🎉 Ditch Summit starts Monday! Details inside

🥴 NEW: How to create sub plans in 15 minutes with AI

It happens a LOT this time of year. You go to bed and you suspect that it’s going to happen.

Then you wake up the next morning and confirm it. You’re sick.

No, you’re not just sick. You’re SICK. 🥴

There’s that saying we use as teachers: “It’s easier to just go in sick than it is to get sub plans ready!”

But what if it wasn’t? What if AI could help us draft some useable sub plans in a hurry so we could get back to bed?

In today’s new post, we share a step-by-step process to create quick sub plans — in 15 minutes — using a couple of freely available AI tools.

Oh … and you can use these to plan normal lessons too if you want!

Read: How to create substitute teacher plans in 15 minutes with AI

📺 What to expect from Ditch Summit on Monday

The Ditch Summit arrives on Monday! If you’ve never participated in the summit before (or would just like a little refresher), here’s what you need to know …

• The summit opens on Monday. That’s when you’ll get access to presentations and resources.

• We send you everything you’ll need by email. You don’t even need a username/password. Just click links in email.

• During the summit, we’ll email you as new presentations are released — Monday through Friday. You’ll get a bit more email from us than normal during the summit.

• On Sunday, you’ll get our traditional “Twas the Night Before Ditch Summit” email. 😁

Here’s what happens during the summit …

• We release new sessions Monday through Friday for the first two weeks. We’ll email you links to them.

• Each day for those two weeks, we release two sessions: a featured speaker session and a spotlight sponsor session.

• Featured speakers are educators, thought leaders, authors, speakers … people with big ideas to share.

• Spotlight sponsors have great products and share about them — and, sometimes, their own big ideas about education.

• By being a subscriber to this email newsletter, you’ll get those summit emails until the summit closes Jan. 5.

When you click on a link to a Ditch Summit presentation, you’ll land on a speaker page like this one.

• From there, you’ll be able to get your certificate of completion, get downloadable notes, and more with the buttons below the video.

If you click on the “Back to all presentations” button, it’ll take you here …

… to the Ditch Summit Video Library.

• This is the main page where ALL of the Ditch Summit presentations live, all ~100 of them.

• From here, you can scroll to browse all of the sessions and click one to watch.

• Or, if you go to the yellow search section, you can use the white drop-down menu to sort by a particular category.

❓When does the summit close?

It closes on Friday Jan. 5. When it closes, all of the videos and related resources become unavailable. Watch as much as you want until then!

❓Can I still win prizes for referring people to the Ditch Summit?

Yes indeed! You can earn prizes through our referral program. To join the referral contest, go to ditchsummit.com and register yourself. In the welcome email you receive, you’ll get a unique link you can share with others. The more people that sign up with your link, the more prizes you can win!

⏰ 40 sites for students with free time on their hands

Sometimes, at this time of year, students get done with their work and have free time on their hands.

They come up to you and say, “Now what do I do?”

If you need something academic for them to do … something that, you know, promotes learning and not mindlessness, send them to a site on this list:

40 sites for students with free time on their hands

This is our ever-growing list of sites that can stimulate students, let them learn, but also let them have fun.

🗄 Template: The free time sites choice board

Want to give students some choice over the free-time sites they choose?

This interactive free time choice board can do the trick.

Give them this link and the template asks them some questions to guide them to a suggested free time site.

Want to personalize this choice board? Click the “Reuse This Genially” button at the bottom of it. You can make a copy of this template in Genially and make your own version of it!