Unsplash - free photo gallery

Unsplash

A wonderful collection of free photos. The photos below model good digital citizenship by giving attribution to the photographer.

Photo by Madhu Shesharam on Unsplash

Canva - amazing presentations

Canva will allow your students to be very creative with their presentations of class material. The learning curve is not hard as they use the same skill sets as with Google Sheets, Microsoft PowerPoint, and online platforms like Piktochart.

There are many presentation templates, font styles, photos, the ability to add your own photos, icons, backgrounds and many more features. Students can sign up using their school Google account, presentations can be emailed to their teacher, and work can be done in collaborative teams.

OzoBlockly

OzoBlockly

Block coding for OzoBots.
While the Ozobots can be used with Grade 1's and older, it is recommended that OzoBlockly be used with Grade 2 and higher.  It is strongly suggested that students have completed at least some levels of Hour of Code activities before using OzoBlockly with OzoBots.

Sample Activity:

Have students construct their own maze out of items like Lego or straws or hand drawn on large sheets of paper.  Determine what codes have to be used to navigate their OzoBot successfully through the maze.

INTRO VIDEO

Book Creator - Unleash Your Creativity!

Book Creator is the number one app for engaging students, encouraging creativity, and giving them a voice! 

This application allows students to share their class research, videos, pictures, artwork, writing, and audio recordings in an innovative and easy to use way. Students of all ages will be able to easily use this app on a Chromebook, iPad and any other device that has a Chrome browser.

The app allows for collaboration and sharing, and publishing their work to show their classmates, teachers and family. They can even publish to iBooks if they wish!

From the cool comic book templates and stickers, to a multitude of fonts, students are only limited by their imaginations. They can make multiple books with unlimited pages in their quest to demonstrate their learning or show off their work. By adding video and audio, a multimedia book is the result that can be shared with people of all ages. There is also the capacity to add links for accessibility to open their book up to an audience that may be challenged in some capacity.

These keepsake books can be printed, shared, stored, saved and read online. Students as young as Kindergarten can be successful at making and publishing their own books in a professional manner. By adding their voice, they can explain their thoughts and read their own words.

Suggestions for student and teacher use:

• any grade level of story writing - can add artwork, captured photos or creative commons photos, students can record themselves reading their work
• student and teacher explanations of math problem solving
• student and teacher explanations of science issues/problems
• method to display science investigations and research
• art work portfolio
• phys ed skill development - tutorial videos, evidence of progress and mastery, skill drills
• professional development videos and background information
• collaborative stories and art

Here is an excellent example, created by a teacher from our school division.


__________________________________________
ISTE Student Standards for Students - here are the standards that Book Creator can strongly address!

• Empowered Learner
• Digital Citizen
• Innovative Designer
• Creative Communicator
• Global Collaborator

_________________________________________

What are my options for use?

1. Try it out using the free app on iOS. You can create one book and you'll be hooked!

2. Purchase the app on iOS and you'll get unlimited books with no restrictions. Awesome value for the price of a few coffees! Volume purchasing program price is valid with the purchase of 20 licences.

3. FREE - teachers and students can use Book Creator on Chrome! Easy for your students to use and publish online. Books can be collaborative. If you set up a free teacher account, you will get a bookshelf that can hold 40 student books. Students join using your unique class code (similar to other apps like Google Classroom). You will be able to provide timely feedback to your students you have access to all of these books.

4. PAID - for a fee of around $60 per year, you will have 6 bookshelves with 60 books each available to you and your students.

QR Stuff

QR Stuff

Excellent QR code creator.  
Paste URL or answers to questions in spot provided and generate a code in any colour you want.  Download the code to put on class documents.

Examples:
1.  Direct students/parents easily to a designated website or to a YouTube video showcasing student work.
2.  Construct an assignment where the answers or help for the questions are hidden as a QR code.

Typing/Keyboarding Programs

Typing.com

• Grades 4 and older
• Free
• Class accounts available to monitor progress
• Games and typing tests

Dance Mat Typing  (BBC Bitesize)

• Grades 2 -4
• Free, no sign in required
• 4 levels with 3 stages each (progress not saved)

KidzType

• Ages 9-15
• Free
• No sign in required, no class accounts (progress not saved)

Scratch

Scratch

This is an excellent website for building computer science coding skills for all ages. 


"With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community.

Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century." (https://scratch.mit.edu/about/)

Scratch Curriculum Guide (draft)

Google: Voice Typing

Google Docs:  Voice Typing  (new feature, Fall 2015)

Commands: 

-period
-comma
-question mark
-exclamation mark
-new line
-new paragraph



There is also the ability to change the default language.

You can also use text to speech on your Android or iOS device - 
 
Read article

Google My Maps

There is an excellent tool added to your Google Drive this week - it is called Google My Maps. It is very similar to the regular Google Maps, but is now integrated into your Drive. It also cooperates nicely with Google Forms as well - you can collect map data and have it plotted for you. Any grade level can easily use this application.

In your Google Drive, press New, then scroll down the list until you see Google My Maps.  You can generate custom maps that outline the story line of a novel, or events that took place during World War II...etc.  All maps are saved in your Google Drive and can be shared with anyone.

Support: https://support.google.com/mymaps/answer/3024396?hl=en&rd=1

You can integrate data collected in a Google Form (survey) to be seamlessly added to your map.  In the simple example below, the survey asked students to enter their favourite vacation spot.  The spreadsheet generated from the survey is imported into My Maps and placed automatically on the map.  There you can share the map with students and they can add photos to their place marker.  The end result is a tour of these places.

Here is a tutorial video outlining the process: 

Importing data into Google My Maps: https://youtu.be/S3QIq5B0L-o

Piktochart: A Great Visual Communication Tool!

Create exciting and interesting INFOGRAPHICS with Piktochart!

• Free to join
• Use your Google account to sign up

Create great infographics, reports and presentations to display photos, stats, information, YouTube clips, and graphs with this amazing online application.  Students will find it very user friendly and easy to share their work.  Built in graph maker.  Great for class projects in which data is displayed.  Has more features for reports and presentations than applications such as PowerPoint or Google Slides. Many templates and graphics included.

Infographics are easily shared via email.

Please watch this short video:  Video Introduction