Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Free Resources to Teach Your Students about AI

As artificial intelligence has become more popular in schools, we have seen lots of great support materials for educators. I have provided many hours of PD, as well as videos, blog posts, resources docs, and more.

You can access all of my AI resources at www.controlaltachieve.com/ai

In addition to training educators, we also need to make sure our students are being well educated on AI. This can involve lessons and activities on:
  • What AI is and what tools are available
  • How they can use AI to assist them
  • What are appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI
  • Identifying potential misinformation and bias in AI
  • And more
Thankfully we are not on our own in providing this information to our students. Many organizations have created lessons, activities, videos, and more to cover these topics in engaging ways for our learners. And best of all, the content is free!

See below for a collection of free resources to help educate students about AI. Although this is an excellent list, I am sure there are many other resources that could be added. Please share any resources you know of ( to me at ericcurts@gmail.com ) and I will be happy to update this post to include them.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Podcast Spotlight: Tech Unwreck

I recently had the pleasure to be a guest on the "Tech Unwreck" podcast.

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love podcasts and am always mentioning something new I learned from one of them, so I was super excited to get to join an episode of this podcast.

The podcast is hosted by Nicky Acevedo from Vivacity Tech and is described as follows:

Tech Unwreck is a podcast for educators and technology experts in the K-12 space to learn, share, and grow in their knowledge. Hear from experts in their field about K-12 technology in the classroom and learn about new and exciting tools, classroom techniques, and more.

I had a wonderful time chatting with Nicky all about artificial intelligence in education including the AI tools currently available, the beneficial ways they can be used in schools, and ideas for addressing potential concerns..

Take a look below to listen to the episode, access the resources that I shared in the episode, and explore more about the podcast.

Monday, February 12, 2024

EdTech Links of the Week - 2-12-24

Each week I keep an eye out for the latest edtech resources through blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, user groups, and more. I then try to reshare these resources in many ways.

One way I share these is here on the blog in these "EdTech Links of the Week" posts. See below to explore the latest batch of resources, and be sure to share with others who may benefit.

If you want to make sure you don't miss new resources, you can:
🔗 View all EdTech Links of the Week: bit.ly/caa-links
📰 Sign up for my weekly email newsletter: bit.ly/curts-news
📧 Join the "Control Alt Achieve" email discussion groupbit.ly/caa-emailgroup
🔔 Get new blog posts automatically through email - FollowIt link

And as always, please let me know of any resources that you recommend. I would love to learn from you!

Googley Valentine Activities

With Valentine's Day coming up, this is a great time to highlight some activities I really love! In this case I am talking about technology activities for students that tie into the holiday theme while also promoting creativity, math, and writing.

I this blog post I will be sharing four Valentine-themed projects that use Google tools. Each of these are ideas I have shared in the past, but I thought it would be helpful to bring them all together in one place.
  • 📊 Hearts and Charts Google Sheets Math Activities
  • 😍 Valentine Emoji Rebus Stories in Google Docs
  • 🧲 Valentine Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings
  • 💌 Valentine Cards with Google Drawings
Hopefully you find all of them to be fun ways to engage your students, while working on practical skills.

See below for a description of each activity, access to all the templates, and links to the original blog posts for the projects I am re-sharing. Hope you love them!

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Accessibility Tools for All Learners - Recorded Webinar

Recently I had the privilege to offer a free online session for the Teacher Innovation Network "EdTech Playground" series where the theme was accessibility tools and resources for all learners.

For my portion of the session I presented on a wide range of assistive technology tools and resources. Here is a description of my session:

Google Tools to Support all Learners
There are many Google tools, apps, extensions, and features available to assist all learners. In this session we take an in-depth hands-on look at a wide range of technology tools to assist any and all learners. These can include text-to-speech, speech-to-text, readability, reading comprehension, artificial intelligence tools, audio support, organization, focus, and more. Learn what tools are available and how to access and use these free tools with your students.

The other presenter was Kat Goyette who also addressed accessibility resources and support ideas.

The Teacher Innovation Network was kind enough to make the recorded video available for people to view if they were not able to attend the live session. See below to watch the recording, as well as access the resources I shared in the session.

Thursday, February 1, 2024

What's New in Google - January 2024

Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from January 2024, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our January 2024 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda with all the awesome resources and Google updates from the last few months. This includes lots of new Google updates and Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:
  • Connect Google-using educators
  • Share the latest Google Workspace news and features
  • Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to’s
  • Share best practices of how Google Workspace is being used within schools
  • Ask questions and get answers
The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the January 2024 meeting: