Ed Tech Blog
News and Information related to Ed Tech
Almost all of the resources listed offer an amount or a duration of free services. There are paid resources in this blog. The presence of these resources on this blog does not mean that CESD has provided licensing for said resources. Choices regarding technology resources are made at the school level, just as decisions regarding textbooks are handled there.
Apr 2, 2020
Prodigy Math Game
The Prodigy Math Game is well-known amongst educators for its engaging math-based games. Further, its privacy policy allows for teachers to enroll students with just first and last name. If you...
Apr 2, 2020
Sum Dog
Sum Dog is a cool little website where students can practice math. The free version includes access to a few math games, and a new math game is always valuable in the arsenal of a teacher! If you...
Apr 1, 2020
iPractice Math
iPractice Math uses game based principles to encourage students to learn through discovery, they also have all the usual stuff schools may like such as worksheets, lesson plans, and of course real...
Apr 1, 2020
Matific
Matific is a free elementary math product that consists of engaging activities and games that teach students problem solving and critical thinking through discovery. They use game based principles...
Apr 1, 2020
Wordnik
Wordnik is the world's biggest online English dictionary, by number of words. Wordnik shows definitions from multiple sources, so you can see as many different takes on a word's meaning as...
Apr 1, 2020
Google Books
In alignment with their corporate mission statement "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”, Google Books boasts the world's most comprehensive index of...
Apr 1, 2020
Lucid Chart
Lucidchart helps users sketch and share professional flowchart diagrams, providing designs for anything from brainstorming to project management.
Apr 1, 2020
Coggle
Whether you're taking notes, brainstorming, planning, or doing something awesomely creative, it is super simple to visualise your ideas with Coggle. Share with as many friends or colleagues as you...
Apr 1, 2020
ThingLink – Interactive Images
ThingLink is an award-winning education technology platform that makes it easy to augment images, videos, and virtual tours with additional information. Seamlessly make your images, videos, and 360...
Apr 1, 2020
Language Tool
Language tool is a nifty website for checking the grammar of text passages under 20,000 words. In the free version, the website states that it has thousands of patterns it uses for finding errors....
Apr 1, 2020
Lexipedia – Where Words Have Meaning
Lexipedia is an online visual semantic network with dictionary and thesaurus reference site. Lexipedia presents words with their semantic relationships displayed in an animated visual word web.
Apr 1, 2020
AI Duet – A Piano that Responds to you
AI Duet is a Google AI experiment. From the site: AI Duet lets you play a duet with the computer. Just play some notes, and the computer will respond to your melody. You don’t even have to know how...
Apr 1, 2020
Autodraw – AI enters the drawing space
Auto Draw is an artificial intelligence experiment hosted by Google. Their AI Experiments is a showcase for simple experiments that make it easier for anyone to start exploring machine learning,...
Apr 1, 2020
Deck Toys – Interactive Lessons
Deck Toys provides a very unique space in which to create interactive learning and learning pathways for students. Self-exploration at students' own pace allows practice for mastery of key concepts....
Apr 1, 2020
Easel.ly – Infographic Creation for Teachers
Easel.ly is an amazing free service to allow teachers to create infographics to assist students with understanding complex topics. Their privacy policy does not allow us leeway to use this service...
Apr 1, 2020
LibriVox – Free Audiobooks
Librivox boasts an impressive library of 5,000 audibooks read by volunteers from all around the world. All books are completely free and can be listened to on a large range of devices. The search...
Mar 31, 2020
Lingro – Dictionary for Websites
Lingro refers to itself as the coolest dictionary known to hombre. When you visit the website, you can paste the address of another website into the top search field, then it will allow you to click...
Mar 31, 2020
Google Arts and Culture Project
Google Arts & Culture Project Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's...
Mar 31, 2020
Sketchpad – Online Creation Tool for Teachers and Students
Sketchpad is a sweet little utility for creative projects. When the Google Drive toggle is set, the contents save directly into the user's Google Drive and nothing is stored on Sketchpad's servers....
Mar 27, 2020
Creating an If… Then… form in Google Forms
This video is part of our Learning Hub Course on Google Forms. This specific video outlines how to create a Google Form that routes to different questions bsaed on the responses inputted by a user.
Mar 26, 2020
Google Classroom Video Walkthrough for Parents
This video was created to assist parents with navigating Google Classroom during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mar 16, 2020
Young Men’s Health
The male companion to the young women's site, Young Men's Health, is just as robust, but is geared to boys. The resource includes general health, sexual health, medical conditions, nutrition and...
Mar 16, 2020
Center for Young Women’s Health
The Center for Young Women's Health is a robust resource filled with topics impacting female youth. It includes general health, sexual health, gynecology, nutrition & fitness, emotional health...
Mar 5, 2020
1,000 Free Audio Books
Open Culture offers thousands of resources that are free of copyright, and can be used by anyone. Their list of classic books informs users where the free resources are to be found, and in the case...
Feb 27, 2020
Problem Attic – Exam Creation Software
Exam creation is a time-consuming process for teachers, and historically many teachers have utilized software such as examview at great fiscal cost. We are pleased to show our teaching staff Problem...
Feb 7, 2020
Google Sky
Google Shttps://www.google.com/sky/ky - it's like Google Earth, except it's the sky. A fantastic companion for the grade 6 sky science unit!
Feb 7, 2020
Word Hippo
Word Hippo is a cute thesaurus/dictionary/word rhyming for younger learners. It asks the question "What's another word for" at the top of the screen and children can type their sought-after word...
Jan 27, 2020
Adobe Spark for Graphics and Video
Adobe Spark is a phenomenal resource for teachers. Spark allows you to quickly and efficiently create a beautiful graphic using a template, your own photos and royalty-free photos. You can also...
Jan 17, 2020
Gapminder
Explore world views with Gapminder. The site contains interactive tools and many videos on a broad range of topics.
Jan 10, 2020
Silk – Interactive, Generative Art
Silk is a really cool interactive, generative art site. It does not require a login, but has a camera icon in the top left corner for artists to take a photo of their creations. Beyond art, this...
Jan 9, 2020
PhET Interactive Simulations
Many of the scientific simulations on the PhET site (from the University of Colorado, Boulder) are now able to be utilized on Chromebooks. They are no longer flash-based simulations. PhET offers...
Dec 12, 2019
Play & Learn – French, Spanish or German
Literacy Center offers a few online games to assist with second language teaching and learning.
Dec 7, 2019
Bomomo
Bomomo is an art site where adults and kids can experiment with art, colours and textures in an animated and engaging way.
Nov 29, 2019
Base Ten Blocks at CoolMath
CoolMath - an old, familiar math website has recently launnched a set of virtual manipulatives including a nice interface for base-ten blocks. Becuase they are just rolling this content out now, the...
Nov 29, 2019
New! More Math Manipulatives!
As many of us have discussed, there is genuine growth occurring in the creation of online resources that are accessible from a Chromebook. Today I am excited to bring your attention to the Didax...
Nov 28, 2019
NaNoWriMo for Young People
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, empowering approach to creative writing. The challenge: draft an entire novel in just one month. For 30 wild, exciting, surprising days, you get to lock away...
Nov 7, 2019
Help Teaching
Help Teaching is a website where teachers can create printables for their classroom. The free version will allow you to make a test or quiz of up to 10 questions. There is content for all subjects...
Oct 16, 2019
We Video – Online Video Editor
We Video is a free online video editor. To access it for free, there are a couple of limitations. The application will limit videos to 5:00 in length, which generally speaking is more than enough...
Oct 2, 2019
How to Submit a Tech Help Ticket
If you are in need of the services of our technology services, we have an easy help ticketing process for you. Lyle, our amazing LAN-Tech created this video to assist you with successfully...
Sep 17, 2019
Inking & annotating screenshots with a Chromebook
Inking - writing on top of an image, otherwise known as annotating is possible using a Chromebook. Our amazing Lan-Tech, Bailey has put together this "How-to" slideshow to assist teachers who want...
Sep 9, 2019
Kami – Some Good Fall 2019 Updates
The wonder of cloud software is that when they update the application, all users benefit immediately. All teachers and students in CESD are provided with a full license to Kami. If you do not see...
Jun 4, 2019
Dynamic vs. Static Software
These may not be the official terms for the software, but I'm going to choose to use these terms to try to help with the distinction between "cloud" software and installed software. To ensure our...
May 7, 2019
Place Value Digital Manipulatives
Instead of looking for all those place value blocks you used last year (they've gotta be there.... somewhere...) why not sign out a cart of chromebooks and provide kids this link (If you have a...
May 7, 2019
Free inspirational Movie Clips
Did you know there are online resources out there that offer just the movie moments you may be looking to use in your classroom? Clips you may not have known about, clips you may have forgotten...
May 7, 2019
Digital Citizenship – Case Studies
This website from a school in BC has a list of stories of people who have been involved in various situations where some different choices as it pertains to digital citizenship could have changed...