Writing Sparks - Writing Prompts for Students

Writing Sparks is a new writing platform developed by the same folks that created the popular Night Zookeeper platform. Writing Sparks provides you with timed writing prompts to share with your students. As a teacher you simply go to the Writing Sparks website then choose an age range and a type of writing prompt to give to your students.

After choosing a writing prompt category on Writing Sparks you should choose the length of time that you want your students to spend writing in response to the prompt. Once those three steps are complete you can project the prompt onto your whiteboard or just read the prompt aloud to your students. Writing Sparks times the activity. Time segments for discussion and brainstorming are included in the Writing Sparks timing.

Students can complete the Writing Sparks activities by writing on paper, in a Word or Google Doc, or on the Writing Sparks website. I like the option of having them write on the Writing Sparks website because it will provide students with a template that they can use while writing. For example, if students are responding to a "story" prompt they will complete a template that asks them to include the nouns, verbs, and adjectives they will use in their stories.

Writing Sparks does not require you or your students to register in order to use the site. If your students use the Writing Sparks writing tool, they will have to download their work as PDFs in order to save it and share it.

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo and David Kapuler for the tip about Writing Sparks. 

DIY Augmented Reality - 3 Ways To Use It In School

Disclosure: Metaverse is a new advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com 

Metaverse is an amazing platform that brings that for the first time enables anyone to create rich augmented reality experiences. In many ways the capabilities within Metaverse remind me of the early days of Minecraft (before it was sold to Microsoft) except that instead of creating games and experiences that only exist on your computer's screen Metaverse lets you create experiences that exist in augmented reality. What does that mean? It means that can create games, quests, and other activities that are completed by locating digital artifacts in a physical world. In other words, you could create your own educational version of Pokemon Go.

Here are three ways you can use Metaverse in your school:

1. Create augmented reality scavenger hunts for historical landmarks in your community. You can make this as simple or as complex an activity as you want it to be. Start by giving players a clue to the first landmark then when they arrive at the landmark they can use the Metaverse app to see if they're in the right place, to learn more about landmark (you can make videos and animations play when people get to the right place), and answer questions to get a clue for the location of the next landmark.
   
2. Have students develop augmented reality choose-your-own adventure stories. Have students first write their stories and the possible paths that readers can take in the story. Then have students use Metaverse Studio to put the story into an interactive format that readers can follow on their phones. In the process of using Metaverse Studio students will have to verify that the logic blocks that they use will correctly lead followers from one scenario to the next. Students' stories can be location based or be location-independent.
   
3. This last idea is a fun one for the first day or school or any other time that you need an ice-breaker activity. Google Vision is one of the logic blocks within the Metaverse Studio. With Google Vision in Metaverse Studio you can create an app that detects if someone is smiling or not. See this logic block illustrated in the video below then read on for my idea on how to use this as an ice-breaker.

• I think it would be fun to create an ice-breaker activity that has people snap a picture of a person's face either smiling or not smiling. Then have the app prompt the user to ask, "why are you smiling on the first day of school?" or "why are you frowning? Can I do something to make you smile?"  

Still not sure how Metaverse works? Check out this playlist of videos or check out one of the free webinars for teachers that are offered through the Metaverse Teachers group on Facebook. 

Disclosure: I tried Metaverse earlier this summer on my own, loved it, and brought it to a couple of workshops. Since then Metaverse approached me about advertising on FreeTech4Teachers.com and I was excited to help them reach more teachers. Everything you read here is my writing. 

Three Countdown Calendars For Your Classroom Blog

In my workshops about developing blogs and websites for classrooms I always make the point that you should add some content that will appeal to all students and parents when they visit the homepage. This content can include links to handouts, a calendar of due dates, and current announcements. Another item that you can add without taking up too much space is a countdown timer to an important date like the start of a vacation. Here are three countdown calendars that you can add to your blog or website (note, none of these work in the new version of Google Sites).

It's Almost is the simplest of the countdown calendars in this list. To create a countdown calendar just go to the site and complete the phrase, "It's Almost..." and then select a date. You can get the embed code for your calendar by clicking "share this" below the running countdown that is displayed immediately after you choose the countdown target name and date. It is important to note that when you embed it into your blog, you must display it at a size of at least 275px wide or it will not work.

TickCounter is another simple countdown calendar service. It offers a little more customization than It's Almost offers. You can customize the colors for the display title and the numerical display in the countdown. When you embed a TickCounter countdown calendar into your blog, it is automatically resized to fit in the space allotted by your blog's template.

CountingDownTo offers the most customization options of the three countdown calendars in this list. You can customize the layout design and the color scheme for your countdown calendar's display. And the display is mobile-friendly. The downside to CountingDownTo is that it does add a watermark to your embedded calendar unless you subscribe to a CountingDownTo paid plan.

Applications for Education
When I was in the third grade my teacher, Mrs. Turkington, had two countdown calendars on the wall near the chalkboard. One calendar represented the number of days left in the school year and the other represented the number of days until our next "special event" (those events were birthdays, field trips, or school assemblies). Today, Mrs. Turkington could put those calendars on a classroom blog's homepage.

(Side note, Mrs. Turkington is now retired and living in Florida. We became Facebook friends 30 years after she was my teacher).

If I Don't Like It, I Don't Write About It

Every morning I receive at least ten pitches from PR agents promising that a company offers something that is new, unique, revolutionary, or better than some other service that I have reviewed. 90% of these emails don't get more than twenty seconds of my attention. Of the ten percent that I do consider, perhaps half lead to me writing a blog post. This is why you don't see me writing negative reviews of a service or product.

Writing a negative review of a service or product isn't a great use of my time or your time. I focus my effort on bringing you the services and products that can help you and your students. So if I don't write about something, I probably didn't like. The exception to that being that there are some products I really like and actually pay for, but don't fit the editorial guidelines of Free Technology for Teachers.

Reminder - These Are Attachments You Should Never Open

This morning as I sifted through the mountain of spammy PR emails that greet me every morning, I noticed one email that had the subject line "Secure Document from X." (X = person whose name I didn't recognize). I recently bought a new home so I have had a lot of secure attachments from my realtor, the bank, and insurance company lately. But this secure attachment didn't seem right. See my screenshot and explanation below.

Clues that the attachment is a phishing attempt/ scam:
1. The body of the email just said "see attachment." I, of course, didn't open the attachment. I am not inclined to open random attachments from people I don't know.
2. I was BCC'd on the email. No one sending me a legitimate attachment isn't going to BCC it to me.

Obviously, I reported this email at a spam/ phishing attempt and then I promptly deleted it.

On a related note, Common Craft offers a great video that explains phishing scams and how to recognize them.



Disclosure: I have an in-kind relationship with Common Craft.