Canva in the Classroom

Have you been looking for a fun way to use technology in the classroom? Have you been wondering how you can use Canva with your students?

Canva is a great tool and they offer it free for educators. If you work in one of my local districts, access is available via Clever, for teachers, staff and students.

I recently attended MACUL and came back with a ton of ideas for using Canva in the classroom. Below is a short list of ways to use it in the classroom.  Please reach out if you would like more details about any of the options listed below.

You can use Canva to create:

Teacher / Student Presentations
Group work activities
Interactive Graphic Organizers
Social Media Posts
Google Classroom Headers
Posters

Newsletters 

Flyers
Videos 

Screen Recordings
Whiteboard activities
Comics

storyboards

digital books

magazine covers
YouTube thumbnails

...and so many more options.

Brisk Teaching

Have you been feeling overwhelmed by lesson planning and grading?

Brisk Teaching can be your new teaching companion! This Chrome extension utilizes artificial intelligence to streamline your workflow. Brisk AI integrates seamlessly with Google Workspace, allowing you to create quizzes, interventions, adjust content reading level, and even assess student writing – all without ever leaving your workspace. Breathe a sigh of relief and let Brisk AI help you get back to what matters most: teaching!

21Things4Students

Last week I wrote about the REMC Association of Michigan.  As I said in that post, they have a wonderful website full of resources!

One of the resources that I would like to highlight is the 21Things4Students.  This site offers FREE activities to help you integrate technology into the middle school classroom curriculum (grades 5-9).  It will provide you with information on how to build knowledge and learn new tech skills for the 21st century. 21Things4Students will also help you teach kids how to be safe and secure online!

Rewordify.com

Have you ever read a text, even reread the text and you still have no idea what you read. Some of our students experience this everyday.

Rewordify.com can help both you and your students!

To use Rewordify simply enter hard sentences into the yellow box, click 'Rewordify text' and you'll instantly see an easier version.  Rewordify even highlights the words it changed and with a simple click, helps you learn the original word. 

Check out Rewordify.com for yourself.  I know you (and your students) will love it!

Enabling and Using Dictation

 Take a moment to consider your students. 

Think about the ones who struggle to get their ideas onto paper. How about the students who struggle with spelling or have fine motor control issues.  Do you have students in which English is not their first language?

Speech to Text is a tool that can help these students and many others. It is an Accessibility feature built into most devices today. Speech to Text is a tool that allows a writer to dictate their thoughts and ideas into a document. 

Speech to Text, also known as Dictation, is available on Chromebooks and iPads.  To enable and use dictation on these devices follow the instructions in the tutorials below.

Enabling and Using Dictation on a Chromebook (http://bit.ly/3GobetQ)

Enabling and Using Dictation on an iPad (http://bit.ly/3MntMLC)

Give it a try! Your students will love it (and so will you)!

Pattern Shapes

Pattern Shapes helps students explore geometry. It helps students think about angles, investigate symmetry, and compose and decompose larger shapes.

Pattern Shapes is a virtual version of the 7 familiar classroom shapes: yellow hexagons, orange squares, green triangles, red trapezoids, blue parallelograms, and tan rhombuses. 

Check out their great tutorials (https://bit.ly/36kEF0i).

Number Line is available as a web app (https://bit.ly/3IrYdNA), for iOS (https://apple.co/3ubFUqN), or for Chrome (https://bit.ly/3N1vMt8).

Money Pieces

Money Pieces helps students visualize and understand its values and relationships. There are two versions of coins and bills in the app. The currency pieces mimick the appearance and size of U.S. coins and the dollar bill.

Check out their great tutorials (https://bit.ly/3uyacG2).

Money Pieces is available as a web link (https://bit.ly/3gtgGxt), iOS app (https://apple.co/3uBxXNh), or for Google Chrome (https://bit.ly/3GAbbI6).

Math Vocabulary Cards

Math Vocabulary Cards helps students better understand key terms in mathematics. Each card has three sections: a math term, a model, and an easy to understand definition. Each section can be hidden or revealed, providing multiple options for practice. Vocabulary cards can be selected one by one or by category.  They are available in both English and Spanish.

Math Vocabulary Cards is available as a web app 

(https://bit.ly/3uqP4kG), for iOS  

(https://apple.co/3L2l0Sw), or for Chrome 

(https://bit.ly/34aeLeO).

Geoboard

Geoboard is a tool that lets learners stretch virtual rubberbands around pegs to form line segments and polygons. Creating these shapes help learners make discoveries about perimeter, area, angles, congruence, fractions, and more.

Geoboard is a virtual version of the rubberbands and peg/nail board we all grew up with. Learners can fill individual shapes with color and display grid lines with or without numbering to more easily calculate area and identify shape locations. 

Check out their great tutorials (https://bit.ly/3FYCFXl).

Geoboard is available as a web app (https://bit.ly/3KGUfTq), for iOS (https://apple.co/3tWZuZ8), or for Chrome (https://bit.ly/343icDE).

Fractions

Fractions is and app that lets students create and use bars or circles to represent, compare, and perform operations with fractions using denominators from 1 to 100.
Fractions is a virtual manipulative. It is an open-ended educational tool, ideal for elementary classrooms and other learning environments that use laptops, iPads, or Chromebooks.

Check out their great tutorials (https://bit.ly/3p319K5).

Fractions is available as a web app (https://bit.ly/3yulVFv), for iOS (https://apple.co/329ScFv), or for Chrome (https://bit.ly/3F7bJVR).

Number Rack

Number Rack has rows of movable, colored beads that help encourage learners to think in groups of 5s and 10s.

Number Rack is a virtual version of an abacus.  This virtual version can contain up to 10 rows of 10 beads so students can work with numbers up to 100.

It is an open-ended educational tool, ideal for elementary classrooms and other learning environments that use laptops, iPads, or Chromebooks.

Check out their great tutorials (https://bit.ly/3dOpjRZ).

Number Rack is available as a web link (https://bit.ly/3yoRe4m), iOS app (https://apple.co/3dOpyMT), or for Google Chrome  (https://bit.ly/3m3TKrX).

Number Pieces

Number Pieces is a virtual set of base ten pieces. The pieces can be used to represent single-, double-, and triple-digit numbers. The pieces can be joined together or broken apart to visualize regrouping.

Number Pieces is a virtual version of the manipulative. Number lines can be labeled with whole numbers, fractions, decimals, or negative numbers. It is an open-ended educational tool, ideal for elementary classrooms and other learning environments that use laptops, iPads, or Chromebooks.

Check out their great tutorials (https://bit.ly/3IPNYDZ).

Number Pieces is available as a web link (https://bit.ly/3EY32wX), iOS app (https://apple.co/30qGqX3), or for Google Chrome (https://bit.ly/3dRgeYG).

Number Line

Number Line helps students visualize number sequences. It can also helps students illustrate a variety of math strategies including counting, comparing, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.

Number lines can be labeled with whole numbers, fractions, decimals, or negative numbers. It is an open-ended educational tool, ideal for elementary classrooms and other learning environments that use laptops, iPads, or Chromebooks.

Check out their great tutorials (https://bit.ly/31UAVQY).

Number Line is available as a web app (https://bit.ly/3oThKzO), for iOS (https://apple.co/3yo3wKx), or for Chrome (https://bit.ly/3dQhMlH).

Number Frames

Number Frames helps students count, represent, compare, and compute with numbers; 5, 10, 20, and 100.

Number Frames has a variety of counter styles and colors to choose from. Using Number Frames can help students move away from one-by-one counting and toward more efficient ways of counting and computing by seeing patterns in the quantities.

Check out their great tutorials (https://bit.ly/3IIuIIF).

Number Frames is available as a web link (https://bit.ly/3DQZYBr), iOS app  (https://apple.co/3IOdBoC), or for Google Chrome  (https://bit.ly/30vq6o0).

Math Clock

Math Clock helps students become fluent working with time. 

Math Clock is a virtual version of the manipulative.  It is an open-ended educational tool, ideal for elementary classrooms and other learning environments that use laptops, iPads, or Chromebooks.

Check out their great tutorials (https://bit.ly/3pQjKbk). 

Math Clock is available as a web app (https://bit.ly/3yyr0fZ), for iOS (https://apple.co/3yrBQ7e), or for Chrome (https://bit.ly/3E77OY1).

The Math Learning Center

The Math Learning Center contains free lessons, materials and publications designed to help inspire and enable individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence. They have materials for use in the classroom and for families in a home setting.

Over the next few weeks I am going to highlight the variety of apps that they have available, for free. Most of the apps are available as a web application, for iOS and for Chrome.

One of the great features of the apps is the ability to share within the apps, even across platforms.  According to the website, "Sharing in an app allows educators to pose problems and investigations for students. Students can share their thinking with their teachers and classmates."

Scroll down to the bottom of the Math Apps page to watch a short video on how it works.  

OneTab

Some Google Extensions are great tools for productivity and organization.  One Extension that can be very helpful is OneTab.

OneTab



One Tab allows you to convert all of your open tabs into a list of URLs.  



From the list you can restore your tabs individually or all at once.  



Using OneTab can conserve battery power on a laptop/Chromebook.  It can also help speed up your device.  OneTab temporarily reduces the amount of memory your computer or chromebook uses, when you keep too many tabs running in the background.

The URL list can also be exported to save for later or to be shared with someone.



OneTab may be just the tool your students need when they are working on a research paper for your class.  They can open and view multiple tabs.  When computer time is over, they send the OneTab list to their G-Mail for later review and use.  They will have all of their research available to them, without having to continually start over or remember what they had searched for previously.  

Mathshare

In last weeks post I provided a link to the Bookshare YouTube channel. This week I want to discuss Mathshare.

Mathshare is new product from Benetech, the developers of Bookshare. Mathshare is similar to Bookshare, but for Math. 

According to Benetech, as many as 40 percent of students grapple with math. It can be particularly difficult for students with special needs, who can struggle with organization or accessing information. Whatever the learning challenge, Mathshare’s unique step-by-step problem solving approach and built-in accessibility make learning math easier and inclusive for all students.

I do want to point out there is one HUGE difference between Bookshare and Mathshare.  Bookshare has specific qualification requirements.  Mathshare on the other hand is free for any school or student to use!

Check out Mathshare at https://mathshare.benetech.org/

They also have a YouTube channel with some helpful videos.  You can find it at https://www.youtube.com/c/Mathshare

Using Pear Deck to Make Your Google Slides Presentations Interactive

Pear Deck is a tool that can be used for a variety of educational options.  I found a great video by Stacey Roshan (http://bit.ly/2YDAN3h) about how to use Pear Deck to make Google Slides presentations interactive.  The video will show you how to install the Pear Deck add-on, how to add various types of slides, how to customize draggable slides and what the presentation looks like from both the teacher and student end.  

Getting Started with Pear Deck to Make Your Google Slides Presentations Interactive. (https://youtu.be/9PJgsa-fnmA)

Stacey also has a great follow up video with tips for using Pear Deck as a student paced, asynchronous option for learning.  

Tips for Using Pear Deck's Student Paced Mode
(https://bit.ly/3rjLUuA)

Virtual Morning Meeting Activities for Distance Learning

Although most teachers have already set up a classroom routine, it is nice to hear new ideas. It is also beneficial to go over and review your virtual class protocols. This short video may help with any or all of these needs.

Maddie at EdTech Classroom created a short video on how to do a Virtual Morning Meeting Activities for Distance Learning (https://youtu.be/bk2h-3xuNDg).  

Thinking outside the box... 

How can you use these ideas in other areas of your virtual day?