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Week 15: City Walks (From Free Technology For Teachers - Richard Byrne)

 In his latest post, Richard Byrne offers several alternatives for Google Expeditions. Google Expeditions is set to shut down in June of this year. One of his recommendations, City Walks, really amazed me. It is exactly what it sounds like! Students take a virtual walk throughout a city. City Walks includes several major cities around the globe and as students take their stroll through the city, facts are about the city are presented. The largest downside to this tech tool is that the walk through the city is not self directed and has a limited view. It seems like the individual recording the "walk" is wearing a Go-Pro camera or something similar to their chest as the video height that you see is at chest level. With that being said, the picture is crystal clear and it offers a very up-close and personal view of the city's streets. You can toggle the city sounds on and off and bounce from city to city easily. It provides students with at least some context or perspective ...
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Week 15: Nitro Type

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 Nitro Type is a fun game that gets students engaged in practicing their typing skills! The graphics and game play are pretty simple but there are a few features that separate it from other typing practice websites. It is essentially a race where students have to type sentences in order to advance their race car on the track. What is really cool about this is students can actually play against one another if they create an profile. They can create a profile by simply signing up with their clever login or by using their google account. They also offer a teacher portal with the following features:  One of my students showed me this game actually! Simple and fun! Here are a few more photos of what you and your students will see:
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Week 14: ReadWorks Offline Feature (From Free Technology for Teachers Blog - Richard Byrne)

I had made a post about this awesome, free learning tool for students and teachers a few weeks ago but I just happened to come across this new feature from ReadWorks while looking through Richard Byrne's blog. A quick re-introduction, ReadWorks is an online platform that has articles, books, stories for students, and even offers paired lesson plans K-12. In the past, students had to be connected to the internet in order to access the books and activities on their platform. Now, ReadWorks has made their materials more accessible with offline capabilities. With this feature, students can download what they want to read while at school, then later open the document at home even if they are not connected to the internet. This may seem like a small added feature however it is going to help so many students have access to reading! Way to go ReadWorks!
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Week 14: Saavas Realize

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 Saavas is a digital learning platform that offers a plethora of guided lessons, activities, and assessments that teachers can assign students digitally. This platform includes learning opportunities at every grade level pre-k-12. The following images are snapshots of the different curricula offered at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.  This platform is seamlessly integrated with google classroom. When the teacher assigns a lesson from Saavas, they can assign it to individual students or to an entire class making it incredibly easy to differentiate learning!  Here is an example of assignable components to just one of the lessons for a second grade math class:
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Week 13: Google Forms Update! (From Free Technology for Teachers Blog - Richard Byrne)

 Finally! Google forms has recently created the ability to save submissions that are not yet completed. However, this is still in beta testing and is only available if your school or districts google workspace domain administrator applies for the beta, from what I understand. I really hope this addition becomes automatically included with google forms. It can save an incredible amount of headaches from both students and teachers. I think I spent 3 virtual lessons trying to complete a google form with a student and the internet continued to fail and the student would lose everything on the form. This will also help the student who just needs a break to get up and move and come back and not be afraid of losing the work if it is left to sit to long. Let's keep our fingers crossed that google makes this a permanent feature! This feature can be applied for by clicking HERE and filling out the form!
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Week 13: Clever

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 Clever is a platform that makes sign-in simple for students and teachers. Most applications or programs that students use for learning can be "installed" into Clever. Once these applications are installed, students can access them from Clever. While this may sound like an extra step, and an unnecessary use of a third party, it will save you and your students so much time and energy, here is why: Once students sign into Clever using their google account information, all they have to do to access their other applications or programs, is click on them. No more signing in on each separate program with different passwords. Once they are in Clever, THEY ARE IN. Clever has truly allowed for complete modulation as it creates a one stop shop for all of your students learning tools. I was a little skeptical about the need for this at first but it is a time and headache saver.   Here is a picture of some of the tools apps, tools, and programs I can see on my Clever page at the mome...
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Week 12: Threadit (From Free Technology for Teachers Blog - Richard Byrne)

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 Threadit is a new tool offered as a chrome extension by google. This extension seems very similar to video and screen recording apps like screencastify or flipgrid, but adds seamless integration with google. Users can easily share their "threads" with others in the same way they would share a google document. This takes out the added steps of downloading the video file after you finish recording it and then uploading it to a shareable platform. Also, users that your video is shared with can respond to your "thread" with their own video (similar to flipgrid). Another feature that separates Threadit from other video recording tools, is they provide a gallery of templates. See these options below:  Also, Click Here to check out Richard Byrne's quick tutorial on Threadit!
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