Author

Lori Gracey

Lori Gracey currently serves as the executive director of the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) and is responsible for training technology directors, administrators, curriculum supervisors, librarians, and teachers across the country. Since 2009, she has led TCEA in membership and revenue growth, helped to pay off their building and purchase a new, larger building, and implemented new conferences, partnerships with other associations, and professional development opportunities for members and non-members. She serves more than 75,000 members and oversees a staff of 20. Lori has served on the board of the Texas Society of Association Executives and SXSWedu, and she has served as the Regional Program Chair for the ISTE 2017 and 2021 Convention in San Antonio. Lori has 28 years of experience in education, with 22 years as a curriculum and technology director.

Seasonal Activities

Celebrate Creativity, Courage, and Collaboration on International Dot Day

by Lori Gracey September 4, 2015

written by Lori Gracey

International Dot Day, a global celebration, began when teacher Terry Shay introduced his classroom to Peter H. Reynolds’ book The Dot on Sept. 15, 2009.

The Dot is the story of a caring teacher who dares a doubting student to trust in her own abilities by being brave enough to “make her mark.” What begins with a small dot on a piece of paper becomes a breakthrough in confidence and courage, igniting a journey of self-discovery and sharing, which has gone on to inspire countless children and adults around the globe.

You and your students can also celebrate International Dot Day by downloading the free Educator’s Handbook (free registration required) with student handouts and activities. Then visit the gallery of past projects for more inspiration and ideas.

Please share with us how you will celebrate on (or around) International Dot Day!

September 4, 2015 0 comments

STEM/STEAM

Free 3D Software for Texas Public Schools

by Lori Gracey September 3, 2015

written by Lori Gracey

With the new 3D printers that are now less expensive and the emphasis on STEM skills, more and more schools are diving in to 3D software to allow students to design solutions to problems around them. TCEA has been granted the exclusive rights in the state of Texas to provide free licenses of SketchUp Pro to all K-12 public school educators and students. The 3D modeling software, normally $495 per license, is easy and intuitive, allowing anyone to model in 3D quickly and accurately. The software is an excellent tool even for those who do not yet have access to a 3D printer, empowering students to learn the critical engineering design process.

The free licenses are available in the following formats:

Licenses for individual school lab networks (Windows and Macintosh). These licenses allow up to 300 simultaneous users on any given network.
Licenses for imaging and installation on multiple laptops that need functionality both on and off of the school network (i.e. students with a laptop assigned to them).
Licenses for stand-alone computers (Windows and Mac) for non-networked machines.

The license is good for one year and may be renewed each year after that. To receive a free license, complete this form. You will then be emailed information on how to download and install the software.

There is a nice introductory guide to SketchUp Pro in the classroom available here. The first activity included in it is for students to design a chair (shown to the right), which is a wonderful start. There is also an excellent Quick Reference Card available as well. Learn more about how to use this amazing and powerful software in a free-to-anyone webinar on Sept. 29.

September 3, 2015 0 comments

Chromebooks

12 Power Apps and Extensions for Chrome

by Lori Gracey August 31, 2015

written by Lori Gracey

If you’re fortunate enough to have Chromebooks in the classroom, then you’ll appreciate these free apps and extensions to make them even more powerful. The list below covers a variety of subject areas and grade levels and even includes a few Chrome apps for teachers.

Magic Actions for YouTube allows you to share YouTube videos with your class. It doesn’t automatically play until you want it to play, and it removes all ads, comments, and side suggestions.
Project Naptha allows you to copy, translate, edit, and even erase the text inside any image you find on the web. This can be helpful when ESL students are using a website for research that includes text inside of images.
TechSmith Snagit allows you to capture screenshots and then annotate them with arrows, shapes, and text. This is perfect for creating short, simple tutorials for students or staff.
Presentme is an option if you are flipping your classroom. It allows you to record your voice alongside a slideshow so you can share information about the content.
Biodigital Human offers 3D models of the human body and all body systems.
Connected Mind allows you to draw memorable mind maps and store them in the cloud for free.
Dictionary Instant is the world’s fastest online English dictionary. Correct spelling when looking up a word is not necessary as it has predictive text capabilities.
1-Click Timer is a simple timer for classroom management, especially good for students working in small groups or on individual projects. It also works offline.
The Elementals is a fun periodic table where every element has its own unique personality.
Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. It’s great for visual task management and perfect for PBL student group work.
If you need a comic creator, try Pixton for Google Chromebooks. It allows you to click-and-drag characters, speech bubbles, backgrounds, photos, voice-overs, and more to create and share comics.
GeoGebra is dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that joins geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphing, statistics, and calculus. It also runs offline, perfect for 1:1 Chromebook use at home where Internet may not be available.

If you want more fantastic Chrome apps and extensions, check out TCEA’s recommended list (available to members only). Divided by subject area and then topic, the list includes all of the resources you could hope for related to Chromebooks.

This blog was updated with new information on February 1, 2017.

August 31, 2015 0 comments

Content Areas

Interactives for Engaged Science Discovery

by Lori Gracey August 27, 2015

written by Lori Gracey

If there’s any subject area that can benefit from powerful Web 2.0 tools and interactives, it’s science. Complex topics, messy hands-on activities, and dangerous chemicals cry out for a technological solution. These hands-on resources can help your students better understand a difficult topic or extend their learning.

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel shows students the true size of our solar system. Scrolling (forever) gives us a taste of the vastness of space in this accurate portrait.
The Compound Machine from EdHeads teaches how forces and simple machines can work together.
Learn the parts of animal, plant, and bacterial cells with Cell Games (for middle school students).
The BBC offers several different interactives on the human body at this website for high school students.
Are you really in danger when you are taking those hairpin turns and death-defying loops on a roller coaster? Discover how amusement park rides use the laws of physics to simulate danger, while keeping the rides safe.
In this interactive from Nova, take a look at the population ecology of the mass-seeding oak tree.
Learn about hearing in this series of interactives called How Your Brain Understands What Your Ears Hear.
Build your own interactive models of almost anything with the Molecular Workbench. These interactive simulations for high school students can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Wonderville is a fun, interactive destination for elementary kids to discover the exciting world of science.
Be a virtual rocket scientist as you launch rockets with this fun interactive from NASA. Three different missions are available to allow for a variety of skill levels.
Explore all of the systems of human anatomy with InnerBody, an amazingly detailed website.

Additional science interactives can be found here and here. And you can find an excellent list of science interactives broken down by topic here. These should keep you going all year long!

How can you ensure success when using any interactive in the classroom? Here are some tips:

The key to using any interactive with students is to first test it yourself. Try doing some things correctly and also wrong, just to see how the interactive responds.
Notice any key concepts during the interactive that you think students may have difficulty with and prepare to pre-teach those before they begin.
Also, determine if the interactive is best used individually, in pairs, in small groups, or as a whole group.
Next, decide how you will evaluate what students learn from the interactive. Will they do a brief report? Complete an exit ticket? Do a Pair/Share? Take a quiz?
Finally, you may want to ask students to share with you what they liked about the interactive and what they didn’t like to help you decide if you will use it again.

If you’re interested in using technology to teach science concepts, join us for the free-to-members webinar “iOS Apps for Science” on Sept. 30 at 11:45 a.m. Central.

August 27, 2015 0 comments

iOS Tips and Tricks

Spark Your Students’ Creativity with This iPad App

by Lori Gracey August 25, 2015

written by Lori Gracey

Adobe Spark is one of those iPad apps that is simply beautiful, both in its ease of use and its finished product. And it’s one that your secondary students should be using in class on a regular basis to showcase their learning.

What Is Adobe Spark?

Using photos from their device’s Camera Roll on the iPad, students can create amazing visual stories with text, hyperlinks, stunning transitions, and more. A robust selection of magazine-style templates takes away the pain of layout decisions and makes it simple for students of all ages to turn their reports into works of art. They can even record their own voice narrating the story, which makes it a great tool for ESL and special needs students. Once the story is complete, it can be published via Twitter, Facebook, email, or text message, or embedded on the teacher website, and viewed with any web browser.

Getting Started

To start using Adobe Spark, students must register for a free Adobe ID or use their Facebook login. Adobe IDs are completely free and don’t require a subscription to Creative Cloud. Once they have their ID, students can stop focusing on the technology and turn their attention to telling their stories. The app allows students to concentrate on creating and publishing a product for a specific audience, an important 21st century skill.

If you want to see what a finished student project looks like, take a look at this report on the Colorado River by a sixth grader. There’s also a nice, short video about how high school students used Adobe Spark. Lesson plans for teachers to use with the app are also available, along with an Adobe Spark Education Guide.

By the way, Adobe Spark is a fantastic app for educators to use, too. It’s an easy way to create and publish your classroom newsletter for parents or design staff memos that will definitely be read.

This blog was updated with additional resources on February 2, 2017.

August 25, 2015 0 comments

Google Tips and Tricks

I Didn’t Mean to Send That Email!

by Lori Gracey August 20, 2015

written by Lori Gracey

Have you ever sent an email to the entire school that you only intended to send to a colleague? Or have you sent an important email, but forgot to include the attachment? Don’t worry; Google email has you covered. Gmail users can enable the Undo Send feature and then be able to retract messages for up to 30 seconds after hitting the send button.

To turn on Undo Send:

Click the gear in the top right of your Gmail screen.
Select Settings.
Scroll down to Undo Send and click Enable.
Set the cancellation period (the amount of time you have to decide if you want to unsend an email; 30 seconds is the maximum).
Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

To give you time to undo, Gmail delays sending the messages for a few seconds. So if you don’t select “Undo” within the time limit you set, your message will be sent.

Want to become more familiar with all things Google? Members can join us the first Thursday of each month for a free power Google webinar. These fast-paced sessions are focused on elevating your skills to enhance productivity and student learning. You can find the list of topics here. Not a TCEA member? You can join for just $45 and continue your professional growth.

August 20, 2015 1 comment

Digital Literacy

Helping Students Find and Cite Photos (Updated)

by Lori Gracey August 18, 2015

written by Lori Gracey

Teaching students to correctly cite resources they use in their reports can be a difficult task. But Photos for Class can make it easier for them. Photos for Class is a free website that allows students to search for and download images that are safe to use in schools with the Creative Commons license. All of the images available are appropriate due to their proprietary filtering system, so that’s a big relief for teachers. But the best thing about the site is that, when the image is downloaded, the author, title of the image, a link to the original photo, and the image license terms are automatically added to the bottom of the graphic. So students can’t help citing their source.

Explaining Copyright First

Before starting to use Photos for Class with students, take time to teach them about why it’s a great tool. Explain basic copyright law to them using one of the resources below.

Copyright Kids
Copyright with CyberBee
Teaching Copyright (lessons and handouts)
YouTube Copyright School (five-minute video)

Putting the Photos Tool into Use

Once students understand the basics of copyright law, put them into small groups or pairs and have them create short scenarios illustrating the main ideas. Then have each group share their scenario and ask the rest of the class to determine what action should be taken. Finally, show students Photos for Class and how to use the search feature. Discuss with them how each image is automatically cited and what each part of the citation means.

By the way, if you are using Edmodo, then you can quickly add the Photos for Class free app from the Edmodo store.

As of this month, Photos for Class now includes public domain images from Pixabay’s safe search, which really enlarges the library of graphics available. This is great news for students and staff.

Photos for Class is a very easy-to-use website that can eliminate one small headache for both teachers and students – the problem of finding appropriate images to use in class projects and then citing them correctly.

This blog was updated with additional resources on March 16, 2018.

August 18, 2015 0 comments

Educational Trends

Gamifying Your Classroom or PD

by Lori Gracey August 10, 2015

written by Lori Gracey

Gamification is one of the big buzzwords right now in education. It is the art, and sometimes the science, of applying game theory in non-game contexts like business or the classroom. Why would educators want to do that? Engagement. Active users are more engaged with the content and so retain more of what they are learning or doing. When education is gamified, students see a connection between their work and positive feedback, and so they become more eager and willing to learn and contribute.

There are four critical pieces in order to be successful at gamifying your classroom or professional development session. Try adding one, two, or all of these:

Accelerated feedback cycles – Everyone wants to know how well they are doing, whether it’s in a race or diagramming a sentence. Providing more rapid and scheduled feedback can help the learner to be more engaged by knowing exactly where he/she stands. The feedback can be badges, points, or silly hats; the reward itself isn’t important. It’s how regular and often the feedback is provided that really matters. And keep in mind that feedback doesn’t just have to come from the teacher or session leader; it can also come from other learners.
Clear goals and rules of play – To be successful at a game, you have to know the rules. So, in the classroom or the workshop, be very clear about expectations and rewards and where the journey will take them.
A compelling narrative – We all love stories. Make the learning into a story by personalizing it with goals that relate to the narrative. Are we learning about adding fractions so that we can help a prince rescue a princess from a tall tower? Are we creating examples of differentiated lessons so that the ogre will release all of the students he is holding captive? What is the story for what is happening?
Tasks that are challenging but achievable – There should be short-term goals along the way for players to reach. Don’t make them too easy, as the gamer won’t work for them. But also, don’t make them out of reach so that he or she becomes discouraged and quits. Make sure that the tasks are scaffolded, moving from simpler to more complex, allowing the player to grow his skills as he moves through each assignment.

To see a great example of educational gamification, check out what sixth-grade teacher Michael Matera did. He divided his classroom into houses, guilds, experience points, and badges in a competitive gamified environment and saw engagement and learning skyrocket. He explains how he did it and a few of the problems he encountered on his website on gamification. And here’s the way a high school biology teacher gamified his classroom with Class Dojo, Google Sites, and Sheets.

If you want additional ideas, check out the book The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game.

August 10, 2015 0 comments

Online Tools and Apps

Take Kahoot! to the Next Level

by Lori Gracey July 31, 2015

written by Lori Gracey

By now, most of you have tried Kahoot!, the game-based student response system that is a wonderful tool for formative assessment. The teacher creates a free account and then can design quizzes with embedded images and video or use one of the millions of already-created quizzes. Students respond to the quiz using any device with Internet access. The faster they respond, the more points they score. In addition, teachers can create items in Surveys, which does not use points, or Discussions, which are single questions without points that can be used at the beginning of a unit to get ideas flowing.

Accessing the Data

Kahoot! is lots of fun and really engages students. But you may not know that, once the quiz is over, there is good data that you can access and analyze. After logging in to her account, the teacher can look at data from each quiz by clicking on the cloud download icon next to the name of each quiz. This will download an Excel spreadsheet that includes a minimum of three tabs: an overview of the total percentage of correct and incorrect answers, ratings from students on the activity, and a detailed breakdown of each student’s answers and the time they took for each question. This last tab is color coded to make it a quick read with correct responses in green and incorrect ones in red. All of this data is automatically generated and is an excellent resource to guide future instruction.

Taking Kahoot! to the Next Level

Here are some other great ideas for taking your Kahoot! to the next level.

If your students are using iOS or Android devices, you can have them add a quick link to the game on their home screens with these guides. There is also a free Android app and a free iPad app for Kahoot! that you may download.
Have a class-to-class battle. Use the link in the Results page to get one class to play against the results of a previous class.
Do you have students who want to take the quiz again? Now they can in Ghost Mode. Once a quiz is over, you will see a Play Again button that contains a ghost icon. When you click on the button, the same quiz is re-launched. Now, as the class plays again live, all students are joined by their “ghosts,” their previous answers. So students can easily see how they did before on each question and try to increase their score. This is a good way to increase retention.
Use the Send a Link feature to provide the link to each student after they’ve played it once in class. Then ask them to take the quiz again at home to try and beat their previous score.
If your class has a partner class in another location, the teacher can use the Send a Link tool to share a completed ghost game with them. This can give your students the chance to compete against others around the world.
For a major holiday, create a Kahoot! and share it with other classes who will all play the game at the same time. You could do an Earth Day game, one for Martin Luther King Day, or just one over a particular math skill.
Keep a Leaderboard of high scores in Kahoot! and watch your students try to reach the top.

New Features

Kahoot! Kahoot has upped its game by adding a Team Mode. Students get into teams with just one device between them. The teacher opens up a Kahoot! and now has the choice of selecting between Classic and Team Mode. Team captains (kids holding the devices) enter their team’s name and their players’ nicknames. Then they begin the game. This will be great for helping kids learn to work together or for those classrooms where devices are limited.

Another recent feature is Ghost Mode, which allows a student to play against himself. This is a good way for students to informally assess themselves to see if they are mastering the required content. They can play the same review game over and over, comparing their current score with their previous ones.

The latest Kahoot! update offers Jumble, a new game format. Like earlier games, Jumble has students take part in quizzes. But in the update, players are challenged to place the answers in the correct order by dragging and dropping rather than just selecting one correct answer.

On May 2, Kahoot! announced two Windows apps. Kahoot Create is the app for teachers to use to create and run Kahoot quiz games. Kahoot Play is the app for students to use to play a Kahoot game individually or in team mode. Both apps are now available in the Windows Store

Updates from ISTE

Kahoot! At the ISTE conference in San Antonio, Kahoot! unveiled a new mobile app for the game. What’s great about the app is that now both the questions and the answers will appear on the student screens. (Before, students had to look at the projected image in the classroom to see the question and then answer it on their own devices.) It also includes Challenges that can be issued by the teacher or by students to each. You can preview the new app (available in both Android and iOS) by signing up to be a beta tester here.

New: Kahoots Aligned to the Math Standards!

Kahoot! has now released some wonderful resources for math teachers. These quizzes are aligned to the national standards and are top quality. Additional games for science and ELA will also be coming soon.

Additional new features will be added. To make sure you have access to them, go into any of your Kahoots as if you were going to start the game. You’ll see a new option called Kahoot! Experiments. Turn this on and a list of add-ons will appear. Right now, the only one is Answer Streak Bonus, which is designed to reward player accuracy with bonus points for correctly answering multiple questions in a row. Get an answer wrong, and the streak is broken.

This post was updated on September 2, 2017 to include new features.

July 31, 2015 1 comment

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