Lemon Tech Tidbits

     Every Wednesday at 12:00, there will be an exciting opportunity for your students to participate in a Skype session with another class, a famous author, or subject expert. This opportunity will be there whether the students are in class or participating virtually from their home. Some examples include a session over monarch butterflies, Roald Dahl celebration day, draw with the Minecraft design team and celebrate dot day with Peter Reynolds.  To participate, you will need to sign up for a free account in Skype in the Classroom. When you are done, click here to see the weekly events for the month. To see more information about the event, simply click on it. If it looks like something you would like to do, click on JOIN LINK on the day of the event and watch it online. You will not need to worry about using Skype or Teams to watch, all sessions will be broadcast on a website. You can share the link to virtual students through Google Classroom, SeeSaw, email, or social media.  T

  GOOGLE KEEP Google Keep is a life-saver for a busy teacher. It is one of the G Suite apps I use ALL the time. What is it? It is a simple note-taking service that is available as a Chrome extension, website, and app on a phone that works seamlessly with other G Suite tools. How do I use it? For a nice overview of how you can use Google Keep in your classroom, take a look at this post by Tessa Maguire . She is an elementary teacher and explains how she uses Google Keep every day.  How do I start using it? I created a short video over Google Keep and how I use it. You can access it here.   In addition, I have created a site that lists everything you need to know about Google Keep. It includes a link to a step-by-step tutorial from Google Learning Center, 7 Ninja Tricks from Matt Miller, Tips and tricks from Hello Teacher, and even a way to have students use Google Keep for research. You can access all of it here.   Want even more ideas? Alice Keeler shares how she uses Google

  TOY THEATER (Free online manipulatives) For elementary: If you are looking for an easy to use virtual manipulative, take a look at Toy Theater . They have manipulatives for math, science, art, music, and teacher tools. On the site, you can access an interactive clock, place value cards, two-color counter whiteboard, animation station, a musical composer, and so much more. One of the things that can be a downer is these manipulatives do not allow you to download them. To share them with a student, you have to use a link. Mathies Learning Tools (Free online math manipulatives) Mathies Learning Tools for elementary math DO allow you to download the manipulative. If you can not find exactly what you want with Toy Theater, give this site a try. There are activities included on the site but unfortunately, you need Flash to run.  Still not finding exactly what you want? Try the Didax website for math manipulatives to use.

  MYSTERY SCIENCE For elementary: Mystery Science realizes how hard it is to teach in our new normal environment. To help, they have made available their most popular science lessons free to anyone to use without the need to even create an account.  The lessons are in grade categories making browsing to find what you need easy. If you don’t find exactly what you need, you can always sign up for a free teacher's account to access over 200 more lessons. All lessons aligned with the NGSS standards. All activities can easily be shared in Google Classroom. This is a site in the freemium category meaning additional lessons and activities are available only for those who pay for a membership. However, there are still plenty of free lessons worth taking a look at incorporating into your plans. SCISHOW KIDS (a science youtube channel) SciShow Kids has recently returned with new updated videos with the focus on showing kids how cool science can be. The videos are short (most are und

I usually will have two different tech tips to focus on but with all of the new features now available on Flipgrid, I figured it earned the right to be an exclusive feature for this week. On the blog DitchThatTextbook , a guest blogger named Mike Mohammad has created a step-by-step easy to follow tutorial all about how to use the new Flipgrid Shorts Flipgrid has reached out to several teachers and school leaders to share some of the best ways to utilize Flipgrid for distance learning. There are some wonderful and creative ideas. All can be found here .  Kasey Bell, from ShakeUpLearning, had a podcast over 10 Awesome Ways to Use Flipgrid in Your Classroom. If you don’t want to listen, she provides a transcript as well as links to all of the resources that are shared. These include students using Flipgrid to pitch business ideas to community members, a history class creating Podcasts over historical characters, and elementary teachers creating introduction videos to share with pare

     One of my favorite, and completely FREE, digital tools is Flipgrid . I love how easy it is to use for both teachers and students. (If you have never used Flipgrid before, go to the website and watch the quick intro video. Scroll down and access the tutorials for even more information). If you haven’t signed into Flipgrid lately, you may have missed some of the updates. For example, with Flipgrid, you can now record a video using a whiteboard complete with drawing tools, insert pictures or another video, add stickers, change backgrounds, use custom frames, add text in different fonts, and it even has Adobe Spark integration. Coming soon will be the option for students and teachers to leave comments with text or video.  Another cool new feature is called Flipgrid SHORTS . It basically takes the power of recording a video on Flipgrid to easily share on Google Classroom.   Two more changes, Grids is now called Groups and a new feature called Discussion which can be used as a stand-al

“Whiteboard.fi is a simple tool that can be used instantly. By creating a class and letting your students join, everyone will get a digital whiteboard. You as a teacher see all your students' whiteboards in real-time, so you can follow their progress. The students only see their own whiteboard and the teacher's.” It is “an instant formative assessment tool for your classroom, providing you with live feedback and immediate overview of your students.” (description from website) Whiteboard.fi was invented by a former elementary teacher who struggled to find good digital tools, especially when teaching math. So he invented his own!  To learn more, go to the website at Whiteboard.fi.   To watch an introductory video over Whiteboard, click here.  To read a short blog post complete with step by step instruction, click here .  For math teachers, a new update was released earlier this year. To watch the video on how to access and use the math tools, click here.

EdPuzzle has been around for a while but I thought it would be a good idea to have a refresher on this digital tool. What is Edpuzzle? In a nutshell, Edpuzzle is an interactive way to make sure students are watching and engaging with educational videos. It is a way to ensure students are watching your videos and understanding the content It works in three easy steps. First, you either find a video from youtube or upload one of your own to the site. Then, you edit the video by inserting questions, adding comments, or recording your voice. Finally, you assign the video to your students and check their progress in real time.  At Chapman, we have access to the premium version of Edpuzzle. To learn more, check out this quick video introduction. To get started, Edpuzzle has a wonderful step-by-step help center that will walk you through how to use it: https://support.edpuzzle.com/hc/en-us/sections/360001671011-Getting-Started If you would rather watch a video that walks you throu