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This week at ISTE 2016 Google and Samsung had large booth displays devoted to virtual reality headsets. The proliferation of virtual reality headsets has been the catalyst for some good conversations about the value of virtual reality in education. Many have wondered if it is a novelty or if could have a meaningful impact on students. I have been a part of those conversations. But as I want to be prepared with good information on the topic, I turned to Google Scholar to see what has been written on the topic of VR in education. The following three papers stood out to me. Construct3D: a virtual reality application for mathematics and geometry education . On the usability and likeability of virtual reality games for education: The case of VR-ENGAGE . Can virtual reality improve anatomy education? A randomised controlled study of a computer‐generated three‐dimensional anatomical ear model . All three of these studies found that virtual reality was beneficial to students. Each study came

Earlier this week at the ISTE 2016 conference I had a nice meeting with the founders of the popular assessment tool, Formative . Formative is hard at work to add new features in time for the new school year in the northern hemisphere. The list of features that they showed me is fifteen deep. Many of those features are focused on data, but some are focused on providing solutions to practical problems that almost every teacher has faced at one time or another while using online assessment tools. These are the five practical Formative features that I'm looking forward to seeing this fall. Send assignments/ quizzes to individual students.  Scheduling a start time and an end time for assignments/ quizzes.  Scheduling a time for the return of quiz scores/ feedback. You'll be able to hold scores until every student has completed the assignment/ quiz.  Students will have a progress meter to show them where they are in a particular quiz/ assignment.  Improved font formatting tools.  App

On Tuesday morning at the ISTE 2016 conference I sat down with the founder of the popular digital portfolio tool, SeeSaw . He showed me some of updated features of SeeSaw's free product as well as the new analytics options within SeeSaw Plus (a subscription service). One of the best features of SeeSaw's free service is the classroom blogging component. SeeSaw added the blogging feature in January in response to requests from users. SeeSaw's blogging feature allows you to select artifacts from your students' digital portfolios to feature on your classroom's blog. You can also have students submit written blog posts that you approve before they go live on the blog. The video in this post shows you how to create a blog within SeeSaw. Applications for Education Connecting with other classroom blogs is a great way to build an authentic audience for your students' work. SeeSaw put together a spreadsheet of public classroom blogs to help teachers connect their classr

For a long time I have used Evernote as my primary tool for personal bookmarks. That's about to change because today Evernote announced that their free plan will soon only allow you to use Evernote on two devices. As I use three devices or more in the course of a typical week, the new Evernote free plan won't work for me. So instead of using Evernote I'm going to start using Google Keep for bookmarking. Google Keep can be used on any device on which I sign into my Google Account. As you can see in the video embedded below, you can add labels to your Google Keep notes. Those labels can also be applied to bookmarks. All Google Keep notes and bookmarks can be shared with others.

For the last few years Verizon has hosted the Innovative App Challenge for students. Verizon recently published the list of the best apps developed in the 2015-16 Innovative App Challenge. The top app was created by middle school students in Michigan. Their app provides a way for the public to alert local government to safety concerns in public parks. The whole list of top student-created apps can be seen in this PDF . The next Verizon Innovative App Challenge begins in August. Students must make a video to explain the concept of their apps and write a short essay about their apps. Complete entry rules are  available here . If your students do want to build an app either for this contest or for their own enjoyment, the MIT App Inventor offers a great way to do that. Students can build working apps in their web browsers before using them on their Android devices.  Click here  to read more about the MIT App Inventor.

Buncee is a nice tool that makes it easy for young students to craft digital stories. Recently, Buncee updated their iOS app to optimize for iPad and iPhone displays. The latest version of Buncee's iOS app brings the best content creation tools of the Buncee Edu web app to the iOS environment. Buncee Edu provides students with a wide variety of multimedia elements to their presentations. To add multimedia content to their Buncee slides students simply tap the "add" button then they can choose from videos (available from Vimeo and YouTube), animated characters, animated text, animated stickers, static stickers, audio from SoundCloud, images from Pixabay (filtered public domain images), and upload their own content from their iPad camera rolls. Students also have the option to draw directly on their slides. Applications for Education Buncee's free iPad app provides students with a great way to tell fiction and non-fiction stories. Students can create visual and audio

For a long time Flubaroo has been one of my go-to recommendations for easy scoring of quizzes created in Google Forms. Today, Google made it easier than ever to have quizzes scored for you and to show students their scores. Now when you create a Google Form you can go into the Form settings and choose the quiz option. Within the quiz option you can choose to have your questions scored as students answer them. You can also choose to show students their scores as well as correct answers. See my screenshot below to learn where you can find the new quiz scoring options. Applications for Education The new automatic quiz scoring feature will make it easier to quickly deliver feedback to your students when they take multiple choice or true/false quizzes. The automatic quiz scoring feature only supports multiple choice and true/false questions at this time. If you want to have short answer or fill-in-the-blank questions scored for you, you will need to use Flubaroo in Google Sheets.

This morning at the ISTE 2016 conference Google announced some great new features for teachers. One feature that immediately jumped out at me is the new Google Cast for Education Chrome  app. The Google Cast for Education Chrome app enables teachers and students share their screens over wireless networks. The app integrates with Google Classroom to make it easy for you to quickly share your screen to your students' Chromebooks or laptops and for them to share with you. See the Google Cast for Education Chrome app in action in the video embedded below. Applications for Education The Google Cast for Education Chrome app will solve a problem that has plagued teachers for years. That problem is getting all of your students to look at the same webpage or app at the same time without having to rely on them to accurately enter a web address or click the correct link.

This afternoon at ISTE 2016 I met with Kathy Ishizuka who is the editor of School Library Journal . Kathy shared with me her excitement about School Library Journal welcoming The Classroom Bookshelf as a new member of their blog network. The Classroom Bookshelf is a blog that many teachers have enjoyed in the past. The content and mission of the blog is the same always. That is to share short book reviews along with detailed suggestions for teaching lessons based on the book. Each post also includes a lengthy list of links to additional supporting resources. If you visit The Classroom Bookshelf today you may notice the formatting is a little off right now. I'm sure that's just a product of the content recently being imported into a new blog platform. I'm sure that will be corrected soon. Applications for Education Like any lesson plan resource, you should be careful to avoid the copycat trap when reading The Classroom Bookshelf. Each book should be evaluated on its own

This afternoon at the ISTE 2016 conference I had a nice meeting with Melanie Broder from Padlet . She told me about some of the things that Padlet is working on developing during the rest of the year. One of things is a community for educators. That community should help teachers find creative uses of Padlet as well as sharing lesson activities in general. Until that community gets going, take a look at Padlet's Best of Education wall. Padlet's Best of Education wall features twenty-seven Padlet walls created by teachers. One of my favorites in that collection is 100 Picture Books to Read and Share . All of the books in that Padlet wall are linked to Goodreads pages. Another good wall in Padlet's Best of Education is a collection of student blogging prompts . Watch my video embedded below to learn how to use the latest version of Padlet's website.

W hile yoga is an ancient art of breathing and stretching, that doesn't mean that its adherents haven't embraced the wonders of modern technology. There is a wealth of yoga apps available for Android and iOS devices that provide visual and audio guides to a variety of poses useful for everything from everyday stretching, exercise, to just stretching in a cramped desk chair or business trip. Check out 10 of our favorite yoga apps below. Yoga Asana (Android) (Free) Yoga Asana  (Android) Sometimes you don't have the free time to go out to a yoga studio, but that doesn't mean you have to ignore your practice. The app Yoga Asana plays on the name of the popular 'Salute the Sun' sequence of asanas, and is designed with an illustrated routine of poses and meditations designed to relieve tension, improve posture and stretch your body, provides users with a library of more than 57 yoga classes and 400-plus workout poses, as well as a variety of intens

Kombucha is a tea fungus of Japanese origin, which has been commonly used Europe for hundreds of years. Initially, it was consumed by kings only and was a well-kept Japanese secret for numerous years. Thousands of years ago, the Japanese emperor invited the Chinese emperor and he planned to honor him with some special gift, so he revealed him the recipe for this tea. Afterward, he decided to share this miracle with all people. The Japanese fungus was used as a healthy drink in Russia as well, and it was called “tea kvass”. From Russia, this recipe was spread to Poland, Prussia, Denmark, and Germany, but during the Second World war, it somehow disappeared. After the war, this tea was again popularized due to Dr. Rudolph Skelnar, who used it in the cancer treatments, in the case of high blood pressure, metabolic disorders, and diabetes. This mushroom tea is, in fact, a biochemical factory. The fermentation of the fungus stimulates numerous complex reactions. It fee