Open Educational Resources

There's a big push in education to create and house free, viable, and complete resources for teachers to use. It can be anything for online textbooks, rubrics, lessons, etc. to help schools. You can learn a ton about Open Educational Resources from this article by Edutopia.

Games in the Classroom

EdSurge released an interesting article about the division between teachers on the appropriateness of games in the classroom. Many of the arguments against "gamifying" include shortening students' attention spans and turning them into tech addicts. The article argues the following important points:

1) Games provide a safe environment for failure and learning from mistakes.
2) Games provide a way for students to collaborate and solve problems.
3) Games reach all types of learners (The article even provides specific games for certain types of learners).
4) Games provide a different way to learn for struggling students.

Google Science Fair

Google Science Fair 2016 has begun! It's open to any individual or team of 13-18 years old. Good luck!

Learn to Code

Interested in learning how to build a website? Codecademy recently updated their "build a website" course to include HTML5 and CSS3. I personally enjoy Codecademy and find it a helpful way to get started with coding.

Math with Google

If you don't follow Alice Keeler or her blog, Teacher Tech, you need to start. She's full of excellent Google Resources. Here's one for all the math teachers out there: Teaching Math with Google. She provides step-by-step instructions on how to incorporate Google into you Math classroom AND even has a helpful infographic.

Free Makerspace Ebook

Interested in starting a Makerspace in your classroom? Here's a FREE ebook from Makerspaces.com.
 The books provides the following information:

-3D printing and modeling software

-Makerspace materials, resources, websites, and project idea

-Coding & Computer Science

-Maker Business

-Expos, Events & Conferences – Maker / EdTech

-Research & Articles – Maker Movement / EdTech

-Twitter Hashtags

3D Printer

Interested in purchasing a 3D printer? ISTE Connects supplies a helpful article on what to look for when purchasing a new printer. They even offer a few models to get you started. A really excellent resource for anyone wanting to get into 3D printing but aren't sure where to start.

President's Day

Happy President's Day!!! Here's a lesson from TedEd describing how George Washington became the first president:

Pixar In a Box -- free animation course

Pixar Animation Studios and Khan Academy paired together to create a program to teach students the basics of animation: Pixar in a Box.

According to Khan Academy, "The course covers different animation-related topics each of which comes with ‘a design focused lesson appropriate for grades 5+, followed by a math focused lesson which is grade specific.’ The topics included are :

• 'Environment Modeling: Explore how realistic blades of grass are modeled using parabolic arcs.
• Character Modeling: Explore how clay models are transformed into digital characters using weighted averages.
• Crowds: Explore how swarms of robots were created for WALL-E using combinatorics.
• Animation: Explore how animators bring characters to life with the help of Animation curves.
• Sets and Staging: Explore how virtual sets are constructed using geometric transformations.
• Rendering: Explore how pixels are painted by solving systems of linear equations."

50 Google Classroom Tips

If you don't follow Alice Keeler, you should start today. She's a Google guru. She recently went on the podcast, Cool Teacher Show, to promote her recently published book and talk about 50 Things You can do with Google Classroom.

Differentiated Instruction

As a building this year, we've concentrated heavily on improving our differentiated instruction. We're looking into differentiating the content, process, and product in our classrooms. I found this interested article from Maryland Learning, and it gives some helpful hints on how to pull off the difficult task of reaching each student.

Girls Who Code

Here's a cool program: Girls Who Code. They have summer immersion programs and other great resources. We need more girls interested in learning computer programming!

Map Makers

I recently had a Social Studies teacher ask me if I knew of any map maker tools, which led me to stumble across 3 Map Maker tools according to Richard Byrne.  I would love to have students create geography games for our Colorado History projects.

Math Growth Mindset

Amazon recently released a program called With Math I Can. It gives students stories of other students persevering through difficult math concepts. Teachers can use videos to learn more about growth mindset, establishing a culture of grit in the classroom, and how to personalize learning for all students. Parents can use the videos to reinforce the growth mindset at home. I'm excited to see where Amazon goes with this program!

Minecraft in the Classroom

Do your students love Minecraft? Do you have students begging you to use Minecraft? Graphite released a blog post on how to get started with Minecraft in the classroom. It provides a teacher ways to setup Minecraft for the classroom, lessons to try, and ways to check student work. It's a great resource for any teacher willing to try Minecraft but isn't sure where to start.