Ditching the Desk

Ditching the Desk

I decided to focus on learning spaces this year in the classroom and around my school. It led me to create a makerspace in my school’s library, but it also led me to take a hard look at the classroom. Last summer, I visited my classroom and decided to change it around. The entire process…

“Thinking about thinking”

“Thinking about thinking”

Amidst the discussions about content standards, curriculum and teaching strategies, it’s easy to lose sight of the big goals behind education, like giving students tools to deepen their quantitative and qualitative understanding of the world. Teaching for understanding has always been a challenge, which is why Harvard’s Project Zero has been trying to figure out how…

Collabrify Suite is a great set of free apps from the Intergalactic Mobile Learning Center

Collabrify Suite is a great set of free apps from the Intergalactic Mobile Learning Center

The Collabrify Suite from the Intergalactice Mobile Learning Center is a collection of free apps for use in the primary and middle school classroom. The suite consists of the follow 5 apps: Collabrify Chart looks a little like a spreadsheet, but with slightly easier options to make charting easier. Collabrify KWL allows the easy creation of Know/Want/Learn…

Almost every job will require technology in the future

Almost every job will require technology in the future

Pick any field “X,” from archaeology to zoology. There either is now a “computational X”, or there soon will be. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, farmers, whatever—the future of all these professions will be full of computational thinking. Whether it’s sensor-based medicine, computational contracts, education analytics or agriculture—success is going to rely on being able to do…

Create logos, draw, and paint with YouiDraw

Create logos, draw, and paint with YouiDraw

YouiDraw is advertised as “Adobe Illustrator in the cloud”. The website works with vectors, which means the drawings consist of mathematical representations of objects. This is different from raster pictures, such as jpeg, gif, and png. Vector graphics can be resized smaller or bigger, without any loss of fidelity. There are three parts to YouiDraw, Drawing, Logo…

Librarian’s role in boosting brain based learning

Librarian’s role in boosting brain based learning

“This is so new for teachers, whereas librarians have been doing this for ten years,” said Paige Jaeger, a school librarian turned administrator and co-author of Think Tank Library: Brain-Based Learning Plans for New Standards. According to Jaeger, librarians were some of the first educators to realize that the Internet made finding information (their bread and…

Highlighting rows in Google Sheets, Twitter for new users, and Google Slides timers – Top 3 for the week

Highlighting rows in Google Sheets, Twitter for new users, and Google Slides timers – Top 3 for the week

Highlight rows in Google Sheets with conditional formatting This is one of the most popular posts on Eduk8me, showing how to highlight a row based on conditional formatting. Twitter tips for new users A checklist for new Twitter users. Adding a timer to a Google Slides A nice little hack for adding a timer to…