Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who was looking for some ideas for creating virtual manipulatives she and her elementary school students to use during remote instruction days. I had two ideas immediately come to mind that I shared with her...
[I decided to make some new investments in my own learning this semester. One of the ways that I’m doing that is to try and become ISTE-certified. I’ve had a longtime relationship with ISTE. When we created the nation’s first graduate program designed to prepare...
As a U.S. History teacher one my primary goals was to help students understand the past to understand where we (Americans) came from to understand how we got here and to, hopefully, avoid mistakes of the past. To that end, I frequently had students read...
Like many teachers, I was disappointed when Google deprecated Tour Builder and Tour Creator last year. Since then in my webinar series with Rushton Hurley and on social media I've answered a lot of questions from teachers about alternatives to Tour Builder. StoryMap JS is...
School resources are always limited, whether they be time, money, attention, energy, or personnel. Before you hire an outside helper for your school(s), here are some questions you might ask… Are we bringing in this person to actually help us do something? Or do we just want...
Disclosure: Volley is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.comAt the end of 2021 an old friend from the early days of Free Technology for Teachers introduced me to a new conversation platform called Volley. I liked it so much that I included Volley in my Best of...
I'm not a regular Microsoft Teams user (the schools and clients I work with all use Zoom or Meet) which is why I rely on Mike Tholfsen's great YouTube channel to keep me updated about the latest and greatest in Microsoft Teams. It's through Mike's...
One of the many things that I love about being a dad to two little girls is all of the questions they ask me. Many of their questions are about things that I haven't thought about in decades. For example, the other night my four-year-old...
This fall I started working with the Mattoon (Illinois) Community Schools. They are doing some really important transformational work for such a small district, including significant investments in students’ leadership capacity through The Leader in Me framework; competency-based education and student progressions; deeper learning modalities in their schools,...
I read some great (and not so great) books in 2021! Here are my top few (and why)… My top book for 2021 is Difference Making at the Heart of Learning, by Tom Vander Ark & Emily Liebtag. Tom and Emily describe how students can make positive...
