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PowerPoint is just my favorite, my first EdTech love.  OneNote and Minecraft are close behind, but there’s just so much you can do #OnlyInPowerPoint.  These are all topics I’ve treated separately, but I really think they deserve to be pulled all together into one place.  (PowerPoint’s Greatest Hits?) There’s a lot here, so no pictures and just a brief description follow, but you can click on any of these to get a lot more information. Day 90 of 365 Ideas for Office 365. Presenter Coach– #OnlyInPowerPoint This one is truly #OnlyInPowerPoint- Rehearse your PowerPoint presentation and get live feedback and a summary via AI.  ThisRead More →

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Flipgrid fun! I wrote twice recently about Flipgrid, but I really didn’t get to the fun parts, like stickers!  Today let’s walk through all the options students have before, during and after creating their video responses. Welcome to Day 89 of 365 Ideas for Office 365. You have created your assignment in Flipgrid and shared it with your students.  Now it’s time for them to have some Flipgrid fun. They will start by clicking on the big, green plus sign. They can jump right in and press the record button, but there are many Flipgrid fun options they can do first. Flipgrid fun with FiltersRead More →

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Yesterday, in between introducing several high school teachers to Flipgrid, I wrote an introduction to Flipgrid.  Today we will look at all the ways students can access Flipgrid.  For day 88 of 365 Ideas for Office 365, we’re sticking with Flipgrid!  (This is very much a How-To post.  If I bore you today, come back tomorrow for the fun stuff, which Flipgrid has plenty of.) Options There are several ways you can make Accessing Flipgrid easy so your students can get right to your Grid or Topic.  If you aren’t using another digital platform (Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, etc.), when they go to the FlipgridRead More →

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Flipgrid is a web-based platform for video conversations in the classroom.  It essentially “flips” the conversation from written to video.  Flipgrid is a simple, easy to use way to instantly provide student choice in how they show what they know.  It’s also really, really fun!  Welcome to Day 87 of 365 Ideas for Office 365, a way overdue article on Flipgrid.  What is Flipgrid for? At its most basic Flipgrid is a way for teachers to pose a question or questions to students and allow them to record their answer.  This has obvious appeal to students with writing difficulty.  As a former Special Education teacher,Read More →

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Student Planners.  Student agendas, Homework journals.  Whatever your school or district calls them, they have been popular for years.  When I was in middle school my teachers tried t teach us organization with binder checks.  Yes, we received explicit instruction in binder organization, and the beloved Trapper Keeper was banned.  When I taught middle school we gave each student a Student agenda- a calendar in spiral bound book format/bathroom pass/parent communication tool.  I shared some idea on how teachers and staff can use Microsoft Planner for personal or group projects a while back, as well as how students can use Planner for group projects.  Well,Read More →

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Table of Contents are easy to create in Word.  So is making them clickable.  Welcome to Day 85 of 365 Ideas for Office 365.  Clickable Table of Contents.  Yesterday we showed you how to add visual structure and accessibility to your Word documents by utilizing the Heading Style to create collapsible menus in Microsoft Word.  An interactive Table of Contents is another way to achieve these goals. Purpose of Clickable Table of Contents Like yesterday’s topic, adding a table of contents to a Word document makes it much easier to both create and navigate longer documents but also to make any length document more accessible. Read More →

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Okay, it doesn’t sound like the sexiest topic possible.  But collapsible headings are really handy when you have a longer document, and add accessibility to any length document.  Welcome (at last) to Day 84 of 365 Ideas for Office 365– collapsible menus in Word. Why Use Collapsible Headings Besides making it easier to create longer documents, collapsible headings make it easier to navigate documents.  Consider your students with IEPs that say “reduce visual clutter” or have trouble with organization or following multi-step directions.  Imagine them having all the content or instructions, yet only needing to see one piece at a time- the part they areRead More →

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Last time we looked at different types of signage in Minecraft:EE– wooden signs, slates, posters and boards.  Previously we showed how you can use a camera in Minecraft and how your pictures get saved in a portfolio, which you can export as a PDF and save to your device or to the cloud, and share.  Pulling all of those pieces together, one of the things you can take a picture of, is those signs.  That way the teacher doesn’t have to go into any Minecraft worlds to get a (gradable) record of what the students wrote.  There is another way students can write, or saveRead More →

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Writing in Minecraft Education Edition (M:EE) can be done on several different surfaces, most of which can be edited. These chalkboard-like surfaces are much more user-friendly than “engraved” signs in other versions of Minecraft.  Welcome to Day 82 of 365 Ideas for Office 365– Minecraft signage. Signage in typical Minecraft In most versions of Minecraft, signage consists of precisely that- you can only write on signs.  These come in a variety of attractive wood options. They are typically mounted on a post in the ground, but can also be placed on a wall in a nice frame.  If you place them in the ground, theyRead More →

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Been a while since you’ve looked at Nearpod? They’ve been very busy adding features and content over the last year or more. Nearpod Matching Pairs First of all, they added the Matching Pairs activity- what you always wanted the Matching activity to be!  Students race the clock to match words and/or images together, like words and definitions, pictures and labels, or words in one language with words in another. Timer  Students don’t have to “race the clock”, but this was the first activity Nearpod added a timer to, and they have now completed that project, because timers are now an option for all Nearpod activities. Read More →