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“Technology will not replace great teachers but technology in the hands of great teachers can be tranformational.”

-George Couros

May 14, 2019

If you have not tried Flipgrid yet, now is the perfect time. Consider using this tool with your current students to wrap up this year and incoming students to start building those relationships for next year.

May 7, 2019

AnswerGarden is a very simple way to collect feedback very quickly. There are no accounts to sign up for and your participants/students do not need to login. Simply share the link and GO!

April 30, 2019

We Are Teachers is a great resource for many things. One of my favorites is the Wellness Way. You can get this downloadable for FREE. All you have to do is print, post, and relax.

April 23, 2019

Annenberg Learner provides teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum. The Interactives and Video Series are some of my favorite resources.

April 16, 2019

The University of Nottingham provides a great website titled Period Videos. The have an a video for each element on the Periodic Table of Elements. They also provide a YouTube page of videos with fun experiments focused on the elements.

April 9, 2019

The University of Colorado Boulder has provided PhET Interactive Simulations for FREE. Once you go to the site, simply select Play with Simulations and enjoy. You can search by topic, grade level, and device. In Teaching Resources, you can browse by activity.

April 2, 2019

Understanding Science and how science really works is provided by Berkeley. In addition to many resources, they have an online interactive journaling tool that is great. You can choose from a simplied version for your younger students or the standard version for your advanced science students.

March 26, 2019

EdTechTeacher has created a website that consists of the Best of History Websites. This would be a great resource for you in building activities and your students in gathering resources. 

March 19, 2019

iCivics exists to engage students in meaningful civic learning. In Teach, you will find entire curriculum units full of resources. In Play, you will find interactive activities that guide students through their learning.

March 12, 2019

Digital History is a great site for social studies resources. You can search by era, topic, resources, and/or references for lots of great materials. You can even create your own timeline by chosing a start and end year. I highly recommend checking out Active Learning: eXplorations for a plethora of great content.

March 5, 2019

Today’s Tech Tip is for our social studies teachers. If you have not been to the Library of Congress lately, you should really check out the Teacher page. You can choose your TEKS (grade and content) for a list of all the applicable resources for your classroom.

February 26, 2019

SpeakIt! is free text to speech extension that reads selected text using TTS technology with language auto-detection. It can read text in more than 50 languages.

February 19, 2019

Dyslexia Unscrambled is a great tool that transforms any webpage into one that is more easily readable by those who are dyslexic. It requires no configuration and can be enabled/disabled with one click. In addition to changing the font it also adjusts the contrast and spacing which make it easier for those who are dyslexic to read any web page. For more information on the inspiration behidn this extrension check out http://blog.codehatcher.com/dyslexia

February 12, 2019

Mercury Reader is a fairly new find for me and has become one of my favorite. This tool will remove all of the “extra” from a page so students can focus on the text.

February 5, 2019

This month I am going to share some accommodation tools for Chrome. The first comes to us from Texthelp. Follow this link for a free teacher subscription.

January 29, 2019

I hope you have enjoyed exploring Robert Kaplinsky’s website for math resources. We will explore Algebra I & II this week. While you are on his website, I recommend that you check out his Resources page that includes Open Middle activities. Those challenges can be done MANY different ways but all should end up the same. This is a great way to highlight the many paths to solve problem situations.

January 22, 2019

I taught 6^th grade math for many years so I have used most of Robert Kaplinsky’s activities near that level and have enjoyed them all. Let’s check out some of those this week.

January 15, 2019

This week I will focus on Robert Kaplinsky’s 4^th grade resources. Each of the Lessons on Robert’s website can be adapted to most grade levels. Consider your own goals and adjust as needed.

January 8, 2019

Robert Kaplinsky is a great resource for math activities. He provides fully formed lessons on his website. I recommend taking his materials and adapting them to your students with all modifications and extensions needed to differentiate for your students. This week we will focus on 2^nd grade math.

December 18, 2018

Today’s ReadWriteThink interactive is all about language. Eye on Idioms will allow the students to view the literal representations of popular idioms and then explain the metaphorical meanings.

December 11, 2018

The Hero’s Journey will be the next great Student Interactive that we explore from ReadWriteThink. The hero’s journey is an ancient story pattern that can be found in texts from thousands of years ago or in newly released Hollywood blockbusters. This interactive will walk the students through creating their own story following the pattern.

December 4, 2018

This month we will highlight ReadWriteThink. Focusing on Classroom Resources and Student Interactives, we will start with Cube Creator. This interactive focuses on summarizing information. Bio Cube, Mystery Cube, Story Cube, and Create-Your-Own Cube are all options for your students to “show what they know”.

November 27, 2018

Our WizerMe Parts of a Flower activity is going great! Today we will add a “Sorting Activity.”

November 20, 2018

On our WizerMe Parts of a Flower Activity, we have done a “Fill On An Image” and a “Matching” section. Today, lets add a “Fill in the Blanks” area.

November 13, 2018

WizerMe was so much fun last week. This week will add to our Parts of a Flower Activity with “Matching”.

November 6, 2018

WizerMe is great tool for creating activities for any age or content. I use the free account. It enables me to do everything I want to do. It also will assign directly to Google Classroom and Edmodo. You can also share your activity with a link. There are many different activites you can use in WizerMe. This month, we will focus on only four of them. We are going to start with “Fill On An Image.”

October 30, 2018

Our last activity for Flippity month is the Flippity Memory Game. This activity is not just for littles. You can use the Memory Game to explore foreign languages, math formulas, science lab equipment, geographic locations, Period Table of Elements, and more.

October 23, 2018

We are going to explore Flippity Madlibs. There are six Madlibs available on the demostration template. However, you can create your own stories with the parts of speech that your students are focusing on in class.

October 16, 2018

Our next Flippity activity is Flippity Spelling Words. You can create a list for each student or a list for each chapter/unit. Either way, the students will love to practice with Flippity.

October 9, 2018

The next great Flippity tool I want to talk about is Flippity Flashcards. This would be great for vocabulary, foreign languages, science safety lab tools, parts of speech, math formulas, and so much more!

October 2, 2018

Flippity is a great tool for every classroom. There are many different tools available in Flippity so I will highlight a different one each week this month. We are going to start by looking at the Random Name Picker.

September 24, 2018

Padlet is great tool for storing and sharing resources. You have the option to add text, links, images, video, and more. There is a free version available that only limits the number of padlets you can have. With the paid version, you are allowed unlimited padlets.

September 18, 2018

PBS Learning Media is our Tech Tip for today.  This is a great website for curating content to build great activities. With access to PBS Kids, Wild Kratts, Daniel Tiger, NOVA, Curious George, The Ken Burns Collection, American Experience, Nature, Masterpiece, Frontline, and much more it is a great staple for research.

September 11, 2018

Today’s Tech Tip is all about Wonder. Wonderopolis is an amazing website for both students and educators. Once you have visited the site, I recommend that you sign up for Get Your Daily Wonder which can be found at the bottom of the home page. This will provide you with a email each day with the Daily Wonder. They are perfect for discussion, research, and writing prompts.

September 4, 2018

Our first Tech Tip will discuss Discovery Education. For additional information, please contact me at kristi.daws@esc9.net You can find additional resources on Discovery Education under Professional Learning in Learn & Lead. There are videos and “how to” information to help you search Discovery Education more efficiently.

This video will walk you through the steps to create a Digital Breakout using Google Forms. 

This video will show you how to make a GIF using Google Slides and www.TallTweets.com