Links You’ll Love
Go topo-loco! The US topographic map project endeavors to map the Nation’s topography, providing both current and historic map views. Check it out!
Educaplay is a gaming site that allows you to create various types of games, including matching games, memory games, word search puzzles and more. You can snag a free basic account with just your Google credentials.
Links You’ll Love
The members of a process group I recently facilitated were excited to use this name picker in their classrooms, so I thought I’d share it here. Visit Classtools.net and choose the random name picker. It’s an eye-catching wheel that you can customize. You can also save it and remove names as you go. That site has lots of fun tools!
Check out this article from JTA about science and tech in Jewish Day Schools. Nice to be noticed!
During a faculty planning week presentation, a colleague mentioned the Cult of Pedagogy podcast and how much she’s gotten out of listening to it. Here’s a link to the website where you can read more and subscribe.
TouchCast Studio
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TouchCast Studio is an ipad app that functions as a whole TV crew and studio! It allows you to create and share detailed multimedia presentations that incorporate many different types of content, including links, webpages, files, images, videos and more. You can annotate videos, diagram with a whiteboard, add green screen effects, and make a professional looking interactive video experience for your students to engage with and enjoy. Once you complete a TouchCast presentation, it can be viewed on their website and also shared via email or via social media. TouchCast Studio is complicated and not for beginners. But, if you have some tech-adept high school students who are looking to create more complex videos, this might be the right match for them. Visit the website to create a free account, then head to the iTunes store to download the free iPad app. Your TouchCast account also automatically gives you a channel, which you can use to share your videos with others. For more information and tutorials, check out the teachers training area on TouchCast’s website. In Your Classroom
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Links You’ll Love
Here’s some more info on fake news and how to detect it.
Data has become an extremely important topic, whether you’re talking about serving students, or serving a particular population. And now, if you’re serving cheese. Check out the Wine and Cheese Map to search for a type of cheese and then get suggestions for wine pairings. You can filter by moisture level, country of origin and type of wine. You. Are. Welcome.
Hands on learning is great – and just about everyone agrees that we need to give students more opportunities to participate in it. Here’s a great graphic that looks at what kind of reflecting students should be doing so we’re not leaving learning to chance.
Links You’ll Love
We’re getting a couple GoPros. What’s a GoPro? It’s a very cool mountable action camera. They can be worn (have you ever seen a video that was shot by someone skiing?), remote-controlled, or set to work automatically. Here are a couple of articles written about GoPros in the classroom to get you thinking about how you might use these:
How a GoPro got my students excited to learn
First Impressions from Recording in the Classroom
Filming Observations with a GoPro
Here’s an awesome TED Talks playlist about math in unexpected places.
The Digital JLearning Network has compiled a nice list of YouTube Channels with videos for teaching Judaic Studies. Find it here.
Links You’ll Love
From Richard Byrne:
Unfiltered News is a new site that uses an interactive cartogram to help you find trending news stories from around the world. Open the website and click on a topic listed within one of the circles on the map. Once you’ve made a selection a list of stories will appear on the right side of your screen. Click on a story to read it in full. From the menu on the right side of the screen you can choose a different location and a new list of stories will appear.
JoeZoo Express is a free Google Docs Add-on that could change the way that you grade students’ work in Google Documents. JoeZoo enables you to give feedback on students’ Google Documents by simply highlighting text then selecting feedback statements from a huge menu of options. This is awesome!
Here’s a great template to use if you want your students to create fake social media profiles for historical figures: https://drive.google.com/a/schechter.org/previewtemplate?id=1-nCxDCLcEAuge4wac5I5F_83GH9QNZpXpKCGMRl2utk&mode=public&ddrp=1#. As a reminder, it’s against Facebook’s TOS (terms of service) to allow your students to use Facebook for fake profiles, and Facebook is developing some sophisticated tools to ferret them out, so use this instead!
And from my “Tech Tuesday” column on SAMR:
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The Technology: SAMR
SAMR is a framework for integrating technology into teaching. Developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, SAMR tackles the use of technology in the classroom through four-steps: Substitution, Augmentation, Modifcation, and Redefinition. SAMR can be a useful blueprint for teachers who are interested in infusing technology into their classrooms in a thoughtful way, rather than just throwing in, “technology for technolgy’s sake.” In this four-part series, I’ll look at different kinds of technology that can help you with each of the four SAMR steps. Note that my above explanation of SAMR is very cursory. You can find much more information about SAMR here. Substitution The first step in the SAMR framework, “substitution”, simply refers to taking something that you regularly do in your classroom with traditional tools, and shift to using new technology tools in their place. This is a great place to start for teachers who may be a little wary of using technology, and it’s typically fun for students to try something new and different. Some suggestions:
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Links You’ll Love
Most of us are old enough (cough, cough) to remember when there were no food allergies. When we could throw a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter into a bag so kids didn’t go hungry on field trips . . . Well, Stanford University is making some fascinating inroads into bringing those days back. Read more about Stanford’s medical trial in oral immunotherapy here.
The folks at TED-Ed have created a video and lesson for every element on the periodic table. You can view them by starting here. Not only are there videos, but there are also accompanying lesson plans with questions to deepen understanding, suggestions for further research, and, in some cases, guided discussion questions. This is obviously a great resource for teaching the periodic table, but also a good model for how to use video as a starting point for lessons.
I’m super excited about this article on digital learning. The author, Dr. Tim Clark, focuses on the various elements of a classroom (essential questions, assessment, classroom environment, etc.) and how technology can support them. I like this so much that I’m thinking about structuring a series of classes around this concept – let me know if you’d be interested.
Oh my! Wait’ll you see THIS! Here’s a beyond awesome Google tip: Did you notice that there’s a “Web clipboard” command under the Edit menu in many Google apps like Slides, Docs and Drawing? Do you have ANY idea what that means? Check it out: select the thing you want to copy to the web clipboard, and go to Edit > Web clipboard. Select “copy selection to web clipboard.” Unlike the invisible Mac clipboard that can only hold one item at a time, Google will save all the things you copy. Then you can paste whatever you’ve copied at a later date. But wait! There’s more. That elegant little web clipboard is available on any computer, any time you log in using your Google account. How sweet is that? I also tested this with Google Docs on the iPad . . . it worked as long as I used Chrome to edit the Google Doc (as opposed to using the Docs app). If you need a tutorial on this, here’s a good video:
Links You’ll Love
Check it out – 15 strategies for teaching vocabulary. There are some great ideas here!
I’m fascinated by introducing alternate reality and gamification into the classroom – here’s a really interesting article about a teacher who did just that.
Chrome tip: check out this article for a list of great extensions to download and install to make Chrome even better.
Links You’ll Love
Email’s awesome, right? Well, not always. Check out CoolCatTeacher’s blog post with some great email etiquette tips.
Remind (which used to be Remind101) is the coolest thing ever! I’ve talked about this before: set up a class, ask parents and/or students to join online, and you can text (or email) everyone with one click of a mouse! It’s also the coolest because it was developed by my former student Brett Kopf. Remind has instituted some big changes this year – learn more here.
Newsela is a news site that’s designed to help build reading comprehension. Like so many sites, there is a free and not-so-free version. The free version, though, does provide multiple news articles every day at various reading levels.
If you’re planning to create a class webpage, here’s a great article that talks about what you should and should not be putting out there.
This is a great idea – here’s a website where you can share photos without jumping through a lot of hoops. Create an event, invite friends, and everybody can upload. Genius!
Food for thought…here’s an interesting article about why flunking is good.
GAFE tip of the week: if you’re doing a research paper in Google docs and want to locate and cite scholarly sources, go to Tools > Research and search for the source. Want to cite it? Click either Cite as Footnote or Insert.
GAFE tip of the week: This is not for the faint-of-heart, but those who are bold enough to hop over here to learn about how to use canned responses in their Google mail. Very cool!
Links You’ll Love
Planning to organize your smart phone or iPad apps this summer? Check out Mashable’s guide to creative organization strategies.
We’re so excited that we’re “going Google” next year! If you’d like to learn a little more about Google Apps for Education, visit Google’s overview. There are some great tutorials here.
About
Debbie Harris is the director of educational technology at the Sager Solomon Schechter Day School in Northbrook, IL. Involved in Jewish education for over thirty years, she has an education degree from Northwestern University with a concentration in instructional media and a master’s degree in professional Jewish studies from Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. She is skilled in using and teaching desktop publishing, video editing, presentation and animation software; and consults and presents regularly on integrating technology into Judaic studies. Her students podcast, blog, edit video and create claymations. She co-chaired the technology track for CAJE 33 in Vermont, is a SMART Certified Trainer for SMART Notebook, and a 2011 recipient of the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Award for Excellence in Jewish Education.
When not learning, teaching or writing about technology, Debbie likes to sketchnote and craft. She likes to knit, do calligraphy, sew, watercolor, paint fabric and just generally play with fun toys like scrapbooking supplies and anything with texture. Debbie travels to California every summer to paint tallitot with high school aged campers. Finally, she is incredibly proud of her two daughters; Lori, who teaches English at a community college; and Allie, who is the director of the URJ’s Camp Newman in California.
Look for her at:
Debbie Does Desktop
Flickr
Twitter
Diigo
YouTube
Ravelry
Email Debbie here
MuseForJews 