Latest education updates from around the world
Branchiness, Videos, and Archives – The Week in Review
Good morning from Maine where I am not racing my bike this weekend and instead will be enjoying a nice early fall day by helping out at my daughters’ soccer practices. By the way, I finished last week’s race much better than I predicted and ended up fourth in my division despite a flat tire around the midway point of the race. I hope that you have something fun and exciting planned for your weekend. And if you don’t, I hope you just enjoy a relaxing weekend doing whatever rejuvenates you.
These were the […]
TED Ed Greek Mythology- 14 Great Lessons Explaining Popular Greek Myths
‘Half-Life 2’ VR Mod Launches Today on Steam, Bringing Free VR Support to Valve’s Classic Adventure
The long-awaited VR mod for Half-Life 2 (2004) is available for free in beta starting today, bringing to the iconic Valve title a near-native level of VR immersion we’ve been waiting for.
In case you didn’t catch our recent VR Modding Monthly article, here’s the lowdown: development on a VR mod for HL2 began nearly 10 years ago, although due to work/life/everything the lead developer had to sideline work on the mod after moving to Rockstar Games.
Last year though, modder Cabalistic joined Wormslayer and the rest of the Source VR team to finally bring Half-Life 2 in its entirety to […]
‘Into the Radius’ for Quest 2 Review – Pure Dystopian Immersion and a Few Stumbling Blocks
Into the Radius is a hardcore single-player survival shooter that you’ve likely already heard about from its time on PC VR headsets via Steam. In case you haven’t, the game serves up a unique mix of heart-racing encounters with deadly entities, a load of environmental traps, and its fair share of plodding tedium—all while paying homage to the suitably Soviet book Roadside Picnic (1972) and later film adaptation Stalker (1979). Although we were hoping for finer visual polish and a cleaner touch to object interaction, it seems the indie studio has done a serviceable job slimming down the 20+ hour game onto the […]
New K/20 Leadership Today Newsletter Helps Educators Navigate Difficult Times
Tech & Learning magazine and K20Connect’s free newsletter is already reaching thousands of leaders each week.
Seven Good Resources for Teaching and Learning About the Value of Money
My daughters have recently started receiving a little weekly allowance. One of them is very interested in saving as many of her dollars as possible for as long as possible. The other sees the money and immediately thinks of the things she’d like to buy. This has led to some conversations around our dinner table about the value of money. The most recent conversation prompted me to compile the following list of resources for teaching and learning about the value of money.
Peter Pig’s Money Counter is a fun little game designed to help kids […]
The WWII Rumor Project – An Activity in Learning Through Primary Sources
A handful of years ago the Library of Congress launched a crowd sourcing project called By the People. The purpose of the project is to enlist the help of the public to transcribe thousands of primary source documents that are housed by and have been scanned by the Library of Congress. Over the years there have been collections of documents from the American Civil War, papers from the American Revolution, presidential papers, documents about suffrage, and documents about the integration of Major League Baseball. The latest By the People campaign is seeking help transcribing […]
The 20 Best Rated & Most Popular Quest Games & Apps – September 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 September 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’ […]
Here’s Every Game Announced for PSVR 2
Sony still hasn’t tossed out a launch day lineup for PSVR 2, although we’re starting to get a good idea of what the next-gen VR headset might have in store when it releases sometime in early 2023.
Here’s a look at what we hope will be a quickly growing list of all games announced for PSVR 2 thus far. Also, don’t forget to check out our detailed hands-on with PSVR 2 hardware to see what sets it apart from the original.
Horizon Call of the Mountain
Horizon Call of the Mountain isn’t a log flume ride or hollow VR “experience” like the […]
Synth is Shutting Down to Focus on Focusable – Other Audio Recording Tools to Try
Synth is a podcasting tool that I’ve used and shared with countless teachers since 2018. Unfortunately, as the title of this post states, the owners of Synth are shutting it down to focus on their new service called Focusable (a cool service that I’ll be writing more about in the next issue of the Practical Ed Tech Newsletter). According to the email sent to users last night, Synth will be shutting down on October 13th.
If you find yourself now looking for some alternatives to Synth, here are my […]
Display Note Broadcast Adds Helpful Features to Improve Screen Sharing
Display Note Broadcast is a tool that I started using last spring as a means for broadcasting my screen to the screens of other people in the room. It provides a simple system in which you click a sharing button, display a join code for your audience, and then they enter it on their computers to see your screen. Display Note Broadcast also has a Google Classroom integration that makes screen sharing as simple asking your students to click a link in Google Classroom to see your screen. Here’s my […]
Best Apps to Help You Learn to Read Sheet Music
1. Tomplay Sheet Music
Professional Learning Communities (PLCs): What You Need to Know
Professional learning communities (PLCs) help teachers thrive, which ultimately increases teacher morale and retention. Here’s how it works.
AhaSlides- Create Engaging Presentations Using Live Quizzes, Polls, and Q&A
Minecraft: How to Use NPC’s to Teleport
In Minecraft Education Edition you can teleport students to another location by using NPC’s. Alice Keeler shows you how to use NPC’s to Teleport in Minecraft
The post Minecraft: How to Use NPC’s to Teleport appeared first on Teacher Tech.
15 of The Best TED Ed Riddles to Use with Students in Class
TED Ed is one of my favourite video resources that I have been recommending for teachers over the last few years. TED Ed features short video explanations (usually less than 5 minutes) covering different educational topics including science, history, physics, sports, media literacy skills, mental health, math, animals, art, planet earth, brain, genetics, technology, literature, coding, and many more.
‘Metal Gear Solid’ Creator Teases Interest in VR with Virtual Booth at TGS
Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear franchise and founder of Kojima Productions, definitely isn’t presenting a VR game at this year’s Tokyo Game Show (TGS) like a recent tweet suggests, although it’s clear the studio is taking more interest in the medium.
“Doing the final check of KJP VR that we are going to show at TGS 2022,” Kojima tweeted today, donning a Meta Quest 2 headset.
According to Kojima’s Japanese language version of the same tweet, ‘KJP VR’ stands for ‘Kojima Productions VR’.
Doing the final check of KJP VR that we are going to show at TGS 2022🫶
Hands-on: ‘Horizon Call of the Mountain’ on PSVR 2 is Bringing a Full Campaign with Insightful VR Gameplay
One of the big questions on my mind ever since the announcement of Horizon Call of the Mountain for PSVR 2 is whether it would be a short ‘experience’ designed as a simple demo for the headset, or a full blown game. After going hands-on with the title I’m happy to report that it not only aims to deliver a full campaign, but it’s also brimming with insightful VR design.
We’ve seen it before and I’m sure we’ll see it again—a big name studio tries their hand at creating a VR game and the end result makes it seem like they […]
PSVR 2 Hands-on: Across-the-board Improvements Are Coming to Sony’s VR Headset
Sony’s long awaited PSVR 2 isn’t here just yet but after an extensive hands-on with the headset it’s clear it’ll be worth the wait.
Last week I visited Sony’s PlayStation headquarters in San Mateo, CA to see PlayStation VR 2 in person for the first time. Though we’ve known the full on-paper PSVR 2 specs for quite some time now, there’s still a lot about using a headset that isn’t easily quantified from numbers alone. But after a few hours in the headset across a variety of different experiences, I’ve got a pretty good sense of what the […]
Tech & Learning Announces New Innovative District Leader Summit
Tech & Learning celebrates innovation at a new conference for district administrators
Semantic Scholar- A Research Tool for Academic and Scientific Literature
What is Brainly and How Can It Be Used to Teach? Tips & Tricks
Brainly is a community-based question-and-answer website designed for students.
Moose Tracks and a Lesson on Eyes vs. Cameras
A couple of days ago I was walking down a trail to one of my favorite fishing spots in all of Maine. Along the trail I saw a bunch of moose tracks. I did my best to get a good picture of them. Unfortunately, like all pictures of moose tracks that I’ve taken over the years, the pictures I took didn’t capture the size and detail of the tracks as I well as I would have liked. That frustration reminded me of a TED-Ed lesson that explains why our eyes see things differently than our cameras […]
Three Audio Slideshow Video Projects for Students of All Ages
Tools like Adobe Express, Canva, and good ol’ Animoto make it easy for students to quickly create videos. I often use these tools when introducing video production projects to teachers who have never attempted to have their students make videos. Here are three types of assignments that you can build around audio slideshow video tools.
Biographical/ Autobiographical Stories
Have students arrange a short audio slideshow about historical figures they’re learning about in your classroom. Canva and Adobe Express offer built-in image search tools that makes it easy for students to find public domain or Creative Common-licensed pictures.
10 Very Good Tools for Research Students
1- Citefast