Group items tagged

" "Even young kids have gotten very adept at Minecraft, so it can be quite intimidating for teachers," said Jason Schmidt, an instructional technologist for Bennington Public Schools who will teach the four-week MinecraftEdu MOOC, in a prepared statement. "If I can help get teachers over that hump, imagine how delighted students will be to have a learning environment tailored to their interests for a change." The other, Minecraft for Educators, "is a course for teachers who are wishing to gamify their learning experiences and deliver a unique pedagogy that will engage, enthuse and keep learners coming back for more," according to information released by the company. Both MOOCs are available through the Canvas Network. Minecraft for Educators will start January 26, 2015 and run through March 9. The company has also released a Minecraft app to allow students to submit assignments to the Canvas learning management system from within the game. Using the app, students can tag what they've made in the game for their teachers to visit, upload books they've written in game directly to the speed grader or use the game's circuitry tool to complete assignments that will be automatically graded. A video demonstration of the app is available at YouTube. Other MOOCs for teachers in the suite include: Digital Literacies 1; Digital Literacies 2; Five Habits of Highly Effective Teachers; Teachers without Borders: Educating Girls; and Tinker, Make and Learn. Among the other MOOC offerings in the new suite is a course designed specifically for parents, Parenting in the Digital Age, which aims to help them address issues such as cyberbullying, digital citizenship, exposure to inappropriate content, media literacy and screentime. Taught by Andrew Swickheimer, director of technology at Noblesville Schools, the self-paced course opens September 22. "Parental involvement in K-12 education has one of the biggest impacts on a child's commitment to learning," said Jared Stein, vice pres

"Browsing or searching the App Store for free apps can be a time-consuming process. Apps Gone Free can save you time in your quest for free iPad and iPhone apps. Apps Gone Free is a free iPad app that serves up a new list of free apps everyday. The apps featured on Apps Gone Free are apps that normally require a purchase but have been made available for free download for a limited time. I used Apps Gone Free today to find a neat app that I think physical education teachers will like (blog post coming soon)."

"Teachers in Littleton, Colorado - like teachers in many places - are increasingly asking students to read and write online. Free tools like Google Docs have made it easy for students to work on the same piece of writing at home and at school, and have allowed teachers to explore collaborative writing assignments and synchronous editing with students. There are also many digital tools that can support students as they learn how to read deeply, take well-cited notes, and navigate the writing process. While many teachers are finding efficiency in allowing students to write and submit assignments online, not all students or teachers want to use the exact same set of tools. That's why Littleton's Instructional Technology Specialist, Dana Levesque, started compiling resources on a site that both teachers and students can access to find the tools that fit their needs."

"Earlier this week I shared five good feeds for mathematics teachers and five good feeds for history teachers. These lists were born out of a common request that I get and that is "can you recommend some good blogs for X?" So this week I'm going to publish a short list each day of the blogs that usually come to mind when someone asks me to make a recommendation for a blog related to teaching a particular subject area. Today, I have five good feeds for ELA and ELL teachers."

"WriteReader is a neat multimedia writing platform for elementary school teachers and students. The appeal of WriteReader is found in the collaboration between students and teachers. Students can create multimedia books that teachers log into to correct. As is seen the video below, each page of a book has a space for students to write in and a space for teachers to write in. Teachers use the space on the page to correct spelling errors and or make editing suggestions."

"Would you be interested in the ultimate list of free tools for teachers? At the following post you will found 321 Free Tools for Teachers separated in 18 educational technology categories. Enjoy!"

Last fall I asked readers to contribute to a list of tips for new teachers. I compiled that list and put it together as a Google Docs presentation of 131 tips. This year, I would like to expand the list with more tips from you. If you have a helpful tip for new teachers, be it technology related or not, please consider leaving a comment on this post and I will add it to the presentation. Last year's list is embedded below.

"iStoryBooks is a good service that for the last few years has offered classic children's books for free through their iPad and Android apps. Today, I received an email from their PR department in which they announced that now all of the books in the apps will be free to teachers. Directions for getting a free premium subscription are copied below."

"OpenEd.io is a free service that launched in October of 2013 for the purpose of offering a huge catalog of educational videos, games, and assessments. One of the services OpenEd.io offers is the option for teachers to create courses and collections of resources to share with their students. This week OpenEd released a free iPad app for teachers and students. "

"TED Ed Lessons is one of the best resources for educational video content to use with your students in class. It features less than  10 minutes lessons created by teachers and animated by professional animators .The goal is to amplify teachers voice and make learning more enjoyable and accessible to students from all around the world. More importantly, TED Ed lessons are customizable so that teachers can appropriate them according to the learning needs of their students. To customize a TED Ed lesson you need to be registered. Registration is free. In today's selection, we are sharing with you some of the most popular Math TED Ed lessons."

"Getting to teach economics lessons is one of my favorite things about being a social studies teacher. In economics lessons high school students start to see how many of the math concepts, logic concepts, and political theory they've learned can apply to them in the "real world" after high school. Econ Ed Link is a great resource for lesson plans, videos, and interactive activities for teaching economics concepts. They recently published an updated list of their Math In the Real World lesson plan library. Math In the Real World lesson plans include activities to teach students how to analyze business profit and loss, how the stock market works, and how distribution of income can influence government policies. The Math In the Real World lesson plans also include activities that have a more personal appeal to students. Those lesson plans include building credit, building a savings, and the dangers of payday loan schemes. The payday loan lesson plan is one that has previously been featured here on Free Technology for Teachers."

"Over the last few days, I have been sharing here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning some useful resources that teachers can draw on to find educational free eBooks. After citing the 13 best sites for free eBooks, today I am sharing with you a great platform called Science Books that provides free online science books. I have gone through some of the links embedded there and found them really interesting."

"Here are this week's most popular posts: 1. A Technology Integration Matrix with Video Examples 2. Guest Post - Sources of Funding and Free Stuff for Teachers 3. Zondle - Games to Support Learning 4. Computer Viruses and Threats Explained by Common Craft 5. Free eBook for Learning the Basics of xHTML 6. The Science of Hitting a Baseball or a Softball 7. Boom Writer - Collaborative Publishing for Kids"

"The concept of teacher professional development has radically changed due to the boom in digital technologies and social media websites. The web now is replete with a variety of professional learning networks and communities of practice on almost any topic you think of. There is also another type of portals that have seen the light recently and which offer massive courses and trainings on different subjects, these are MOOCs. MOOCs are a great way for growing professionally particularly that most of the courses they offer are free. I have already featured some interesting MOOC resources that teachers can use for the enhancement of their PD and today I want to share with you some wonderful iPad apps that will allow you to pursue your PD on the go."

"ViewPure is absolutely an excellent tool for teachers and students. It allows you to watch YouTube videos in a clean and distraction-free interface. All the distractive features such as ads, related videos, and comments are removed providing students with an ideal environment for watching educational videos. Inappropriate content accompanying YouTube videos lead many teachers to shun away from incorporating YouTube videos in their instruction but with ViewPure this is no longer a problem and teachers are able to provide students with an enhanced YouTube experience with the minimum distraction possible. We said minimum because some ads are integrated with YouTube videos and ViewPure can not remove them."

"This post is born out of a request for help from someone that I met at the Teacher 2 Teacher conference in Bow Island, Alberta. She was looking for some free online talking storybooks to use in her grade 1 class. I didn't have anything coming to mind right off, so I searched Diigo and my blog archives to find these three places to find and free online talking children's storybooks."