Thursday, January 22, 2015

Fun With Squishy Circuits

Fun with Science & Squishy Circuits!




Pipestone Area School 3rd Grade students had a blast on Wednesday, Jan 21, 2015 learning about science through Squishy Circuits. I have 5 Squishy Circuit kits and made a Makerspace in the teacher's room. The students were so excited to use the Squishy Circuits even though they didn't know anything about them. 

I briefly told the students a little bit about what we would be doing. I purposely didn't explain how to do everything because I wanted the students to try and try again before asking for help. I found a worksheet on the Internet that I left at each station to assist students in their quest with Squishy Circuits. Once students got the hang of it, science and learning took off!

Below is a video I took with some students while they were trying different things. I tried ask questions that would make them think about the outcome. If something didn't work, I talked to them about what they thought were issues and how we could solve them once the camera was off. 




Squishy Circuits were invented at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. The kit can be purchased online.  The kit includes a recipe card to make your own conductive and insulating dough, 1 motor, 1 Piezoelectric Buzzer, 1 Mechanical Buzzer, 1 battery pack, and 25 LEDs in red, yellow, green, white, and blue. I think the price is very reasonable, especially to incorporate into your classroom ($25.00 per kit). The company does offer a price break the more you purchase. 

I hope you follow our journey as I bringing Squishy Circuits to more schools that I work with. We will also be showing them off at our "This is IT" Technology Conference in March 2015. 


In Education & Tech,
Kara :)


Monday, January 12, 2015

Free Leveled Reading Program from Smithsonian


We love the word free in education, especially when it is paired with a great resource. Today, I bring to your attention the Free Leveled Reading Program from Smithsonian for grades PreK-12 and even in Spanish!

Teachers will need a free account from Smithsonian TTribune. Once your free account is set up, the teacher can enter classes and student names. No information is collected from the student.

The TTribune consists of daily news site for kids, tweens, and teens. The articles contain text, photos, and audio/video. The site also contains lessons, with instructional and assessment tools.  The articles are grade-appropriate. Users can also choose their Lexile Level for each article.

Be sure to check out this awesome resource for leveled reading. 

Free Apps Monday 1/12 iPad

All apps were free as of this posting. Only the publisher can determine the length of how long an app will be on sale for free.  If you are interested in one, be sure to grab it right away! 
I do not endorse any of the following apps. Just passing along freebies.

Apps to know about:
  • Evernote Scannable - always free
  • RefME - allows you to scan a book/journal barcodes, search via DOI, URL, ISBN, etc and sync with RefME.com to create citations, bibliographies and reference lists in a click.


Friday, December 19, 2014

Photo Editing Aviary

Get the entire collection for free until 1/5/15 (worth $200.00)!

Photo Editor by Aviary is a free photo editing app for both Android and iOS. I recently downloaded the app and saw that you can receive all of their add-ons for FREE until January 5. In order to receive the free add-ons, you need to sign in with your free Adobe ID. If you don't have an Adobe ID you can create one for free in the app.

To unlock Aviary's collection of photo editing tools (a $200.00 value) visit the store from the app.

Google Play Download

Apple Download

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Take Kahoot! to the Next Level

By now, many of you have tried Kahoot!, the free game-based student response system. The teacher creates a free account and then can create quizzes with embedded images and video. Students take the quiz using any device with Internet access - great for formative assessments. 

Kahoot! is lots of fun and really motivates students to participate. But what you may not know about it is the data that you can access once the quiz is over. 
  1. After logging in, the teacher can access data from each quiz 
  2. Click on your name in the upper right corner
  3. choose My Results 
  4. Then click the cloud download icon next to the name of each quiz. 
  5. This will download an Excel spreadsheet that includes a detailed analysis of the student answers, including correct and incorrect answers by each student, along with an overview of how all of the students performed. 

Use the data for formative assessments and see how your students are doing with concepts.



Kara :)

Monday, December 15, 2014

Google Docs: Force students to make a copy of a document


One of the best features of Google Drive is the ability to share files with others. Educators use Drive as a way to pass out instructions, homework, graded work, etc. Now, Google has made it even easier to have students make a copy of your doc!

You can force your students (or anyone) to create a copy of the document.


  1. Open the document you would like to force a copy of
  2. In the address bar at the top of the page, place your cursor at the end of the URL (website address)
  3. Delete the word "edit" 
  4. Type the word copy
  5. Press Return
  6. Email or post the link for your students




Friday, December 5, 2014

Free App Friday 12-5-14

The following apps are free for today only. It is up to the developer of the app to determine how long the apps are free for. If you see something you like, be sure to download right away!



Biology - Multiplayer Science Quiz

MolaSync - Collaborative Cloud Notes

The Hobbit Official Visual Companion

TIME Maps for Middle Ages

iTellTales - Create and Share Tales

Ladybug Zee - interactive story

Nick has a funny day - interactive story

Little Pirate - Saving Mirandella - story that allows for your child's name to appear in it

Tydlig Calculator

Padtales Animated Storybooks

Joy Sprouts - preschool

The Wee Adventures of Shabu Shabu Book 1

Magic Dots - preschool

ABC Writing (full)

ABC Animations