Latest education updates from around the world
A Brief Introduction to micro:bit and MakeCode
On Tuesday morning I went to micro:bit workshop hosted by Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez. It was a ton of fun. My only complaint, I wish it was longer because I wanted to keep playing with my new friends as we explored and tinkered together.
On Tuesday evening I shared some of my notes from the workshop. In those notes I included a short video introduction to micro:bit. If you missed it, I’ve included it below. During Gary and Sylvia’s workshop we worked with Microsoft MakeCode to program the micro:bit. It’s a block programming […]
The Most Popular Posts of the Month
Good evening from New Hampshire where I’m having a little R&R with my family after a very busy week and a busy month. The sun came out just in time for us to enjoy some time outdoors before bedtime. As I write this my kids have just fallen asleep and I will be doing the same just as soon as I finish this blog post.
As I do at the end of every month, I’ve compiled a list of the most popular posts of the month.
‘The Wizards’ Studio Brings Mind-bending Cubic Puzzles to Quest 2 in ‘Mindset’, Trailer Here
Carbon Studio, the developers behind Crimen – Mercenary Tales, The Wizards, and Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Tempestfall, released a new narrative-driven VR game that’s packed with logic puzzles and what the studio calls “a bizarre story taking place at the very core of your subconscious.”
Called Mindset, the Quest 2 exclusive makes good use of Quest 2’s hand-tracking tech, letting players tackle the game’s complex cubic puzzles either with Touch controllers or with their bare hands. Here, you’ll test your intelligence, dexterity, and deduction skills on an array of cubic puzzles.
Here’s how Carbon Studio describes the head-scratching action:
‘SPACE BALL’ Fuses ‘Gorilla Tag’ Movement with ‘Rocket League’ Action
SPACE BALL is a sports game currently free on Quest that mashes up Gorilla Tag’s movement scheme and the fast-paced gameplay of Rocket League. Indie VR studio 31 Labs announced it’s bringing the game to PC VR headsets next month.
The competitive multiplayer game offers up a number of modes, including Basketball, Soccer and Handball modes, letting players can go 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3 online, or play against bots to practice their skills.
Gorilla Tag and its knuckle-dragging locomotion scheme has definitely influenced Space Ball too, as players move about the field by pushing off the arena floor, also […]
Mindful Tech Integration: Unplug to Reconnect
Mindful tech integration emphasizes the power of intentional connection.
Tech & Learning Announces Winners of Best of Show at ISTE 2023
This annual awards celebrates the products, and businesses behind each one, who are transforming education in schools around the world.
test
‘Horizon Call of the Mountain’ Behind-the-scenes – Insights & Artwork from Guerrilla & Firesprite
It’s a rare treat when we get a VR game with the scope and scale of Horizon Call of the Mountain, let alone to see a much-loved IP reimagined specifically for the medium. Made exclusively for PSVR 2, the game was built collaboratively between studios Guerrilla Games and Firesprite, both part of PlayStation Studios. We sat down to speak with Alex Barnes, Game Director at Firesprite, to learn more about how Horizon Call of the Mountain came to be and how it turned out to be one of our best-rated VR games in recent memory.
Editor’s Note: The exclusive […]
25 Search Strategies You Need to Know – New Course Starting Soon
%20(1).png){kind=link}
One of the most popular webinars and courses that I’ve hosted over the years have been about search strategies and how to teach them to students. This summer I’m offering a new Practical Ed Tech course on that topic. The course starts in two days!
25 Search Strategies You Need to Know is a five-part course in which I’ll teach you my favorite search strategies. More importantly, I’ll teach you how I teach these strategies to students in grades three through twelve. The course includes written lessons, video tutorials, and handouts […]
The Coolest Canva Use I’ve Seen
Yesterday morning at ISTE Live I met Lauren Enders. Lauren is a well-known presenter in the field of AAC (augmentative and alternative communication). We chatted for a good twenty minutes or more about many things including how she’s using Canva as an AAC tool. In fact, she gave me permission to share the recording of her recent presentation on that topic. You can find Lauren’s presentation and her accompanying resources here on the AAC in the Cloud 2023 Conference website. The video of her presentation is embedded below.
The thing that impressed me the […]
Five of My Favorite Take-aways from #ISTELive
ISTE Live in Philadelphia was a whirlwind 72 hours. I’ve been home for about 18 hours now and have had some time to reflect a little bit on the trip. I’ll share more in-depth take-aways later. For now I wanted to summarize and share a handful of the highlights of trip. To do so I made a short highlight video that is embedded below.
As my trip was sponsored by Canva, that’s what I used to create the video that you see below.
7 Best Parental Control Apps
The devices and apps that connect our children to the world also expose them to a range of risks and challenges. The online world can be a daunting place – from cyberbullying to screen addiction, harmful content to digital strangers.
As someone working with kids myself, I’ve often grappled with striking a balance – encouraging my kids to explore, learn, and socialize online, while also wanting to protect them from the darker corners of the internet.
Parental control apps can be a lifeline in this respect. They offer us tools to monitor, guide, and safeguard our children’s online […]
Oculus Founder Explains What Apple Got Right & Wrong on Vision Pro
Apple Vision Pro is about to set a lot of expectations in the industry of what’s ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ about mixed reality, something the fruit company prefers to call spatial computing. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey weighed in on his thoughts, and coming from one of the main figures who kicked off the VR revolution of today, it means something.
Speaking to Peter Diamandis in a nearly two hour-long podcast, Luckey delved into many areas of his work over the years, touching on the role at his defense company Anduril, his role in kickstarting the modern era of VR, […]
‘Synapse’ Review – A Power I’ve Been Waiting For
Synapse is the latest action game from veteran VR studio nDreams, built exclusively for PSVR 2. While you’ll do plenty of shooting, players are also equipped with a telekinetic superpower that feels great as a core mechanic. But does the rest of the game live up to it? Read on to find out.
Synapse Details:
Available On: PSVR 2 (exclusive)
Release Date: July 4th, 2023
Price: $35
Developer: nDreams
Gameplay
Editor’s Note: Gameplay clips may not appear with cookies disabled, click ‘View clip’ to see them in a separate window.
Synapse is a roguelite shooter where you’ll be blasting baddies with a weapon in one hand and […]
‘Iron Man VR’ Gets 25% Permanent Price Reduction on Quest
Meta announced the high-flying superhero game Marvel’s Iron Man VR (2020) has a new permanent price, bringing it to $30.
Once a PSVR exclusive, Iron Man VR on Quest 2 and Quest Pro lets you suit up as Tony Stark and take to the sky to fight evil. The action-adventure game is now available at a new price of $30, or 25% off the original $40 purchase price.
When it launched on PSVR in July 2020, we gave it a rating of ‘Great’ in our full review, calling it VR’s “first great superhero game.” We liked it so […]
AR Startup Brilliant Labs Secures $3M Seed Funding from Oculus & Siri Co-founders
Brilliant Labs, an AR startup working to integrate AI into daily life, announced that it has raised $3 million in seed funding which it will use to expand its team and invest in R&D for its open-source, AI-powered smartglasses.
The funding round was led by Brendan Iribe, co-founder of Oculus, Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri, Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, and Plug & Play Ventures, among others.
Founded in 2019, Brilliant Labs describes its design approach as “embodied intelligence.” Its one-eyed ‘Monocle’ smartglasses dev kit is an open-source device which began shipping in February 2023, offering up a single-lens design […]
What is Pencil Code and How Can It Be Used for Teaching? Tips & Tricks
Pencil Code is a fun and intuitive coding teaching platform for a wide range of ages and abilities.
Google Reportedly Shelves Multi-year ‘Project Iris’ AR Glasses
Google has reportedly shelved a multi-year project that sought to commercialize an AR headset, known as Project Iris.
According to Business Insider, Google shut down Project Iris earlier this year following mass restructuring, which included layoffs, reshuffles, and the departure of Clay Bavor, Google’s head of AR and VR. The report, which hasn’t been substantiated by Google, cites “three people familiar with the matter.”
According to a report from The Verge earlier this year that first mentioned Project Iris, around 300 people were purportedly working on the headset, which was said to expand by “hundreds […]
Resources for Learning About the Tour de France
This year’s Tour de France starts on July 1st. (By the way, my search strategies course starts the same day). For the next three weeks my mornings will be occupied by watching parts of every stage.
The Tour de France provides some neat opportunities for science, health, and physical education lessons. Here are some of my go-to resources for teaching and learning about the Tour de France.
Unleashing Student Creativity: AI as a Digital Co-Creator
A classroom is a place where students learn, grow, adapt, and socialize. It is a place that, ever since the beginning of the 21 century, has seen a lot of development and technology integration.
Just one example is ChatGPT which is an online-based digital service that provides allows users to interact and collaborate with the platform through text-based instructions.
It is one just of many different AI-based tools that students can make use of to automate various tasks.
As we can see, AI is a powerful tool. And one way that it can be used by […]
How to Publish Google Slides Presentations
Around this time every year I field a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I update many of them. That’s why over the next few weeks I’ll be publishing some new Google Workspace for Edu tutorials. This week’s series of tutorials is all about Google Slides.
In the first post in this series I shared directions on how to make your […]
A Professor Encouraged Students to Use ChatGPT. OpenAI Asked Her What She Learned
Dr. Francine Berman permitted her students at UMass to use ChatGPT to help them write. Despite limitations, she found there were ways it could help edit student work.
Notes from a Micro:bit Workshop
Today, I attended a workshop hosted by Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez. It was a great workshop about using Micro:bit. Gary gave some introductory directions and then we had some challenge activities to try to complete in small groups. I worked with Sheila from Virginia Beach and Scott from California (sorry Scott, I can’t remember which city you’re from). We had fun completing a challenge in which we programmed our Micro:bits to pass messages.
I didn’t take a lot of notes during the workshop. Those that I did […]
5 Best Canva Alternatives
As an experienced blogger and educator, I have had the opportunity to delve into the world of digital design, exploring a myriad of tools aimed at creating visually engaging content. Whether you’re designing a blog post graphic, an engaging social media post, or a compelling infographic, the importance of an intuitive and comprehensive design tool cannot be understated. Canva, for instance, has been a go-to for many due to its ease of use and an extensive library of templates.
However, whether you’re in search of different features, looking for something more tailored to your needs, or simply want to […]