French lawmakers follow through and ban smartphones in schools… With a catch

French lawmakers follow through and ban smartphones in schools… With a catch

French schoolchildren will have to leave their smartphones switched off or at home as the new academic year begins in September, after lawmakers voted for a ban on Monday.   The ban on smartphones, tablets and other connected devices, which will apply to pupils up to the age of 14-15, fulfills a campaign promise by…

Practice math in grades 1-5 with ADDieMath

Practice math in grades 1-5 with ADDieMath

Practice math in grades 1-5 with ADDieMath. Source: ADDieMath ADDieMath is strictly drill and kill software, but with math, sometimes you just need a little practice. Once adding a user, the user can select a program to practice. There is addition, subtraction, multiply, divide, and specific multiplication factors. This might be a quick and dirty site…

Docs365 Gifmaker creates animated gifs from a Google Slides presentation

Docs365 Gifmaker creates animated gifs from a Google Slides presentation

Docs365 Gifmaker creates animated gifs from a Google Slides presentation. Source: Docs365 GIFmaker – Google Slides add-on To use Docs365 GIFmaker, first add the add-on to your Google Slides presentation. In your presentation, create each frame of your animation as a slide. Once your masterpiece is finished, run the add-on to create an animated gif. The result…

Little Big City is a pretty cool map and 3D experiment

Little Big City is a pretty cool map and 3D experiment

Little Big City is an experiment in web 3D graphics using the openstreet map database You can navigate to different locations using the map in the lower right. Unfortunately, there is no search, so you’re stuck either panning across the world or inputing the coordinates. Pretty nifty visualization if you are teaching maps or map reading.

RSS is dead, long live RSS!

RSS is dead, long live RSS!

I have included a module on RSS to allow my students to create their own research teams on topics of interest. Because I’m old, I still have my students set up Feedly accounts and plug in the RSS feeds of their classmates and hopefully add other blogs to their feeds as well. And like blogging, I…

I don’t think we’re ready for robo-grading of essays

I don’t think we’re ready for robo-grading of essays

But now, machines are also grading students’ essays. Computers are scoring long form answers on anything from the fall of the Roman Empire, to the pros and cons of government regulations.   Developers of so-called “robo-graders” say they understand why many students and teachers would be skeptical of the idea. But they insist, with computers…