Saturday, February 15, 2025

Give Your Students a Voice - Be An Author Month 2025

This blog post is sponsored by Book Creator, but all opinions are mine.

Book Creator has long been one of my favorite EdTech tools, providing students with both the inspiration and the tools to tell stories, share their ideas, and let their voices be heard.

I have often shared about Book Creator, including how this tool can be used to help students write and illustrate their stories. For more details on that, see my earlier blog post and tutorial video here - "Book Creator Pen Tools - Let Your Inner Illustrator Come Alive!"

Well March is "Be An Author Month" and Book Creator is helping to celebrate it through activities, webinars, templates, and a personal narrative competition for all students.

Writing is a passion of mine, including this blog, my "Control Alt Achieve" book, my poetry for kids, my essays on wellbeing, and more. I am so excited for resources that support and inspire students to write.

See below for all the details on how you can access these free resources and engage your students in the writing activities.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

EdTech Links - Week of 2-10-25

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!

Sunday, February 9, 2025

AI-AI-Oh! Awesome AI Uses in Education

Artificial Intelligence can be used in so many different ways in schools to improve teaching, learning, creativity, productivity, support, and more for educators and students.

Recently I recorded a 45-minute webinar where I covered a wide range of helpful and creative ways to use AI in schools

To bring some order to my examples, I organized them into six categories including:

  • 🤔 Brainstorming
  • ✍️ Creating Content
  • ✂️ Altering Content
  • 🔎 Processing Information
  • 💯 Grading and Feedback
  • 🗣️ Student Conversations

See below to watch the recorded video, as well as access the session resource document and slideshow. And please reach out to me to let me know your suggestions for other AI uses. I am excited to learn with you!

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

EdTech Links of the Week - 2-4-25

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!

Thursday, January 30, 2025

What's New in Google - January 2025

Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from January 2025, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our January 2025 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda with all the awesome resources and Google updates from the last few months. This includes lots of new Google updates and Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:
  • Connect Google-using educators
  • Share the latest Google Workspace news and features
  • Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to’s
  • Share best practices of how Google Workspace is being used within schools
  • Ask questions and get answers
The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the January 2025 meeting:

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Boost Student Learning with Brisk Teaching

Brisk Teaching is one of my favorite educational AI tools which I have shared about often on this blog.

I usually refer to Brisk Teaching as the "Swiss Army Knife of AI Tools for Schools" because of all the things you are able to do with it from creating content, to generating feedback, to re-leveling text, to so much more.

In addition to all of those uses, recently Brisk added a new feature that is easily one of my favorites… Brisk Boost activities for students!

With Brisk Boost:
  • Educators can create school-safe student-friendly "Boost" activities with customized AI chatbots that students can interact with.
  • These can include chatbots for tutoring, chatting with a character, debating, brainstorming, exit tickets and more.
  • And Brisk records everything typed by the student and the AI so you can review it and learn how best to support your learners.
Recently I had the pleasure to present a booth session at FETC on how to use Brisk Teaching for students. See below for the 25 minute recorded video of that presentation to learn all about creating Brisk Boost activities, the student experience, and the teacher experience.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

EdTech Links of the Week - 1-28-25

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!

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Class Tools to Make Google BETTer

This week Google is in London at BETT, the world’s biggest educational technology exhibition. At the event, companies from all around the world show off their latest and greatest innovations for educational technology.

Google is using this opportunity to showcase new updates for Google Workspace for Education. These updates include new features for Google Classroom, Docs, Accessibility, Chromebooks, AI, and more!

Although I have never been to BETT yet (definitely a goal for the future!) I wanted to share these new updates with you. The big new update that caught my eye is "Class Tools" which is a classroom management solution for teachers and students to use on Chromebooks.

See below for the details on this new Class Tools feature, as well as an overview of what else Google announced at BETT.

EdTech Links of the Week - 1-22-25

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!

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

"Abracadabr-AI" - MagicSchool AI Rooms for Student Learning

MagicSchool is a very well known AI tool for schools, which I have shared about many times before.

When most people think of MagicSchool they probably think about how it can assist educators with creating content such as lesson plans, rubrics, releveled text, DOK questions, and more. 

As awesome as that is, MagicSchool has another use that makes me even more excited… MagicSchool for students!

With MagicSchool:
  • Educators can create school-safe student-friendly "rooms" with customized AI chatbots that students can interact with.
  • These can include chatbots for writing feedback, idea generation, tutoring, sentence starters, character chats, and many more.
  • And MagicSchool records everything typed by the student and the AI so you can review it and learn how best to support your learners.

Recently I had the pleasure to present a booth session at FETC on how to use MagicSchool for students. See below for the 25 minute recorded video of that presentation to learn all about creating student rooms, the student experience, and the teacher experience.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Top 10 Components of the Perfect AI Prompt

As amazing as AI chatbots are, to get the best results from them it is important that we provide them with well structured prompts.

As the old saying goes "Garbage in, garbage out."

Now certainly if you are not interested in creating your own prompts, there are many excellent tools that will do the entire process for you such as MagicSchool, TeacherServer, Khanmigo Teacher Tools, Fobizz, Brisk Teaching and more.

However, creating your own prompts gives you much more control and flexibility. And it really isn't that difficult! Prompt engineering is a valuable skill for everyone to help us get the most out of our use of AI.

In this blog post we will explore my top 10 tips for creating the perfect prompt, as well as other prompt engineering resources and techniques. And as always, please share your suggestions with me. I am excited to learn with you!

Tuesday, January 7, 2025

EdTech Links of the Week - 1-7-25

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!

Sunday, January 5, 2025

One Word of the Year - Google Slides Photo Word Template

The idea of choosing one word for the year has become a very popular activity to do. It can be a helpful way for anyone to set a goal to work toward or a focus to work on throughout the year.

There are lots of templates and tools to help you do this, but a couple years ago I tried this out by creating what I called a "Photo Word" in Google Slides. This is basically a clever way to make it look like you have a picture inside of a word.

If you want to learn all the gory details about that you can check out my earlier blog post as well as my short intro video and my very long deep dive video all about creating Photo Words.

However, to make things super simple I have a Google Slides template that you can copy and edit to make your own "One Word" for the year.

See below for a link to the template and a short tutorial video on how to make your "One Word" for the year.

Thursday, January 2, 2025

17 Super Chrome Extensions

Google Chrome is a powerful web browser filled with loads of useful features and tools. I covered many of these in my earlier series of posts and videos called "Google Chrome Can Do That?!"

However, as awesome as Chrome is, it may not do everything you need.

Thankfully Google allows you to make Chrome even better by installing Chrome web extensions. Extensions are tools from the Chrome Web Store that give extra features and abilities to Chrome. When you have them installed, you will find them as little icons in the top right corner of your browser.

In this blog post and webinar video we are going to take a deep dive into extensions including how to get extensions, how to manage your extensions, my resource with over 150 recommended extensions for you and your students, and a deep dive into 17 of my favorite extensions!

See below for the recorded webinar and all the resources for this session.