TARA - A Planning Tool for New and Veteran Teachers

TARA is a new tool designed to help you streamline your lesson planning process. It was designed by a couple of teachers for teachers. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to see a live demo of TARA. There was one feature of it that really stood out to me as something that can be useful to new teachers as well as those of us who have been around for a while. 

In TARA there is a resource bank that you can access while planning your lessons. The resource bank includes collections of resources from around the web. That's not the part that grabbed my attention (lots of services have similar collections). What grabbed my attention was inside the resource bank there is what I would call a "strategy bank." That strategy bank could be useful for new teachers who are looking for a little guidance on developing a lesson. The strategy bank could also be useful for experienced teachers who are looking for some inspiration for new ways to teach a favorite topic. 

The TARA resource bank for strategies includes links to templates and resources that you can duplicate, modify, and store in your free TARA account. Take a look at my screenshot below to see what it looked like when I went looking for ideas for class discussion openers and closers. 

Applications for Education
There are many more things that you could do within the TARA environment including creating your own collections of resources, managing to-do lists, and crafting full lesson plans. In the future I may spend more time exploring those. For now, I think the resource bank with its associated strategies bank is a feature that makes TARA useful for all teachers who are looking for some new strategy ideas.

Broadcast Google Slides Directly to Your Students' Computers

A few weeks ago I wrote about and published a video about using Display Note to broadcast your computer screen directly to your students' screens. This week Display Note published some updates that teachers who use Google Classroom and Google Slides are sure to appreciate. 

Display Note now offers a free Chrome extension that you can use to broadcast your Google Slides directly to your students computers. With the extension installed not only can you broadcast your slides directly to your students computers, you can also annotate your slides and students will see those annotations appear on their screens. 

The default option for sharing your screen through Display Note is to give students a six digit code to access your broadcast. Entering the right code can be a little tricky for some students and can slow down the process of getting everyone on the same page. That's why Display Note now offers a new Google Classroom integration. With that integration in place you simply put a link in Google Classroom and students click it to access your broadcast to view whatever you're sharing from your screen. Watch this video made by Display Note to see how the integration works. 

And if you're interested in seeing how Display Note works without a Chrome extension, watch my video that I published last month. 

An Interactive Map of the Roman Empire

A few years ago I wrote about a must-bookmark resource from Stanford University for history teachers and students. That resource is called ORBIS and it has been updated since the last time that I wrote about it. ORBIS is Stanford University's Geospatial Network Model of the Roman Empire. 

On ORBIS students can calculate the distance and travel times between hundreds of settlements in the Roman Empire. The calculations happen according to the modes of travel that would have been used during the time of the Roman Empire's greatest height. For example, I calculated the time and cost to travel by foot, wagon, and boat between Roma and Londonium in the summer and winter. The calculations include the cost of feeding donkeys along the way. 

In this new video I provide an introduction to using ORBIS. 

Applications for Education
While you could certainly have students use Google Earth to map distances between settlements in the Roman Empire, ORBIS is a step above that because students can calculate travel times and distances according the modes of transportation that were available during the Roman Empire.

New Google Docs Features You Might Have Missed

This spring (fall for my friends in the southern hemisphere) Google has added some new features to Google Docs. I've written about a couple of them in the last month. There are others that I haven't covered until I published this new video. 

Watch Five New Google Docs Features You Might Have Missed to learn about the following:

• Responding to documents and comments with emojis.
• How to add a dropdown menu into a document.
• How to use the new table formatting options. 
• How to change page orientation for sections of documents. 
• The new extensions dropdown menu. 

Watch this video to learn more about dropdown menus.

Watch this video to learn more about table formatting in Google Docs.

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.