Melanie Fessler

#NaBloWriMo Day 20


Twiddla is an Online Whiteboard...and it is super simple!  Users can mark up websites or graphics, or start drawing on a blank canvas. It is a really great tool for distance learning led by a teacher or peer to peer.  It even has a built in Equation editor for the mathletes out there.

Twiddla requires no plug-ins or downloads and works on any browser.  Best of all - NO account required!  This is great to maintain student privacy.  (The free version allows for up to 10 participants to meet for 20 minutes.  There are other pricing structures.)

To get started, start a board, and share the link.

I’m happy to release video of the talk I gave throughout the 2016-2017 school year, including at the NCTM Annual Convention in San Antonio, TX.

This is my best attempt to tie together and illustrate terms like “intellectual need” and expressions like “if math is aspirin, how do we create the headache.” If you’re looking for an elaboration on those ideas, or for illustrations you haven’t seen on this blog, check out the video.

The Directory of Mathematical Headaches

This approach to instruction seriously taxes me. That’s because answering the question, “Why did mathematicians invent this skill or idea?” requires a depth of content knowledge that, on my best days, I only have in algebra and geometry. So I’ve been very grateful these last few years to work with so many groups of teachers whose content knowledge supplements and exceeds my own, particularly at primary and tertiary levels. Together we created the Directory of Mathematical Headaches, a collaborative document that adapts the ideas in this talk from primary grades up through calculus.

It isn’t close to complete, so feel free to add your own contributions in the comments here, by email, or in the contact form.

Rewordify is a free site that can help students understand complex passages of text. At its most basic level Rewordify takes a complex passage and rephrases it in simpler terms. Students can adjust Rewordify's settings to match their needs. For example, students can add words to a "skip list" and those words will not be changed when they appear in a passage. Students can also use Rewordify to simply highlight difficult words instead of having them replaced. Watch the video below for a complete overview of how Rewordify works.



Applications for Education
Rewordify could be helpful to students when they are challenged to read a book or article that is a step or two above their current reading levels. After trying to read through a tricky passage students can use Rewordify to help the check their comprehension of that passage.

EquatIO is a popular tool that math and science teachers like to use for using handwriting, equation and formula prediction, and graphing in Google Forms, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings. The service is provided by TextHelp who also makes the popular Read & Write add-on for Google Docs.

This afternoon TextHelp announced that EquatIO is now free for teachers to use. To get a free teacher account just create an account on TextHelp then complete this form. Upon approval, you will be granted access to all of the premium features that EquatIO offers.

Learn more about EquatIO in the video that is embedded below.

Who doesn’t love a colorful word cloud? But what I don’t love is the time it takes to input all of the words to create one. My motto is that students should do the work in our classroom, not me. Well, I work a little, but I don’t want to do the lion’s share of the work. The person doing the work is doing the learning, so my students do the heavy lifting in our classroom. That’s why I was so excited when I discovered Mentimeter!

Mentimeter–a cloud-based interactive presentation software–is super easy to use and has a robust free version. It provides the user with several different ways to engage a class, but my absolute favorite type of question is the word cloud.

Think about a question you want to ask students and select the type of question you want to use.

Click the “word cloud” image and type your question. For example, at the start of our unit on social media, I asked my students “What words come to mind when you think of social media?” I was curious to see what words they would associate with social media.

Once you’ve created your slide, you can project it for students. It will have your question, the link to Menti.com, and a six-digit code at the top. When students go to Menti.com, they’ll see a window like the one below.

As they submit their words, the word cloud updates in real time on your projected slide. Words that are repeated by multiple students appear larger in the cloud to reveal areas of commonality and agreement. My students associate social media with their friends above all else. Other words that were repeated by multiple students included, socializing, memes, communication, interaction, and public.

These word clouds are a powerful strategy to generate ideas, engage the class in conversation, and facilitate an analysis of word choice and meaning. I love that I did NOT have to create it. The words are entered directly by the students without being filtered through me.

It’s worth checking out some of the other question types too. There is a limit to the number of slides you can have with the free version, but it has worked wonderfully for me!

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” -Benjamin Franklin

The holidays are here! You might be familiar with advent calendars, which have treats or gifts to count down the days to Christmas. Well you can take the same concept and create your own digital version of an advent calendar. Tis the season to inspire active learning with a click and learn digital countdown calendar! Students can count the days till the break or count the days towards class starting again in 2018. In your digital calendar, you will present a nugget of learning, each day as a gift! This could be a fun learning game, trivia, writing prompt, joke, inspiring quote, fun app to try, a hyperdoc, or small task. Award a digital badge for each task as an added bonus! You can also create a digital click and launch calendar to launch an edtech mission like the ones in my book, Hacking Digital Learning Strategies with EdTech Missions. Simply attached the mission card and badges from the book to each day. Check out my example digital calendar and the instructions that follow.

Get your copy of Hacking Digital Learning, The 30 Goals Challenge, or Learning to Go. Ask me about training your teachers, ShellyTerrell@gmail.com!

Create a Digital Calendar

To create your own interactive digital calendar:

1. Go to my Google Calendar Template and make a copy.  Add an image to the header.
2. Take a screenshot of the calendar so it is a jpg or png.
3. Upload this image to ThingLink.
4. Add links, prompts, challenges, missions, or apps to explore. Feel free to add a digital badge to inspire more completion of tasks.

Challenge: Inspire learning during the holidays with a click and learn digital calendar.

Subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

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Listen to my interview with Don Wettrick (transcript):

Sponsored by mysimpleshow and Peergrade

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This post contains Amazon affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy receives a small portion of the sale at no extra cost to you.

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I hear it all the time: The world is changing, and schools need to change. Lots of us recognize that we should no longer be relying on the old model, where we just dump information into our students’ brains and they regurgitate it back. The world we live in today requires more of people: problem-solving skills, creativity, collaboration, the ability to innovate, iterate, and design solutions for problems that don’t even exist yet. The way we do school now just doesn’t prepare kids the way it should.

It’s a good message, a true message, but too often, that message leaves us hanging. We nod along, we agree that things need to be different, but then we go back to doing more or less what we’ve always done, because we aren’t exactly sure HOW to change school.

Luckily, more people are starting to figure it out, and part of my mission here is to share their ideas with you. In the past, I have interviewed the teachers at the Apollo School, an innovative program blending history, English, and art that’s run inside a public high school in Pennsylvania. I’ve talked to Steven Ritz, whose incredible urban gardening projects transformed his Bronx classroom and the lives of his students. And I also told the story of an underused middle school library in Ohio that completely reconfigured its space into a collaborative, flexible, technology-rich learning hub that now stays busy all the time.

Now let’s look at another model for 21st century learning, a year-long elective offered in an Indiana high school where students design and execute their own passion-driven projects. The course is called Innovation and Open Source Learning, and the teacher’s name is Don Wettrick. In our podcast interview, Don tells me about how the course works, how he structures it to build in both accountability and freedom for his students, and how he’s changed and improved the program over the past six years. The key points from our conversation are summarized below.

My hope is that when you learn about this innovation class, you’ll start to think about how you might implement something similar in your own school; if not a fully fledged class, then maybe an after-school club or a pull-out program, a way to differentiate for some students. To learn even more about Don’s course and how it works, head over to Don’s website, startedupinnovation.com, where you’ll find links to his podcast, his Facebook page, and his YouTube channel, where he shares daily video logs that document his students’ work in class.

What is this class?

The official name for the course is “Innovation and Open Source Learning.” Wettrick started teaching it six years ago as an extension of the Genius Hour idea, where students work on projects of their own design, focusing on topics that interest them.

Although Wettrick found that Genius Hour worked fine in an elementary setting, it wasn’t as easy to implement in high school, where time is chunked into different content areas and teachers have fewer hours to spare. So six years ago, he introduced the course as a year-long elective.

 

How does it actually work?

Part 1: Innovation

The first seven or eight weeks of the course make up the “Innovation” phase: This looks more like a traditional class, where Wettrick does a lot of direct instruction to prepare students for the rest of the year.

During this phase, students are introduced to the concept of innovation and taught to think differently about what school could be like. Wettrick opens their minds to new ways of thinking by exposing them to a collection of ideas and activities.

“We have a couple of TED talks that we watch,” he explains. “We’ll play a couple of games—Disruptus is such an easy, fun game that gets a lot of things going. I’ll give them short excerpts from books like Seth Godin’s Linchpin. I have them listen to podcasts. I’ll show them clips from Tony Wagner’s film Most Likely to Succeed. And I’ll show them all the urgency, all this media on ‘Schools should change, schools should change, schools should change.'” This helps students understand the point of the course and how it will require them to approach learning in a different way.

While reframing students’ thinking, Wettrick also equips them with the tools and skills they’ll need for the second phase, where they will actually design and implement their own projects:

• Students learn how to set SMART goals.
• They study the protocols they will use for planning, implementing, and reflecting on their projects.
• They set up public-facing social media profiles “where people want to follow you, that they’re shocked and amazed that somebody at 16 years old is going to be tackling great problems,” Wettrick says.
• Each student starts a blog, a podcast, or a YouTube channel, which they’ll use to submit the required course reflections.

Part 2: Open Source Learning

For the rest of the year, students get to work on their self-directed projects. Some work on a different project every two weeks, while others work on incremental stages of a long-term project.

Wettrick uses the acronym ROTH-IRA to describe their innovation cycle. In this case, it has nothing to do with finances, but the process of thinking of an idea and taking it all the way through and beyond its implementation.

R = Realization
In this step, students are noticing things and thinking about problems that need addressing. “Just go observe things,” Wettrick tells them. “And so they’ll get this realization. Like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and then when they do, I’m asking them to jot it down.”

O = Open Discussion
During this phase, students talk through their ideas with the rest of the group, which Wettrick says can lead to challenges. “What you thought may have been a good idea, you say out loud, and then the rest of the group, it’s their turn to fight.” This leads to the next step.

T = The Tussle
This is part of the open discussion, where students refine their ideas by talking through them—which can often be kind of a “tussle”—with others.

H = Homogeneous Grouping
As students shape their goals, they begin to come together with other students who might want to work toward the same goals but have different skill sets that can complement one another.

 

Once the idea is in place, the implementation begins.

I = Ideation
This is where students make a plan of action: “What’s keystroke one?” Wettrick says. “What is prototype No. 1? What is phone call one? What is connection one?”

R = Reflection
After meeting the first two-week goal, students reflect on their progress, take an honest look at what went wrong, and celebrate successes.

A = Adjustment
Finally, students set new goals based on the progress they’ve made so far and the lessons they have learned.

This video explores the ROTH-IRA framework in more detail.

How do Students Figure Out What to Do?

All of this sounds really good if students already know what they want to do for their projects. But students who have spent years in a system that tells them exactly what to do need some time to adjust to all this freedom.

Wettrick teaches students how to listen to the conversations they hear in their daily lives. “When you hear people say, ‘You know what sucks?’ Their ears are going, ‘What?’ There’s money to be made. There (are) problems to be solved. And so they become active searchers of problem solving.”

Once students become more attuned to listening for problems, their next step is to choose the problems that fit their interests. “Pick your lane,” Wettrick tells them. “If you’re really into social justice, look around. What can you do to fix it? Don’t go to a protest and that’s it. What are you going to do? If your thing is animal cruelty, what are you going to do? If your thing is making money, what are you going to do?”

Before they can start setting goals for a project, students have to get the project approved. Projects have to satisfy what Wettrick calls the rule of thirds: “Rule number 1: Are you passionate about it? That one’s easy,” he says. “Number 2, what’s your skills acquisition on this? And number 3, who is it benefiting other than you? Because I don’t care if you’re successful. I want you to be empowering others.”

Here’s an example: One student wanted to focus on day trading. He had a definite passion for it. “He’s like, ‘Bro, I’m making money. I want to make money,'” Wettrick says. Although his skills weren’t great, he was committed to learning. When it came to rule 3, however, the plan wasn’t up to par, so Wettrick didn’t approve it. So the student decided to start a stock club, where he would teach other students what he was learning and do day trading with simulated money. Then his project was approved.

Some students get rule 3 on the first try, like these two who are building a school in Africa:

 

• The podcast and YouTube channel students created to help other students deal with depression,
• The student who is producing a video channel to showcase his school’s cross country matches
• The brothers whose YouTube channel helps other guys develop an affordable fashion style

How do you hold students accountable?

As part of their project proposals, students set goals for themselves. Every two weeks students submit reflections on their goals in the form of a blog post, podcast, or video. They also conference with Wettrick about the progress they’re making on their goals. Ultimately, their grades are based on the quality of their reflections and on how well they met the goals they set for themselves. This video explains the process:

 

Learn More

All of this is just a small sample of what Wettrick and his students share online about their process. If you’re interested in starting an innovation class in your school, visit Wettrick’s website, StartEDUp. Also, check out his courses on Innovation in the classroom.

 

Even if you’re not quite ready to go as far as pushing for a full course like this one, my hope is that this model will provide one more template we can all use to rethink the way we’re doing things now, one more approach to making school a place that gives our students a chance to practice solving problems for the rest of their lives. 

 

 

We’re excited to share with you some details on the new Breakout EDU Platform.

We wanted to take a moment and explain the new Breakout EDU platform and how you can access all the great free resources available.

The new site allows teachers to have accounts rather than having to enter the generic password every time they access a game. All of the 300+ games that were previously available are now available for free on the new platform. This includes great games from the Breakout EDU Team like Time Warp, The Dot, Totally Radical 80s Time Travel Adventure, and Dr. Johnson. You can sign up for your account here. 

In each Subject Pack folder you’ll find a collection of games labeled “user generated”. That is where we’ll be housing all those games. We’ve also added the tag “free” to those games.  We will continue to add games to these collections regularly.

In addition to the hundreds of free games and resources, we’re launching two new premium elements. On the platform you will find 100+ new “Subject Packs” that contain games for specific content areas and a tool for building custom digital games.

Subject Packs

Our team is currently working hard to build games for as many subject areas and lesson topics as possible. Here’s a list of our first collections. If you don’t see the game you’re looking for, you can request new game topics.

The NEW Breakout EDU Digital

The new tool is fantastic and you’re able to design custom games and track students progress. Here is an in-depth tutorial on how to use the new digital tool.

We’ve created a few examples so you can see how much fun your students will have with the the new Breakout EDU Digital. You can play a sample Halloween game we created for elementary students here.

The Updated Kit

In additional to all the standard Breakout EDU kit items. We now include in the kit the new color, shape, and number rings for your Multilocks and the red lens viewer.

Pricing

Each Breakout EDU kit now includes 12 months of access to the platform. You’ll have the ability to renew your access for a discounted price. Additionally, users are able to purchase access separately without a kit. Here is the full pricing chart.

You can purchase the updated Breakout EDU kit or platform access here.

Already have a kit?

If you’ve ordered a kit previously with Breakout EDU shoot us an email with your order information and we can provide you with information on how to upgrade your account.

For more information on getting started with Breakout EDU please visit BreakoutEDU.com/welcome

Please reach out to us at info@BreakoutEDU.com if you have any additional questions.

 

After launching the Breakout EDU Platform just a few weeks ago, we have been hard at work on making it even better. While a lot of that work is going on “behind the screens” to increase speed, cross-browser compatibility, etc., we wanted to share with you some of the changes from the past week or so:

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Digital Game Locks gain a new Lock Setup / Story Element

When creating a Digital Game you may notice that we added an optional text box to each of the Digital Game puzzles. Now, in addition to the clue (text, image, or video) that you provide, you can include text to set up the clue.

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Resources for Creation

Playing games with Breakout EDU is a ton of fun. Building games is also a fun challenge. We updated the BreakoutEDU.com/create site with some helpful resources. The first is a printable PDF template that you can use when planning a digital game. The second is a submission for users who are creating Digital Games to share them. We look forward to showcasing some free user-generated games.

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Tap or Type

For letter or number puzzles, you can type in your answers in addition to the tap option.

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ShowYourWork

In the spirit of Austin Kleon’s “Show your work” mantra, we wanted to share with you the brief tale of a feature that we quickly built and launched based on user feedback, but ultimately decided to remove based on - you guessed it, more user feedback. When playing a Breakout EDU Digital Game some users had become upset that their students had refreshed the screen and reset the game. We developed a feature that would produce a pop-up warning whenever a user was in a digital game and neared the edge of the browser. But this pop-up wound up confusing many more folks. We made the decision to remove it. Long story short - we learn from all the feedback we get from our users and make the best efforts to make the site better each and every day. We appreciate your patience as we improve it even further.

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Coming Soon

Here’s a sneak peek of a feature that we hope to launch in the next few weeks. We are building the ability to drag and re-order your locks while editing Digital Games.

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Bug Reporting / Feature Requests

We take every email to heart and every suggestion seriously. If you are having a problem on the site or have an idea that you want us to consider, please feel free to report it by filling out this form. Bug reports can be submitted at https://www.breakoutedu.com/bug - Feature suggestions can be sent to info@breakoutedu.com

I was on my way home from the gym today and thinking what I might get for lunch to reward my workout. As I drove along Maryland Avenue, where Companion Bakery used to be, I noticed an arch of colorful balloons announcing the opening of Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh.

Yippee-dee-do-dah! I had read about the Denver-based chain, that emphasizes delicious, nutritious ingredients in its pitas, falafels, gyros, wraps, salads, kebabs and drinks. I pulled around back and found a parking place. Instantly, I became Wander Woman, donning my culinary cape, headed for another gastronomic adventure.

A young man behind the counter greeted me from across the room as I walked in and pointed me to where I should get in line to order. (It’s the reverse of Companion Bakery.) The guy in charge of the line, handed me a complimentary falafel, and explained how to place an order. I’ve noticed that several restaurants require a tutorial to navigate their menu, (Lona’s Lil Eats, Crushed Red), but this one was fairly straight forward.

Before placing my order, I inquired about the pita bread being shaped and baked in the area labeled Bakery.  I learned that their pita is made from scratch as are the sauces and toppings. The chicken is antibiotic free and gluten-free pita is available. Three cheers to this Denver outfit for wanting to get the ingredients healthier.

I should mention that company CEO James Park is originally from St. Louis and is joined in the venture by locals Michael Staenberg and Eddie Cherry with the intention of bringing more Garbanzo outposts to the area. (There are 23 now, mostly in Colorado.)

I asked the food linesman what he suggested for my meal holder: pita, wrap, plate, or salad. He suggested the pita bread being made fresh before my eyes. And for the protein, the antibiotic-free chicken. After that, I picked a vegetable combo and sauces until I had completed my personal pita creation.

This warm baked pita filled with top tier ingredients was an alliance of flavors and goodness. I’d like to duplicate it on another visit, but my selections were made hastily and without names attached that I recall. For some reason, it was unusually noisy and hard to hear the servers behind the counter. We did a lot of pointing. Maybe it was just the buzz that comes with opening day. 

Garbanzo was a most happy discovery. Having a Mediterranean food spa within walking distance of my condo will be the perfect place for a quick and healthy meal this winter.

Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh.  8143 Maryland Ave., Clayton. (At the corner of Forsyth and Maryland. Open: 7 days a week, 11a-10p. Seats 46 inside plus outdoor dining patio.

The post Garbanzo Mediterranean Comes to Clayton appeared first on Good Food St. Louis.

Remember the Cranberry Jiggle?

I’m not making the cranberry dish this year for Thanksgiving. Wait, don’t get me wrong; we’re having cranberries all right. It wouldn’t be a proper celebration without them. True, I passed them up during my youth. Back then a red, gel cylinder was released from a can and plopped onto a serving dish just before the turkey arrived on the table. The best part was watching it do a Jello jiggle before it was calmed down by being cut into edible slices. Once on your plate it did a slow melt and ended up leaving a puddle around your mashed potatoes.

This year we’ll have a cranberry relish made from fresh berries, oranges and nuts and another called citron-cranberry marmalade. I’m looking forward to both. But there are other things you can make with the tart, round marbles, such as meatballs, cranberry white chocolate cake, cranberry-oatmeal-chocolate cookies, cranberry scones, and cranberry chutney.

Cranberry-Orange Nut Bread

This year I couldn’t pass up buying a sack of cranberries even before I figured out what I’d do with them. I settled on Cranberry-Orange Nut Bread, that I’ve made before at this time of the year. It works as a breakfast bread, snack, or even dessert served with fruit or ice cream. The recipe looks simple—and really is. But it’s one of those that causes you to use every bowl, measuring spoon and cup in the kitchen. Or maybe it was just poor planning on my part. The kitchen and I both survived.

I did two things differently than usual. One of them didn’t help make things any easier. Instead of chopping the berries in the food processor, I followed the advice of some online food guru and chopped them in half by hand. A whole cup and a half!  I was glad I did afterwards. It really made for a prettier bread when cut, because you see the circular halves rather than just specks and flecks.

Secondly, I cut back on the sugar. The recipe calls for one cup and I went with more like ¾ cup, because I prefer my sweet bread being less sweet. I thought it was perfect. The loaf is languishing in the freezer now with only one slice missing off the end. How else could I tell if the bigger cranberry slices and reduced sugar made a difference?

The post Cranberries: Not Just for Sauce Anymore appeared first on Good Food St. Louis.

Whisper is a free Chrome extension that was featured in last week's most popular post of the week. During the week I received a bunch of emails about the extension. Here's a short run-down of the questions most frequently asked about Whisper.

1. What is Whisper?
It is a free Chrome extension that lets you send pop-up notifications to the students listed in your Google Classroom rosters.

2. How is this different than sending emails?
When Whisper is correctly installed and enabled, your students will not need to check their inboxes to see the notes that you send to them. This makes it great for sending quick notes like, "keep up the great work today" or "please get back on task."

3. Nothing is happening/ why don't my students see my notes?
The number one cause of this is having pop-ups disabled. Make sure that pop-up notifications are enabled both in the Chrome browser and on your Mac or Windows computer itself.

4. Can my students see the notes that I send to their classmates?
No. The only way that they see the notes that you send to their classmates is if you use the "entire class" notification option.

5. My IT department is blocking Whisper. 
Okay, so this isn't a question so much as it is a complaint about your school's filtering policies. If you want to see if your school is blocking access to Whisper, go here. That page will also give your IT department information about how to open access to Whisper.

Want to learn more about workflow in Google Classroom? Join my upcoming course, Getting Going With G Suite. 

Google Tour Builder allows users to tell stories using Google maps, images, videos, and text. It is a fantastic tool for students to use to show what they know about different topics. Maybe students are summarizing the chapters of a book and each placemark represents a different chapter. Or perhaps students create a tour to share summaries of current events happening around the world. There are many different ways to incorporate Google Tour Builder into the classroom. In this video, I will walk you through how to get started and show you some of the basic features of this tool.

Click here to read a recent post on Google Tour Builder.

In order to share your tour, click the Done Editing button. This will give you the option to change the privacy settings and grab a link to share.

Dr. Scott McLeod on episode 189 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Dr. Scott McLeod, co-author of Different Schools for a Different World, has a frank conversation about the change that needs to happen, how long it will take to happen, and the next steps for promoting creativity in schools.

Listen Now

 

 

• Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

 

 

• Stream by clicking here.

 

Below is an enhanced transcript, modified for your reading pleasure. For guests and hyperlinks to resources, scroll down.

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Enhanced Transcript

Improving Schools By Killing Boredom and Promoting Deeper Learning

Link to show: www.coolcatteacher.com/e189
Date: November 9, 2017

Vicki: Today we’re talking to my friend, Dr. Scott McLeod @mcleod about his new book, Different Schools for Different Worlds, that he co-authored with Dean Shareski.

Now, Scott, what are some of the things that you think are preventing kids from learning?

What is preventing kids from learning?

Scott: I think they’re bored out of their minds, most of the time. I think that we see that manifest physically, in terms of those kids who are chronically absent, tardy, those who drop out, etc.

But then there’s the ones who are compliant and show up, but they’re mentally checked out. I think that’s probably our biggest failure to powerful learning right now.

Vicki: But there are some people who would say, “Kids have been bored forever. I was bored when I was a kid, and it didn’t hurt me.” Well, what do you say to that?

Scott: (laughs) Well, again they’re compliant, but I don’t know if they’re learning much. If you ask most of those people how much they remember, or what kind of powerful learning they experienced when they were in school, they often struggle to articulate what that looked like.

Vicki: OK, so what do we do to tackle this problem?

Scott: So, I think we can do a couple things. Obviously, schools as systemic structures need to change quite a bit.

4 Big Shifts in Schools

I’ve been trying to talk to schools about four big shifts:

1. The shift from low-level recall and regurgitation to deeper learning,
2. The shift from teacher-directed to greater student agency,
3. The shift from isolated-disconnected classroom work to more real-world authentic work,
4. And then finally, using technology in robust ways to facilitate those first three.

Those four shifts seem to resonate with folks because they have seen the power of those, at least in small doses within their systems.

Vicki: They do resonate. They make sense. Why is it so hard to make those shifts?

Scott: (laughs) Because schools have incredible inertia, and they were set up for a different time. Right? So Lauren Resnick, who did this wonderful study for the federal government, said that our schools were never designed to prepare large numbers of critical thinkers and problem solvers — which is exactly what we need now.

• READ: Learning in School and Out by Lauren B. Resnick (1987)

They were designed to prepare a large number of compliant people who would go into the basically automatable-type manufacturing jobs and office jobs, where they were basically a replaceable cog in the wheel.

Now, all of a sudden, for a variety of reasons, we need kids who can do that higher level, complex, analytical, interpersonal work.

Schools were never designed to do that, so we basically have this massive paradigm shift that we’ve got to figure out how to go through. Right now, we’re in that transition period.

Vicki: We are. Now we have of course the ESSA Act here in the US that lets states have different measures. So we’re talking about wanting to scale creativity. If lawmakers or policymakers ask us, how do we measure that?

How can we adopt creativity standards that are scalable and translate between schools?

We know, for example, say we did portfolios. You know, it’s really hard to have a standard measure of portfolios between schools. How can we measure and encourage and create an environment where we have creativity?

 

Scott: Right. Well, we went down this road before, right? We saw some movement in the 80’s and 90’s around portfolio development, around performance assessment, and other sorts of indicators of authentic work. We were figuring out ways to scale that up at the state level.

And then, when No Child Left Behind came along, it kind of cut all that off at the knees.

We’re sort of returning to that loop now, rediscovering what we had started to make progress on before, figuring out to make that happen.

You know we have a number of states, particularly in the New England, that are figuring out some kind of competency-based student exhibition or portfolio requirements as necessary for graduation.

One of the more interesting initiatives that we’re seeing is coming out of New York, a consortium of schools called the New York Performance Assessment Consortium. That’s gotten some waivers from the state department, where they’re trying to figure out what common performance assessments look like across districts. These could be used for assessment purposes.

So, there are lots of sort of interesting things happening.

Vicki: In other words, we’re just not there yet.

The Frustration of Transition

Scott: No, no, no. We’re in this massive, messy, transition period that’s going to take much longer than you and I want it to. It will probably be a decade or two or more before it all shakes out.

Vicki: But what about all these kids now? Doesn’t every child deserve to have the opportunity to be more creative and innovative and — to invent and to make and to have deeper learning?

Scott: Absolutely. You and I feel and urgency around that. Other folks either don’t feel that urgency, or at least have some inkling that that’s the direction we need to go, but they don’t have any ideas of how to accomplish that.

Vicki: Oh… but I don’t want to feel hopeless, Scott.

Scott: I’m not hopeless. I’m just trying to feel more patient. (laughs)

Vicki: (laughs) Good luck with that! You know, these children are just here. They’re now. I just think that we can do better.

How many years do we have to wait, with people saying, “But they have to take the test.” I mean, really. How long do we have to live this?

Scott: Well, until we gain critical mindset with our communities… and our educators and our policymakers… we’re going to have to wait a while.

Unfortunately, systems change slowly.

It’s easy to change at the individual level, right? You and I can make a mental shift, garner some resources, and go. But getting while systems to move is a whole ‘nother matter.

So, yes, I feel that urgency like you do. I battle it every day, and I try to find ways to “infect” people with different kinds of urgencies and mindsets. But the reality is that it’s going to take some time.

Vicki: OK, so let’s look at this one about student agency. Do you have some best practices and thoughts for really helping improve student agency in their own education?

Scott: Yes. My colleague Julie Graber @jgraber and I created a technology integration protocol. It has this horrible name called Trudacot. But it has a set of questions around agency that we’ve been having a lot of success with, with classroom teachers. Basically, the idea is that if the teacher has the interest or goal of increasing student agency in the day-to-day work, or maybe for a particular lesson or unit, there’s a set of questions that you can ask yourself about how you’re doing that or accomplishing that purpose. And it’s basic questions, like:

• Who gets to decide what is learned?
• Who gets to decide how it’s learned?
• Who gets to decide what the work product is, and how it’s assessed?
• Who gets to pick the technology?
• Who’s the primary user of the technology?
• Do students have the ability to be entrepreneurial, self-directed, and go beyond?

Questions like that, right?

• Read about Trudacot and use it to evaluate your classroom

And so if your answers are always, “Teacher, teacher, teacher,” then what we’re doing is we’re using those same questions as pivot points for redesign.

So we’re saying to teachers, “OK, so you have this goal of student agency, and you have this unit in mind. Right now, your answers are primarily, ‘Teacher, teacher, teacher…” or “No, no, no, whatever…”

What if we took this question around, “Who gets to decide what the student work product looks like?” What if you wanted the answer to be “Student” instead? How would you redesign this to get there?

What if you wanted to take that question around, “Do students have the opportunity to be self-directed and go beyond?” Right now the answer is “No.” What would the lens look like where the answer was “Yes.” How would you redesign this to get there?

And we’re having great conversations with teachers around what seemed like fairly basic questions, but it’s the structured process of it that I think really moves them in desired directions.

How do we make to the change to deeper learning?

Vicki: So one more. We don’t have time to go deep into all of these, but “Deeper Learning…” How do we make that shift? And I know you can’t give that answer in a minute, but just point us in a direction.

Scott: Sure. I think we’re starting to make some movements in this direction. We’re just not there yet.

We’re looking at,

• What kind of questions are we asking?
• Are they of greater cognitive complexity?
• Are we asking students to do meaningful, real-world tasks that require students to apply what they’re learning in new directions and at new depths?

Anything that gets us beyond the regurgitative multiple-choice item or fill-in-the-blank item — is all good.

Vicki: Yes, beyond regurgitative multiple choice, because you know many years ago… I can’t remember who it was that was on Facebook. I think it was Alec Couros. He asked, “What did you used to think about education that you found is not true?

Pretending that test measure learning

When I first got in, I thought that the tests actually meant something — until I realized that the kids actually forgot it the day after. Then I started doing projects. Years later, even now that they’re in their twenties and dare I say some are in their thirties, they come back to me and talk to me about these projects and concepts that they’ve applied in their real life.

And I’m like, “Oh yeah. That was teaching. Right?”

Scott: Yeah. I continue to be baffled by the game playing that we all engage in where we pretend that students care about and remember the thing we covered four weeks ago.

Vicki: And I would say that that is somewhat of a game. And do they understand it, or do they just memorize it?

Scott: Yeah. And they don’t even hang onto it for very long. Right? Nut in this pressure to cover stuff, we know in our hearts that they don’t remember and hang onto this, but we continue to proceed as if they do.

Vicki: Yeah. So I think that Scott’s blog — every time I talk to hi, I’m like, “Yep. His blog’s named well, ‘Dangerously Relevant’ because he is an instigator, a question asker. I hope that we all feel a little unsettled and dissatisfied because we can never be complacent.

I think the enemy is complacency and stagnancy. We need to make progress for these children. How can we scale creativity? I mean, that is what we need to have in our world today, particularly in more developed countries. We need that creativity.

This has been a fantastic conversation. I hope that you’ll take a look at the Shownotes and follow the links.

I’m definitely going to be asking some of these agency questions, Scott!

Scott: Cool. Thanks, Vicki. I’ll get you a copy of the whole protocol. Maybe you can share that, too.

 

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

kymberlimulford@gmail.com

Bio as submitted

---

An Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Colorado Denver, Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on P-12 school technology leadership issues. He also is the Founding Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the nation’s only university center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators.

Blog: dangerously ! irrelevant

Twitter: @mcleod

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. 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.) This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Different Schools for a Different World appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

AutoMastery is a new Google Forms Add-on that was created by Mary Ellen West, a technology coordinator from Georgia. This add-on allows you to automatically differentiate assignments for students based on the score they receive on a Google Forms quiz.

As the teacher, you will set a mastery score and a beginner level score. Students who score at or above mastery will receive a link to an extension activity. Students who score at or below the beginner level will receive an assignment that is designed to fit their needs and help them build the necessary skills to move to the progression level. Students who score above beginner but below mastery will receive an assignment that is designed to bring them up to the mastery level. All assignments will be sent to the students through an automated email.

When you go to install the AutoMastery add-on, you will more than likely see a warning message that says the app has not been approved by Google and to only install it if you know and trust the developer. This is just a glitch that will be worked out soon!

Once installed, you will need to configure AutoMastery. During this step you will set the mastery and beginner scores and add the links to the three different assignments you have selected.

Applications for Education
Administering a quiz, sorting the scores, then trying to make sure students get the correct assignment takes a lot of time! This add-on automates all of those tasks so teachers can spend time facilitating and following up with students who need extra help. This add-on has the potential to be used by teachers across grade levels and subject areas.

A teacher sent me a link to a video recently. I think it was probably from Teachers Pay Teachers, and she asked, “How do you make something like this in G Suite?” The video showed a document with three columns and a bunch of words at the bottom. The words at the bottom were moveable. […]

This is a guest post from Caroline Schaab.

As a 4th grade teacher, I’m always looking for creative ways spark curiosity, promote student voice, and keeps students engaged and to want to continue learning outside of school. Last year, with a few weeks left in the school year, I was introduced to Flipgrid. Fligrid is an easy to use video discussion platform, that allows students and teachers to record video responses anywhere from fifteen to 90 seconds. My students can record videos on their Chromebooks or if they have another device at home they can do this as well. At first, I was a bit hesitant about using Flipgrid, however, I stepped outside my comfort zone and watched the magic happen with these assignments:

• Math Songs - We learn a song to reinforce the concept being taught in class. Students would then go home and record themselves singing the song, and learning the concept.

• Math in My World - This is a favorite of mine. Students will find math in their life that illustrates the standard/skills we are working on in class. They will then take a video on the topic, explaining how this concept applies to THEIR real world example.

• Reading Logs - As alternative of writing down their reading life for the evening, sometimes we mix it up with LIVE reading logs! Students record their video talking about the skill we are learning in class, and how it helps them understand their books better. When studying character, students have even pretended to be their character and shared why they made certain decisions.

• Monthly Book Reviews - students can post their review of what novels they are reading. This is great practice for students writing summaries as well as keeps an easy to access library of our favorite books.

One of the reasons I really love this product is that it has a lot of safety measures built into it to keep students work private. It’s easy to use, because students do not need accounts, however, unless they have the code for your grid, they are not able to access the material. I’m able to share this easily on Google Classroom for students to access as well as can email the link to parents if they’d like to see what we are working on. I am able to monitor the videos as they are posted, and intervene if necessary if someone is using this tool inappropriately. This has been a great tool for my students to practice being a good online citizens as well as let their voice and creativity shine through in the magic of video. I am also able to provide individualized feedback right to their video, which they have access to immediately. Some students will choose to submit another video to ensure they are meeting all standards that are being addressed.

The Flipgrid site itself has some amazing resources for getting started with Flipgrid, including a quick video to get started. One that I tackled this summer was becoming Flipgrid certified. This meant learning how to use the tool using their resources. In three easy steps I was able to earn a badge that let the world know, I have #flipgridfever! My students love this resource and are always begging for homework using Flipgrid. I hope you find this tool helpful and I’d love to hear how you choose to use Flipgrid in your classroom. Leave me a video response by clicking here so I can see if I sparked your interest!

Quick Walkthrough Video from Flipgrid on Vimeo.


About the author:
My goal as an educator is to empower all of my students to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, enthusiastic readers, and skillful researchers. I embrace the whole child valuing intellectual, social, emotional, and physical well-being. I want to inspire all students that enter my classroom to be life-long learners and create a safe environment for students to takes risks with their learning. Currently, I teach 4th grade at Field Elementary School in Park Ridge, IL, where I’ve spent my fourteen year career teaching 4th grade, 5th grade, and having been an instructional technology coach at a another school in District 64.

Peppe’s Apt. 2 has been on my “Must Dine” list for awhile. This week Cyndy and I drove out to Kirkwood for lunch at the Italian restaurant tucked away in a residential neighborhood on South Geyer. We pulled into the back parking lot and walked along the breezeway adjacent to the garden patio. The outdoor area was closed for the season, but a few hearty roses and plantings were still in bloom. 

Comfortable Elegance

Opening the side door, we came into a spacious entry area, leading to the dining room that seats about 50 people. The elegant, but inviting, space is punched up with glass chandeliers, cushy seats and framed mirrors. I love the pristine feel of the ivory-colored decor and finely set tables topped with fresh flowers. I’d have no trouble spending the afternoon here, perhaps with a cup of tea and a good book.

Chef-Owner Peppe Profeta

Items on the ample menu are true to Peppe’s Sicilian heritage. His culinary training started at age 10 with his grandfather back in Italy. Later, as a teenager in St. Louis, he worked in the family-owned Gian-Peppe’s on The Hill, which was named one of the top 100 restaurants in the USA. Seven years ago he migrated to Kirkwood, where he continues to charm diners with his classic Italian and Mediterranean specialties.

Amazing Meatballs; Tantalizing Tortellini 

When we seemed perplex by the many fine choices, Lucy, our chatty and charming server (who said she had worked there since the place opened) came to our rescue. She could bring us a small order of Mama Profeta’s meatballs, she said, and split just about any item on the menu. Perfect! We shared the meatballs, the Asparagus Tart, and the Chicken Tortellini. All were splendid, quickly prepared, and handsomely presented. 

“Holy Cannoli, Batman, These Are Homemade!”

When we demurred on dessert, Lucy gave a graphic description of the cannoli that won our hearts. So we split an order of three pieces. Besides, dividing a dessert lessen the calories by half—or so I’ve heard. Of ourselves, Cindy could always take one home to her husband. But Lucy advised against it, saying they are best enjoyed when eaten immediately. Sorry, Joe.

This is a place where delicious memories linger on—a discovery you want to share with friends. Peppe’s could easily become one of my new, most favorite places.

Scenes from Peppe’s Table

Peppe’s Apt. 2. 800 S. Geyer, Kirkwood. Open for Lunch: Tue-Fri 11a-2p; Dinner: Tue-Sat 5p-11p; Closed Sunday and Monday. Reservations recommended.

The post Peppe’s Apt. 2: Fine Dining in Kirkwood appeared first on Good Food St. Louis.

Document Studio is a new Google Sheets Add-on developed by Amit Agarwal. Document Studio will create documents based on the data that you have stored in Google Sheets. And because Google Forms will feed data directly into Google Sheets, you can use Document Studio to automatically create documents from Google Forms submissions. Document Studio can create one document for every row in a Google Sheet.



Applications for Education
Watch this video to see how you can collect data through a Google Form then use that information to generate personalized documents. The video, embedded below, uses business letters for the model. Those letters could easily be modified to be permission slips or personalized letters to parents.

Breakout EDU has been a breakout hit in classrooms over the last couple of years. The success of the physical Breakout EDU games has spurred the creation of many digital versions built on everything from Google Forms to full-fledged online game environments. Metaverse recently published a tutorial on how to make your own digital breakout game on their free augmented reality platform. These are breakout games that you can build and your students can play on their mobile phones. Of course, your students can also build their own games on the Metaverse platform. Watch the tutorial below to learn how to build your own digital breakout game.


Disclosure: Metaverse is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com

Planboard is a lesson planning app that is free for individual teachers. Create digital lesson plans and access them from anywhere. Use templates to build lessons that can include attachments, photos, and videos. Add individual standards to your lessons and track student progression for each class. Cutback on lesson planning time by reusing lessons from one semester to another or share lessons with colleagues. 

An additional planning tool to check out is the lesson plan tool for Google Docs.

Padlet has added a couple of new features that bring it even closer to being an all-in-one formative assessment tool. Padlet now lets you vote on the notes added to a wall and grade the notes added to a wall. This is all done through the new "reactions" setting in Padlet.

Voting on Padlet notes can be done through the use of a "thumb" icon, a "like" icon, or a star icon. The "thumb" icon will let your students vote up or vote down each note on a wall. The "like" icon just lets you show that you like a note. The star icon will let you give a star rating of one through five on a note.

It is now possible to add grades to notes on a Padlet wall. You can give a score of one through one hundred on each note on a wall. It's important to note that all students will see the scores. So you'll want to use the grading function only after all notes have been submitted and you have made the wall private.

Watch my short video embedded below to learn how to use the new "reactions" setting in Padlet.


Padlet is one of my favorite tools to use for formative assessment. Come to my webinar on Monday to learn more about how I use it and other formative assessment tools.

ColorPick Eyedropper is a Chrome extension that allows you select a color from a webpage. This extension comes in handy when it is important to create a near perfect match or when you want an exact color.

Once you install this extension, click the dropper and drag the crosshairs around the page. You will see that each time you scroll over a new color, a new combination of letters and numbers appear. These are often referred to as hex color codes. As soon as you find the color you want, click on it to lock in the hex color. Copy the number and use it in use it to create customized colors in Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings.

Similar extensions include ColorZilla, Eye Dropper, and ColorHexa Search Tool. You can learn more about hex colors here.

Applications for Education
Understanding how to use hex colors in presentations is a useful skill for anyone who creates presentations. It helps us use different tools to their fullest potential and have more control over how our finished products look.

A primary teacher recently contacted Free Technology For Teachers to get ideas for how to incorporate technology into an activity where her students are learning the different characteristics of mammals. She wants them to be able to create a sort of virtual animal park.

I have several ideas for how this can work. While these options will discuss animals, they can be modified for any subject and grade level. All three of these options make student learning visible and provide students with the opportunity to show what they know.

Option 1: Have students use Adobe Spark Video to create a narrated description of the animals they have selected. Adobe Spark Video is incredibly easy for students to narrate.

Option 2: Students could use a combination of Google Slides and an extension called Talk and Comment. A single slide presentation could be used to house all of the slides and students could record a narration to go along with their slide or slides. The narrations could be added as comments or they could be added on top of the image of the animal.

Option 3: Each student could have their own Google Drawing and upload one or more images to it. They could record their narration using the Talk and Comment extension, then link the recording to the images of their animals.

As more schools continue to adopt 1:1 in their buildings, the desire to reduce paper and enable ease of sharing within a students’ and teachers’ workflow has greatly increased. Awhile ago, we published a post that had several Google Apps templates for things like instagram posts, facebook pages, tweets, and more. That has been a very popular post and many of you have requested additional templates for use with things like graphic organizers and popular educational models (Frayer, for instance).

While I am a huge advocate of not confining ourselves to using one handout or constraining thinking into one format, providing students with an assortment of tools that will allow them to organize their thinking in a way that makes sense allows for student choice, differentiation, and individualization.

Consider providing the tools below as options for kids to help organize their thinking. And, since they live within the Google Apps ecosystem, they are extremely easy to share with groups of students or directly back with the teacher.

Have a template that you’d like to see created? Leave me a note in the comments.

As always, the “Preview” link will show you the template, the “Copy” link will force copy the doc into your Drive, automatically.

 

Bubble Map: Preview | Copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Compare/Contrast Matrix: Preview | Copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flowchart: Preview | Copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frayer Model: Preview | Copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Storyboard: Preview | Copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Timeline: Preview | Copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Venn Diagram: Preview | Copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wheel: Preview | Copy

Looking for some fun activities to celebrate Halloween in your classroom? Then look no further! Listed below is an updated version of some really spook-tacular educational Halloween resources that are sure to creep out your students—in a good way, of course!

Whether it’s writing prompts, science experiments, Halloween candy math, Edgar Allan Poe videos or haunted vocabulary, there’s something ghostly awaiting you right here, right now…

» Build a Jack-O-Lantern with Google Slides

Generated by Eric Curts, this fun, and educational Google Slides activity is a great way for students to be creative and to work on writing skills by describing the Jack-O-Lantern they build with shapes and/or drawings of their own.

» Haunted House Escape

For the Breakout EDU junkies… Check out this spooky, musical, holiday-themed digital breakout game created by Aubrey Yeh. (Designed for middle school students but could work for upper elementary or high school as well.)

» Breakout EDU: Halloween

Check out three challenging yet fun hands-on games with a Halloween twist located on the Breakout EDU site.

» 6 Halloween Paper Circuit Projects

In this project tutorial, learn how to make six different Halloween paper circuit creations. Using parallel and simple circuits, students can bring these templates to life with copper tape, LEDs and batteries.

» 100 Free Halloween STEM Activities

A collection of 100 Halloween STEM activities that are completely free via Nick’s Picks for Educational Technology.

» Free Halloween Music, Images, Videos, and Clipart for School Projects

Another collection of Halloween goodies from Nick’s Picks for Educational Technology.

» Halloween Activity Set

Get your classroom in the Halloween spirit with these math and science activities, writing ideas and crafts. This site, powered by Scholastic, includes Halloween-themed book lists to find a perfect read-aloud title or scary stories to share with your students for independent reading.

» Halloween Classroom Activities for Any Grade

To prepare for Halloween in your classroom, check out these Halloween classroom activities from Teach HUB for new ways to sneak in some spooky lessons and ghoulish learning!

» Halloween Lesson Ideas

Math… Pick a Pumkin… Bats in the Classroom… And Historical Figure Day, an alternative to the traditional Halloween hoopla. If you’re ready to celebrate Halloween in “spooktacular” fashion, you’re sure to find a fun idea or two right here on the Education World site.

» 30 Halloween Activities for the Classroom

A collection of nearly three dozen hands-on activities (with accompanying pictures) from the Proud to Be Primary blog.

» It’s Halloween!

A Pinterest board containing 90+ Halloween sites to celebrate Halloween by Edutopia.

» The Best Sites for Learning About Halloween

A collection of all things Halloween by Larry Ferlazzo—A visual history, slideshows, vocabulary and spelling games, cloze activities, Halloween Around the World and Mia Cadaver’s Tombstone Timeout, one of the most favorite games found on the BBC site and more!

» Halloween Activities

A variety of educational sites for Halloween by 19 Pencils.

» Tech-Themed Halloween Costume Ideas

Check out and/or share some pretty neat tech-inspired Halloween costume ideas on the Tech with Us Community Facebook thread found here. A shout out to Julie Goode Smith for generating this fun post!

Classroom Connection:
Use these resources to teach and learn about Halloween in fun and hands-on ways.

As a classroom teacher I worked in a magnet school in New York City. One of our goals as a magnet school was to “attract” new students and show off the great work happening in our building. This was early on in the days of Twitter and blogging for me – and the way schools […]

The post How To Tell Your School’s Story with Adobe Spark Branding appeared first on Class Tech Tips.

Google Tour Builder is one of my favorite lesser-known Google tools. If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you have probably seen me mention it a number of times including posts such as "Hipster Google" and "Create your own Lit Trips". After doing several posts on different aspects of the tool, I figured it was time to give it the full treatment of a video training webinar.

For those not familiar with the tool, Google Tour Builder allows you and your students to create virtual tours on a map, including locations, images, videos, descriptions, hyperlinks, and more. These tours can be used in any subject area such as retelling the events from a novel, tracing the locations of a historical event, visiting different biomes or landforms around the world, and more. Tours can be viewed by others in Tour Builder, or even imported into Google Earth for a full 3D experience.

See below for my 1-hour video training webinar on "Google Tour Builder for any Subject". In addition you will find links to all of the resources mentioned in the video.

Video Training (1 hour)




Session Slideshow




Session Resources

• Google Tour Builder site - Web site link
• Slideshow - "Google Tour Builder for Any Subject" - Google Slides link
• "Launch Tour Builder Tours in Google Earth with One Click" - Blog post link
• "Create your own Lit Trips (and more) for Google Earth" - Blog post link

Sample Tours:

• Lit Trip - Small as an Elephant - Tour Builder link
• Grade K - 3D Shapes in the Real World Tour - Tour Builder link
• Grade 1 - Make Way for Ducklings Tour - Tour Builder link
• Grade 2 - Animal Habitats - Tour Builder link
• Grade 3 - Holiday’s Around the World - Tour Builder link
• Grade 4 - US Landmark Tour - Tour Builder link
• Grade 5 - American Revolution Tour - Tour Builder link
• Autobiography - Service to Scholarship - Tour Builder link
• Art - The Life of Kandinsky - Tour Builder link
• Tour Ancient Egypt - Tour Builder link
• The American Revolution - Tour Builder link
• Super Sleuth - Chet's Cheesy Chicken Chimichanga Recipe - Tour Builder link

Webinar Files:

• Session Chat: If you have any questions or comments during the session, type in the document linked here - Google Document Link
   
• Session Evaluation: Please provide your feedback on this session - Google Form link
   
• Get Certificate: Earn a certificate of attendance for one (1) contact hour by watching the training video and passing this quiz - Google Form link

Post by Eric Curts. Bring me to your school, organization, or conference with over 50 PD sessions to choose from. Connect with me on Twitter at twitter.com/ericcurts and on Google+ at plus.google.com/+EricCurts1