Latest education updates from around the world
FREE Printable Graphic Organizer Templates for Teachers
15 VR Horror Games for an Immersive Fright This Halloween
It’s that spooky time of year again, and if you’re looking for an extra fright (or fifteen) leading up to Halloween, go no further than these top VR games that are sure to send shivers down your spine.
Here’s our favorite VR games which span the gamut of horror and thriller sub-genres. Below you’ll find adventure, combat, and plenty of hair-raisingly close encounters with ghoulies of all make and model. With some exceptions, most of the games below support all major VR headsets, including SteamVR, PSVR and Meta Quest.
Cross-platform Titles
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
Where other zombie games may […]
Panasonic’s Latest Shiftall Prototype Brings SteamVR Tracking Module & Index Controller Support
Panasonic brand Shiftall has revealed the latest prototype of its MeganeX VR headset. Along with the updated design the company has shown off a SteamVR Tracking module to add precision tracking to the headset, along with support for Valve Index controllers. The company says it will be showing off the latest design at the AWE Europe 2022 conference, though it seems the headset may no longer be standalone but rather built for PC VR.
The Shiftall MeganeX VR might have a terrible name but it’s certainly an interesting looking VR headset. Promising SteamVR compatibility, inside-out & outside-in tracking, a high […]
Supporting Student & Teacher Well-Being
Good student and teacher well-being supports engaging and effective learning
Addressing Fear of Accountability in Education
For many school leaders, the idea of accountability can bring about fear and/or anxiety
What is Shape Collage and How Can It Be Used to Teach? Tips & Tricks
Shape Collage make collage creation easy for use by teachers and students.
Two EdTech Guys Take Questions – Season Three, Episode Two
.jpg){kind=link}
Last week Rushton Hurley and I hosted the second episode of the third season of our Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions series. We were joined by a handful of fine folks and even more people were registered to join us. If you missed our live broadcast, you can now watch the recording and find all of the associated links right here on Next Vista for Learning. The recording is also available to view here on Rushton’s YouTube channel and as embedded below.
How to Catch Monsters – A Halloween Play Script
How to Catch Monsters is a free play script published by Playbooks Reader’s Theater. The play was written to be performed by students in first through third grade. The play centers around two children who are trying to catch blue, green, and purple monsters. The children do get a little help from their work-from-home dad. In all there are six roles for students to play. There is also a narrator role for a teacher to play in How to Catch Monsters.
The How to Catch Monsters script is […]
Webinar – Engage and Investigate With the Ken Burns Classroom Collection
As a student and teacher of U.S. History, I’ve enjoyed many of the documentaries produced by Ken Burns (even if my students didn’t always enjoy them). That’s why I’m excited about a new webinar from the National Council for the Social Studies. The webinar is titled Engage and Investigate With Resources from the Ken Burns Classroom Collection. The description of the webinar promises to showcase some new ways to teach with resources aligned to the documentaries The Civil War, The Roosevelts, The West, and The Vietnam War.
Here Is How to Use Google Docs to Write Your Book
So you are planning to write a book but don’t want to be caught up in the vagaries of editing and formatting. I feel you. The technicalities of book writing can be time and effort consuming, that is if you choose to do themselves yourself, which several authors do. But there is always the choice to hire a professional editor to do the work for you. From a personal point of view, hiring a professional editor is all worth it.
13 Virtual School Activities that Students & Educators Love
13 Virtual School Activities that Students & Educators Love
Virtual school activities are a great way to engage students in learning.
However, virtual activities do not always have to be reserved only for homeschooled students. These activities can be used as an effective form of teaching at any time during the school year or as part of professional development courses.
You will find that the best virtual school activities are not academic, but instead focus on community building or include some form of social-emotional learning.
The best virtual school activities involve students learning from each other as well as learning from their […]
Five Ways QR Codes Can Be Helpful in Your School
Five Uses for QR Codes in School Settings
GeoGeek AR – An Augmented Reality Geography Game
GeoGeek AR is a fun app for testing and developing your knowledge of world geography. As its name and icon imply, the app uses augmented reality to put a virtual globe in any space that you choose. You can spin the globe with your fingers or simply move around the room to see different parts of the globe.
Helpful YouTube Tips for Teachers and Students
Helpful Google Docs Templates for Writing Letters, Essays, Book Reports, and Resumes
Today’s post features Google Docs templates that teachers and students can use for a wide variety of educational purposes. The purpose is to empower you with resources that can make a difference in your overall productivity and add value to your work.
Voices, Search, and Bare Trees – The Week in Review
Good morning from Maine where the leaves are falling faster than ever. A couple nights ago a big rain storm through and some of our trees lost all of their leaves. I love the beauty of the changing leaves of autumn. I don’t, however, enjoy raking all of the leaves that fall as I will be doing for part of the day today. The upside to raking all of the leaves is seeing how much my daughters enjoy jumping into the piles of leaves. I hope that you have as much fun this weekend as my […]
50 Tech Tuesday Tips for You
.png){kind=link}
Are you a new tech coach, tech integrator, or media specialist who has been asked to run a little tech workshop? Do you need some ideas for it? If so, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips is for you!
50 Tech Tuesday Tips was curated from more than 400 editions of The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter. In 50 Tech Tuesday Tips you will find ideas for lots of helpful things that you can teach to your colleagues and to students. Throughout the eBook you’ll find tutorials and handouts that you can […]
Meta’s Next-gen Avatar Presentation Was Too Good to Be True… For Now at Least
This week Meta showed off a preview of its next-gen avatars during the Connect keynote. Frankly, they looked great! However, there’s… less than meets the eye here.
When Mark Zuckerberg appeared in Horizon during the Connect 2022 keynote sporting a next-gen Meta avatar with complete body tracking I was frankly blown away. Compared to the existing leg-less avatars that everyone appears as in Horizon, these new models not only had a full body, but also incredibly natural and movements with not a glitch in sight… it seemed almost too good to be true.
From what I know of the existing tech […]
YouTube is (finally) Coming to Horizon Home Making it Easier to Watch with Friends
Meta announced that Quest users will soon be able to watch YouTube content inside Horizon Home, the first-party social VR space that’s finally making it easy to hang out in VR with friends.
Meta is slowly… painfully slowly… building out the core social features of its Quest series of headsets that first launched all the way back in 2019.
It was just a few months ago that Horizon Home begun allowing users to invite their friends into the Home space. And while you can watch videos together there, what’s on offer is a difficult-to-browse smattering of flat and VR-specific content hosted by […]
Best Open Access Journals and Scholarly Articles for Research Students
Scientific knowledge is proliferating in an unprecedented rate with an increasing number of journal articles and research papers published every year across various disciplines from humanities to medicine and technology. Unfortunately, a sizeable portion of this academic scholarship is locked behind paywalls thus restricting its access to those who can afford to pay.
Google’s Project Starline Starts Real-world Testing, Bringing Light-field Video Calls to Partners
Google’s Project Starline is an experimental system for immersive video chatting that aims to close the distance between people without needing an AR or VR headset. At Google’s annual Cloud Next conference, the company announced it’s rolling out the booth-sized device in early access to select enterprise partners, officially taking it beyond the walls of Google’s offices for the first time.
The company says in a blogpost that early access to Project Starline is starting this year, with the installation of prototypes at the offices of Salesforce, WeWork, T-Mobile, and Hackensack Meridian Health.
Project Starline provides a glasses-free […]
Free Fact-Checking Sites for Students and Teachers
Fact-checking sites for students to research reports, papers, and more
How to Print Guest Lists for Google Calendar Events
Google Calendar, like most products in Google Workspace, has lots of little features that are often overlooked. Just because those features are overlooked doesn’t mean that they’re not useful. For example, you can print a guest list from an event on any of your Google Calendars. In the short video that is embedded below I demonstrate how to print guest lists for Google Calendar events.
I use printed guest lists for meetings because it’s often faster for me to take attendance on paper than it is to toggle between tabs or […]
A Fun Timeline Game for History Students
Play Your Dates Right is another great game template developed by Russel Tarr at ClassTools.net. The concept of Play Your Dates Right is that students have to pick the correct sequence of three historical events. The event in the middle of the game template is always the event that actually did come second. Students have to guess if the first and third events are in the proper sequence. Watch my short video that is embedded below to see how the game is played and how you can create your own version of it.
You […]
Meta Quest ‘Active Pack’ Accessory Bundle Will Bring Index-like Straps to Quest 2 Controllers
If you haven’t already cobbled together your own third-party solutions, Meta is now offering an ‘Active Pack’ that includes a few things to keep your Quest clean, and Touch controllers safely in-hand as you work out in VR. And that last one seems to be taking some clear inspiration from Valve’s Index controllers.
Despite the glut of fitness-focused VR games out now, like Supernatural or Racket: NX, stock Quest 2 headsets just aren’t built with sweat in mind.
Now Meta is pitching a new Active Pack kit for Quest 2 that includes a wipeable facial interface, an extra pair of […]