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

📰 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!

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

✨ Recorded Webinar - Google Gemini for Education

Resource Link

I recently had the opportunity to record a 45-minute webinar on Gemini, which is Google's free AI chatbot with great features such as built-in fact checking and data protections for school accounts.

If you have not used Gemini yet, this will be a great overview to get you started.
If you have used Gemini, this deep dive should help you explore more of its features.

Click the link above to access the recorded video and all the session resources.

🗣️ My 2025 OETC Sessions

Resource Link

I am excited and honored to be presenting at the 2025 Ohio Educational Technology Conference (OETC25) in Columbus, Ohio on February 11th through 13th:

🚦 Managing AI Concerns in Schools
👓 Hipster Google: Lesser Known Tools
🧰 AI Toolbox: Best AI Tools for Schools
📛 Classroom Guest: Mr. A.I. Chatterbot

If you will be attending, I hope to connect and learn with you. You can get all the details at the link above.

🎧 Podcast Spotlight: Unpacking Education

Resource Link

I recently had the pleasure to be a guest on the "Unpacking Education" podcast from AVID. I had a wonderful time chatting about generative AI and how it can be used in K–12 classrooms, with specific examples of AI tools to try and practical classroom activities that can make a real impact with students.

Click the link above to listen to the episode, access the resources that I shared in the episode, and explore more about the podcast.

🪄 Magic Exercise Book

Resource Link

If you use Google Classroom this free add-on is a must have!
Have you ever pushed out copies of Docs or Slides to your students through Classroom and then later realized you needed to add more content?
With the "Magic Exercise Book" add-on you can do just that.
Simply create the new content in Slides or Docs then run the add-on to append the new content to all of the students' copies.
With this add-on you are able to add additional work as you go without having to open each student's work and manually copy it across.
This is super useful for adding content you accidentally forgot to include, or to intentionally push out additional content for an ongoing assignment.

🦕 Tom Traferatops' Storybook Hub

Resource Link

Although Trafera is known as an EdTech company, they also provide a collection of free digital literacy books for elementary students.
Anna Hanrahan created the "Tom Traferatops" series of books which include:

Tom Traferatops Recognizes His Strengths
Tom Traferatops and Friends See the World Through a STEM Lens
Tom Traferatops Becomes A Good Digital Citizen
Tom Traferatops Learns About Coding and Future-Ready Skills

Each book can be downloaded for free as a PDF, or you can play the digital read-along version that is read by an engaging narrator.
There are also downloadable lessons to go along with each book for grades K-2 and grades 3-5.

🖼️ New Google Slides Templates

Resource Link

Over the years I have shared about excellent resources to get Google Slides templates such as SlidesMania, Slides Carnival, Slidesgo, and more.
Well Google has now added a new collection of modern, professionally designed templates right inside of Google Slides.
Simply click "Insert" then "Templates" when in Google Slides and the new "Templates" side panel will open.
Here you can browse through loads of templates including "Class overview", "Class project", "lesson", "Course overview", "Book report", "Science presentation" and more.
You can insert the entire template into your slideshow, or you can just insert the individual slides that you want.
After inserting the template slides, you can modify them as usual to customize them for your specific presentation.

✍️ Rumi AI for Student Writing

Resource Link

I have been doing a lot of PD on how to address cheating with AI and one of my main suggestions is to use tools that move forward with the student to monitor the writing process rather than tools that go backwards and try to detect AI writing from the final product. One tool that does a great job of this is Rumi.

With Rumi, teachers create assignments and decide how much AI the students can use.
Rumi then monitors the entire writing process and provides AI assistance as directed by the teacher.
Rumi then provides the teacher with a detailed record of the entire writing process including full revision history playback, and writing analytics such as writing duration, pasting, revisions, AI use, and more.

While AI detectors try (and fail) to analyze what was written, Rumi reveals how it was written. You can learn more at https://www.rumidocs.com/ and in this overview video.