A Toolkit for Libraries Providing STEM Outreach Activities contains directions for ten hands-on STEM activities that can be done with elementary school students. The list of activities that you will find in the toolkit include rubber band helicopters, DIY pattern blocks, and Puzzling Packets (an activity for explaining how the Internet functions).
A Toolkit for Libraries Providing STEM Outreach Activities includes directions for each of the ten activities, vocabulary lists for each activity, links to additional supporting resources, and suggested strategies for extending each lesson. And for those who would like some ideas on how to get students and parents excited about these activities, there is a page of suggested marketing strategies at the end of toolkit.
Take a look at the links below for even more STEM resources:
Writing yesterday's blog post about my favorite alternative to Quizlet prompted me to look back at some other options for creating online flashcards. Should you find yourself looking for some free and easy ways for students to make online flashcards, give the following options a try.
Flippity's flashcard template lets you create multimedia flashcards by simply entering terms into a Google Sheet. Your flashcards can include audio, video, images, and text. In this video I demonstrate how to create a set of multimedia flashcards by using Flippity's Google Sheets template. A bonus of using Flippity is that, as I point out at the end of the video, when you create a set of flashcards with Flippity's template you're also creating matching activities and practice quizzes at the same time.
Easy Notecards is a free tool for creating text-based and image-based flashcards. What makes Easy Notecards a little different from other notecard and flashcard services is that you can search for public notecard sets according to textbook topics and titles. This is possible because when an Easy Notecards user creates a set of cards he or she can tag the cards with a book title and chapter within that book. For example, if I am making a set of cards based on chapter four of the U.S. History textbook The Americans I would tag that set with "The Americans, Chapter 4." The cards that you create and or find on Easy Notecards can be used in five ways. They can be used as traditional flashcards that you simply flip back and forth. They can be used in a matching game. The cards can be used in a quiz game. Your cards can be used in an online bingo game. And the cards can be printed.
There are more than 300 flashcard templates in Canva's design gallery. In that gallery you'll find templates for making flashcards for math, spelling, geography, and more. And all of the templates can be modified to fit your needs. In this short video I demonstrate how to use Canva to create printable math flashcards. While watching the video pay attention to my trick for making all of the cutting lines exactly the same.
After a summer hiatus Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I will be resuming our Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions webinar series tomorrow evening at 5pm PT/ 8pm ET. Join us for this fun and free half hour event in which we answer all kinds of questions about educational technology stuff.
Register here to join us for tomorrow's live session. And take a look at past sessions right here. Join us and ask your questions live or send them to us in advance. We'll do our best to answer anything you throw at us.
Three times in the last week I've answered emails from readers who were seeking suggestions for alternatives to Quizlet. Each time my answer was to try Knowt.
Knowt does more than just flashcards. It also creates practice quizzes for you. The best part of that feature is the ability to pick a target date for learning the material in a set of flashcards. That target date is then used to create a schedule of practice activities.
Watch my short video that is embedded below to learn more about how Knowt works and why it's a great alternative to Quizlet.
Last week I published a blog post about the new games feature of Quizalize. That feature enables you to take any quiz that you've written or any of the premade quizzes in Quizalize and turn it into one of six arcade-style games for your students to play individually or in teams. The video demo that I initially made for that blog post didn't come out quite as well as I would have liked. So this morning I created a new version of it.
In this short video I demonstrate how to use the new Quizalize games feature. Specifically, I demonstrate the teacher and student perspectives of playing the Kleo the Koala game in team format. The quiz that I used to create the game is an icebreaker quiz that Quizalize provides in all teacher accounts.
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