Applying tech tools to meet classroom needs.
Zaption, a tool that allowed you to embed questions and student feedback into a video, has come out with some updated tools that are useful for a whole-class activity. Now, if you are going to show a video to your class, keep it short and to the point. There is hardly a time where we…
Edcamp Iowa was the first Edcamp that I ever went to and I have been hooked on Edcamps since then. I have traveled up to the Twin Cities and down to Kansas City for Edcamps. Every Edcamp that I go to has been a great learning experience and has reenergized me as an educator. Edcamps…
Adding text onto images or video files inside of iMovie is not always easy with the limited selection of options. By using Google Drawing you can easily add text over your video. Just create the text you want in Google Drawing, using the large variety of fonts and formatting, leave the background as it was…
ITEC was just last week but I am just now posting my resources and reflection. As usual, ITEC was a great chance to learn and connect with other great educators from in and out of Iowa. There were a ton of great sessions and thanks to Twitter I was able to follow along with those…
Earlier this week I was at the annual ITEC conference in Des Moines and had the opportunity to try out one of the Breakout Edu Challenges. (http://www.breakoutedu.com/) If you have not heard about Breakout Edu, head to their site to check it out. It is basically a classroom version of the breakout room challenges that…
Google Calendar is now integrated with Google Classroom. If you go to classroom.google.com and click on the three horizontal lines, you should see Calendar as an option. You can also get to it by going to the About part of your Classroom. It will be listed towards the bottom. If you have not…
To be an effective learner today, you need to know how to curate resources. There is a tremendous amount of information out there and if you do not curate your resources, selecting those that are relevant and useful, you will be overwhelmed by what you find. There are a lot of curation tools out there…
One new thing we are trying at my building this year is the use of Google Classroom to assist the work that our PLCs are doing. As our PLCs work together to collect data from common formative assessments and collaborate to improve student learning, we needed a way they could easily do this in a…
One of the things that irritates me, both as a teacher and a learner, is when I see so many teachers missing a great opportunity to help learners because they only provide assistance or feedback at the end of a learning activity. Too often we assign something and wait till it is turned in before…
This summer I am trying some new things to help keep the learning going with teachers that I work with. Some of them are tools that I used during the school year that I am still using while others are new to me in the way that I am using them. I believe, that as…
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