Taking Shape: Drawing Your Own Icons - Webinar Recording

This afternoon Tony Vincent gave a great presentation as part of the Practical Ed Tech Creativity Conference. His presentation was all about creating your own icons. In his presentation Tony explained why teachers might want to make their own icons, the benefits of making their own icons, and how the process fits into classrooms. Of course, he also showed us how we can create our own icons by using the tools that are available in Google Slides. If you missed his presentation, it's now available to view here.

Here's how Tony described his presentation:

Icons are an extremely effective form of communication. They are simple pictures that are immediately recognizable and universally understood. Icons tend to be simple drawings and are typically one color, making them easy to design if you break them down into shapes. Sure, there are millions of icons you can download, but there are advantages to making them yourself. When you draw your own, you can fill it with any color. And, you can customize your icon—you can change it to exactly meet your needs. Plus, it feels good to be creative with your visuals!

ScriptSlide - A Google Slides Add-on for Pacing Presentations

ScriptSlide is an interesting Google Slides add-on that takes the speaker notes in your Google Slides and displays them in a teleprompter-like screen that you can control with your phone. That might sound complicated, but it's not.

Here's how ScriptSlide works. First, write your presentation with speaker notes as you normally would. Second, enable the ScriptSlide add-on and click the "open ScriptSlide" button that appears in the sidebar. Third, scan the QR code provided by ScriptSlide to control the flow of the script as it appears on your computer's screen. Here's a little video that demonstrates how those three parts work together.


Applications for Education
At first I thought of ScriptSlide as being a tool for typical teleprompter settings like making a video in which you're speaking into a camera. Then I tried the remote control aspect and realized that it could be great for pacing the delivery of notes that you display in your classroom. Just tap the "next" button on your phone when using ScriptSlide to advance the notes that you're displaying in class.

Making Simple Wearable Electronics - Webinar Recording

Last night Denise Wright gave a great presentation as part of the Practical Ed Tech Creativity Conference. Her presentation was Making Simple Wearable Electronics. In the presentation she shared a bunch of the wearable electronics projects that her middle school students have done. Some of the projects that she shared were making pedometers and smartwatches, a jean jacket that can play music, and electronic greeting cards. The recording of Denise's presentation is now available to view here.

Coding + Drones = 100% Engagement - Webinar Recording

Yesterday evening as part of the Practical Ed Tech Creativity Conference Karin Knapik-Cloutier gave an energetic presentation about using drones with her middle school students. If you missed her presentation, the recording is now available to view here.

Here's how Karin described her presentation:

Create multidisciplinary projects that teach students coding as well as the 4 C’s of critical-thinking,creativity, collaboration and communication. Using TELLO drones and free apps that run on IOS, Android and as a Chrome extension you can teach coding to students in elementary through high school.

You can get a copy of Karin's slides here.

How to Create Interactive Images With Classtools

A couple of days ago I wrote about a new tool from Classtools called Image Annotator. It does exactly what it says on the tin. I made the following short video to demonstrate how easy it is to use the Classtools Image Annotator. In the video I demonstrate annotating an image of a map, but you can use it to annotate any PNG, JPG, or GIF image that you have the rights to use.