Tech Tips
August 2015: Volume 3- Number 16
Strongsville Mustangs!!
Flippy Wheels
"Flippy Wheels is a rag-doll physics adventure game in which you can jump off buildings, smash glass & avoid explosives and arrow guns.
Try to beat the infinite amount of user-generated levels as quickly as possible, keeping as many limbs as possible.
Ridiculous rag-doll physics will keep you flipping through crazy levels on your vehicle of choice."
Geoboard
Geoboard by The Math Learning Center
"Geoboard is a tool for exploring a variety of mathematical topics introduced in the elementary and middle grades. Learners stretch bands around the pegs to form line segments and polygons and make discoveries about perimeter, area, angles, congruence, fractions, and more." Geoboard Website
Imagination Playground 3D
"Come build with Imagination Playground! Like the well-known Big Blue Blocks in real life, the Imagination Playground 3D Builder encourages open ended, unstructured free play.
Just like in real life, users can stack, connect, and channel with the Imagination Playground building blocks. The Blocks overflow with limitless creative potential for builders. Play, dream, learn and explore endless possibilities while building."
App Smashing Amps Up the Power of Apps
"App smashing is using two or more apps that enhance the apps’ features in new, creative and often unexpected ways. This opens up a whole new approach to learning.
For instance, in an app like Wordle, students can create word clouds using the week’s vocabulary and spelling lessons. Once the word cloud is saved, it can then be accessed by an app like ThingLink, which allows you to make images interactive. Students can then link the words in their cloud to pictures, websites, articles or videos. They can go a further step by taking the file they saved in ThingLink and use it in a slide show app like 30Hands.
What makes app smashing perfect as a teaching tool, Davis points out, is that it eliminates the need for a different app for each subject or project. Instead, teachers can collect a core set of apps that cover multiple topic areas and smash those with more specialized apps when necessary.
How easy is it to start app smashing? It is simple enough that first graders can do it, literally, as Parker-Jones and Davis say they work with 6-year-olds who are creating an image in one app and moving it into other apps. It’s a matter of experimenting with the apps you’re already using and adding in the apps with features you’d like to include."
Universal Learning by Design
What is UDL?
Universal Design for Learning
is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn.
UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone--not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.
Why is UDL necessary?
Individuals bring a huge variety of skills, needs, and interests to learning. Neuroscience reveals that these differences are as varied and unique as our DNA or fingerprints. Three primary brain networks come into play:
A classic!
August's Infographics & Interactives Galore
August 3, 2015 by Larry Ferlazzo | 0 comments
There are just so many good infographics and interactives out there that I’ve begun a semi-regular feature called “Infographics & Interactives Galore.”
You can see others at A Collection Of “The Best…” Lists On Infographics and by searching “infographics” on this blog.
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Embracing Messy Learning
"Learning is a messy process -- and authentic, project-based learning immerses us in unique parts of this mess. There are days when my check-ins with students reveal that many young people are lost or unclear about how to proceed with the early stages of a project."
13 Common Sayings to Avoid
"When I was a new teacher in middle school several centuries ago, I occasionally said things to students that I later regretted. In the last few years, I have witnessed or heard teachers say additional regretful things to students. Recently I asked students in my graduate courses (all practicing teachers) if they ever told their students anything they regret. After hearing these regrets and talking with children about what teachers said that bothered them, I compiled a list of things that never should be said.
I've narrowed my list to 13 representative items. Some of these are related to control issues, others to motivation, and still more to management. All reflect frustration and/or anger. Let's start the upcoming school year by wiping these sayings out of our vernacular."
PDF My Google Drive Folder
From Alice Keeler: "In response to a tweet asking how to print a folder of student work in Google Drive I wrote a script that will list all the files in a folder in your Google Drive and create a PDF. The advantage to this is you can download all of the PDF’s at once to your computer. Usually, if you select a collection of files on your computer and choose to print them, you can print multiple files at once.
- Create a list of files in your Google Drive folder.
- Create a list of the URL’s to the files to make sharing easier.
- Create a PDF of each file."
How to Live Wisely
"What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? And how do I use my time here at college to build on the answers to these tough questions?"
First Energy STEM Grants
STEM Classroom Grants
FirstEnergy proudly supports classroom projects and teacher professional-development initiatives focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
One of the ways we support these activities is by offering science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education grants of up to $1,000 to educators at schools and youth groups in communities served by our electric operating companies, other areas where we have facilities, and where we do business.
More than 1,000 educators and leaders of youth groups have received classroom grants since the program began during the 1986-87 school year.
Applications for the 2015-2016 school year are now available.
3 Ways Technology Can Support PBIS
Google News Archive
"Google, the greatest search engine of all time, has created a news repository. It’s a searchable archive of newspapers from around the world, dating all the way back to the 1700s.
"You can easily search topics or specific time periods to provide students primary sources. Think about the power of this. Students can search a paper from the North about the Civil Rights Movement, and then students can read the Southern perspective by the contemporary news reporters. Students have access to first-hand accounts to analyze and create their own perceptions of events during a particular time. Take it a step farther by examining two different countries during one of the World Wars, or the English perspective on America’s Revolutionary War.
Students are often receiving history from textbooks. “History is written by the victors” is a phrase often attributed to Winston Churchill. Give students the ability to decipher biases (a skill called for by the Common Core) and interpret and analyze history through differing perspectives." Literacy in the Digital Age
SCS Instructional Technology Information
Contact me if you have any questions or would like help using these tools.
Email: vturner@scsmustangs.org
Website: http://www.strongnet.org/InstructionalTechnology
Phone: 440-572-7067
Twitter: @vturner8