#BookSnaps

What is a #BookSnap? -- A BookSnap is simply a digital, visual representation used to annotate and share reflections of any excerpt of a book or text.

   

Examples ofBookSnaps

#BookSnaps on Twitter

Video: #BookSnaps in Google Drawing & Slides

Video: #BookSnaps with FREE PicCollage app (on our iPads)

Read more here.

Read morehere too.

If you’re interested in investigating this further, please let me know! I’m super excited about having a way for our students to share their learning with the world! (And it could be a great #communication or #creativity 5C badge… just throwing that in there.)

10 Writing Tips from Stephen King

I found this interesting and thought you might too. It's an infographic version of the Top 10 Writing Tips from Stephen King's Memoir. Read more. 

Google Lit Trips on Chromebooks

If you are not familiar with them, a Google Lit Trip plots locations from a novel on Google Earth to create a 3D geographic tour of the story. At each location the Lit Trip can also include annotations, web links, images, videos, activities, and more, all related to that part of the story. This is a great way to put students in the story, helping them see where the events took place, and bring the story to life.

Google Lit Trips are now available on Chromebooks! Check out this article with screenshots and directions. 

TED-Ed: The Writer's Workshop

TED-Ed collected several videos to help students become better writers into their "The Writer's Workshop" playlist. It contains lessons on basic topics like how to use punctuation and videos on more complex topics like how to make your writing humorous. Take a look! 

12 Excellent Add-Ons for Google Docs

This list of 12 excellent add-ons for Google Docs is worth your time! It includes details on:

1. Revision History Analytics
2. SAS Writing Reviser
3. Easy Accents
4. g(Math)
5. Translate
6. Highlight Tool
7. Rhyme Finder
8. Word Cloud Generator
9. Pupil Pref
10. Doc Tools
11. Orange Slice Teacher Rubric
12. EasyBib

Google Docs Add-on: Writing Reviser

It is always helpful to get a second set of eyes to look over your writing. This might include peer review, teacher feedback, or even a text to speech tool to hear your words read back aloud to you. One other helpful tool is the SAS Writing Reviser Add-on. When you run this tool you can choose from 25 different tests that will check over your document. These include tests in sentence economy, sentence variety, sentence power, sentence clarity, and more. This can be helpful to give students additional insight into their writing and some possible corrections or improvement they may make when revising.

To add an Add-on:

Open a Google Drive Doc and select Add-ons.  Then search for SAS and add. J

Common Sense's Top EdTech Eleven

Common Sense publishes a Top EdTech Eleven list and updates it often. Check it out to see what they say is the best of the best in the world of EdTech.
If you have any questions or want someone to investigate with you, please contact your DLC, Penney Matos!

Newsela for today's news

Little known start-up @Newsela is a great way to keep students (and adults) informed about today's news! Read more here. Visit Newsela here.

Free Resources from the National Archives and the Library of Congress

  

Check out these awesome FREE resources:

• 7 FREE Mobile & Web Apps from the National Archives 
• 5 FREE Teacher Tools from the Library of Congress

Grammarflip

Teachers can register on GrammarFlip for free and create online classrooms in which they can track their students’ progress on the lessons they have completed.  The concise tutorials are designed to engage students and grab their attention while allowing pause and playback at any time.  Students are awarded virtual badges when they successfully reach certain milestones to build confidence and provide encouragement.  GrammarFlip can be used with any computer, tablet or mobile device connected to the Internet.

Learn more by visiting GrammarFlip’s website!

Google Classroom: Share from Gale

Any resources found through Gale (access through MackinVia) can be shared directly with your students through Google Classroom.

Instructions for adding a Gale item to the Google Classroom linked here.

Instructions for downloading a Gale article (with notes and highlights) to Google Drive linked here.

Video tutorial on using Gale with Google Classroom linked here.

Video tutorial on adding Gale resources to Google Drive linked here.

A Teacher's Guide to Wikipedia

Often teachers ban students from using Wikipedia which may not be the best practice. Take a look at Edudemic's article, A Teacher's Guide to Wikipedia. It discusses pros and cons, situations when using Wikipedia is helpful, and more. 

Histography - Timeline of History

This is one of the coolest websites I've run across.

histography.io

Every dot is a historic event from Wikipedia.

Resize the bottom bar to view any time period or era.

Use navigation on the left to narrow by topics including literature, music, wars, politics, construction, inventions, riots, women rights, disasters, art, nationality, discoveries, empires, assassinations, and religion.

TED-Ed: Superhero Science and more cool topics

Superhero Science is a playlist of science lessons published by TED-Ed. The lessons in the playlist feature explanations of what would happen in various scenarios if you had superhero powers like flight, strength, and speed. Each lessons explains the mathematics and science of scenarios frequently found in superhero stories. For example, in the lesson on strength we learn what would happen if a superhero did catch someone falling from the top of a skyscraper.

On that same link, there is alist of all the other TED-Ed lesson series that are available.  Some fantastic stuff!

Actions and Reactions

Animation Basics

Awesome Nature

Before and After Einstein

Behind the Curtain

Click You Fortune

Cyber-Influence & Power

Discovering the Deep

Ecofying Citites

Everyone Has a Story

Exploring Theories

Getting Under Our Skin

Government: Declassified

How Things Work

Ingenuity in the Developing World

Inventions that Shape History

Making the Invisible Visible

Mastering Tech Artistry

Math in Real Life

Mind Matters

Mysteries of Vernacular

Our Changing Climate

Out of This World

Periodic Videos

Playing with Language

Questions No One (Yet) Knows the Answers To

Reading Between the Lines

The Artist's Palette

The Big Questions

The Way We Think

The World's People and Places

The Writer's Workshop

Things they Don't Teach in School (But Should)

Troubleshooting the World

Visualizing Data

What Will You Do with Your Life?

You Are What You Eat

You Graduated... Now What?

If you have never used TED-Ed before, if you create a FREE teacher account, you can customize the questions and activities that go with the videos and you can assign them to your students.

Let me know if you are interested in learning more about it.  I’d be happy to help set it up.

Graphite's Top Picks for Persuasive and Argumentative Writing

Common Sense Media's Graphite

Apps, Games, and Websites for Persuasive and Argumentative Writing

  

These products include skills-builders, practice tools, and writing communities, all of which help students -- especially those in middle and high school – understand the mechanics and art of crafting writing that communicates a point well.

Endangered Languages Project

EndangeredLanguages.com is an online collaborative effort to protect global linguistic diversity. It shows languages of the world that are in danger of dying out. It includes approximately how many people still speak the language and, when possible, recordings of the language being spoken.

TextCompactor.com

This is really cool!  http://textcompactor.com/

For struggling readers.  Take a piece of text and copy and paste it into the compactor.  The student can adjust the % of text to keep so they can understand the content.  

FREE Graphic Organizers through Google Drawing

15 FREE Google Drawings Graphic Organizers - and how to make your own

INeedAPrompt.com

Looking for a prompt to help with writing, artwork, improv, etc? Check out www.ineedaprompt.com. Users can select to add/remove adjectives, nouns, verb, adverb and location. 

Please keep in mind that some of the prompts generated are not necessarily school appropriate, more on the PG-13 side than G, so use this site to get a prompt BEFORE class. It may take a few tries to get one you like that can be used with your students.

Hyperlink YouTube videos

You and your students can easily create a "choose your own adventure" type video trail with YouTube's Spotlight feature.

Record and upload your video, when in edit mode select Annotations --> Add annotation --> Spotlight then place it where you want it located in your video. On the bottom right, click Link and add the URL for the video or playlist you want linked to.

Check out this example from students at Frisco HS.