Podcast Spotlight: Teaching 'N Tech with Allan & Chad

I recently had the pleasure to be a guest on the "Teaching 'N Tech with Allan & Chad" 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 Allan Brown and Chad Hoffman and is described as follows:

Allan Brown and Chad Hoffman host this podcast series highlighting effective instructional strategies implemented by educators in Northeast Ohio. Episodes focus on successful teaching methods from their experiences in the classroom and special guests provide insights as well.

I had a wonderful time chatting with Allan and Chris about three of my favorite AI tools for schools, as well as ideas for embracing technology in the classroom, even for teachers who are unsure.

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

EdTech Links of the Week - 9-26-24

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!

Jam Slides - Google Slides Replacement Template for Jamboard

Last year Google announced that they would be shutting down Jamboard, which was a collaborative digital whiteboarding tool. According to Google's timeline, as of October 1, 2024, Jamboard will become view-only, and as of December 31, 2024, the tool will shut down entirely.

This announcement was a great disappointment to many educators who have come to rely on Jamboard for teaching and learning.

Since then many other tools have been explored as potential replacements for Jamboard including Figjam, Lucidspark, Miro, Padlet Sandboxes, Canva, and more. I have even hosted an intro and advanced webinar on moving from Jamboard to Figjam.

All of these are excellent tools and I encourage you to test them out. However, I would like to suggest one other option to consider … Google Slides.

Although no tool is an exact replacement for Jamboard, Google Slides is actually very similar. In addition, it is a Google tool, so you and your students already have access to it and are probably pretty familiar with how it works.

To make this transition even easier, I have created a free Google Slides template that you can copy and use. This "Jam Slides" template is designed to help you mimic all of the features from Jamboard in Google Slides.

See below to get your own copy of the template, and to watch a tutorial video where I use this template and go through each Jamboard feature one by one and show how they can all be done in Google Slides.

Join Me for MoteCon24

I am excited and honored to be presenting at the free, virtual MoteCon24 event on September 30th!

MoteCon is a totally free, online conference with loads of great sessions on using Mote, the awesome Chrome extension that lets you and your students record your voice and add that recording to websites and web tools including Google Docs, Slides, Forms, Classroom, Gmail, and more.

In past years I presented at MoteCon22 and MoteCon23. This year MoteCon will be streamed live on YouTube on September 30th from 5pm to 8pm Central Time (6pm to 9pm Eastern). For those who can't watch live, the recorded videos will be available for on-demand viewing afterwards,

See below for all the details and how to register for free. I look forward to learning with you!

Spelling Snake - Using AI to Code Educational Games

In the past I have shared about using AI for coding and I even have a blog post from about a year ago with a 1 hour deep dive video with loads of examples that you can check out.

Well a lot has changed in the last year so I wanted to share a great new AI tool that makes it easier than ever to create, play, and share educational games or simulations or other interactives.

And you don't even need to know how to code!

This tool is the new artifact window in Claude. If you are not familiar with Claude, it is an AI chatbot very similar to ChatGPT and Gemini, and can be accessed for free at claude.ai

The artifact window is a new feature that lets you see the code that Claude generates, run the code to test out your game live, and share a link with others so they can play your game.

So for my example I decided to create a spelling game. My idea was to have it be a twist on the classic snake game, but with spelling words. Now of course you can have Claude create the code for whatever you want. It can be an educational game or a simulation or an interactive activity.

See below for the 13 minute video that walks you through the entire process from start to finish. And if you create something with Claude, please send me the link so I can try out what you created.

EdTech Links of the Week - 9-17-24

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!

The AI Toolbox - 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 artificial intelligence in education.

For my session I presented on a wide range of my favorite artificial intelligence tools and how they can be used for teaching and learning. 

Here is a description of my session:

The AI Toolbox: Best AI Tools for Schools

ChatGPT and Gemini are wonderful, but what other AI tools are available? Thankfully there are many educational AI resources that build on top of these models with tools that are free, provide extra functionality and features, and make the process easier and more convenient for educators. In this session we will explore many of these tools such as MagicSchool AI, Khanmigo, SchoolAI, QuestionWell, EnlightenAI, Snorkl, Sorcerer, Drift, Curipod, Brisk Teaching, Ideogram, Udio and more.

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.

Feel free to share with others who may benefit, and please let me know what AI tools I left out that I should explore.

Upcoming Webinar - The Future of Feedback and Personalized Learning

I am excited to be offering another webinar for Fobizz! 

A few months ago I partnered with them to present my "ABC's of AI" session which provided a general overview of AI in education. You can get all the details about that session in my earlier post.

For the next webinar we are narrowing the focus to grading and feedback with AI.

One of the biggest challenges in education is the time required to provide detailed feedback on student work. Thankfully we now have powerful AI tools that can generate personalized feedback for student work based on the guidelines, rubrics, and style we suggest. This can include feedback on student writing from short answers to full essays, as well as feedback on spoken student explanations. In this session we will explore AI feedback tools such as the Fobizz AI Grading Assistant, Snorkl, EnlightenAI, and more.

Here are the details:

💬 The Future of Feedback and Personalized Learning

📆 Thursday, September 26, 2024 from 4pm to 5pm (Eastern)

🎯 Learning goals

• You will learn how to use AI tools to assist with grading and feedback.
• You will explore how AI tools function in an educational context.
• You will understand how to train AI tools using rubrics and exemplars.
• You will learn methods to save time and increase consistency in grading using AI.
• You will discover how to maintain your personal touch and oversight while using AI tools.

The webinar will be recorded for those who cannot attend live. You can register for the webinar on the Fobizz website at:

https://plattform.fobizz.com/fortbildungen/1827-the-future-of-feedback-and-personalized-learning

Note: The webinar is completely free, but you will need to sign up for a free Fobizz account to sign up. Fobizz provides a wide range of free webinars on EdTech topics.

I am looking forward to learning with you!

EdTech Links of the Week - 9-10-24

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!

Back-To-School AI Webinar

As the new school year kicks off, artificial intelligence is on everyone's minds with thoughts of how to best use this powerful new technology to support teachers and students.

Dan Fitzpatrick, a leading voice in AI for education, has organized a panel of educators to help address this topic in a free "Back-To-School AI Webinar".

And I am super excited to be a part of it!

Here are the details:

• The Back-To-School AI Webinar 2024/25
• 📅 September 19, 2024
• ⏰ 11:00am Eastern / 8:00am Pacific / 16:00 UK
• 🧔 Speakers - Dan Fitzpatrick, Jason Gulya, Dr. Sabba Quidwai, Matthew Wemyss, Aileen Wallace, and Eric Curts (me!)
• ✅ Register for free at https://hz03lw7mbb2.typeform.com/to/ufAsvREV

What you'll leave with:

• Clear steps to get started using AI effectively (or clear steps on how to guide your colleagues)
• Prompting tips for tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini
• Insights into the AI education tools that are causing waves around the world
• Much more

5 attendees will win a brand new copy of the Back-To-School AI Guide 2024/25: 46 Steps & Tools For Educators Exploring Artificial Intelligence

Please share with others who may benefit, and I look forward to learning with you!

Make Educational Maps with AI

By now we are all pretty used to AI chatbots being able to generate a wide range of content from lesson plans to images to even educational songs. However, another creative use for AI chatbots is to create content for informational maps.

Google My Maps is a free tool that allows you to create your own custom maps, where you can add pins for different locations, and then add content to each pin to explain what it represents.

Although you can do this by hand, that can take quite a while. It turns out that Google My Maps allows you to upload a CSV file (comma separated values) with all of the data needed to create a map.

Well the good news is, we can use an AI chatbot to generate that CSV file, complete with all the data needed for our informational map.

See below for a short video tutorial and detailed directions on how to do this, along with several demo examples I created that you can explore. And of course I would love to see examples of what you create. Please feel free to share with me the maps you make.