Lemon Tech Tidbits

  What is it? Mathigon/Polypad is an interactive learning platform designed for mathematics. “ A completely new content format, combined with an innovative new curriculum, makes learning more personalized and fun than ever before: we call it the “Textbook of the Future”. Highly interactive content allows students to actively “explore and discover.” How much does it cost? It is free and students don’t have to sign in to use Polypad IF they don’t want to save their work. They can go to the site, explore, and visualize how math works. Want to know more? Watch this short video for a quick overview. Alice Keehler has a blog post in which she talks about how she uses Polypad to help her students visualize fractions including a video of her elementary age son using the program. You can access it here.

  What is it? Scribble Diffusion is an AI site that lets you draw an object and add a short description. The AI computer will then take the sketch (with your description) and turn it into a refined image. It tries to match your sketch with your description so sometimes, the final result can be funny and sometimes it can be creepy.  Educational Uses? There are still a lot of bugs to be worked out with this new AI site. I can see it being used strictly with a teacher leading a class discussion on descriptive words. You can draw something like a cat or a vase of flowers on the site in front of a bunch of students. Then, start by using a general description such as “a cat”  before you generate the image. Have the students then add to the description adding in more details and regenerate the image again to see how it changes. The whole idea is to get students to use descriptive wording.  But beyond that, this new AI that is being shared and talked about on many tech b...

  I loved Screencastify when it first came out. It was so easy to record your screen and I used it all the time. Before, it was only 24 dollars a year which I found to be cheap for how often I used it. Now, the cost has risen to over 80 dollars a year and I just can’t stomach the expense (on top of all of the other educational related expenses). I have tried Loom and do use it but I don’t like the sharing capabilities. So I was happy to read Casey Bell’s latest blog post about a new tool called ScreenPal. What is it? ScreenPal is a Chrome Extension that allows you to easily record video inside of a text box such as when sending an email, adding an announcement or assignment in Google Classroom, or in a Google Doc comment field. Basically anywhere you would normally write text.  How does it work? Go to the Chrome Extension Store and search for ScreenPal . Click on the Add to Extensions button. After you install it, anytime you are typing in a text box, a small button will...

  What is it? Eric Curtis has created a Google Slide activity called Tier List . The basics of this activity is to have students think critically and collaboratively in sorting a group of items from the best to the least. This could be sorting out the most important battles of the Revolutionary War to listing important characters from a book that had an impact on the outcome of the story. The idea comes from video games culture where people rank characters or objects based on how important they are to the game.  How long is the activity? According to Eric Curtis, the entire activity should take one class period. He has it broken down into three parts each taking between 5-10 minutes to complete.  How to do it? Basically, after you share the Google Slide Tier List with the students, they will work individually to sort and rank the group of items based upon your prompt from S (the best) to F (the worst). They will then compare their rankings with a partner and at the end, t...