Eric's EdTech Webinars and Certificates

Although I do lots of live trainings, both in-person and remote, I am only able to reach so many people that way. To try to reach more people, for many years I have been recording a lot of my training sessions and then posting those to my YouTube channel.

If you haven't checked out my YouTube channel, I encourage you to do so. There are hundreds of videos there covering a wide range of educational technology topics. Please consider subscribing as well so you don't miss new content. You can access my channel here: youtube.com/ericcurts

Although having access to my videos on YouTube is great, sometimes teachers ask me if they can also get a certificate of attendance for watching my recorded trainings. Many educators need a certain number of PD hours each year to renew their licenses.

To help with this I am now providing free automated certificates of completion for many of my recorded videos. See below for all the details on how to view the videos and get your own certificates.

EdTech Links of the Week - 8-22-24

Each week I keep an eye out for the latest edtech resources through blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, user groups, and more. I then try to reshare these resources in many ways.

One way I share these is here on the blog in these "EdTech Links of the Week" posts. See below to explore the latest batch of resources, and be sure to share with others who may benefit.

If you want to make sure you don't miss new resources, you can:

🔗 View all EdTech Links of the Week: bit.ly/caa-links

📰 Sign up for my weekly email newsletter: bit.ly/curts-news
📧 Join the "Control Alt Achieve" email discussion group: bit.ly/caa-emailgroup

🔔 Get new blog posts automatically through email - FollowIt link

And as always, please let me know of any resources that you recommend. I would love to learn from you!

EdTech Playground Sessions for 2024-2025

I am excited to once again be presenting an "EdTech Playground" for the Teacher Innovation Network this year! In past years I have presented on  "Mote for Multilingual Learners" and "Accessibility Tools for All Learners".

The great things about the EdTech Playgrounds are:

• They are FREE!
• They are streamed live
• The recordings can be viewed later
• They are open to anyone

This year I will be doing a session on artificial intelligence:

• The AI Toolbox: Best AI Tools for Schools
• August 27, 2024
• 3:30 to 5:00pm (Pacific Time) / 6:30 to 8:00pm (Eastern Time)
• Registration - https://sccoe.to/tin2425

See below for the full list of EdTech Playground sessions for this year, as well as details on how to register. I look forward to learning with you!

Happy 10th Birthday Google Classroom!

It is hard to believe, but Google Classroom came out 10 years ago!

Before we had Classroom, I remember leading loads of PD sessions where I tried to help teachers build their own system in Google Drive where they created shared folders for every student, developed consistent naming schemes, and tried their best to stay relatively organized with the hundreds of files shared by their students.

Then along came Classroom! It automated and simplified file management for teachers, but also made it easier to assist students with their work. Over the years more and more new features have been added to build on this foundation.

On August 14th Google celebrated the 10th birthday of Google Classroom. To help celebrate I updated and reorganized my Classroom Resource page on my blog. Now it is easier for folks to find all of my Google Classroom tutorial videos, blog posts, resource docs, slideshows, and more.

You can check out all the resources here - www.controlaltachieve.com/classroom - or in the rest of the blog post below.

[Image credit ChatGPT]

Excellent EdTech Newsletters

It is difficult to stay up to date on everything new in educational technology. It seems that everyday there is a new tech tool or website, a helpful update, a PD opportunity, a creative idea for using technology in the classroom, and more.

How can you stay in the loop on all this great information?

One practical option is subscribing to EdTech newsletters!

This is actually one of my favorite ways to learn about new EdTech ideas. Sure I also listen to podcasts and belong to email discussion groups and check social media, but I especially appreciate newsletters for many reasons:

• They come directly to my email so I don't have to remember to go out and check anything.
• They are filled with great tools, tips, updates and resources.
• They are free!

See below for a list of many of the EdTech newsletters I currently subscribe to and benefit from. Hopefully you will find some here that will help you. And of course I am sure I am missing many other excellent newsletters. Please send me an email to let me know which ones you subscribe to that I should check out. I will keep updating the list below with more newsletters over time.

EdTech Links of the Week - 8-13-24

Each week I keep an eye out for the latest edtech resources through blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, user groups, and more. I then try to reshare these resources in many ways.

One way I share these is here on the blog in these "EdTech Links of the Week" posts. See below to explore the latest batch of resources, and be sure to share with others who may benefit.

If you want to make sure you don't miss new resources, you can:

🔗 View all EdTech Links of the Week: bit.ly/caa-links

📰 Sign up for my weekly email newsletter: bit.ly/curts-news
📧 Join the "Control Alt Achieve" email discussion group: bit.ly/caa-emailgroup

🔔 Get new blog posts automatically through email - FollowIt link

And as always, please let me know of any resources that you recommend. I would love to learn from you!

15 New Favorite Google Fonts

As I have shared in the past, I am quite a typophile. That is, someone with a passion for typefaces, font design, and the art of typography in general.

One of my main sources for typefaces is Google Fonts at fonts.google.com where Google provides over 1,700 free fonts (as of the date of this writing). These can be used by you and your students in most all of Google's products to add style, personality, and creativity to your docs, slides, and more.

Every now and then I like to go to the Google Fonts website and sort the fonts by date. This allows me to explore the newest fonts that Google has added. I did this recently and wanted to share some of my favorite new fonts. See below for a list, examples, descriptions and links to 15 awesome fonts from Google.

Keep in mind, you can easily add any of these fonts to your Google tools by clicking the font menu, choosing "More fonts", and then typing in the font name. And of course these are only 15 of 1,700+ fonts, so be sure to explore more at Google Fonts.