Bloom into EdTech: The Blog

As part of an effort to incorporate more mind breaks into my day, I have been creating and editing the following Google Slide document that I would like to share with you. I have a feeling that I will continuously be adding so please check back.  You can grab your free copy by clicking here. Upon opening the document, you will notice that there are many slides that have pre-made themes for you to use with your students. You can easily delete any slide you wish not to use in the template by clicking on the unwanted slide on the left hand side and going to Edit in the menu then Delete :   Furthermore, you can edit any of the following tables to meet your needs. You and/or your students can type and change the format of the font or color within each editable table.  The document is completely editable. Please feel free to use the created backgrounds to create a  Learning Menus, HyperDocs, Choice Boards, Play Lists based on your needs. You can easily customize th...

Are you ready? Are you excited?! It's here- The Hour of Code. Although coding should go way beyond the hour... please take this week to become acquainted with the plethora of Websites available to you to assist your students in learning how to code. Here is a Symbaloo Webmix of sites that I use with my students during the week: Happy Coding!

So much pressure is placed in education on using technology. However, in many classrooms it is the teacher utilizing the technology for presentation of their notes, and the students are the ones who are handwriting them down in journals and notebooks. In my opinion, using digital tools in the classroom as a form of note taking is a tremendous stride in the right direction. There are many tools that can assist students with note taking; G Suite , Evernote, Notability, etc. are just a few of the examples. Today’s big push appears the interactive notebooks. An interactive notebook is a paper notebook that allows students to place notes and teachers can create activities within the sheets of paper (Interactive-notebooks-home, N.D.). I could easily see this transition to students using either Google Slides in conjunction with Google Draw or Evernote to create an interactive notebook and replace its paper counterpart. Some advantages of incorporating digital notes into your...

If you are ever in the search for royalty free, high-quality images to use with your students, Pixabay.com  is the place to go. I have been a huge fan for years and have found from experience that the bigger they grow and the more popular they have become, the more I am running into questionable images. Luckily, {although not foolproof} Pixabay has a Safe Search for images built right into their Website. Please know that sometimes, (like anything else) questionable content slips through the cracks. You are always your students best line in defense to make certain they are safe. Making sure students know how to "handle" the situation is also a priority (i.e. have them turn off the screen before the come and report it). Here is how to access it Pixabay's Safe Search: 1. In the top right-hand corner is a menu button. Select it and press FAQ. 2. Scroll down until you find the Safe Search section and check off the box to enable. That's it! Happy safe s...

You can learn more about this lesson, by visiting my class Website found here . I hope this gave you some inspiration for today!