The Week in Review - On the Road

Sketch notes about my video workshop.

Good evening from Arizona where I'm relaxing after a great week of speaking at conferences in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Today, I had the honor of giving the closing keynote at the Native Innovation Education Conference in Flagstaff, Arizona. That conference was the second one this week that offered workshops on using technology to help teachers and students improve their physical fitness. It's great to see that trend.

I was on the road all week which is why I re-posted some of the most popular posts of the 2015-16 school year. New posts will resume on Sunday.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. An Illustrated Mathematics Glossary
2. 7 Blogging Platforms for Teachers Compared and Ranked
3. Good Tools for Learning to Type
4. 10 Good Video Sources for Social Studies Teachers and Students
5. 10 Resources for Teaching With Primary Sources
6. Great Google Drive Add-ons & Chrome Extensions for Teachers
7. 5 Things We Can Do to Help Students Learn & Work Independently

Summer PD Opportunities With Me

• Take a look at the online workshops I'm hosting throughout the spring and summer.
• The Practical Ed Tech Chromebook and BYOD Camps are sold out! Email me to get on the waiting list. 

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. 

Triventy - Collaboratively Create Online Games and Save the Results

Triventy is a free online quiz game platform that is similar in concept to platforms like Kahoot and Socrative. Triventy differentiates itself from the crowd by allowing you to accept question suggestions from students. You can see an overview of Triventy in this video that I published in January.

This week Triventy add a frequently requested feature. That feature is the ability to download a history of responses to quiz questions. At the end of every activity you can now download a spreadsheet of your students' responses to questions in your quiz game.

Applications for Education
One of the neat features of Triventy for students is that they can ask for a hint or to have an answer choice eliminated. Students can also see an explanation of the answer to each question.

Teachers can invite students to add questions to their games. Typically, as a homework assignment before running the game in class. This creates a comprehensive learning experience in which students are both ‘players’ and ‘tutors’ who share their knowledge with you and their classmates.

Teach Your Monster to Read - Now on Android and iPad

Teach Your Monster to Read is a great series of online games designed to help students improve the speed and accuracy with which they recognize letters and sounds. The website gets its name from the friendly monster avatars that students help learn to read through the course of the games.

The Teach Your Monster to Read games are designed to help students improve the speed and accuracy with which they recognize letters, sounds, and word. The games have eight levels (or islands as they're called in the game) each containing four activities. Students play the game as a friendly monster avatar. On each island students can earn prizes for their monsters and customize the look of their monsters.

This week the folks who have developed Teach Your Monster to Read announced that the games are coming to the Android and iOS platforms. You can download the Android app now and you can request access to the beta version of the iOS app now by requesting access.