Useful links Weekly

• Free stock photos · Pexels “The some good free stock photos & videos shared by talented creators.”

• Visual to text coding- Index page | Digital Technologies Hub “This lesson sequence provides a bridge between visual coding (eg. Scratch) and General Purpose Programming languages (eg. Python or JavaScript). Each video builds a simple program in all three ways: Scratch, Python and JavaScript. This resource is most suitable if: you have never done General Purpose Programming, you benefit from slow-paced, step-by-step video tutorials.”

• Developing digital citizenship | Services to Schools Education 2020. With our time spent #remotelearning online, good digital citizenship & literacy skills are more important than ever. This guide includes many tips & resources to help you & your students. Developing digital citizenship with the understanding that Digital citizenship encompasses skills, values, and behaviours that include appropriate and effective ways we interact with people and information through media and technology.

• Dylan Wiliam: The nine things every teacher should know | Tes News A list of the nine things created by an experienced teacher with point he wished he had known when he started teaching. “

• factitious It you are teaching digital literacy skills this is a fun way to reinforce your points. A free game that tests your ability to spot FALSE or MISLEADING News. Offers different levels (6) depending on educational level of students

• Everything You Need to Know About Building a Great Screencast Video | Cult of Pedagogy “One of the most effective ways to move instruction online is to build screencast videos. Screencast videos are unique because they are actual recordings of your computer screen or tablet as opposed to a video of an in-person lecture. They are a powerful way to deliver instruction, but they do require a fair amount of time and planning, which I have learned through a lot of trial and error. Building effective screencasts continues to be the barrier that stops educators from making a smooth transition to distance learning, so I have put together the following tips to help guide you through the process.”

• Andrew Fuller: Remote learning tips and ideas for teachers – The Parents’ Website “Remote learning is a major opportunity for schools to refine their lesson planning and delivery. The efforts of teachers to adapt classes to online platforms has been nothing less than heroic. Now we have the chance to incorporate the ingredients that create effective remote learning, accelerate expertise and enhance the experience of our students. The rapid shift to remote learning has been unprecedented and we are all learning as we go through this. At its worst, remote learning can be disorienting and disconnecting. We all need to be innovative in creating learning that is engaging and involving for our students. The ideas in this paper are derived from the author’s research and work with schools of the air and distance education as well as his work with students who have been unable to attend school due to mental health issues.  “

• Free Online Language Learning Resources for Kids | The New York Public Library A compilation (annotated) of useful resources for students learning

• Join NYPL’s #BookCoverDouble Challenge! | The New York Public Library  New twist on an old idea. Recreate book cover images

• Women’s Prize for Fiction Announcing the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist – Women’s Prize for Fiction This is the 2020 Womens Prize for Fiction shortlist. Information on the six shortlisted authors and their books is available here.

• Support resources to share with parents | Education Endowment Foundation | EEF “The Covid-19 crisis has meant that schools are having to maintain communications with parents and families in very challenges circumstances. Here are some EEF resources to help schools communicate with parents/carers, as well as resources schools can share with families to support home routines and valuable learning opportunities, such as shared reading.”

• Free Online Language Learning Resources for Kids | The New York Public Library  A compilation (annotated) of useful resources for students learning

• National Standards for Quality Online Learning | From Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance (VLLA) and Quality Matters (QM) Although a US site it still has useful information for anyone trying remoteteaching. “Below are links to view or download the most current versions of each of the standards sets. National Standards for Quality Online Courses is currently being revised. Below are links to download the past versions of the standards from iNACOL.”

• Free Technology for Teachers: Quick Tip – Apply Custom Colors to Google Slides “Regular users of Google Slides are probably familiar with the process of adding images to the backgrounds of their slides and changing the background color. There is one little background color option that is easily overlooked. That option is applying a custom color that isn’t listed in the default colour menu in Google Slides.”

• Your local Bookshop An list of Australian bookshops has been compiled here so you can see which Australian bookshops offering home delivery, book drops and drive through pickups.

• How to set personal boundaries with remote learning : Innovative Education in VT “Many teachers are are struggling to make a distinction between home and work. This change in working conditions may feel overwhelming.The shift to remote teaching and learning is fraught with challenges. One of the biggest is how to make this type of work sustainable for teachers. In this situation, many are working for hours without breaks, forgetting about their own needs. This is not healthy or sustainable. This article offers some advice bbout how to set up some boundaries.”

• Women’s Prize for Fiction Announcing the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist – Women’s Prize for Fiction This is the 2020 Womens Prize for Fiction shortlist. Information on the six shortlisted authors and their books is available here.

• Getting Started With Project-Based Learning (Hint: Don’t Go Crazy) | Edutopia A handful of tips to help teachers ease into #PBL without getting overwhelmed.

• Becoming a More Connected Educator #digicon15 – Read Write Respond

• Celebrate Science: Where Should We Shelve Informational Fiction? Blog post discussing this literature “For the most part, the authors fully realized that these books should be classified as fiction, and they liked the term “informational fiction” because it acknowledged all the research they’d done and that the books were mostly faithful to the facts. But the Library of Congress labelled these books “juvenile literature” (the term they use for nonfiction). And in most cases, publishers and reviewers called the books narrative nonfiction.”

• Student Leadership Through a Student-Led Podcast @coolcatteacher

• Research Confirms Value of School Librarians | School Library Journal

• Sensory Products AU | Sensory Toys Australia | Sensory Oasis For Kids “Sensory Products for Special Kids with Special Needs. Australian owned & operated, Sensory Oasis for Kids is a Melbourne-based online & retail store run by a mum of three amazing Autistic boys”

• On The Move Visual Kit | Sensory Oasis For Kids

• 7 Good Lesson Plans Sources for Teachers and Educators | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning Some good sites mentioned here. ReadWriteThink and TedEx have a lot lot of ideas but from the descriptions of some of the others, there are a few other useful places to go for ideas.

• Create Interactive Online Presentations & free Infographic software. HTML5 Animations, download & Publish | Visme.  A digital tool that allows your create interesting visual stories (Infographics, presentations, etc.). You are allowed to create 5 free resources before you need to pay. My students have found very easy to use and creates some nice looking timelines for their assessment task.

• Jen Robinson’s Book Page: The Third Grade Cliff: My Response to a Finding from the @Scholastic Kids and Family Reading Report “The 7th edition of the Scholastic Kids and Family Reading Report was released last October. Scholastic presents the results of a survey, managed by YouGov, of 2758 adults and children. This biannual report is, I think, one of the best windows into what families are doing and thinking when it comes to kids’ reading. I’m in the process of going through the material and there are certainly causes for optimism overall. However, one of the major  findings hit me hard: The Decline by Nine”. Author discusses some results and how she intends to overcome them.

• 10 Elements Of A Quality Blog Post: Tips For Teaching Students (Poster and Examples) “Students have been learning about the elements of quality blog posts and comments. When high standards are set for publishing online, students tend to yield the greatest results. They can meet academic outcomes while learning how to be a safe and positive digital citizen. This post goes through 10 elements of a quality blog post. You are free to share these tips with students and they might be useful for adult bloggers.”

• Collage Maker | BeFunky: Create Photo Collages Useful to generate interesting images.

• Top 5 Unbiased World News Sources Free From Censorship “Every journalist is aware of the nine principles of journalism. The first says that a journalist’s first obligation is to the truth.
  “This ‘journalistic truth’ is a process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts. Then journalists try to convey a fair and reliable account of their meaning, valid for now, subject to further investigation.”
  The ability to set aside one’s own prejudices in order to be “neutral” is not a part of those principles. However, “the source of their credibility is still their accuracy, intellectual fairness, and ability to inform.” When journalists let personal biases hinder their objectivity, it puts the entire media organization at risk. Thankfully there are still enough media outlets left that uphold these principles.”

• Stock photos that don’t suck “An ongoing list of the best stock photo sites the author has come across.”

• A Universe of Podcasts: A Summer Listening Guide for Elementary, Middle, and High School Students | School Library Journal  “The 2019 Collaborative Summer Library Program reading theme, A Universe of Stories, offered unlimited opportunities to connect with students and to build community. This summer is also the 50th anniversary of the July 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing. As you include related fiction and nonfiction titles on your summer reading lists, consider adding a listening guide that explores the theme and anniversary through podcasts. New research provides compelling reasons to recommend them, and our curated lists will get you, your students, and their families started.” Lots of ideas that could be repurposed.

• School Sends Kids To Meditation Instead Of Detention, With Amazing Results One elementary school has changed the approach to disruptive children. Instead of detention and punishment, the children take part in a “Mindful Moment Program” with some amazing results.

• Three Powerful Google Docs Add-ons for Creating Diagrams and Flowcharts | Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “Google Docs add-ons that enable you to create a wide variety of charts and diagrams. Of course there are numerous other tools you can use for this purpose but these  three are conidered by the authors to be the best. “

• How to Engage Digitally Distracted Students – The Tech Edvocate While it is clear that digital technology is distracting students, the technology is here to stay. For example, while most teachers agree the best way to turn digital distraction is to not allow mobile devices in the classroom, these same teachers agree this is ineffective in the long run. Instead, educators must be proactive and teach proper digital device usage in the classroom. Therefore, teachers must find ways to engage digitally distracted students.”

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Useful links

“2012-240 #6WordMission” (CC BY 2.0) by mrsdkrebs

• Reshot: Uniquely Free Photos Useful site for for students to go to for images to put in their projects

• Why feedback is SO time consuming — and how to fix it | Ditch That Textbook We all agree the feedback to students is important but how can we be give useful and timely feedback and be smarter about it so we don’t get totally overwhelmed by it? This offers some useful ideas about how teachers could go about giving feedback to their students and remain “sane”.

• This Is How to Use Google Drawings to Create Educational Visuals ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “The Google Drawings tool is a very useful one for teachers. The strength of Drawings, besides the different features it provides for free, lies in its integration with Google Drive allowing you to easily integrate anything you create through Drawings into other services (i.e., Docs and Slides)

• 5 Takeaways from News Literacy EdCamp – EasyBib Blog  “The best way to help combat fake news is to teach our students what it is, what it looks like, how to spot it, and how to prevent it. These were identifies as the five biggest takeaways from a day of workshops and discussion from The News Literacy Project & TIME Inc.’s News Literacy EdCamp. Keep these in mind when teaching your students about fake news.”

• Digital Citizenship “In collaboration with Common Sense Media, this lesson helps students learn to think critically about the user information that some websites request or require. Students learn the difference between private information and personal information, distinguishing what is safe and unsafe to share online. Students will also explore what it means to be responsible and respectful to their offline and online communities as a step toward learning how to be good digital citizens”

• Blogging the Digital Technologies Curriculum – Read Write Respond

• Science Printables and Freebies | Elemental Blogging Lots of science printables for free, with no strings attached.

• What Great Scientists Did When They Weren’t Doing Science (infograph) What Great Scientists Did When They Weren’t Doing Science (infograph). Marie Curie was a simply astounding woman. She won the Nobel prize two times. The first time she won it in physics, in 1903, and the second time in chemistry, in 1911. But of course, there was much more to her life than just work. She had a husband and children….& she was also an avid long-distance cyclist. Get to know some of the interesting quirks behind the famous faces in science.

• Seven Advanced Excel Features You Should Be Using [Infographic] | Lifehacker Australia “Microsoft Excel is packed with useful data management features that don’t see a lot of use, like pivot tables, index and match, and conditional formatting. If you’re just using excel to sum and chart columns, this graphic can show you some other tools to help you become the spreadsheet guru you always wanted to be.

• 15 of the best apps to engage students outside the classroom | eSchool News “Learning shouldn’t stop when students leave for summer vacation. Rather, this extended break from the classroom is the perfect time to introduce kids to a variety of mobile apps that can continuously promote creativity and critical thinking. From kindergarten to grade 12, the vast assortment of digital offerings can meet any student’s interests, all while providing valuable lessons that will appropriately challenge each user. Here are a few great options for rainy days, road trips or any time in between.”

• 57 Teaching with Technology: Beyond the Bells and Whistles | ELL Strategies | Empowering ELLs “We have moved beyond an Industrial-Era approach where students are passive consumers of information to a modern one where students are active prosumers of content. Our duty is to prepare ELs for their future, not our past. Tech fosters critical thinking, spurs creativity, and cultivates collaboration – all skills needed for their futures.”

 

Useful links

“Change and growth” (CC BY-NC 2.0) by  rhondda.p 

Finding an Authentic Goal for Your PBL Classroom | Edutopia “PBL is focused on helping solve the problems around us. e-NABLE has definitely tapped into something, but it doesn’t need to be the charity that you focus your classroom on.Teachers have a role to play in helping students ask the questions to discover what those needs are. This process of inquiry should be the initial part of any PBL unit”

12 Must Have Resources for Free Public Domain Pictures to Use in Class ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “An annotated list of public domain image sources “

Welcome to Quick Rubric – Free, Fast, and Easy to Use!  A tool that helps you create and print assessment rubrics. You can customize point values, definitions of good performance, rows and columns, then print the rubrics for distribution. The site also offers tips for writing a strong rubric. Also privacy note: Quick Rubric collects personal information from educators who create accounts. Students do not need to create accounts.

Photos For Class – The quick and safe way to find and cite images for class! A search engine for Creative-Commons-licensed photos for students to use in class or on their homework. Students can download and repurpose any photo they find, and the images come with appropriate attributions. The search also filters out inappropriate images.

WeAreTeachers – Get Lesson Plans – Teacher Grants – Teaching Resources and More This site offers a lot of free, printable lessons, PD resources, decorations, lists and blog posts, along with info on grants and contests. Subjects range from financial literacy to social emotional learning.

101 Educators to Follow on Twitter | @TeacherToolkit This is a list of educators who use Twitter to share their ideas and expertise with others. “They are not teachers, but educators in various sectors and countries, curated from those whom the author has been interacting with online for up to 8 years; some people they have met and have developed professional relationships with.

[3874] 7 Tips for Teachers Who Have No Interest in Coding A podcast that is useful to listen to as it offers ideas and tips for teachers and it is not too long. “Though many teachers have no interest in coding, demand for the subject is growing rapidly. Increasingly, teachers are being asked to teach elements of coding in their content areas. Our guest offers some simple tips to help teachers get on board.”

Reflective Practice- Are you Doing it? | An Ethical Island “Reflective practice occurs when teachers step back and evaluate the learning environment. The teacher looks at himself or herself. They ask, “How can this be better?” They identify what went right or wrong. It occurs both during the learning events and after.”

Instead of Handouts – Google Keep – Teacher Tech A Google option that allows you an easy way to go paperless.

Math Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt – Teacher Tech “A fun way for students to learn math vocabulary is to ask them to go on a vocabulary scavenger hunt. Students go out on campus and take pictures that represent the “math in the wild.”” It could be adapted for use across many learning areas

My Lesson Plan Template – Teacher Tech “I teach pre-service teachers. Part of my class is their first lesson plan ever. Unlike most of the lessons my students experienced as K12 students, their lesson plans need to include Common Core standards, SAMR model, students using technology, Digital Citizenship and identifying DOK levels. The lesson plan template I provide the students is really long, I would not expect them to fill it out more than this one time. The idea is to get them thinking about elements of a lesson plan that they possibly would not naturally include since they do not have any experience with lesson planning.”

To-Do List Competition: Level UP – Teacher Tech “A Google spreadsheet to keep track of all the assignments due during the semester. Each person who voluntarily wanted to participate created a column for themselves to check off when they have completed a task. This was helpful, but after adding a gamification element to the to-do list it really got fun. “

Why a Brochure? – Teacher Tech Links to template but many ideas for better student creation listed

CS Teaching Tips: A project funded by the NSF (Grant # 1339404) 10 posters with Teaching Tips for teaching Computer Science focussing on a number of areas including reducing bias, assessment, seeking help, pair programming, scratch and more. ach is linked to the tip sheet and helpful video.

Better Bookmarking With RainDrop.io – Hongkiat

Imageoid: adding simple effects to images

In a week I will be working with some year 7 students as the create a glog that reflects the picture book they have been reading. 6 groups have been engrossed in reading not just the text but the pictures too, as they piece together the stories that the authors and illustrators are telling.

To this end I have been investigating tools that the students might use to help them create interesting visual hooks.

One tool I have enjoyed playing around with was Imageoid. This is a nice site for uploading an image and the adding a preset effect. It is also a  free service and is very simple to use.

To use Imageoid you follow the directions to :

1. upload your image from your computer (NB: images should be less than 0.6 MB or no more than 600KB) This tool can also resize your image but I preferred to use Corel photopaint to do this first before uploading my images.
2. choose any of the 24 effects you want to apply to the image (you can also combine effects). Some of the effects include grayscale, sepia, inverting, mosaic, emboss, shapes and borders. 
3. click “reset” to start again if you don’t like what you have created.
4. To transfer the image to your computer you click on download and then right-click on the image that pops up and “save as”

Below you can see the before and after of one of my images. Imageoid. is still in beta and they have indicated that there are more effects on the way.