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Saturday, June 4, 2016

The Week in Review - Collaborate2Create

Good evening from Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix, Arizona. Today, I had the privilege to speak at the Collaborat2Create conference hosted by the Arizona Technology in Education Association and Glendale Elementary Schools. It was great to see so many teachers come out on a Saturday to connect and learn with each other.

Next week I'll be speaking in Amarillo and Abilene, Texas as well as Topeka, KS and Flagstaff, AZ. If you're going to be at any of those events, please say hello. Visit my work with me page to learn how to bring me to your school or conference.

 Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. A Fun Tool for Making Word Clouds in Fun Shapes
2. 15 Tools for Teaching History With Technology - A Handout
3. A Great Video Explanation of Onomatopoeia
4. 5 Ways to Create Mapped Stories
5. What Connects These Things? - A Search Lesson
6. Global Forest Change Explorer - Trends in Deforestation
7. 10 Sites and Apps for Vocabulary and Spelling Practice

Summer PD Opportunities With Me
Bring Me To Your School or Conference
Click here to learn about my professional development services. 

Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.
Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.
BoomWriter provides a fantastic tool for creating writing lessons. 
Storyboard That is my go-to tool for creating storyboards and cartoon stories.
Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.
PrepFactory offers a great place for students to prepare for SAT and ACT tests.
FrontRow offers adaptive online ELA and Math practice activities.  
Teach n Go is a comprehensive platform for teaching online courses.
The University of Maryland Baltimore County offers graduate programs for teachers.
Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.
EdTechTeacher is hosting host workshops in six cities in the U.S. in the summer.
Buncee offers a great tool for creating visual stories. 
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5 Things We Can Do to Help Students Learn & Work Independently

This morning I gave the opening keynote for the Collaborate2Create conference in Glendale, Arizona. The title of my talk was Preparing Students to Work Independently. The slides from that talk are embedded below.


If you would like to have me speak at your school or conference, please send me an email at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com or check out my work with me page.
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Open Source Software Explained by @CommonCraft

Open source software powers many of things that we see and do on the Internet and on our computers every day. In fact, if you're reading this on an Android device right now, you can thank the people who have contributed to the open source code making that happen. What is open source software? How is it supported? Why would someone open source a project? Those questions and more are answered in the latest video from Common Craft that I have embedded below.

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A Great Journal for History Teachers

The Library of Congress has quite a number of great resources for teachers and students. The Student Discovery Sets are favorite amongst my favorite resources that I've featured in the past. That collection of resources was recently updated by the LOC. The recent additions to the Student Discovery Sets include iBooks about the New Deal, scientific discovery, and weather forecasting through years.

Another great resource from the Library of Congress that history teachers should bookmark is The Teaching With Primary Sources Journal. The free online journal features activities for using primary source documents in primary and secondary classrooms. In addition to the teaching activities in the journal each issue includes a feature article about that issue's theme. The theme of the current issue is "historical and geographic thinking." After the feature article teachers will find links to related articles and related resources from the LOC and from around the Internet. The Teaching With Primary Sources Journal is published on a quarterly basis. The archives of the journal are available to browse and read online.
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