FPS Integrating Technology into Your Classroom

"Mentimeter allows you to use mobile phones or tablets to vote on any question you specify. Our vision is to improve the meeting between a presenter and an audience."

"The easiest way to caption and translate any video. The most powerful and flexible subtitling platform in the world."

The Smithsonian is all about questions and answers, and it is people who bring those questions to life. We created seven quirky characters to symbolize the questions the Smithsonian asks and answers every day: The Wild represents the diversity of the animal kingdom The Green reflects the wonder of the natural landscape The New is where technology and creativity collide The Masterpiece embodies artistic expression The Storyteller is about America, its people and the tales they tell The Discoverer explores our world and the universe These characters help us show why Smithsonian is Seriously Amazing. Look for them inside the question mark!

"How To Add Rigor To Any Lesson, Unit, Or Assessment Rigor is a fundamental piece of any learning experience. It is also among the most troublesome due to its relativity. Rigorous for whom? And more importantly, how can you "cause" it?"

"Frequently this conversation focuses on the most effective hardware for teaching and learning. While this is an important decision to make, it should not be the focus. In fact, the best devices a school can employ are great teachers."

"Over time we have built up a collection of 33,984 free PowerPoint templates, themes and PowerPoint Backgrounds. We have made available a wide range of these professional designs for you to download for free. You can browse all of our PowerPoint templates or select them by category or colour or by tag. We also have a range of PowerPoint Backgrounds."

"Build better video lessons, together Find a video and make it yours" Crop YouTube, Khan Academy videos, explain the video with your voice including audio notes for clarification, introduction, etc., and add a quiz/check for understanding at the end.

Interested in what an infographic is and what it can do? Check out Kathy Schrock's website on infographics. Great possibilities with the PLDs. Consider doing this in your classroom.

"The days of foldable paper maps are numbered but the world wide web is opening up the potential of maps by offering an amazing variety of cool websites that teachers should take the time to explore. Below are ten great mapping sites for you to use in the classroom."

Our belief is that technology should empower teachers. Each student has unique learning needs and teachers don't have the tools to personalize their lessons to those needs. The eduCanon platform is a tool for teachers to build lessons with interactive timed questions and engaging video content. Already, we've been amazed by the creative and inspirational uses of eduCanon by teachers--for flipped and blended learning environments.

Field trips generally venture only as far afield as the local heritage village, where you're likely to catch pilgrim 'Ezekial' behind the butter churning hut sneaking a modern-day cigarette. Google wants to offer a more far-reaching experience, with a new Connected Classrooms initiative that lets classes take "virtual field trips" using Google+ Hangouts. So instead of learning about pioneer times from a local drama student who has to keep the goat stables clean in addition to infotaining the kids, you'll check out the Seattle Aquarium, Minnesota Zoo or the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Google says that teachers already employ its social network in classrooms, but the Connected Classrooms program is designed to make it easier for more of them to do so. It offers not only those virtual excursions mentioned above (along with a number of other destinations), but also provides teachers a chance to work together on class plans and learning experiences for use both in the classroom and out.

"FlipQuiz was created to provide educators with a quick way to create gameshow-style boards for test reviews in the classroom. Traditionally, these are created (tediously) using posterboard, chalkboards, or dry-erase markers on an overhead slide. The review questions are usually even written on a separate sheet of paper. With FlipQuiz, questions are displayed on-screen and boards are saved for later use. Combined with a well-designed board, students are more likely to be interested and stay engaged with an otherwise disjunct test review process."

"Between societal changes and technological breakthroughs, it's become abundantly clear that the human brain is transforming the way it processes and learns information. While there are many discussions about whether or not this is good or bad for us as a society, it's definitely a change. As educators, it's our job to make sure that students (and adults) are learning. Part of that process isn't only about making an engaging activity or lesson, but also realizing how the modern brain learns. Teachers all over America are faced with this challenge of keeping students engaged in the classroom when their world outside of school is one of constant engagement and stimulation. Knowing the world outside of our institutional walls is only one step in addressing modern learning styles. How to act and adjust schools today is the next step in making the classroom of today ready for tomorrow."

"A while back, I was asked, "What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders. The responses I received from all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my students' answers to the question: "What engages students?""

"Classroom is a way to get all of your students in one place and allows you to easily assign work and for students to turn it in."

"Depth of Knowledge is a conceptual framework and a vocabulary reference developed by Webb (1977) to help with analyzing the cognitive demands and expectations students are to meet when engaged in Common Core learning. DOK categorizes the curricular activities into four major groups with each one of them corresponding to a particular cognitive level it addresses."

"During the summer the IT department at your school may have been working to update the technology infrastructure in your school. At the same time, the developers of many of your favorite apps and services were working hard to update what you can do with technology in your classroom. Here are ten popular services that were updated over the summer. "

"And then one day everything changed for me. While researching online for something to add onto a lesson on art, I found a video that was beautiful, intriguing, and fell neatly into my curriculum. Instead of adding it on to an established lesson, I took a different approach and I built a lesson around the video instead. The focus went from adding technology to my lessons as an afterthought, and instead the technology became the starting point of my lesson."