The National Archives to Host Online Professional Development This Summer

The National Archives offers many excellent resources for history teachers. For example, they recently published a new guide to understanding perspectives in primary sources. And this summer the National Archives will be hosting free online professional development events for teachers. 

The first event is on July 12th through the 14th. It is the Truman Library Teachers Conference. The theme of the conference is Presidential Character and Decision Making. The conference will include presentations from representatives of ten presidential libraries and museums. 

The second event is a series titled We Rule: Civics for All of US. This series has two sessions for elementary school teachers and two sessions for middle school/ high school teachers. Dates and details for each session are available here. 

The Three Branches Institute is the third of NARA's summer professional development opportunities for teachers. This event will focus on new ideas and resources for teaching about the three branches of government. The event will be held via Zoom on August 2nd through 4th. Registration is free, but you must register by July 17th. The registration form can be found here. 

Ziplet Now Integrates With Microsoft Teams

Ziplet was one of my favorite tools in 2021. Ziplet has a few features that make it an outstanding tool for conducting online exit ticket activities. First, there is a large library of premade exit ticket questions that you can use. Second, students can respond in a variety of ways including with a just an emoji. Third, you can respond to students' responses on an individual basis or group basis. Here's my tutorial on using Ziplet.

Ziplet has long had a Google Classroom integration. This week they announced a Microsoft Teams integration. Now you can import your Microsoft Teams class rosters to use in Ziplet. The complete directions for connecting Microsoft Teams to Ziplet can be seen here. 

Applications for Education
Ziplet fits in a gap between tools like Kahoot and Google Classroom. For that reason it could be a good tool for engaging students in discussions about assignments, course topics, or the general feeling of the class.