Thursday, February 20, 2025

EdTech Links - Week of 2-17-25

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 4 resources from my blog.

📖 Be An Author Month 2025

March is "Be An Author Month"! Give your students a voice with free Book Creator resources & activities:
  • ✍️ Personal narrative competition for students to participate in
  • 📗 Templates to help with reading and writing
  • 📝 An Activity Journal with daily prompts throughout March
  • ▶️ Inspirational webinars featuring expert authors and educators
See the link above for all the details on how you can access these free resources and engage your students in the writing activities, or go directly to the Book Creator "Be An Author Month" site.



💡 AI Student Learning Activities with Prompts

I’ve been exploring ways to use AI for classroom activities without giving students direct access, which is great for students who are too young to use AI or for schools where AI tools are not yet approved for students. These activities include:
  • 🎙️ AI Interview
  • ⚖️ AI Debate
  • 🧩 AI Games
  • ✍️ AI Co-Writing
You can use the link above to get copies of the prompts for all of these activities, as well as watch a 28-minute video where I demonstrate each one.



🏔️ My UCET 2025 Sessions

I am excited and honored to once again be presenting at the UCET 2025 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah on February 25th and 26th. If you will be there, I hope to get to connect and learn with you. 

You can get all of the details about the conference including registration, presenters, sessions, and more on the conference website at ucet.org/conference/

And you can get all the details and resources for my sessions at bit.ly/curts-ucet25 or at the link above.





🎉 My NCTIES 2025 Sessions
Resource Link

I am excited and honored to once again be presenting at the 2025 NCTIES Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina on March 5th through 7th.

You can access more NCTIES information and register for the conference at ncties.org/2025-registration.html

And you can get all the details and resources for my sessions at bit.ly/curts-ncties25 or at the link above.




📸 FuseBase Pro Screenshot Extension
  • For many years I have used the Nimbus Screenshot extension to capture images online for my blog posts, PD resources, social media, and this newsletter.
  • Recently I was sad to find out that the extension had shut down.
  • Thankfully the developers who had originally created the tool have now made a new version under the name "FuseBase Pro".
  • The new extension works just like the old one, allowing you to easily take screenshots in multiple modes including Selected area, Entire page, Visible part of page, Delayed screenshot and more.
  • And best of all … it's free!



🔗 Google Sites Templates for Schools
  • Kirksville Web Design provides a collection of free Google Sites templates for use in schools.
  • Templates include School Teacher Site, Capstone Student Project, Lesson Plan, Professor Bio Sites, Student Profile Site, Classroom Template and more.
  • These templates are completely free to copy and modify however you need to create your customized Google Site.



📰 RetroReport
  • Retro Report is an independent nonprofit newsroom creating trusted documentary videos and classroom resources.
  • They provide more than 300 videos and lessons to connect the past to the present, fostering engagement and critical thinking skills.
  • Topic categories include Science, U.S. History, World History, Psychology, Geography, Civics and Government, Media and News Literacy, Environment and more.
  • Teachers can sign up for free to get access to hundreds of free lesson plans, student activities and videos to use with students.



🚨 Factile

Factile is the #1 online Jeopardy-style game maker, designed specifically to make classroom topic reviews fun and engage students. Create custom Jeopardy-style quizzes for your classroom in minutes with Factile's easy-to-use platform.

Key Features:
  • Buzzer Mode: Turn any device into a buzzer for an exciting classroom gameshow experience.
  • Multiple Game Modes: Choose from Jeopardy, multiple-choice, memory, flashcards, or quiz bowl formats to fit your lesson plan.
  • AI-Powered Game Creation: AutoGen generates questions and answers from your teaching topics, subtopics, or uploaded PDFs using generative AI.
  • Question Bank: Organize and reuse questions across lessons to build a library of classroom content.
Factile saves teachers time while making learning fun and interactive. Ready to boost student engagement? Start building your classroom quiz today: Create a Game

P.S.: Factile is currently offering 500 FREE AutoGen tokens to try out the AI question-generation feature.



Post by Eric Curts
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