Summertime and the Reading Is Easy: Kick back with a good ebook app or two
Handy tools for reading and ebook discovery that you can enjoy using yourself and perhaps put them to use with students in the classroom or library.
View ArticleClik here to view.
Making the Most of Video in the Classroom | Cool Tools
Vialogues home page As a social studies teacher, I’ve always liked using documentary videos and news clips in my classroom. It’s a challenge, however, to give students the time they need to discuss...
View ArticleOnline Bookclubs are Facebook for Booklovers!
This summer, I taught a professional development class for our staff. The goal? To each read two novels and one nonfiction book that we could enthusiastically recommend to our students this year. What...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cool Tools: The Best Free Web Applications for Reaching Out to Parents
It’s a new school year and that means you’ll be getting to know a whole new group of students and parents. Building relationships and communicating with them is an important part of your job, but where...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Free Web Tools Make Classroom Management Fun
ClassDojo When I decided to become a teacher, the first course I took was on classroom management. It involved all sorts of rubrics and checklists for documenting student behavior—certainly not the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tech Tidbits from the Guybrarian’s Gal: Make Technology Work for You
A friend of mine recently forwarded me one of those emails. I’m sure you’re familiar with them: lots of cute photos, and when you scroll to the bottom, you typically see some kind of humorous...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mobile Apps Make Student Assessment Easy and Interactive | Cool Tools
Diagram created in GoClass Regardless of what curriculum areas we teach, observing and assessing our students is something that we all do every day. Thanks to mobile devices like iPads and Android...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Teens Dig Tumblr
According to Social Times, an online source for all things social media, Tumblr has eclipsed Facebook as the number-one platform of choice, with 61 percent of 13- through 18-year-olds using it,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Planning Common Core Lessons?: Free, Web-based applications can help align...
Common Curriculum Ready or not, here they come. Currently adopted in part or in full by 45 states, the Common Core (CC) standards are seemingly on everyone’s mind. At almost every school I visited this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Alternative Search Tools: These options to Google will help students become...
Pose a research question to students and most of them will immediately turn to the Internet. Sadly, many students think the only option is Google. Some of our students who have spent a lot of time in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Top Tools for Upgrading Your Resume | Cool Tools
It’s spring, a time when high school students start looking for summer jobs or internships—and that requires some attention to their resumes and portfolios. While some prospective employers may be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Getting Kids Engaged with Primary Sources | Cool Tools
I vividly remember being disappointed during my first year of teaching: my students weren’t nearly as excited about primary source documents as I was. Primary source documents, as you know, offer...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Best PowerPoint Alternatives for Creating Great Presentations
We’ve all endured “death by PowerPoint.” It’s a painful experience for the audience and probably not all that fun for the presenter either. To help my students deliver effective presentations—free of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cool Tools: Create your own learning games for free
A quick web search for “educational games” or a variation thereof will yield thousands of results. Some of those games might suit your students’ needs, but you could end up with nothing. So rather than...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blogging for Reluctant Writers: Have students share their ideas using sound...
For students who love to write, composing blog entries is a natural—and effective—way to share their stories and ideas with a wider audience. Reluctant writers can have great ideas, too—they just...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Summer Project? Six Tools to Upgrade Your School Website
School’s out—and time to enjoy some serious lounging. Summer is also a prime time to reflect on the year past, anticipate September, and consider upgrading for back-to-school. If you’re considering...
View ArticleFrom Scavenger Hunts to Photo Sharing, Fun Apps to Calm the Back-to-School...
Excitement. Nerves. Dread. The first day of school brings out a wide range of emotions among students, particularly those entering a new school. Fortunately, clever uses of technology can help orient...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Teach Kids how to Code, Make Apps and 3-D Models With These Tools
Ask anyone to share a favorite school memory, and it will likely involve making something from scratch. One of my standout experiences from elementary school was learning Logo, a graphic programming...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ebook toolkit: Cool Tools for Multimedia Publishing
When it comes to creating media-rich publications, iBooks Author is just one of many great options With the launch of iBooks Author in January, Apple made it possible for anyone to make graphically...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Resources for Curating Video Collections and Creating Custom Courses
A good video can be a powerful way to help students understand new concepts or refresh their knowledge of a topic. Thanks to YouTube, Vimeo, and oodles of other sites, we can now find instructional...
View Article