The EdTech Take Out

Mindy and Gina are back with our final championship round of AI Madness. In this episode, Mindy and Gina take a deep dive into Brisk Teaching and School AI. Join them as they put these two AI tools against each other in completing similar tasks and reveal the good, the bad, and the truly amazing about both of these tools. Curious to know which tool wins? Take a listen to find out! Brisk Teaching Plans - Free for teachers. Paid version with additional features/tools for schools. Become a Certified Brisk AI Professional 20-minute course for 45 days of premium Brisk feature School AI Free for teachers. School Plan available - book a call to learn more.    

In the spirit of March Madness and how much we love Iowa Women’s basketball on our team, we have taken the idea of bracket play into the AI world. In the last episode, we shared eight tools within the four categories of productivity and communication, lesson planning, scaffolding, and assessment and feedback.  In this episode, we narrowed those eight tools down to four to face off in head-to-head competition.  Ghostwrite Cost: 15 emails a month, unlimited for $10/mo Integrations: Outlook, Gmail, Zendesk Student Use: Age restricted to 18 and up, but you could use as exemplar emails No additional uses besides email generation. School AI  Cost: teachers get a freemium account, otherwise purchase as a district (schedule a call) Integrations: download or copy the output Student use: sidekick, bellringer, exit ticket, historic figure chatbot: spaces Students do not need accounts. Additional features: rubrics, text leveler, performance tasks, syllabus Built-in chatbot assistants for teachers: field trip planner, co-teacher, curriculum coach   Eduaide Cost: Freemium: 15 generations/mo, limited feedback bot Pro account: $6/mo, school and districts accounts Integrations: download or copy output Student use: Age restricted to 18 and up Additional features: Different categories for instructional use: planning, information objects, independent practice, cooperative learning, gamification, questions Brisk Cost: Freemium or District Purchase Integrations: works with Google docs, but integration into comments is for purchase  Student use: Students 13-18 can use Brisk teaching, however the educational institution has to reach out directly to Brisk to authorize the accounts. Additional Features: Creates many different types of content on the fly (quizzes, decodable texts, lesson plans. Releveling on texts. Inspect writing by using the Replay tool in Brisk to see a time-lapse video of the writing being generated.   Join us next week for the AI Madness Final!

In the spirit of March Madness and how much we love Iowa Women’s basketball on our team, we have taken this idea of bracket play into the AI world and have come up with four different categories for AI tools. Within those four different categories, we have chosen two tools that we feel fall into that category to match against one another. To compare these two tools, we will share the cost, what integrations the tool has, and usability of the original output.    For the next two weeks, we will advance tools through the bracket and we will share more in-depth analysis of these tools.   Main Course: Elite Eight    Bracket 1: Productivity and Communication: Ghostwrite (Mindy)Cost: 15 emails a month, unlimited for $10/mo Integrations: Outlook, Gmail, Zendesk Usability of Original Output: built into your email composer, choose tone, style, length, very little need to revise. Goblin Tools (Gina)Cost: Free Integrations: Download as a file, copy and paste Usability of Original Output: Simplistic, choose tones to communicate, choose level of tone Bracket 2: Lesson Planning School AI (Mindy)Cost: teachers get a freemium account, otherwise purchase as a district (schedule a call) Integrations: download or copy Usability of Original Output: easy entry point for teachers getting started with AI, provides structures for completing a robust prompt, helps teachers get to a response that they want, sparks some ideas and provides a flow to a lesson Cuirpod (Gina) Cost: freemium, $7.50/mo  individual account, school license or district license $4000/yr Integrations: NA (link sharing for adding students to a lesson) Usability of Original Output: Many of the lessons that are generated are a good “starting point” however, a teacher would want to go through and add additional information and perhaps adjust some of the questions or interactions that Curipod automatically creates with AI. Bracket 3: Scaffolding Eduaide (Gina)Cost: Freemium: 15 generations/mo, limited feedback bot Pro account: $6/mo, school and districts accounts Integrations: NA Usability of Original Output: Good starting point for ideas, but doesn’t actually create differentiated artifacts.  Diffit (Mindy)Cost: Free up to 2500 words, $15/mo or district license Integrations: Print or Download (with free version), paid Google integrations Usability of Original Output: generates content, paste in text for easy leveling, grade leveling of text can be challenging to decipher–its really about student level so worth a professional eye.   Bracket 4: Assessment and Feedback Brisk (Mindy)Cost: Freemium or District Purchase Integrations: works with Google docs, but integration into comments is for purchase Usability of Original Output:, generates feedback with the click of a button: glow and grow, rubric criteria and next steps  Class Companion (Gina)Cost: Freemium, free for teachers and students, paid school/district account integrates Class Companion into LMS (Schoology and Canvas, with additional features) Integrations: LMS integration with school or district plan. Usability of Original Output: Teachers have access to the content library on the free teacher plan. They cannot create a library of their own content. The AI is useful in coaching student and providing them just in time feedback and they are writing. It is transparent to all (students and teachers) they are getting feedback from AI and there is a place where students can dispute feedback they get from the AI. Geared towards an older audience so elementary teachers might not find this as useful.

News and Updates: Google BardAI is now GeminiAI  Google Doodle contest Seesaw has instructional templates: Seesaw Library=> Daily Routines => Instructional Templates Pear Deck adds additional tools with its new name, Pear Deck Learning: Pear Assessment, Pear Deck Tutor, and Pear Practice. Main Course: National Educational Technology Plan What it is: This 2024 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) examines how technologies can raise the bar for all elementary and secondary students. It offers examples of schools, districts, classrooms, and states doing the complex work of establishing systemic solutions to inequities of access, design, and use of technology in support of learning. Why it’s important: It addresses three main components: the digital use divide, the digital design divide, and the digital access divide. It also provides actionable recommendations to advance the use of technology in teaching and learning in these three areas. Digital Use Divide: Inequitable implementation of instructional tasks supported by technology. On one side of this divide are students who are asked to actively use technology in their learning to analyze, build, produce, and create using digital tools, and, on the other, students encountering instructional tasks where they are asked to use technology for passive assignment completion. While this divide maps to the student corner of the instructional core, it also includes the instructional tasks drawing on content and designed by teachers.  Digital Design Divide: Inequitable access to time and support of professional learning for all teachers, educators, and practitioners to build their professional capacity to design learning experiences for all students using edtech. This divide maps to the teacher's corner of the instructional core.  Digital Access Divide: Inequitable access to connectivity, devices, and digital content. Mapping to the content corner of the instructional core, the digital access divide also includes equitable accessibility and access to instruction in digital health, safety, and citizenship skills. Tech Nuggets: Caffeine for Macs - Mac app to prevent your Mac from going to sleep while presenting. Stickity - Cool online stickers for feedback. School AI - Create customized chatbots (Sidekicks) for students to interact with for specific assignments.

These are a few of our favorite Google Updates: Gifs and stickers in slides - Insert >> Image >> Gifs and Stickers (Gina) Customize notification settings in Google Docs - Tools >> Notification Settings Insert Emoji in Google Docs - Insert >> Emoji There are a few of our favorite new tools: GirlJams Revision History - Extension to see how long you have written for, copy and pastes, deletions, etc. MyLens.AI - Generate different timelines quickly. Download timeline as a PNG. You can now export YouTube questions from MagicSchool.ia into Google Forms with the new MagicSchool.ai GW Corner Booth: Student Engagement Through Metacognition: A Instructional Coaches Workshop - course #226291 Two Dates: January 19, 2024 or February 23, 2024.  AI in Education (Course or two stand alone workshops) - Dates: February 13th and March 5th.  Full Course for recertification #226303 Day one only workshop #226304 - “What is AI?” workshop  Day two only workshop #226305 - “Integration of AI in Teaching and Learning” Both courses will be held in-person at Grant Wood AEA. Don’t forget to take care of you: https://twitter.com/TCEA/status/1733835712003186920?s=20

In this episode, Mindy and Gina interview their new teammate Shalyn Huber.    News: Kahnmingo is coming to Canvas: Kahnmingo is an AI tutor that was developed by Kahn Academy.  Seesaw - Computer Science Activities and English Language Explorers: Newcomers Teach AI Toolkit Catch up with the team from ITEC: bit.ly/DLGWAEAitec2023   Nuggets: Reader Mode in Chrome Text FX with Google: Suite of tools to support figurative language generation.  Twee - AI aid for teachers who use text and much more. Generate reading questions. Generate dialogue around topics.  Searching Tabs in Chrome with @Tabs in Omnibar, search tabs with carrot Ghostwrite: ChatGPT Email Assistant  Office Hours for Seesaw   We’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us on X @DLGWAEA or send us a message on Facebook or Instagram! You can always use our #EdtechTO and share your thoughts with us too!

Mindy and Gina explore some Jamboard replacement tools. Figjam Get verified as a Figjam educator Eric Curts Figjam for Schools Webinar. Miro Miro education templates Miro for Teachers (Video) Canva Whiteboard Getting started with Canva Whiteboard video series

In this episode, we are jumping back into Universal Design for Learning or UDL and brought our resident experts Lynn Kleinmeyer and Bridget Castelluccio in to share more about this topic. We’ve talked about UDL in the past, but it is such an important topic, we wanted to bring it back to the forefront again. 6 Myths about Universal Design for Learning - UDL UDL in the ESSA MTSS: What Is a Multi-Tiered System of Supports? | Understood Lesson Planning with UDL CAST UDL Guidelines Katie Novak’s website Zooming in on MTSS (Katie Novak) - learning session at GWAEA GWAEA “Foundations of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)” microcredential We’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us on Twitter @DLGWAEA or send us a message on Facebook or Instagram! You can always use our #EdtechTO and share your thoughts with us too!

Welcome back to the Edtech Takeout–this is episode 114. This episode is a fan favorite – News and Nuggets!  A little fun fact: This week we reached our 100,000th download!   News and Updates: Canva: Magic Draw, Magic Eraser, Magic Write What’s New Wednesday Webinar - April (Canva)  Newsela: Moving to Newsela Lite, access to four articles at a time with five different reading levels, teacher can access student quiz scorers and writing prompts Seesaw: Add frames (in drawing template) and student responses snap into the frame so no sizing is necessary, Present to Class 5 Chromebook Updates for Students and Teachers Voting Chip in Google Docs - watch for this in the coming months! Tech Nuggets: Mindy:  How to Differentiate Texts Using ChatGPT Convert Your Doc in Canva into a Slide Deck in One Click  (convert button)  Example  made from this The Juice: delivers five articles a day to grades 5-12 students. Followed by vocabulary and comprehension checks, each student is assigned a specific reading level by the teacher. Teacher dashboard that shares data. 30-day free trial Gina:  #FilterTheNoise - News Literacy Course/Resources - Jonathan Ketchell Deep Fakes - Can You Spot Them? MIT Test yourself. Research project. Sutori for Playlist Like Wakelet with built-in polls and checks for understanding Pricing - 30 days all features free, free level, and $120 for a single teacher for a year. Department/Grade level pricing.  Sutori Video Beth: Genially - Nice alternative to Thinglink Teachflix - Teacher currated video repository Canva - Vertical videos with background removal example Remove background in Canva video - tutorial   The GWAEA Corner Booth: Student Engagement Through Classroom Discussion One-day Workshop for Instructional Coaches May 5, 2023 - 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM at GWAEA in CR 6th Street Course number 205152   Tenets of Transformative Classrooms (Online) Online course for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators Section 315455: Starts June 19th - Ends October 6th Section 315456: Starts August 1st - Ends November 30th   GWAEA Professional Learning Institute June 26 - June 30, 2023 Find more information here.   Iowa AEA’s CS PD Week June 12 - June 16, 2023 Find more information here.   We’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us on Twitter @DLGWAEA or send us a message on Facebook or Instagram! You can always use our #EdtechTO and share your thoughts with us too!

Join Mindy, Gina, and Corey for a conversation with AI education expert Charlotte Dungan from AI Edu.  Show Notes: MarI/O - watch AI learn to play Mario. This is a great example of machine learning. ChatGPT - Generative AI that creates written content. Content Detector AI - Detector that used AI to recognize AI-generated content. Kahnmingo AI Tutor - Kahn Academy AI tutor AI Edu - Resource for educators interested in teaching more about AI. Includes AI snapshots mentioned by Corey. These are great bell ringers or discussion starters around the topic of AI.

News and Updates: Include Captions with a Google Meet Recording Padlet has added a slideshow (Tony Vincent) Bing AKA Sydney The Online Search Wars - The Daily 2.15.23 The Online Search Wars Got Scary. Fast. - The Daily 2.17.23 AI - Chat GPT for positive use in the classroom Create & Edit a Timeline View - Google Docs Editors Help Table Templates in Google Docs   Tech Nuggets: Mindy:  Take the background out of your iPhone pictures (iOS16) Force captions on in YouTube: Thanks, Amber!  ?cc_load_policy=1 (embed code comes after video ‘name’) The Achievery: Has Learning Units, essential questions, standards, grade level, video clips, and lesson plans. Thanks, Lynn! Eduprotocols in Google Slides from @MrsGearhart   Gina:  ScreenPal for video feedback in any textbox Curipod - AI-powered lessons Iorad - great for creating tutorials  Slides Timer - Chrome extension for a timer in Google Slides Cloze Reading Assignment with Drop Downs in Google Docs - via Eric Curts   Stacy:  Conker - topic and grade level and will give multiple choice quiz that can go into a Google form or PDF QR code - Canva Apps Checkboxes in docs- can add to tasks  About spaces and group conversations - Google Chat Help   The GWAEA Corner Booth:   Computer Science Pedagogy & Best Practices: Principles 7-12 PreK-12 teachers join us for a six-week virtual course exploring six of twelve pedagogical principles from Hello World's "The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy." When: March 22 - April 19, 2023, 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Virtual via Zoom GWAEA & CSTA Iowa CS Pedagogy & Best Practices Course 2 Course #204370 Section # 313928

Mindy Cairney and Gina Rogers chat with Bridget Castelluccio and Corey Rogers about all things Computer Science at GWAEA.  State of Iowa CS Report CS PD Week (June 12th - 16th)  Interest Survey Secondary Computer Science Endorsement (Grant Funded) Interest Form Iowa Statewide AEA Supports for CS GWAEA CS PD and Events GWAEA CS Website

Our theme for today’s episode is Start, Stop, Keep. Gina and I have been using this prompt with teachers for quite a few years now–the frame is What will you start doing? What will you stop doing? What will you keep doing? We asked our team to think about this as a New Year's resolution with a technology focus and they’ve sent us some nuggets that might be helpful for you in the year ahead! Gina - Time Insights on Google Calendar  Amber - managing notifications Corey - using Pear Deck to keep learners engaged, use as a formative assessment Lynn -  snoozing emails, emails as tasks  Stephanie -  one-click, Britannica ImageQuest Mindy - unsubscribing and deleting accounts. Go to Google Preferences, Autofill, Password Manager on Chrome So…what will you start doing, stop doing, or keep doing in 2023? We’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us on Twitter @DLGWAEA or send us a message on Facebook or Instagram! You can always use our #EdtechTO and share your thoughts with us too!  Have a great winter break and we will see you in the new year!

In this episode of The Ed Tech Takeout, Mindy Cairney is joined by Amber Bridge, Beth Swantz, and Gina Rogers to discuss the Transformative Classrooms Tool that they developed. The conversation focuses on the throughline of collaboration and discourse and what that looks like in all three tenets of the Transformative Classrooms Tool.  Resources: The Tenets of Transformative Classrooms Project Zero Thinking Routines 1, 2, 4, All Accountable Talk Register for The Tenets of Transformative Classrooms Online Class (Iowa Educators Only) Start date: January 9, 2023

In case you missed it, the Edtech Takeout will look a bit different moving forward….at the end of last season, we said goodbye to Jonathan Wylie as he moved to a different position in the agency. However, the team felt strongly that the podcast needed to continue on. Our plan is to record shorter episodes in more bite-sized chunks. This episode is just a news and nuggets episode. The next episode will be more like the main course part of our original format and will have more content and conversation. This way you can look through the playlist menu and choose what looks most appetizing!  News and Updates Screencastify extends free time limit Seesaw What’s New?: One app for all, inbox gets a facelift, try lessons for a year Pear Deck: News-o-Matic and Boston Museum of Science Flip Read Along Online DLGWAEA Corner Booth Ride the Wakelet Wave (Online Course - starting October 3rd - December 16th) Firm Goals, Flexible Means: Honoring Your Learners (UDL) (November 1 - December 16) Designing Instruction with Pear Deck (November 28 - January 20) Transformative Classrooms Online (January 16th - April 14th) Tech Nuggets  Emojis in Google Docs  Video Recorder in Canva Classroomq  Schoolytics Please email us, podcast@gwaea.org or hit us up on Twitter @dlgwaea @TeamCairney @grogers1010

Well, here we are. This is our last episode before our summer hiatus and we wanted to take a few minutes of your time to talk about what The Edtech Take Out will look like when we come back in August.  So, we hope you enjoy this episode and stick with us as we get ready to embark on a new adventure. You can follow Jonathan (@jonathanwylie) and Mindy (@TeamCairney) on Twitter and see all the Grant Wood AEA Digital Learning Team tweets at @DLGWAEA. You can also email us with questions or ideas, at podcast@gwaea.org. If you enjoy the show, please share it with your friends and colleagues and leave us a review on your podcast app of choice. Last but not least, THANK YOU for listening! We really couldn't (or wouldn't) do this without the support of listeners like you!  

The end of the school year is approaching. Are you ready? If not, we can help! We have some tips on how to best wrap up your school year by giving you some best practice advice for the apps and services you have been using all year.  Here are the links for some of the things we talked about: News and follow-up: Use new table templates and dropdown chips in Google Docs Control Alt Achieve: Create "Cloze Reading" Activities with Google Docs Dropdown Chips How to email from Google Docs | Zapier Breaking down language barriers with augmented reality | Google How to Create VR Tours in ExpeditionsPro Wakelet + Mote Desmos joins Amplify Library button added to homescreen in Seesaw Main Course: Wrapping it Up! Google Classroom - Eric Curts Seesaw End of year guide Pear Deck Archive sessions Export student answers Google Takeout Out of office or vacation responder in Gmail 10 end of year templates to help students thrive Three Tools for Quickly & Easily Creating End-of-Year Slideshow Videos Namecoach Tech Nuggets: CrashCourse on YouTube Textomap Activity Hero PocketTube via Katie Wardrobe You can follow Jonathan (@jonathanwylie) and Mindy (@TeamCairney) on Twitter and see all the Grant Wood AEA Digital Learning Team tweets at @DLGWAEA. You can also email us with questions or ideas, at podcast@gwaea.org. If you enjoy the show, please share it with your friends and colleagues and leave us a review on your podcast app of choice. THANK YOU for listening. We really couldn't (or wouldn't) do this without the support of listeners like you!  

We're back, and so is ITEC - Iowa's premier edtech conference! Mindy and I were in attendance, as were the rest of the team, so in this episode, we are going to reveal some of our takeaways from this always popular conference. Here are the links for some of the things we talked about: News and followup: iOS version of ExpeditionsPro Apple introduces a new version of iMovie iMovie Trailer Templates Spring Forward with Zoom Whiteboard & Gesture Recognition Main Course: ITEC Spring Conference: ITEC Iowa Resources from the @DLGWAEA team at ITEC Auto-advance slides in Google Sites add a favicon to a Google Site 3D animal AR search in Google wordsift.org Use vector images, converted into google drawings to make it a moveable image Collabracam TweetShelf add a hint to a Seesaw template Reality Bytes: Innovative Learning Using Augmented and Virtual Reality Google Translate JigSpace Using Google Sheets to Map Addresses Tech Nugget(s)? Send a video to the future You can follow Jonathan (@jonathanwylie) and Mindy (@TeamCairney) on Twitter and see all the Grant Wood AEA Digital Learning Team tweets at @DLGWAEA. You can also email us with questions or ideas, at podcast@gwaea.org. If you enjoy the show, please share it with your friends and colleagues and leave us a review on your podcast app of choice. THANK YOU for listening. We really couldn't (or wouldn't) do this without the support of listeners like you!

We have been wanting to have an episode like this for a long time, but we have never been able to find a good guest to talk to. All that changed when Katie Wardrobe (@MusicTechTchr) agreed to come on the show and talk about the intersection of music and edtech. Whether you teach music or not, this was a really fun conversation with great ideas for any classroom, including TikTok challenges for students! Here are the links for some of the things we talked about: News/Follow-up: Practice Sets in Google Classroom Socratic by Google Schedule posts for multiple classes in Google Classroom Universal Control for iPad and Mac Apple announces new coaching program for educators Designing student activities in Canva Main Course: Katie Wardrobe: Soundtrap Bandlab GarageBand Flipgrid QR Codes in the Music Classroom Finneas O'Connell on Jimmy Fallon Andrew Huang TikTok challenges duets/collaboration harmony builder Midnight Music Music Tech Teacher Podcast Tech Nuggets Pagify Toy Claw Machine Slides Isle of Tune - lesson plan for Isle of Tune Text Chat Animator PineTools aka The Gateway to the Dark Web?  Incredibox https://runwayml.com/ Beepbox You can follow Jonathan (@jonathanwylie) and Mindy (@TeamCairney) on Twitter and see all the Grant Wood AEA Digital Learning Team tweets at @DLGWAEA. You can also email us with questions or ideas, at podcast@gwaea.org. If you enjoy the show, please share it with your friends and colleagues and leave us a review on your podcast app of choice. THANK YOU for listening. We really couldn't (or wouldn't) do this without the support of listeners like you!

In this episode, we decided to try something a little different. We invited Micheal Cohen (aka @TheTechRabbi) to join us to talk about the implication of NFTs for students and educators.  If you haven't heard of NFTs or web3 before, you're not alone but that's one of the main reasons why we decided to have this conversation. It will make you think differently about all kinds of things. Here are the links for some of the things we talked about: News/Follow-up: Sharing slides as a Virtual Background in Zoom Google is bringing Chrome OS to PCs and Macs  My EdTech Bundle is now free… Pear Deck Updates You Might Have Missed Introducing Pear Deck Reflect & Review! Be Internet Awesome — Pear Deck Follow up on Mindy’s Video Comment Request… Main Course: NFTs with Michael Cohen Michael Cohen on Twitter: @TheTechRabbi NFTs 101 — A Beginner’s Guide 'The Sky Is the Limit:' How NFTs Are Revolutionizing the Art Market Tech Nuggets Random Name Selector in Google Classroom Thanks to Kelly Roskopf at Solon High School Video Candy Tract courtesy of Beth Swantz (@betswan) Solvemoji You can follow Jonathan (@jonathanwylie) and Mindy (@TeamCairney) on Twitter and see all the Grant Wood AEA Digital Learning Team tweets at @DLGWAEA. You can also email us with questions or ideas, at podcast@gwaea.org. If you enjoy the show, please share it with your friends and colleagues and leave us a review on your podcast app of choice. THANK YOU for listening. We really couldn't (or wouldn't) do this without the support of listeners like you!