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Sphero indi is My NEW Hero and free activity

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We offered ten stations at the session eRobots: Robots for the Everyday Elementary Classroom. I would be remiss if I omitted the Wakelet I created here: https://wakelet.com/wake/d320d572-f125-4935-8a9d-3c9aa78851d8 . I have to say, most of the robots I had used in my classroom as a teacher. I became more acquainted with a handful while working as a technology integration specialist supporting teachers in their classrooms. And then there were three that were 100% brand new to me…. Sphero indi. What can I say about this robot, besides the fact that I am in absolute love! Every part of me wanted to jump back into the classroom and see what my students could do with this fantastic bot when I ordered it and delivered it to my door a few weeks before ISTE. What do I love about Sphero indi? Well, for starters, the versatility. With this little bot, you can do both plugged and unplugged activities. I honestly could visualize the students I once taught being highly intrigued with the ability t...
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Elementary Robots: Dance Like a Robot Unplugged Activity- FREE Resource

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At ISTE '22 this year, I was given the opportunity to share my passion for teaching elementary students robotics with a fantastic group of educators. Being a computer teacher for many years, I even spent my pre-teaching days teaching 3 and 4-year-olds computers in a local daycare here in Western New York before landing my first teaching job, I was excited to share and learn from others. Especially after not being with humans for so long due to the pandemic. Throughout my career, I have been a strong advocate for Computer Science. I was humbled by the experience of sharing the workshop, eRobots: Robots for the Elementary Classroom, with a broader audience outside of my hometown. Over the next few days, I will share a variety of the resources I have created, either when I was a teacher in the classroom or for this specific workshop. First up is Dance Like a Robot. After discussing the importance of teaching young students computational thinking, I focused on how our littles learn...
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Flipgrid Tutorial For Beginners

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  Empower Every Voice https://info.flipgrid.com/ Hey- hey. New to Flipgrid ? You are in the right place. Please use this tutorial to learn about the basics! If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out! Empower Every Voice https://info.flipgrid.com/ Hey- hey. New to Flipgrid ? You are in the right place. Please use this tutorial to learn about the basics! If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out! ______________________________________________________________________________________ Let’s begin shall we? Signing Up and Creating an Account To begin, go to https://info.flipgrid.com/ and click “Sign Up” located in the top right-hand corner if you have not already have made an account: Choose either Microsoft or Google as a log-in. Fill in appropriate fields: Welcome! You are now ready to Rock and Roll! Well, Hello Flipgrid….. _____________________________________________________________________________________ _ Creating A Group You are now ready to create ...
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Tech-Know: Google Meet Students Can't Rejoin Workaround

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Have you had the experience of losing a student during a Google Meet and not having the ability to rejoin? Even if you didn’t remove them from the Meet, from time-to-time a student may lose connectivity and not be able to rejoin. We have also been experiencing this phenomenon even after resetting the Google Meet link in Google Classroom and reinventing everyone back in. Some students are still not lucky enough to rejoin!? A work around to this is having the lost student access Google Meet itself https://meet.google.com/ and providing them with the code to your Meet. As of this post, simply sending the students the direct link did not work. If you are in the midst of your Google Meet you can easily access this code in the bottom left hand corner: You can share the link to Google Meet ( https://meet.google.com ) and the code to your Google Classroom’s Stream, GoGuardian, etc. Once your student is at Google Meet, have them enter the code that you have given them: This so far has been su...
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Google Slides: Get-To-Know-You FREE Template for Remote Learning 2nd-4th Grade

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 If you were a game character, what would you be like? Learn about your students by tapping into their inner-gamer. In this simple Get-To-Know-You Google Slide template, your students will: learn how to navigate to a linked Website ( https://www.abcya.com/games/make_a_face ).  create and download their gaming character.  Insert their downloaded character into a Google Slide. type 3 powers that their character possess. This is the time to have them think of three strengths that they want to share with you and your class! Don't forget to force a copy for each student in Google Classroom/Schoology! Grab your copy here! Introductions: Gaming Character by Aimee Bloom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License .
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Creating Online Learning Adventures using Google Sites

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                 So, we have Webquests , HyperDocs , Choice Boards , Playlists , Interactive Games in Google Slides all utilizing Google Docs, Forms, and Slides as a way to present information and encourage choice and voice for student learning. If you follow my blog, you know that my realm of education has expanded as I have been an art teacher, a computer teacher, an assistant principal, a technology integration specialist, and am now a staff development specialist. I spent the last few months (like many in my position) assisting teachers on how to teach and what tools to teach with during our stint with distant learning. During this time, I facilitated numerous online courses, workshops, webinars for teachers and admin on various technologies and instructional practices for distance learning that include, but not limited to, creating mutli-modal ways to deliver content in which students have choice.  This brainchild of mine...
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Creating an Animated Zoom Background

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Today during an ISTE Certified Teacher virtual meeting, I used a “newsroom” animated virtual background for Zoom that I created using Screencastify and Canva. I was asked how I made this possible. Below are the directions: First, here is my example so you have some context as to how to make this work: Okay, the steps…. I personally recorded my screen using Screencastify and exported the recording into an animated Gif. Then on to Canva …. In Canva, I started by Creating a Design using Custom Dimensions and setting the dimensions just below the recommended 1920px by 1080px (16:9 aspect ratio) from Zoom. (I originally had it set at the recommended ratio but was advised by Zoom that it was too large of a file when I went to upload it). I went to work creating my virtual background. Once content, I then uploaded the animated gif that I recorded and downloaded from Screencastify into Canva and added it as part of my background. Then download it as an MP4. You can also download as animated ...
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