It’s hard to believe that this is the last weekend in April. This week, we have some great new resources to carry you into May and get you excited about summer.

Teaching Humanities with Technology

Tom Daccord, Greg Kulowiec, Shawn McCusker, and Beth Holland gave some great project ideas and tools for English, History, and Foreign Language classes. If you missed the webinar, you can watch below or check out our archives.

http://youtu.be/EmPvhW0aw6M

For more great ideas, check out some of our Summer Workshop opportunities for humanities teachers.

• Teaching History with Technology – Chicago with Shawn McCusker
• Teaching History with Technology – Cambridge with Greg Kulowiec
• Teaching English & Language Arts with Technology – Cambridge with Tom Daccord
• Teaching Foreign Languages with Technology – Cambridge with Tom Daccord
• Reading, Writing, & Research with iPads & Mobile Devices – Cambridge with Beth Holland

ETT Summit Sessions

We have an incredible line up of speakers for our inaugural EdTechTeacher Summit in Chicago July 28-30. Given the tremendous topics, we’ve asked our speakers to submit blog posts as a teaser to the main event. Look for those to begin appearing next week.

In the meantime, our own team has been writing about their presentations. Here’s a sneak peak of what’s to come.

Staying Uncomfortable is the Key to Progress

Patrick Larkin will build off of this idea in both of his featured sessions at the ETT Summit as he talks about Collaboration with Google & the Cloud for becoming a digital leader as well as the keys to becoming The Mobile Leader.

Small Tech Changes – BIG Learning Impact

Beth Holland wrote this post for Diversa in Brazil. Not only will she present this topic in July, but she is leading a hands-on workshop in Cambridge the week before.

Beyond Worksheets, A True Expression of Student Learning

Featured presenter, Shawn McCusker, wrote this post as the culminating article in his MindShift series – Learning in the New Age of Information. In addition to presenting Teaching and Learning in the New Economy of Information and Creating a Culture of Research and Writing in the 1:1 Social Studies Classroom he will be leading workshops this summer to further explore these concepts.

Chrome Smashing: Creating the Inconceivable

In her latest Edutopia article, Beth Holland explores the potential of applying Greg Kulowiec’s concept of the smash to Chromebooks. She will be presenting Smashed, Crushed, & Remixed – Creating Learning Artifacts with iPads & Tablets at the ETT Summit and also leading hands-on workshops this summer.

Don’t miss a great opportunity! Early Bird Registration is open!

Resources Discovered (and Uncovered) this Week

From preparing for summer workshops to planning our webinars to redesigning the EdTechTeacher web site, we have found some new tools as well as some great updates this week.

Chalkup + Google: The new way to use Google Drive in the Classroom
With Chalkup, annotate and grade docs in Drive to provide feedback to students.

Build with Chrome
This is like Minecraft for Chromebook combined with Legos.

Vocabla
Web and iOS app for organizing vocabulary lists and reviewing new words.

Exploration Lite
This game based app for creating worlds on iPad is like a mini version of Minecraft.

Flashcard Exchange
Flashcard Exchange works much like Quizlet but with a slightly cleaner interface. Students can create flashcards with images or their own text and then test themselves. Flashcards can be published and shared as well. It does work with some apps for review on mobile devices.

inklewriter
Free web tool to design your own interactive stories! Create choose your own ending books online and then share them.

BaiBoard – Collaborative Whiteboard
Not only does BaiBoard allow students to collaborate on a shared whiteboard via their iPads, but they can also jointly annotate PDFs. Much like with AirSketch, BaiBoard also includes the ability to do a web share. This means that when on the same network, and with the unique URL associated with the iPad, ANY device can see a student working on their BaiBoard through a browser.