Latest education updates from around the world
All About Venice – Another Post Inspired by my Daughters
A few days ago while driving home from seeing a community theater’s musical production of The Little Mermaid one of my daughters asked me “why does Venice have canals instead of roads?” It was a question that I was happy to answer. The question also inspired me to revisit some items on the topic that I new were in my blog’s archives, somewhere. Here’s my updated list of resources for teaching and learning about Venice.
And head here for more posts inspired by the questions my daughters ask me.
Venice Backstage is […]
Five New Padlet Features to Try
Along with Google Workspace tools, Padlet is one of the educational technology tools that I’ve used the most consistently over the last fifteen years. I’ve used it for everything from hosting online brainstorming sessions to digital mapping to distraction-free YouTube viewing and a whole lot more. Padlet recently add five new features for the new school year.
The new features of Padlet are demonstrated in the two new videos that are embedded below. The new features include:
An AI drawing tool.Scheduling notes.PollingGoogle Drive integrationAutomated content moderation
ClassHook: How To Use it to Teach
ClassHook makes video-based learning fun and interactive with ease.
Meta Appears to be Readying a Quest 3 Charging Dock to Streamline Usage
A new charging dock from Meta, apparently for Quest 3, has been revealed through regulatory certification. As with Quest Pro’s dock, the goal of the new dock is certainty to streamline headset usage by encouraging users to keep it charged and always up-to-date.
Friction in VR—all of the clunk associated with putting a thing on your head, fitting it, then, going through menus to get to the software you want to use—is a tough challenge the industry has been slowly chipping away at over many years.
One major piece of that friction comes with keeping headsets charged and up-to-date. It’s […]
WEBINAR: How District Leaders Can Design a Holistic Plan for Student Safety and Wellbeing
How districts can manage student wellness proactively
WEBINAR: How to Harness Data to Maximize Student Outcomes
Use research-backed practices to develop the whole child, including their social and emotional growth.
WEBINAR: How District Leaders Can Create Equitable STEAM Programs to Engage All Students
Effective ways for getting students excited about STEAM learning.
WEBINAR: Solutions for Acceleration, Not Remediation
How to remediate schema, not isolated skills, and develop a growth mindset
Bring the Joy Back to School With Book Creator
Disclosure: Book Creator is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com
Book Creator has been one of my go-to multimedia creation tools for nearly a decade. For back-to-school season they’ve created a hub of resources arranged around the theme of bringing joy back to school. Amongst many excellent resources in that hub you’ll find registration links for a handful of free webinars.
Some of the webinars include Differentiation for Lesson Planning Using AI, Cultivating Kindness, and Creative Back-to-School Activities. If you don’t want to wait […]
Creating A District-Wide Student Wellbeing Survey
How the School District of Philadelphia uses its student wellbeing survey to support diversity, equity, and inclusion
Experiential Learning Simply Explained
Experiential learning is one of the key pedagogical concepts that informs the modern philosophy of teaching. Defined by the process of learning through doing, reflection, and active engagement, experiential learning takes learners beyond traditional classroom boundaries, immersing them in real-world scenarios. But what exactly is experiential learning? How does it manifest in practice? What are its key characteristics? These questions have driven my exploration and research into this fascinating subject.
In this comprehensive post, I dive into the heart of experiential learning, uncovering its various dimensions. Starting with a detailed definition, based on seminal works like Kolb’s (1984) experiential […]
Following Single-player Successes, Polyarc Announces First PvP Game ‘Glassbreakers – Champions of Moss’
Following a tease earlier this year, Polyarc Games has announced its first PvP game, Glassbreakers – Champions of Moss, based on its acclaimed single player adventure games Moss (2019) and Moss: Book II (2022).
Moss and Moss: Book II exemplify third-person VR adventure games, giving the player control of a mouse named Quill which travels through the fantastical world of Moss. Uniquely to third-person VR, the player isn’t just the person behind a screen, but actually exists within the game and can interact with Quill and the environment to solve puzzles and aid in combat.
Alongside great design, art, and polish, the successful execution of […]
Teaching with Holograms: The Next Level of Immersive Edtech
Hologram lessons outperformed virtual reality and web lessons on 3D printing at the Florida Institute of Technology.
Is BoomWriter Good For Teaching? Tips & Tricks
BoomWriter helps students publish their writing to encourage talent to flourish.
Ten Books That Shaped America
Just like I do with my weekly newsletter, C-SPAN Classroom sends their weekly newsletter on Sunday evenings (Eastern Time). When I read it last night I learned about a new C-SPAN series that sounds great! It’s called Books That Shaped America and it is presented by C-SPAN in conjunction with the Library of Congress.
Books That Shaped America is a ten-part weekly series that is beginning on September 18th. Each episode will feature one of ten books from American history that have shaped and impacted American society. The […]
18 Google Keep Tutorials for Teachers
A couple of weeks ago I published a short tutorial on how to use Google Keep to scan and search handwritten notes. Publishing that tutorial prompted me to update my playlist of tutorials on ways that teachers and students can use Google Keep. The full playlist of 18 Google Keep tutorials can be seen here on my YouTube channel. Some highlights from the playlist are embedded below.
Don’t Let the Graphs Fool You
Tools like Canva, Adobe Express, and even good ol’ PowerPoint make it incredibly easy to quickly create good looking graphs. But as Randy Krum points out in his book, Cool Infographics, a graphic that looks good isn’t necessarily a good graphic. In fact, many times a graphic is made to look good in order to distract from the reality of the information presented within it. That’s a point that is made in a few ways in a TED-Ed lesson titled How to Spot a Misleading Graph.
By watching […]
How to Create and Share Canva Templates
In the winter of 2021-22 my kids and I conducted a winter bird survey at our house. Because my kids were little and because I thought it would be fun, I made a little observation journal that we put on our refrigerator. Last winter we did it again and I shared our observation template with a couple of friends who wanted to use it with their young children.
Zones of Regulation Posters For Classrooms
Emotions and their management play a critical role in the educational environment. As a seasoned educator and researcher, I understand the profound impact that a well-regulated classroom can have on a child’s learning experience. That’s why zones of regulation posters have become such an integral tool in today’s classrooms.
But with an abundance of options out there, finding the right poster that resonates with your classroom’s needs can be a challenge. That’s where I’ve stepped in. Drawing from my years of experience and a keen eye for what works in real-world educational settings, I have meticulously curated a list […]
Three Google Slides Accessibility Features You Should Know How to Enable
As the new school year approaches it’s a good idea to review some of the easily overlooked, but important features of some of the tools we use the most. Google Slides is one of those tools that I use a lot and has a lot of features that are easy to overlook. For example, unless you use them on a regular basis the accessibility features in Google Slides are easy to forget about. In a new video that is embedded below I provide and overview of three Google Slides accessibility features you should know how to […]
Audio, Assessments, and Summer Cold – The Week in Review
Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising on what should be a great summer day. Fortunately, I’m feeling much better than I did throughout the week as a struggled with a miserable cold that had me sleeping a lot more than normal and exercising a lot less than normal. I did get out for a few walks with my dogs. On one of those walks we stopped to help a salamander cross the road (to get to the other side, obviously).
I hope that you had a great week. If you started school this week, […]
How Much Do Teachers Make in the USA? Latest Stats
How Much Do Teachers Make in the USA? is the topic of our blog post today!
In the diverse educational landscape of the United States, the question of “how much do teachers make in the USA?” is a frequent and fundamental one. With a wide array of schools, curricula, and teaching methods, teachers’ salary figures can vary significantly across states and levels of education.
Understanding these numbers is essential for educators planning their careers, policymakers aiming to incentivize the profession, and communities working to appreciate and support their local teachers.
In this comprehensive exploration, we dive into the […]
Seasoned VR Devs Raise $1.6 Million for New Studio Focused on Virtual Pet Experience
Windup Minds is a newly announced XR studio which has raised a $1.6 million seed investment for immersive experiences focused on virtual pets and companions.
Windup Minds was founded earlier this year by Bernard Yee, Ben Vance, Amy Conchie, and Stefani Swiatkowski. The quartet of seasoned VR developers have collectively worked at Oculus, WeVR, Microsoft, EA, and more, with works under their belt like Oculus demo projects Bogo, Toy Box, and First Steps, along with mainstream gaming projects like Destiny, Plants vs. Zombies, and Dishonored.
The quartet announced this week it raised $1.6 million in seed funding to get the […]
By Request – Teacher and Student Views of Joining Google Classroom
Twice this week readers emailed me to ask if I had any tutorials about how students join Google Classroom. I didn’t have a current one so I made one.
In my new video that is embedded below I demonstrate three ways to invite students to join Google Classroom and the three ways that students can join your Google Classroom classes.
Video – Teacher and Student Views of Joining Google Classroom
Which method of inviting students is best depends on you and your students. If your students have previous experience with Google Classroom and they have active […]
How to Use AI in Google Slides
In case you haven’t heard, AI is the buzzword of the year in education and technology. If you haven’t tried any AI tools yet, Google Slides has one that it’s easy to use and that you might actually want to use on a regular basis.
The “insert images” menu in Google Slides now has an option titled “help me visualize.” When you select that option you can type a description of the kind of image you would like to add to your slides. Once you’ve done that give Google twenty seconds and it will generate a small […]