Ditch That Textbook Podcast :: Education, teaching, edtech :: #DitchPod

virtual reality is beginning to spread, and so many of its uses have to do with consumption. What if students were able to create with VR? Darcy Grimes, a North Carolina educator and former state teacher of the year, shares how Google Tour Creator can help students learn how to create in virtual reality. You don't even need any fancy gear to make it happen!

The beginning of class is a crucial time everyday. Those first several minutes can set the tone for the entire day of instruction! If we want to make the most of those minutes, we can give students learning activities that really engage them and stimulate them. And our digital devices can help! In today's episode, I share several ways to kick off class with digital bell ringer activities. I'll also share the blog post -- with a free ebook and a tutorial video! -- where you can find 20 of them.

My new book is coming out in April, and I want to celebrate by giving you lots of great free resources! The book, Tech Like a Pirate, shares how we can create memorable learning in the classroom with technology. It will be lots of fun! For the next 10 weeks, we will be sharing lots of free resources on the Ditch That Textbook blog. They will be related to each of the eight ways to Tech Like a Pirate. In this episode, I'll tell you more about it and where you can find those resources!

Have you ever heard of the "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" game? You're supposed to be able to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon with no more than six connections to other actors. Making connections can be a powerful classroom activity! Nate Ridgway, my co-author in the book Don't Ditch That Tech, has shared a whole folder of templates that help your students to do this. In this episode, I'll tell you about this activity and where you can get those templates!

Infographics are very brain friendly. They blend together visuals and text in a way that's very sticky for the brain. I recently found a video tutorial by Claudio Zavala that shows how to create those using Adobe Spark Post. In this episode, I will share a few of the tips I learned from his video and show you where you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.

many of our students are very interested in social media. We can tap into that excitement and enthusiasm, and we don't even need students to use those apps! There is an inherent draw that every social media platform has that gets us interested in it. If we know what that draw is, we can infuse our lessons with it. In this episode, I share a few of those draws that I see in a variety of social media.

Chrome extensions add extra super powers to our Google Chrome web browsers. Teachers and students all over reap the rewards of them, too! In this episode, educator Michael Bertoni shares A few useful Chrome extensions from his presentation at the PETE&C Conference In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Podcasting is on the rise. When we use it in the classroom, it gives students a voice. They are able to create with what they learn. Teacher Heather Kelly has seen great benefits from podcasting in the classroom with her students. In this episode, she shares the simple way she is publishing her students' audio work and tips for helping reluctant students to dive right in.

We want students to be good citizens and productive members of society. But how can we advocate responsibly for the democracy that we all hope for? Pennsylvania teacher Mike Soskil (Twitter: @msoskil) is the editor of a book that will be published soon. It collects thoughts from classroom teachers and academics about this subject. In this episode, Mike shares a couple of things we can do from the classroom to promote a solid democracy.

It can be tricky to discern fact from fiction these days. It can be even trickier to help our students navigate the digital waters of fake news and fact. In this episode, I share a good fake news self-assessment. It comes from the book Fact vs Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News by Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins.

Virtual field trips are so much fun. We can take our students to places all over the world without leaving the comfort of our classroom. Thankfully, lots of these virtual field trips are available for free. They include live video calls with people in museums, historic sites, and national landmarks all over the United States and beyond. In this episode, I will tell you about five great virtual field trips and where you can find more. Did I mention that they are free?!?

Voice is on the rise. Podcast listenership continues to grow. Smart speakers are selling like hotcakes. With all of this buzz around audio content, maybe now is the time to incorporate podcasting in your classroom. However, it doesn't have to be complicated. You can do it with a simple tool you may already use -- Google Slides -- and a free audio recording tool. I ran across a blog post by Jen Giffen (@virtualgiff) and love her solution for it. In this episode, I will share the steps that Jen provides for podcasting with Google Slides. Link: http://virtualgiff.blogspot.com/2020/02/podcasting-in-classroom.html

We use Google Classroom to assign, collect, grade, and return work with students. Many teachers will use Google Classroom in a web browser on their laptop or desktop computers. But have you tried the Google Classroom mobile app? It has a couple of superpowers that the regular browser version does not. In this episode, I'll tell you about two of those features and why they are really helpful.

As teachers, a lot of times we like to assign students work using templates. Google slides is a great choice for doing that! But what do you do when students make mistakes and need to go back to a previous version? In this episode, I talk to Maria Sohn, who teaches technology and stem. She has a couple of unique ideas to share!

I ran across a really helpful question in a post on Twitter. It may help you, too!