Monday, March 2, 2015

Educational Games, Printable Resources, and More

Disclosure: MrNussbaum.com is advertising on FreeTech4Teachers.com this month.

Greg Nussbaum is an elementary school teacher in Virginia who has developed a large website full of games, online tools like map generators, and printable materials for elementary school students and teachers. Take a look at MrNussbaum.com and you'll see resources organized by subject and grade level. Students can play the games without registering on the site. The site has a section dedicated to iPad-friendly and Android tablet-friendly games.

MrNussbaum XTEND is a companion service to MrNussbaum.com. MrNussbaum XTEND is free for teachers to register for. Upon registration, you can register three classes and 120 students FREE as well. You can manage your students' accounts including passwords. When you register you get immediate and permanent access to seven of the programs which serve as plug-ins. One example of a plug-in Spelling Central where you can enter spelling lists to generate and distribute interactive activities to your students.

Another plug-in found in MrNussbaum extend is called Graphmaster. In Graphmaster your and or students can create polls to be answered by classmates. Poll results can be analyzed by MrNussbaum and turned into instant online, recordable assessments with the click of a button. For reading practice take a loot at the plug-in called Cloze Reading, allows you to deploy 50 pre-made, grade-leveled online reading exercises to students. You can also use Cloze Reading make your own activities. Beyond the seven free plug-ins additional programs are available as subscriptions.

Because you manage your students' accounts in MrNussbaum XTEND you can also keep track of how they are doing with the activities that you distribute to them through your account.

View Webs of Related Search Terms on WikiMindMap

Earlier today on the FreeTech4Teachers Facebook page someone asked if there is a way to create a mind map of Wikipedia entries. WikiMindMap.org does exactly that. On the site you can enter a search term and almost instantly see a web of related topics. In the video embedded below I provide a short overview of WikiMindMap.org


Applications for Education
WikiMindMap.org can be a great tool for students who need a little bit of help altering their search terms. WikiMindMap.org can also be helpful to students who need to narrow the focus of their research from a broad topic to narrower subtopic.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

February's Most Popular Posts on Free Technology for Teachers

Good evening from Woodstock, Maine where my dogs and I enjoyed the first day of March by spending some time in the snowy woods. All three of us are tired from our time in the fresh air. I hope you all had a great weekend too.

As I do at the end of every month I've compiled a list of the most popular posts of the month. This list is ranked according to the number of views that each post received during the month.

Here are the most popular posts in February, 2015:
1. 10 Good Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms Add-ons for Teachers
2. How to Create Online Collaborative Whiteboards
3. CK-12 Launches a New Collection of Elementary School Math Resources
4. More Fun With Math in Pictures
5. 5 TED-Ed Lessons on How the Human Body Works
6. Insert Graphs and Equations Into Google Docs and Forms
7. Speech to Text in Google Documents
8. 5 Videos on Making Flipped Video Lessons
9. 5 Browser-based Tools for Creating Audio Recordings
10. How to Create Flashcards from a Google Spreadsheet

Registration is open for the spring and summer sections of my popular online courses Getting Going With GAFE and Blogs & Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders. Graduate credits are available for both courses. People who are subscribed to the PracticalEdTech.com newsletter receive a discount on registration.

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.
Versal is a great tool for building interactive online course components.
MidWest Teachers Institute offers online graduate courses for teachers.
PresentationTube provides a good way to use PowerPoint to create flipped lessons.
Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.
MasteryConnect provides a network for teachers to share and discover Common Core assessments.
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.
SeeSaw is a great iPad app for creating digital portfolios.

How to Search Google Books, Scholar, and News Archive

Last week in my post about the Google News Newspaper Archive I mentioned the value of getting students to use search tools other than Google.com. By using search tools like Google Books and Google Scholar students often find resources that they wouldn't have discovered had they simply used Google.com for their searches. The three videos embedded below provide overviews of how to use Google Books, Google Scholar, and the Google News Newspaper Archive.





OnGuard Online - Concise Internet Safety Videos from the FTC

OnGuard Online is a series of sixteen videos from the Federal Trade Commission. The videos provide concise lessons about topics in Internet Safety. I discovered the series while looking for a video about public wi-fi security (or lack thereof) to share with a friend of mine who spends a lot of time on a local coffee shop's wi-fi network. Besides wi-fi network security OnGuard Online covers topics like avoiding malware, recognizing phishing scams, and responsible sharing on social media. The video is embedded below.


Applications for Education
The OnGuard Online video about wi-fi security is a good one for students who are taking school-issued laptops, Chromebooks, or tablets home with them and eventually using them on public wi-fi networks.