Someday, our children’s grandchildren will ask them, “What was it like during the Pandemic of 2020?” As they live through history, our students are now, intentionally or unintentionally, creating pieces of our historical record. We might be able to encourage and guide those efforts. And we may consider adding to the record ourselves. While these […]
Ten Chrome Extensions (and a Google Add-On) too good to miss
July 27, 2017 by 4 Comments
Over the course of the past couple of years, I’ve become particularly fond of a few Chrome tools that I consider too good to miss. These would be handy across the board, but especially in Google Classroom and Chromebook environments. Here’s a rundown of nine of my favorite discoveries in no particular order: 1. Google Keep is […]
Plotagon now free for educators
July 14, 2017 by Leave a Comment
A couple of years back I was thrilled to discover Plotagon and posted about it here. Today, I was thrilled to discover that free one-year teacher licenses are now available at Plotagon Education. (Currently, students may sign up for 30-day trials.) Reminiscent of Xtranormal, Plotagon encourages writing skills as users craft professional-looking animated movies. Plotagon movies […]
Orange Slice: Rubrics for docs
December 12, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I just discovered Orange Slice, a Google Add-on that offers both teacher and student rubrics. A handy productivity tool, Orange Slice plays nice with Google Classroom and makes it super easy to evaluate student work in Docs. The Orange Slide Teacher Rubric allows teachers to add rubrics to students’ assignments for grading. The Orange Slide […]
Google introduces Voice Typing for Docs (and it transcribes too!)
September 4, 2015 by 2 Comments
Hooray! I rely heavy on voice typing for messaging and searching on my phone. I type pretty darn fast, but I talk and think way faster than I type and I just lose ideas before they make the page. Along with several other enhancements (a See New Changes feature and research tools that I will […]
ReadWriteThink rocks: with free apps
January 16, 2015 by 6 Comments
If it’s been a while since you’ve returned to ReadWriteThink, I urge you to consider a visit today. The quality portal, rich with free resources and sponsored by the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Verizon Foundation has grown even more interactive. So what’s new? There’s an array […]
liberi.o: from Docs to pub
July 23, 2014 by 1 Comment
My favorite third party solutions for e-publishing include Issuu, FlipSnack, and ePubBud for kiddos. But, if you or your students do any serious writing using Google Docs, you’ve probably longed for an instant strategy for sharing your text masterpieces as ebooks. Liber.io, just out of private beta, may be a serious answer. The program allows […]
Google Docs adds add-ons
March 18, 2014 by 3 Comments
Take a close look at the Google Doc or Sheet you likely have open right now and you’ll see something new on a tab about the WYSIWYG tools. Last week Google launched add-ons–easily accessible tools created by Google’s developer partners that offer on-the-fly features for your documents and spreadsheets. When you click on the add-ons […]
Kaizena: improving voice feedback for student writing
October 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Back in May I was excited to discover Voice Comments–a great tool for personally adding voice feedback to student writing or collaborative work. Recently, the app relaunched with a new interface and a bunch of impressive new features, as Kaizena. (In Japan, Kaizen refers to a philosophy of continuous improvement.) If Google Docs is a way of life at […]
Crowdsourcing Fifty (or so) ways to leave your paper:
August 21, 2012 by 6 Comments
Every couple of years I attach a list of alternate project ideas to my September faculty newsletter. As I began to update those ideas this time around, it occurred to me that it would be a much better list if we built it together. So here’s the document I have so far. I invite you […]
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