Week Two Review: Free Technology for Teachers a Blog by Richard Byrne
Richard Byrne's blog Free Technology for Teachers immediately caught my attention. This blog is a well-organized and easy to navigate life saver. It is FULL of so many helpful resources, tips, and tutorials for teachers. Richard Bryne a former high school social studies teacher created this blog in order to help other teachers learn how to utilize all of the wonderful technology we have available to us. Richard also has other sites like Practical Ed Tech, iPad Apps for School, and Android 4 Schools. He even is able to find time to work with teachers through professional development seminars.
One of the resources Richard posted about was "Two Ways to Visually Show Classroom Noise". It talks about two tools that teachers could use to help students with their volume control. One of the resources he suggested was Calmness Counter. I did not try this one out because you have to disable your webcam and turn off speakers because it may record visuals. It does warn you about this on the site though which I found very helpful! The other resource he suggest is called Bouncy Balls. As I was exploring this site I fell in love with this tool! I have played around with it a bit, it is a lot of fun. It displays a screen with bouncy balls at first but you have lots of options if you do not want bouncy balls, for example there is an emoji option. The balls will bounce/move around based on the noise within the classroom. This helps the teacher and students to visually see and be accountable for their noise levels. I definitely plan on using this resource in my classroom! As I was exploring this blog I kept learning new information that ranged from how to successfully use certain websites to how to efficiently create your own! There is so much information that Richard provides for FREE on his blog. I plan on keeping this blog in mind to help me with my technology needs! |
