Latest education updates from around the world
How to Create Your First Canva Presentation
Over the years I’ve published a lot of Canva tutorials. But until last week I had never created one specifically for students and teachers making their first presentations in Canva. That’s what this new video is all about.
In How to Create Your First Canva Presentation I demonstrate how to sign into your account, how to find projects that have been shared with you, and how to create a new project from scratch. In the video I also cover how to add and customize pictures, drawings, and videos […]
AI Art Generators in The Classroom: What You Need To Know
ChatGPT’s AI art generator cousins have potential applications in the classroom but also drawbacks, say educators.
What is Harmony and How Does It Work? Best Tips and Tricks
Harmony is a social learning tool built for the classroom with SEL best practices in mind.
4 Strategies for Tech-Savvy Teaching
Tips for tech-savvy teaching in the classroom from two award-winning educators
6 Great AI Drawing Generators
AI drawing generators are revolutionizing the creative landscape in ways beyond our wildest dreams. Within seconds you can generate beautiful artwork using text prompts. No technical skills or sophisticated drawing software are needed. All you need is to clearly articulate what you want to generate and the AI art generator will take care of the rest.
167 Math In “Real Life” Lessons
Math in Real Life is a series of 167 TED-Ed lessons and TED Talks. The “real life” context in these lessons isn’t things like “how calculating percentages helps you be a frugal shopper.” The “real life” context found in the videos in the Math in Real Life series is broad in nature. For example, you will find lessons about how math is used to guide ships and calculating rates of travel in space.
Chem Collective Virtual Labs
Chem Collective is a project designed and maintained by Carnegie Mellon University’s chemistry department and the National Science Digital Library. On Chem Collective you will find virtual labs for chemistry experiments, simulations, visualizations, tutorials, and auto-graded problems. Students and teachers can search the site by resource type or by chemistry topic.
Applications for Education
Chem Collective offers teachers the option to create their own Chem Collective pages containing resources and activities that they have selected from the Chem Collective library for their students.
Chem Collective also offers free virtual lab experiments to run your web browser.
Some of the Best AI Art Generators (Text to Image)
AI art generators, also known as AI picture generators or text to image generators, are programs that use the power of artificial intelligence to generate images and visuals from text prompts. And like AI video generators, these AI art generators are simple and easy to use requiring no technical skills or expensive software to do the job.
AI, Brainstorming, and Authentication – The Week in Review
Good morning from Maine where the wind is howling and the wind chill makes it feel as though it’s -15F right now. It’s no wonder our cat has camped himself in front of the stove this morning. I much prefer he do that than rub his head on my laptop as I type this week’s week-in-review post.
This week was school vacation week here in Maine. I took most of the week off to teach skiing lessons, take my own kids skiing, and enjoy a little time away from my computer screen. Somehow I still managed to […]
“Why Does He Do So Much Sniffing?” – Another Question from My Daughters
If you read this blog regularly, you’ve probably picked up that I love dogs. So of course I was excited years ago when TED-Ed published a lesson about how dogs “see” with their noses. And I enjoyed it again this week after my youngest daughter asked me why our dog does so much sniffing.
The 20 Best Rated & Most Popular Quest Games & Apps – February 2023
While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual games & apps are performing across its Quest 2 storefront, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the 20 best rated Oculus Quest games and apps as of February 2023.
Some quick qualifications before we get to the data:
Paid and free apps are separated
Only apps with more than 100 reviews are represented
App Lab apps are not represented (see our latest Quest App Lab report)
Rounded ratings may appear to show ‘ties’ […]
Is AI Artwork Copyrighted?
A question I have been receiving recently from readers of Educators Technology is whether AI images can be copyrighted or not. While I am not a lawyer or expert in these matters, I did some research and hopefully can help clarify some of these questions. For practical reasons, I only talk about copyright in the context of the U.S.
Is AI generated art copyrighted?
The short answer is no. AI generated artwork, according to a recent ruling by the U.S.. Copyright Office , is not protectable by copyright because it lacks ‘human authorship’.
Long answer, read below.
AI is taking the […]
Best Free Engineering Lessons and Activities
Explore these top engineering lessons and activities for K-12 classrooms.
Why That Image Link Won’t Work in a Flippity Template
Earlier this week I wrote about and published a video about making memory games with Flippity. Almost every time I write about Flippity I get an email from someone who has run into a problem with images not rendering. This week was not an exception to that pattern.
A Good Series on How Computers Work
We use computers every day. But how many of us actually know how they work? Sure we know how to use the software, but I’m thinking about the hardware. How does that aspect of your computer work? Code.org has a good video series that addresses that question and more.
Through watching the videos in How Computers Work you can learn about memory, logic, circuits, binary, and the interaction between hardware and software. Get started by watching Bill Gates introduce the series.
If you’re planning to […]
‘Gorilla Tag’ Creator Hints at ‘Echo VR’ Spiritual Successor as Next Project
Another Axiom, the indie studio behind wildly successful VR game Gorilla Tag, hinted that it’s now pursuing a project inspired by Echo VR.
Kerestell ‘LemmingVR’ Smith, the lead creator of Gorilla Tag, originally started working on the game thanks to his love of Echo VR, the zero-g sports game created by the Meta-owned studio Ready at Dawn.
Late last month though, Meta announced it will be shutting down Echo VR this summer as the team pursues other projects. As you’d imagine, this didn’t sit right with the small but dedicated playerbase, Smith included.
And Smith isn’t just any fan; he’s competed in and […]
My Updated Guide to Media for Classroom Projects
Over the last year some of my old favorite sources of media for classroom projects changed or completely disappeared. They’ve been replaced by some new and updated sources for free sound effects, music, videos, pictures, and drawings to use in classroom projects. That’s why I created an updated guide to finding media for classroom projects.
5 Ways To Teach With ChatGPT
Ways to effectively teach with ChatGPT and avoid student misuse of the technology.
The Google Docs Features Starter Pack
I recently published a playlist of 76 Google Docs tutorials. But you certainly don’t need to use all of the features of Google Docs demonstrated in that playlist let alone watch all of the videos. In fact, I’m often asked for a list of the “must-know” features instead of all of the “could use” features. Here are ten features that new users can benefit from learning early on.
1. Font options
Besides the default options in the font drop-down menu there are hundreds of other options available when you choose “more fonts” at the […]
6 of The Best AI Tools to Make Videos from Text (Text to Video)
AI text to video tools are revolutionizing the way we create video content. Text-to-video AI tools allow users to quickly and easily create videos from any written content (e.g., blog posts, documents, presentation slides, PDFs, etc) making them an invaluable tool for teachers and content creators.
As is the case with AI video generators and AI writers I covered in an earlier post, AI text to video tools are simple and easy to use. They basically allow you to create videos in a fraction of the time and with minimal effort. These AI tools […]
Quest 2 Update Brings Phone-style ‘Direct Touch’ UI Navigation, In-Game Multitasking & More
Meta released the v50 update for Quest 2, bringing to the standalone some new experimental features that not only aim to make hand-tracked UI navigation a little more natural, but also bring 2D app multitasking to Quest 2 for the first time.
One of the headlining features of v50 is something Meta is calling ‘Direct Touch’, which lets you tap and swipe through the Home UI. Simply ‘touch’ the tile and manipulate the menu like you would on a phone or tablet, Meta says, something that sounds a little more natural than pinching tiles from a distance in mid-air.
Meta […]
‘I Expect You To Die 3’ Announced for Quest & PC VR, Coming in 2023
Schell Games, the team behind the I Expect You To Die franchise, announced the third game in the series is slated to arrive on VR headsets this year.
Called I Expect You To Die 3: Cog in the Machine, the latest installment of the spy-flavored puzzle-adventure is expected to come to Meta Quest 2 and SteamVR headsets later this year.
The studio hasn’t mentioned PSVR 2 support yet, although it’s likely we’ll be waiting on a bigger announcement surrounding PSVR 2 versions of both the first and second I Expect You To Die games.
In I Expect You To Die (both […]
How to Create Your Own Online Memory Games
A few years ago one of my students created a memory game app with the MIT App Inventor. It was a great exercise through which she learned about all of the variables and parts of the app that need to be designed. If you’re a little more pressed for time than my student was and you just want to quickly generate some matching games for your students to play, there are easier methods than programming your own app.
Matching Game is one of the many Google Sheets templates that Flippity offers. Like all Flippity templates you […]
Three Ways to Quickly Map Spreadsheet Data
I recently came across an older Towards Data Science article about ten ways to represent data on maps. Reading the article reminded me of something that I’ve tried to share with social studies teachers and students over the years. That thing is that a great data set can tell you a lot. A great map can tell you a lot. Putting them together can tell you even more. To that end, here are three ways to quickly create a map of data contained in a spreadsheet.
Onboarding and Orientation for Teachers
Tips for effective onboarding and orientation for teachers and school staff from recent Tech & Learning leadership award winner Jenith Mishne