Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit

I’ve attended this session for the past few years and always find something interesting.  Please see the information below- the sessions are online and since they are pre-recorded, you can watch them at any time.  Just be sure to finish by January 8th. Below is the information from the site.

Get registered for free at: DitchSummit.com.

HOW IT WORKS: New presentations are released every day from Dec. 14-22. They remain available until Jan. 8 so you can re-watch or catch up on any you’ve missed. They’re pre-recorded, so you can watch them whenever you want until Jan. 8. After that, the summit ends and the videos are unavailable to watch anymore.

FREE PD HOURS: You can get FREE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CREDITS for watching the videos. There’s a form to fill out after each presentation, and you’ll get an automatic PD certificate emailed to you.

Sign up for the digital summit at DitchSummit.com.

This year’s new speakers include: 

• Dr. Lindsay Portnoy, cognitive scientist, professor, and parent

• Knikole Taylor, educator, lead learner, and Google Certified Innovator

• Dee Lanier, educational technologist, equity enthusiast, and Solve in Time Creator

• Dr. Desiree Alexander, education consultant, presenter, and speaker

• Esther Park, high school ESL / ELA teacher

• Maria Arfanakis (Galanis), innovation curriculum specialist, Google Certified Trainer

• Paula Martínez, designer and slide template creator, Slides Mania

• Nyree Clark, curriculum program specialist, culturally responsive teaching advocate

• Matt Miller, author of 5 books, Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit host

BrainPOP and Family Engagement

Here are suggestions to use BrainPOP with your families.

Family Engagement

Family engagement in student learning leads to advances in cognition, language, and social development. Visit BrainPOP’s Home-School Connection to find out how families can use BrainPOP. 

What’s new in BrainPOP?

Click here for a list of new BrainPOP features.

Media Literacy for All

In his blog post, Frank Banker (writing on the Middle Web site) clearly outlines 7 steps to help your students become more media savvy.  From who paid for the message to what is omitted- he clearly demonstrates how you can improve your students’ critical thinking.

Gettysburg by the numbers

TeachersFirst recently share this infographic on Gettysburg.  It explores a variety of content areas and works to help students understand the significance of the battle.

Teach the Constitution?

Here’s an article from Edutopia from Benjamin Barbour using Webb’s Depth of Knowledge to teach the constitution. It might be a good start to look at differentiation and scaffolding options for your students.

Try the new Kami Dashboard

 

Kami has a new dashboard feature- click here to see the details and how you can turn on this Beta feature.

What you might not know about BrainPOP!

 

Get to know BrainPOP beyond our movies and quizzes—each of our 1,000+ topics are embedded with a suite of activities, fun challenges, and creative projects. Learn more about our most-loved features:      Make-a-Map   Make-a-Map invites students to make meaningful connections between concepts and reinforces understanding using BrainPOP images, keywords, and movie clips.         Make-a-Movie   Help learners apply knowledge and encourage higher order thinking by creating their own BrainPOP movies. Make-a-Movie cultivates planning, organizing, writing, collaborating, and analyzing skills.          Creative Coding   Provide students with 21st century-ready skills! Each coding project is scaffolded with support and is flexible so beginners can be successful and advanced programmers can create more sophisticated projects.     ...And there's even more to explore!  Whether you’re teaching remotely or in-person, these powerful features are a great way to make lessons more interactive, provide students with voice and choice, and build higher-order thinking skills. How can these features boost your curriculum? Get to know all the possibilities! EXPLORE ALL TOOLS P.S.: Don’t forget to take advantage of your Assignment Builder! Use it to create custom learning pathways with our movies and features and assign them to individuals or groups.

New Dashboard features in Screencastify

 Screencastify recently introduced interactive questions-now you can create a video and add your own questions. (Need more information on interactive questions?  Click here.)

Now they have revised the dashboard to make it easier to see and interpret student results.  Please see their directions here.

Are you thankful?

Here’s the latest from BrainPOP- November is for gratitude.

Theme: Gratitude

November is National Gratitude Month and we just want to say thank you for your continued partnership!  As we move into the holiday season, we wanted to remind you to explore our collection of fall resources including movies, activities, games, planning guides, and video tutorials.

Become a pen pal!

 

Are you a third-fifth grade teacher looking to form connections with another class?  Check out the US Post office and their pen pal proejct.  The first letters will be mailed inJanuary.  Please click here for the details.

Native American Heritage Month

TeachersFirst has a specially curated collection of Native American resources.  You can find it here. There are several sorting options and each review includes grade levels as well as suggestions for classroom applications.

Celebrating Native American Heritage Month

During November, Native American Heritage Month is celebrated. Big Deal Media recently shared this blog post with a variety of resources. The focus is on Native American customs and traditions with a variety of media.

Active BrainPOP Suggestions

Here are a few ideas from BrainPOP on how to encourage active engagement while viewing a BrainPOP video:

Step 1 BEFORE

Build excitement by asking questions that connect students to themselves or current events; for example, “How do you recycle at home? Why do we recycle?”

 

Step 2 DURING

Pause the movie whenever important keywords, people, dates, and concepts appear onscreen and ask questions, or invite students to ask their own.

 

Step 3 AFTER

Create a concept map using Make-a-Map and have students share new facts or ideas they’ve learned; you can encourage older students to identify a problem and connect solutions.

What’s new in November for BrainPOP

It’s not just all Veterans Day and Thanksgiving.  Take a look at their newsletter for all the November highlights!

Thinking of creating student videos?

Monica Burns in her recent post (4 Quick Tips for Creating Movies) suggests several steps that will help your planning and improve the student experience. I would encourage you to use Storyboardthat to help plan your project.

How are your students thankful?

Using this idea from Eric Curts, your students can create a Google Slide turkey with all their thanks.  Eric provides a template you can copy and complete directions.  While he suggests using Mote to record, I would try Screencastify.  Once the students create their slides, have them make a screencast and record their thoughts.  To make it easier, you could assign it via Screencastify Submit.  Here are the student directions for recording a screencast.

Civics in a minute!

 

I love this podcast!  How could you use it in your class?  Maybe have your students answer the question and then listen to the podcast.  You can find it at 60 Second Civics and read the review in TeachersFirst here. It is suggested for grades 5-12.

STEM Activities

This website was started by a mom to encourage her daughters to explore STEM activities.  Raising Smart Girls contains a variety of resources (lists of sites to visit by state) as well as some STEM at-home projects.  While it has a strong parently focus, I think you will find some DIY projects your students might enjoy.

New Single-Cell feature in Storyboardthat

When using Storyboardthat, you now have the option to see only one cell at a time.  This will help when using a smaller screen or when you really need to add details.  Please see my video here for a demonstration. 

News Media Across the Content Areas

 

In this collection from PBS, the goal is to assist students (from grades 6-12)  to read critically and investigate the information they obtain from news and online line sources.  As PBS says:

 Media literacy is an essential skill for all students across a range of subjects, from Science to Social Studies to English Language Arts. The collection is also useful for a behind-the-scenes look at journalism and how information is researched, shaped, and reported. Check out the resources in the collection topics. This collection, which includes videos, blog articles, student handouts, lesson plans, and tip sheets for families

Click here to access this collection.

Video Essays (It’s Lit)

Image from PBS

In this series from PBS, you will find topics (and books) of interest for your grade 6-12 readers. Rather than paraphrase, here’s the PBS description:

It’s Lit! is a series of smart, funny video essays from PBS Digital Studios about our favorite books and why we love to read. Explore related lesson plans, video resources, and more.

I viewed the one on Little Women (Why We Still Love Little Women, 150 Years Later) and found it both interesting and entertaining.  You can find more videos and lesson plans here.

Lesson Plans with Molly

Want to introduce your younger learners to informational text?  Have Molly of Denali help you.  Here’s an over from PBS:

Informational text and Alaska Native culture form the basis of these educational resources based on Molly of Denali. This collection offers videos, digital games, lessons, teaching tips, and activities so that educators can utilize the series in the classroom.

You can access the PBS site here.