Great Ideas for Using Scratch in Elementary Math - Best of 2016

As I usually do during this week, I'm taking some time off to relax, ski, and work on some long-term projects for the next year. This week I will be re-publishing the most popular posts of 2016. 

Last month I received an email from Jeffery Gordon in which he shared with me an online binary calculator that he created for his students. When I asked him for more information about the calculator and what he was teaching in general, he shared another cool resource with me. That resource is ScratchMath.

ScratchMath, written by Jeffery Gordon, is a free ebook filled with examples of using Scratch in elementary school math classes. The examples are Scratch models through which students can learn concepts dealing with place values, multiplication, and division. Each example includes the steps that need to be completed in Scratch to create models like a multiplication array, a divisibility checker, and factoring game.

For folks who are not familiar with Scratch, it is a free programming tool designed for students between the ages of eight and sixteen although it has been successfully used by younger and older students. Scratch uses a visual interface that helps students see how the parts of a program fit together to create a final product. Students create programs by dragging and dropping commands into a sequence. Programs that students create can vary from simple animations to complex multiplayer games. Visit the Scratch Educators page to learn more about how to use it in your classroom.

Control What's Projected With Chromecast or Extended Display - Best of 2016

As I usually do during this week, I'm taking some time off to relax, ski, and work on some long-term projects for the next year. This week I will be re-publishing the most popular posts of 2016.

Whether it is to quickly search for a video, find a bookmark on Pinterest, or dig-up a file in your Google Drive there are times when you'll find your computer hooked to a projector, but you don't want everything projected in front of your classroom. That's when using the "extended display" mode is handy. Extended display allows you to project one thing while looking at another on your computer's screen.

Let's say you want to find a in your Google Drive, but you don't want to project your entire Google Drive dashboard to your students. With extended display activated you could search within your Google Drive for your file then when you find it you can move its display from your computer's screen to your projector screen. Similarly, if you a Chromecast you can search in your web browser and or have multiple tabs open in your web browser then choose which specific tab to project.

How you extend your display varies slightly depending upon the operating system that you're using on your computer. Mac users can find directions here. Windows 7 users will want to follow these directions. Windows 8 users should follow these directions. Windows 10 users will find these directions helpful. Chromebook users can follow the directions here to connect and extend displays.

How to Create Online Collaborative Whiteboards - Best of 2016

As I usually do during this week, I'm taking some time off to relax, ski, and work on some long-term projects for the next year. This week I will be re-publishing the most popular posts of 2016. 

Stoodle is a free online collaborative whiteboard tool hosted by CK12. On Stoodle you can create a whiteboard space and invite others to use it with you. Registration is not required in order to use Stoodle. In the video embedded below I demonstrate the features of Stoodle.


Applications for Education
One of the best features of Stoodle is the option to import files from a wide variety of sources including Dropbox, Google Drive, and Evernote. Students could use Stoodle to import a file, highlight portions of it, draw on it, and chat about it in real-time as part of peer editing exercise. Stoodle could also be used for peer tutoring sessions on math problems as the whiteboard allows free hand drawing on iPads.

How to Enable Automatic Grading in Google Forms - Best of 2016

As I usually do during this week, I'm taking some time off to relax, ski, and work on some long-term projects for the next year. This week I will be re-publishing the most popular posts of 2016. 

The new automatic grading function in Google Forms seems to be a hit with many readers. I've received a bunch of questions about it in the last week. To answer many of those questions I created the short video that you can see embedded below and or on my YouTube channel.


In Google Forms & Sheets for Beginners you can learn many more ways to streamline processes and save time.