Merry Christmas!

I hope you have a wonderful and safe holiday season. Enjoy your time with family and friends and relax.

Enjoy a few of my favorite Christmas carols.

The Most Dangerous Writing App

Need students to practice typing for a certain amount of time? Want to improve your own writing and thought process? Want a challenge? The Most Dangerous Writing App site allows you to set a time frame to start and finish your writing. If you complete the time you are rewarded with a text file of your work. If you pause (for around 5 seconds as far as I can tell) all of your work is lost. 

Looks like you can set the timer for 3, 5, 10, 20, 30, or 60 minutes or 75, 150, 250, 500, 1667 words. In regular mode you see your text as you type. However, there is also a hardcore mode. This blurs your text after it is typed. All you will see is a giant letter of the key you just pressed. 

I tried the three minutes and it was hard to put a congruent thought for that long with my mind thinking I need to type something so I don't lose all of my work. I could see this as keyboarding a challenge where students are transcribing from another text. But I could also see this for the unmotivated writer who needs to work under a deadline. 

Check out the site and give it a try.

 http://www.themostdangerouswritingapp.com/

Google Education On Air: It Takes a Teacher

https://educationonair.withgoogle.com/live/2016-dec?tab=americas

Recently, Google produced their Education on Air event. Linked above are all of the On Demand sessions you can view for free. Get great tips, tricks, and ideas from around the globe. The link takes you to the Americas sessions, but make sure to check out the Austraila and the United Kingdom tabs as well. 

New Year's Resolution

A bit early to talk about resolutions, but I already have one. Write on my blog more than I have this semester. I am setting a goal of once a week. Hopefully, I can do that.

Most of the resources I have been sharing have been on my Twitter feeds. Please feel free to follow me at either location or both.

https://twitter.com/scottfirenza - My personal Twitter account. I mainly post about EdTech, but you will also see my personal life creep in. Disney, Vacations, the Dallas Cowboys, Food, and more... If any of that interests you, please follow

https://twitter.com/lisdtechdeploy - My more Professional twitter feed branded under my district, Lubbock ISD. All technology resources for education and the classroom. Lots of Google, Chromebooks, iOS apps, Internet resources, and more.