virtual reality is beginning to spread, and so many of its uses have to do with consumption. What if students were able to create with VR? Darcy Grimes, a North Carolina educator and former state teacher of the year, shares how Google Tour Creator can help students learn how to create in virtual reality. You don't even need any fancy gear to make it happen!
The beginning of class is a crucial time everyday. Those first several minutes can set the tone for the entire day of instruction! If we want to make the most of those minutes, we can give students learning activities that really engage them and stimulate them. And our digital devices can help! In today's episode, I share several ways to kick off class with digital bell ringer activities. I'll also share the blog post -- with a free ebook and a tutorial video! -- where you can find 20 of them.
My new book is coming out in April, and I want to celebrate by giving you lots of great free resources! The book, Tech Like a Pirate, shares how we can create memorable learning in the classroom with technology. It will be lots of fun! For the next 10 weeks, we will be sharing lots of free resources on the Ditch That Textbook blog. They will be related to each of the eight ways to Tech Like a Pirate. In this episode, I'll tell you more about it and where you can find those resources!
Have you ever heard of the "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" game? You're supposed to be able to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon with no more than six connections to other actors. Making connections can be a powerful classroom activity! Nate Ridgway, my co-author in the book Don't Ditch That Tech, has shared a whole folder of templates that help your students to do this. In this episode, I'll tell you about this activity and where you can get those templates!
Infographics are very brain friendly. They blend together visuals and text in a way that's very sticky for the brain. I recently found a video tutorial by Claudio Zavala that shows how to create those using Adobe Spark Post. In this episode, I will share a few of the tips I learned from his video and show you where you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.
many of our students are very interested in social media. We can tap into that excitement and enthusiasm, and we don't even need students to use those apps! There is an inherent draw that every social media platform has that gets us interested in it. If we know what that draw is, we can infuse our lessons with it. In this episode, I share a few of those draws that I see in a variety of social media.
Chrome extensions add extra super powers to our Google Chrome web browsers. Teachers and students all over reap the rewards of them, too! In this episode, educator Michael Bertoni shares A few useful Chrome extensions from his presentation at the PETE&C Conference In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Podcasting is on the rise. When we use it in the classroom, it gives students a voice. They are able to create with what they learn. Teacher Heather Kelly has seen great benefits from podcasting in the classroom with her students. In this episode, she shares the simple way she is publishing her students' audio work and tips for helping reluctant students to dive right in.
We want students to be good citizens and productive members of society. But how can we advocate responsibly for the democracy that we all hope for? Pennsylvania teacher Mike Soskil (Twitter: @msoskil) is the editor of a book that will be published soon. It collects thoughts from classroom teachers and academics about this subject. In this episode, Mike shares a couple of things we can do from the classroom to promote a solid democracy.
It can be tricky to discern fact from fiction these days. It can be even trickier to help our students navigate the digital waters of fake news and fact. In this episode, I share a good fake news self-assessment. It comes from the book Fact vs Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News by Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins.
Virtual field trips are so much fun. We can take our students to places all over the world without leaving the comfort of our classroom. Thankfully, lots of these virtual field trips are available for free. They include live video calls with people in museums, historic sites, and national landmarks all over the United States and beyond. In this episode, I will tell you about five great virtual field trips and where you can find more. Did I mention that they are free?!?
Voice is on the rise. Podcast listenership continues to grow. Smart speakers are selling like hotcakes. With all of this buzz around audio content, maybe now is the time to incorporate podcasting in your classroom. However, it doesn't have to be complicated. You can do it with a simple tool you may already use -- Google Slides -- and a free audio recording tool. I ran across a blog post by Jen Giffen (@virtualgiff) and love her solution for it. In this episode, I will share the steps that Jen pr...
We use Google Classroom to assign, collect, grade, and return work with students. Many teachers will use Google Classroom in a web browser on their laptop or desktop computers. But have you tried the Google Classroom mobile app? It has a couple of superpowers that the regular browser version does not. In this episode, I'll tell you about two of those features and why they are really helpful.
As teachers, a lot of times we like to assign students work using templates. Google slides is a great choice for doing that! But what do you do when students make mistakes and need to go back to a previous version? In this episode, I talk to Maria Sohn, who teaches technology and stem. She has a couple of unique ideas to share!
I ran across a really helpful question in a post on Twitter. It may help you, too!
Augmented reality is showing up in more and more schools all over. But how can we use augmented and virtual reality in meaningful ways in the classroom? I love the approach that David Saunders used to upgrade 9th grade history textbooks with augmented reality. I found this example in the book Reality Bytes: Innovative Learning Using Augmented and Virtual Reality by Christine Lion-Bailey, Jesse Lubinsky and Micah Shippee.
When I was a beginning teacher, I thought that technology use in the classroom was good no matter what. It didn't take me long to change my views on that, though. When we use tech in the classroom, we have to ask ourselves, " How is it improving learning? " In today's episode, I share a few questions we can ask ourselves to see whether we should be using technology in our lessons.
Your Google Classroom can get pretty organized sometimes, can't it? This is a pain point for so many who use it and other learning management systems! A couple of little tips can go a long way to getting it neat and tidy. At the TCEA conference in Austin Texas, I hosted a session on organizing your Google Classroom. Some of the suggestions from the participants were fantastic! I share them in today's episode. To catch the session resources from that presentation, go to http://ditchthattextbook.c...
So many of us educators turn to Twitter and Pinterest to get ideas and connect with each other. But there's a new social media that's developed specifically for educators that's coming out soon. in this episode, I interview one of the founders, Michael Crawford, to get all the details.
Libraries in schools are getting a makeover. They don't just have to be a room full of dusty books! Kelly and Crystal from Pasadena, Texas, share how they're using technology to engage students in their media center.
I'm at the TCEA conference in Austin, Texas! There's a lot to learn here. In this episode, I share several of my key takeaways from the first day.
Many times, when we see the cool things that teachers are doing with Google products, we might assume that the same things can't be done with Microsoft. But that's not necessarily the case! Scott Titmas Share some of his favorite tips and tricks for making Microsoft products work for you in the classroom.
teachers love to have choices in their professional development as much as students love to have choices in their learning! In this episode, Stacy Saia shares how her school district is giving teachers choice and how they learn professionally -- and how they are reaping great rewards from it.
So many of our students are fascinated with social media. any mention of one of their favorite apps can instantly grab their attention. We can pull elements of social media into our learning activities to engage those students! In a recent post on the Ditch That Textbook blog, We shared several templates and websites that can help you accomplish that!
In so many schools around the United States and the world, we see a wide variety of native languages. Providing support to students and their families in their own language can pay great dividends in student learning. The Microsoft translator app lets educators connect with students and their families in their native languages and a wide variety of circumstances. In this episode, I share four places where it can strengthen family communication and instruction.
Understanding how the brain works and learns can help us teach and our students learn with more power. Understanding that each student's brain doesn't learn the same way is important, too. In Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond, she shares how we can understand culture, how it is wired into our students' brains, and how we can reflect that in our teaching.
When we learn how the brain prefers to learn, We can learn smarter instead of harder. I got so much valuable information and insight from the book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zarretta Hammond. in it, she talks about how we can teach in a way that recognizes all students in our classes and optimizes learning for their brains. in this episode, I share her insights on the three phases of information processing.
When students take activities home to do, sometimes they struggle. Sometimes the parents struggle! To add a layer of assistance to your activities, you might try what Nate Ridgway calls the Flipgrid 5. It's an easy way to add a short instructional video to paper-based assignments that you give your students. You can learn more about it on his website, TeachingFromTheRidge.com.
Lots of students do media projects when they need music or sound effects to make them sound their best. The YouTube Audio Library is a great source of downloadable songs and sounds.
Quizizz is one of several formative assessment tools that teachers are using all around the world. After loading it up recently, I noticed a few newer features that really impressed me. in this episode, I'll tell you what those features are and why you should be excited about them, too.
