Over the last couple of years, one tool has helped me the most in my professional development as a teacher. This tool may not be viewed as a positive tool by many, but it has shown to have great potential. Twitter is the one professional development tool that I do not want to leave behind…
Too often our classrooms feel restricted, restricted by the space we have, restricted by the supplies we have and restricted by the time we have with our students. Through the use of technology we can easily extend beyond these restrictions. Learning is not something that only happens in a certain period of time each day…
A few years back, at my previous school when we started the 1 to 1 initiative there, I was posed with the problem of outdated texts. Our Earth Science texts were old and had either missing or incorrect information. Not to mention the fact that I am not a big fan of textbooks to begin…
There are a good number of digital tools out there that allow you to do a formative assessment in your class. (Reminder = formative assessments are used to help guide (inform) instruction, not to end a unit or to determine a grade.) I will go over 2 of the big tools out there that you…
A class website can be very useful in the learning environment for students. You can create a place that is the starting point for your class that contains links, resources, class calendar, forum posts, news and updates. The website can also be a great way to make connections with parents. A Google Site…
The company behind the Voice Comments tool for Google Docs has updated their tool to include more features and to improve others. The tool has been greatly improved and should be a lot easier to use. The video below shows exactly how to use the new tool but you can also go to this site…
If you want students to be able to view each other’s work during a class, there is a good number of ways to do this. Which way works best for you will depend on your background in using the tools and what tools you already use. One easy way is to use a Google Form…
Ames High School is starting our 1 to 1 initiative with a major change, no more Microsoft Office products. Instead of Word, our students will be using Google Docs or LibreOffice. This is going to be a big change for some but for many this should not be a big difference because the tools are…
You can access your Google Drive files while offline if you follow the steps below. The steps were posted by Google at (https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375012?hl=en&ref_topic=2375002). Set up offline access Follow these steps to enable offline access on your computer. Keep in mind that offline access is available only when you’re using Chrome or a Chrome OS device. If you…
1. Make sure you are logged into your google account. 2. Go to maps.google.com 3. Click on “my places” 4. Click on “create map” 5. Give your map a title and a description. 6. Select “public” or “unlisted”, if you are using this for a class and do not want everyone else…
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