💡 My best ideas from TCEA

🤖 Get up to speed on AI in education

This book continues to rank near the top of the Computers & Technology Education category on Amazon!

Why? It translates AI for education. It provides concrete AI ideas to save time and create engaging learning.

Plus, it goes deep into academic integrity and cheating … and it even talks about preparing students for an AI future.

You will not be disappointed by this book! The author offers great ways that us educators can use AI in our classroom right now. — Earl D. Lemaster via Amazon

Get AI for Educators in paperback, Kindle ebook or audiobook

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🎙 My best stuff from the TCEA Conference

TCEA is one of the biggest edtech conferences in the United States. Every year I look forward to it!

If you weren’t able to attend, we gathered slides, videos, templates, links and more on our Ditch That Textbook TCEA page.

Here are some of the best resources I was able to bring back to you:

1. Resources from the AI Power Hour panel discussion: I served on a panel with three other educators. I loved the conversations it started in the room and on social media! We gathered some of our favorite educator resources about AI in this slide deck.

2. VIDEO: JamBot: Student Brainstorming + the Power of AI: I gave this short session about one of my favorite features in FigJam, a digital whiteboard tool by Figma. Watch how you can use FigJam’s AI too, JamBot, to promote student brainstorming.

3. How to boost student engagement with Book Creator: If you haven’t checked out Book Creator, now is the time! This presentation shares six fun Book Creator classroom ideas. Plus, at the end, there’s a code for SIX MONTHS of free premium Book Creator!

4. AI vs. Cheating, Plagiarism, and Academic Integrity: This session was popular, and I keep updating it! In this slide deck, we discuss whether using AI is really plagiarism. We discuss problems with AI generators. Plus, we take a nuanced look at different ways AI can support student learning.

5. VIDEO: The Instagram Classroom (Interactive and Collaborative): FigJam lets students do visual learning — learning that can even feel like Instagram! In this session video, we combine one of my favorite templates from our DTT template library with FigJam.

6. EfficienTEACH: Teach Better and Save Time for What Matters Most: This is one of my favorite sessions! In this slide deck, I share some of my favorite time-saving, learning-boosting resources. They’re from EfficienTEACH, our library of templates and teaching ideas to save teachers time.

7. NEW FREE LESSON PLAN RESOURCE: The Achievery: Free engaging lesson plans paired with video clips from popular Warner Brothers movies (and others). It’s all free in The Achievery with classroom permissions for all of the videos. Wonder Woman, the Lego Batman movie, Shazam, The Big Bang Theory … they’re all featured!

8. VIDEO: Meet Diffit, an AI-Powered Teacher Tool: Diffit creates differentiated teaching and learning resources in a matter of seconds. In this video, I share my favorite features in Diffit. You’ll get a clear picture of how it works in less than six minutes!

There’s even more! Check out our TCEA resources page.

🎯 QUICK TEACHING STRATEGY

Reduce test anxiety with “Test Talks”

This is a simple but powerful strategy for reducing test anxiety in your students shared by Howie Hua on Twitter/X. He calls them “Test Talks.”

🧐 What is a “Test Talk”?

Test Talk is a five-minute exercise that you do before the test starts. You ask your students to look over the test and talk to their peers about the problems and how to solve them. They can use any strategy they want, as long as they don’t write anything down. The goal is to get them to collaborate, communicate, and think critically about the questions they will be answering.

Note: As Howie points out this is not a good strategy for multiple-choice tests.

🤔Why does this work?

Well, first of all, it helps students relax and feel more confident. They realize that they are not alone and that they do have some ideas on how to tackle the test.

It also allows you to test the way you teach. If you use a lot of cooperative learning in your class, why not include some of that in your assessment?

As Rhonda Fehr pointed out, in her response to Howie’s original Tweet, it creates an opportunity to ask deeper questions and challenge your students to explain their reasoning and justify their answers.

💡Learn more and try it out yourself!

Check out this article by Howie Hua on Edutopia called A Strategy for Reducing Math Test Anxiety: Letting students discuss a test with peers before they take it can reduce anxiety—and it creates an opportunity to ask deeper questions.

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!