Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"Twurdy is actually based on Google, but it analyses Google results for readability, so it can help you to find more lower level texts for learners without you having to read through every result from Google to see if it's simple enough. Just type in the topic of the text you need and click on your Twurdy type. You have a choice of three different Twurdy types. The differences are mainly speed (how fast you want your results) vs complexity (how thoroughly you want the results analysed) I would recommend choosing Twurdy with Pop as this will analyse the number of word on the page, length of sentences, number of syllables per word and also the popularity of the words in the text." After finding a good text, you could create lessons with Hot Potatoes for it. Nik's blog entry also includes related links for reading, such as "Prompting reading speeds" and "Comparing Texts to aid Noticing"

"Google Books can be a good research tool for students if they are aware of it and know how to use it. These are the activities that I often use to teach students and others about the features of Google Books." This blog entry includes short videos to provide directions. T/H R. Byrne

Another superb teacher-training video from R. Stannard on using Goggle Forms to create questionnaires, surveys, and quizzes.

"Using Google Forms, teachers can create custom checklists that allow them to quickly record observations for all students on one form. With a place to record the date and objective being observed, the form is reusable. Google Forms also conveniently organizes all observations in one place. Teachers can collect data over as many days, and for as many objectives as they wish. Keep in mind that it's not necessary to record an observation for every student every time." Blog by Nick LaFave helps teachers use technology to become more efficient and effective at real-time assessment.

"In the past I have shared Google Drawing templates for students to create drag-and-drop "magnetic" poetry with a winter-theme as well as for Valentine's Day. "This time I have updated the template for Springtime. Just like before, doing this activity with technology such as Google Drawings provides many benefits: " No limit on the quantity of words provided. Just copy and paste more of them as needed. Great tech skills practice with dragging and dropping and copying and pasting. Ability to edit the words provided if needed. Ability to add your own words. Easy collaboration with others. Easy to share or download your final creation. No pieces to get lost. It's free! "See below to get your free copy of the Springtime Magnetic Poetry template to use with your students (or yourself) however you want, as well as directions on how to use it." A template and instructions follow. T/h to Eric Curts blog, Control Alt Achieve

"This addictive game plunks you down somewhere in the world using Google Street view. You literally start on some country road and the whole point of the game is to figure out where in the world you are. You can navigate down the road in the app, and you can turn around and zoom in to look more closely at things, but because the game often chooses the most remote locations, you often find yourself traveling for quite a while before you see any clues. Once you do see something-a road sign, ideally, or something at least with language on it-you can start figuring it out. "I don't even know if this is following the rules, but the times I've played this, I've been amazed at the number of resources I ended up pulling together to figure things out: I do Google image matches, use Google Translate to figure out what a language even is, and even look things up on Wikipedia to figure out if I'm on the right track. I've had four or five different tabs open to try and narrow down a precise location, and all the while, I'm learning stuff. I had no idea, for example, that there was an island called Gotland off the coast of Sweden! Or that there's an animal called a springhare in South Africa that looks an awful lot like a kangaroo" T/h to Jennifer Gonzalez

"Google Docs in the Classroom" Lesson objective is to write collaboratively using Google Docs. Video page includes discussion questions and teacher comments.

Some nice advice on using the many features of Google Drive with your students.

"One of the first questions teachers new to Google Drive always ask me is, how do you organize your files. I've gone through several different ways before figuring out what works best for me. Here are some options." Lots of interesting ideas and tips.

This set of illustrations is actually better than Byrne's instructional video on how to use the new features of Google Slides.

Use this guide to set up your domain and groups for different classes or types of users. Specific, detailed information from Google.

This is a good blog to follow as a teacher explores various technologies she find useful. This particular entry is on using Google Docs. Clear instructions.

These sites include RAS Animate with thought-provoking videos about education and other subjects; Problem Attic with a bank of 80,000 quetions from the NY Regents exams, review tests, quizzes, and flash card; Learners TV with thoughsands of video lectures, tests, and animations in various disciplines to support classroom instruction; Sketch Toy which lets you draw and share pictures; Daily Infographic, where you can search topics and subscribe; and Google Tutor, which gives you news, tips, and tutorials about Google. Thanks to M. Sheehan at Learning Never Stops for the info.

This page explains how to create a Google form. You can make a quiz for your students and email it to them, collecting data from the form. You can require respondents to sign in to use the document, which helps with security. See the sidebar on the left for more instructions and tutorials.

Great links for using Google Earth for science classes, as well as for English/Language Arts (see "Lit Trips"), math, culture and history, etc. Pre-made lessons. Also links to "How to create Placemarks and Tours," "To Geography and Beyond," etc.

"Discover, purchase, and share educational apps, books, and videos easily with Google Play for Education - a new online destination just for schools." "Browse content by grade, subject, or standard; purchase with school PO (no credit card required); distribute apps via cloud." "This page also shows how to set up tables to allow use of content and to find approved apps."

This is an incredibly thorough article that gives one a lot of ideas for using Google Drive on your own desktop or tablet. Apps and add-ons make some of the neat features of MS Word available, with the added advantage of picking and choosing which features you really want/need. Thorin Klosowski is most helpful. Just having regular updates of Drive enables work off-line where needed.

Some nice tips to narrow and refine your searches using Google.

This guide is fairly complete on how to use Google Hangouts, but doesn't mention that you can open a text chat elsewhere on the web, e.g., in your blog or YouTube channel, and thus have a much larger class or group of students join in with text chat, while seeing and listening to the audio-video hangout. Participants take turns dropping in and out. This would be hard to organize with high school kids/teens, but would work with adults or teachers-in-training.

It's suprisingly easy to search for images by type, size, color, and copyright-free. This training video (5 min) by R. Stannard shows you how to do it.