Educational Technology

There are several web tools teachers can use to easily design educational visuals, posters and infographics to use in their instruction without the need for any graphics design knowledge.  Two of our favourite tools in this regard are Piktochart and Canva. Google Drawings is another powerful tool that is simple and easy to use and can be utilized to create a wide variety of graphics. The great thing about this tool is that it is integrated with Google Drive making it easy for you to insert your visuals right into Docs and Slides. In today's post we are walking you through the process of how you can go about creating your visual from scratch. Read on to learn more. This visual, based on Docs Editors Help ,  is also available in PDF format from this page . First appeared here

Lumio is an excellent tool to use for bookmarking, curating, and clipping web content. Students can use it to highlight interesting content in a webpage, add notes to it  and save it for a later access. Highlights are recorded together with source information so students can easily check back and cite source pages. Additionally, Lumio provides users with internal search functionality that allows them to quickly search through and locate saved content. Users can organize their highlights into collections and rearrange them the way they want. However, you do need to sign up to Lumio to be able to benefit from all of its features including  storing data on the cloud and accessing it from different devices. Another cool feature is the ability to access and read your saved content using Lumio’s built-in reader with a distraction free reading view. You can also easily channel your highlights to other apps such as Slack or Trello or share them with others through email or social media. First

Esri Story Maps is a web tool that enables you to combine the power of maps and narrative text to create engaging and inspiring stories to share with others. Besides maps, your stories can include places, locations, and geography. You can also embed a wide variety of multimedia materials to tell your stories. These include: videos, images, texts, shapes and many more. Esri Story Maps provides several story map designs to use for your stories. Depending on the type of story you want to share, you may want to select a design that suits your communicative purpose. Designs come with different layouts. For instance, you can choose from:   Story Map Tour:  ‘Present a set of photos or videos along with captions, linked to an interactive map. It's ideal for walking tours or any sequence of places you’d like users to follow in order.’ Story Map Journal: Create an in-depth narrative organized into sections presented in a scrolling side panel. As users scroll through the sections in your Map

This is the sixth post in a series of posts geared towards helping teachers, educators and students make the best of Google services in education. Today we are featuring Google Sheets, an excellent tool to help you create, edit, format and share a wide variety of spreadsheets with others. Using the guidelines below. you will get to learn almost everything you need to master Sheets from creating and sharing spreadsheets to viewing and editing settings of spreadsheets. Previous charts we have published so far include: Google Drive Chart ,  Chromebook chart ,   YouTube chart ,   Google Maps guidelines chart , and Google Forms chart . Google Sheets Guidelines for Teachers Create, edit and format spreadsheets How to use Google Sheets Create a spreadsheet Edit and format a spreadsheet Import data sets and spreadsheets Format numbers in a spreadsheet Work with sheets, Protect, hide, and edit sheets Edit rows, columns & cells in a spreadsheet Publish and embed your spreadsheet Publish and

Google Forms is an important tool teachers can use to create, edit and share surveys, forms, and quizzes.  If you are using or planning to start integrating Forms in your instruction the chart below will be of great help. It is basically a set of guidelines provided by the folks in Google Forms to help you learn more about how to create a wide variety of forms. More specifically, you will get to learn how to create, edit and format forms; how to share your forms and collect responses; how to set rules for your form and use add-ons and apps script. This chart is part of a series of EdTech charts we have recently started posting covering different Google services. For previous charts, check out:  Google Drive Chart ,  Chromebook chart ,   YouTube chart , and Google Maps guidelines chart .                         Google Forms Guidelines for Teachers Create, edit and format How to use Google Forms Create a survey using Google Forms Create a quiz with Google Forms Edit your form Add a them

Here is a collection of some very good iPad apps students can use in their classroom projects. The apps, which are curated from Apple's Real World Learning collection, are geared towards enhancing a number of key skills that include: creative thinking, design skills, literacy skills, coding, and many more. Some of the things students can accomplish using these applications include: create beautiful ebooks to share with others; create visual sketches to record notes; design educational video clips, screencasts and presentations; capture and organize ideas in diagrams and mind maps. 1- Book Creator  ‘Book Creator is the simple way to make your own beautiful ebooks, right on your iPad. With over 25 million ebooks created so far, Book Creator is ideal for making all kinds of books, including children's picture books, comic books, photo books, journals, textbooks and more.’ 2- Paper by Fifty Three ‘Paper is the best way to capture and connect your notes, photos, and sketches. Create

Here is a list of some useful iPad apps students can use to unleash their creative thinking and engage in hand-son learning activities. The apps, curated from iTunes App Store's collection called 'Explore Your Creativity', will enable students to create short movies, edit and share visuals and photos, tell stories using a wide variety of multimedia materials, create and learn about music, and draw beautiful sketches to share with others.  We have also visualized the list in the infographic below which you can download for free from this link . Enjoy Make a movie 1- Stop Motion Studio ‘Create beautiful stop motion animated movies anywhere instantly on your device. Everything you need is right at your fingertips. No computer needed. It's simple to use, deceptively powerful and insanely fun to play with. Create fantastic movies your friends will enjoy or share it with the world on YouTube, Facebook and other sites.’ 2- Animoto Video Slideshow Maker ‘Make fun videos wherev

A huge number of emails we receive from our readers are queries about different features in Google Drive.  And while we have extensively covered Google Drive functionalities in several posts in the past, today we are sharing with you this handy chart that sums up almost everything you need to know to make the best of Google Drive. Clicking on any of the titles below will direct you to a Drive Help page where you will get to learn more about the feature in question. These are all guidelines provided by the folks in Google Drive. Our purpose is to make it easy for you to quickly search, access and find information related any of the important features in Google Drive from learning how to use Drive files offline to learning how to manage and restore your device back-ups in Google Drive. Google Drive Guidelines 1- Get Started with Google Drive 2- Use Google Drive Files Offline 3- Accessibility in Google Drive for Mobile Devices 4- Navigate in Google Drive with  Screen Reader 5- Manage File