Take a moment and think of how the world has changed in your lifetime. No, really. Take a minute and write down three modern conveniences you didn’t have when you were growing up. Here are my three:
- My Roomba that vacuums my house, removing the never-ending pieces of dead grass my dogs bring in from the yard.
- My Echo Dot that tells me the temperature and sets the timer for cooking jambalaya.
- The ability to deposit my travel checks with my iPhone.
Technology never stops changing and evolving to make our lives easier. In fact, I just heard about a couple more technologies on the brink of revolutionizing current processes:
- Starship is a company that makes delivery robots the size of portable printers on wheels. They are already operating in Washington, D.C., Fayetteville, AR, and two San Francisco Bay-area cities. The word on the street is they could launch in Austin sometime this year. Read the full article here.
- Justin Crandall, a Dallas entrepreneur, and his business partner Bart Lomont have co-founded Robin. This lawn care startup is rolling out robotic lawnmowers to take care of keeping your yard in top form. The company has 36 robotic lawnmowers, which run on their own and use electric power rather than gas. Read more here.
Who will need to invent, design, and program these new robots? Hopefully, you said our youth, those students running around on our playgrounds and sitting at their desks. We need our kids to shift from passive consumers of tech to improving our world with their creations and imaginations. If you’re ready to engage your students with hands-on, design-based learning, join TCEA this summer for:
Mission Possible: LEGO EV3 Robotics in the Classroom
Here are five reasons to bring robotics to your classroom or campus:
- Sensory Learning Student learn with their senses, and robotics aligns with the active, hands-on development of today’s child.
- Social Learning Communication and collaboration are key skills needed for future college and career readiness.
- Innovation Opportunities Robotics offers opportunities to build and express creativity.
- Raise the Level of Thinking Future jobs will require our students to perform at the highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy: application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
- Bring Joy into Learning Brain research suggests that fun is not just beneficial to learning, but, by many reports, required for authentic learning and long-term memory.
The workshop takes place in the TCEA Conference Center in Austin, Texas from Monday, July 15 to Friday, July 19. It is hands-on, minds-on learning and is guaranteed to have you ready to teach robotics when school starts back. It will start with the basics, but then move to more advanced concepts. Lesson ideas and lunch are included each day. For more information, topics covered, and registration details, visit this website.
Learn robotics this summer. Teach robotics this fall.
Featured image photo by author.
Adobe users unite! You’ll find this the perfect academy if you use any of the Adobe products yourself or if you teach your students how to use them. Innovative uses, clever work-arounds, and new features will be shared to give you the solutions and steps you need. And, if you are new to Adobe, you will find several sessions that will help you get up to speed and boost your confidence. Adobe pros haven’t been left out; our presenters have clever ideas that are worth listening to and taking note of.
Make a point to attend our first annual Microsoft Academy to boost your skills in Microsoft products including Office365 and Minecraft. This is going to be a great gathering! You’ll also be introduced to mobile coding with Creative Coding through Games and Apps and gain a deeper understanding into Microsoft Makers projects and 3D Builder. You will definitely find this packed full of topics that you can’t get at other learning opportunities.
Even if you don’t have a Chromebook, but use Google Suite for Education, you will find these sessions filled with new and great ideas that you can take back to transform the way your students learn. Be sure to bring a friend so you can divide and conquer on the sessions and then share with each other at the end of the day!
Do you teach any of the Technology Applications or Career and Technology Education courses where students learn to use Adobe products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, Premiere, etc.? Or do you want to enhance your creative Adobe skills for personal projects and enjoyment? If either of those are true, then you definitely want to attend the Adobe Academy on June 19-20! Besides networking with other creative educators, you’ll have concurrent sessions to choose from in order to gain fresh ideas, polish your Adobe skills, and take your curriculum to the next level. You’ll learn from other Adobe-using educators in this hands-on event. For more information about this academy go to 
If you are one of the many Microsoft-using educators, you will find the Microsoft Academy a perfect fit. On July 12-13, you can experience a wide array of Microsoft tools to help you extend your learning and gain fresh ideas of how to use the tools with your students and fellow educators. Whether you are using Office365 in the cloud or are using a not-quite-so-new version, join in on the active sessions and take away new ideas. For more information about this academy go to 
Calling all Googlers! Learn from some of the Googliest educators around at our interactive Chromebook Academy on July 26-27. There will be great sessions for Google Suite administrators as well as for teachers integrating Google Suite in their classroom. You’ll learn about the most current features and how you can use them to maximize your impact with students. Add-ons, scripts, hyperdocs, Slides, Forms, and more will be explored so that you can get what you need to take your students to the next level! To learn more about the Chromebook Academy, go to 
Most free books are in the public domain, but that doesn’t mean that they are not relevant for our students. But that’s not the only place to find free books. Some parents and students may benefit from signing up for a free month with a particular service even if they don’t plan to extend their usage beyond the complimentary time.
Many text-to-speech readers are available that can assist with ebooks. Your device and platform may determine which works best for you.
Hot off the press, these updated lists can give you and your students some direction of what author to check out, the next series to explore, and possibly a new genre to try out.
Making a book more enjoyable can easily be done by including some after-reading activities. Here are few to get you started. These are great to share with parents as well!
