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...

PLAY MYSTERY ANIMAL WITH GOOGLE This information comes from a blog post by Control Alt Achieve written by Eric Curtis. Google has introduced a new game you can do with students called Mystery Animal developed for Google Home devices and app on Android Phones. But you can play a game or two from your own laptop device with your students! To play: Go to https://mysteryanimal.withgoogle.com/ Click on Preview It Here in the bottom right-hand corner Allow access to your Microphone. Google will then introduce to you the game and a small introduction. You get 20 questions to try to guess the animal. To ask a question, you simply hold down on the microphone icon. Google will then tell you the answer.  This is a simple game to play and since there is no typing involved, it can be used by all age groups. The students will need to put on their deduction caps and work together to solve who the mystery animal is. Perfect for teaching students how to ask good questions to narrow dow...

LET’S BE GRIDPALS! Previously, I have mentioned how much I love Flipgrids and can see many educational uses for this new tech tool. Flipgrid is a free/paid website that allows a teacher to create a “grid” of short discussion questions for students to answer with a short recorded video. It is very easy to use for both teachers and students in a variety of different ways. Earlier this year, someone had the great idea of creating a Flipgrid and then sharing it with another school making a connection across state lines. Soon, this idea was expanded and international connections were made called GridPals thanks to the power of a single Twitter hashtag - #GridPals If you would like to sign up to participate, all you need to do is fill out a simple form on this blog . You can use the free or paid version of Flipgrid. Happy Matching!

DUBIOUS STATISTICS Every year in my high school tech class, we spend a great deal of time learning about Fake News and how to detect it. There are many different units we cover such as how to evaluate the sources, recognize the use of satire, understand bias and debunk deceptive statistics. Getting ready for this unit, I came across this blog post by Tim Stahmer over a BBC podcast over a debunking guide in the size of a postcard. If you are short on time can don’t want to listen to the podcast, here is a list of the advice (but you should really listen to the podcast, it’s less than 11 minutes): Remember confirmation bias - how you feel about a statistic is important. Understanding the claim - know what you are not being told in the statistic. Get the backstory - who is responsible for the statistic. Put things into perspective - things may sound better or worse than they are. Embrace imprecision - there are many things that cannot be precisely depicted. Be Curious - if a...

NEWSEUM ED This is an offshoot of Newseum , one of my favorite sites to find high-quality news articles to use with students. It is the place where you can find standards-aligned lesson plans, artifacts, cases studies, and tools to help teach media literacy. Sign up is required to get the most out of the site but it is FREE. (From the website) : NEWSEUMED.ORG AT A GLANCE: Optimized for mobile devices, tablets, and desktops Hundreds of historic front pages, videos, and artifacts 230+ lesson plans and activities Curated, standards-aligned content Interactive timelines and maps Thematic suites of resources on the civil rights and woman suffrage movements, Election 2016, and balancing individual freedoms and public good. New content added frequently One of their activities I really like is titled “IS IT SHAREWORTHY? ” Here is the accompanying infographic you can share with the students. In fact, share all of their infographics. They are all wonderful and ve...

12 Tools To Find Quality Reading Passages For Your Classroom In the article by Lisa Tanner from the blog, TeachThought ,  is a list of 12 different tools teachers can use to find quality reading passages online. Many of you are most likely familiar with some of the tools such as Newslea but there were a few that will be new.  Each tool contains a brief description and includes whether the service is free or paid. I do want to point out though that the article has one glaring omission. Nowhere in the article does the author mention using databases to find articles. The State of Kansas provides access to many free databases such as Explora . Explora lets you search for an article from a popular magazine, newspaper, or academic journal. You can browse through topics of choice or do an advanced search to find exactly what you want. You can even filter the results by lexile level. And the best part? The articles can easily be added and shared through Google Classroom. ...

WATCHING YOURSELF:   THE POTENTIAL OF VIDEO RECORDING IN STUDENT REFLECTION On the blog,  TeachThought , Jessie Johnson addresses how students can benefit and learn by videotaping themselves when they analyze or reflect on their learning. In the article , Johnson tells the story of a research assignment in English. The students would often discuss their topic of choice with the instructor verbally in a 1 on 1 setting but would then forget what they said or struggle with carrying it over to the written paper. A solution was to have students record themselves while they visited with the instructor. What happened next was students who seemed to be bogged down with the writing process found confidence in their ability to verbally brainstorm ideas. They were able to reflect and organize their thoughts in a way that helped them achieve the outcomes desire...

BE INTERNET AWESOME! NEW GOOGLE PROGRAM TO TEACH INTERNET SAFETY FOR GRADES 1-5 Internet safety is so important to teach students from the very beginning. They need to understand how to behave online, how to evaluate what they see, and how to stay safe in an increasingly populated social media world. Students are invited to explore a world called InterLand where they learn internet safety tips while playing in a game-style environment. Topics include: Share with Care Don’t Fall for Fake Secure Your Secrets It’s Cool To Be Kind When In Doubt Talk It Out In addition, teachers can download “lesson plans that have received the ISTE Seal of Alignment and classroom activities that bring the fundamental lessons to life.” To watch a short introduction video and/or to learn more, go to: https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/

Is this website/ online source  CRAAP? An easy to way to check to see if the source you found online is trustworthy is to use the CRAAP test. This  acronym was developed by California State University Meriam Library and is a sure way for students to remember. It stands for the following: C - Currency:  what is the timeliness of the information? R - Relevance :  does it fit with what you need? A - Authority:  who is the author/ publisher/organization.  Can you trust them? A - Accuracy:  what is the reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content? Can it be verified by other sources? P - Purpose:  Why is the information online? Is it to sell, inform, or persuade you? For more information:  goo.gl/fBQub7

FAKE NEWS! Lesson to use to teach students how to detect it. Think critically! There has been a lot of talk lately about the effect fake news has on people’s opinions and all aspects of their life. It is important to teach students how to detect fake news and to think critically about the sources they use online. There are many wonderful lesson plans already made to help combat this trend. Below are some of my favorites: C-Span Classroom:  Lesson Idea: Media Literacy and Fake News goo.gl/K7vqGj Ted Ed Lessons Worth Sharing : How to Choose Your News goo.gl/KHvF5M SLJ Article : Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post-truth” world  (Full of great resources) by Joyce Valenza goo.gl/QspB8I 

It’s Back! Quickly and easily cite sources in Google Docs Around September, Google replaced the Research tool with a new one called  Explore.  Explore was designed to provide suggestions to help the user in creating a better final product. But educators quickly discovered the Explore tool was lacking some critical components students and teachers came to depend upon. One of those was the ability to quickly and easily cite sources as well as create footnotes in the Google Doc. Recently, G Suite has released many new updates including the return of citations as footnotes being a part of Explore. You can change the format of your citation from MLA, APA, and Chicago. (hint : Explore does bring websites & images based upon what has previously been typed in the document but I still find it’s best is to teach students how to use the search bar at the top and do their own advanced Google search to find exactly what they need from a reliable source.) For more informati...

FAKE NEWS versus The Truth: how to spot the difference One of the biggest discussions right now is about the use of fake news in social media sites, especially on Twitter and Facebook, and how quickly it can be shared. Here are just a few articles concerning this trend: Students have 'Dismaying' Inability to Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds - NPR Facebook, Fake News and the Meaning of Truth - BBC We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs. Here's What We Learned - NPR School Librarians are Information Teachers and are here to help.  We are at the forefront of teaching  Information Literacy.   These are must-have skills both students and adults should process such as the ability to: Consider the source. (Authority)   Read beyond the headline. (Authority) Check the author. (Authority)  What's the support? (Accuracy & Reliability)  Check the date. (Relevance and Reliability)  Is this some kind of joke? (New in t...