The Week in Review - Fun & Learning in Alberta

Good morning from the Edmonton International Airport. This week I had the opportunity to speak at the 21st Century Technology and Learning Symposium in Ponoka, Alberta. This was at least my 15th time visiting Alberta. As always, it was a great experience. A big thank you to my hosts and to everyone who came to one or more of my presentations. Meeting teachers from all over the world is one of the true pleasures that has come from writing maintaining this blog over the last eight years.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. 7 Tools for Adding Questions and Notes to Videos
2. Quick Rubric Provides an Easy Way to Craft Rubrics
3. 151 Practical Ed Tech Tips
4. Life on Minimum Wage - An Economics Lesson
5. Sorting TED-Ed Lessons by Grade Level
6. Coggle - Mind Mapping With Instant Messaging
7. My Reading Mapped is Back!

Would you like to have me speak at 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.

HelloTalk is a mobile community for learning a new language.
MasteryConnect offers a series of apps for identifying standards. 

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.

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.

Lesley University offers online education programs for teachers.

HelpTeaching offers online tests and printable resources for teachers.  

King University offers online M.Ed programs.

Google Keep for iOS - Organize Ideas and Task Lists

Google Keep is one of my favorite Android apps. I use it for setting reminders and creating task lists on my phone. Occasionally, I'll even use it to organize my thoughts in a series of sticky notes.

This week Google made Keep available as an iOS app. The iOS version of Keep works just like the Android and Chrome versions. On Google Keep you can create sticky notes to use simple text notes, as bookmarks, or as reminders with dates and times. You can color code your notes and arrange them by dragging and dropping them into any order you like. And like most things in your Google Account all of the notes in your Google Keep account will sync across all of your devices.


Applications for Education
Using the color-coding aspect of notes in Google Keep could be a nice way for students to construct an outline for a research paper or presentation.

Google Keep can be an excellent to-do list app for students. Students can color code notes, make lists, and share notes.

Best of the Web - Autumn 2015

This morning at the 21st Century Technology and Learning Symposium in Ponoka, Alberta I gave the latest version of my popular Best of the Web presentation. The presentation included some old favorites mixed with some new favorites. Some of the old favorites in the slides continue to update which is why they continue to be in this slide deck. The slides are embedded below.


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My Reading Mapped is Back!

At about this time two years ago I wrote a post about a great collection of Google Maps and Earth files called My Reading Mapped. Suddenly, six months ago it went offline. This morning I received an email from the developer of My Reading Mapped. The email was an announcement that he has relaunched the site.

On My Reading Mapped you will find KML files (AKA Google Maps & Earth files) for things like historical migration and trade routes, monarchies and republics, famous explorer and conqueror expeditions, and climate change patterns. More than 150 maps are available to download from My Reading Mapped.

Applications for Education
My Reading Mapped is a great resource for social studies teachers to bookmark and share with students. The maps offer an excellent alternative to reading out of a textbook because students can not only read the information they can also quickly explore the areas that they are reading about.

Sorting TED-Ed Lessons by Grade Level

Yesterday, I received an email from someone who saw my post about TED-Ed's The Writer's Workshop. She was wondering if there is a way to search TED-Ed videos by grade level. That's not a function available on YouTube, but it is a function available on the TED-Ed lessons website. To sort TED-Ed lessons by grade level go to the TED-Ed lessons page then choose "student." In the "student" drop-down menu you can choose elementary school, middle school, high school, or university. You can combine grade level sorting with content search.

Applications for Education
As TED-Ed's lesson database continues to grow, being able to sort by grade level will become more and more useful in our searches for content appropriate for our students.