Control Alt Achieve: EdTech Links of the Week

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

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📧 Join the "Control Alt Achieve" email discussion group: bit.ly/caa-emailgroup
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And as always, please let me know of any resources that you recommend. I would love to learn from you!

This week I have 4 resources from around the Internet and 3 resources from my blog.

📦 Boxie

Resource Link

I met the Boxie team at both FETC and ISTE this year and really admire what they have built. If you are not familiar with Boxie, here is a quick overview:

Boxie allows teachers and students to annotate videos and PDFs with 📌 "pins" (for a specific spot in the content) and 🏷️ "tags" (for a section of the content) collectively called "pintagging".
These annotations can be text, links, images, videos, presentations, games, and much more.
Teachers can annotate to help students learn the content in a more engaging and interactive way.
Students can use annotations to show what they have learned.
Boxie can also be used to create assessments on the content with multiple choice or short answer questions.
Boxie's AI can even be used to help create and grade these assessments.

Head over to https://www.meetboxie.com/ to learn more!

🍋 Squeezy

Resource Link

Squeezy is a free daily word game that is fun to play while also helping to build skills in spelling and vocabulary.
The game is played in three rounds that get progressively more challenging.
In each round you are given a list of words and a bank of letters. Your job is to squeeze the letters into the words to make new valid words.
As a bonus the squeezed in letters spell out words that align to a theme for that day's puzzle.
The game can be played in standard "Breezy Mode" or more difficult "Wheezy Mode" that adds extra unused letters as distractions.

🕹️ Educaplay

Resource Link

Educaplay lets you create 18 different types of learning games including matching, memory, unscrambling, word search, crossword, yes/no, fill in the blank, and more.
Or you can search and use over 7 million activities from the community.
The games can be shared with students as a link or with a code.
Students do not need accounts to play, but can optionally enter a nickname for tracking their scores.
Detailed results are available for teachers to see student progress.
The free version allows unlimited games and players, sharing or embedding games, and accessing result reports.
Paid versions remove ads and offer additional integrations, advanced options, and more detailed reports.

🎞️ Screencastify Offering Free Student Video Assignments

Resource Link

With Microsoft shutting down Flip (formerly Flipgrid) many educators are looking for possible replacements. Although nothing is a perfect replacement for everything that Flip offered, there are several tools that are trying to help.

One such tool is Screencastify with their Submit tool which makes it super easy for students to record and submit video responses to your assignments. To help teachers explore this tool. Screencastify is making Submit completely free for unlimited use for the entire school year until May 2025.

They are even adding new features to make the tool more interactive for students and seamless for teachers including:

Student interactivity: The ability for students to comment on each other’s videos
Student video editing: Easy tools for student video creation like trim, annotations, and more
Teacher feedback: record or type personalized feedback beyond the grade
More templates: New seasonal assignment templates

🌞 My 2024 CFISD Digital Learning Conference Sessions

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Wrap up the summer with my free virtual EdTech PD sessions! I am super excited to be presenting the following topics online for the CFISD Digital Learning Conference on July 25th

🖐️ Active Learning with Google Tools and EduProtocols
📊 Google Sheets for Educators: From Data Noob to Nerd
✨ The "Gem in AI" - Google AI Tools for Education
🖥️ Google Meet Enterprise Features

In addition to my sessions there will be about 100 more presentations from a wide range of amazing educators. Get all the details, resources, and live streaming links at the link above.

🤿 World Snorkl Day - Virtual PD

Resource Link

Snorkl is one of my favorite AI tools for schools. It lets students answer assessment questions by speaking and drawing, and then uses AI to grade those responses and give personalized feedback. You can see my earlier blog post and tutorial video for more details about it.

The great news is that Snorkl is running a free virtual PD event on July 30th with a wide range of sessions to help you learn, explore, and apply Snorkl even better. I am super excited to be part of one of the sessions, the "Snorkl Innovation Slam".

See the link above for all of the details and how to register for this free event.

▶️ Recorded Webinar - Hipster Google

Resource Link

I recently recorded a new training on "Hipster Google - Tools You Probably Never Heard Of" where I shared 15 of my favorite lesser known Google tools out of my full list of 90+ Hipster Google tools in categories including:

🔎 Search Tools
🗺️ Map Tools
🎨 Creative Tools
🎵 Music Tools
💬 Communication Tools
🕹️ Games
💡 Miscellaneous Tools

You can access the recording and all of the session resources at the link above. Feel free to share with others, and I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on these tools.