Noel Erskine, Technology Coordinator Norris Schools

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The NEW Smithsonian Learning Lab - a great new resource for educators.

Friday, June 10, 2016



Today’s museums are making millions of images and recordings freely available, going far beyond yesterday’s traditional field trip. The Smithsonian Learning Lab (http://learninglab.si.edu) is brand new and will officially released later this month!


The Smithsonian Learning Lab is about discovery, creation, and sharing.

The Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access created the Smithsonian Learning Lab to inspire the discovery and creative use of its rich digital materials—more than a million images, recordings, and texts. It is easy to find something of interest because search results display pictures rather than lists. Whether you've found what you were looking for or just discovered something new, it's easy to personalize it. Add your own notes and tags, incorporate discussion questions, and save and share. The Learning Lab makes it simple.

**above description taken from the Learning Lab - About Section

Check out the Learning lab here:  http://learninglab.si.edu  <---Be the first to check it out! 

The online portal for educational resources at the Institution can be found here: http://SmithsonianEducation.org,

There is even a live show about this new resource tomorrow on the classroom 2.0 site: http://live.classroom20.com 

BAM!!! Free music, awesome Tech tools... and more in this weeks tech list!

Web Tools and Resources:

Smithsonian Kids allows you to explore some of the world’s best museum exhibits This site offers tons of educational resources! Games, ebooks, lessons, animal cams and more! 

YOU have to check out TEDEd - Build a lesson around any TED-Ed Original, TED Talk or YouTube video. Make sure you view all the TED-Ed lessons

New 'Coding With Chrome' App Helps Students Learn to Code

Five Fresh, Fun, and FREE Presentation Tools <--- WOW! Great tools! - Some great new one’s in this list! The new free Adobe Spark tool is AMAZING!


Top 10 Places to Find Awesome Things to 3D Print

20 of the best 3D printing software tools-  And most of them are free!

Have your own classroom book library? 
Use this site to manage your classroom library! 
It's free, simple, apps and/or web interfaces, scan barcodes....... and gets great reviews. 

Free Music:

Jana Kramer: Live at Black River Studio (MP3 Digital Album) - Free

Led Zeppelin II: Remastered (MP3 Digital Album Download) - Free

These are not free - but for $1 are a good deal if you like them:

Thanks to slick deals for these!


Free eBooks - Via Zing!


You can create a class - have kids join via a code... and start assigning free books. 



Use Wizer to make creating engaging online worksheets fast and easy! You can even assign them directly to your Google Classroom classes! 

Ready to start?Read: How to make a Wizer worksheet
Watch: Getting started

ClassKick is a great tool for providing teacher feedback and works on any device free! This one looks really cool.  

The above two tools look really great! An educated guess would tell me that they will be free for several years, but may eventually start charging.  If it works as shown, it's probably worth using for the time it will be free. ðŸ˜€  And who knows... they may always be free.  (I often miss on my guesses.) 


Google Doc' and apps - Tips and tricks:
How to Create a Word Cloud in Google Docs! -Nice add-on to docs. 

Google Sheets: Have Fun with Fonts 

Google sheets & slides