings, start sharing your desktop to anyone, anywhere at any time.

15 Free Authoring Tools For Teachers

1. Easygenerator Easygenerator provides cloud-based eLearning authoring software. Easygenerator enables instructional designers and subject matter experts to rapidly create the most engaging courses that have the highest learning impact. Easygenerator is affordable, easy to use, and future proof. Simply create, design and publish your eLearning courses. Used and loved by 5000+ users in more than 120 countries in both enterprises and universities. Easygenerator's headquarter is located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

2. LCDSThe Microsoft Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a free tool that enables the Microsoft Learning community to create high-quality, interactive, online courses and Microsoft Silverlight Learning Snacks.

3. SmartBuilderSmartBuilder is the award-winning course authoring tool that enables you to create rich Flash e-learning with an easy-to-use interface.

4. The Multimedia Learning Object Authoring ToolThe Multimedia Learning Object Authoring Tool enables content experts to easily combine video, audio, images and texts into one synchronized learning object.

5. authorPOINT authorPOINT is an authoring tool that allows users to capture presentations and add pre-recorded audio/video, all inside of Microsoft PowerPoint. authorGEN also offers authorPOINT Lite, which converts PowerPoint presentations to Flash.

6. DipityFrom what we can glean from their website, Dipity is an online timeline creator. Users, known as Dipsters, can create their own content on subjects that are meaningful to them and share them with other users. Dipsters can also integrate social media into their timeline, utilizing real-time updates.

7. Document Suite 2008Document Suite 2008 is an authoring tool that helps transform documents into online help modules.

8. IzzuiIzzui is a hybrid social learning application that can be linked with QuickLessons. Izzui uses Facebook as an LMS to track and deliver courses. Izzui also has an e-Commerce capability allowing users to charge and pay for courses that they have created.

9. JackdawJackdaw produces SCORM 1.2 compliant content that is easily integrated into any LMS. Users can create interactive content either from scratch or with the the help of over 100 templates. Jackdaw also lets users create content that they can then sell on the Open Elms web-store.

10. LessonWriterFrom what we can gather from their website, LessonWriter is a tool for teachers that allows them to create lessons from any passage. These courses allow teachers to be creative with their lesson plans and also saves them a great deal of time.

11. MOS SoloMOS Solo offers a way for users to create content on the go without having to rely on a constant Internet connection. Even though they are using an offline content creation tool, they do not lose any of the functionality or power to create their multimedia content.

12. myUdutuA free online authoring tool with a suite of WSIWYG tools, allowing users to create courses in an approachable environment. Claims to export SCORM 1.2/2004 conformant courses to be used in a 3rd party LMS or integrate into social media sites, such as Facebook.

13. QuickLessons Authoring ToolQuickLessons was built from the ground up to be a completely SaaS based content authoring tool, requiring the user to only have access to a web-browser. QuickLessons comes equipped with quizzes, games, characters, out-of-the-box animations and other customizable content to allow users to create truly unique and interactive flash-based content to meet their needs. Users can either use QuickLessons for free, publishing their content only to Facebook, or they can buy an individual, corporate or academic account.

14. ScratchFrom what we can gather from their website, Scratch is a creative tool that helps users create content that is beyond the barriers of traditional page-turners. Scratch users can create interactive stories, animation, music, and art, then share their creations on the web.

15. xtimelinextimeline is a tool that allows users to create timeline based content for free. Users can also share their timelines with other users, creating a community.

5 Free Annotation Tools For Teachers

1. Diigo It's one of the most commonly used free web annotation tools which lets you bookmark and tag web pages. In addition to that, you would also be able to highlight a part of a webpage if you wish to emphasize something and attach sticky notes to it. Its advanced search allows you to rummage through the text of pages you have bookmarked which includes tags, titles, URLs and even your own comments and highlights. One of the best features of Diigo is your ability to comment on other users' notes which can be set to either public or private.

2. A.nnotate A.nnotate is not just a free annotation tool but also a collaboration and indexing tool. It can be used to catalogue images and other document formats. It also makes it easier for you to work with a group especially when documents are needed to be sent through email back and forth because of comments of different users. With the use of A.nnotate, you can simply create a single read-only copy of your document and share it with whomever you like so you could all comment on it. Another good thing about it is, it is very easy to use and it works fine in commonly used web browsers without you having to install software or plug ins. You may sign up for a free account which gives you credits for annotating 30 items every month, anything above that will require payment.

3. Bounce App Bounce app is a very simple free annotation tool that works just as effectively as others in the market. You simply log on to their website, enter the URL of the webpage you'd like to comment on and then click on Grab Screenshot. Voila! You'll have a screenshot of that webpage and you're now ready to comment on it by dragging the mouse and creating red boxes (like the one you see below). These red boxes are labelled with another box that contains your name and has a space for your comments. One of the best features of Bounce is that you can share your feedback on either Facebook or Twitter and let your friends see it.

4. Crocodoc Crocodoc Personal is a free annotation tool used for commenting on documents. Simply log on to their website, upload a PDF file, Office Doc or image, modify it using Crocodoc tools which allow you to highlight, draw or comment on it. When you're done, click on Share button at the upper right hand corner of the page and send the link to whomever you'd like to share the document with. You may share it through copying the link and sending it through email or IM, or you may even embed it on your blog or website. However, if you would like to store your files or view your upload history, you have to sign up for a Crocodoc account but you need not worry because this app is absolutely for free.

5. Markup.io Markup allows you to draw on any webpage using built in tools. Simply go to their website, drag the icon located at the lower right hand corner of the page to the bookmark bar of your browser.

8 Free Video Tools For Teachers

1. Ezvid Ezvid is a 100% free video creation tool that allows you to capture everything that appears on your computer screen. It also allows you to edit your recorded videos by splitting your recordings, inserting text and audio, controlling the speed and even drawing directly on your screen. There's also a Gaming Mode specially designed for gamers to avoid black screen problems when recording games such as Diablo III and Call of Duty which are full screen games. You can save your edited videos for later use or you may directly upload them on YouTube.

2. BlueBerry Flashback Express Recorder This recorder just, like other screencast tools, enables you to capture your screen while recording yourself through a webcam. It introduces quite a long list of features that will let you edit videos like a pro. BB Flashback Express Recorder also has a very easy user interface that allows you to decide what area of your screen you would like to capture and whether to record sound and web activity or not. Another good thing about it is that you can have scheduled recordings so you wouldn't have to miss online events. It also includes a player which works like a VCR and allows you to review your recording frame-by-frame.

3. ScreenrScreenr is a web-based screen recorder. Yes, you read it right. It's web-based so that means, you wouldn't have to install it on your computer but it requires Java to run. Screenr allows you to easily capture your screen by logging on to their website, clicking on the record button and keeping it open while you are capturing your screen activity. Keep in mind that you only have a maximum of 5 minutes per recording. Files are saved on the site. When you're finished, you'll be given a link that can be easily shared by email or can be embedded on websites. It's absolutely free, works on both MAC and PC and will work even on your iPhone.

4. Rylstim Screen Recorder Rylstim is a very simple and easy to use Screen Recorder which, aside from capturing your screen, also allows you to record events happening on the monitor including right and left clicks. It has a minimalistic and intuitive interface but supports multiple CODECs. You can also customize the video frame rates. Rylstim Screen Recorder works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows

5. Krut Krut is a screencast tool that works in almost any Operating system and requires Java to run. It's a very simple program with only 3 basic controls: Record, Snap for still pictures, and the Arrow button used to adjust the borders of your recording area. It's very minimalist without all those complicated features that other screencast tools offer, but it can be powerful too because of some additional features such as timer-controlled recording. You can also use it for recording streaming video and audio.

6. CamStudioCamStudio is a pretty straightforward program that lets you record your screen and audio and produce outputs in AVI or SWF format. It enables annotation such as text and call out inserts and even provides you some cursor options such as default, hidden or highlighted, which should be carefully laid out prior to recording. You have some video options too which lets you control compression, frame rates , quality and time lapse but aside from that, you can't really do much with the video because it doesn't include editing capabilities.

7. Webineria Webineria is an open-source easy-to-use screencast tool which lets you capture your screen activity and do "picture-in-picture" video by adding your webcam stream. It provides you 3 frame rate options: 5, 10 and 15 frames per second and outputs can be produced in either AVI or FLV format. It has built in features too that let you adjust the boundaries of your record area, use hotkeys to pause and resume recording. Outputs are saved on the site and can be shared via email links or embedding on websites.

8. Screen-O-MaticScreencast-O-Matic is a screencast tool which has both web-based and desktop versions. It's very easy to use and will run so long as you have Java installed on your computer. It has free video hosting and allows you to record your screen or both your screen and webcam. You may also publish your output directly to YouTube. The free versions of Screencast-O-Matic has limited features though. For instance, there's a 15-minute recording time limit, there's a small watermark when recording, it doesn't allow webcam-only recording and it doesn't allow you to zoom and annotate while recording.

6 Free PDF Tools For Teachers

1. Adobe Reader XIAdobe Reader is a trusted high quality tool that allows you to view and print your PDF files. It also lets you interact with PDF content, including multimedia. Other features covered are adding and verifying digital signature, annotating on PDF pages, creating and filling out PDF forms, and printing out these documents.

2. Doro PDF Writer by CompSoftDoro PDF Writer is very easy to use and is pretty straightforward. It doesn't have all the other options that other PDF tools have but it works great in printing PDF files. It is installed as a virtual print driver and converts any printable document or image to PDF format. It can be powerful too as it lets you set the author name and even protect it with a password before conversion. Just select it from the program's setting menu before printing a PDF document and it will launch and provide you the option to change the document's metadata. On top of those mentioned is the ability to enable and disable copying, pasting and printing functions of the document. It is compatible with XP, Vista, Windows 7 and 8.

3. BullZip PDF Printer by BioPDFBullZip is another PDF tool that works as a virtual print driver and uses Ghostscript to convert documents. Like Doro, it also allows you to convert printable document or image to PDF format but on top of that, it also lets you add watermarks, merge PDF files and even add protection to your PDF files. It is free for up to 10 users and offers installation of promotional, third party components. You may check the guidelines here.

4. PDFTK BuilderThis is an open source PDF tool used which allows you to easily reorder or merge selected pages. It is also capable of splitting and rotating pages and adding stamp and encryption to your file. Aside from those mentioned it doesn't offer too much and even lacks the basic function of watermarking with background text.

5. PDFill PDF ToolThis is probably one of the most user-friendly free PDF tools that offer you so many features. It provides the most important functions such as merging, splitting, reordering, rotating and cropping pages and even allows you to add headers, footers and watermarks. It also offers additional features such as encrypting and decrypting security options, and deleting, flattening and adding form fields. It requires GhostScript and Java to run.

6. jPDF Tweak It can be a good choice when you want to get as many features as you can in just one application. It lets you merge, split, reorder and rotate pages, and add watermarks and encryption too. You can also digitally sign PDF documents using it. There are features for attaching files to PDF and editing metadata as well. jPDF Tweak requires Java 5, or even higher, to run. It uses iText library to manipulate PDF documents and JGoodies Forms for its GUI.

34 Sites To Download Royalty Free and Creative Commons Music For Teachers

1. Archive's audio and MP3 library This library contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.

2. ArtistServer Free independent music, 11,000 mp3 downloads by more than 10,000 artists.

3. Audiofarm It´s the best and easiest way to find new and interesting music, audio recordings, people and friends from around the world.

4. Audionautix All music in this online collection created by Jason Shaw. Released under Creative Commons license 3.0 You are free to use the music (even for commercial purposes) as long as you credit "Music from - audionautix.com"OR provide a link to this website from yours. Music must be part of some other created works. No further permission is required.

5. BeatPick Creative Commons licenses allow the use of music for free for non-commercial projects, provided that users credit your name in association with their multimedia projects. Thus, we provide music for free for scholastic and socially involved projects, while we require that governmental funded ones pay a licensing fee. For personal use, we encourage our users to buy the albums/EPs from our site. To obtain the download of the required files, all projects must provide us with their name, e-mail and project description, allowing us to control that they are indeed entitle to such uses.

6. Brainy Betty Free Sound Clips and Music for Presentations!

7. Bump Foot Bump Foot is a non-profit netlabel in Japan. There are two main branches. Bump side : techno and house, or based on them. Foot side : ambient, IDM, or etc... other than bump side.You are free: to Share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to Remix - to adapt the work.

8. CASH MusicCASH Music is a non-profit organization that hosts digital tools for musicians and labels to share their music. The digital tool allows for uploads and downloads of songs and sharing is made easy.

9. ccMixter Looking for music for a video, school project, game you're developing, podcast or just for listening in your cubicle or mobile music device? Find exactly the music you're looking for - podsafe, liberally licensed - using dig.ccMixter Music Discovery tool.

10. CCTrax All showcased music is available under one of the six Creative Commons licenses. They authorize free music download and enable the artists to promote their music while protecting their rights.

11. DanoSongs Hi, I'm Dan-O and I post my original music as free MP3 downloads here on DanoSongs.com. You can listen to the songs online or download the tracks. It's also legal to use the music royalty free in your video, game, film, presentation, slideshow or website.

12. FMA The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

13. Freeplay Music Library Freeplay's first product, the Freeplay Music Library, is a comprehensive collection of High End Broadcast production music spanning all the popular musical genres, available for download either on-line or via our Portable Hard Drive.

14. FreeSFXDownload free sound effects.Stuart Duffield has been creating audio professionally for 18 years. Having worked predominately in the Games Industry, he has produced a wide range of audio for various worldwide clients and numerous high profile projects. Based in the UK, Stuart has a history of synthesising, recording, designing, processing and editing audio of all types. Having worked in-house for a number of major Game Developers, Stuart currently works on a freelance / contract basis. This involves audio design, music composition and voice production in various forms - for Games, Animation, TV and Film.

15. Freesound Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse.

16. iBeat Free Beats - Download beats, loops, breaks and samples Free beats, loops, and breaks - iBeat.org iBeat - pushing beats, loops and breaks since 2007. Free under Creative Commons licensing.

17. Incompetech Incompetech hosts a wide variety of royalty free music. You can browse their selection by genre or feel. "Feel" would include things like: Action, Relaxed, Intense or Humorous; you can select a combination of 'Feels' and it will check its database for selection matches. Clips can be played on the website and instantly downloaded as well.

18. Jamendo370,000 tracks.Free music for all. Enjoy unlimited music, it's completely free and legal.

19. JewelBeat Free Background Music. Easily search thru over 4,000 free background music and sound effects simply by using keywords. No need to download to preview - just type in keywords, listen immediately then download what you need! Start searching for free background music.

20. Josh Woodward Yes, you can freely download, share and use all 180+ of Josh Woodward songs.

21. Kompoz Kompoz is an online community that prides in collaboration between artists from all over the world. Artists post their clips on the website where anyone can download it and use it for their own productions. They can also add their own instruments or creative mix to the original clip and upload it on the website again.

22. LifeSounds LifeSounds works on the integration of music throughout the curriculum. Their desire is to build each individuals' ability to strengthen their emotional intelligence and to encourage understanding between people.

23. Musopen Set music FREE. Musopen (www.musopen.org) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.

24. Orphan Songs The Orphan Songs website is running by Carl-Otto Johansson. Most of the music here is free to download and use. (Creative Commons).

25. PacDV This is a small database of free audio clips organised by mood or emotion such as: Warm, Loving, Serious or Lonely.

26. Partners in Rhyme Royalty free music libraries for you to download and start using right away in your commercial projects. These high quality music tracks will make your projects more effective and sound more professional.

27. Public Domain 4U Great Historical Music Recordings, Free to Download, Play, and Share. Our musical heritage is our culture. The Past should be appreciated, not neglected. These artists are so unique, they should never be forgotten. This site is designed for your musical edification. This site can not grant any commercial uses of this material.

28. Purple Planet Free Collection of Royalty Free Music available for download, composed and performed by Geoff Harvey and Chris Martyn Music can be used free of charge for web-based projects e.g. YouTube (see 'Using Our Music' for more info) in exchange for a link to our site. Donations are welcome!

29. Restorm This is a platform to sell music to the public. Also, you can download some of their free selection of music just by creating an account.

30. Royalty Free Music Library Royalty Free Music Library is proud to offer one of the largest offerings of online broadcast-quality royalty free music anywhere on the web. Download royalty free music from 3 of the top royalty free catalogs online:

1. Royalty Free Music Revolution - The definitive royalty free music catalog with over 1000 songs from some of the top composers in the industry.

2. Radical Music Library - Royalty free music with cutting edge productions and "indie" attitude. Created by professional composers with a long list of film and television credits.

3. Mojo Music Library - An offering of top- notch royalty free music with broader coverage on each CD for those who need a bit wider coverage for their budget.

31. SampleSwap Creative Commons Licensed Electronic Music for Commercial and Non-Commercial Royalty-Free use(Free professional-quality MP3s for DJ'ing, film scores, radio, TV, video games, podcasting, etc.). These pre-cleared songs were uploaded by artists at sampleswap.org under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. Please be sure to read the licensing information for each track carefully before using any of this music.

32. Sonnyboo 40 completely free pieces of music. For each and every single song below, all you have to do is credit the songwriter - Peter John Ross (www.sonnyboo.com) and the music is your to use for free.

33. SoundCloud SoundCloud is a website where artists share their new tracks to the world. There is a section under Creative Commons license where you can download other people's tracks. You can stream the available clips and it takes just a simple click to get the MP3 file without any registration.

34. Stock Music Boutique Stock Music Boutique library offers high quality royalty-free production music. All tracks have full music clearance ready for instant buy out. Find a track you like and use it forever at no extra cost.

18 Free Stock Photos Sites For Teachers

1. PublicDomainPictures.net is a repository for free public domain photos. You can download high quality photos, upload your own pictures, earn money to charity, get exposure and gain popularity and improve your photographic and graphic skills.

2. FreeImages is not just another clipart graphic site!.... more than 6000 original stock photos all for FREE! Free images is a high quality resource of digital stock photographic images for use by all. All images in their collection are free to use on websites and printed materials.

3. FreeFoto.com is made up of 132232 images with 182 sections organized into 3630 categories.

4. Free stock photos, easy to download, easy to browse. Use them for commercial or personal design projects of any kind! Some are even public domain, so you can use those for whatever you want. Whether you're looking for free stock designs for your project, free stock photography for your next big design or something in-between, freestockfor.us is your resource for quick downloads!

5. FreePixels offers free high resolution stock photos for use in both personal and commercial design projects.

6. Nearly 100% of their Royalty Free Stock Photos are Free Download. Every image is absolutely free, with some more options to buy individual higher resolutions. They can be used either for private or commercial purposes. In exchange, we only ask you to use the images according to our Licensing.

7. The SXC (stock.xhng) is a website providing free-to use stock photography and illustrations. The stock.xhng operates as a hybrid of a picture library site and a social networking site; registered users may set up a personal profile, upload their photographic works to share with other users, write a blog and participate in online forums to discuss and critique each others' work.

8. The 4 Free Photos is an online community of photographers who enjoy taking pictures and decided to share them with the public to use them for free in their private or commercial projects. They hope you will find the collection of free and public domain images useful.

9. Morgue File is an easy to use free photo site. Free images for your inspiration, reference and use in your creative work, be it commercial or not!

10. From Free Digital Photos you can download royalty free photos and illustrations for websites, newspapers, magazines, video and TV productions, iPhone applications, PowerPoint presentations, forums, blogs and school work.

11. Turbo Photo offers Free stock images from 10 categories (3.4 GB). Stock images are in the public domain.

12. If you are a designer you can download high resolution RF stock images for free from Dreams Time. If you are a photographer you have the opportunity to achieve a great portfolio exposure by offering free images.

13. Image * After is a large online free photo collection. You can download and use any image or texture from our site and use it in your own work, either personal or commercial.

14. In Public Domain Photos you can access 5,000 free photos, 8,000 free cliparts. All photos on this web site are public domain. You may use these images for any purpose, including commercial.

15. The photos in the Flickr Free Use Photos Group are available for use by anyone. There is no need to give credit or to fear rights infringement. These images are posted by their creators. By posting to this group, you're allowing freedom of use.

16. Free photos and clip art from Microsoft Office Online

17. Every Stock Photo is a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo's license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free, without advertising, and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos.

18. PikWizard offers a stunning library of over 1 million stock images and videos. These are royalty free and safe for commercial use, with no attribution required. You can also take each image and edit on graphic design software, Design Wizard!

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324 Free Tools for Teachers - Free Educational Technology

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At this article you will find 324 Free Educational Technology Tools for teachers, online educators, instructors and eLearning professionals.

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Click here to download a pdf of all the podcasts posts here.

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Lex Fridman Podcast

https://lexfridman.com/podcast/

The K12 Engineering Education Podcast

https://soundcloud.com/piuswong

Tech Tent

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01plr2p

Future Tense

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense

Tech Stuff

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-techstuff-26941194/

Everything VR & AR Podcast

https://www.thevrara.com/podcast

Voices of VR

http://voicesofvr.com/topics/podcast/

Beyond the Hour of Code

https://www.teachercast.net/episodes/beyond-the-hour-of-code/

The Modern Domestique podcast

https://www.themoderndomestique.com/podcast

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Life of the School Podcast: The Podcast for Biology Teachers

https://player.fm/series/life-of-the-school-podcast-the-podcast-for-biology-teachers

Chemistry in its Element

https://player.fm/series/chemistry-in-its-element-1244216

The Science Show

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/

Stuff You Should Know

https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts

60 Second Science

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/60-second-science/

Physics Central Podcast

http://physicscentral.com/explore/multimedia/podcasts.cfm

Science Vs

https://www.gimletmedia.com/science-vs/all#all-episodes-list

Astronomy Cast

https://player.fm/series/astronomy-cast-163143

You can find even more Science related podcasts here https://player.fm/podcasts/Science-Education

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Math Ed Podcast

https://player.fm/series/math-ed-podcast

Breaking Math

https://player.fm/series/breaking-math-podcast

The Math Dude

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/math-dude

BBC - More or Less: Behind the Stats

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrss1/episodes/downloads

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We Teach Languages

https://weteachlang.com/

The Fluent Show

www.fluent.show

The Actual Fluency Podcast

https://actualfluency.com/actual-fluency-language-learning-podcast/

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Oh, The Humanities! (and Social Sciences)

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/oh-the-humanities-and-social-sciences/id1331749901?mt=2

Talking Social Studies

https://player.fm/series/talking-social-studies

Reflecting History

https://player.fm/series/reflecting-history-1337582

Assorted History Podcasts https://player.fm/podcasts/History

Freakonomics

http://freakonomics.com/

Making History Radio - BBC Radio

https://player.fm/series/making-history-1301281

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The PE Geek Podcast

https://thepegeek.com/podcast/

SHAPE America Podcast

https://shapeamerica.podomatic.com

The PE Umbrella Podcast

https://peumbrella.com/blog/podcast/

Playing with Research in Health and Physical Education

https://anchor.fm/PwRHPE

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Music

Music Tech Teacher Podcast

http://musictechteacher.libsyn.com/

Music Ed Amplified

https://open.spotify.com/show/2VwgOsN9n5jSGusgEugql5?si=7226d9c35b8942a6

Music Education & Technology Podcast

https://open.spotify.com/show/40f7zRHWAH2zgoB11wDtOz?si=a31fad97aed244a5

The Crescendo Music Education Podcast

https://open.spotify.com/show/3WdWLtXWbOQl6gutJuRr8s?si=c5e6dce0b2c6411e

Art
Art Ed Radio

https://www.theartofed.com/artedradio/

Art Juice

https://www.louisefletcherart.com/podcast

Drama

The Drama Teacher Podcast

https://www.theatrefolk.com/podcast/

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The New Yorker Podcasts

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast

Classic Poetry Aloud

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/classicpoetryaloud

National Writing Project

https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3173

Grammar Girl

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl/

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The EdTech Podcast

https://theedtechpodcast.com/edtechpodcast/ (Links to an external site.)

The Cult of Pedagogy

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/ (Links to an external site.)

Teachers' Education Review

https://terpodcast.wordpress.com/category/podcast-episodes/ (Links to an external site.)

10-Minute Teacher Show

http://www.coolcatteacher.com/podcast/ (Links to an external site.)

Australian Educators Online Network

http://www.aeon.net.au/ (Links to an external site.)

Teacher Magazine (ACER)

https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/category/audio (Links to an external site.)

And for even more podcast ideas try...   https://www.teachthought.com/technology/51-education-podcasts-for-the-21st-century-teacher/  (Links to an external site.)

And https://www.weareteachers.com/teacher-podcasts/

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Microsoft Teams is a digital hub that brings conversations, content, and apps together in one place. Educators can create collaborative classrooms, connect i...

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5 smart steps for choosing technology for your class

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5 smart steps for choosing technology for your class

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The search for classroom technology can be overwhelming. Whether you're looking for hardware or software, there are often hundreds of options on the market, all loaded with their own bells and whistles. Not to mention, your budget may be tight, and you want technology that integrates seamlessly into your lessons rather than taking them over. Here are five smart steps to follow when you're choosing technology.

1. Ask your colleagues for recommendations.

Your best sources for technology picks are your teaching friends down the hall or at a school similar to your own. These colleagues know the students and subject matter that you teach and may have conducted their own detailed searches for your desired tools. IT coordinators are another great resource. You might suggest an occasional addendum to your faculty meetings during which teachers can share apps, software and tools that are working for them.

2. Look for teacher reviews online.

The next best thing to a personal recommendation is the opinion of a real teacher who has used the product in a classroom setting. Look for pros and cons and be cautious of reviews that do nothing but rave about a product-they may be paid or placed.

3. Take it for a test drive.

Many technology companies offer free trials of their products so you can get a snapshot of how they work before you commit to purchase. Take advantage of these trials and of anyone you know who owns your desired tools and may be willing to let you borrow them temporarily. Don't limit your crowdsourcing to fellow teachers-even your great-aunt Edna might lend you her iPod Touch for a few days.

4. Brainstorm potential lessons.

Before you make your big purchase, try planning five lessons that incorporate your desired piece of technology. Does the tool add to each lesson in a meaningful way? Is it the most effective tool in each case or do pen and paper work better in some instances? If you can't think of at least a handful of ideas that you know will work well in your classroom, it may not be the right tool for you.

5. Explore available support.

No one wants to read an inch-thick instruction manual, so it's important to think about how usable the technology will be from the beginning, and where you will go for ideas and help. Many vendors offer online communities where users can share ideas. And of course, your colleagues offer another source of potential inspiration and support.

Question for you: What steps do you take when choosing technology for your classroom? Why?

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5 Smart Steps for Choosing Technology for Your Classroom

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The search for classroom technology can be overwhelming. Whether you're looking for hardware or software, there are often hundreds of options on the market, all loaded with their own bells and whistles. Not to mention, your budget may be tight, and you want technology that integrates seamlessly into your lessons rather than taking them over.

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Teens and tweens are bound to have their phones in hand most of the day, so why not install some really useful apps? These amazing free apps for students cover all the major subjects, plus provide help with study skills, time management, planning, and more. The best part? These apps are all free to use.
Note: some have ads, and some offer paid versions, but we only chose free apps for students that provide a really robust experience for this list. Jump to your Free Apps for Students by Topic:
Reading and Writing Apps

These free apps for students provide ebooks to read, brainstorming tools for aspiring writers, and help with grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. (Explore more of the best reading apps and writing apps for all ages.)

Most libraries use Overdrive for their e-book and online media lending. All you need is a library card to set up an account, and you're off! ( iOS, Android, Kindle)

Libby is another way to access books through Overdrive, with an interface specially designed for mobile devices. Be sure to check out the Teen Guide for good recommendations. ( iOS, Android)

Many local libraries belong to Hoopla, so check yours. Everything on the app is always available for immediate virtual check-out. Hoopla is especially popular for its wide selection of audiobooks, comics, and graphic novels. Plus, it has a dedicated "Kids Mode," making it easier for everyone to find books they'll love. ( iOS, Android, Kindle)

GoodReads offers personalized book recommendations and access to a vast community of like-minded readers. Keep a want-to-read list, read and write book reviews, and share book recommendations with others. ( iOS, Android)

This app is everything you love about Dictionary.com, but it's also available offline. You can even switch between dictionary and thesaurus mode. The Word of the Day feature is fun too. ( iOS, Android)

Word Hippo

Avoid overused words and phrases in your writing with this app, which provides synonyms and antonyms in a flash. ( iOS, Android)

This no-frills app is excellent for older learners, especially ESL students. Review grammar guides and lessons, then play games to practice your skills ( Android)

Everything you love about Mad Libs, in an app! Prompts ask you to fill in parts of speech to create a funny new story each time. The free edition comes with 21 stories. ( iOS, Android)

Practice your reading comprehension and prepare for standardized tests with this app. It provides fiction and non-fiction reading passages with comprehension questions for each. The free version offers 12 stories to start with, with a new one available each week. ( iOS)

Grammarly is a beloved program that helps people of any age produce stronger, cleaner writing. The mobile apps work for anything you type on your phone, including social media and messaging. ( iOS, Android)

Mind mapping is an excellent method for brainstorming and organizing your thoughts before you begin writing. This app helps you through the process, creating maps that ultimately make your writing clearer and stronger. ( iOS, Android)

Words with Friends is Scrabble for the digital age, and it's wildly popular. It's a sneaky way to improve your vocabulary and spelling while enjoying games with anyone, anywhere, anytime. ( iOS, Android)

Love to write? This is the way to share your stories, get feedback from others, and find new inspiration. This app provides resources for improving your writing and helps you get it out there for others to discover. ( iOS, Android)

STEM Apps

Science, technology, engineering, and math ... they're all here in this list of free apps for students. ( Find more STEAM apps for all ages.)

Explore NASA's latest articles and tweets, watch live NASA TV, and check out the incredible image gallery. You may even download it for your wallpaper! ( iOS, Android)

View and explore Earth's history over the last 4.5 billion years. This research-based app includes interactive features and in-depth maps on concepts like continental reconstruction, sea level, and global temperature. ( iOS)

Scan any math problem with your camera to get colorful, step-by-step instructions on how to solve it. Resist the temptation to use this to speed through homework, and instead let the app help you learn how to do the math yourself. ( iOS, Android)

High school and middle school students match with each other based on skill level and compete head-to-head in real-time to see who can answer questions fastest, much like offline competitions such as Science Bowl.

This app replaces the bulky (and expensive) graphing calculator students have been toting around for decades. Parents will wish they had these in high school! All the functionality, no batteries required. ( Android)

Another graphing calculator app, this one for iPhone and iPad. ( iOS)

Geometry Pad

Bring geometric equations to life with this app, which allows you to create fundamental shapes, then explore and change their properties. Export and save documents to your device or the cloud. ( iOS, Android)

Learn the programming language Swift, used by Apple to create apps. This colorful, user-friendly app includes clear instructions, a glossary of common coding terms, and a variety of fun and engaging levels to play. ( iOS)

This app is ideal for middle school students who want to learn coding. Play around to learn how to create cool games, animations, or complete apps. ( iOS)

This citizen science project has set out to map every living species on the planet, and you can help! Report your sightings, help identify other spottings, and contribute to all sorts of ongoing research projects. ( iOS, Android)

This interactive reference tool is a must-have for students of human anatomy or biology. It includes rotational images and lots of helpful animations. ( iOS, Android)

This no-frills app lays out the basic concepts, formulas, and theories of physics. All information is available offline, too, so you can look up information without getting distracted by social media or email notification. ( Android)

In this addictive gravity puzzle game, you launch a planet into orbit around a black hole with the flick of a finger. The goal? To keep the planet in a stable orbit, rather than being devoured by the black hole. ( iOS, Android)

The interactive periodic table in this app is a terrific resource on its own, but you also get a molar mass calculator, solubility tables, acid strengths, and more. ( iOS, Android)

This augmented reality app tells the story of rivers and their ecosystems. Learn how people and wildlife interact with river systems, and what happens if a river is dammed or its health suffers. ( iOS, Android)

Turn your phone into a pocket-size science tool. Get free science activities to try, document experiments and research, and record observations of the world around you. ( iOS, Android)

Help NASA by making environmental observations to complement satellite data. There are multiple ongoing projects to join and contribute to, including the mapping of trees and mosquito habitats. ( iOS, Android)

Budding stargazers and experienced astronomers alike will find a lot to like in this app. Augmented reality makes it easy to identify what you see the night sky, in the present, past, or future. ( iOS, Android)

Bridge Constructor

Put your physics knowledge to work by building bridges in a variety of environments. Then, put them to the test to see if they hold up to the stress! ( iOS, Android)

Explore the periodic table in depth with this free app for students. Watch a 2-hour episode of NOVA, play a fun chemistry game, and dive deep into an interactive periodic table. ( iOS)

Learn how the Earth's climate is changing by exploring visualized climate data from NASA. Zoom in and out on a beautifully colored interactive globe. ( iOS, Android)

Teach yourself C++ programming language with 80 complete lessons that include quizzes to test your knowledge along the way. SoloLearn offers a variety of other programming courses, all for free. ( iOS, Android)

Social Studies Apps

These free apps for students cover a variety of topics in geography, history, government, and civics.

Google Earth is like a globe come to life. This robust app has become the standard worldwide for learning more about just about every single place on the planet. ( iOS, Android)

World Geography Quiz Game

Need to prep for a geography test, or just interested in learning more about the world? This app has more than 6,000 questions about maps, capitals, flags, currency, and much more. ( iOS, Android)

Test your knowledge of national flags and capitals with this free app for students. You'll learn fascinating facts about each country too. ( iOS, Android)

Find out if you have what it takes to compete in the National Geographic GeoBee! This app has more than 1,000 questions from past geography bees, including challenging bonus photo rounds. ( iOS, Android)

Historia is all about dates. The app shows you a historical event and asks you to give the correct date. The closer you are, the higher your score. While dates aren't necessarily the most important thing to know, remembering when an event fits into history is useful for understanding its place in the bigger picture. ( iOS)

Learn new historical facts every day with this free app for students and other history lovers. Whether it happened last year or centuries ago, find out what was happening in the world on this date in history. ( iOS, Android)

The popular podcast has its own app! Each episode features conversations with a historian to help you learn about important events and people in the early United States. This is a must for every American History student. ( iOS, Android)

This is the classic game of American pioneers, updated for a new generation. See if you can get your party safely across the continent to a new home in Oregon. Tip: Watch out for dysentery! ( iOS, Android)

Every U.S. citizen should have this app, giving them ready access to the document that protects important freedoms. The app also helps you understand the Bill of Rights from a historical perspective, detailing the evolving language and the efforts necessary to get each amendment through Congress. ( iOS)

Access documents from the National Archives and learn more about them with a wide variety of activities. Some are meant for classroom use, but others are perfect for independent study. ( iOS)

Travel back to 1787 and work to get the votes needed to ratify the new U.S. Constitution. Hear opinions from all 13 original states, and try to convince dissenters to vote in support of ratification. ( iOS, Android)

Run your own law firm, and determine whether your clients have a constitutional right on their side! Then, match them with lawyers and argue their case! ( iOS, Android)

Learn about the three branches of government as you pick leaders for each, then create a presidential agenda, pass laws in Congress, and apply judicial review. This is the most fun way around to learn how the U.S. government works. ( iOS, Android)

Use your persuasive abilities to argue real Supreme Court cases! You'll learn about landmark cases like Brown v. Board of Education and the significance of precedence and evidence in the judicial decision-making process. ( iOS, Android)

Think you want to be president? This app lets you find out if you're up to the job! Set your agenda and face the challenges that pop up during your four-year term. ( iOS, Android)

Voting is a right and a responsibility. Learn what it takes to be an informed voter, and where you personally stand on important issues that may impact your vote. ( iOS, Android)

Want to be president? First, you have to win the election! Set a platform, raise campaign funds, follow the polls, and campaign for votes in your bid for the White House. ( iOS, Android)

The United States is a nation of immigrants, but what does it really take to qualify for citizenship? Find out in this interactive game. ( iOS, Android)

Foreign Language Apps

Whether you want to practice what you're learning in school, or are looking to pick up a new language on your own, these free apps for students have got you covered.

DuoLingo is probably the most popular free app for students learning foreign languages. The lessons are great for brushing up on vocabulary and listening skills, while the recording exercises help develop stronger speaking skills. DuoLingo currently offers 35 languages, and it's growing all the time. ( iOS, Android)

Learn a new language ... in just 5 minutes a day! Choose from one of more than 35 languages and even get ready for travel to another country. ( iOS, Android)

Memrise is another top app for learning a new language. The bite-size lessons teach useful phrases in a wide variety of languages. They also offer courses on topics like literature, history, and math. ( iOS, Android)

What sets Busuu apart is the ability to interact with and get feedback from native speakers of the language you're learning. Choose from a dozen different languages. ( iOS, Android)

If you'd like to focus on being able to read another language, instead of just speaking it, this is the app you'll want. It offers text in 13 different languages, with side-by-side translations to help you learn. ( iOS, Android)

With its incredible selection of languages, this is the go-to app for learning something a little more obscure. Dip into Afrikaans, Latvian, or Catalan, languages you're less likely to find on other apps. (iOS, Android)

In addition to basic text translations, use this powerful app to translate bilingual conversations in real-time, or instantly translate text in images with the built-in camera. The offline mode is especially handy for travel. ( iOS, Android)

Want to practice your French or learn about life in Japan? HelloTalk matches you with native speakers in your country of choice so you can talk, text, or video chat. Translation tools are provided in case you need a little help along the way. ( iOS, Android)

Note-Taking and Study Apps

These free apps for students help you take better notes in and out of class and stay focused when it's time to study.

Use Google Keep to store things like websites, images, quotes, and lists on color-coded "sticky" notes. It's easy to share your notes with others, too, and keep everything synced across devices. ( iOS, Android)

Evernote's free basic plan allows for note-taking in a variety of formats, including text, sketches, photo, audio, and video. Sync your notes across devices and share them with others effortlessly. ( iOS, Android)

If you have an iPhone or iPad, this app comes standard. Ask Siri to start a new note for you, create folders to organize notes, create checklists and attachments, scan docs, and much more. ( iOS)

This app is available on pretty much any device you can think of, including Kindle. It also works on every web browser and operating system, so you'll always have access to your notes no matter where you are. The generous free version gives you all the features you really need. ( Multiple devices)

This is the note-taking app for those who love to sketch, draw, doodle, or take notes by hand. If you can do it on paper, you can do it in this app. ( iOS)

When you don't need all the bells and whistles, just a simple clean interface for taking notes and keeping them organized, try Simplenote. It does have a few cool features, like the ability to go back and see edits you've made and view previous versions of your notes. ( iOS, Android)

Let your phone take notes for you in class so you can give your full attention to your teacher. This app records voice notes and converts them into text so you can use them for study later. ( Android)

Otter Voice does the same type of speech-to-text transcription for iPhone and iPad. The free version gives you 600 minutes per month. ( iOS)

Mobile flashcards boast all the benefits of traditional flashcards in a convenient and accessible format. Create and share flashcards for any subject, or choose from thousands of stacks created by others. ( iOS, Android)

This flashcard app offers more than 500 million flashcards on any and every topic. No matter what you're studying, there are free flashcards for that! ( iOS, Android)

Cram is another popular flashcard app that allows you to create, share, and explore flashcards on the go. ( iOS, Android)

StudyBlue goes beyond the standard flashcard app by letting you upload and share your notes and other study materials too. It's everything you need to study anywhere you go. ( iOS, Android)

Khan Academy is a massive database of free videos and exercises on every subject imaginable. This is the place to practice what you're learning in school, and brush up your skills before an exam. ( iOS, Android)

Get free flashcards, practice tests, and other useful tools in more than 60 high school subjects. There are lots of AP topics available, as well as SAT and ACT prep courses. ( iOS, Android)

When you're truly stuck on a homework question, check out Brainly. This community of students and experts can help guide you to the right answers. Plus, you can help others answer their questions too. ( iOS, Android)

edX

Ready for a challenge? Take real college courses, for free, using this cool app. Find out what college classes are like and expand your knowledge at the same time. ( iOS, Android)

Planning and Time Management Apps

Stay on top of exam and assignment due dates with these free apps for students. They'll also help you manage your time so you're not up late cramming the night before a big test.

Add classes and track your upcoming work in an easy-to-read monthly, weekly, or daily calendar view. Notification reminders ensure you never miss a crucial deadline. ( Multiple devices)

If you use other Google tools like Gmail or Google Classroom, Google Calendar is a terrific planning app. It automatically adds items to your calendar that it detects in other apps, and allows you to set reminders and color-code your tasks and events. ( iOS, Android)

This free app for students was designed from the ground-up for schools, so it's full of features that make it easy to use. Schedule classes for a semester or year, break tasks down by subject, and sync your plans across all devices seamlessly. ( iOS, Android)

Chipper was designed for college students, but high schoolers can benefit from it too. One of the coolest things about it is that it makes suggestions to help you break your work into more manageable pieces, and helps you prioritize your tasks. ( iOS, Android)

Egenda

This app is specifically designed to track homework. Simply set up your classes, add your homework assignments each day, and get to work. ( iOS, Android)

Power Planner: Homework/Grades/Schedule

This app does more than track your schedule and homework assignments. It also allows you to keep track of grades and your GPA, so always know how things stand and where you might need to improve. ( iOS, Android)

Need to avoid distractions while you study? Forest's creative approach can help. Set the timer and get to work while a digital plant grows on the screen. If you pick up your phone and exit the app before the time is up, the plant dies! ( iOS, Android)

This simple timer app uses the Pomodoro technique of 25-minute work sessions alternating with shorter brain breaks to keep you focused. You get 20 free sessions a month, enough for homework time every night of the week. ( iOS, Android)

Wondering if you spend too much time on social media or gaming, or just how often you check your phone each day? This app logs those actions and allows you to see how you compare to others, so you can decide when it might be time to take a bit of a break. ( Android)

Throw away those paper to-do lists you keep losing anyway and try this app instead. Create lists, get reminders, and even share tasks with up to two other users. This app syncs with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Evernote too. ( Multiple devices)

This app promises to help you develop better habits ... for free. Track what you do, set new goals, and celebrate milestones as you hold yourself accountable for new ways of life. ( iOS, Android)

Other Useful Free Apps for Students

These free apps for students include programs that encourage mindfulness, safety, exploration. You'll also find a document scanner, video editing apps, and more.

This has become the go-to app for lots of teachers and students. It works with hundreds of other apps to provide interactive learning in the classroom and at a distance. Be sure to install other G Suite apps like Google Drive, Docs, and Slides too. ( iOS, Android)

The face to face social network that allows you to connect to up to eight people on a video call at a time and play games. Houseparty's mission is to bring empathy to online communication. Houseparty was created to be the most human way to be together, when not together. This video-based social network also has the functionality to leave video messages. ( iOS, Android)

This clever app turns mobile devices into portable scanners with a simple camera shot. Export the images in several file types to save or share with others. ( iOS, Android)

A stock market simulation game that also teaches money skills. Use fake money to trade stocks while using real-time data from NYSE and NASDAQ. Kids build confidence in investing and can win real gift cards along the way. ( iOS, Android)

Attention, artists! This free app turns your phone or tablet into the ultimate surface for sketching, coloring, and creating. ( iOS, Android)

Ensure you're crediting your sources properly with this app that creates citations in MLA or APA for books, journals, websites, and videos. ( Android)

Trouble getting out of the bed in the morning? This clever alarm app is out to change that! It forces you to complete a task like taking a picture or solving a math problem to turn off the alarm! ( iOS, Android)

Apple's video editing software lets you create, edit, and share professional-looking videos using a variety of templates, graphics, text, and audio. ( iOS)

This terrific video editor for Android has many of the same features as iMovie, allowing you to make top-notch videos even if you have no prior experience. ( Android)

This app was originally designed to keep college students safe when they were out alone, but younger kids and parents alike are loving it. Simply set a circle of 6 people to be quickly notified when you need some help. Really, everyone needs this brilliant free app. ( iOS, Android)

This app is popular in Australian schools, where it was developed. In just 10 minutes a day, it promises to help you practice mindfulness and bring balance to your life. ( iOS, Android)

This app from UCLA Health provides daily and wellness meditations, informative videos, and a weekly podcast. Use it to stay centered when life gets busy (so, always). ( iOS, Android)

In addition to providing guided meditation, this app encourages you to check in throughout the day to see how you're feeling. Monitoring your moods and making active changes to de-stress can have a huge impact on your productivity and quality of life, so every student can benefit from this app. ( iOS, Android)

Elevate is a brain-training app designed to help improve attention and memory. Play three games each day that target skills in writing, listening, speaking, reading, and math. ( iOS, Android)

Looking to be inspired? This app provides access to the entire library of official TED Talks. Browse featured talks, view curated playlists, or discover talks on virtually any topic of interest. ( iOS, Android)

This addictive, multi-player trivia game lets you challenge friends while learning fun facts on a variety of topics. ( iOS, Android)

Take any photo, draw a line for a mouth, and record a message. Share it with friends for some silly fun, or use it for the most creative class presentation ever! ( iOS)

Love learning online? So do we! Find our unbelievably huge list of online learning resources here.

Teachers need apps too! Here are our 7 Best Organization Apps for Teachers.

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The Big List of 100+ FREE Apps for Students in Junior High and High School

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Teens and tweens are bound to have their phones in hand most of the day, so why not install some really useful apps? These amazing free apps for students cover all the major subjects, plus provide help with study skills, time management, planning, and more. The best part?

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Practice Videos

This collection includes videos that have not yet been tagged for inclusion into the Matrix as well as current Matrix videos presented without reference to their position within the Matrix. Viewing and discussing videos can be included in effective professional development activities. The videos raise many topics for discussion, including the use of technology to support curriculum goals, classroom management, student autonomy, support, and pedagogical strategies.

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This collection includes videos that have not yet been tagged for inclusion into the Matrix as well as current Matrix videos presented without reference to their position within the Matrix. Viewing and discussing videos can be included in effective professional development activities.

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Mindful Powers™ is an award-winning, kid-first, holistic approach to helping young minds learn and practice mindfulness so they can respond more effectively to stressful situations through the power of play. Built on a skills-based approach that helps children in early and middle childhood build a healthier relationship with life, stress, and anxiety, Mindful Powers™ empowers kids to bring calm to their lives at the touch of their fingertips.

Download Mindful Powers™ today to experience the first three Mindful Play lessons for free!
Ideal for kids aged 7 - 10

Mindful Powers™ is designed to be a part of your child's daily routine. It is simple, easy, and fun to use, so kids can pick it up and use it at any point in their day. The two key features are:
* Mindful Play | voice-guided mindfulness sessions
* Focus Time | a task timer

Mindful play:
Through a series of 10 progressive and interactive voice-guided sessions, kids learn how to master the powers of mindfulness - the ability to know and understand what is happening in one's head at any given moment, without getting carried away by it. Before each lesson, kids sooth their very own Flibbertigibbet™, who is in an agitated state, with the touch of their finger. This sensory-based repetitive interaction triggers the body's rest and digest response, helping kids relax and regain focus.

Focus time:
The Flibbertigibbet™ self-set timer helps kids set mental parameters around a given task by applying focus time until completion. When the focus timer is on, Mindful Powers™ deters kids from using the device for any other purpose, encouraging them to work towards completing their tasks.

Mindful Powers helps grow the following skills:
* Calmness & relaxation
* Stress & anxiety reduction
* Concentration & focus
* Navigating big emotions
* Getting along with others

"Mindful Powers™ is not a cookie cutter approach to mindfulness. Based on contextual behavioral science and inspired by an approach to therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, it recognizes that the mindfulness experience is a psychological experience that can be learned in small bits and gradually presented and trained."
- Dr. Roger Vilardaga, Assistant Professor at Duke University

Mindful Powers Awards:
* GOLD Winner: The Davey Awards, Best Mobile Apps/Site - Health & Wellness
* GOLD Winner: The W3 Awards, Best Mobile Apps/Site - Family & Kids
* Best Learning App: Kidscreen Awards 2019 - Original
* Finalist: 2018 Cynopsis Imagination Awards - Mobile App - K6-11

The content and lessons included in Mindful Powers™ were developed in consultation with Dr. Roger Vilardaga, a Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Professor at Duke University's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

*Mindful Powers™ is not intended to clinically treat kids with behavioral and/or emotional challenges.

Please note, In-App Purchases are not included in Family Sharing. If you have the app installed on multiple devices, you will need to be signed into iTunes using the account that made the initial purchase in order for your Story Pack In-App Purchases to carry over. You also have the option of downloading the paid version: Mindful Powers™ edu, which is compatible with Family Sharing (and does not have IAP).

Version 1.1.0

Flibbertigibbet has been working hard to improve the Mindful Powers App! With this update we've added a new feature; you can now pick different smoothing settings for Flibbertigibbet. If the current setting feels like there's too many spiky bumps to smooth-out, head over to the settings section of the app and select the "No extra bumpy spikes" option for a more relaxing smoothing experience. The app now supports newer iPhone screens and our new privacy update is Flibbertigibbet's way of showing you how much your satisfaction matters to us. Flibbertigibbet has been hard at work fixing minor bugs.

AMAZING 😌

This app helped me calm down as my life is super stressful at the moment. My psychologist recommended this app to me and I have been so thankful since. Just a few days of playing, I got my parents to purchase the rest of the app (Mindfulness 101 course).So far, its really helping. I can't resist it! The great thing about the purchase is it's a 1 time payment and isnt an expensive monthly subscription like other apps. This app is amazing. I have tried MANY different mindful apps but this one is my personal favourite. There is a little creature called a Flibbertigibbert. Its so cute! When it gets stressed it gets spiky and you can smoothen it out into a cute relaxed ball. I'm slowly learning how to handle stress and fears the right way! The voice isn't annoying at all, it is calming and soothing. 5 stars for this one is a no brainer.

We are so happy you are enjoying Mindful Powers Dog16! We are so pleased to learn that Mindful Powers has helped you calm your mind and focus your attention. And that Flibbertigibbet was there to help make that happen. Flibbertigibbet says thanks for smoothing out all his bumps!

Very Beneficial

I love this app! My stepson who is 6 and his older brother have really enjoyed the mindful games and we even used the focus timer to get him through homework happily without having an emotional meltdown.

Thank you so much for your kind and thoughtful review Tita Jo! We are so happy to learn that the mindful games and the Focus Timer are beneficial, and that's great news on avoiding the meltdowns. :) Please tell your stepsons that Flibbertigibbet appreciates all the time they spend with him!

Just AWSOME

This was AWSOME it really helps you calm yourself and I'm around a teenager so I get very angry but this just calms me and my mind I recommend getting this

Thank your thoughtful review Idkwhoiamloljk! We are so happy to learn that Mindful Powers helps you calm your mind. And Flibbertigibbet appreciates all the time you spend with him!

Information

Seller

Smashing Ideas LLC

Compatibility

Requires iOS 9.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Copyright

© Smashing Ideas.

In-App Purchases

Mindfulness 101 Story Pack $7.99

Family Sharing

Up to six family members will be able to use this app with Family Sharing enabled.

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‎Mindful Powers™ is an award-winning, kid-first, holistic approach to helping young minds learn and practice mindfulness so they can respond more effectively to stressful situations through the power of play. Built on a skills-based approach that helps children in early and middle childhood build a h...

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Great ideas for tools

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EdTechTools - Through The Classroom Door

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This is a list of web 2.0 EdTechTools, curated with the Maker (1982) model. TAGS #Animations, #FlippedVideos, #FormativeResponse, #Previewing, #Animate, #Comics, #GraphicOrganisers, #Mindmap, #Multimedia, #ePortfolios, #Audio, #Flipped Content - What students need to learn Guiding Focus Questions: - Can I choose a familiar context to help make connections or will I ...

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Help your students become better searchers

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Help your students become better searchers

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With the materials on this site, you can help your students become skilled searchers- whether they're just starting out with search, or ready for more advanced training.

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The Advanced Google Searches Every Student Should Know

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The Advanced Google Searches Every Student Should Know

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The Advanced Google Searches Every Student Should Know - November Learning

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"Did he seriously just ask that? How old is this guy?" Well yes, I recently seriously just asked a group of students if they knew how to search Google. And yes, the students got a good laugh from my question.

"Of course I know how to use Google," I have been told by every student to whom I have asked the question.

"Really? Let's see. This won't take long," I promise.

The truth is that every student can use Google on some level. What is interesting to me is that when I interview students about their search strategies and I ask them if they have ever asked their teachers for help with a search the answer is almost always, "No". What if our students are overconfident about their search skills?

If you watch your students use Google you will probably observe that most begin their search by simply typing the title of the assignment verbatim into Google (i.e., Iranian Hostage Crisis). They do this partly because this technique can yield satisfying answers to basic questions, and because in many cases they haven't been explicitly taught to do anything else. It is the easy way out that does not require much in the way of critical thinking.

After their results pop up, most students will look only at the first screen of results, believing that those top hits contain everything they will need to complete their assignment. In many ways, this response is natural - it's quick and easy. If they do not find what they are looking for within three tries they will likely give up and assume that Google cannot fulfill their request.

But what happens when a meaningful search requires more thinking than simply typing in the assignment?
Expert Google search strategies
The internet presents our students with the significant challenge of learning how to access and synthesize massive amounts of information from all over the world. To manage overwhelming amounts of information, it is critical to learn how to design searches that take you past the first page of results. The quality of information can lead to a over simplification of an issue or lead to a much deeper understanding of the nuances of a topic.

In today's global economy, global empathy is one of the most critical skills we must teach our students. To this end, utilizing the internet strategically can lead students to understand other cultures and viewpoints and spark authentic learning experiences. While the internet provides us with the opportunity to explore issues from multiple perspectives and exposes our simplified narratives, the reality of how Google targets basic search often leads to localized results.

The irony of having access to thousands of channels of information is that many of our students seem satisfied when they find the most visually accessible version of the truth. Students must be educated to ask themselves, "How can I design a search or series of searches that yields the highest quality results? As educators, we must equip our students with the skills and strategies to help them develop sophisticated search strategies that will enable them to engage in critical analysis.

Let's take a look at a detailed example assignment, "the Iranian Hostage Crisis."

If you key in "Iranian Hostage Crisis" in Google, and you are in North America, your search in the top screen will yield no sources from Iran, despite the fact that this was where the event took place. Prior to the rise of the internet, omitting Iranian sources may have been completely acceptable and practical in a school setting. There simply were no sources from Iran in the average well-stocked school or town library.

When I challenge students to redesign their search to yield sources from Iran, they usually add the words "Iranian sources" into the search bar. Sadly, this will also lead to zero content from Iran's perspective, and students will continue to be flooded with results detailing a Western version of the event.

Whenever students are researching a problem that involves another country, they should make use of "country codes" and/or use advanced Google searches to limit their search to a particular country. (A list of country codes can be found here. "IR" is the two letter country code for Iran. If students want the shortcut to generate Iranian sources, they can type "site:ir" into the search and the results will be from Iran. ("Site:" is a Google operator that limits results to content in the extension portion of a web address.)

While getting to Iran is just a matter of looking up the two-letter country code and understanding the Google operator "site," the creative part of the search is imagining the Iranian perspective. Essentially all students will type: "site:ir Iranian hostage crisis" after they are taught to limit their search to Iran. At that point, students must be challenged to question their perspective and possible biases: "Do you think the Iranians called this event the Iranian Hostage Crisis?"

This is where Wikipedia can be quite useful. With a quick scan of the Wikipedia article about the Iranian Hostage Crisis, students learn that in Iran the event is known as "The Conquest of the American Spy Den." (Many teachers decry the use of Wikipedia as an authoritative source, and it is true that consulting Wikipedia alone does not represent a comprehensive search strategy. However, Wikipedia may be used to expose researchers to content that can lead students to refine their search.)

Now that we have sorted out the mechanics of accessing the Iranian sources and perspectives, here is the revised Google search:
site:IR Conquest of the American Spy Den
Using this new search, students are presented with an entirely new set of sources, all from Iran. But why stop there? How do we know these sources are credible? What if we could isolate our search to sources from Iranian universities? To access this type of refined search, students can search:

site:ac.ir Chronology of Conquest of the American Spy Den
*The addition of "ac" indicates an institution of higher education, much like ".edu" does for American universities.

Students will notice that this new search has no resemblance to their first, and that the information contained in this latest search offers a vastly different account of the American-named "Iranian Hostage Crisis." Using this new search, students are empowered to access a perspective they may not otherwise have considered. Students have now used Google to gain a perspective than they previously imagined was possible.

When confronted with examples of using the advanced features of Google, the students who previously laughed at the question, "Do you know how to use Google?" are stunned, and in some cases even embarrassed or mad. They wonder why they have never been taught how to perform this type of search. They often are quick to ask: "What else don't I know?"

There is great news in this response. Students do not want to feel inadequate when they use the internet. Once you start to teach them the tricks of deep research they will often ask for more. With some minor adjustments in how we think about and teach basic online research skills, teachers can help create an environment where students take pride in their ability to "zoom in" on a topic as deeply as possible. It makes huge sense for a teacher to ask students to show their search strategies as well as their results. In this way, teachers can gain insights into how students thought about querying a search engine.

You have to love it when students demand to learn more!

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The Advanced Google Searches Every Student Should Know - November Learning

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"Did he seriously just ask that? How old is this guy?" Well yes, I recently seriously just asked a group of students if they knew how to search Google. And yes, the students got a good laugh from my question.

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Creativity and how to encourage it - video

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Creativity and how to encourage it - video

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when there is a correct answer  Exercise in creative thinking

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A correct answer kills the creativity. See what happens when third grade students think there is a correct answer. details in the ebook http://www.ourboox.com/books/when-there-is-no-correct-answer-a-lesson-in-creativity/ http://www.segevelad.com/english

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20 Google Sites tips and tricks - Ditch That Textbook

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Google Sites has been around for a long time and a few years ago Google Sites got a major update. Since then many more user-friendly features have been added to this fantastic web page-creation tool.

In a recent #Ditchbook Twitter chat educators shared their best tips for using Google sites in and out of the classroom along with tons of great tricks you might not have even heard about yet. Scroll down for 20 tips and tricks to help you and your students get the most out of Google Sites.

Using Google Sites in the classroom

1. Provide a whole unit with resources.

It can get messy to try to keep sharing resources with students during a whole unit of study. Packaging them in a site allows for easy updates and sharing of ideas.

2. Package your HyperDocs.

Google sites can be used to package large units like novel HyperDocs. All the links and resources they need to complete the work are all on the site.

3. Use Google Sites to supplement Google Classroom.

Use subpages in Google Sites to package content for your students. The website link can be added to an assignment in Google Classroom for students to easily reference during their work.

4. Teach students (and staff) about new tools or procedures.

Sites provides an easy way to house all of the tips and tutorials that users might want to reference while learning something new.

A1: I love creating Sites for our students when we have new initiatives or procedures. Our MTSS structure is a great example Ss were able to visit that site and receive updates and announcements on where to go, how the procedures were laid out, all in an easy format! #ditchbook
- Evan Mosier (@emosier3) November 15, 2019

5. Get gamified with digital escape rooms.

Digital escape rooms are a fun way to introduce, practice or review content and a Google Site provides the perfect "room" for all of your clues and locks. Learn all about how to create a digital escape room for your students in this post.

6. Give students access to school from home.

Posting material on a class website gives students the opportunity to access material from home. Also a big plus for parents trying to help their students!

7. Have students create sites for classmates.

Creating a useful website is a valuable skill. Have students create their own website to share information with classmates or club members.

8. Show what you know with Google Sites.

Give students the option to create their own site to demonstrate their learning after a lesson or within a unit.

9. Make your site interactive with the embed feature.

You can use a URL or embed code to add to your website. Embedding an interactive Padlet allows your students to add content to the site and even comment on their classmate's work without being a contributor to the site.

10. Use a Google Form inside a site for easy access to a daily check in.

We want to connect with our students and know how they are doing every day. But it can be difficult to check-in with every student in every one of our classes. Embedding a Google Form inside of your site makes it simple and easy to get started connecting with all of your students. Find an example Google Form check-in template here.

Tips and tricks for using Google Sites

11. Make a copy of a site.

The new Google Sites allows you to make a copy of a site. This is a useful feature if you want to share a site with someone to collaborate but don't want to lose your original site. Also great for making templates of site designs you use often.

12. Share pictures easily with image carousel.

Inside of your Google Site on the right hand menu select "Insert" then "Image Carousel" to upload and select the images you want to share. You can even resize the carousel frame to the size you want.

13. Use an incognito window to test your settings

If you are the owner of the site and the images and embedded resources it can be hard to know which ones are shared and which ones are still private. Checking your site in an incognito window allows you to see what your students or families will see.

14. Look more professional with the button tool.

A button can look so much better than a simple hyperlink. Try it on a new Google site by clicking on "Insert" then scroll down to find the button option. From there you can add a name for your button and a URL or site page to link to.

15. Show only the content you want by hiding.

If you want to create the content just for yourself or if you are planning to release it later you can hide a page from navigation so that others can't see it even when it's published. Go to "Pages" then use the three dots next to the page name to choose "Hide from navigation".

16. Add a favicon!

Make your site even more personalized by adding a favicon. Just click on the three dots in the top edit menu and choose "add favicon". You can add your own image or search for one to use.

A3 #ditchbook

I also like how you can add a logo to the site navigation bar and favicon to Google sites. It can really help give sites a personal and professional look.
- Sean Fahey (@SEANJFAHEY) November 15, 2019

17. Create a Google Slides template.

On episode 83 of the Google Teacher Tribe Podcast Joe Marquez shows us his hack for creating a template in Google Sites. Listen to the episode below!

18. Insert collapsible text boxes.

A brand new feature added to Google Sites now allows you to insert collapsible text boxes. Check out this Google Blog post to learn more about this awesome new feature!

Bonus! A Site full of Sites tips and tricks!

Check out this Google Sites tips and tricks presentation created by Raul Cortez. TONS of great stuff here!

Taking Google Sites beyond the classroom

19. House all of your professional resources in one place.

A Google Site is a great way to showcase the work you have done as a professional educator. Whether your preparing to change positions or want to share your resources all in one place a Google Site provides a simple and free way to package it all.

20. Take your sites skills out into the world!

That pre-school meet-up group, your son's swim team, a book club are all fantastic groups that might be looking for a way to easily share information and resources. Wow them with you Google Sites know-how and help your group get organized.

A4: Uses for Google Sites beyond the classroom ...
- Home base for clubs, activities, sports teams
- Create a parent portal with info, class photos, contact info
- Outreach from the front office with news, documents, info#DitchBook
- Matt Miller (@jmattmiller) November 15, 2019

Want to get in on the next #DitchBook Twitter chat?

Having trouble? Still unclear on how a Twitter chat works? Feel free to tweet to these #DitchBook ambassadors and they'll help - Karly Moura @karlymoura, Sean Fahey @seanjfahey, Sandy Otto @sandyrotto, Rachel Marker @rachelmarker, Evan Mosier @emosier3, Mandi Tolen @TTmomTT, Craig Klement @craigklement, Tara Martin @taramartinedu, Krista Harmsworth @zonie71, Anne Kamper @annekamper, Rayna Freedman @rlfreedm, Lance McClard @drmcclard, Stephanie DeMichele @sdemichele or David Platt @herrplatt!

Ready to take your tech skills -- and student learning -- to another level?

Sign up for Tech to Learn online course!

Check Out My Books

©2019 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

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20 Google Sites tips and tricks - Ditch That Textbook

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Google Sites has been around for a long time and a few years ago Google Sites got a major update. Since then many more user-friendly features have been added to this fantastic web page-creation tool.

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How Edtech Can Expand What Teachers Do | Edutopia

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Education technology has the capacity to increase what a teacher can accomplish in the course of a day's work.

Bob Daemmrich / Alamy Stock Photo

Teaching isn't an easy job, and recent changes in education and society aren't making it any easier. A generation ago, if you made sure to cover your curriculum according to pacing guides and best practices, you were doing a satisfactory job. But as students' needs and society's expectations have risen, so have the demands placed on teachers' shoulders.

Teachers today need to differentiate their instruction, use data-driven instructional practices, address students' social and emotional challenges, close achievement gaps, and ensure that all students are prepared for the 21st-century economy. It's hard to imagine teachers measuring up to these goals just by getting better and working harder.

Fortunately, in the face of these challenges, technology has something to offer. Many common uses of classroom technology serve primarily to enhance teachers' existing lessons, but technology can start to really move the needle on the many demands on teachers when it expands the frontiers of what they're able to accomplish in a day.

How Edtech Affects Teaching Practices

You may not have thought about it in those terms before-that edtech assists teachers in basically two ways, by enhancing what they do now, and by expanding what they're able to do.

First, technology enhances teachers' current practices by increasing their instructional value or making them work more smoothly. For example, projector slides can enhance your lessons with audiovisual elements such as diagrams, photos, and videos. Sites like Google, Teachers Pay Teachers, and IBM Teacher Advisor can help you enhance your lessons with materials and learning activities that are more engaging, pedagogically sound, or aligned with standards and student needs. Educational YouTube videos can enhance the edutainment in your classroom. Google Classroom can enhance your workflow by helping you bypass the copy room.

These technologies don't fundamentally change the way you teach, but they can enhance your current practices by improving their instructional value or making them work more efficiently for you and for your students.

Second, technology can expand teachers' capacity to implement new practices that would otherwise be challenging to adopt and maintain. Human history is in part a story of new technologies that make new practices possible. From the wheel to the steam engine to the supercomputer, these technologies expand how people produce the goods of life. Food, clothing, housing, energy, and entertainment are all far more affordable and accessible than they were just a few generations ago because technology has steadily pushed out the frontier of human productivity.

Technology can play a similar role for teachers by helping them use their time, attention, and energy in new ways to make a bigger difference for their students. For example, online learning technologies like Lexia Core5 Reading and Newsela can adapt instruction to students' individual learning needs, thereby expanding teachers' capacity to offer differentiated learning. Adaptive software platforms can give teachers daily snapshots of students' learning progress, thereby making data-driven instruction much more manageable. And writing feedback software such as Ecree and NoRedInk can provide automated feedback on the grammar and structure of students' essays so that teachers can focus their feedback on higher-order elements of writing that often get shortchanged, such as reasoning, rhetoric, and style.

In many blended learning instructional models, teachers create online videos to replace their lectures so that students can learn the foundational content for each unit in an independent, self-paced, mastery-based manner. With this shift, the teachers can spend more of their class time working directly with students. Many teachers also find that reallocating class time through blended learning expands their capacity for a host of other valuable learning activities-such as problem-based learning, project-based learning, or small group instruction-and creates more time for personal interactions that foster caring and supportive relationships.

These valuable teaching practices-differentiated instruction, data-driven instruction, higher-order feedback, mastery-based instruction, problem-based learning, project-based learning, small-group instruction, and relationship-building-predate most educational technologies. They don't require technology, but technology can expand teachers' capacity to adopt these practices in a manageable way.

The diagram below illustrates the power of technology to expand teachers' capacity for new practices, increasing what teachers are able to accomplish with their students given the fixed amounts of time and energy they have in a given day.
Kareem Farah and Thomas Arnett
Enhancing and expanding can both be worthwhile ways to use edtech. Yet for perfectly understandable reasons, expanding is often the road less traveled. If you're a busy teacher, when do you find the time to sift through the overwhelming amount of edtech on the market and then learn a bunch of new practices? And given how tech can come and go, it's reasonable to be leery of investing your time in tools that might not last. Furthermore, when you've spent years developing and honing your current practices, it may seem like it doesn't make sense to set them aside and try radically different approaches to teaching. When you have a system that already works for you, the work involved in adopting new practices rarely seems worth the cost. But many teachers are indeed working to expand their practices by trying those radical new approaches.

Is changing how you teach easy? No. But for many teachers who are using technology to expand their teaching repertoire, looking back isn't an option. This change takes a lot of work, but ultimately it lets teachers have more of the types of experiences with students that made them want to become teachers in the first place.

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Education technology has the capacity to increase what a teacher can accomplish in the course of a day's work. Bob Daemmrich / Alamy Stock Photo Teaching isn't an easy job, and recent changes in education and society aren't making it any easier.

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Unofficial plug in to use immersive reader in chrome. 

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Select text, right-click, and Microsoft's Immersive Reader will help you read it

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Gain students attention with call out and responses

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50 fun call-and-response ideas to get students' attention

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Call-and-response is a time-tested technique for getting attention. Instead of repeating yourself, train students to respond to a fun statement!

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Data for students to use

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The Atlas of Economic Complexity by @HarvardGrwthLab

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Visualize global trade data and economic growth opportunities for every country

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See other graphics from 4212

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Images
Bloom's Taxonomy - Partnership with Learning Design

regiscpslearningdesign.weebly.com

Images may be subject to copyright.

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Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds. Images Bloom's Taxonomy - Partnership with Learning Design regiscpslearningdesign.weebly.com Images may be subject to copyright.

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http://inventwithpython.com

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Learning to program makes you a smarter and more capable human being.

Rocket science uses programming, but programming isn't rocket science. Whether you're a student preparing for a software career, an office worker with a folder full of spreadsheet files, or a hobbyist who wants to make video games, the Python programming language is an excellent start in the world of programming.

I'm Al Sweigart, and I write books to teach beginners to code. I put them online for free, because programming is too valuable and needs to be accessible to all. (You can also buy print and ebooks versions.)

Get started. It's a great journey.

The second edition of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is available October 29th!

Programming Books by Al Sweigart

"Introductions to Python are easy to find. But at the end of the day most Python tutorials for beginners end up being the same lessons repackaged, often leaving the new programmer with gaping holes in how their newly acquire skills can be applied practically. This is not one of those books. Where this book stands out is the second part where you actually build useful tools you might need to use every day. The author does a fantastic job of bridging the concepts and skills you learned earlier to real world applications."

Nicholas Sarlo Read full Amazon review

"This book is totally appropriate for someone who has never programmed before. Everything is explained, right from the ground up, in a lively, interesting style which doesn't dumb things down."

J. Hartley, tartley.com Read full Amazon review

"I am a college professor who occasionally teaches courses for liberal arts students. [...] I offered a game programming course in the Python programming language using Sweigart's book. The students loved this book. It starts at the very beginning and leads them, game by fascinating game, to become highly capable programmers."

Dr. Robert C. Gann Read full Amazon review

"I'm halfway through this book and very pleased. I have never seen a programming book so accessible to complete beginners. It really gave me the jump start I needed. I use it alongside other resources, but it continues to be the easiest to absorb."

Jared Walters Read full Amazon review

"I used to write a column on a greek magazine about learning Python and PyGame. [...] Since I found this book, every time the topic of learning programming is mentioned - especially from a person interested on making games - I point people to it."

Konstantinos Michalopoulos Read full Amazon review

"It is difficult to write a clear and easy to understand book on programming for a beginner. It is even more difficult to write a clear and understandable book on cryptography for a beginner. To do both at the same time is nearly impossible, but this author has nailed it."

jstine Read full Amazon review

"My name is Felix. I'm ten years old, and I really liked your book on game programming with python."

Felix D. (in an email to the author)

Everyone in the 21st century needs to learn to code, right? But not everyone needs to become a software engineer or computer scientist. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is written for office workers, students, administrators, and anyone who uses a computer how to write small, practical programs to automate tasks on their computer.

You don't need to know all the complexities of algorithms and syntax, you just want to write basic programs to automate mundane computer tasks. In the process, even total beginners will learn to use Python to control their computers without having to learn complex information about computer science. This is a practical programming guide for the rest of us.

You can also take the online course of this book on Udemy. Use coupon code LOWESTPRICE to buy the course for about $15, about a 60% discount!

You've mined for diamonds, crafted dozens of tools, and built all sorts of structures-but what if you could program robots to do all of that for you in a fraction of the time?

In Coding with Minecraft, you'll create a virtual robot army with Lua, a programming language used by professional game developers. Step-by-step coding projects will show you how to write programs that automatically dig mines, collect materials, craft items, and build anything that you can imagine. Along the way, you'll explore key computer science concepts like data types, functions, variables, and more.

You can get a free review copy of this ebook! (Scroll to the bottom of this link for info.)

Cracking Codes with Python teaches complete beginners how to program in the Python programming language. The book features the source code to several ciphers and hacking programs for these ciphers. The programs include the Caesar cipher, transposition cipher, simple substitution cipher, multiplicative & affine ciphers, Vigenere cipher, and hacking programs for each of these ciphers. The final chapters cover the modern RSA cipher and public key cryptography.
You can get a free review copy of this ebook!
Cracking Codes with Python is the new edition of the older book, Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python.

Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python teaches you how to program in the Python language. Each chapter gives you the complete source code for a new game, and then teaches the programming concepts from the examples. Games include Guess the Number, Hangman, Tic Tac Toe, and Reversi. This book also has an introduction to making games with 2D graphics using the Pygame framework.
You can get a free review copy of this ebook!

Making Games with Python & Pygame covers the Pygame library with the source code for 11 games. Making Games was written as a sequel for the same age range as Invent with Python. Once you have an understanding of the basics of Python programming, you can now expand your abilities using the Pygame library to make games with graphics, animation, and sound.

The book features the source code to 11 games. The games are clones of classics such as Nibbles, Tetris, Simon, Bejeweled, Othello, Connect Four, Flood It, and others.

Udemy Online Courses

You can supplement your book reading with Udemy online video courses for "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" and "Scratch Programming Playground". Use these links to receive large discounts:

All of my books are free to download and share under a Creative Commons license and have been part of Humble Book Bundles benefitting charities. If you'd like to help me out, there are several options:

Donate through Paypal

Support me on Patreon

Use my Udemy referral discount codes. My referral links bring me more income than even paying full price without the referral. Sign up for the Automate course with code LOWESTPRICE or the Scratch course with LOWESTPRICE.

Write a review on Amazon helps get the word out about my books:

Tweet about this website

Or purchase these other recommended programming books from the links below.

Programming Book Recommendations

About Al Sweigart

Al Sweigart is a software developer and tech book author living in San Francisco. Python is his favorite programming language, and he is the developer of several open source modules for it. His cat weighs 12 pounds.

Conference Talks

Interviews

Copyright 2009- | [email protected] | @AlSweigart

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Learning to program makes you a smarter and more capable human being. Rocket science uses programming, but programming isn't rocket science. Whether you're a student preparing for a software career, an office worker with a folder full of spreadsheet files, or a hobbyist who wants to make video games, the Python programming language is an excellent start in the world of programming.

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https://openstax.org
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

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Immersive reader can be integrated into Nearpod now. It's in Beta :)

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Nearpod's integration with Immersive Reader allows students to access text accommodations including text-to-speech, translation, and more right inside Nearpod. When Immersive Reader is enabled through your advanced settings, students can access Immersive Reader on most Nearpod activities and with text on slides created within Nearpod or made with the Google Slides Add-On.

With Microsoft's Immersive Reader built into Nearpod, teachers can:

Provide text-to-speech, read aloud, audio, and translation supports for English Learners

Create supportive classroom environments for students who need additional reading supports in any subject or grade level

Here's how to enable and use Immersive Reader:

To get started, users must enable the feature in their advanced settings. Enabling this feature will grant access to student on:

- Open-Ended Question

- Matching Pairs

- Slides created within Nearpod

- Slides saved via the Nearpod add-on in Google Slides

- Activities (Mulitple Choice & Open Ended Question) within Nearpod's Interactive Video

What to expect on each slide/activity:

- Open-Ended Question, Poll, or Draw-It: Microsoft's Immersive Reader will capture the text in the instructions.

- Matching Pairs: Students can use Immersive Reader for the instructions and the individual cards (when expanded).

- Quiz/ Multiple Choice: Microsoft's Immersive Reader will capture the text from both the question and answers.

- Nearpod created slides and Google Slides (via the add-on): Students will be able to manipulate any text added to the slide.

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How to use Nearpod's Beta Integration with Microsoft's Immersive Reader

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Nearpod's integration with Immersive Reader allows students to access text accommodations including text-to-speech, translation, and more right inside Nearpod. When Immersive Reader is enabled through your advanced settings, students can access Immersive Reader on most Nearpod activities and with text on slides created within Nearpod or made with the Google Slides Add-On.

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The Atlas of Economic Complexity by @HarvardGrwthLab

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Visualize global trade data and economic growth opportunities for every country

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SPEND More time discussing LMSs and how to use them. Online learning, anywhere anytime learning.

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dr. laura spencer (@lspenceredd)- how online learning works

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‎The Dr. Will Show Podcast: Dr. Laura Spencer (@LSpencerEdD)- How Online Learning Works on Apple Podcasts

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‎On this episode, I Zoom in Dr. Laura Spencer and we chat about her journey into teaching online, and what the future of learning looks like in K-12.

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SAMR and Tech Can Help Teachers Truly Transform Assessment 

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SAMR and Tech Can Help Teachers Truly Transform Assessment 

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ARTICLE

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I read an interesting article in EdSurge last week about how current educational technologies do little to move learners beyond rote recall of knowledge and it caught me off guard. It was not the belief that technology has yet to be harnessed to its highest potential that surprised me. It is true that many fields are only starting to see the benefits technology brings to their work. What struck me most was the narrative in the article, which seemingly compared the role of technology to the role of pedagogy. While educational technology does make learning visible, it is the teacher that makes learning meaningful.

As educators and curators of educational technology we know that technology is a tool that complements instruction. As such, the strength of the tool is predicated on its use by a skillful educator. There are certainly some exciting and revolutionary innovations and technology as a tool can be quite powerful if it encourages creative discovery or reinforces foundational knowledge. We crawl before we walk, just like we memorize sight words before we write prose. What follows are four ways that technology transcends analog tools in education, including those that demonstrate simple recall while providing valuable feedback to fuel learning to the true innovators in our classrooms: teachers.

A Tale of Two Taxonomies

The referenced article cites Bloom's cognitive taxonomy, a scale of increasingly complex levels of thinking that students demonstrate as they learn-moving from rote recall to higher order skills like creation and evaluation. This taxonomy provides verbs that describe the cognitive processes students use during learning. For example, a student in the application category is able to implement or execute existing knowledge in novel tasks. This is an important skill that students demonstrate whether they're applying Pythagorean's theorem when presented with a novel problem or writing alternative endings to a favorite fairy tale. In the article, author Jared Silver uses Bloom's taxonomy to suggest technology can more optimally engage learners. And while this may be true, it is the teacher who is the guide on the side scaffolding learning across these increasingly complex categories.

(source: vandycft/flickr)

By contrast, Reuben Puentedura's SAMR model suggests increasingly complex ways that technology impacts the classroom. From tools that substitute to those that redefine the nature of instruction, technology is seen as a tool that has the potential to impact the nature of teaching. For example, technology tools in the augment category provide teachers with improved ways of interacting with students. This is evident in the way that Google Forms transform exit tickets by quickly and efficiently identifying areas of confusion, highlighting opportunities to dive in to the next day's lesson.

Bloom's taxonomy is essential for teachers to identify student's levels of thinking, whereas Puentedura's taxonomy is essential for teachers to identify the tools that can be used to innovate on instruction. The two are not synonymous and point to two potential views of technology and education: one where the technology guides instruction, and the other where skillful teachers guide instruction supported by technological tools. As a student of cognitive science, I hold strong to the work of Lev Vygotsky, which suggests the latter and posits technology as a cultural tool. In the SAMR model, technology in the hands of a knowledgeable educator can transcend traditional teaching and learning in four distinct but impactful ways.

Puentedura's SAMR model with examples

The SAMR model was created to help teachers reflect on how they're using technology today while paving the way towards impacting their students' future. The four levels move from simple substitution, to augmentation, modification and finally redefinition, where each successive level increases the tool's impact on the classroom. Research shows that each level has had an effect on learning, here we dive deeper into some of the tools teachers are already using that are making significant impacts on classrooms worldwide.

Substitution: Oxford meet Oxford 2.0

The simplest level of the SAMR model is substitution. Tech tools at this level serve the same purpose as their analog counterparts without changing the nature of teaching or learning. For instance, a student may refer to the Oxford online dictionary instead of meandering to the class library and sifting through the pages to find the word "obfuscate." These tools may be used to introduce students to real scientists through Skype a Scientist instead of relying on Bill Nye videos (which I still think are pretty terrific!).

On the surface, substitution tools do not appear to significantly shift the nature of learning. But digitally documenting a student's inquiries through substitution tools makes learning visible and provides formative feedback. For example, when my students create a digital concept map in coggle about a unit on biodiversity, they substitute a paper and pencil version of a concept map with a living document that can be shared and revised from home or school. While the process of creating a concept map has not shifted, teachers can observe iterations in student learning and more accurately and quickly meet students in their "just right zone".

Augmentation: Student and Teacher Driven Tools

Augmentation level tools are powerful ways of providing both student and teacher-driven feedback for learning.Augmentation tools may ask students to understand or apply their knowledge, lower-order verbs on Bloom's taxonomy, while providing teachers with evidence of student learning and a clear focus if they need to pivot their instruction in real time.

Socrative, Kahoot and TopHat, are great tools for augmenting assessment, especially in flipped classrooms. These digital tools gamify the process of learning and help teachers quickly assess topics that require either more or less discussion, allowing students to move to independent and group work faster. Plickers are a low stakes and low tech way of ensuring students have a solid understanding of content before moving on. Seamlessly integrating into lessons, tools like PollEverywhere invite students to quickly share their interests, knowledge, questions and even hopes around a content area in real time. Most importantly, these tools mean that student responses can be used as feedback to create more relevant experiences and more meaningful instruction.

Modification: Old Problems, New Lens

Tools that modify classroom tasks encourage students to demonstrate understanding and create new ways of solving old problems. Nearpod accomplishes this by taking a traditional lesson and infusing real time assessment, interactive experiences, and differentiated extensions. These tools become truly transformative when they're used by teachers.

Modification tools are those that redesign typical classroom tasks like book reports and science projects. Typical book reports become Siskel and Ebert style video reviews using tools like YouTube Capture. And when teachers ask difficult questions about the impact of abiotic factors on marine environments students can respond using a video through new tools like FlipGrid. What is more, students can respond to teacher prompts by creating their own books or narrate new endings to a story by creating a digital comic strip or their own book using tools like Book Creator.

Redefinition: Ground Control to Major Tom

It is true that technology's impact on education is only just beginning, but ed tech tools are already redefining the way we teach and learn. No longer are we relegated to imagining weightlessness when our students listen to storytime from space as real astronauts read childhood favorites aloud while suspended in zero gravity at the international space station. Flipping the classroom is a redefinition of traditional instruction made possible by technologies like Educreations where carefully curated learning prepares students to actively apply learning.

Traditional models of engaging and assessing students are wholly transformed by tools that redefine teaching and learning. In art class, painting in watercolors becomes a three-dimensional rendering using tools like Google's Tilt Brush. Not only are growing artists able to demonstrate their understanding of depth and color but so too are their classmates able to take a walk through a shared 3D museum. Technology in education is helping break the barriers of access providing field trips to remote and exciting locations like the surface of the moon or the surface of a cell. And while medical students hone their surgical skills using tools like Osso VR, Olympic athletes gain a competitive advantage engaging in simulation tools created by STRIVR.

Learning Is the Outcome, Tech Is Just a Tool

The potential of these tools resides in their ability to untether our nation's teachers from the physical boundaries of their classrooms and untie our nation's students from arbitrary groupings while unleashing an exciting new level of truly immersive learning. To harness the true utility of these tools we must continue to address the digital divide that perpetuates inequities in our classrooms by not only bringing high speeds to our classrooms but also access to the tools that students and teachers need to support our most valuable assets, our future citizens.

A single tool, even with the greatest AI, will never be a panacea for education. But technology does help teachers take learners to worlds beyond their imagination while making learning visible and actionable. Tools that help make learning visible allow teachers to scaffold instruction and meet the needs of all of their learners. When teachers are empowered with the resources they need to thrive, students win.

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How SAMR and Tech Can Help Teachers Truly Transform Assessment - EdSurge News

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I read an interesting article in EdSurge last week about how current educational technologies do little to move learners beyond rote recall of ...

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Building Courage in Kids - How to Teach Kids to Be Brave - Hey Sigmund

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Building Courage in Kids , there are many things that lead to success and happiness, but one of the most powerful of these is courage. Visit our page.

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Educator Center Overview - Microsoft Learn Educator Center

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Microsoft Learn for Educators takes the best of Microsoft Learn online learning paths and helps you to bring instructor-led training materials from Microsoft into your courses. This program provides members with access to Microsoft ready-to-teach curriculum and teaching materials aligned to industry-recognized Microsoft Certifications.

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What is Minecraft | Minecraft: Education Edition

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Make game-based learning part of your curriculum. Find out how Minecraft for schools can help your students learn valuable skills in a whole new way.

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Cheat sheet for searching with Google

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WA primary schools and tablets - SAMR & TPACK

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WA primary schools and tablets - SAMR & TPACK

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SAMR model

One model to consider when integrating technology into the classroom is the SAMR model.

The SAMR model describes a continuum of how technology is integrated in the classroom - moving from substitution to redefinition of classroom activity. Technology integration moves learning and teaching from the enhancement of existing practices to the development and creation of new practices.

Redefinition

Technology allows for creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable

For example the use of iBooks Author to create media rich ePub books

Modification

Technology allows for significant task redesign

Camera function to record oral retells, recording of reading

Augmentation

Technology acts as a direct tool substitute, with functional improvement

Basic functions of eBooks are used such as Read To Me and dictionary definitions

Substitution

Technology acts as a direct tool substitute, with no functional change

eBooks are used in reading groups

The SAMR model enables teachers to gauge how technology is utilised in classrooms. The ratings are influenced by teacher's comfort with the technology. The focus is on what can be done with the technology. The model is premised on ICT as a tool for learning not a substitute for a teacher.

Technology integration can be considered on a continuum - moving from substitution to redefinition of classroom activity.

Substitution is when the use technology is used as a direct substitute for existing classroom practices. It is doing the same task with the introduction of technology but without any modification of the task. For example, using a notetaking application on the iPad to draft a document rather than handwriting with paper and a pencil.

Augmentation involves some functional improvement but is still a direct tool substitute. The task has not changed but been enhanced slightly. For example, using some of the iPad's built in tools such as the thesaurus, dictionary or speak mode to augment the classroom task.

If technology integration remains in the substitution and/or augmentation level, classroom workflows will only be slightly enhanced. Students may be engaged whilst using technology in the classroom but the use of the device remains defined and limited.

Modification involves giving students a different kind of task. For example, using multimedia and adding sound and video.

Redefinition is doing something that was inconceivable without technology. For example, creating a digital storybook to share with students across the classroom, school or world.

When technology is used in this way it leads to the transformation of classroom and student workflows and the technology is used in its most effective form.

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One model to consider when integrating technology into the classroom is the SAMR model. The SAMR model describes a continuum of how technology is integrated in the classroom - moving from substitution to redefinition of classroom activity. Technology integration moves learning and teaching from the enhancement of existing practices to the development and creation of new practices.

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Going to look into this more but I'm very interested as an English teacher.

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I could not be happier to share the news that Nearpod and Flocabulary are joining forces, bringing together two of the most beloved brands in education. Today represents a major milestone for both companies, and a true testament to our passionate teams, customers, and partners who supported us over the years.

Our Stories

The origin stories for both @Nearpod and @Flocabulary are rooted in true friendship and in a shared mission to bring joy to every classroom. Nearpod.com/Flocabulary Click To Tweet

Flocabulary was started by Alex Rappaport and Blake Harrison, musicians and entrepreneurs. Their journey together started in 2003 when they met waiting tables at an Italian restaurant in San Francisco and became fast friends. They often played pickup basketball before their waiter shifts, and it was during one of those games that Blake mentioned to Alex the idea of what would later become Flocabulary. After writing a handful of songs for SAT prep and performing live at schools, it became clear that Flocabulary not only helped students learn vocabulary but also engaged and inspired them in profound ways. The program has been heralded as "groundbreaking" and "necessary", and Flocabulary artists have performed on stages from to the EdSurge Fusion Conference .

If you haven't experienced the power of Flocabulary yet, make sure you out check this lesson about Setting.
Watch, listen and learn about Setting here.
I co-founded Nearpod with my friends Felipe Sommer and Emi Abramzon. The three of us are immigrant entrepreneurs from Argentina. We attended the same schools growing up and have been friends for decades. In 2012 we started Nearpod after seeing a real opportunity to bring unique innovation to the way teachers led their classrooms by leveraging the power of mobile technologies. As soon as we started visiting classrooms and building empathy for the work of teachers, we knew that we could help teachers engage ALL students using technology. The common refrain we shared each time after leaving those early pilots was " Acá hay algo " ("There's something here").

Both companies had many ups and downs over the years, but none of us ever questioned the decision to dedicate our organizations to help teachers engage students in class. Another thing in common? Teachers and students absolutely love what we do:

Thanks again to @flocabulary for being a tool that we can consistently rely on to not only ensure maximum engagement,but to also teach our youth the stories that went untold for far too long. 🚀#WeAre25 #WEaretheKEY #makethemSHINE #lovemyjob #whyiteach #relationshipsfirst pic.twitter.com/hhcexa0IHf

- Dustin Ecker (@EckerDustin) February 16, 2019

Using @nearpod and had 100% engagement! Yes, 100%!!! They get so excited when they walk in and see the iPads bc they know what's coming. They love showing their work so that I'll share it with the rest of the class. #iteachmath #technologyinmath #nearpod #mathisfun @twcawarriors pic.twitter.com/kokkXe5HuM

- Nicole Schuler (@SchulerIsCooler) April 5, 2019

Why are we joining forces now?

As our teams engaged deeper in the conversations that led us to bring the two companies together, we realized that we had many more things in common that we ever imagined:

The first thing we realized is that what really unites us is our drive to engage students and bring joy to every classroom.

Student engagement is cited as a top priority by 91% of superintendents . However, Gallup surveys find student engagement drops as they move through school. By 11th grade, only 32% of students feel engaged in the classroom. This lack of student engagement has also been linked to challenges such as chronic absenteeism and poor academic performance.

At both Nearpod and Flocabulary, we work on solving the Student Engagement Crisis through two highly complementary approaches. After much thought, we realized that as a whole we can do more than the sum of our parts.

2. Our products are very complementary.

Flocabulary's culturally-relevant, media-rich content captures student interest and inspires creativity. These video-based lessons fit well in multiple teaching modalities, whether it involves a teacher in front of the classroom or students watching videos and rapping at home.

Nearpod's platform is primarily designed for elevating student voice in device-rich classrooms, and combines a variety of ways for all students to learn and demonstrate their understanding.

Combined, @Nearpod and @Flocabulary create the most comprehensive Student Engagement Platform that leverages creativity, culture, interactivity, and media. Nearpod.com/Flocabulary Click To Tweet

Research shows that engagement and achievement increases when students' interests and voices are respected and reflected in the classroom. The combined solutions from Nearpod and Flocabulary will help schools and districts authentically engage their students in the midst of this Student Engagement Crisis.

Our product, engineering and content teams are already "geeking out" dreaming about the fun and engaging new solutions that we'll be able to bring together to classrooms. Teachers and students should stay tuned for new awesome products that will come from the best creative talent that both Brooklyn and Miami can offer.

3. Our future together: the chance to build the best Student Engagement Platform.

The biggest reason for our two teams coming together is the opportunity ahead. By now everyone has realized that the industrial model of education no longer works. If there is a team in our industry that has envisioned the future of education to be starkly different - to be joyful, to be engaging, to be rigorous - it's us!

Together, we're already helping teachers engage each and every student with a technology platform and digital content that teachers and students love.

But teachers , need more. They need 100% student engagement. And together Nearpod and Flocabulary will solve that need.

Thank you for being part of the Nearpod and Flocabulary family.

Here's to our next chapter. Together.

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I could not be happier to share the news that Nearpod and Flocabulary are joining forces, bringing together two of the most beloved brands in education. Today represents a major milestone for both companies, and a true testament to our passionate teams, customers, and partners who supported us over the years.

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Here is a link to a Padlet that sets up a lesson using Google Expeditions.

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Some great ideas for GF from Matt Miller DTT

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G Suite

Everyone wants data. Schools want it to track student performance. Companies want it to learn about their customers.

We track data in our own personal lives (fitness data, banking data, even social media data).

Teachers and students have their own data gathering and tracking tool that's free and easy to learn - Google Forms.

Google Forms lets you create a survey with lots of different kinds of questions:

Short answer

Long answer

Multiple choice

Checkboxes

Drop-down menu

... and more. You can distribute these surveys to anyone - students, parents, even yourself - and track the data in the Google Forms app itself or in a spreadsheet.

Teachers have used Google Forms to do quizzes and assessments for a while. But that's not the only way it can make our lives easier and better!

Here are 25 ways to use Google Forms in the classroom and in schools.

Procedural stuff

1. Opinion surveys - Want to get to know your students better or learn about their preferences? How about parents? Create a simple survey. Add a short answer question for the name, or if you want to keep it anonymous, leave it out.

2. Quick poll - A simple one-question Google Form makes getting the pulse of the classroom quick and easy. Closed-ended questions can be displayed as graphs immediately in with the "Responses" tab in the form.

3. Late work submission (with email notifications!) - When students use this form, they can provide assignment details and a link to any digital work to turn in. You can receive an email when they submit the late work form. In Forms, use the "Responses" tab and click the three dots menu button. Select "Get email notifications for new responses". It will automatically send an email to the account you used to create the form. Here's an example of a late work submission form you can use.

4. Sign-up sheets - Need students or parents to sign up to bring something to class, work the concession stand, etc.? Have them sign up in a Google Form! Want to eliminate a choice once someone has taken it (i.e. remove a time slot when it's been claimed)? Use the Choice Eliminator add-on to remove that choice after someone makes it (so nothing gets claimed twice!). Check out the Choice Eliminator page to see how it works.

5. Sign-out sheets - Ditch the sign-out sheet when students leave and return from the room (or when they check equipment in and out). Use a Google Form instead! Use the CheckItOut add-on. It uses multiple choice, list or checkboxes questions. When something is signed out, it moves to another question - the signed-out group. When it's signed back in, it's moved to the signed-in question. Create a "Name" short-answer question and you can see the paper trail of who checked equipment in and out and at what time in the spreadsheet of results. This YouTube video (less than two minutes!) makes using the CheckItOut add-on crystal clear. Click to view what the form would look like, or click to make a copy you can edit yourself.

6. Lesson plans - Want to quickly create detailed lesson plans with standards, learning objectives, activity descriptions and more? Add all the parts you want included in those lesson plans in a Google Form. (Add all of the individual standards as checkboxes.) Then view your own form and start filling in information. Use the Autocrat add-on to turn your responses in the Google Form into custom-created documents. You'll have a document with all of your lesson plan information for each day! These are great for turning in to administration, leaving for substitute teachers or filing away for next year. See the blog post I wrote with detailed step-by-step directions here!

7. Daily check-in - We want to connect with our students and know how they are doing every day. But it can be difficult to check-in with every student in every one of our classes. This daily check-in Google Form template created by Mari Venturino makes it simple and easy to get started connecting with all of your students.

8. Create a HyperDoc in Google Forms - Incorporate the lesson design that makes HyperDocs so effective in a Google form by including sections for students to learn or review the content, show what they know, share their thinking and apply their skills. You can even include links for students to explore once they have completed the task. Check out this blog post by Karly Moura that includes examples, creations tips, and a template to get started.

9. Customized email newsletters - Using a combination of Google Docs and Google Sheets (with an option to use Google Forms to input information), you can create personalized email newsletters with custom comments for every student. See the blog post I wrote with detailed step-by-step directions here!

Assessment

10. Autograded quizzes - If you create a quiz or other assessment with closed-ended questions, Google Forms will autograde it for you. Create your quiz and click the gear (settings) button. Choose the "Quizzes" tab and turn on "Make this a quiz". You have some options in that window. Then, go through your questions and select the correct answer (your answer key).

11. Quizzes with Flubaroo - Flubaroo is an add-on to Google Sheets that can create a detailed grading summary with student results from an assessment. When students complete a quiz/assessment in Google Forms, click the "Responses" tab and click the little green Sheets button. This will create a spreadsheet of results from the quiz/assessment. Open that sheet. Flubaroo's official user guide walks you through the steps of setting Flubaroo up to autograde your assessment. It creates a summary that shows average student grade, individual student grades (plus which questions each student got right or wrong), questions students struggled on, and more.

12. Exit ticket/bell ringer - Have students answer questions at the beginning or end of class with a Google Form. Add images, links, videos and more to the form to make it a richer multimedia experience. Then gather all of the student responses in a spreadsheet.

13. Quick grade log - To quickly mark a grade for simple assignments create a Google Form with every student's name. When I did this, I walked around the room and had the form loaded on my iPad. I put each student's scores into that form. Later, I pulled up the responses and transferred them to the grade book. Here's an example form of what that might look like that you can copy into your Drive!

14. Flipped classroom assessment - The flipped classroom comes in many different shapes and sizes, but many teachers have students watch a video and then answer some comprehension questions afterward. This is easily done in Google Forms. Create a form with a YouTube video (created by you or found on YouTube) and questions. Here's what a form like that would look like when students loaded it.

15. Rubrics - Create your rubric in a Google Form to make an easy place for you to assign grades and provide feedback to students. When you're done grading and writing feedback, use the Autocrat add-on to turn all that feedback into a document. Share that document with students (or parents too!). Here's what a rubric form could look like when you load it (click here). Here's the document generated with the feedback for students (click here).
16. Add math equations to Google Forms with EquatIO Chrome extension -

Teachers can use EquatIO to create math assignments and quizzes. Check out this video to learn more.

After adding the extension click the EquatIO icon next to any question or answer in the Form.

This will open the EquatIO toolbar at the bottom of your screen.

Students can respond right in the Google Form creating math expressions including equations and formulas.

Get the tools, the practical ideas, and the inspiration to transform the way you use technology in the classroom!

Lesson ideas and downloadable templates

A companion webpage full of FREE resources (click here to access NOW)

Brand new PIRATE engagement hooks

Encouragement and motivation to start

Learning and creating

17. Logs (for exercise, nutrition, reading, etc.) - If students need to submit information in logs to track progress over time, Google Forms can capture that information easily. Create a form with the student's name and all the information he/she needs to submit. Each time he/she submits, it's logged into a spreadsheet where students can review that data and submit it to you.

18. Choose Your Own Adventure stories - By using branching (the "go to section based on answer" choice in the three-dots menu in a multiple-choice question), you can create fun Choose Your Own Adventure Story-type activities. Create them for your students or let students create their own! Here's a math example from Mandi Tolen's class.

19. Sharing examples in professional development - Teachers can use Google Forms to share their learning, too! During professional development, direct teachers to a Google Form where they can share their ideas, reflections or experiences from the classroom. Provide a link to the spreadsheet of results to everyone in the group. That way, when everyone's done, each teacher can see everyone else's ideas all in one place!

20. Answer with an image - With younger students, the old version of Google Forms was tricky because almost everything used text. Now, you can ask questions AND provide answers with images! Teachers can cue students verbally and they can answer by choosing the correct picture. When creating the form, just click on the answer to edit it and click the image button at the right. Here's a VERY simple example of how to use images as an answer (click here).

21. Brainstorming with a word cloud - Provide a simple Google Form where students can reflect on what they've been learning, either with a sentence or a few individual words. When they finish, copy all of their responses from the spreadsheet and paste them into a word cloud generator like Wordle or Tagxedo. It will show the most common words larger in size than others, sorting the reflections of the class in a fun, visual form.

22. Personalized guidance via e-mail - Do your students (or teacher participants in professional development) need answers fine-tuned to their unique needs? Create a Google Form to let them choose the type of feedback they need, collecting their answers in a Google Sheet. Then, the Form Mule add-on can send them a custom e-mail response based on their answers. Basically, you write an email for every possible answer, and Form Mule sends it to them automatically when they submit the form. See more about Form Mule here.

23. Writer's conference schedule - If your students need to schedule a time to meet with you to discuss their writing, the Form Limiter add-on can help. Create a form in Google Forms and it will gather the data you'll need (name, class, time, etc.) in a Google Sheet. Form Limiter will stop accepting responses when specific Google Sheet spots are filled. No double-booking!

20. The Amazing Race, Google Style. This game is an intense mashup of Google Slides/Documents, Google Forms and Google Maps (optional). Students must complete several challenges provided by the instructor using Google Slides or Documents. Once the complete the first challenge in the slide presentation or document, they submit the link to the presentation/document in a Google Form. Once submitted, the link to the next challenge in the game is in a link on the confirmation page for the form. Clear as crystal, right? No? Check out this outstanding example by Michelle Green. Once you get it, this activity is super engaging.

24. Digital escape room locks - Use data validation to create a set of "locks" in a Google Form. This will make it so that the student MUST type in the correct answer in order to submit the form and "escape".

Check out this post for 30+ FREE digital escape rooms (plus tips and tools for creating your own) Want to try one out before you dive into using them with your students? This Ditch that Textbook themed digital escape room was created by Mandi Tolen and Karly Moura. Try and see if you can break free from Ditch That Textbook headquarters!

25. Teach students how to make their own! - Show your students how to create their own Google Form and have them create one for their classmates. It's a fun way for students to show what they know and creating the incorrect and correct answers levels it up. Who knows, they might even stump you!

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! Is Matt presenting near you soon? Check out his upcoming live events!

Ready to take your tech skills -- and student learning -- to another level?

Sign up for Tech to Learn online course! Just $49

©2020 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

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25 practical ways to use Google Forms in class, school - Ditch That Textbook

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G Suite Everyone wants data. Schools want it to track student performance. Companies want it to learn about their customers. We track data in our own personal lives (fitness data, banking data, even social media data).

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Adam Braun went to school in the US and now runs a nonprofit that builds schools in Ghana, Laos, Nicaragua and Guatemala. In contrast, Sugata Mitra-the winner of the 2013 TED Prize -went to school in India and now is a professor in the UK, where his research on self-directed learning routinely brings him into elementary schools. Both of these education activists have seen how typical classrooms function in the Western world, and both have seen how typical classrooms function in the developing world. And both say, the West isn't always better.

Braun and Mitra have teamed up through Microsoft's Work Wonders Project to bring Mitra's School in the Cloud learning platform into Braun's Pencils of Promise schools. As the two pilot their partnership in a school in rural Ghana, we got them together via Skype to talk through a bold question: what can the West learn from the developing world when it comes to education? Their conversation is packed with insights.
To start us off, can each of you share three lessons that the developing world can teach the developed world when it comes to education?
Adam Braun: I think that, in the developed world, we tend to assume that we have all the answers and that those will trickle down to the people at the base of the pyramid. But there's a lot to be learned from unexpected places too. Three things that that our staff and team has observed:

In the American education system, the teacher is usually assumed to be the expert. We have this traditional model where one teacher stands in front of 30 kids. But the act of teaching is actually one of the most valuable ways to learn. It's nice to see environments where children can be teachers. That's something that Sugata has really expanded on with his Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs), which a lot of times remove the teacher altogether and allow children to learn from one another and teach one another simultaneously.

In the United States, there is the expectation that students are supposed to sit still. You're told not to fidget and to focus. But scientific research shows that brain activity is significantly heightened after 20 minutes of physical activity. There's significant value in what you see in the developing world-in between classes, kids run in a field, play in a river, climb a mountain. And because they don't always have proper desks, they're often learning while sitting on the floor or moving about in the classroom. That can actually lead to better retention and synthesis of information.

The third thing is about the way we learn to read. As much as we think of reading as the act of simply turning letters into sounds in our head, literacy is actually the act of conversion of symbol into sound, and that symbol can take several different forms. When we expect kids to learn, we usually activate two different components-the auditory and visual, so they hear things aloud and observe through their eyes. But kids can learn better when you also activate a third plane-the spatial-through things like sign language. We've been piloting programs where we have kids create symbols with their hands and it's leading to phenomenal literacy gains.

Sugata Mitra: Those are such valuable observations. I do hesitate to say, "What can developing countries teach the developed countries about education?" but I would like to frame it as, "What can children teach us about learning?" Because it's kind of stupid to think that for thousands of years we never asked them. Here are three counterintuitive things that I've learned:

1. My first observation, I learned quite accidentally: a reduction in resources brings increased cooperation. It sounds obvious that if there's one computer and five children, they can fight, in which case nobody gets to do much, or they can come to an agreement about what they want to do. I think it's very healthy for children to find agreement. That's a lesson that I brought from India and hesitantly tried in England-and to my absolute delight, it worked exactly the same way, like magic. At first, the kids asked, "Why are you turning computers off?" I said, "You guys are not going to talk if everybody has a computer." As soon as I did that, the good old hole in the wall from the slums of Delhi suddenly appeared in the U.S. and U.K. with exactly the same results.
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2. The act of cooperating around the Internet amplifies reading comprehension. Reading has always been taught as a one-to-one thing. With reading on paper, it isn't easy to read together, whereas on a nice, big computer screen, you can. When children do that, they learn to read adult-level text as a result. People sometimes don't believe me. They say, "How could they possibly read the Harvard Business Review and understand anything?" To which my answer is, "I don't know, but they seem to understand it." Now, I'm measuring this, and have a couple of students who are studying it too. It's a very exciting finding, and one that could be very relevant in the United States, where reading comprehension is a problem. If this works, it could be a simple solution. I mean, what can be simpler than saying, "Shut down a few computers and read together."
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3. The third thing is just what Adam said: children in classrooms in the developing world move around a lot because they're not being supervised. They run about, they disturb each other, they do all the things you're not supposed to do inside a classroom-but the results are good. I was in a school in London, doing a SOLE with 9-year olds, and they were making a tremendous amount of noise. At the end of it, I asked, "Weren't you disturbed by all the noise?" One little girl said, "When I hear the voices of my friends, I feel relaxed." That was a revelation-I had never thought of that. She was concentrating better because she heard voices around her. It was actually aiding the learning process.

All of t hese observations are so interesting. Let's start with one Sugata mentioned: that a reduction in resources can lead to more cooperation. Adam, is that something that you've seen?
Adam Braun: I definitely agree with that idea. As an entrepreneur, I think a lot from a business standpoint and time and time again, the most effective exercises in the manifestation of ideas happens when you limit resources. It's common practice in off-site exercises for people to be given limited resources and be told, "Okay, go solve this problem." You see unexpected, innovation solutions emerge. I think that applies to the learning process as well.
In School in the Cloud classrooms, are there other resources in the room besides computer stations, or do you keep it scaled down to those to get that cooperation effect? That's interesting-they started playing teacher. Adam, you'd mentioned earlier the importance of kids getting the chance to teach. Is that something you see happening frequently in classrooms in the developing world?
Sugata Mitra: You got me thinking about an activity that's very popular with children in India: airplanes. In the cities, children can buy perfect scale models of airplanes to play with. But in the villages and the slums, the children make an airplane out of two ice cream sticks. Isn't that far more creative and imaginative?

Sugata Mitra: The most prominent equipment in the room are the computers-there are usually six or seven of them with good, high-definition, large screens. In two of the schools, I also installed Xboxes. The teachers thought I was out of my mind. They said, "The kids are not going to do anything besides play with the Xbox." But I think there's another way to look at it: If they're playing all the time, that means that whatever we've asked them to do is not as interesting as the Xbox. In which case, we'd better rethink the tasks that we're asking them to do. We tried an experiment-I gave the students a really nice SOLE question and they got to working, and I purposely said, "Oh, by the way, there's an Xbox." As the teacher predicted, everybody started playing. But there were three little boys who were busily working on the question. I went up to them and said, "I've got a serious problem. If everyone keeps playing with the Xbox, my SOLE isn't going to happen properly. Can you help me?" One of these kids got up, went straight to the Xbox, stood in front of the screen, and said, "We are in the middle of an important educational experiment. Do you guys mind getting back to work?" And you know what-the other kids listened.
Is there a difference in attitude about going to school? I feel like in the United States, there was always a sense of, "School is something we have to do." Not of it being something exciting or a real opportunity. Is that different in India, Ghana, and other countries you've seen?
Adam Braun: You see it a tremendous amount. Even outside the classroom, it's just in the way of life. Increasingly in Western culture, parents feel protective of their kids, so there's constantly this need for an adult to be around and, with the competition for colleges and whatnot, kids have multiple layers of teachers-once they leave the school, they have the tutor, then once they're done with the tutor, they work with the parent. It's rare for one child to teach another child. And yet in the developing world, what you see is that the parents go out, spend the day in the field, and the kids are kind of left to their own devices. Oftentimes, it's expected that the older children will look after the younger children. It's part of the norm of the culture. I think that the learner is able to relate better, because they're closer to a peer and they see the world with the same lens. And the child who is teaching develops an advanced sense of responsibility and a mastery of whatever content they're teaching because, as I think we all know, you can't teach something unless you know it intimately. I've seen this in dozens of countries.

Sugata Mitra: I see it all the time in India as well, the children having to mind each other. I want to add one thing, Adam, which might interest you. There's one situation where a child becoming the teacher doesn't work: in the classroom itself. If you take a classroom and say, "Okay, Adam is the teacher," what many children do is they get a stick and they hold it up and they say, "Everybody sit quietly. I don't want a single word to be spoken." The child's idea of what a teacher is comes from that military, colonial background. But when they're in the field or the house and the parents are not there, then they help each other. If you ask them, they'll say, "I'm helping him tie his shoelaces." They won't say, "I'm teaching him to tie his shoelaces." I think there's a huge difference between the two. What both Adam and I are talking about as an alternative to what's currently going on in schools-the whole idea of converting "teaching" into "helping you learn." If that were the ethos, I think children would learn a lot better.
Are there any skills, habits or abilities that you've seen in students in India and Ghana that would be useful for students in the Western world to learn?
Sugata Mitra: In India, it's exactly the same. The children are reluctant-they have gloomy faces in the morning. If you really probe, they say they don't quite understand why they're going to school except to see their friends-that's the big delight. It's not that they don't want to learn things, it's just that they are not given an option to learn it their way. They're told to learn in a particular way, and I think that's the reason why all of us in the morning used to feel a little glum. We knew we would be told to sit quietly, take notes, memorize things, and we also knew that these are not fun things to do.

Adam Braun: I've seen all sides of the spectrum. I've seen communities where education is just not a high priority; part of that might be that the parents themselves weren't educated. They have never really seen the benefits that can be accrued, and they have more pressing daily concerns. More often than not, the kids' attitudes stem from the attitude of the surrounding community. It takes a catalyst to ignite some type of commitment-that can come from a parent, an engaged teacher in the town, a grandparent, a village chief, an older sibling. Once that child feels like they're supported in this endeavor, things just take off. When you see a catalyst in the community, you tend to see far greater commitment to education and the opportunities that it provides. I think that applies to kids in the Western world too.

Sugata Mitra: There are self-motivated children. By about 11, 12, 13 years of age, you find-in India and the U.K., certainly-children who say, "I must do well in school so that I can become an engineer." But for the 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds, that goal is too far away. They think of school as a place where they teach things; and, most of the time, they don't like the way in which it is taught. So I think parents and other adults telling the child, "You have to go to school," may not be the right approach. If school could be exciting-if the school had an Xbox, for example-I think it wouldn't be that difficult to get children to want to go. In the hole-in-the-wall experiment, parents used to complain to me that their children weren't coming home. I was thinking to myself, "These are the same children who hate going to school, but they're not coming back from their roadside computer. What's the difference?" The difference was the freedom to learn their way.
W hat is a lesson that each of you has personally learned from a student you've met in India, Ghana, or another country?
Sugata Mitra: We just did an experiment together, which you can see in the video above, where we had children of similar ages in Ghana and the United States answer the same question-"Why is the blue whale so big?"-in a Self-Organized Learning Environment. We got nearly identical results. Which I think that is a lesson in itself: when it comes to motivated, self-directed learning, children really are not different from country to country. That is terrific news. We don't have to think of different solutions for different socio-economic strata. If we do it right, then children will engage in the same way, whether it's in the United States or in Ghana.
It is still early days for your collaboration, but could you give an update on where things are with bringing SOLEs into Pencils of Promise schools?
Adam Braun: There's one basic thing I've seen that's different in students in the developing world: resilience. It's not to say you don't see it in Western culture, but students in the developing world face significantly more potential obstacles than most kids in the Western world. There are so many hurdles to becoming a university student when you start out living in a bamboo hut without running water, when nobody in your family has even completed secondary school before. It requires a tremendous amount of resilience to get to the point where you graduate. In the developing world, I think there is an appreciation for the difficulties of the journey. Because of that, there's an expectation that, once someone succeeds, that they give back to their community in some capacity. I hope that continues-and it's something that would be very beneficial to Western culture as well. Right now, we have this romanticizing of the person who goes off and leaves behind where they came from, but it's really beautiful and powerful to see that in the developing world, even if a person doesn't move back to the community, they find a way to help lift others out of impoverished situations. I don't want to say it doesn't happen in Western culture, but it's something that I see happen consistently in the developing world.

Sugata Mitra: I've spent most of my life in India; it's only the last eight or nine years that I've been outside. The sentiment that Adam's describing-that's the first thing that I saw missing in Western society. I wondered why, but there is a very simple answer: because there isn't a shortage. If you take a young man or woman who is earning good money, they think, "My parents are okay-I don't really need to send them money." And they are correct. But in a way, it's very ironic. Young people eventually stop aspiring. What Adam is saying, very politely, is that poverty drives a certain value system-a good value system-but poverty is not a nice thing, so we have to invent a new way to have that value system without the actual poverty.

Adam Braun: I remember very distinctly being in a multiple-acre dump in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It's a horrific, hellish place that's pretty devastating to see-communities live on the edge of it and they send the kids out to collect sacks of hard plastic from the garbage, for which they can get something like 10 or 15 cents. When I was 21 years old, I got involved with an organization called the Cambodian Children's Fund, which took kids out of that situation and put them into a facility that provided quality food, healthcare, and a full education. I went back at one point and I was walking around the outskirts of this dump and I found this kid who was living there. I asked him and his friend what they wanted to be when they grew up. They couldn't have been more than 10 years old; they're garbage pickers. And one of them looked at me and said he wanted to be a lawyer, and the other one said he wanted to be the Prime Minister. I remember being so awestruck by the size of these kids' dreams. As adults, particularly adults from the Western world, we have this expectation that kids understand the limits of their situation and that, because of that, they'll be inhibited in how big they dream. But these kids were very serious. They weren't willing to limit themselves to the confines of the situation they were in at that moment. That was an immense lesson that always stuck with me. When you hear a child in a situation like that say they want to be the head of their country, it's extraordinarily humbling and motivating and inspiring at the same time.

Sugata Mitra: The lesson I want to share is of a completely different kind. I learned it from a child who was about 5 years old in the United States. He was being taught how to multiply-to write down two digit numbers, one below the other, and then you do this and that. I was chatting with him and I asked, "Why are you struggling with multiplying?" Without batting an eyelid, he said, "Because I could use a phone. Why do I have to multiply numbers like that on a piece of paper?" He was really annoyed. And at that moment, I realized something important: that the answer to his question was, "They are wasting your time." I gave a lecture a couple of days later, and I brought this up. I said, "Maybe it's time we stopped teaching paper arithmetic." And boy, that community of teachers erupted-they could have killed me. "How can you not have arithmetic? It's a pillar of primary education." But who is primary education for? Five-year olds and six-year olds. And there's my 5-year old friend, who was so extraordinarily annoyed by it. I learned a lot from that conversation with him.

Sugata Mitra: We're moving this project forward. This is where our meeting ground is: the SOLE as a method is effective and inexpensive, because it works best with just a few computers. So if we take the SOLE idea into Adam's school and restructure a little bit, then we would get a new kind of model for a school, which others may want to look at. Where Adam's work is invaluable to me is that his schools-and he has made a lot of them-are currently up and running whereas my holes in the wall are not. I have not been able to solve the problem of sustainability, and I want to find some of the right techniques to get it. It will be exciting to see where we can go together. It should be a few months before the first one or two start to function.

Adam Braun: Leslie Engle is our Director of Impact and she's been working with a gentleman on Sugata's side to formalize what this program can look like. We're excited to find a middle ground in which our commitment and experience with building sustainable schools can mesh with Sugata's brilliance around SOLEs, and to bring it to life on the ground. Obviously it takes time and it takes iteration and it takes willingness to put forward new ideas. But we're both committed to it and I'm excited to see where it develops through the rest of the year.

Sugata Mitra: It's interesting-with the Schools in the Cloud program that I'm doing, my biggest problem, surprisingly, is not pedagogy, or student engagement. My biggest problem is getting quality Internet connections and quality electricity-not having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on solar energy, only to have it not function properly. We need equipment that is designed for the tropics. If you design a pair of shoes to work in New York City and then take it to the paddy fields of Vietnam, in an hour, there will be no shoe left. But if you've designed a shoe that works in the paddy fields of Vietnam, that will work forever in New York City. I think that if Adam takes his model, builds it and then brings it out of Africa, we'll get a model of education that works everywhere.

Adam Braun: I would like to echo that. The most sustainable projects and products are those that are built in challenging environments. That's an exciting place for us to be, knowing that we have the ability and the staff and the relationships to actually do something on the ground. The hope is that if it works out there, then we can expand it and it can propagate across various other parts of the world.

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What can the American and British education systems learn from classrooms in the developing world?

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Adam Braun went to school in the US and now runs a nonprofit that builds schools in Ghana, Laos, Nicaragua and Guatemala. In contrast, Sugata Mitra-the winner of the 2013 TED Prize -went to school in India and now is a professor in the UK, where his research on self-directed learning routinely brings him into elementary schools.

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Learning Tools for retention and homework

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Learning Tools for retention and homework

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Quizlet makes simple learning tools that let you study anything. Start learning today with flashcards, games and learning tools — all for free. https://quizlet.com/
Edpuzzle -Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students  https://edpuzzle.com/

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Tech tip smackdown! 70  edtech tips from fellow educators | Ditch That Textbook

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Warning! This post contains SO many great tips, tricks, links and ideas that you may end up with a case of "too many open tabs". That's OK, it's totally normal. Using the Wakelet or OneTab extension can help alleviate some of the symptoms associated with this condition.

As educators, we have many amazing tech tools available to us. Everything from creation tools embedded into our students' G Suite accounts to games we can create to use with our whole class.
But are we using these tools to their full potential?
The #Ditchbook community came together in an epic Thursday night "Tech Tip Smackdown" chat where they shared over 70 (yes 70!) tips for utilizing these powerful tools in your classroom. The conversation was STILL going on the next morning!

Participants shared fantastic tips for using your favorite edtech tools like:

Scroll down for tips for using G Suite, Flipgrid and Kahoot, Gimkit, Quizlet Live and Quizizz from the #Ditchbook community. Each collection has copy enabled so you can add it straight to your own Wakelet account! Also, be sure to check out the full chat curation with even MORE tips here.

Related posts:

25 G Suite tips and tricks

15 tips for using Flipgrid in the classroom

20 helpful tips for playing Kahoot, Gimkit, Quizlet Live and Quizizz

Want to get in on the next #DitchBook Twitter chat?
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:
Categories: #DitchBook Twitter chat, G Suite, Gamification, Google Classroom, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Slides, Teaching

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase. If you decide to purchase, think of it as a way of supporting Ditch That Textbook without paying anything extra! I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

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Tech tip smackdown! 70+ edtech tips from fellow educators

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Warning! This post contains SO many great tips, tricks, links and ideas that you may end up with a case of "too many open tabs". That's OK, it's totally normal. Using the Wakelet or OneTab extension can help alleviate some of the symptoms associated with this condition.

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Edtech for the K-12 Classroom (ebook)
https://id.iste.org/connected/resources/product?ID=4181&ChildProduct=4152
Learning First, Technology Second

The Educator’s Guide to Designing Authentic Lessons
https://id.iste.org/connected/resources/product?ID=3975

Eduprotocols
https://www.eduprotocols.com/

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Office 365 Teacher Academy https://preview.education.microsoft.com/learningPath/dc32e990

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https://support.office.com/en-us/article/learning-tools-eff7f7e3-7e21-42f0-a6f1-da7027f98261?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#ID0EAABAAA=Reader&ID0EABAAA=About

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Lots of Microsoft courses and learning paths are available free for educators! Get learning today.

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Educator Center Overview - Microsoft Learn Educator Center

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Microsoft Learn for Educators takes the best of Microsoft Learn online learning paths and helps you to bring instructor-led training materials from Microsoft into your courses. This program provides members with access to Microsoft ready-to-teach curriculum and teaching materials aligned to industry-recognized Microsoft Certifications.

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https://ourworldindata.org/

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https://education.microsoft.com/courses-and-resources/resources/immersive-reader-research

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Narrated the world around you. Free app to assist vision impaired and others. 

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Seeing AI app helps people with vision impairment convert visual info into audio. Download for free in English, Dutch, German, French, Japanese, and Spanish.

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https://aireader.co/#about

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https://markpegrum.com/keeping-up-with-digital-learning/elanguage-tagcloud/

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I love this short version (in Hindi with translations) of Mitra's Hole in the Wall experiment.
https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_how_children_teach_themselves?language=en

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Here is a series of activities that I think middle-school teachers (in particular Yr7) should do with students (some are being updated).
https://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/web-literacy/

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Education/Tech Website links from a WA teacher

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Education/Tech Website links from a WA teacher

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https://www.websitesforkids.biz/

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http://futurewe.org/makexr
Make XR is a free mini-book from Jonathan Nalder showing how any teacher can understand and apply EXTENDED REALITY > VR . AR . 3D . 360 . Holograms. It gives you the overview, tips and lesson workflows needed to begin making next-gen content, and enabling students to do the same. (*Based on SAMR model and maps to the EXPLORE and SHARE domains of the FutureWe Be Future Ready Framework )

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20 activities to "Bloom" with the new Flipgrid camera | Ditch That Textbook

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Video is so easy to create in the classroom now. What used to take expensive equipment and advanced know-how can be created in seconds with devices we already have.

Video is a rich medium for learning. Students can practice speaking skills, show their passion through their voice, and make learning visible.

In summer 2019, Flipgrid ( flipgrid.com) released a new camera. All of its new features give students TONS of options for showing what they know and reflecting on learning:

Filters (including pixel mode)

Text boxes

Stickers (emojis, accessories, etc.)

Drawing/inking

Whiteboard mode

Live recording (make changes on the fly while recording)

Trimming and arranging video clips

This post by educator Mike Mohammad outlines all the new features. His graphics (see one above) are fantastic, showing you what everything does at a glance.

I saw these features and started thinking ...

You can do some high-quality learning with these features.

The camera goes farther than making prettier videos. They can lead to deeper thinking and more descriptive demonstrations of learning.

(Of course, they can be used superficially for just making videos prettier. And there's nothing wrong with prettier if that's your goal. But when we want to get the most out of technology for the sake of better learning, it has to go deeper than that. This new Flipgrid camera has tons of potential for that.)

So ... what would that look like?

Let's use Revised Bloom's Taxonomy as our guide. It looks at the depth of thinking and the type of knowledge students are working with.

Here are 20 practical Flipgrid activities you can use in your class that hit different levels of Revised Bloom's Taxonomy:

REMEMBER
Retrieve relevant knowledge from long-term memory
1. Vocab/spelling run-down

Students place vocabulary words on the screen as text boxes. (Or images of sight words ... or students type spelling words as they recall them. Ways they can practice the word:

Spell it

Use it in a sentence

Give synonyms/antonyms

Give examples/non-examples (Frayer model)

Give characteristics (Frayer model)

The words can start at the bottom of the screen. As they use a word, they drag the word to the top of the screen to make a list of words they've covered.

Note: For it to be true "remember" in Bloom's, students need to recall from long-term memory rather than recite it off a paper or screen in front of them.
Revised Bloom's category: remember + factual
2. Step-by-step tutorial with photos/icons

Students can take their own photos (or find photos licensed for reuse) illustrating steps of a process. They can even create their own images with tools like Google Drawings, Canva, The Noun Project (icons), Flat Icon, etc.

Option 1: They can leave the images at the bottom of the screen. Pull them to the top when they talk about them.

Option 2: They can pause the video and add an image to illustrate a step. Then start recording again. Pause, remove an image, add a new image, start recording again.
Revised Bloom's category: remember + procedural
3. Thinking about thinking strategies

Do you have favorite learning strategies that you share with your students? Encourage them to think about the way that they think? (If not, here are seven strategies you can use.)

Students could record these as informational videos for other students. (Really, as much for themselves as others.)

They could also record them as advice videos. They could advise students how to use the strategies in different situations.
Revised Bloom's category: remember + metacognitive (information videos) or apply + metacognitive (advice videos)
UNDERSTAND
Construct meaning from instructional messages, including oral, written and graphic communication
4. The sticker/picture shuffle

Once students have learned something new, it's helpful for them to show what they know. They can do that with stickers/emojis, images, and even short video clips.

Student can use these "virtual visual aids" to describe what they've learned in their own words.
Revised Bloom's category: understand + factual
5. The one-problem deep dive

Solving lots of problems can be good repetition for practice. But doing a deep dive into one problem gives insight into how the student thinks. It helps the student better understand how he/she thinks. It helps the teacher see how the student sees the work.

Students can take a picture of a problem - one they've written on to solve or a "clean" problem they haven't written on. They place the problem on one side of the video and their head/shoulders on the other. They can point to the parts of the problem and talk the viewer through their process.
Revised Bloom's category: understand + procedural
6. Sort into categories

More or less? Column A or column B? To help students understand the relationship between items they've learned, they can sort them into categories.

Student places himself/herself in the middle of the video. They can prepare the items on the list in multiple text boxes ahead of time (or pause the video and add them individually). In the video, he/she places items in one column over the right shoulder or in another column over the left shoulder.
Revised Bloom's category: understand + conceptual
APPLY
Carry out or use a procedure in a given situation
7. Speak for characters with emojis

Sometimes, we want students to understand characters, historical figures, people they're studying. When they really understand those people, students can imagine what they might say or how they would think.

Students can answer questions posing as a person they're studying. (i.e. Based on what we've learned, what would a past president think of the current state of the country?)

To add to the experience, students can place emojis, stickers or even photos of these people over their faces in the video while they talk. They can even try their hand at a spoken accent!
Revised Bloom's category: apply + conceptual
8. Give advice with points

Once students have experienced something, it can be fun for them to give advice to others based on what they've learned and seen. It could be school-related (how to survive ninth grade) or content-related (how a historical event could have played out better).

Students can record their best advice in a video with a summary of their suggestions in text boxes. They can drag their points onto the screen, pause to add new text boxes, or just point to the list as they talk!
Revised Bloom's category: apply + conceptual
9. The "Who Am I" game with pixelization

Students print a picture of a historical character, a character in a story ... basically a person. They use the picture to cover their face. Then, they record themselves describing the character. (They can even read a script off the back of the printed picture!)

The catch? They have the pixelize filter on! Anyone watching the video can't tell who they're portraying. At the end of the video, after they've given all of the facts, they turn the pixelize filter off and the viewer can see who they're supposed to be.
Revised Bloom's category: apply + factual
10. Talk about learning strategies

In an earlier activity, students shared learning strategies. In this activity, they can apply them - and help others to apply them.

Students share an activity, a learning experience - some time they used strategies for learning. They can list important points with text boxes. They can illustrate how they felt with stickers and emojis.

This activity helps the student recording the video to reflect. It also helps students watching the video to get new ideas!
Revised Bloom's category: apply + metacognitive
ANALYZE
Carry out or use a procedure in a given situation
11. This or that

No two lists have to be created equal. Take a list of facts, a list of people, a top 10 list, a music playlist. Compare it to another. Analyze: Which list is more complete? What does one have that the other does not?

Take a screenshot of each list or create a text box for each list. Put one on either side of the student's head with his/her head in the middle. Then, discuss!
Revised Bloom's category: analyze + factual
12. The roving reporter

In newspapers and television, a reporter might hit the street to interview several people. When finished, that reporter composes a story analyzing his/her findings.

Students can do the same! Have a student join someone else on camera. It could be a fellow student, a teacher, a family member - anyone! The student conducts a quick interview (maybe just one question). When finished, the student clicks the arrow button in the bottom right corner of the camera to save that video as a clip. The student then goes back to the camera to record another clip, interviewing another subject.

When finished, the student can sort the video clips, moving alike responses next to each other. The student can even summarize the findings at the beginning or the end like a reporter would
Revised Bloom's category: analyze + conceptual
13. How's it different now?

Students can learn a simple set of steps. But what happens when there's an anomaly? When something doesn't go according to plan?

This is where analysis comes in. Using the steps from #2 above (step-by-step tutorial), students take a twist: what does the exception to the rule look like? How is it different when the circumstances change?
Revised Blooms' category: analyze + procedural
EVALUATE
Make judgments based on criteria and standards
14. Book compare/contrast

Reading a book and recalling facts/happenings is one thing. To go deeper, students can compare books, stories, characters, settings, etc.

To start, they can upload the covers of two books, images of two characters, etc. Then, they can compare/contrast. Students can pause the video to swap out images.

Another approach: list several characteristics of the two compared things. (i.e. plot, setting, characters, etc.) With a list for each book, students can use the inking feature to cross out characteristics they don't have and circle the characteristics they do have.
Revised Bloom's category: evaluate + conceptual
15. Instant replay commentary

Students perform a variety of tasks: speeches, demonstrations, music, athletic feats, etc. Students can upload a short video of a task - one they performed or performed by someone else. Then, they can critique the video, listing the good and the bad.

Option 1: The student can record a quick video introducing the video, then show the video of the task, then offer the commentary.

Option 2: Instead of showing the video of the task in one sitting, the student can trim the video to show one part - then record a quick commentary video. The student can upload the video again and trim it down to the second part - then record a quick commentary. That helps the viewer to see more specifically what the student on camera is talking about.
Revised Bloom's category: evaluate + procedural
16. Critique the pro writer

(with screenshots) based on your class's essay rubric (evaluate + conceptual)

Do the pros - journalists, authors, poets - meet the criteria we use to evaluate work in class?

Students can read something written by a "pro" and evaluate it with the same writing rubric the teacher uses. Afterward, have the student grab a few screenshots of positive/negative examples to share.

During a recording, the student can evaluate the pro's writing with the class rubric, pausing to upload screenshots of examples to show the viewer.
Revised Bloom's category: evaluate + conceptual
17. Check in on your goals

What are your goals? How will you know you've reached them?

What's your progress? How do you know?

When students take control of these questions, they start to own their learning. They're in control. Videos are a great place to set goals and to show progress. Create a grid with a topic for each student. Students can share their updates and check-ins on their own topics with short videos throughout the year. At the end of the year, they can look back over their skills and see their progress.
Revised Bloom's category: evaluate + metacognitive
CREATE
Put elements together to form a coherent whole: reorganize into a new pattern or structure
18. Present mini posters

In the "factual" category, it's easy to get stuck in recall mode: drill and kill. Making something with facts students have learned gives it a different dimension. Plus, when what they create has visual elements, it connects with the brain in a different way.

Mini posters are a quick way to create with facts. Turn on whiteboard mode. Add photos and text. Then, students can present their mini-posters to add a layer of verbal communication to the activity.
Revised Bloom's category: create + factual
19. Create a dream team

Create a dream team of scientists. Authors. Historical figures. Then, make your case. Why do the ones on the team make it? Pick some that aren't on the team and explain why they didn't make it. Photos of the members of the team and some text boxes with their accomplishments are the icing on the cake.
Revised Bloom's category: create + conceptual
20. Create a learning portfolio

In #17, we shared goals. In this one, we share work. What were your greatest hits of the year? What's the stuff you're most proud of? Include photos and video of that work. Talk about why it's significant, the struggles, the lessons learned. Like in #17, a topic for each student in a grid for learning portfolios would make a great shareable spot.
Revised Bloom's category: create + metacognitive 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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20 activities to "Bloom" with the new Flipgrid camera

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Video is so easy to create in the classroom now. What used to take expensive equipment and advanced know-how can be created in seconds with devices we already have. Video is a rich medium for learning. Students can practice speaking skills, show their passion through their voice, and make learning visible.