Smore has launched a new collaborative community called The Educator Hive. This awesome space allows you to share your flyer templates and adapt others as your own. The navigation makes it easy to sort by type of resource (presentation, newsletter, assignment, etc) to find exactly what you need to support classroom instruction. You can duplicate a flyer that you like, which copies a modifiable template into your account. You will need to have an educator’s account in order to have access to this community.

You’re tired. You should be. Fortunately, there are plenty of educators willing to share lessons and resources you need to keep students engaged and learning until the very last day of school. This happens to be an exciting time in our country with the upcoming Presidential elections and Summer Olympics. It’s the perfect opportunity to embed current event themes into review activities or end of the year research projects. Matt Miller from Ditch That Textbook has created some amazing end of the year review activities with an Olympic theme. He utilizes Google Drawings and Kahoot and gives detailed explanations as to how the review games work. Visit his blog post to read more.

PBS Learning Media created an entire site dedicated to teaching students the process of U.S. elections. It includes information outlining debates, an interactive map that shows the amount of electoral votes allotted to each state and the current location of the candidates, and virtual field trips to important destinations in Washington D.C. 

I’ve added both of these resources to my list of End of the Year Tech Ideas that you can view below. Let me know in the comments section if you have a great lesson or resource to add to the list.

Showcasing student work is a vital part of the content creation process. I’m constantly looking for the easiest way to curate examples or have students submit work without having to login to yet another account. My usual go-to tool is Padlet, however, sometimes it does not play nice with some of the tools I work with. Here is a specific example:

Screenshot of Voki uploaded to Padlet.

Recently, Sherry Philippus, librarian at Northwood Elementary, had her 4th grade students create Vokis on Lone Star Legends. She needed a way to embed them all in one place, but Padlet would not embed or link to the original Voki. Bindrs is a website I discovered about a year ago when looking for a way to curate Thinglinks along with a written description for each example. When I tested embedding a Voki in a Bindr, it worked perfectly! I’m including a quick video showing how to make it work. You need to make sure to check the box that says                “Use HTTPS to embed in a secure page.”

It would be wonderful if there were that one perfect tool that was compatible with all online platforms, but alas, it still eludes me. Here are the ones I use on a regular basis along with some comparisons of what I think are the most important features and examples. Hopefully this will help you match the perfect tool with your project.

Some additional information on the chart above:

1. Logging in for elementary students can be very time consuming and distract from the content of the lesson. If a website does not offer the ability to sign in with their district Google account, it’s a deal breaker for me. I say move on and find something else.
2. HSTRY, one of my most favorite sites ever, has new features in development. Here is what Thomas Ketchell shared with me the other day, “We will have collaboration integrated by the beginning of the next school year and hopefully the embedding of other content will be ready sooner than that over the next couple of months. You will be able to embed iframes and resources such as Thinglinks and Google Slides to a timeline!” I’m a happy girl.
3. I included uploading files in my chart, however, with GAFE (Google Apps for Education) this feature may not be as necessary as some of the others. 

The final grading period is here and Rock the Lab is open for business. All of the K-5 grade level buttons have been flipped over to the new lessons that support the 4th nine weeks grading period. All lessons follow the NEISD scope and sequence. If you are not a teacher within North East, check them out anyway. You might be able to use some of the lessons located in either the current or last 9 weeks. Just click on “9 Weeks” in the main navigation toolbar at the top. I will be working on the rest of the lessons over summer break. Many of the activities require student accounts, so please check out the teacher section of the website for tutorials. Please let me know if you have any questions or need in person assistance.  

May the lab be with you.

Seriously? It’s February already?

I’ve updated my list of February themed lessons that support Groundhog Day, Black History Month, President’s Day, Valentines Day and more! Hopefully you will find a lesson that will work for you.