[ad_1] Next weekend I’m taking final exams for the first time since Clinton was in office. (If you missed the news, I’m a full-time student again). This has given me an opportunity to test some modern takes on classic study methods including flash cards and Jeopardy-style games. Flashcards From the first day of the semester I…

[ad_1] This week is Hour of Code week organized by Code.org. They’re joined by just about every company that makes some kind of learn-to-code product in offering short activities designed to introduce programming concepts to students of all ages. Code.org and the Hour of Code website are fine places to find activities to use this week. There…

[ad_1] When I started teaching there were some websites on which you might find a lesson plan, but they were few and far between. So there were more times than I care to admit in which I found myself flipping through books, bugging sympathetic colleagues, or just staring at the wall in the hopes of…

[ad_1] This year’s emergence of AI-powered tools for education reminds me a bit of the emergence of Web 2.0 tools fifteen years ago. Back then there were a lot of new tools emerging that had great potential despite being rough around the edges. I feel the same way about a lot of AI tools right…

[ad_1] This week is Geography Awareness Week. It’s my favorite non-holiday week of the year. Don’t stop reading because you’re not a geography teacher. As I hope you’ll see by the end of this newsletter, digital mapping tools are useful in many subject areas. To that end, here are some digital mapping activities for a…

[ad_1] In my course on making and teaching with animated explanations I provide in-depth explanations of that process and why it is helpful in remembering key terms and concepts. I also provide a lot of direction on various methods for making animated explanation videos. Last week I tried a new AI tool for making animated explanation videos.…

[ad_1] This week I was going to just write about Halloween and how to create comic strips in Canva. Here’s the video about how to do that. But last week was a very difficult week here in Maine, so it felt more appropriate to share an SEL resource. On Monday morning my daughters’ school and most others…

[ad_1] As one of my friends who teaches 4th grade said to me last week, we’ve entered the part of the school year in which “we’re really in it.” What she meant was the newness of the school year has worn off. When the newness has worn off it is time to revisit some basics…

[ad_1] I haven’t been to an arcade in decades (do they even still exist?). But if I have the chance to play ski-ball or mini-basketball to win a prize, I’ll take it. So it was with excitement that last week I tried a new AI tool that can be used to turn quiz questions into…

[ad_1] If there is one thing that I’ve come to expect from Google over the last seventeen years it is that none of their best products stay the same for too long. Case in point, so far this month Google has announced the deprecation of Jamboard and has released a new version of Google Earth. …