Latest education updates from around the world
What is Digital Wellness? How One School Implements It
Digital Wellness goes beyond digital citizenship to help students navigate modern technology in a healthy and productive manner
Tons of Free Aesthetic Christmas Wallpapers and Backgrounds
Christmas spirit is back again and we can already feel it around and among us. It is about the time of year we unleash our creative Christmas gene and celebrate the holidays with beautiful decorations and artwork. Christmas decorations are everywhere and you probably have already decorated your place. But how about your devices: phone and desktop?
You probably want to share some Christmas love with them as well. Aesthetic Christmas wallpapers and Christmas backgrounds are great in this regard! Use them to “fill your heart and devices with the joy and gladness of reindeers, candy canes, gingerbread […]
Niantic Reveals Snapdragon AR2-powered Headset Reference Design for Outdoor Use
Back in early 2021 Pokémon GO developer Niantic gave just a brief tease that it was working on some kind of see-through headset. Now the company has revealed that it’s been working with Qualcomm on a reference AR headset based on the Snapdragon AR2 platform.
Niantic has been quietly developing a sleek reference design for what the company is calling an “outdoor AR headset.” Qualcomm has been part of the project too, with Niantic calling the headset a “shared vision for an outdoor AR headset,” in an announcement this month.
There’s very few actual details on the specs of Niantic’s […]
‘WHAT THE BAT?’ Replaces Your Hands with Baseball Bats for Slapstick Fun, Now on Quest 2 & PC VR
What would happen if you had baseball bats instead hands? Triband, the indie studio behind madcap golfing game WHAT THE GOLF? (2020), have released a new VR game that conveniently answers that eternal question.
Called WHAT THE BAT?, the built-for-VR game gets you swinging through a series of increasingly silly minigames that Triband says is “about so much more than baseball.”
The concept is pretty simple: use your bats with precision as you swing (and deftly manipulate) through over 100 levels of batting, cooking, shooting, smashing, parking, painting, pickling, petting, and more.
Meta to Host a “hyper-realistic” Version of Notorious B.I.G. in VR Concert Next Month
In honor of The Notorious B.I.G.’s 50th birthday, Meta is hosting a VR concert experience next month that aims to bring together a host of musical guests alongside a realistic avatar of the Brooklyn-born rapper, who left this mortal coil back in 1997.
The Notorious B.I.G. Sky’s The Limit: A VR Concert Experience is set to take place on December 16th, bringing to Meta Horizon Worlds what the company calls a “hyper-realistic avatar” of Biggie, set to take place in a virtual recreation of ’90s Brooklyn called ‘The Brook’.
Following a narrative journey written and voiced by American writer and […]
Post-Pandemic Teaching: 5 Things to Remember
What to consider in your post-pandemic teaching approach
How to Teach With Deep Fake Technology
Despite the scary headlines, deep fake technology can be a powerful teaching tool
Maps and Videos About Where Thanksgiving Foods Come From
Where Does Your Thanksgiving Dinner Come From? is an interactive storymap that I’ve shared in the past and still find interesting. The map displays where eight popular Thanksgiving foods are grown and harvested in the United States. The storymap includes a map for each ingredient. Each map shows the locations of commercial producers. Fun facts are included in the storymap too. For example, did you know that Illinois has at least twice as many acres of pumpkins as any state?
Where Does Your Thanksgiving Dinner Come From? shows where food comes from today, but it […]
How to Read Music – And 17 Other Lessons About Music
Music Snippet is a Google Docs add-on that I’ve written about in the past. It’s handy tool for writing music in Google Docs. A reader recently asked me about it which prompted me to search my archives for other music-related resources. One that I came across was a TED-Ed lesson that explains the fundamentals of reading music. Watching the video won’t turn students into composers over night, but it provides a good start.
TED-Ed offers a lot of interesting and useful video lessons for students. Many of the […]
Two Good Ways to Create Simple and Focused Websites
Parts of this post originally appeared late last year in an issue of my Practical Ed Tech weekly newsletter.
Google Sites is fine for making simple sites, but the aesthetics […]
STEAM Lessons About the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade
Watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a little tradition in my house just like it is in millions of other homes in the United States. For the last few years Macy’s has offered some hands-on STEAM lessons related to the parade.
Parade 101 features four video demonstrations of hands-on activities that students can do at home with their parents or in your classroom. The four activities include inflating balloons through the use of baking soda and vinegar, designing balloons for the parade, making and using sculping dough, and building model floats. […]
EasyBib- APA and MLA Citations Generator
What is EasyBib used for?
Chegg – Rent eTextbooks and Access Homework Help Resources
1- Chegg Study
10 Great Citation Generators for Teachers Student Researchers
In this post, I share with you a collection of some good online citation generators to help you generate citations quickly and easily. These tools support several citation formats (e.g., APA, MLA 7/8, Chicago and many more) as well as a multitude of sources that include newspapers, journal articles, chapters, books, web pages, videos, audio clips and many more.
Using these citation generators will absolutely save you so much time and efforts and help you focus on what matters most: ideation. You can also use them to create and share annotated bibliographies. However, These citation […]
CiteFast- An Incredibly Easy Citation Tool for Students
Elk, Geography, and Art – The Week in Review
Good morning from Maine where I’m home after spending most of the week in western Nebraska. It was there that I took the picture featured in this post. It’s a little hard to make it out, but there’s a bull elk in the picture. It was one of three that walked right past me early on Monday morning. Those of you who follow me on Instagram might have also seen a video of those same elk earlier this week.
Now that I’m home this weekend is going to be full of some late autumn chores like putting […]
Five Digital Mapping Tools That Aren’t Made by Google
Google Earth and Google’s My Maps are great tools for students to use to create multimedia maps. But Google isn’t the only game in town when it comes to digital map creation tools. In fact, there are some good ones that are freely available to you and your students outside of what Google offers. Here’s a summary of five good ones that are worth trying.
Best Online History Games
The purpose of this post is to provide teachers, parents, and students (and anyone else interested in learning history) with a handpicked collection of interactive history games to help with history learning. All you need is a browser and an Internet connection. The games are engaging, interactive, and fun to play. Students won’t complain again about history being boring!
Easy Notecards- Free Notecards, Flashcards, Quizzes, and Games
Here Is Why WordReference Is a Great Dictionary and Translation Tool for Language Learners
Is WordReference reliable?
Best Educational Apps to Learn Sign Language (iOS & Android)
Build-your-own VR Drum Kit App ‘Paradiddle’ Launches on Quest and PC VR
After five years of early access, VR drumming app Paradiddle launches out of Early Access on PC VR and for the first time on Oculus Quest.
Paradiddle started in Early Access on PC VR way back in 2017. Over the last five years developer Emre Tanirgan and team have continued to hone the application which gives players access to a build-your-own drum kit tool where they can build the drum kit of their dreams, and even build ‘impossible’ drum kits (like fusing a drum and a cymbal together to play both sounds with one hit).
Paradiddle is part instrument, part […]
Here Is How Easily Change Background on Zoom
Zoom’ s Virtual Background feature enables you to display ‘an image or video as your background during a Zoom meeting’. Virtual backgrounds allow you to hide your real-life background providing you with more privacy and giving your meetings a professional look. Zoom offers a wide variety of ready made virtual backgrounds that you easily apply to your video meetings or you can upload and use your own images and videos.
Tips for best Zoom virtual background results
Zoom provides you with the option to either use the Virtual Background feature with a green screen or without a green screen. For […]
How to Create a Story Map
StoryMap JS is a tool that I’ve been using and recommending for many years. It’s a free tool that students can use to create a story map in a manner similar to Google’s My Maps or the old Google Tour Builder. The difference between those tools and StoryMap JS is that StoryMap JS is much easier for new users to master.
StoryMap JS enables students to tell stories through a series of slides that appear on a map. Each slide is matched to locations that you choose on your map. Each slide in your […]
The 20 Best Rated & Most Popular Quest Games & Apps – November 2022
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 November 2022.
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’ […]