Nerd Alert! The Top 12 Cool Things We Found at ITEC

Last week we attended the annual ITEC (Iowa Technology and Education Connection) Conference. It’s one of our favorite days of the year because we get to nerd out about ed. tech. with all of the other ed. tech. nerds in the state. A few things spoke to our nerdy, nerdy hearts, so we decided this would be the perfect place to share them with all of you nerds. All of these are on our website as well.

12. Canva is a tried and true tool for graphic design that students can use to create posters, infographics,and more. Canva is a great tool to introduce to students if you are tired of having them give slides presentations to the class. Have them use Canva to create an advertisement for a concept in your class, to build social media posts for literary characters or historical figures, to construct one-pagers to review class content, or to complete any other creative idea you come up with!

11. Classroom Screen is a nifty tool that puts a dashboard for you to project at the front of the room where you can add a variety of widgets that make your job easier as a teacher. For example, you can add a random name generator, a timer, a sound level monitor, quick QR codes to sites you want to send students to, exit polls, and more.

10. Emojis in Education is a website from educator Tony Vincent that contains a host of ideas for incorporating emojis into your teaching. At first glance, this could seem like fluff, but Vincent has a ton of great ideas for using those ubiquitous little smiley faces and other symbols to do things like conducting exit polls, creating vocabulary games, or even just helping to organize your Google Drive by adding images in the title to make it easier to find the file you’re looking for.

9. Insert Learning allows you to insert instructional content into any web page. You can easily scaffold text with questions and media that help all of your students be more successful learners. Insert Learning is very similar to Actively Learn, except that it allows you to use internet sites for students to read instead of just pdfs or Google docs.

8. Metaverse is the easiest way to make interactive content without requiring programming for students. It lets you build super easy and quick augmented reality (AR) experiences for your students (think Pokemon Go). This could be a fun way to conduct a pre-assessment, have students explore information before a unit, or create a scavenger hunt review. Even better, have your students build the AR environments as an alternative method of presenting information to the class. It gets your whole class up and moving and incorporates elements of coding as students create their Metaverse experiences.

7.  Flippity lets you make any Google spreadsheet into a game easily!  Flippity has TONS of games such as jeopardy, hangman, random name picker, scavenger hunts, etc.  Check out all the options as a list won’t do it justice.

6. Soundtrap is a fun way for students to collaborate and make music anywhere, with anyone, anytime. Students can record their creations directly with any device, explore the collective extension of loops, connect an instrument, or use one from the program. It is an awesome alternative to Garage Band that you could use to have students create podcasts, music for video projects, or even just a quick audio exit ticket.

5. Peardeck Extension allows you to make interactive presentations and formative assessments to engage every student in your room, every day. Peardeck works with your Google suite so that your Google slides become interactive, effortlessly. You can also choose to turn on student-paced mode to allow students to work at their speed in the classroom or at home. Students can also share anonymous answers on the projector screen to spark debate, make every opinion be heard, and discuss common misconceptions.

4. Classkick is a tool for teachers to make presentations and lessons more interactive.  Classkick allows you to assign points to slides, gives you tools such as map markers, and has interactive ways to give formative assessments as you are presenting your lesson.  It would be an easy way to “flip” your lesson while still getting feedback if you needed to work in small groups.

3. Next Vista for Learning and / or Classhook are two good sites that have videos you can use with your students in class. Next Vista for Learning specializes in student-made content, so if you are looking for inspiration for an upcoming video project or need stellar exemplars to show your students, this is a fantastic resource. Classhook has videos related to a wide variety of school content from pop culture sources. Both databases are searchable by content area and are fun ways to hook students at the beginning of class.

2. Spiral is an easy way to give fast formative assessments to gauge what the whole class is thinking. It allows you to create and share collaborative interactive presentations; it also allows you to turn any public video into a chat. You can use this for student assignment help outside of class or as a student portfolio as well. If you are looking for ways to make lectures more engaging, check out this site.

1. Google’s Applied Digital Skills Lessons Google has ready-made lessons from their free digital curriculum.  Students progress at their own pace so that you as the teacher can give individualized attention. You can track student achievements through the site, and it also allows for group projects to incorporate teamwork.  Some topics that have pre-written units include if-then adventure stories, programming, marketing, business, money management, project management, communication, and current events. This can be a great tool for sub plans and / or supplementing your current curriculum.

Teacher Feature: Shannon Lumley

Shannon presented at ITEC this year on how to use 3D pens to aid student learning. She showed conference attendees how the use of 3D pens can help students visualize concepts through a hands-on approach. Over the past few years, Shannon’s students have used the pens to create 3D models of a variety of science concepts. Stop in sometime, and she will show you the creative ways her students have applied this tech. tool in her classes.

The Dark, Evil Vortex of Late September, October, and November

DEVOLSON

Every year, we post about DEVOLSON, the Dark Evil Vortex Of Late September, October, and November. It’s that time of year when things begin to look bleak. It is a loooong haul between now and Thanksgiving break, the days are getting shorter, the weather’s getting cooler (and wetter, apparently), we have marathon days of parent / teacher conferences, and our stress levels are starting to ramp up. During DEVOLSON, you might see yourself described in one of the DEVOLSON Bingo squares below:

Photo credit: We are Teachers

Jill: Like blogger Love,Teach, I’m a big fan of bottling up my emotions during DEVOLSON until I reach a breaking point and have a meltdown. This happened last week when I found myself crying on the couch at Tom Hanks yelling for Wilson to come back to him (he was his best friend!) and then comforted myself by eating half a tray of chocolate chip cookies. I realized that I might possibly maybe potentially need a healthier outlet for my stress, so I’m working on carving out more time in the morning to walk on my treadmill instead. I also often find myself unable to sleep at night during DEVOLSON as I make list after list in my head of things I need to get done the next day. But why? There’s nothing I can do about the stack of papers on my desk at 2 in the morning, and my lack of sleep makes it a lot harder to cross things off of that list the next day. Instead of stewing about my to-do-list, I’m going to try making a different list in my head when I’m trying to sleep -- a list of things I’m grateful for and bright spots that happened to me during the day. For example, I have super fun coworkers that keep me energized, an amazingly supportive family, and I get to see world-class teaching in action every day as part of my job.

Lindsey: DEVOLSON…. It’s bizarre because my husband started calling me a name that was very similar to this. I began my Sunday night routine of stay up until 3 a.m. binge eating chips and playing Mario Odyssey until the wee hours to cope with the fact that I needed two or three more of me.  It was brutal -- heck, ask Bradley as he got to endure most of this. So what did I do? I started balancing the really important things in life and ensuring I was hanging with people who would be builders and not breakers. I asked myself if what I was stressing about would actually make a difference in student learning.  I started finding help through flipped lessons and stations to in fact make two of me. I also did a lot of reflecting. I used to be an accountant, and I was so bored. I don’t want “bored.” So, I became a little more grateful and instead of seeing the “work,” I tried to look for the good. I asked for help. Guys, ask for help!  My husband is already pretty great, but I asked more of him, of my co-teachers, and of my students.  They got to do more of the heavy lifting instead of me. Anyway, eventually my dog died and I got meds (see large picture above desk). No but really, I did get help to help me balance out what was important, which was family and finding that passion in an everyday job that has its ups and downs.

Break your DEVOLSON by finding healthy coping mechanisms like exercise or new hobbies. Look for bright spots. Find your builders, remember your passion in this very challenging yet rewarding job that you will never be bored in, and be grateful!  I know your students are -- even the ones who didn’t show it immediately.

Remember that during this time of DEVOLSON:

Give-away time! Earn yourself a chance to be entered into a drawing for a new purple G2 pen and something else by commenting below about your mechanisms for coping with DEVOLSON.  Also bring your bingo card up if you complete it for a delicious snack, because clearly you need it

THIS COOL THING We FOUND: DECK.TOYS

Deck.Toys is a versatile tool you can use for blended or flipped learning, independent practice at a station in your classroom while you work with others, gamifying a lesson, or even as a different method for hosting a Breakout Edu. Deck.Toys essentially lets you create a map or game board for students to travel through, and you can post different learning activities along the way. It has eighteen different games that students can play with study sets you create, including matching, sequencing, sorting, Wheel of Fortune, pictionary, jeopardy, and more. You can also upload slideshows, YouTube videos, and embed other web content into the different activities on your board.

Deck.Toys is now added to the website under technology.  We are starting to build the other subjects more, so check back for resources.  See it in action in the video below:

TEACHER FEATURE: Leshia Anderson

Leshia has been a teacher for many years, most of which have been spent in Boone. Former students are very grateful for what they learn from Leshia, because she does such an amazing job of balancing games, language instruction, and speaking in her classroom.  She involves all of her students in her day-to-day lesson planning and is never afraid to continue to learn.  She has recently been pushing herself and her students in using more formative assessment data to make decisions on student learning.  She has been using Quizizz along with researching other forms of formative assessment to use in her classroom.