Tech Tools

Canva Power Ups: 10 Must Have Apps That Turbo Charge Your Designs: a Tech-Talk Webinar

Polly Farrington Learning Opportunities, Tech Tools , ,
Canva Power Ups: 10 Must Have Apps That Turbo Charge Your Designs: a Tech-Talk Webinar

On August 6, CDLC is offering a free webinar on tools to help you use Canva, the popular online graphic design tool. The webinar is from Tech-Talk.

(Register here)

“Think you know Canva? Think again. Most users miss out on some of its most powerful tools – free apps that can transform your designs from basic to brilliant. In this fast-paced webinar, we’ll reveal 10 must-use Canva apps hiding in plain sight. You’ll discover…How Brandfetch pulls logos, colors, and fonts from any website in seconds, how to use Image Blender to merge visuals like a pro… plus eight more tools that will unlock your creative edge – no upgrades required!”

Tech-Talk partners with many libraries. You can register on their site, as well as the CDLC site. Take a look around their site for a wide range of useful tech oriented webinars.

CDLC Adventures in Artificial Intelligence Challenge

Polly Farrington Artificial Intelligence AI, Learning Opportunities, News, Tech Tools
Logo for the CDLC Adventures in AI Challenge

The Capital District Library Council (Albany NY region) has put together a terrific and fun AI challenge. It includes 10 short activities using a variety of artificial intelligence tools. A great AI tasting menu!

The activities include: having AI write a letter, summarize an existing document, challenge your artificial intelligence prompt writing skills, create an image and more.

I did the 10 exercises over a couple of days. Each one could be accomplished in about 10 minutes, but I encourage you to explore the tools for a bit longer. ​

Check it out at Discover the Power of AI

CDLC members can receive 2 CE credits for completing the 10 activities.

I’ve started putting together a similar quick (free) program of 10 activities focused on topics for school library staff. Anyone interested? I’ll pop the links here in Cool Tools when it’s ready! (I can’t award CE credit, but maybe your regional school library system would agree to it.) 

Tony Vincent offers “Classy Creativity with AI” Workshop

Polly Farrington News, Tech Tools ,

Tony Vincent of Learning in Hand, will be offering what sounds like a terrific workshop on uses of Artificial Intelligence in education from April 3 to 30, 2024. This workshop is called Classy Creativity with AI. I’ve take some of Tony’s workshops in the past and learned so much from him. He’s a terrific educator and his workshops are very well organized. The workshop fee is $99 if you register by March 13. Even though I’ve been retired for 5 years (omg, 5 years?), I may take this workshop. Hope some of Cool Tools for Schools folks join me!

Here’s the outline for the workshop.

 

Flourish infographic tool joins Canva

Polly Farrington News, Tech Tools

Flourish examples
Flourish, a terrific tool to “easily turn your data into stunning charts, maps and interactive stories”, is now integrated into Canva, a popular tool for creating graphics, presentation slides, and so much more.

Haven’t yet tried Flourish? Give it a whirl. Lots of templates for colorful, creative data visualizations and storytelling. Help students think about how data can be presented in multiple ways and how visualizing data can make presentation more compelling, powerful and persuasive. And learn how the same data can tell different stories depending on how it’s presented.

There’s even a fun quiz format. See their Harry Potter quiz embedded below. Free accounts are available, perfect for testing and for educational use.

Learn all about Google Sites with Tony Vincent

Polly Farrington Google Stuff, News, Tech Tools

Classy SitesWant to learn all the ins and outs of using Google Sites for a classroom website, lesson resource site and more? Tony Vincent, of Learning in Hand, is offering a 5 week Classy Sites online workshop starting February 23.  You can follow along with the class over the 5 weeks or go at your own pace, the content will be there forever.

I took one of Tony’s workshops in 2017. It was a terrific workshop, so well organized and presented. Tony was very responsive to all students during the workshop and student interaction was so helpful too. And, 4 years later, the course content is still there for me to review any time I need a refresher. Register by February 8 and get a discount. (No, I’m not getting a commission on this. I just think Tony’s workshops are a terrific!)

Classy Sites: An Online Workshop with Tony Vincent Are you interested in making a wonderful website? If so, join me for an online learning experience! I am gathering a community of educators to explore creating websites with Google Sites. We’ll examine the possibilities and power of having a personalized website for your class, lesson, school, activity, or presentation.

Changes to Weebly for Education

Polly Farrington News, Tech Tools

Weebly for education logo
Do you use Weebly for your classroom webpage? Or for  student webpages & portfolios? There are changes coming in August 2022.

TLDR:

  • Teacher/educator accounts will be moved to free, standard weebly accounts.
  • Hosted student accounts will go away. Weebly suggests moving to Edublogs for student accounts.

Weebly email:

On August 1, 2022, all teacher accounts will automatically transfer to a free standard Weebly account. Your site will remain published and no action is required. With a standard Weebly account, you can continue to build and publish websites with the same easy-to-use editor you already know.

If your students have websites, their sites and accounts will be disabled. Due to COPPA privacy constraints, we do not store student personal information and will not be able to continue to host student websites.

If you are a teacher or education administrator who is using the Weebly for Education platform to build and publish content, you can continue using your free Weebly standard account when Weebly for Education discontinues. Aside from hosting students, this standard account includes most of the features you are already familiar with including the same easy-to-use editor.

We understand that you may have more specific education requirements, like hosting your students’ websites. To better serve those requirements, we recommend Edublogs. Edublogs offers a free online class platform where students can build their own websites and teachers can post content, leave feedback, and manage multiple classrooms. Weebly teachers get 50% off Edublogs Pro plan for the first two annual payments (equivalent to one year free). Learn more and sign up here.