Deb Norton Tech

Whew! It's been a while since I've written a post on here. Let's talk about one of my favorite pastimes, reading! My summer was a nice balance of work and finding time to enjoy my hobbies of reading, gardening, baseball, cooking and traveling. I enjoyed reading and listening to many books over the summer. Here are my top three picks to share with you. I'm also on Goodreads if you'd like to see other books I've read and connect with me there. What books did you read this summer or are you currently reading? I'd love to hear from you.

Hello!  It's nice to be back sharing some links and loves! A few weeks ago my son, Robert, and I tested out  this DJI drone  for the first time. In  this video  you will see Robert using hand gestures to control the drone. When Robert waves his hand the drone will take off and go into the air.  The drone locks in on Robert as a target and will then follow Robert as he moves around. When Robert holds up both hands in the air, the drone comes back down and lands in his hand. The technology developed to use and control this drone is truly amazing.  I can't wait to use this with staff and students! LINK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Do you read for enjoyment? Over the summer I read several novels including the books listed below. One of my favorite pastimes is sharing book reviews with students and colleagues.  Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng Dark Matter by Blake Crouch Small Gre...

CommonLit.org - Guided Reading Activities From the moment I opened CommonLit.org I was impressed. CommonLit has free reading passages and progress tracking tools for grades 5th - 12th. I started by creating an account. CommonLit.org is 100% free. In the Library tab, I can filter my search by book, genre, grade level, literary device, text set or theme.   Once a reading passage is chosen, there are several choices. On the right there are guiding questions, assessment questions and discussion questions. There is also the ability to enlarge the font, highlight the text, translate words to other languages, look up words in a dictionary and listen to the text be read aloud at various speeds. Teachers can create a class (with the ability to import from Google Classroom or share a link or a code) and assign a reading passage to students.  If the teacher assigns guided reading to the passage, students are asked to answer multiple choice quest...

High School ELA and Literacy teachers are going to love Curriculet ! Curriculet is a digital layer of questions, quizzes, and rich media layered on top of top of any text.  As students read a text, questions, quizzes and annotations pop out of the text, so that students are instructed and assessed as they read. . . at just the right moment. Text can be a file uploaded from your computer or the URL of a website. Once a text is uploaded to your library, you can edit the Curriculet and add a question, quiz or annotation.  Selecting text can also help teachers or students to define a word.  For example, here I used the URL of a website (from CNN.com about the white and gold / blue and black dress). When editing the Curriculet, I highlighted a bit of text and added an annotation which gave a link to the meaning of a part of the text. I also added a question, (this is different than a quiz).  Every question or quiz can be linked ...

eBooks are the future.  Do you have an eReader?  I personally love my Kindle Fire and read on it daily.  Today's students should also experience eReaders and digital books.    I find that my students really enjoy experiencing a story on the Internet.  My co-teacher and I use eBooks with our students during RTI (Response to Intervention) all of the time. Here are two eBook sites to share with your students. Msnucleus.org has storybooks about science.   Topics covered are: Applied science - electricity and light Universe Cycle Plate Tectonics Cycle Rock Cycle Water Cycle Life Cycle - organisms, human biology, plants and natural environment. Each eBook has animation and text.  The stories are interesting and engaging. We Give Books has award winning digital picture books for students through age 10.     There is a mix of fiction and non-fiction.   These picture books load in a very nice format that m...

Today I'm using this sticky note idea to help my students to Stop and Think and Jot while they read.  The idea if from this blog post .  I wanted to share in case anyone else wants to use this idea with sticky notes.