EdTech Links of the Week - 8-29-24

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 group: bit.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!

Free Webinar - Navigating AI Challenges

I am excited to be presenting a free webinar for Skyrocket Education Services on September 13th on the topic of "Empowering Learning with Artificial Intelligence: Navigating AI Challenges".

As beneficial as AI is for educators and students, there are also challenges, concerns, and the potential for misuse.

In this session we will explore ways to address academic integrity concerns, tools and strategies to help monitor AI use, proper citation for AI generated content, ways to encourage positive use of AI in the classrooms, developing your own class set of AI guidelines for students, alternative assessment options, addressing AI bias and inaccuracies, student data privacy, identifying fake content, evaluating AI tools, and more.

Here are the details for this free webinar opportunity:

• 🧭 Navigating AI Challenges
• 📆 Friday, September 13, 2024
• ⏰ 1-2:30pm (Pacific) / 4-5:30pm (Eastern)
• ✅ Registration - https://www.addevent.com/event/CZ22391170
• 🧰 Session Resources - https://bit.ly/curts-aimisuse

I look forward to learning with you!

New Equatio Math Whiteboard

As a previous math teacher, the Equatio extension for Chrome has long been my recommendation for the easiest way to add math symbols and content to Google Docs, Slides, Forms and more.

I have often shared about Equatio in training sessions and blog posts. For example, you can learn more about the basics of this tool in my earlier post "Equatio: Yes You Can Type Math and Science in Google Docs and Forms!"

Well recently Equatio got a new way to create, add, and edit math content… the Equatio Whiteboard tool.

This new tool makes it easier than ever to create and insert math content into Google tools, such as shapes, lines, freehand drawings, text, and even embedded YouTube videos.

To help share about this update I recorded a short demo video going through the basics. See below for the video and details about this new feature. And a big thanks to Texthelp for sponsoring this post!

Eric's EdTech Webinars and Certificates

Although I do lots of live trainings, both in-person and remote, I am only able to reach so many people that way. To try to reach more people, for many years I have been recording a lot of my training sessions and then posting those to my YouTube channel.

If you haven't checked out my YouTube channel, I encourage you to do so. There are hundreds of videos there covering a wide range of educational technology topics. Please consider subscribing as well so you don't miss new content. You can access my channel here: youtube.com/ericcurts

Although having access to my videos on YouTube is great, sometimes teachers ask me if they can also get a certificate of attendance for watching my recorded trainings. Many educators need a certain number of PD hours each year to renew their licenses.

To help with this I am now providing free automated certificates of completion for many of my recorded videos. See below for all the details on how to view the videos and get your own certificates.

EdTech Links of the Week - 8-22-24

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 group: bit.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!

EdTech Playground Sessions for 2024-2025

I am excited to once again be presenting an "EdTech Playground" for the Teacher Innovation Network this year! In past years I have presented on  "Mote for Multilingual Learners" and "Accessibility Tools for All Learners".

The great things about the EdTech Playgrounds are:

• They are FREE!
• They are streamed live
• The recordings can be viewed later
• They are open to anyone

This year I will be doing a session on artificial intelligence:

• The AI Toolbox: Best AI Tools for Schools
• August 27, 2024
• 3:30 to 5:00pm (Pacific Time) / 6:30 to 8:00pm (Eastern Time)
• Registration - https://sccoe.to/tin2425

See below for the full list of EdTech Playground sessions for this year, as well as details on how to register. I look forward to learning with you!

Happy 10th Birthday Google Classroom!

It is hard to believe, but Google Classroom came out 10 years ago!

Before we had Classroom, I remember leading loads of PD sessions where I tried to help teachers build their own system in Google Drive where they created shared folders for every student, developed consistent naming schemes, and tried their best to stay relatively organized with the hundreds of files shared by their students.

Then along came Classroom! It automated and simplified file management for teachers, but also made it easier to assist students with their work. Over the years more and more new features have been added to build on this foundation.

On August 14th Google celebrated the 10th birthday of Google Classroom. To help celebrate I updated and reorganized my Classroom Resource page on my blog. Now it is easier for folks to find all of my Google Classroom tutorial videos, blog posts, resource docs, slideshows, and more.

You can check out all the resources here - www.controlaltachieve.com/classroom - or in the rest of the blog post below.

[Image credit ChatGPT]

Excellent EdTech Newsletters

It is difficult to stay up to date on everything new in educational technology. It seems that everyday there is a new tech tool or website, a helpful update, a PD opportunity, a creative idea for using technology in the classroom, and more.

How can you stay in the loop on all this great information?

One practical option is subscribing to EdTech newsletters!

This is actually one of my favorite ways to learn about new EdTech ideas. Sure I also listen to podcasts and belong to email discussion groups and check social media, but I especially appreciate newsletters for many reasons:

• They come directly to my email so I don't have to remember to go out and check anything.
• They are filled with great tools, tips, updates and resources.
• They are free!

See below for a list of many of the EdTech newsletters I currently subscribe to and benefit from. Hopefully you will find some here that will help you. And of course I am sure I am missing many other excellent newsletters. Please send me an email to let me know which ones you subscribe to that I should check out. I will keep updating the list below with more newsletters over time.

EdTech Links of the Week - 8-13-24

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 group: bit.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!

15 New Favorite Google Fonts

As I have shared in the past, I am quite a typophile. That is, someone with a passion for typefaces, font design, and the art of typography in general.

One of my main sources for typefaces is Google Fonts at fonts.google.com where Google provides over 1,700 free fonts (as of the date of this writing). These can be used by you and your students in most all of Google's products to add style, personality, and creativity to your docs, slides, and more.

Every now and then I like to go to the Google Fonts website and sort the fonts by date. This allows me to explore the newest fonts that Google has added. I did this recently and wanted to share some of my favorite new fonts. See below for a list, examples, descriptions and links to 15 awesome fonts from Google.

Keep in mind, you can easily add any of these fonts to your Google tools by clicking the font menu, choosing "More fonts", and then typing in the font name. And of course these are only 15 of 1,700+ fonts, so be sure to explore more at Google Fonts.

Texthelp Back to School Virtual Conference

I am excited and honored to be a part of the Texthelp "Back to School Blockbuster" virtual conference on September 18th and 19th, and I invite you to attend!

I have been sharing about Texthelp's products for so many years now, including tools such as Read&Write, Equatio, and more, which provide accessibility and support tools for all learners.

Well Texthelp is once again running their annual back to school virtual conference. I will be joining many amazing speakers, and will be presenting a session on AI in education. See below for more details and free registration:

• Texthelp "Back to School Blockbuster"
• September 18th and 19th
• 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm EST
• Streamed live
• 100% free!
• Recorded videos will be available through November
• Register here: Registration link

I hope you can join us and I look forward to learning with you!

Learn your New Students with Google Slides

One of the first things every teacher wants to do each year is memorize their students faces and names. This makes a personal connection to each of your students and helps them feel welcome and valued in your class. The last thing we want to do is call a student by the wrong name or have to resort to a "Hey you".

When I was first teaching (back in 1992, you do the math) I took pictures of my new students on the first day of class with an old camera with 110 film. I then would get the pictures developed at my local drug store and would attach the photos to 4x6 cards I had the students fill out with their names and details about themselves.

These became my flashcards so I could learn my students names, faces, and key details about each of them. I would practice with these for the first week or so of school to make sure I learned all 130 or so new students I had that year.

Well now with technology there are so many better and faster ways to do this. For one example I have created a Google Slideshow template that you can use to help learn your students names and faces and a little about them. You can even randomize the slides for better quizzing of yourself. See below to get your copy of the template and directions for how to use it.

EdTech Links of the Week - 8-6-24

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 group: bit.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!

World Snorkl Day - Recorded Videos

I recently had the privilege of presenting a session for "World Snorkl Day". This was a free live streamed PD event with four hours of awesome content from twelve amazing educators across eight different sessions of fun, learning, and inspiration!

If you are not familiar with it, Snorkl was one the featured AI tools in my "Cool Tools 2023" series. For more details you can read that original blog post and watch my 12-minute tutorial video all about the tool.

In short, here is how Snorkl works:

• You create a problem, question, or prompt for your students and provide an exemplar answer for the AI.
• Students then record themselves speaking as they solve the problem or answer the question while explaining their reasoning.
• If needed the student can draw on the digital whiteboard while speaking.
• The AI then reviews the student's explanation based on the guidance you have provided.
• The AI then provides personalized feedback for the student on their work.
• The grades and feedback are all collected for you as the teacher to review.

See below for all of the recordings from "World Snorkl Day" including the "Snorkl Innovation Slam" session I was honored to be a part of.

Join me for the MakerEd Educators Forum

I am super excited to be presenting at the virtual MakerEd Educators Forum this September. The MakerEd Educators Forum is a two day virtual conference where educators will explore maker topics, share ideas, exchange tips & tricks and learn from one another.

The event will be held on September 27th and 28th, and will consist of 30-minute presentations on Friday, interactive workshops on Saturday and unconference conversation opportunities both days. 

The goal of the Forum is to give STEAM & maker educators the opportunity to share ideas, resources, and experiences.  The sessions will focus on practical skills, examples of successes and struggles, creative uses of AI in the classroom, new ideas and tips and tricks you can use with your students. Presentation topics include bridging literacy and computer game design,  exploring Tinkercad's newest interactive features, AI and storytelling in the classroom and much more.

Even better, you can use the code "MEF2024free" to save 100% off of the normal $65 cost! This gives access to all the live sessions as well as their recordings afterwards.

On September 28th I will be presenting the following session:

Yes (even) You Can Code with AI! 

Don't know Python from Perl? Is HTML all IDK to you? Do you think JavaScript is the handwriting on your Starbucks cup? Even if you have never written a line of code in your life, you can with AI! In this session we will see how to use tools such as Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude to create code that you can use in Google Docs, Sheets, and Sites for learning games, simulations, activities, supports, time-savers, productivity helpers, and more.

You can get more details and register for the event at https://makered.org/educatorsforum

Between a Doc and a Hard Space: How to insert non-breaking spaces

Google Docs is a powerful word processing tool with so many useful features for educators, students, and everyone. As awesome as those are, however, there are still some things that Google Docs can't do, or perhaps just can't do as well as other tools.

Recently I received an email from someone asking how to insert a "hard space" into a Google Doc (or sometimes just called a "non-breaking space").

In short this is a special space character that prevents the words on either side of it from being separated by a line break. When text wraps to the next line, the words connected by the non-breaking space stay together on the same line. It's useful for keeping things like names, dates, measurements or other word pairs from being split apart.

It turns out you can do this in Google Docs, but it is not a simple task. I was excited to dig in and discover how this can be done (as well as create an exceptionally punny title for this blog post).

See below for direction on how to add a "non-breaking" or "hard" space in Docs when needed.