One of my favorite analogies when talking about the different tools we have in education deals with golf. You can relate teaching to many different activities but one analogy is usually never enough to fully explain ideas and concepts in the complex field of teaching. Teaching is not exact, but there are certain rules that…
I was working on my assignment for my Masters class this week and referenced a talk by Kevin Honeycutt. He discussed how his home situation affected his education, which worked well because my assignment deal with poverty and education. I decided to rewatch the talk and became a bit distracted. It reminded me of one…
Dave Burgess writes in his book, “Teach Like a Pirate”, about his dislike of the phrase, “it’s easy for you, you’re creative.” He goes on to say that everyone has creativity in them and that by saying this phrase, you are discounting all of the work that person put in to whatever they did that…
One of the first things that I wanted to do this year as a technology integration specialist was to create a simple Google Site that would contain resources and links for teachers at my high school. The only purpose was to have a place that I could collect and sort out resources and tips for…
While at the Midwest Google Summit this week at the Wisconsin Dells in Wisconsin, I had the extreme fortune to listen to Krista Moroder. Krista is a Director of Learning for Instructional Technology and Library Media in a Wisconsin school district. She was presenting about their EdTech Challenge, which is the professional development plan for…
Scoop.it is a digital curation/social bookmarking tool that is free and very easy to use. Like other curation tools you have a way to save websites or other pieces of media and place them in one location to share with others. There is a simple button you can install on you bookmark bar or you…
PowToon is a simple, web-based cartoon creator that can create simple, fun presentations. The program is web-based so that means that you can start on one computer and finish on another. There are ample free options inside the program and it is very simple to use. Instead of creating a boring presentation, you can create…
Google Hangouts has been updated. The video below will go over the basics of Google Hangouts including how to get started and the uses for a teacher in the classroom. YOUTUBE VIDEO
The updated Google Maps tool allows you to easily create maps that contain any information you want. You can create a map showing places you have visited, a map that contains information about certain events, or even a map that includes stories written by students and the locations that they took place. The Google Maps…
Google just released the Google Earth Tour Builder tool to allow you to create your own tours in Google Earth. As a science teacher I have used Google Earth in many ways, sometimes just to show students where something is and how it really looks, but this new tool opens it up to even more…
Donovanscience 