September
30
ISAT Portal Update by 9/30
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September
29
Triaging your “Crazy Busy” Life
September
28
How to be your best selves in time of crises (emotional agility during a pandemic)
I found this today and it was an eye opener of the many ways that the pandemic we are experiencing takes its toll on us in many different ways. Yes, you can get very sick but that is not the only way it is affecting our worlds. I just happened to be talking to a friend yesterday about how the stress of the pandemic is rearing it’s ugly head in other ways and how our students are being affected, our families are being affected, and how we personally are being affected emotionally and psychologically. To be a bit transparent-it has been very difficult for my family personally. Here is a TED talk from one of my favorite authors Susan David about this exact thing-totally worth the time if you can watch or listen to it.
September
28
Weekly Tech Tips by Richard Bryne
A couple of weeks ago I was talking with a few of my students about TikTok’s possible sale and or possible ban in the U.S. The course of the conversation brought up a lot of “I’ve heard X” and “I’ve read X” statements from my students. I ended up spending a lot of time helping discern fact from rumors and opinions. That experience prompted me to show them this short video.
If you find yourself in a similar situation to mine, here are some good resources to help students develop their skills in discerning good information from bad in online media.
Factitious
Factitious is a game that is designed to help students practice identifying real and fake news stories. The 2020 version of the game features stories about COVID-19. To play Factitious simply go to the site and select start. You’ll then see an article appear on the screen. Read through the article, click the source listed at the bottom, and then select either the green check mark or red X to indicate whether or not you think the article is a real news story. After you make your selection you’ll get instant feedback and an explanation of how you can tell if the article was a real or fake news story.
Bad News
Bad News is a website that offers simulations that show visitors how misinformation is spread through social media. Bad News is available in two versions. The regular version is intended for those who are high school age or older. Bad News Junior is appropriate for middle school and older elementary school students. The difference between the two versions is found in the news topics that are used in the simulations.
In both versions of Bad News players work through a simulation in which they attempt to build a Twitter following by spreading misleading news stories. (I must emphasize that there are no real Tweets sent and you don’t have to even have a Twitter account to play Bad News). Through the simulation players learn how headlines, memes, and Tweets are designed to manipulate people and prompt reactions from them. The simulation also shows players how Twitter bots are used.
Checkology
Checkology is a service that is designed to help students develop those skills. Checkology offers interactive modules for students to complete. Each of the modules is comprised of between twenty and forty-seven instructional video clips and interactive comprehension checks. The four of the modules are titled Info Zones, Democracy’s Watchdog, Practicing Quality Journalism, and Misinformation. As you might expect, the contents of the modules gets progressively more difficult as each section is completed.
Spot the Troll
Spot the Troll is a quiz game that was developed by Clemson University’s Media Forensics Lab as a way to educate people about deceptive social media accounts. Spot the Troll presents players with eight social media profiles. Based on the clues in the profiles players have to decide if the social media profile is genuine or a fake designed to spread misinformation. Players get instant feedback after making a guess at whether each account is real or fake. Whether or not the player is correct or incorrect Spot the Troll provides an explanation the signs that the account was real or fake.
Before you have your students play Spot the Troll you should play the game yourself. Some of the profiles include content that might not be appropriate for your students. I definitely would not have kids younger than high school age play the game.
Spot the Problem With These Headlines
Can You Spot the Problem With These Headlines? is a TED-Ed lesson that walks students through the dissection of a couple of hypothetical news headlines. By watching the video students can begin to understand how headlines are written to entice readers and how misleading headlines are created.
These were last week’s most popular posts on FreeTech4Teachers.com:
1. Google Adds Another Control for Teachers Using Google Meet
2. Five Zoom Features You Need to Know
3. Jamboard is Now Integrated Into Google Meet
4. The Google Science Journal App is Now the Arduino Science Journal
5. TeacherMade – Quickly Create & Share a Variety of Online Activities
6. Using YouTube to Share Lessons This Fall? – Settings and Tools You Need to Know About
7. Spot the Troll – Can You Spot Fake Social Media Accounts?
Online Professional Development This Week!
On Tuesday at 4pm ET I’m hosting A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video. I offered this at the end of August and a bunch of people have asked me to host it again, so I am. Join us! If you can’t make it for the live session, sign up and a recording will be sent to you.
My popular Ten Search Strategies Students Need to Know webinar is now available on-demand. You can access that webinar right here.
September
18
Whooo Hooo-TMT Math Classes and Other PD’s
September
17
Math Learning Center PD Webinars
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September
17
Wonders and its Glitches-Oh My!!!!
For Teachers
1. Post materials from Wonders to Classroom using the steps found on slide #34 https://docs.google.com/
For students to access:
- Login to Clever
- Click on McGraw Hill to connect to Wonders
- Click on Launch (this is the key, students must launch (authenticate with the system)
- In a new tab (must leave the other tab open) – open Google Classroom
- Find the previously made assignment
- Click on the Wonders link to the material
- The student will now have access to the material.
September
14
Teacher Tech Tip from Richard Byrne
Whiteboards Fi, Whiteboard Chat, Jamboards, and more tech tools!
One of the things that I’ve been stressing to anyone who will listen this fall is to give students activities to do during remote instruction, don’t just talk at them. For example, this week during my Intro to Networking class I had my online students diagramming simple router and switch networks. They did that on Jamboards that I shared with them through Google Classroom.
Using remote whiteboards like Jamboard is a good way to have students create diagrams, to solve math problems, to draw, or to respond to any prompt that might be tricky to type a response to. By using remote whiteboards they can work independently and you can watch them work. Jamboard isn’t the only tool for this. You might also try Whiteboard Fi or Whiteboard Chat. All three tools are explained below.
Jamboard
Jamboard is Google’s free online whiteboard tool. It is different from Google Drawings in two ways. First, it allows you to have multiple pages within the same file. Second, it doesn’t have as many drawing tools as Drawings. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when you want students to focus on answering math problems or creating a rough sketch. Jamboards can be shared just like a Google Doc which means you can see your students working on them. Jamboard can be shared through Google Classroom as an assignment. That process is demonstrated in this short video.
Whiteboard Fi
Whiteboard.fi lets you create an online room in which each of your students has his or her own whiteboard to draw on. As the teacher, you can see what your students are drawing as they do it. You have the ability to clear students’ boards and to kick them out of the room if they are not using their whiteboards as intended. Students are also able to see your whiteboard if you choose to push it out to them.
Combine Whiteboard Fi with Google Meet or Microsoft Teams and you can see what students are doing in real-time without having to screen share. Here’s my short video about that process in Google Meet.
Whiteboard Chat
Whiteboard Chat is a free service that you can use to create collaborative whiteboards to use with your students. It is possible to use Whiteboard Chat without an email address which makes it quick and easy to get started. Whiteboard Chat includes an option to create individual whiteboards for each student to use that you can also observe. Check out this video to see how it works.
These were last week’s most popular posts on FreeTech4Teachers.com:
1. Google Adds More Teacher Controls for Google Meet – Yay!
2. Movies on Map – Discover the World Through a Map & Video Combination
3. Whiteboard Chat – Online Whiteboards You Can Share and Monitor
4. TeacherMade – Quickly Create & Share a Variety of Online Activities
5. Add Science & Math Simulations to Google Sites
6. An Easy Way to Make a Stop Motion Video
7. Video Puppet is Now Narakeet – Still Turns Slides Into Narrated Videos
On-demand Webinars!
Last week I hosted Ten Search Strategies Students Need to Know. If you missed it, you can watch it here. Every Thursday Rushton Hurley and I co-host Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff. You can catch those recordings here.
Have a great week!
~Richard
September
9
Mystery Science Distance Learning Guides
Mystery Science has done an outstanding job putting together a “Distance Learning Guide” for each grade level. It is user friendly and has everything you need. Please see links and example below:
https://mysteryscience.com/distance-learning-guides
September
9