Great Ideas Come From Others

This past weekend, I was privileged to teach a graduate course containing teachers from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and soon to be Virginia. I was really excited to have the chance to have learned some ideas from them! Here are some gems that I learned:

• Have you ever needed to keep multiple words together in Wordle and they split apart once you create it? Simply placing a ~ in between each word keeps them together. For example, if I wanted to keep the phrase Universal Design for Learning together, I would write it as Universal~Design~For~Learning. 

• A new idea for blogging! Why not put your essential questions, key questions, or whatever you call them...on a blog for students and parents to see each day? As an assessment, students could reply back to the post. 

• Need a temporary email address for your students to create a username and password for another site? Mailinator and Tempinbox may be good alternatives. 

• I love Ted Talks, but I never realized that there was an educational version called Ted-Ed or "Lessons Worth Sharing." This site has a lot of cool bells and whistles that you may want to see if you can use in your classroom. 

• Do you want a free version of SMART Notebook? SMART allows you to download the second most recent version of the software for free. This may be a good alternative for cash-strapped districts, who want to use technology, but are concerned about how to pay for it. 

Do you have any gems or ideas worth sharing? Feel free to comment below! 

Matt