Control Alt Achieve

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Halloween Themed Google Fonts

As I have shared in several previous posts, I have always had a love for fonts. The right typeface can help to communicate information or spice up content.

With Halloween almost here, I decided to share some of my favorite fonts for the spooky season.

My favorite place to explore typefaces is Google Fonts, where (as of this writing) Google provides over 1,700 free fonts. You can explore and preview all of these typefaces at https://fonts.google.com/

These fonts can be used by you and your students to add style, personality, and creativity to your Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms, Sites, and more. 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.

If you are not using Google tools, you can also download the fonts for use in the programs on your computer.

See below for a dozen of my favorite fonts for Halloween. Some tie into the scary side of the season, while others lean into the candy and fun.

Citation Needed: AI Tools that Provide Sources

Although artificial intelligence can be a great benefit for educators and students, there are also valid concerns that schools need to consider and address (see https://bit.ly/curts-aimisuse for more details).

One of those concerns is the possibility for AI to produce content that is incorrect. In short, AI can make mistakes.

When discussing this with schools, I usually recommend several ideas to help address this concern:

Educate students on the potential for misinformation
Encourage critical thinking and skepticism among students
Use multiple chat tools to get a variety of responses
Improve the initial prompt to get more accurate responses
Ask follow-up questions to expand information and perspectives
Use tools that help check and verify information

For this blog post I am going to take a closer look at the final suggestion listed above - "Use tools that help check and verify information". Thankfully there are many AI tools that assist with fact checking or can provide sources you can use to learn more and verify the information.

See below for details on five suggested AI tools and how they can be used to help address potential inaccuracies. I have also included details for the free versions of each of these tools.

Be sure to explore all of my AI resources at https://www.controlaltachieve.com/ai and as always I would love to hear your ideas, recommendations, and questions.

EdTech Links of the Week - 10-17-24

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!

Back-To-School AI Webinar Recording

Last month I was honored to be on the panel for a "Back-To-School AI Webinar".

Dan Fitzpatrick, a leading voice in AI for education, organized a panel of educators to share some of their favorite AI tools and ideas to help kick off a new school year. The panel included:

Sabba Quidwai, the CEO of Designing Schools from California
Jason Gulya, an English professor at Berkeley College from New Jersey
Aileen Wallace, a high school teacher from Scotland
Matthew Wemyss, a school leader from Romania
And me!

For my portion of the webinar I shared about Brisk Teaching and how educators can use it to easily:

Create content such as a quiz, lesson plan, slideshow, etc.
Generate feedback on student writing
Change reading level and language of articles and documents
Monitor student writing process
Create student AI chatbots for learning activities

See below to watch the recording of the webinar. I hope you pick up some great ideas!

Creating Soundboards with Google Slides for Stories, Games and More

How can you bring some extra life into your class activities, discussions, and games? Ding, Ding, Ding! Yes, that's right, with your own custom soundboard.

A soundboard can be used in your class for many purposes:

It could provide fun sound effects for class games, quizzes, and competitions.
You could use the soundboard for audio cues for classroom transitions, such as indicating when time's up, or students need to clear their desks, or switch groups, or such.
The soundboard could be used while you are reading a story out loud to your students, to bring the story to life with sounds from the story content.
You could use the sounds to support and reinforce content being taught in class.
If you or your students are recording podcasts and videos, a soundboard can be used to for effects and transitions while recording.
And more!

There are certainly lots of options for classroom soundboards, but one free and easy tool for this is Google Slides. With Google Slides you can create your own custom soundboard with audio that you have recorded or downloaded from free audio sites.

See below for details on how to do this. You will find a 21-minute video I did for MoteCon24 where I go through all the steps, as well as links to my associated resource document, session slideshow, sample soundboard, and more.

My 2024 ITIP Ohio Google Summit Sessions

I am excited and honored to once again be presenting at the ITIP Ohio Google Summit at the Kalahari Resort and Conference Center in Sandusky, Ohio this October 28th and 29th, 2024. This year the conference is hybrid, with an in-person or virtual registration option.

I always look forward to an opportunity to see old friends, make new friends, share some ideas, and learn so many new things from others.

You can learn more about the conference at: itipohio.org/google-conference-2024

You can also view the full conference schedule and register for the conference.

Below is a list of sessions I will be presenting at the ITIP Ohio Google Summit, along with any associated resources. Please feel free to join me for any of these sessions. I look forward to sharing, learning, and chatting with you!