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In the following post, I share with you this interesting collection featuring some good tools to use to create and share word clouds. Check them out and share with us your feedback. 1- Tagxedo This is another great word cloud tool. You can use it the same way like Wordle but with an added feature which is  that of creating clouds in various forms. 2. ShapecloudShapecloud is a free word art generator from Creative Fabrica that allows you to easily generate your own word art. To start creating your word art, select a shape of your choice. You can either choose from Shapecloud' s pre-made shapes or you can upload your custom shape through an SVG file. Once your shape is selected, provide words you want to include in your word art, then select your favourite font and colour. When your design is complete you can download it in various formats including PNG, SVG, or as PDF file. 3- Wordle This is my favourite word cloud tool and it is probably the most well-known of them all it he

The purpose of today's post is to share with you this collection featuring some very good tools to help you create beautiful word clouds. Whether you want to collect students feedback, summarize a long passage, or simply create a beautiful piece of art to integrate in your instruction, these word cloud tools are ideal to start with. They are simple and easy to use and do not even require any technical or graphic design knowledge. 1. Shapecloud Shapecloud is a free word art generator from Creative Fabrica that allows you to easily generate your own word art. To start creating your word art, select a shape of your choice. You can either choose from Shapecloud' s pre-made shapes or you can upload your custom shape through an SVG file. Once your shape is selected, provide words you want to include in your word art, then select your favourite font and colour. When your design is complete you can download it in various formats including PNG, SVG, or as PDF file. The free vers

Do you know the name of the flowers you like? How about the name of the flowers or trees you walk by everyday on your commute to work, do you know their names? Well, now you can with the help of the plant identification apps below. I curated for you a collection of some of the best apps you and your students can use to identify plants, flowers, and trees by simply photographing them. To identify a plant, install one of the apps below, take a picture of the plant or flower you are interested in using the camera of your mobile device and let the app do the work for you. In addition to identifying plants by pictures, these apps also offer gardening guides and tips to help you take good care of your plants and flowers.  Apart from PlantNet which is free, the other featured plant identifier apps offer in-app purchases and provide different monthly and yearly subscriptions. 1. PictureThis PictureThis is a great plant identification app for both Android and iPhone/iPad. PictureThis make

A great way to engage students and empower their voice is through providing them with spaces where they can publish and share their creations and document their learning experiences. Creating a classroom website or blog is one way towards this goal but is not the only one. Another equally engaging task is by creating a classroom newspaper.  There are tons of free pre-designed newspaper templates that you can easily edit and customize to create your own newspaper. No graphic design, HTML code, or any technical knowledge is required.  Simply select the newspaper template you like, edit its layout, insert your content, and download or share the final product with others. There are also simple and easy to use tools to create a classroom newspaper from scratch. Below is a collection of very good resources where you can access ready-made  templates to use to create newspapers for your class. You can even involve students in the creation process. Divide them into groups and let them come u

Over the last nine months, PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for the freedom of expression, found that American schools have banned 1,145 books. In 41 per cent of these books central characters are represented by people of colour, 30 percent of these banned books either feature LGBTQ themes or feature LGBTQ as protagonists or secondary characters, and  20 percent of these banned books cover in a direct manner topics related to race and racism. These are indeed staggering numbers but not surprising either. The practice of banning books has always existed in America and everywhere else for that matter. Supporters of the ban cite various reasons including the fact that the banned works include content or language that is offensive, sexually violent, inappropriate, or needlessly graphic, and therefore not relevant to be used in schools. On the other hand, critics view the practice as a blatant breach of free speech and part of a raging cultural war. For them these banned works rep

September 25, 2014 I have been receiving several requests to feature a list of the best Android apps for  flipped classrooms. I know I have repeatedly featured here different iPad apps for creating flipped lesson videos but the thing with Android is that I am not really a huge fan of it for the simple reason that its app store is lacking several powerful apps that are indispensable to us in education. Even when I was working on today's list I was really disappointed that apps such as Educreations, ShowMe, Knowmia  are not available for Android users. However, I did manage to cobble up 5 of the best apps that teachers can use on Android to create flipped lessons. Check them out below 1- Explain Everything Explain Everything is another good whiteboard app for Android. The app has been around for some years now and it proved its efficiency as among the best whiteboarding applications out there. Explain Everything provides access to a host of interesting features including: the abili

In this post I share with you some of the best whiteboard apps for Android. You can use these apps to create and share interactive whiteboard presentations, record screencasts,  brainstorm ideas for a project, create mind maps, and more. The apps also offer various features including the ability to draw, sketch or type your ideas; insert various shapes and images into your creations,  bring your ideas to life using stickers and reactions, and more.  Almost all of these whiteboard Android apps support real-time collaboration allowing you to collaborate with your colleagues and friends on joint projects. For instance, you can collaboratively brainstorm ideas for a shared projects, upload documents and edit them in real-time, and more. Interested in mind mapping apps? Check out the best teacher apps for creating mind maps. 1. Jamboard Jamboard, by Google,  is my favourite whiteboard app for Android. It offers a wide variety of features that are ideal to use in your instructional pr

Documentaries are insightful and educational. They document reality from a concrete perspective and represent the world through a non-fictional lens. Documentaries can be used for educational, entertainment, activism, personal expression, journalism, or instructional purposes. As a teacher, you can use the communicative and educational power of documentaries to introduce students to new concepts, enhance their learning, and expand their academic as well as civics knowledge. Documentaries enable students to experience the world through alternative perspectives, exploring new cultures and ways of living and being. Documentaries are also ideal to raise students' critical awareness about complex issues related to human rights, environment, climate change, oppression, gender-based violence, and many more.  However, concomitant with using documentaries with students, I recommend that students learn  the importance of critical thinking as a way to assess and internalize knowledge. A d

The purpose of this post is to share with you this interesting playlist from TED Ed called TED History vs. that you can use with your students in class. The videos are especially ideal for history classes but they can also be incorporated into any other subject area.  Each of the featured TED Ed history videos covers a popular (often controversial) historical figure such as Genghis Khan, Cleopatra, Vladimir Lenin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud, Christopher Columbus, Richard Nixon, Augustus, and more.  TED Ed history videos are accompanied by pre-made lessons to integrate in your teaching. The standard structure of TED Ed lessons, as you probably know, is composed of the Watch section where students watch the video lesson, Think (contains multiple choice questions to check students comprehension), Dig Deeper (features extra resources and materials to help students learn more about the topic covered in the video lesson), and the Discuss section that offers guided discussion for st

Technology is increasingly occupying a central place in today's classrooms. More and more teachers and students are embracing it and using it almost on a daily basis. This is definitely good news, the power of technology is being leveraged to advance education. We have seen this and experienced it first hand especially during the pandemic. Web technologies were our saviour when all of a sudden schools and classrooms were closed and we were forced to socially isolate. Video conferencing tools were to the rescue. That said, a pedagogically informed use of technology remains a goal that we all need to work towards. We don't want to use technology for the sake of technology but we want to turn it into a transformative force, a catalyst for profound learning experiences in and out of class. To do so, teachers need to familiarize themselves with EdTech theory and more specifically those theoretical EdTech frameworks that have direct practical application in our teaching namely SAMR m

With the pervasive use of technology inside our classrooms, pedagogical concerns related to the effectiveness of technology in transforming education and creating optimal learning experiences come to the surface. Every teacher drawing on technology in their instruction has probably, at a certain point in time, mulled over questions such as: does technology always work for every instructional task? Does it enhance students learning? How about distracting features that come with this technology? Do they affect students learning? The strengths and weaknesses of technology is a topic that has been extensively covered in a wide variety of studies and the extant literature  in this regard features multiple examples.  The stance we have always espoused towards technology is one that celebrates its strengths and capitalizes on the advantages and affordances it provides for us in education while also working diligently to raise awareness about its inconveniences and help minimize their impact o

Blooket is a game-based learning platform that allows teachers to create educational games to share with students. You can host live games that students can play using a generated ID or assign games as homework for students to play at their own pace.  Blooket works in the same way as other game-based learning tools namely Kahoot, Quizlet, Quizizz, and Quizalize. As a teacher, you can create your own question sets or use ready-made sets created by members of the Blooket community (Blooket lingo refers to games as question sets and I use both terms interchangeably in this review).  Students are not required to register to play the games. However,  having a student's account allows students to "track their stats, place in global leaderboard rankings, buy and sell Blooks, and participate in upcoming community-wide events!" Teachers can leverage the educational potential of Blooket to boost teaching and enhance students learning. Gamified learning is a surefire strategy

Technology has tremendously facilitated students life making it super easy for them to stay productive throughout the entire school year and beyond. Student planners are an example of apps that are so helpful in this regard. Students no longer need physical objects to use to schedule their classes and organize their assignments and homework,  planner apps can do the job perfectly. The apps also offer a wide variety of interesting features that make scheduling and organizing scholarly tasks a breeze of air. Using these apps, students will be able to easily track their assignments, homework, and tests. They can also use them to schedule classes, set reminders for important due dates, and many more. 1. myHomework Student Planner myHomework is a student planner that offers a wide variety of features including the ability to track classes, homework, tests, and assignments; supports time, block and period-based schedules; synch across different platforms, and many more. 2. School

Brush Ninja is an animated GIF maker that is suitable for kids and students of all ages. Using the platform's integrated tools (e.g., brushes, colours, marker, pencil, etc), students can draw their own animations, turn them into animated GIFs and share them with others. The process is simple and easy and does not require any log-in or software download.  Simply open Brush Ninja's online editor from the homepage and start drawing your animated GIFs. You can type in or handwrite text, add shapes and lines, upload images to use as background, change colour, add captions to frames, and many more. You can add as many frames as you want and when you are done click on Play button to preview your animated GIF. Use the Frame Rate feature to adjust the speed of your animation.  You can set how many frames yo want to display per second and how long each frame will last. If you are content with your production, click on save to save it to your Downloads folder or click on Exp

Kapwing is the Swiss army knife of creativity. It offers a suite of powerful features that allows you to create stunning videos and visuals including video editing, meme making, screen recording, video converting, background removal, captions adding, and many more. As a teacher, you can use Kapwing to create educational videos, step by step tutorials, screencasts, video slideshows, interactive visuals, training videos, and more. Kapwing is simple and easy to use. No prior technical knowledge is required. Kapwing also works online and syncs everything you create to the cloud so that you can access it across different devices and platforms. Kapwing offers two plans a free plan that comes with limited features and a premium plan that unlocks all of Kapwing's features. Below is a quick overview of some of the main features of this platform. 1. Kapwing video editor Kapwing's video editor allows you to create and edit videos online. It is simple and easy to use and offers a wide

Academic writing is not easy and can be extremely challenging. As a research student, you get to do a lot of academic writing from writing your term paper to working on peer-reviewed journal articles, you definitely need a robust academic writing style to survive the popular motto in academia: publish or perish. I have already shared various resources to help you with your academic writing including academic writing guides, academic writing cheat sheets, research methodology textbooks, and many more. Besides these resources, I am also sharing with you this collection featuring some good books that can help you in the planning and writing of your dissertation, thesis or proposal.  More specifically, the books focus on these key areas: research design, formatting, mechanics of writing, presenting, and publishing. Links to the books are under the visual. 1- The Craft of Research, Fourth Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) 4th Edition, by Wayne C. Booth (Author

In this post, I am sharing with you  this collection of helpful writing tips I collected from Stephen King's book ‘On Writing: A Memoire of The Craft’ . These tips are less about writing mechanics and more about developing a writer's mindset. Stephen King's nuggets of wisdom are a culmination of his writing career which has spanned more than two decades and has resulted in numerous blockbuster fiction publications some which made it into movies. Whether you are fan of King's works or not, if you are a budding writer or simply a person keen on developing their writing skills, these tips will resonate with you. They are timeless pieces of advice coming out of the pen of someone whose sole craft is writing.  If you are a graduate student working on a thesis/dissertation, term paper, or any other academic writing project, I highly recommend this list of books. They will help you develop your academic writing skills and learn what it takes to write proper academic essays.   

Myths and legends are both receptacles and transmitters of cultural mores, societal traditions, and human knowledge. They have existed with us since the dawn of time and have served a wide variety of purposes including educational. In this post, I share with you this handpicked collection of popular Greek myths which have shaped and continue to shape our perceptions of various phenomena. These myths are available as TED Ed video lessons that you can easily incorporate into your teaching.  The writing, narration, and animation of these myths have been designed by a dedicated team of TED Ed's teachers, educators, and graphic designers.  TED Ed Greek mythology is therefore a playlist of short video animations depicting and impersonating those popular Greek (and non-Greek) myths, stories, and legends that have left an indelible mark on human psyche. From learning about Psyche (the incarnation of the goddess of love) and her plight with her lovers, the myth of Prometheus and his cou