You Don’t Need a Makerspace to Have a Space for Makers | John Spencer When I was a kid, my brother and I built a “roller coaster” in the backyard with a wagon, some scraps of wood, and tons of pipes. Was it safe? Probably not. Did it ever work properly? Not really. But it…
A Principal’s Reflections: Waving Goodbye to Drive-By PD There has been a great deal of knocks on professional development as of late and rightfully so. More often than not, professional development is something that is done to educators as opposed to an experience that they truly value for growth. For many, district professional development is…
Gitter.im is a chat service that makes it really easy to create public chat rooms. I’ve talked about Gitter before, with one if its drawbacks being the requirement of a Github account. This week Gitter will be adding the ability to sign up and use Gitter with Twitter accounts. Accounts using Twitter will be limited…
Should I Download That App? A Ten Question Checklist for Choosing Tools Worth Your—and Your Students’—Time | EdSurge News Whether you are a classroom teacher, instructional coach, or administrator, ask yourself these ten questions before tapping GET, INSTALL, or BUY. I totally concur with number one.
By default, the favicon for Gmail is the boring old Gmail logo: . There is a way to update that icon, and have the favicon reflect the number of unread emails in your Gmail inbox. To do this, you will need to go to the settings in Gmail by clicking on the gear icon, , and then…
Flexible Seating and Student-Centered Classroom Redesign | Edutopia Everything I do in my classroom is based on research and best practices for kids. Redesigning my classroom was not any different. I’ve found that some of the immediate benefits of flexible seating include burning more calories, using up excess energy, improving metabolism, increased motivation and engagement,…
A Small Idea for More Choice in Our Curriculum So I wanted to do a review of the standards we have covered. I wanted to give the students way more choice. While choice and student voice is huge component of what we do, it can sometimes feel lost in the background as we create projects…
Create an mp3 of translated text with Sound of Text Sound of Text is a website that will translate a short phrase and create an MP3 file of the phrase in the translated language. ⓔ Putting a file in two places at once in Google Drive with Add Here Neat little tip to use to…
I’ve found that although you can share a Google Form for collaboration, sharing a Google Form in this manner is sometimes not the best way to brainstorm forms or to make a form that consists of more than one page or branching. In these circumstances, a Google Doc is a way to share the job…
Visual Note Taking at a Conference | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog Nonetheless, I still believe that it does not hold true for everyone, nor in all situations. I also believe that we owe it to ourselves to keep experimenting with different note taking forms. With so many tools at our disposal it is up to…