I am continuing to share on this blog more great tips and updates as we all continue on this journey!
Rivet – Google for Education
During school closures, it can be extra tough to be there for our children who need extra support in their learning. Google continue to improve on their offerings to help in this area and I am excited about this tool called Rivet. It seems free for now and it supports reading – with some very different books – some including Youtube stars and popular shows. the app is supported best at the moment, but there is a web version too.
This is invented and supported by engineers familiar with machine learning and with access to Google’s superpowers. I think this is only going to get better. Currently you can click on any word for it to be read out loud, and it will find a definition too. Just think- this software is collecting information about words that children struggle with and then can teach itself how to best help similar age students. Big future ahead.
Createability – More Google Education
Another Google project is Creatability which is still in development but is geared to supporting anyone with accessibility issues.
Creatability is a set of experiments made in collaboration with creators and allies in the accessibility community. They explore how creative tools – drawing, music, and more – can be made more accessible using web and AI technology. They’re just a start. We’re sharing open-source code and tutorials for others to make their own projects
https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/creatability
We’ve used a couple of these before and they are just super cool to play with. There will be more on the way I am sure.
Teacher Virtual Summits
With many Educational conferences being moved or cancelled – ISTE 2020 is the big one for me 😦 – teacher empowerment can not be stopped and there are various online summits coming up that offer some great PD from the comfort of your home. Be warned – these don’t hang around, so set your calendars. Here are the ones i’m ‘attending’ so far. Or at least trying to:
Whole Child Virtual Summit – with a number of key speakers thinking about many social aspects of education. This set up by a growing player in social-emotional learning, Character Strong.
Research Ed – Limited time only – UK based summit on research within education – it also features some support on school closures
Wonder Workshop – Like to use more computational thinking in your classroom? Ever used or heard of Dash/Dot/Cue robots – this has loads of great talks about programming and STEAM and all things techie!
And Finally
Dav Pilkey is doing his thing online to help make more interesting activities at home. I appreciate Joe Wicks and Oliver Jeffers and Julia Donaldson are already doing their bit and so well too, but, well, y’know, it’s Dav Pilkey and 20 million+ kids are pretty happy about it.
Mr Hill's Slice of Education 