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When effective, coaches have the opportunity to change the mindset of teachers, move districts forward, and inspire innovation.
Mastery Learning is a powerful, strategic approach to classroom instruction that empowers every student at every level to progress with confidence.
Ever been interested in Japan? Well, Japan is interested in you! Well, more specifically, your classroom. LoiLoNote School is a cloud-based classroom support system, based in Japan, looking to help schools from all over. In the pursuit of augmenting human potential and improving education worldwide, we’ve found that traditional education methods are not enough to foster active learning, in an increasingly digital world, especially when they involve unilateral lectures for students without providing them the opportunity to apply their own knowledge or collaborate effectively. The benefits of active learning are wide-reaching across cognitive, ethical, and social competence, which bleeds into culture, knowledge, and experience to form more well-rounded, confident individuals. As we considered the best ways to access these benefits, our educational software came into fruition and has continued to be developed ever since.
There are powerful ways that educators can leverage digital technologies and resources to help support families.
EdTechTeacher is so thrilled to welcome Dr. Catherine Atkinson to our team of summer instructors. Catherine Atkinson is an experienced classroom teacher, curriculum designer, presenter, and technology coach. She taught history/social science and ELA to English language, gifted, and special education students for 27 years at the middle school level. Catherine has taught in a 1:1 classroom since 2008 where her students used MacBooks, iPads, and Chromebooks to collaboratively and creatively demonstrate their learning. She has served in a variety of leadership positions: history/social science department chair, technology coordinator, master teacher, mentor teacher, and member of the instructional leadership team. Catherine…
I am happy to announce that I have sold EdTechTeacher Inc. to Tom Driscoll, who has now assumed the role of EdTechTeacher CEO. Tom is the consummate professional, a person of high integrity, and a leader of enormous abilities with an inspiring vision of student learning. I have known Tom for more than a decade and seen up-close his keen understanding and application of emerging instructional design models — blended learning, personalized learning, deeper learning, project-based learning, game-based learning, school leadership, and more — as well as his ability to connect deeply with educators at all levels and in all…
EdTechTeacher is so thrilled to welcome Dr. Catherine Atkinson to our team of summer instructors. Catherine Atkinson is an experienced classroom teacher, curriculum designer, presenter, and technology coach. She taught history/social science and ELA to English language, gifted, and special education students for 27 years at the middle school level. Catherine has taught in a 1:1 classroom since 2008 where her students used MacBooks, iPads, and Chromebooks to collaboratively and creatively demonstrate their learning. She has served in a variety of leadership positions: history/social science department chair, technology coordinator, master teacher, mentor teacher, and member of the instructional leadership team. Below,…
EdTechTeacher is so thrilled to welcome Jed Stefanowicz to our team of summer instructors. Jed Stefanowicz is a Digital Learning Coach in Walpole, MA, providing job-embedded professional learning and coaching for academic technology. Through conferences and workshops, Jed aims to engage and build staff/student digital learning capacity, keeping the focus on practice over product. As a 25 year elementary educator, speaker, blogger, and MA Teach Plus Policy Fellow, Jed shares his passion for effective tech integration to transform teaching and learning, and to design experiences that activate, innovate, and motivate digital learning. He is the Author of Take AIM at Digital…
EdTechTeacher is so thrilled to welcome Dr. Rayna Freedman to our team of summer instructors. Rayna is a 5th grade teacher at the Jordan/Jackson Elementary School in Mansfield, MA. She has taught grades 3-5. Rayna is the Past President of MassCUE and has been presenting at the annual conference since 2010. She is a Google Level 2 certified educator, a BrainPOP certified educator, Flipgrid Ambassador, Fablevision Ambassador and Wakelet Ambassador. Rayna will be facilitating a workshop entitled, Ways to Engage Readers, Bringing Authors into Your Classroom, on August 1, 2, and 4. These three one-hour sessions will take place from…
Station Rotations are one of the most effective classroom strategies that educators can integrate into their practice to support personalized, differentiated, and high-quality student learning. According to the research from The Learning Accelerator, by using flexible grouping strategies such as station rotation, teachers provide access to learning materials in a variety of ways, which supports the learner variability found in every classroom. Utilizing these types of differentiated instructional strategies, teachers can create opportunities for students to take ownership of their learning. In this video, EdTechTeacher instructor, Tom Driscoll, leads an exploration of the technique, purpose, and impact of the station…
Google Sheets offers a variety of options for designing learning experiences that facilitate the monitoring of student progress, as well as opportunities for giving timely and effective feedback.
As educators, we are always working to discover ways to support the vast learner variability in our classrooms. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework focused on responding to learner diversity by designing flexible pathways to engage, represent, and express knowledge.
Google Docs and Google Slides offer a wide variety of options for designing learning experiences that facilitate the monitoring of student progress, as well as opportunities for giving timely and effective feedback.
Google Classroom provides educators with multiple opportunities to monitor student progress and provide timely, targeted feedback.
We’ll look at five EdTech organizations that give the kids unique educational experiences and one that focuses on assisting teachers.
Google Forms is a fantastic tool that can be used to design formative assessment opportunities. With both pre and post teaching assessment strategies, as well as opportunities to check for understanding within the learning experience, educators can design activities that differentiate instruction for students while collecting important data along the way.
How many tabs do you have open in your Google Chrome browser right now? Five? Ten? More? Tabbed browsing is a fantastic way to be productive, but it can also get visually overwhelming and disorganized pretty quickly. There are several strategies to manage tabs. Check them out in the video below.
Google Workspace for Education provides flexibility for educators to create a host of assessment experiences that enable learners to demonstrate their thinking in both traditional and nontraditional ways.
Timely and authentic feedback is a vital component to student learning. The Google Docs comments feature is a fantastic tool to share feedback with students. Teachers can highlight specific sections of text and insert written comments to help students improve their writing. However, this process can become overwhelming with many students in multiple classes. At times, teachers might find themselves repeatedly sharing the same comment with multiple students, which can be time-consuming. A possible solution to streamline the workflow of creating feedback comments is to use Google Keep in conjunction with Google Docs to create a Comment Bank of sorts.…
We are excited to announce that our new monthly EdTechTeacher show “What’s Next in EdTech” is now streaming live on Youtube! In each episode, we highlight exciting news and resources in the world of educational technology. Each fast-paced episode will be 15-20 minutes and include a show notes document that curates all of the resources mentioned during the episode.
Google Workspace for Education is an awesome set of tools to support portfolio creation. Watch the hour-long webinar to learn more!
Screencastify has transformed its My Recordings page option to a My Videos page with increased
Google Workspace for Education is an awesome set of tools to support portfolio creation. Watch the hour-long webinar to learn more!
We are excited to announce that our new monthly EdTechTeacher show “What’s Next in EdTech” is now streaming live on Youtube! In each episode, we highlight exciting news and resources in the world of educational technology. Each fast-paced episode will be 15-20 minutes and include a show notes document that curates all of the resources mentioned during the episode.
Canva for EDU gives us the capability of being able to import a Microsoft Office file into Canva. Learn more today!
The Chromebook provides a wide variety of settings and accessibility options for teachers & students. Check out our YouTube playlist that houses a series of short, focused videos and explore how these features and functions can support teaching and learning.
Formative assessment strategies can be used to evaluate student understanding throughout the learning process. These strategies serve to collect timely and relevant academic data to inform instructional decisions by educators as they plan for instruction. Google Forms is a fantastic tool that can be used to design formative assessment opportunities.
Over the past couple of years, educators have been immersed in creating digital assignments and workspaces to support students in a remote, online, or hybrid learning environment. Whether we are remote or face to face with our students, digital tools can enhance the learning environment. However, it is important to create exceptionally high quality digital workspaces that will support students in any type of learning environment. There are many considerations for digital learning design. To begin, a consistent unified location for instruction, learning materials, and activities is important. Teachers should work to minimize distractions and maintain consistency of icons,…
Google Classroom provides educators with multiple opportunities to monitor student progress and provide timely, targeted feedback.
Use screencast videos to create unique EdTech materials for your students. Learn how you can make an excellent educational video using screencast software.
Screencastify has been a fantastic tool to record a computer screen for years. But lately, Screencastify has been adding features to their already awesome platform and creating functionality that is perfect for the classroom.
After many months of remote learning and tuning into a device for synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences, many teachers and students might be ready to move away from digital experiences and return to analog activities for learning. Elementary educators, in particular, understand the need to regulate the amount of time students spend in front of a screen, and many of the activities in an elementary classroom are hands-on, active, and without the need for technology. However there are many ways in which technology can provide unique opportunities in classrooms. When using technology in the elementary classroom, teachers should be judicious…
When considering the value and impact of edtech tools and platforms, I always take a close look at the following factors: I recently had the opportunity to take a deep dive into a tool called Sutori. This resource is an emphatic “yes” to all of the questions above. It is a versatile content and multimedia creation tool. It enables students to interact with content in various ways while also having the opportunity to collaborate and engage with other classmates. It works great with other commonly used tools such as Quizlet, Padlet, and Edpuzzle.
Canva has come out with a couple of new features. Learn more here!
Exciting news from Canva this past weekend! The application has created the opportunity for users to do some freehand DRAWING. There are four drawing tools available including a pen, marker, glow pen, and highlighter. Each drawing tool can be adjusted for size and transparency. Additionally, there are endless color options that can be customized with a hex code or an eyedropper color picker tool to be very exact. The eraser tool can also be sized to erase a large or small area of the drawing. One of the really neat features of Canva’s drawing tool is that when the drawing…
In the lead-up to our live Innovation Connection event on November 1st, EdTechTeacher’s Tom Daccord, Avra Robinson and Tom Driscoll had the opportunity to engage in fascinating discussions with nine of our featured presenters.
Comic strips can be a fun and creative way to tell a fictional story, demonstrate understanding of nonfiction content, or share ideas in many other contexts. With Canva for EDU, teachers and students can start from scratch or use a premade template to get started.
We have a whole series of blog posts and videos designed to help you learn more about how to CREATE – and get your students creating in Canva for EDU. Check it out today!
Teaching is an art. Only those who strive to become the best teacher for their students can achieve career success. But there are also several practical tips on how to become a good teacher.
Post by EdTechTeacher Instructor Tom Driscoll (@TomDriscollEDU) In my latest session of our EdTechTeacher Back to School webinar series, I took participants on a dive into “Podcasting with PBL”. Our focus was on exploring ways that we can leverage the power of audio and podcasting to take PBL (Project-Based Learning) units to the next level. We explored several practical ways to design and implement podcasting and other innovative uses of audio within the context of authentic project-based learning. You can check out the video archive of this 30-minute webinar below! (Or linked directly here). As always, feel free to reach…
Mote is a powerful Google Chrome Extension that allows audio recordings to be seamlessly included in a variety of Google environments including: the comments of Google Docs or Sheets, Google Slides, Google Forms, and Google Classroom. In Google Classroom, Mote recordings can be a part of the instructions of an assignment, or they can be part of a Private Comment in the grading area. Recently, while facilitating a workshop with some educators in the Reed-Custer School District in Illinois, a question arose about whether or not the private Mote comments could be added to the Comment Bank in Google Classroom…
As part of our EdTechTeacher Back to School webinar series, I recently led a “Virtual Tours with Google for EDU” session. You can check out the video archive of this 30-minute webinar here!
Receiving a university degree helps accomplish some of such dreams. However, while you study, there are always some additional benefits that are less obvious from having a college education yet essential.
Canva for EDU is integrated with several different learning management systems, and more integration is coming. Teachers utilizing Google Classroom can currently import rosters into Canva, and push activities or assignments via Google Classroom. Canva also has some systems built in to facilitate a feedback workflow between teachers and students.
As we compare Canva to programs such as Google Slides, one unique feature is the ability to seamlessly create a video from a set of slides. Gone is the need for two programs; the presentation and video recording can both be created right within Canva. So Canva becomes a one-stop shop for creating video presentations.
Canva for Education is a fantastic creation program for teachers and students. From infographics or posters to multimedia presentations or even printables, teachers and students can combine thousands of free elements such as fonts, graphics, photos, music, and more as they create.
Canva for EDU has many templates that are already created and can serve as an entry point to help students explore the program’s possibilities. By using a pre-made template, students can get ideas about what is possible and then learn the mechanics of the program by changing the design elements and settings as they customize the template.
Since schools and curricula are organized around subject areas, it makes sense for teachers to think about student creativity in terms of subject-area skills. Teachers are encouraged to think about subject-area manifestations of student creativity, so that they can identify creative student responses and start to design creative learning experiences.
As we think about nurturing student creativity, we need to keep in mind that humans possess more cognitive flexibility and adaptability than rules-based computers, and our teaching should strive to hone and express that creativity. Student creativity is not only about self-expression; it’s a critical educational objective.
Flipgrid is a fantastic tool that students can utilize to create videos. Using Flipgrid, students can record videos of themselves telling a story, speaking in a target language, practicing reading fluency, solving a math problem, and much more. Flipgrid can be accessed from almost any device including computers, iPads, Chromebooks, and smartphones. When students are on a computer or Chromebook, they can also record their screen as they present a slideshow or create a demonstration of something they’ve learned. In addition to demonstrating their understanding of content or proficiency with a new skill, Flipgrid can also be used as a…
Instead of Teacher Appreciation Week, we are making it a whole month with FREE EdTechTeacher webinars over the next few weeks.
Technology in the service of learning is the foundation of the work that we do at EdTechTeacher. While technology can provide efficiencies for educators, allow for streamlined instruction, and facilitates distribution of digital assignments, we try to embrace technology in the hands of students as a creation platform. There are countless tools available for students to create with technology, tools where they can express their understanding, unique perspective, story or approach to a concept. Video has become a staple of student creation in many classrooms because the barrier to entry and the bar for creating has been lowered significantly in…
Class discussions are a powerful way for students to share their understanding and perspective in a live setting. Yet there are challenges associated with class discussions that often result in some students not participating in the process. Whether they feel uncomfortable sharing their perspective face to face, or they simply need more time to process the ideas being shared before formulating a response, educators may need to consider and create opportunities for students to engage with each other and share their ideas beyond the confines of a physical classroom environment. Threadit from Google (Area 120), is a helpful video discussion…
Creating high quality instructional video is a skill set that will benefit all educators that are working with students to help them know and understand course content across all grade levels and content areas. There are countless web tools available to create screencasts and videos, and I wanted to share one very helpful and free web tool to level up your instructional videos with a progress bar across the bottom. You may have seen these types of videos on various social media platforms. When I come across this sort of content, I find myself stopping to watch. It is through…
How You Can Use Clubhouse to Discuss and Design The Future of Education A guest post by Dr. Sabba Quidwai Each week, Joe Erpelding, Senior Vice President of Thrively and former principal of Design39 Campus, a K-8 public school in San Diego, brings people together to discuss one of his deeply held beliefs – the future is a place we create. One week as Joe shared how entrepreneurship was an integrated part of the elementary experience Harshal, a parent at Design39 raised her hand to speak. As Joe invited her to the stage, she shared a story of how her…
At EdTechTeacher, we believe in the potential for transformative learning experiences through innovative uses of technology. This guidebook provides educators with best practices, practical recommendations, and technology tools to reimagine learning in any classroom.
This article is Part 2 of a two-part series about introducing an online mindfulness program for teachers, and includes practices you can use in these times of challenge and change.
This blog post shares some important considerations and essential questions for schools and teachers to consider when planning for the upcoming school year.
The following post is an excerpt from EdTechTeacher CEO Tom Daccord’s blog, Leading Innovations in Schools: From Someday to Monday.
Evidence shows that when teachers have a practice that develops mindfulness and social-emotional capacities, it benefits their relationships with students, lowering states of anxiety, and increasing focus and ability to connect.
